Something that’s long is no more likely to be true than something that it short, at least that’s how I see it. Birthers, I don’t know. I’ve see lots of birther material that plays more like a novel than a news story and this latest, published at the My Very Own Point of View blog is a good example.
Like any novel (and I do believe this article is a work of fiction), the article titled “It’s a Date” tries to build some tension with phrases like saying that the information “cost a big chunk of money and a monster effort to obtain” and “That stuff is not for public consumption. I have to tell you all, she had nerves of steel to do some of the things she did, to go to some of those places, alone and not sure what to expect.” Of course, none of these exploits, nor the name of the person making the claims is disclosed. They are just “seasoning” to make the rest of the story more gripping. Other language about anonymous persons from an anonymous person is supposed to make one believe them, phrases like: “He is the good person.”
So exactly what is this article really about?
It’s about the Hawaiian birth index, the one that has been photographed, and written about on the Hawaii Department of Health web site. The article mingles what I assume to be fact, that the page headings on the computer printed pages aren’t the same for certain years, or for different kinds of indexes (birth, death, etc.) Hooked by that fact (and pictures), the rather remarkable claim is made (for which there is not a shred of evidence offered, not even the name of the person making the claim) that someone visited Hawaii in the past, looking for Obama in the birth index — and he wasn’t there! Here’s the claim:
Regular readers will recall that the first trip I arranged, for a long time close friend to travel to Honolulu, yielded the stunning information that the Birth Index book did not contain obama’s entry on that day in early March 2010 when my buddy (we’ll call him TsunamiGeno) looked for it there. He was stunned, so he checked and rechecked. He then looked for all the other names that were on his to-do list, and when done, went back to looking for obama. He never saw it in the book that day.
So this claim goes way back to March 2010? Oops, no.
I decided not to publish that part of his experience because I had no PROOF.
So why are you publishing now? You still don’t have any proof. Where is the proof? OK, now it’s funny. The dog ate my camera:
I had sent a micro camera with him, but being of rather poor quality, and requiring a special practiced “knack” to turn on, he couldn’t get it to run.
It’s fiction, but it’s bad fiction.
H/T to Bob Ross for the link
“Something that’s long is no more likely to be true than something that it short, at least that’s how I see it.”
There’s a term in skepticism for this: proof by verbosity, or argumentum verbosium. It’s quite common for conspiracy theorists and fringe pseudoscientists to produce lengthy tracts advocating for their position. Remember how often Polarik would appeal to the insane length of his ‘Final Report,’ and argue that no one had debunked *all* of his conclusions?
Skeptoid describes this logical fallacy this way:
Polarik’s “Final Report” was very much in my mind when I wrote this article.
While it wouldn’t mean much, a more valid test would be compare the 1960-64 birth index page headings to the years before it (done) and after it (not done). Why wasn’t this done, and if it was done, why was it not disclosed?
That’s what I’m curious about or even show the O pages for the 1955-1959 and then the years after
“I had sent a micro camera with him, but being of rather poor quality, and requiring a special practiced “knack” to turn on, he couldn’t get it to run.”
During the night, a spaceship landed on my fire escape. I grabbed my camera, but the card was full, and the battery was dead. By the time I deleted the card and put in a fresh battery, it had taken off. I saw the creatures inside, and waved to them. They waved back.
We’ve looked at William Rawle, an important early authority on the US Constitution, on this site before. Rawle’s book, “A view of the Constitution” contains an important reference to “natural born citizen”, stating:
The My Very Own Point of View blog has attacked Rawle by saying: “He is a RABID abolitionist, and so his comment on “natural born” may reflect somewhat on his personal viewpoint-that is just my own supposition.” A previous birther attack was that Rawle’s father was a British sympathizer during the war.
What’s wrong with being an abolitionist?
However, there is a critical flaw for those that attempt “argumentum verbosium” and one that fairly quickly cuts to the heart of the matter:
It is completely unnecessary to debunk ALL their conclusions. All one has to do is find and point out the first flaw or lie in their argument (X) and point out since X is bogus, they lack credibility and therefore their entire spiel is highly suspect and warrants no further attention. One weak link is all that is required to tumble their entire house of cards.
