April 26, 2011

What's Obama hiding?

Famed landlord Donald Trump has been asking some questions about President Obama's background, such as what were his college records at Occidental and Columbia?

The basic impetus behind questions about Obama is the perfectly reasonable feeling: "Who is this guy?"

For example, I lived in Chicago from 1982 until the late summer of 2000. I read local newspapers, I watched local news. I've got a pretty good memory. When Barack Obama became a media superstar in 2004 and an heir apparent to the Presidency, I said to myself, "Oh, yeah, him! I remember him from my Chicago days from ... stuff. Well, I'm pretty sure I've been hearing his name for years, going back to the early 1970s when his radical Black Power plays were so controversial. Oh, wait a minute, I'm thinking of playwright Amiri Baraka, not Barack Obama. Well ..."

My best guess is that when Barack Obama's name surfaced in the news in 2004, it wasn't new to me, but I might just be kidding myself. 

Now, if I'd been paying close attention to local Democratic black politics on the South Side, I would have remembered him as the guy who got crushed by Bobby Rush (whom I was quite familiar with) in early 2000 in the House primary. If I was a player in Democratic rich white politics on the Gold Coast, I would no doubt have heard about how he leaves wealthy white liberals with fainting spells about how he should be President. 

But to a white Republican yuppie on the North Side with a job, he just wasn't on the radar. And why should he have been? What was he accomplishing that marked him out as Presidential timber?

Four years later, he's elected President, eight years after losing badly a House primary.

That's not the most amazing eight year rise in American Presidential history. For example, in 1860, Ulysses S. Grant was a counter clerk in his dad's shop in Galena, IL. Eight years later he was elected President. 

Of course, in the meantime, Grant had conquered Vicksburg and Richmond and defeated Robert E. Lee. 

In contrast, over eight years, Obama had ... uh ... well, mainly he had given up his lifelong ambition of rising to power on the back of black voters and switched to a strategy of rising to power on the back of white voters. 

Back in 2008 in VDARE, I considered various popular theories about Obama"

That he was really born in Kenya and thus isn’t eligible to be President.

That he isn’t black because his father was 7/8ths Arab.

That he is a practicing Muslim.

That his real father was a Communist poet, Frank Marshall Davis.

That Bill Ayers ghostwrote his 1995 autobiography Dreams from My Father.

For example, obviously Obama wasn't born in Kenya. The cost and discomfort for a pregnant lady to travel from Hawaii to Kenya in 1961 would be prohibitive. And why would Barack Sr. have taken Ann to Kenya? To meet her co-wife?

I encourage you to reread my 2008 article for a sensible take on various controversies.

So, what is Obama covering up?

Well, one thing that he's not particularly trying hard to cover up, but almost nobody has noticed, is the dubiousness of his parents' marriage:
"In fact, how and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I’ve never quite had the courage to explore. There’s no record of a real wedding, a cake, a ring, a giving away of the bride. No families were in attendance; it’s not even clear that people back in Kansas were fully informed. Just a small civil ceremony, a justice of the peace. The whole thing seems so fragile... "

He doesn't spell it out, but as a lawyer and a politician, the whole thing would strike him as trouble: Barack Sr. was already married back in Kenya with a wife and a couple of kids, so getting married in Hawaii would be the crime of bigamy. (This situation was anticipated uncannily in John Updike's 1978 bestseller The Coup, in which an African student in an American college in 1959 keeps trying to tell his white American girlfriend that he has a wife back home in Africa.) Or, you could argue that Barack Sr.'s marriage in Kenya according to the customs of his tribe wasn't a "real" marriage, but that sounds pretty racist. And the whole thing raises the topic of polygamy, which isn't really on-message in American political campaigns.

Obama introduced himself to America at the 2004 Democratic convention with a famous speech that began with 390 words about his ancestry, especially his parent's marriage. It's always been a big selling point for Obama that he unites through his parents' marriage the black and the white, just as Henry VIII united the white and the red roses of the War of the Roses. And, it's been a selling point that his parents' black-white marriage was illegal in many states in 1961 (although not, of course, Hawaii, where a huge fraction of marriages by then were interracial, a subject that Obama supporters don't like to talk about). This is a big part of the self-congratulation that helped get Obama to the White House: look how enlightened we are on race today!

But what's the political utility of the truth about his parents' marriage: that it was illegal because polygamy is illegal in America? The federal government fought a small civil war with the Mormons over polygamy in the 1850s. There's no way, no how to positively spin the fact that Obama's parents marriage was illegally bigamous, so let's not talk about it.

But, Obama has been reasonably forthcoming about his parents' illegal marriage. He's never mentioned that his parents marriage was bigamous, but he's laid out enough facts in Dreams from My Father that you can easily figure it out if you read the President's autobiography closely, but who's bothered to do that? (I have.)

So, what is Obama still hiding?

One theory that makes more sense out of his career's ups and downs -- graduating in the top 16% supposedly at Harvard Law School, where he made a big impression on everybody, alongside periods where he seemed down and withdrawn -- is that he's mildly bipolar. Lots of people are. Famous people often are famous because their up phases coincided with periods of opportunity in their lives. By his own accounts, he appears to have suffered major depressive episodes in New York in the 1980s and after his rejection by black voters as not black enough in 2000.

Another theory that I'm increasingly drawn to is that Obama got a little help along the way from CIA/NSA types, but that's completely off everybody else's radar because it doesn't fit ideological categories. His father was a protege of the CIA's main man in Kenya, Tom Mboya, and was chief witness of his assassination. His mother worked in the U.S. embassy in Indonesia, a main front in the Cold War, soon after the 1965 coup, and then went on to a long career with U.S. government-affiliated organizations in the Third World. Barack Jr.'s one private industry job was as a copy editor at a firm, Business International, whose owner had previously admitted the firm served as a front for four CIA agents.

But that likely wouldn't be that big of a deal: say that his parents and stepfather got some people they knew at Langley or NSA or the Ford Foundation or some oil companies to pull some strings to get young Barry transferred from Oxy to Columbia to study international relations. And then, somebody directed him to a job at a CIA-connected firm for a year after college There might be an interesting story here, but perhaps the more interesting one is how he rebelled against this path laid out for him in international affairs and came up with the idea of becoming mayor of Chicago, a very insular, anti-international ambition, a rebellion against his parents' internationalism.

Overall, though, I think the basic situation is that Obama wakes up every morning in the White House and says to himself, "Holy crap, those poor dumb saps really did elect a black lefty affirmative action baby to be President. I'd better act like a complete tool of Wall Street and the neocons, or the saps might finally figure it out. Fortunately, the Republicans are even bigger tools of Wall Street and the neocons, and white Democrats are complete idiots about race, so Democrats will never grasp why I have to sell them out: because I can't let anybody notice I'm a black lefty affirmative action baby! It's so ironic that if white liberals started to think about it, their heads would explode like that computer on Star Trek."

But, mostly, Obama's big dark secret is that he just didn't do much in his life other than self-promote himself as the guy who should be the first black President. The embarrassing secret is that Obama is President for the same dumb reason as the last guy was President: because of who his daddy was.

