National Public Radio (NPR) hosts an unscientific poll that says “no.”
Will the release of the president's birth certificate settle the so-called birthers issue?
It has been the conventional wisdom on my side of the fence that the NPR web site visitors are right. I, and many others have said, nothing will convince the birthers. But what about now, with all the media debunking, new evidence and Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate all over the Internet? Hey, it’s been “shock and awe” over Birthistan.
Visiting the “usual subjects” birther web sites confirms that birthers have reacted to the long form just as they reacted to the short form, with accusations and denunciations. At least for the vocal birthers we deal with daily, nothing has changed. However, I would not jump to the conclusion that we will not see a sharp decrease in the number of people toying with the idea that Obama was not born in Hawaii. I’m sure there will be a poll upcoming to answer exactly that question.
I’m very curious to see the polling on this subject (especially how the questions are worded). I’m expecting a significant drop in the birther-curious…
I now consider the matter settled. There is no doubt Obama was born in Hawaii. However, I do believe the long-form BC should be forensically tested but I do believe the long-form BC released ultimately settles the issue. People have been saying the BC is forgery but that is a PDF and not the original long-form BC. If people really want to make that argument stick, the original copies retained by the Obama Administration need to be tested. But I believe the originals are valid and there is no doubt.
As far Obama not being a NBC, birthers do have a point on that. I do believe an NBC is one born of 2 citizen parents and I don’t believe Obama is an NBC.
That being said though, I don’t believe the NBC argument will go anywhere. Neither the courts nor Congress will ever rule Obama in not a NBC. It is a subject that just too argumentative.
Where Obama was born was a factual issue that needed to be answered and thus it has been and is settled.
I do not condemn any birthers in insuring that our POTUS is qualified under the Constitution and Obama will receive no apology from me.
I still hold Obama accountable for persecution of LTC Terry Lakin for not releasing the long-form BC at that time.
As for the criminal acts of Obama. They need to be answered but Obama will have to be impeached for those acts which will never happen.
MSNBC had an open poll when they covered the story of Obama’s LFBC release and press conference and how people viewed the issue as a result.
Here’s the results:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/27/6543187-now-that-youve-seen-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate-are-you-convinced-hes-a-us-citizen
11.6%
Yes. It is irrefutable proof he was born in Hawaii.
34,522 votes
36.6%
No. There will always be doubt in my mind.
109,108 votes
51.8%
I never questioned his citizenship in the first place.
154,311 votes
Perfect example of ODS and moving the goal posts…
Both the 2 parent nonsense, with a bit of Terry Lakin sprinkled in…plus just a pinch of alluding that the LFBC should be tested.
So, this will be part of the Birther sqwawk line going forward, I see.
Same sort of sour grapes BS we’re seeing from Jess Beard.
Who cares?
Like making a case against Iraq from whole cloth, and then invading it for oil? Exposing Valerie Plame? Tell me more.
And the torture Misha, don’t forget the torture (they don’t call him ‘Dick the war criminal’ for nothing…)
Thank you for acknowledging that Obama has one of the cleanest administrations in history at this point in his term. Obama has not committed any criminal acts, nor has any member of his administration been indicted for anything.
You keep forgetting that Presidenting While Black isn’t actually a crime.
No legitimate forensic document examiner would even glance at this case with the pedigree this document has, and the testimony of Hawaii’s DOH and government.
This document has more juice behind its authenticity than almost any other document in history.
Give it up.
>>>hope the many members of this discussion board who may hold the view that shooting a birther in the head is likely to miss their brain by several feet and thus not necessarily result in death will excuse the assumption of brain locaion I have made in this case.<<<
I think the sudden inrush of air into the vacuum would result in a fatal implosion.
“Where Obama was born was a factual issue that needed to be answered and thus it has been and is settled.”
It was settled in 2008 with the release of the COLB Tell me whereI am wrong with that statement). You all wasted 2.5 years to add the name of the hospital and attending doctor (never explaining WHY those two data points would affect cisizenship – please shed light on that.).
“I do not condemn any birthers in insuring that our POTUS is qualified under the Constitution and Obama will receive no apology from me.”
How about the guys who question who called him a liar and a forger – both groundless.
The liars are forgers were BIRTHERS who made up Kenyan birth stories and produced and distributed illicit forged legal documents.
As for latkin his case was NEVER about a BC. He was lawfulkly advised in ADVANCE of his actions by his superior officers that he was wrong and would suffer grave consequences. The military appointed and paid fo a qualified lawyer who advised him that his civilan birther lawyer was unqualified. The LFBC was immaterial from day one,
Birthers should apologize for the willful ignorance and disregard for facts.