Wow…that *IS* an odd attack to make. I can’t see that argument making sense, except to those predisposed to racist viewpoints. …but then again, that does seem to describe many birthers true motivation, doesn’t it? So, its probably an intentional dog-whistle to such and not as clever or subtle as they think….
Maybe she though he was an RABID abortionist.
Rawle’s step father was a loyalist. William Rawle was 17 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
“William Rawle, a Quaker and a native of Philadelphia, gained a basic education at the Friends Academy in Philadelphia. His father Francis Rawle died when he was only two years old. Since his stepfather, Samuel Shoemaker, was a Loyalist and mayor of Philadelphia during the British occupation, his family moved to New York when the British evacuated Philadelphia in 1778. There young William Rawle began to study law, before traveling in 1781 to London to study at the Middle Temple and then for a tour through Europe.
Despite some hesitation and sense of humiliation over his family’s British sympathies, Rawle made the decision to return to Philadelphia. He was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar soon after his arrival in 1783, and that same year married Sarah Coates Burge.”
http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1700s/rawle_wm.html
You really have to ask?
It’s all about race. It always has been.
The birther point of view is best summed up as:
It is not possible for a black man to be President.
Any natural born citizen can be President.
Therefore, a black man who has won an election to be President cannot be a natural born citizen.
(The above also explains why the argument never really caught fire before the election).
Sound analogous to several incidents during my recent vacation, related to spectacular wildlife scenes.
Sadly, there is a *HUGE* truth in what you just said…
…and it is not just those “hardcore” birthers with this view.
There are quite a few folks I know (NOT birthers) who are extremely anti-Obama and very angry – pretty much for the mere fact that he’s President. (Full disclosure – most of them are 50+ in age).
Their main points of contention is still harping on to this day that he “came from nowhere” and “had no prior work background” or something to that effect and that “big money” or “elites” or something “selected” him and that’s how he won.
They seem to feel that somehow, the election was rigged and that Obama was completely unqualified and “stealth” sprung on us and wouldn’t have been able to get elected if *only* people “had time to be aware of who he was”…
These people honestly did NOT believe during the entire campaign that he could ever actually WIN the election…up to the VERY day of election!
I even work with a few of these folks (otherwise good people) and I calmly (but incredulously) try to point out that this was a 2-year campaign…it was kind of hard NOT to know he was running or hear all about who he was and his life story or his campaign ideas during that time and that the polls always showed that he was doing fairly well, especially in the last 6 weeks of the election campaign, so I don’t understand how they couldn’t see this coming.
Those rebuttels just lead to a lot of “but…but…but…” types of stammering and excuses. However, I found that if I have to point out that much of his campaign contributions came from a large amount of small donors and that obviously his message resonated with enough people that he won a decisive election, by a margin of more than 9.5 million more votes for him than McCain and more importantly, a 365-173 electoral vote margin – well, those simple harmless yet accurate statistics seem to almost always invoke a visibly violent reaction…
So yeah, I think it totally comes down to the truth that there is a huge segment of the public that just assumed that a black man could never become president and that no matter what, there was no way the public would “actually” elect one…and therefore didn’t take it seriously…until he was. …and once that reality set in… at some visceral level, they are very, very, very upset by that as a notion and refuse to accept it.
Prior to the Civil War there was RABID hatred of northern abolitionists in the South. If the remark from the My Very Own Point of View blog had come from the South in 1830, I would have thought nothing of it; but hearing it today was a jolt.
If it wasn’t for the abolitionists President Obama would have never been able to get ‘uppity’ and run for president, let alone win…
Can I smoke some of what you are drinking?
Ever see Putney Swope?
It is as plausible as this:
“I had sent a micro camera with him, but being of rather poor quality, and requiring a special practiced “knack” to turn on, he couldn’t get it to run.”
Yes I did, and I loved it.
Wow. Thanks for the link. Never heard of it before. (It came out before I was born). I see it was directed by Robert Downey Sr.