98 comments:

  1. Really, BHO is so much of an inscrutable cipher, and so much of the politics surrounding his Presidency seems consumed with his personality, that the issue has become tiresome. His defenders seem obsessed with any appearance of a slur or slight upon his dignity or ancestry (witness the incessant race-carding and the whole "birther" sideshow), and his opponents seem at times all too willing to continue to make things a referendum on him. At the end, he remains as much of a (probably deliberate) enigma as he was at the beginning. It's basically personality rope-a-dope.

    If I were coming up with a basic theme for the GOP Presidential candidate in 2012, whoever it might be, it would be "if you think that the most important person in this election is Barack Obama, vote for him. If you think it's you, vote for us."

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  2. "he's President for the same dumb reason as the last guy was President: because of who his daddy was": heh! Keep it up, Sailer.

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  3. "he's President for the same dumb reason as the last guy was President: because of who his daddy was": but beating McCain wasn't hard - it was beating Hellary that was a feat. So, really, he's President because of who her husband was.

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  4. PR Intern/College Slacker4/26/11, 2:58 PM

    He's not hiding anything. Refusing to release whatever it is the Teapartiers (to use the kinder variation) demand to see is just a 'screw you' to them. It wouldn't convince any of them to vote for him, plus independents don't care about the issue so why bother?

    It also uses up a lot of airtime that could be spent on actual important issues. It makes many on the right seem slightly off (the term 'birther' doesn't help) and gives Obama easy targets.

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  5. To me it seems simple. The original document only has a few items of information on it in addition to the bare fact of the birth. Apparently the Obama administration is uncomfortable with one or more of those items.

    The whole Kenya birth issue seems to have arisen because of some remark his half-sister made. She corrected herself soon thereafter but that seems to have set off the paranoia receptors among conspiracy theorists. It seems to me to be extremely unlikely that he was born in Kenya but that notion has grown wings because he is obviously hiding something.

    The document includes the items race and religion. It is possible that a white woman giving birth to a light skinned mulatto like baby Barrack might find the child classified as White. It wouldn't be inaccurate either. He's as much White as Black. This isn't very sinister but it would be inconvenient for his later political career.

    The other possibility seems to me to be that he was listed as Muslim. Islam is patrilineal. If the father was a Muslim the child is presumed to be a Muslim. The mother when asked in the hospital about the religion of the child could quite naturally answer Muslim. She was married or at least associated with Barrack Sr. a nominal Muslim and would later marry another Muslim. Young Barrack wouldn't be exposed to Christianity until he came to live with his grandparents much later.

    Our President chooses to downplay his Muslim connections (name, school, relatives, etc.) so it is not very mysterious that he would seek to suppress an official document that shows him to have been - in a sense - born a Muslim.

    Albertosaurus

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  6. when did he change his name back to barak hussein obama? did his step father adopt him and gave him the legal name soetoro

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  7. "...his opponents seem at times all too willing to continue to make things a referendum on him."

    And why shouldn't they? What was the 2010 election - a victory of historic proportions for his opponents - but a referendum on Obama? Probably close to 80% of hetero white males will vote against the putz in 2012. The key to the election will be keeping white females focused on the guy they've fallen out of love with. And to do that all his opponent has to do is to keep the focus on Mister Use 'Em And Throw 'Em Under The Bus. That'll register with white females just in case they're thinking of a second fling.

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  8. He's really president because the American media betrayed its own set of ethics in what must be considered, effectively, the first coup in American history. Simply no way this could have happened without an industry of willing enablers on their knees in supplication before him. He's a overmatched dimwit with pretensions; they're traitors.

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  9. I have to say that Thomas' advice for the GOP is excellent. I'd push it on the center.
    And yes, beating McCain was anti-climatic after the fight with Hillary. That's when the cult of personality was blooming in full force.

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  10. "but beating McCain wasn't hard - it was beating Hellary that was a feat. So, really, he's President because of who her husband was."

    Nah. There was an article about Hillary's campaign organization after the election and it's amazing how incompetent it was: the Latina in charge watched soaps in the office, during the day. Hillary finally took control, and started to close the gap with Obama, but it was too little, too late.

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  11. the CIA theory is good, but how does it actually manifest in any sort of hiding-ness? The long-form birth certificate hiding could be to hide his parents' lack of marriage, his transcript hiding could be to hide his lack of accomplishment, but what does he do that suggests he's hiding a CIA connection? And if he wants to be seen as a tool of Wall street or neocons why wouldnt he want it known he had CIA connections?

    Or is the CIA help basically another example of his lack of accomplishment?

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  12. Er, um.

    Jimmy Carter appeared on the December 13 1973 episode of 'What's my Line'

    Nobody guessed who he was.

    Less than 3 years later he was elected President.

    www.imdb.com/title/tt0747064/

    You can add Fillmore and Harding to the names of Presidents who came out of nowhere (largely)-and that's excluding the 'accidental' Presidents.

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  13. I'm really looking forward to his post-presidency, to see if shows the real him a bit more. Also to see the quality of the books be produces.

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  14. For example, obviously Obama wasn't born in Kenya. The cost and discomfort for a pregnant lady to travel from Hawaii to Kenya in 1961 would be prohibitive.

    Similarly, the cost & discomfort for 18-year-old Stanley Ann, to have shown up in Seattle, as a single mother, enrolled as a student at the U of W, about two weeks after ostensibly giving birth back in Hawaii, would also have been prohibitive.

    So one very real possibility is that Stanley Ann had already been in Seattle for months, and had crossed over the border, to Vancouver, British Columbia, for the birth [so as to have avoided the humiliation and ostracization which would have come from giving birth to a mulatto bastard in the States].

    In which case Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Dunham Whomever-He-Is would not be a "naturally born citizen" eligible to serve as president of the United States.

    Point being that the canonical sequence of events which we are supposed to believe - birth in Hawaii on August 4th, Stanley Ann & little Barry all alone in Seattle two weeks later - is simply nuts.

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  15. Ace (from Ace of Spades) looked at this just today and his evidence is that Obama probably only graduated in the top 50-75%. It used to be "honors" meant top 75% and magna was only top 50%. They've since changed that to be more selective. Also the grading was very subjective and filled with Affirmative Action A's if you had the right skin color -- which he did.

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  16. Obama WAS a tool of Wall Street over Republicans. HE got more donations from them than Republicans did in 2008. Why? Because Wall Street is just as PC driven as say, Hollywood or the media or Universities and other elite institutions. Not very reassuring, but there you have it. Wall Street is very, very socially liberal.

    You don't spend $2 million in legal fees keeping your birth certificate secret if you don't have something to hide, as Trump notes. McCain, GWB, Clinton, GHW Bush, Reagan, Carter, all made their long-form birth certificates public. As did Gore, Kerry, Dukakis, etc. So what is Obama hiding?

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  17. My view is that Obama is hiding his race. Which was listed as "White" on his birth certificate. Which if released would doom his re-election chances.

    In the early 1960's, which race was more advantageous? White or Black? And which now? [Obama's Honors at Harvard Law were shared with 47% of his classmates. Not so honors after all. He's not very bright.]

    Obama has posed as the Black Messiah to White liberals, and Blacker than Black to Blacks. He loses even ten percent of either because he's revealed as a White Man "passing for Black" and he's finished. Hence the secret long form birth certificate. Race as always is the key to everything about Obama.

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  18. Jimmy Carter appeared on the December 13 1973 episode of 'What's my Line'

    Most Americans aren't that familiar with state senators and governors in states where they don't reside. That's no surprise. Hell, most aren't that familiar with the people at the federal level. Carter still had a military career, a successful business career, and an extensive political career prior to running for president.

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  19. I am Lugash.

    OK, here's my super icky theory of BHO:

    Frank Marshall Davis is his true father AND he had a sexual relationship with Frank Marshall Davis as a young man. BHO discovered who his true daddy was after the relationship started, and it totally freaked him out. BHO is in some sort of weird denial mode about the question of who his father is, which is why he won't release the birth certificate.

    OK, totally implausible. Just look at BHO's resemblance toBarack Sr. blows my wild ass theory out of the water. Maybe we can weave some of the other theories into a nice meta theory.

    I am Lugash.

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  20. Would anyone hold being born to a polygamous marriage against Obama? Nope. You can't help that as an infant. Nor would they hold him accountable for being born as a "Muslim." That's fine, in fact people VOTED for him because they thought, hey Muslim President, Muslims will like us!

    But if he's really White ...

    The take on Canadian Birth for Obama (to avoid then-racist Seattle) and the "birth announcement" [motive: secure US citizenship/strong custody position] seems apt. But I think the real scandal Obama is hiding is that he was listed as "White" and "acted White" his early life.

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  21. From what i've read of his mother i've known similar women and my guess is she put "muslim" down on the certificate as a symbolic way of giving the finger to the running dogs of capitalist imperialism.

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  22. Harry Baldwin4/26/11, 4:46 PM

    Albertosaurus said . . . The whole Kenya birth issue seems to have arisen because of some remark his half-sister made.

    It's easy to understand her confusion. Obama has something like eight siblings and half siblings that we know if from three different mothers.

    The document includes the items race and religion. It is possible that a white woman giving birth to a light skinned mulatto like baby Barrack might find the child classified as White.

    The parents' races are listed but not the baby's, so that's not an issue. Also, there is no listing of religion on the contemporary long-form Hawaiian birth certificates that have been shown on-line.

    The theory that Obama was born much earlier, possibly in Canada, is intriguing. However, what about reports that the birth announcement was not placed by the family but generated from hospital records?

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  23. "Jimmy Carter...Less than 3 years later he was elected President."

    He was governor of Georgia.

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  24. Or maybe a clerk at the hospital was filing the form, came to the name Obama, crossed out whatever box the parents checked as being an obvious typo, and, judging from experience with people named "Obama" in Hawaii: checked:

    X Japanese

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  25. Harry Baldwin4/26/11, 4:53 PM

    Those who are speculating wildly on what might be on Obama's long form birth certificate--race? religion?--should look at what a Hawaiian birth certificate circa 1961 looks like.

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  26. > It also uses up a lot of airtime that could be spent on actual important issues. It makes many on the right seem slightly off (the term 'birther' doesn't help) and gives Obama easy targets.

    This model seems not totally inviable, but I doubt it's true. The thing looks kind of bad. It could influence people, liminally at least.

    How do you really know no one cares? They may say they don't, but that could be largely because the press has tried manfully to stigmatize the question. I'm sure his pollsters know that what people assert in a poll need not be a 100% accurate representation of their real thoughts.

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  27. >Refusing to release whatever it is the Teapartiers (to use the kinder variation) demand to see is just a 'screw you' to them.<

    And to the Constitution.

    Which W allegedly said is "just a g-- d--- piece of paper." So why expect better of you?

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  28. Obama's birth certificate lists him as a "white" child.


    Just kidding. Thats actually a theory asserted by a talk-radio-host. Im kind of inclined to think the blood-type might eliminate the paternity of Obama Sr. and make Frank Marshall his father by default. Wouldn't that be juicy?

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  29. Whiskey declared

    >Wall Street is just as PC driven as say, Hollywood or the media or Universities and other elite institutions[...]very, very socially liberal.<

    Are you saying Wall St. - like Hollywood and the media - earns like Episcopalians and votes like Puerto Ricans?

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  30. You're thinking too much about this identity thing. Dude wants to be rich and powerful, like three quarters of men. He says what he has to to get elected President. Now that he's President, he needs money for reelection, so he can't piss Wall Street off.

    I won't deny politics is full of smokescreens, but if you assume they're just a bunch of greedy thieves the rest falls into place pretty easily.

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  31. "What was he accomplishing that marked him out as Presidential timber?"

    He was against the Iraq invasion. That is what enabled him to defeat Clinton.

    I saw his 2004 convention speech on television and thought he was boring. My opinion of him changed a couple of years later when an internet posting quoted from his 2002 speech against the war.

    It was one of the best speeches I have read on the war as political rhetoric and as a prediction of what a disaster the war would become. The war was the major issue in the race. Hillary had backed it from the start and never expressed regret over her vote. Left wing Dems were furious with her stance. It was obvious to me that when antiwar Dems heard of Obama's early opposition they would enthusiastically back him and that a coalition of white anti war activists and blacks would amount to a big chunk of the Dem primary electorate.

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  32. Here's an issue I've always had with Obama's birth certificate, which is perhaps more a problem with the media than it is with him.

    I personally find it highly unlikely that Obama wasn't born in the US; it simply would require a conspiracy of far too large a scope to be plausible.

    But there has always been the issue: why has Obama always relied only on the so-called "Certificate of Live Birth" issued by the state of Hawaii, rather than showing to the public the "long form" of his birth certificate? Nothing has done more to fuel the rumors that Obama may not have been born in the US than the failure to produce this original certificate.

    What is simply bizarre about virtually all mainstream media accounts of the so-called "birther" controversy is that this particular odd fact is never mentioned. In the rather rare case in which it is mentioned, it is quickly dismissed as irrelevant: we are told insistently, only the Certificate of Live Birth is of importance; officials in Hawaii have vouched for that certificate by examining the long form.

    But here's my most basic puzzle here: so far as I know, neither Obama nor any of his spokespeople have ever offered up an explanation as to why the long form has not been produced.

    Now Obama and his spokespeople might claim that it is as a matter of privacy that Obama has chosen not to produce the long form. Of course, it would be quite difficult to understand just what might be "private" about such document under the circumstances.

    Obama and his spokespeople might also assert that they simply can't produce the original long form because they have no access, or they aren't allowed to do so, or some such bureaucratic reason. But it would be very difficult to see how that might be true either -- can it really be that the Hawaiian state government would not permit it, even at the behest of the person whose birth certificate it is?

    The real point here is that, again so far as I can tell, no explanation for this failure to produce the document has ever been offered up.

    And here is where the media comes in: why has the media failed even to ask Obama or his spokespeople the simple question as to why Obama has not produced the long form?