I find the members of the ‘scholar’ tribe of birtherstan fascinating (the prime examples would be Ladysforest, Miss Tickly, and Butterdezillion). To me it seems like a ‘cargo cult’ version of research – they pour through old records, collect data, and hold themselves to standards that they believe are objective. When you ask them about their work, they point out that the things that they do and say ‘see – we’re doing the same things as real* research scholars’. Just like the cargo cults on pacific islands after World War II would say, ‘Look, we’ve got a runway and a control tower with a guy in it wearing coverings on his ears – we’ve even made a big antenna out of bamboo! We’ve done everything right, so the planes WILL come back…’, the birther researchers say, ‘We did all of this work (and it was hard, too…) so it MUST mean something!’, never realizing that their lack of a basic understanding of the process means that they are not just doomed to failure, but they’re not really trying to do what they think they are in the first place. The other birthers see the wide array of abstruse details the researchers have generated and parade it around as if the scholar had found the holy grail – pointing to all of those little details (and daring the obots to refute, say, the lack of dates on the birth index) and saying, ‘all of these things are unquestionably true (and they usually are) so therefore this (unrelated thing) must be true’, completely missing the point that their data gathering methodology is so shoddy and they chose their field of study so poorly that any valid conclusions they could possibly make are vague and weak. I mean I’ve heard of missing the forest for the trees, but the research arm of birtherstan are practically wetting themselves because they are so excited about how many trees they have in their forests – you almost hate to tell them they’ve been counting blades of grass…
*they, of course, think of themselves as ‘real’ research scholars…
> that there is a huge segment of the public that just assumed that a black man could never become president
In Germany, we have a saying (coming from a humorous poem) “weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf”, translated roughly to “because that which must not be, cannot be”.
That’s pretty much the root of the birther movement.
(Whereas most other conspiracy theories are fueled by the fear of things beyond human control.)
(In that regard, birthers would probably totally freak out if they lived over here; we have a female chancellor, an openly gay minister of foreign affairs, another minister of Asian descent and an openly socialist party which co-governs several states. Oh, and universal healthcare, way beyond what ObamaCare does.)
““I had sent a micro camera with him, but being of rather poor quality, and requiring a special practiced “knack” to turn on, he couldn’t get it to run.”
A person can afford to send someone to Hawaii, but they can’t afford a decent camera to document the whole reason for the trip?
They’re also a self-admitted “control freak”, but never made sure their friend understood how to operate this camera, despite knowing it was potentially problematic?
And then neither person had a means of communication possible to work out how to operate the camera while they were still in Hawaii?
Why not mention the brand name or model of this difficult-to-operate camera?
Why not make certain they’ve practiced this “knack” of turning on the camera before they left on this uber-important mission?
Why not provide a back-up camera or call in a credit card order to a camera store for their friend to obtain a better camera?
Why not provide scans for any of the flights, booking arrangements, tickets or receipts?
This entire blog entry is devoid of anything that verifies a trip even took place.
It’s like describing a huge 5-star meal and then delivering an empty plate of air.
One more thing: I looked at the EXIF info for one of the pics provided.
It said the image was produced by a “TSN-410”
Here is some info on this device:
SKYPIX Mini Wireless Portable Scanner, Portable Handheld USB Scanner Handyscan TSN 410
Good catch, that explains the smearing of the page number in the top hand corner of the first page.
> This entire blog entry is devoid of anything that verifies a trip even took place.
It just highlights the extremes.
For things they do not want to believe, no level of proof is ever enough, there’s always things to doubt or consider “dubious”.
For things they want to believe, any statement (including coming from anonymous sources or convicted felons) will suffice to be treated as gospel.
And that’s the funny part; they don’t even try to give the impression of an actual thorough investigation. Rumour and hearsay is enough. (Just like our German cranks who usually do little more than talk about alleged “secret protocols and treaties” no-one – except them – has ever seen which “totally prove” everything they’ve pulled out their rear ends. Along with the usual “but some government official admitted the whole thing back in 1959 to my neighbour’s sister’s dog’s hairdresser backstage at a Beatles concert!” memes.)
That was a great catch! They got caught up in their own hatred for Obama, they forgot slavery is wrong.
We can see jus soli intersect William Rawle and abolitionism in the case of the slave Kitty (1815). Kitty escaped Virginia and gave birth to three children in Pennsylvania (a free state). Rawle wrote that her children should be free.
http://www.hsp.org/files/newmanlegaciesarticle.pdf
I’m surprised, though, that the birthers don’t like Rawle. After all, he also said: “the law of nations is the law of the land.” (The case of Gideon Henfield.)