    Perhaps, in fact, some such question has been asked, and been answered. If so, I'd much appreciate hearing what that answer was.

    But if not, how bizarre is it that no one in the media has even asked that question? How protective of Obama must they be not to see that, at bare minimum, the question as to why Obama has not produced the document is important and legitimate?

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  33. PR Intern/College Slacker is on the money. I’m wondering how Obama is trying to choose his opponent. I remember the liberals' 2008 pointed attacks on Romney because Romney is smarter than Obama and had a pretty good strategy for independent voters. The NYT wanted McCain to be the nominee because his strategy centered on a war that was unpopular and seemed (at the time) headed toward failure. More recently, Obama has complimented Romney in order to hurt his appeal with conservatives. Trump seems easy for them to defeat, but they actually said so, which seemed like a dumb strategy. Perhaps they are hoping Trump really will launch a third-party nomination, like he said he might do. If that is their plan, then they are idiots. Trump is the 2012 Wesley Clark. If he runs at all, he would not run for a cause, like Ron Paul does. I am surprised that the liberals aren’t trying to draw more attention to Romney’s religion. If I were helping Obama, I would do anything to help Huckabee become the Republican nominee because he has so many weaknesses, and he is so sloppy. His handling of the “birther” issue makes Trump’s thoughts sound clear. I doubt Trump believes what he is saying. He saw an opportunity in the fact that, for whatever reason, Hawaii is not producing the birth certificate. Obama cannot be attacked the way that Clinton and Bush could be viciously attacked because of his race, so there is a hunger among conservatives to find a way to make personal attacks on Obama not seem racist.

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  34. Well, I also think it's clear there's something pretty embarrassing in the birth certificate, though I'm not exactly sure what.

    But leaving that aside, it seems to me pretty likely that---whatever the birth certificate said---Obama considered himself to be a Muslim while a child.

    After all, his father was a Muslim. His step-father was a Muslim. He grew up in a 98% Muslim country and attended a Muslim school. So unless his mother was some sort of fanatic Christian---which she obviously wasn't---I'd think the path of least resistance would meant he was raised as a Muslim.

    Here's some support from a a dog that didn't bark. As a foreign-looking child growing up in Indonesia, he was always been teased and harassed by the Indonesian children, as described in all the articles and books. Now if he hadn't been considered a Muslim, surely they would have primarily teased and harassed him for his alien religion (or his atheism). And the stories of such religious harassment would have become a very powerful part of his autobiographical political narrative: "I have a deep personal understanding of the horrors of religious bigotry---after all, I was constantly attacked as a child for being of the Christian faith." I'd think that sort of thing would have gone over extremely well, both among Christian conservatives and also among liberals.

    Since he never mentioned or used it, it probably never happened. Since it never happened, he probably was considered Muslim as a child in Indonesia.

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  35. "I'd better act like a complete tool of Wall Street and the neocons, or they might finally figure it out."

    Uh... He IS a total tool of the Wall Street.

    I don't think there is any (sane) liberal or (wages under $250,000) republican who will dispute this?

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  36. Let's not forget the Larry Sinclair episode. I know the guy has had credibility issues stemming from the fact that he hasn't been the most virtuous of citizens. People in that lifestyle always have skeletons in the closet and so are easily brushed off.
    But remember the Paula Jones affair in Clinton time? The Clinton attack dogs dismissed her as just "trailer trash" and everybody went along with it. Turns out that Paula Jones had more scruples and integrity in her little finger than Clinton ever had in his whole life.
    There might be something to it. Where's the tell all previous girlfriends? It would be a big fast buck for any woman who could establish having had at least a one day romance with him. But instead all you hear is silence. Obama is the man who casts no shadow, creates no image in the mirror.

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  37. His mother worked in the U.S. embassy in Indonesia, a main front in the Cold War, soon after the 1965 coup, and then went on to a long career with U.S. government-affiliated organizations in the Third World.

    I think that most people would forgive Obama for having had a crazy mother, who dragged him halfway across the world, forced Indonesian citizenship on him, and allowed Lolo Soetoro to convert him to [or to continue his inculcation in] Islam.

    And the working [tacit, implicit] assumption would be that after Obama came back home to Hawaii, to live with Madelyn & Stanley Armour Dunham, as a teenager, he would have contacted the US State Department, on or [well] before his 18th birthday, to let them know [in no uncertain terms] that once he was legally emancipated, he intended to renounce his "dual" Indonesian citizenship, and revert [exclusively] to the American citizenship of his birth. And as an American citizen, he certainly would have had to register with the Selective Service, on or before his 18th birthday.

    But what if he didn't do that?

    What if he continued to carry an Indonesian passport after his 18th birthday? What if he never registered with the Selective Service? What if he applied for foreign student grants at Occidental or Columbia, as an Indonesian citizen? What if he travelled to Pakistan, in 1981, with his homosexual lover, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, on an Indonesian passport?

    Then you've got him with foreign loyalties as an adult, and there is no way in Hell that he passes the "natural born citizen" test.

    Now fast forward to the spring of 2008.

    On Thursday, March 20, 2008, when news of the State Department passport files breach is made public, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton says, "This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years."

    But just two days later, on Saturday, March 22, 2008, it is revealed that Obama campaign operatives, as directed by Obama supporter John Brennan, were responsible for the passport files breach.

    The media then goes into coverup mode, sweeps the entire passport files story under the rug, and devotes zero attention to it for the remainder of the campaign.

    Four weeks later, on Thursday, April 18, 2008, the key prosecution witness in the passport files case, Lt Quarles Harris Jr, is found murdered.

    And a year later, in 2009, John Brennan is named Special Tsar for Black-Ops in the Obama Administration.

    At this point in the story, a cynic would point out that there are no coincidences in the intelligence bidness...

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  38. And the stories of such religious harassment would have become a very powerful part of his autobiographical political narrative: "I have a deep personal understanding of the horrors of religious bigotry---after all, I was constantly attacked as a child for being of the Christian faith." I'd think that sort of thing would have gone over extremely well, both among Christian conservatives and also among liberals. Since he never mentioned or used it, it probably never happened...

    Er, you mean, "Since Bill Ayers never mentioned it..."

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  39. Roger Chaillet4/26/11, 7:19 PM

    Here's a CIA angle not mentioned by anyone else.

    How is it that Robert Gates was chosen to be head of Texas A&M University?

    A&M is a top engineering and natural sciences university. Gates is neither a scientist nor an engineer. Gates was replaced by a "Latina": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_Murano

    And how is that Rob Allyn, Bush's crony, could have hosted an A&M website devoted to "diversity" at A&M? Or rather, Fleishman-Hillard, the PR firm that bought Allyn's firm, did the hosting. http://fleishmanhillard.com/who-we-are/advisory-board/

    Interesting that Barry McCaffrey is on the advisory board of Fleishman-Hillard.

    Rob Allyn used to sit on the board of Ace Cash Express. Ace has earned millions off remittances sent south of the border by all the "hardworking migrants" residing here illegally. Allyn also got Vicente Fox elected. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rob_Allyn

    So, the "war" on drugs has close ties to the CIA.

    Are we surprised?

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  40. On topic:

    Isn't there some sort of privacy law that Hawaii vital records such as the original "long form" document can't be released to the public?

    Whether or not this is true, I don't understand why birthers don't address this issue.

    ______________________
    Off topic:

    Whiskey wrote: "Obama WAS a tool of Wall Street over Republicans. HE got more donations from them than Republicans did in 2008. Why? Because Wall Street is just as PC driven as say, Hollywood or the media or Universities and other elite institutions. Not very reassuring, but there you have it. Wall Street is very, very socially liberal."
    ________________________

    Yes, what could possibly drive three brothers such as Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and Harvard professor Zeke Emanuel to take such consistently liberal positions?

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  41. Er, you mean, "Since Bill Ayers never mentioned it..."

    Yes, exactly! I can't imagine Ayers would have passed up such a wonderful aspect of the ideological narrative he was crafting for his protege. And while it might not do to overly emphasize the racial bigotry of Indonesians towards half-black children---after all, non-whites can't be racist---it's fine to focus on their religious bigotry. Everyone knows all religious people are bigots, even Third World non-white ones...

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  42. His killer chicken-wing recipe.

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  43. "He's not hiding anything. Refusing to release whatever it is the Teapartiers (to use the kinder variation) demand to see is just a 'screw you' to them. It wouldn't convince any of them to vote for him, plus independents don't care about the issue so why bother?"

    It was all sealed up long before there was a tea party so your premise is stupid.

    People keep lids on embarrasing stuff, like Jeremiah Wright. The only reason his followers in the press even mentioned the Wright controversy was because videos of his sermons popped up on youtube and were attracting eyeballs.

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  44. The issue is the total coverup of all barry records. Not just the birth document.

    What poisons the entire document chain? Bogus citizenship. Some lawyer said quash everything. It's a daisy chain from hell.

    They can't release the real bc because it's not Hawaiian: he wasn't born in HI but they wrangled the short form - which is about as legit as jose's matricula consul card. They can't release the college records because he was enrolled as a foreign student. Who knows how many inconsistent fudges were made along the way.

    The link above to a real 1961 HI birth doc is important. The damning info is not race or religion - the doc doesn't list that info.

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  45. Harry Baldwin4/26/11, 8:26 PM

    Anonymous said . . .And here is where the media comes in: why has the media failed even to ask Obama or his spokespeople the simple question as to why Obama has not produced the long form?

    I find this fascinating too. In most stories about this issue, such as one I saw yesterday on the Shepard Smith Show, the claim is that the computer-generated Certificate of Live Birth is in fact the birth certificate everyone is talking about, only they're too dumb to realize it. The journalists rarely note that the Certificate of Live Birth contains considerably less information than the Certification of Live Birth. Despite the fact that Trump keeps stressing this, it's news to Shepard Smith, the New York Times, CNN, etc.

    A fall-back position, used by the White House Press Secretary, is to say that it's no use releasing the long-form certificate because the birthers won't be convinced by anything. "Next they'll want his mother exhumed for a DNA sample," said one of Obama's defenders.

    Of course, this is a very weak argument. Releasing the long-form certificate would do a great deal to settle the issue.

    Isn't there some sort of privacy law that Hawaii vital records such as the original "long form" document can't be released to the public?

    Under a 1999 law, it's illegal to release the information without the subject's permission. Obama could arrange it with a phone call, I'm sure. When Obama flack Hawaii governor Neil Abercrombie promised to end the controversy by releasing the certificate, he later backed off.

    This is from the AP story:

    "State Attorney General David Louie told the governor that privacy laws bar him from disclosing an individual’s birth documentation without the person’s consent, Abercrombie spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Friday.

    “'There is nothing more that Gov. Abercrombie can do within the law to produce a document,' said Dela Cruz. 'Unfortunately, there are conspirators who will continue to question the citizenship of our president.'”

    In other words, despite the governor saying he would end this controversy by releasing the document, he now says he can't do it because evidently the president will not consent to it, so unfortunately "conspirators will continue to question the citizenship of our president."

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  46. "Releasing the long-form certificate would do a great deal to settle the issue."

    But why do you think Obama would want to settle the issue, especially right now? Because he's a good sport? Because sportsmanship and the common good are the Chicago Way of playing politics?

    If he settled the issue right now, it would be forgotten by the 2012 election. On the other hand, if Republicans make a big deal about the non-existence of the long form birth certificate in the 2012 campaign, and Obama then releases the long form birth certificate on November 1, 2012, he would get maximum advantage from the timing.

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  47. He's hiding his birth certificate because he's hiding everything. It's the old lawyer trick of hide-the-ball; you can't be sure what he's really hiding because it's lost in the noise of a general blackout.

    As Kurtz has shown he's got plenty to be hiding from his Chicago days; he was quite probably a Democratic Socialist. Plus, as Trump points out, his legend of being the Smartest Guy in the Room is likely to be nonsense.

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  48. "If he settled the issue right now, it would be forgotten by the 2012 election. On the other hand, if Republicans make a big deal about the non-existence of the long form birth certificate in the 2012 campaign, and Obama then releases the long form birth certificate on November 1, 2012, he would get maximum advantage from the timing."

    But if one of the states passes the legislation requiring an LFBC,things will get very, very interesting. Not producing the LFBC will make no political sense then, because it will draw out the court fight and the media will have absolutely no choice but to ask critical questions when all the candidates except Barry have no problem getting on the ballot. Are you willing to admit that if one of the states passes birther legislation and Barry doesn't immediately release his LFBC, it will probably mean he doesn't have one and the S*** is going to hit the fan?

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  49. ...isteve why didn't you include a facial comp with frank marshall in your 2008 article? are you sure marshall was devoid of east african genes?

    - obama strongly resembles marshall who was light skinned himself
    - obama looks like he could be a quadroon and not 1/2 black
    - obama throws a baseball like an octaroon white girl

    ...how many string bean males are in the dunham family tree and/or the marshall tree?

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  50. Harry Baldwin4/26/11, 8:59 PM

    Steve Sailer said . . . On the other hand, if Republicans make a big deal about the non-existence of the long form birth certificate in the 2012 campaign, and Obama then releases the long form birth certificate on November 1, 2012, he would get maximum advantage from the timing.

    I don't see any Republicans but Trump making a big deal out of this issue, and I don't think Trump is actually going to run. Also, if Obama were to release the birth certificate week before the election, most people would be annoyed with him for yanking everyone's chain for so long. It would fit in with the impression Obama makes of being an above-it-all jerk.

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  51. Frank Marshall Davis is his true father AND he had a sexual relationship with Frank Marshall Davis as a young man.

    I agree that there was something extraordinarily perverted going on with that little triangle of Stanley Armour Dunham, Frank Marshall Davis, and Barry Soetoro Dunham Whatever-The-Hell-His-Name-Was.

    One of Cashill's correspondents also agrees with us: "[This incident] may be describing outright sexual abuse. But perhaps not; we don't know, and we'll never know. But there is no question that the poem is describing a boundary violation on several levels: this child feels invaded - perhaps even taken over - by this man, and is fighting against that sensation."