Speaking of law of nations. I got another one of those Law of Nations is in the constitution so they must have been talking about Vattel birthers.
Even better, Watermelon Man.
Another one: Bamboozled, especially the last ten minutes.
that was a weird movie
However, as good or as fun or thought provoking as those films are, neither of those films gets a black man elected because everyone assumed that no one else would vote for him.
I believe my reference was on topic 😎
Reminds me of a scene from U-turn where Sean Penn’s character is trying to get his car out of the shop of a mechanic played by an unrecognizable Billy Bob Thornton. Penn doesn’t have the money or even a credit card to pay for the overpriced repair. After the encounter escalates to an argument, Penn plays to the old “My attorney will shut you down!” card. Billy Bob just looks at him and asks, “You ain’t got no credit card, but you got an attorney?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaYdfPchd_M
The article that Doc links to is interesting…But the comments are even more out there…The usual cast of characters show up…Cort W., Miss. Tickly among others…..It seems like lady is not too happy that not many Obama supporters have posted on her blog…I guess she doesn’t understand that since everyone knows that she moderates her stuff, why would they waste their time on commenting….
I thought this comment was hilarious….Already speculating on why she won’t be believed…
I know of three or four individual who requested redacted copies of the original 1961 Index Data, they were refused flat. TsunamiGeno did request to see it in person, he was refused, and told he could only see the ones that are the laser printed bound things.
As to Duplicate Mae, well, I don’t want to speculate that she had one kind of BC, then changed it for another and that’s how she happened to become a “Duplicate”. LOL, I guess I’m through “speculating”. There is a distinct anomaly attached to every damn “record” for this guys birth. At one point we must stop speculating. That is why I wanted actual images, you or I could speculate all day long, but the images are from tangible sources that show real anomalies, and will help everyone be on more solid footing when debating this eligibility issue.
The reason I say that is because the obama clingers will make claims that birthers make everything up under their tinfoil hats. We however, have real material to prove that we do not invent this. We can beat their insults with facts, then bring the focus to the real problem of obama’s dual citizenship birth status. He is not a natural born Citizen.
ladysforest said this on March 8, 2011 at 11:24 am
I suspect the “law of the land” many of them want is not our existing Constitution but the one written for the Confederacy…
A recent exchange between Danae and BCC over at Free Republic:
Danae says:
The “Law of Nations” was the foundational work the Constitution was based upon.
BCC:
That is ridiculous. The U.S. was established under the common law system we inherited from Britain. British common law was the law of the colonies and remained the law of the colonies afterwards except where expressly superceded by statute. That is inarguable and obvious to anyone who has practiced law. Our writs, from the Great Writ right on down, are all part of our British legal heritage. Heck, some of those cases are still even cited today in U.S. courts.
Arguing that the Founders based this country’s legal system and definitions on a Swiss writer is nuts. Switzerland, France, and continental Europe generally, including de Vattel, instead followed civil or code-based law. Don’t take my word for it — look it up yourself. Read up a bit on common law versus civil law, and then come back and try to convince people that the foundational document of our Constitution was based on a civil law treatise.
There are certainly some of his ideas that were considered influential, particularly regarding the law between nations, or what we call international law. He was about the only guy who wrote on that. But just because a court cites a given treatis for one proposition of law as being persuasive doesn’t mean it adopts the entire thing. That’s Law 101.
In terms of domestic law, British common law was the foundation of our entire legal system. And as de Vattel himself noted, Britain was one of the few nations that followed jus solis rather than jus sanguinas citizenship. And if you’re going to pick the name of a foreign jurist out of a hat, why not try Blackstone?
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Blackstone%2c+Sir+William
With whom do you think the Founders were more familiar? The author of the preeminent legal scholar of their own legal system, who wrote in their own language, whom they cited in their own legal briefs, and who was published in 1765?
Or the writings of a man from an entirely different, civil-law based system, whose “natural born citizen” phrase doesn’t even appear in the original French, nor in any English translation until one published more than ten years after the Constitution was ratified? Look it up.
Oh, and here’s what Blackstone said:
The children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such. In which the constitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_4_citizenships1.html