    BTW, Bill Ayers is also an admitted bisexual.

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  52. I think it reasonable to ponder the duration, intensity, and extent of any Secret Service / FBI/ & other governmental contacts and interviews with those having had any noteworthy degree of social interactions--elective social, work related, academic, etc.-- with President Obama, going far back. A propinquity chart would be assembled and used to guide organized interviewing. That such contacts are made is entirely appropriate and required for the fullest security of President or Presidential candidate. IF, however, such contacts were made in any way that inhibits persons with knowledge from being forthcoming publicly, then that would be highly relevant. I have the troubling sense that statistically speaking far fewer persons have commented publicly about the President than one would imagine to be the number of such persons if all such people felt at liberty to speak out publicly (??) Oversight committeees in Congress ought to be able to get some sense of how this was handled and some persons contacted that could be interviewed by Committee staff to help determine if "zip lip" pressures were insinuated into the process by government agents/ or their contract agents, etc. I don't know whether an FOIA Request could determine within broad limits how extensive governmental contacts and interviews have been. Such Requests would have to welcome redacted documents, etc.,--i.e., would have to "work the edges".

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  53. I don't see any Republicans but Trump making a big deal out of this issue, and I don't think Trump is actually going to run.

    Maybe not at the national level - where the RINOs rule the roost - but at the grassroots, there are only two things that the GOP cares about in 2012:

    1) Sarah

    2) The signature of the Attending Physician on the long form birth certificate

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  54. "...how many string bean males are in the dunham family tree and/or the marshall tree?"

    And how many string bean males are in the Nilotic Luo tribal tree?

    A lot.

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  55. Harry Baldwin4/26/11, 9:22 PM

    Anonymous said... He's hiding his birth certificate because he's hiding everything. It's the old lawyer trick of hide-the-ball; you can't be sure what he's really hiding because it's lost in the noise of a general blackout.

    This makes a lot of sense. It's hard to see what could be in the birth certificate that could be so damaging, but it's easy to imagine that Obama's policy is to let nothing out because there are certain records that would blow him out of the water. As long as people are focusing in the birth certificate he'd as soon make his stand there. Since the state media are being so supportive in his efforts to stonewall, why pull the rug out from under them?

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  56. if Republicans make a big deal about the non-existence of the long form birth certificate in the 2012 campaign, and Obama then releases the long form birth certificate on November 1, 2012, he would get maximum advantage from the timing.

    Many on the right were already making a big deal out of this issue in the 2008 election.

    Do you seriously believe Obama decided to "save" this issue for the 2012 election, rather than use it to guarantee 100% his election victory in 2008, and/or get him that extra margin of victory that would render his election all the more "historic" and his mandate all the more powerful?

    No politician thinks that far ahead -- least of all the stuck-in-the immediate Mr. Obama.

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  57. Anecodatal evidence: I'm a white northsider, and I certainly knew who Barack Obama was in the late 90s. That's because I had multiple friends and acquaintances who were involved with the University of Chicago. In particular, one friend of mine (who is now a Democratic activist) took one of Obama's classes ca. 1999 and basically thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He was really excited about the 2000 Congressional campaign. I was already an anti-leftist at the time, so I was never going to be a supporter, but Obama definitely seemed like an intriguing character.

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  58. none of the above4/26/11, 10:46 PM

    Steve,

    Your tongue in cheek theory about Obama's decisions doesn't quite hold together, but it's at least entertaining. I think speculating about politicians' internal motives often ends up as an exercise in fundamental attribution error. (That's probably made more common by the way politicians cultivate some kind of an image--whether that's postracial intellectual or regular guy from Texas--that is professionally created and often pretty far from reality.) Obama is probably mostly responding to his incentives as he understands them, given a desire to keep and exercise power.

    I think we can learn a lot more about his incentives as he sees them from his actions than we can about his beliefs. Presumably, it doesn't pay to push too hard on the military or spy agencies or on Wall Street, because despite having campaign promises and alleged ideological preferences in the direction of pushing on all three, he hasn't done much pushing.

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  59. "Presumably, it doesn't pay to push too hard on the military or spy agencies or on Wall Street,"

    Do spy agencies have all the new President's phone calls from a decade ago on file at Echelon?

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  60. "In particular, one friend of mine (who is now a Democratic activist) took one of Obama's classes ca. 1999 and basically thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread."

    I once took a class from a really popular professor, too. I think he's now Pope, or Chairman of the Board of Toyota, or coach of the Lakers, or something like that.

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  61. Suppose that the President who follows the International Man of Mystery is a Republican, and suppose that he decided to release everything the government - meaning mainly the FBI and CIA I suppose - has on the IMoM. That would be fun. I suppose it might be done just to "dish the Democrats". But might it be done to invalidate all the laws that the IMoM has signed, all the executive orders? What would be the legal position if it were found retrospectively that he wasn't a natural-born citizen?

    (N.B. I've not seen any evidence whatever that he's not a natural-born citizen. I'm just someone who wonders what the devil he's hiding.)

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  62. Just as a matter of fact, when did the US start to permit dual citizenship?

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  63. Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), was a United States Supreme Court decision that set an important legal precedent that a person born or naturalized in the United States cannot be deprived of his or her citizenship involuntarily.[1] The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of a man who had voted in a foreign election after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen,[2] but the Supreme Court ruled that his right to keep his citizenship was guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.[3] In so doing, the Supreme Court overruled one of its own precedents, Perez v. Brownell (1958), in which the Court had upheld loss of citizenship under similar circumstances.[4]

    Beys Afroyim (1893-1984) was a painter born as Ephraim Bernstein in Ryki, Poland.[5] In 1912 he immigrated to the United States, and in 1926 he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen.[6] He later moved to Israel, and as a Jew, Afroyim was automatically granted Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.[7] In 1960, following the breakdown of his marriage to Austrian painter Soshana Afroyim, Afroyim decided to return to the United States,[8] but the State Department refused to renew his U.S. passport, ruling that under section 401(e) of the Nationality Act of 1940 — which mandated revocation of U.S. citizenship for voting "in a political election in a foreign state" — Afroyim had lost his citizenship by voting in an Israeli election in 1951.[2]

    Afroyim argued that since "neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor any other provision of the Constitution expressly grants Congress the power to take away that citizenship once it has been acquired . . . the only way he could lose his citizenship was by his own voluntary renunciation of it."[6] Lower courts, however, rejected Afroyim's claims, based on an earlier Supreme Court decision — Perez v. Brownell, 356 U.S. 44 (1958), a case which upheld Congress's right to revoke U.S. citizenship for voting in a foreign election "under its implied power to regulate foreign affairs."[9] Afroyim asked the Supreme Court to overrule the precedent established in Perez v. Brownell, rule the foreign voting provision of the Nationality Act to be unconstitutional, and rule that he was still a United States citizen.

    The court ruled, in a 5-4 decision, that "Congress has no power under the Constitution to divest a person of his United States citizenship absent his voluntary renunciation thereof."[3] Specifically discarding the precedent set in the 1958 Perez v. Brownell case, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that Congress had such power and said that "no such power can be sustained as an implied attribute of sovereignty". Instead, the majority held that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution defined "a citizenship which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it" and which, once acquired, "was not to be shifted, canceled, or diluted at the will of the Federal Government, the States, or any other governmental unit.[10]

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  64. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  65. Oh, now I remember -- that really cool professor that all the kids liked? Well, they made him head of the Zeta Cartel. He has like 20 guys with AK-47s accompany him everywhere nowadays.

    Nobody who took a class from him is surprised. All the students could tell he was really going to be somebody some day.

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  66. The most boring reason I can think of is that he's hiding this for the same reason he's hiding all his other past documentation: the less specifics people have about his exotic background, the more he could portray himself at that blank slate he talked about. It was important that people not know him too well, so they could project their own desires onto him.

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  67. The media refuse to vet him doesn't matter with the white liberals who voted for him. I have tried with my family - they are indifferent to the black panther case (what's the big deal, blacks have been oppressed, blah blah)

    As I have said, Obama is the guy white liberals have been dreaming of since they saw the first syndey poitier movie. its a fantasy and nothing will get in the way of it.

    The Sailer strategy - attack eric holder - who gets visibly angry when any white asks him anything about race, and is a nasty jerk to begin with - will make a lot more headway.

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  68. Sherlock Holmes once famously said, “Nothing is more deceptive than an obvious fact”. David Axelrod was not only the person who sealed Obama’s paper trail but he was also the same person who coined the phrase “birther”. He clearly understood that if he simply told everyone to fuck off and stay out of the boy wonders past it would have simply aroused more suspicion about Obama’s past, not less. So what he did is bait the topic by throwing out the birther issue. After all, people only want to see it because they are racist and cannot accept that a black man could be President, right? Nothing on Obama’s birth certificate could be that damming if for no other reason; He was not responsible for what was written on it. The rest of his records are all his doing. I don’t know what Axelrod and Obama are hiding, but if I were a betting man, I would say where there is smoke there is fire.

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  69. iSteve gets results! WSJ reports that the WH just released the long-form certificate.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187604576288811924282824.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

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  70. Of course, the question to ask about BHO finally releasing the so-called long form of his birth certificate, is: Why now?

    They had been stonewalling on this for so long, so why now?

    Do they perceive the Trumpster as such an enormous challenge that they have to pre-emptively neuter him?

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  71. Steve, you mean like those other harmless professors, Subcomandante Marcos and Abimael Guzman?

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  72. The whole Kenyan birth thing is pretty implausible, as Steve has pointed out. And as others have - correctly - pointed out - there is no space for religion or race (of the baby that is) on the birth certificate form. So the only information on the birth certificate that could really be embarrassing to Obama would be either a.) that the father was not Barack Obama Sr., or b.) that the delivering physician was Joseph Mengele.

    Option b. is not very likely, so that leaves a. I have to admit, I don't see much resemblance between Obama Sr., and Obama Jr., but it's difficult to tell from a few pictures, and certainly Obama Jr. has a definite east african appearance. He doesn't look much like Frank Marshall Davis either, if you ask me.

    Of greater interest perhaps is what became of his citizenship when he and his mother moved to Indonesia, and what became of it when they moved back.

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  73. I love the way the media is complaining about the interest in his past, grades, etc.

    They dug up everything they could on palin and bush - plastered their grades, etc, across the front pages, news headlines..

    Why do they get away with such hypocrisy?

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  74. Harry Baldwin4/27/11, 7:33 AM

    So now Obama's Certificate of Live Birth has been released, and it provides no surprises.

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  75. This thread has been overtaken by events. The Obama administration has released the "long form" birth certificate and it shows nothing. I was flat wrong about race and religion - as some others have commented. I never really knew or cared much about this issue. Maybe I should refrain from adding my unsupported speculations to the messy discourse.

    Albertosaurus

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  76. Another interesting anomaly about our illustrious President is the social security number he used which appears to be from a block of numbers originally assigned to Connecticut residents in the late 70s. Obama lived in Hawaii at the time and, as far as anyone knows, never lived in Connecticut. So what gives? There is reportedly something hinky about his selective service number. Almost as if someone with clout was backfilling in a legally valid american identity for him.

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  77. He truly is the chosen one!

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  78. "Harry Baldwin said...

    I find this fascinating too. In most stories about this issue, such as one I saw yesterday on the Shepard Smith Show, the claim is that the computer-generated Certificate of Live Birth is in fact the birth certificate everyone is talking about, only they're too dumb to realize it."

    Yes, I find that remarkable too. The document released by the Obama campaign and by the Hawaiian state government was clearly printed with a laser-writer, which - I'm pretty sure - did not exist in 1961. Liberals seem oblivious to this. Certainly Shepard Smith seems oblivious to it - but then he seems to be the stupidest person at FOX News, which is saying quite a lot.

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  79. You are correct. Ideology is not an issue. The CIA is above politics. The Federal Reserve occupies the same lofty status, which means we can never throw the bums out. It should come as no surprise then that Obama is expected to name David Petraeus CIA director. Would a Republican POTUS have named someone different?

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  80. RE: Obama's versus Trump's "pressers" this morning

    1). Everyone's asking who the winner is. Well, as usual, the Big O looked peeved (not good) and petulant (even worse.)


    The average Joe is thinking, "So Mr. President...if you have produced your long form birth certificate only after a well-known millionaire showman forced you to do so, why didn't you simply produce it two years ago when average Americans asked you to do so?

    The same average Joe is reminded also of how the MSM can never be trusted to apply the same rules of reporting to Obama that they do to anyone of a conservative bent. That will have an effect on the media's ability to shape the 2012 election.

    2). Trump is right--he, not the press, not opposing pols like Clinton and her people--is the only one who has managed to get Obama to produce the document, reminding people that, whatever else Trump is, he gets results.

    3.) My neighbor, who voted for Obama, said a few minutes ago, "No sooner did he (Obama) say that he released the document so that he could get rid of the distractions so that he could get some serious work done than he climbs on a plane to do Oprah's show."

    Trump 1 Obama 0

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  81. Perhaps he's hermaphroditic and his original birth certificate says he is female. Hell, I'd hide that. Wouldn't you?

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  82. I was at University of Chicago in the early to mid-1990s, studying history. I also took Constitutional law, conservative jurisprudence and something or another on the First Amendment.

    The law school was almost equally divided into conservatives/moderates and the hard left. Mike McConnell, a name often floated for a replacement Rep for the Supremes, was the conservative Con Law and jurisprudence professor -- Obama was for the hard left.

    Obviously, I took from McConnell. I just googled his name and he's at Stanford now.

    http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/91/

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  83. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, George Clooney, Rosie O'Donnell, Ashton Kutcher, Margaret Cho, Demi Moore, Tom Hanks, are all hyperliberal. And none are Jews.

    Now that Obama has FINALLY released his long-form Birth Certificate, there seems no surprises, but ... WHY release it now, instead of either right before the election, or years earlier?

    Answer: because Obama feels he must HIDE EVERYTHING. And he's hurting ... NOW.

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  84. Dana Thompson4/27/11, 12:13 PM

    Here's the link to the long-form birth certificate that I just found on Drudge:

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

    As a physical entity, just what in the world is it? Look at the left border, where the page disappears into a bound book, and the top border, where there's a nearly undetectable blend with a background paper, and the right border, where the blend is undetectable. There's not a crease or thumbprint on it. Do you think that's a 50-year old document? Do you think that pattern of paper even existed in 1961? Above all, look at the pale nimbus surrounding every character of the written and printed text. Obviously, everything in the image was copied from some other document, using Photoshop or similar, and a lot of work was involved. I couldn't have done it in less than a day, though I'm not good at Photoshop. Do you think the Hawaii registrar's office expends that much effort on every routine document of this type? The situation has taken a turn to the really, really strange, as if it wasn't odd enough already.

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  85. Dana Thompson4/27/11, 1:00 PM

    Regarding my earlier post: A lot of people have noticed that this is an obvious Acrobat/Photoshop document, e.g.

    http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/obamas-birth-certificate/

    and maybe Acrobat can process a grubby-looking original in a highly automated fashion. So this is not a legitimate cause of wonderment, and my earlier post doesn't add much to the conversation.

    Some comments on other blogs are just plain nuts, e.g. the fact the attending physician has died since then suggests a conspiracy. Maybe it is time for the whole issue to die down. Remove both my posts if you feel like it, Steve.

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  86. The most glaring difference between Obummer and GWB is the behavior of the media. The MSM are still providing 24/7 air cover for Barry, whereas by now in the presidency they had been ripping Bush apart.
    It's depressing that the MSM still wield so much power now that the internet has been around for a while.

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  87. THEY DID NOT RELEASE THE "BIRTH CERTIFICATE".

    They released an "ABSTRACT" of the birth certificate: "I CERTIFY THIS IS A TRUE COPY OR ABSTRACT OF THE RECORD ON FILE IN THE HAWAII STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, Alvin T. Onaka, PhD, STATE REGISTRAR".

    In particular, note that a signature for a "(Stanley) Ann Dunham Obama" appears on the "ABSTRACT", but that no such signature appears for the putative father.

    Furthermore, note that the "ABSTRACT" gives no indication as to whether the mother and the putative father are married.

    The actual Birth Certificate itself might have more light to shed on this question, but that information was not included on the "ABSTRACT".


    PS: We do now have a name for an Attending Physician, although I can't make it out ["David A Somebody-Or-Other"].

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  88. Dana Thompson4/27/11, 1:59 PM

    You nailed it exactly in your post of 4/26 8:35pm, Steve:

    "If he settled the issue right now, it would be forgotten by the 2012 election."

    Obama and his handlers aren't stupid. They knew that the controversy would be prolonged by releasing a Photoshop confection instead of an original. There's a lot of barking loons out there, and Obama wants them to bark as long and loudly as possible. Of this I am absolutely

    POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
    -- Ambrose Bierce (Devil's Dictionary)

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  89. A semi-surprise on the long form birth certificate is that the address of the mother, Ann Dunham Obama, is the same address as her parents at the time. That suggests that Ann Dunham Obama never lived with Barry Obama Senior as man and wife. Even if they were married in a legal ceremony, it would appear that the “marriage” was more or less a sham, intended to avoid the stigma of an unwed pregnancy if in name only.


    The address on the long form birth certificate is the same as the address in the newspaper birth announcements, so it isn’t a complete “surprise” but it is more evidence that Ann Dunham and Barry Senior never lived together as husband and wife. Was President Obama the result of a “hit and run” one night stand between Barry Obama Senior and Ann Dunham? That certainly looks like a possibility.

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  90. "Maybe I should refrain from adding my unsupported speculations to the messy discourse."

    Nah, too much fun. I'll sadly have to move on from the muslim option and find a new angle.

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  91. Image analysis of Obama birth certificate indicates that the text areas may have been photoshopped!

    http://errorlevelanalysis.com/permalink/611bfc0/

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  92. "Do they perceive the Trumpster as such an enormous challenge that they have to pre-emptively neuter him?"

    Not necessarily a threat in the election, but the media just can't resist pointing a microphone at Trump. So as long as Trump was going to keep talking about this, ordinary people were going to hear about it, and not only from the usual talking heads soothingly telling us it's all a crackpot right-wing racist theory. People might have started to think there was something to it after all.

    In this day and age, I'm not sure why people think we could ever know that a document is a legitimate original, especially after wealthy and influential people have had years to invent one. (I thought the same thing when the Rose Law Firm records showed up two years after being subpoenaed, and came just short of incriminating anyone. How hard would it be to fake up some records in two years?) We're just supposed to say, "Oh, there's the official seal and someone's signature; it's the real thing for sure"? Good grief.

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  93. none of the above4/29/11, 1:56 PM

    Aaron B:

    The other side of this is the disaster that befell 60 Minutes w.r.t. faked National Guard records. Or the growing consensus that a huge amount of forensic evidence that's been taken as very reliable for years now often isn't all that good. (The NSF did a big report on this a couple years back.)

    FWIW, I would be utterly shocked if there turned out to be anything to the birther rumors--the whole thing just looks silly and bizarre to me. But the broader point about document authenticity is interesting--there are probably meaningful ways to be sure of the originality of a document, but I think even the alleged experts may not be all that great at it, and my understanding is that there's not any kind of meaningful blind evaulation of them, which is what you'd need to get real confidence. (You need to know P(claimed match|real match) and P(claimed match|not real match) to be able to really use the evidence intelligently.)

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  94. none of the above4/29/11, 2:06 PM

    Steve:

    I don't know, but it wouldn't be all that big a shock, would it? Google for Cointelpro, or read a history of J Edgar Hoover, for well-documented examples of politically-motivated domestic spying in our country when we were kids.

    The last three administrations have been *very* friendly to the idea of making sure the spies can wiretap whomever they like. There have been several scandals, right out in the newspapers, in which illegal spying was caught--nobody *ever* goes to jail or suffers any other consequences for that stuff. There have also been reports from some investigative reporters of being told, by their spy/police agency sources, that their phone calls were being listened to.

    My guess is, once you build up a big domestic spying agency, it's really hard to keep that agency from acquiring a scary level of power. Think of how many big-name politicians have been brought down by scandals, and how useful it must be, come time to renew your agency's budget, to be able to offer a couple key congressmen the choice between keeping your funding intact or explaining to the media about that harmless dalliance with the five teenage male pages.

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  95. As re "Wbo's BHO?" it might be instructive to assemble just a fact sheet of who/where/when concerning the President's life and the persons/milieu/ in which it might have been observed--one month at a time for the roughly 600 months of his life. What would emerge, possibly worthy of display in the Guggenheim, would be the huge blankness of it all. Against this reality, his desire to conceal matters re his enrollments, his grades, SAT / National Merit / scores, etc. would
    finally be given stark context. There is very very little that is securely known about this fellow aside from his "cookie cut" autobiographical "writings".

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  96. "- obama throws a baseball like an octaroon white girl..."

    That's 'cause he's used to being the catcher....

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