I still hold Obama accountable for persecution of LTC Terry Lakin for not releasing the long-form BC at that time.
Anyone who holds that view is either willfully ignorant of the military or is trying to stir up trouble. Lakin’s duty was to follow all facially lawful orders. He didn’t do that. He also took his pre-deployment leave, which the guy who replaced him didn’t get. His six month confinement sentence was way too lenient, in my view.
The only order Lakin could have refused, is one that would result in another My Lai. What universe do you live in?
My apologies to DCH. This quote was from John instead. The quoting system here sometimes gets really confusing.
terry lakin was taken for a ride.
birthers – `hey terry, we know you don´t like the new guy, how about helping us out´.
terry – `yeah, o.k, how do we do it?´
b – `we know hw wasn´t born in the u.s, and if you refuse to be posted by saying that you don´t believe he´s an american, he´ll have to show his BC which will say kenya and we can get him kicked out´.
t – `er..o.k, but ain´t that risky for me?´
b – `don´t sweat it, we´ve got all the bases covered´
military court – `6 months and booted out´
b – `sorry terry, we didn´t expect that. don´t worry though, we´re fighting your corner and you´re a martyr to birtherism!´
t – `WTF just happend? i just got reamed!´
b – `don´t worry, it was all obama´s fault´
t – `bastards!´
😀
An addendum:
t – “But, but, but …”
military court – “You’re finished, but you don’t get a belly button.”
Another adendum:
t – “What am I gonna say to the wife and kids?”
“Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”
Poor stupid birther latkin also lost his big military pension and benefits. That idiot gave up a million dollars +.
In all likelihood, the President was advised by the military not to release the BC, once Lakin publicly tried to extort it from him. You cannot have a junior officer running amuck. Lakin knew that. The President owes him nothing. In fact, Lakin needs to apologize to the President.
Lieutenant Colonel Lakin in his own words: “I chose the wrong path.” It was the path to Fort Levenworth, Kansas and no pension.
Although you can’t fault anyone for having the gut-instinct impulse to do so.
After all…we’ve seen the connection between Birthers & Zombies over and over and over again… and so it only comes naturally to think they can be put down in the same fashion. 😉
I would add that ALL Birthers need to apologize to the President….
I sincerely doubt that anyone from the military ever discussed the matter with the President. Such a discussion of a matter before a court martial woulld have been highly inappropriate.
I am not convinced that the President even to this day has heard of Lakin. He isn’t surfing pro or anti birther sites (not even Doc’s I’m afraid). Presidents live in a bubble. As far as Lakin’s letter, it’s an awfully naive assumption to think that if you write the President, he will read it.
Lakin was told what to do by his commanders and didn’t do it. He’s no hero. Nor is his life ruined. He did 5 months in the slammer (not the end of the world) and lost his pension. But I doubt he will lose his medical license, since the offense was not one that would impact his competency to practice, nor was he convicted of fraud. He will probably go into private practkice and do just fine. His wife is a doctor and can certainly support the family until he gets his practice going. It’s not a tragedy. More like a farce.
Agreed. Well said.
I still hold Paul Jensen accountable for misleading Terry Lakin into thinking he could force Obama’s hand via military courts. Jensen had to know it was folly. He used Lakin for political purposes.
I’m not sure i agree with you on that point. Once Lakin was on CNN giving interviews, the White House would probably be aware of it. Whether it filtered all the way up to the President, who knows.
Let me put it this way, if it ever did come up and if the President asked the military advisors about the Lakin case, they would have told him that they would take care of it.
As proof that crazy conspiracies will never die and certain hard-core Birthers will persist with being stupid forever, I give you Iraq’s latest conspiracy of stupid, where some are convinced Saddam Hussein is still alive… despite the public hanging that took place years ago. *sigh* *facepalm* *sigh*
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/04/29/iraqs_elvis.html
I shudder to think what they will want for verification…
I hope his cell window faced southwest towards Wichita and Honolulu.
Obama isn’t responsible for what happened to Lakin. He made his own bed.
You know, suppose that, sometime between when Lakin disobeyed his orders and when he was convicted, the long form was released. And then Lakin is like, “Oh, okay, I’m convinced. I’ll go to Afghanistan now.” You know what the military would have done?
At least I hope it’s what they would have done, because it’s certainly what they should have done, under the law.
That is: prosecuted his a** for disobeying lawful orders! Birth certificate or no birth certificate, makes no difference. In the military, you don’t get to set conditions on what orders you obey and what ones you don’t (unless that condition is, “unless they’re blatantly and obviously illegal.)
Or, as I remember my drill instructor putting it, back in the day: “If you’re ever going to disobey an order, it had better not be because you think it’s unlawful. It had better be because you know for a fact it’s unlawful. And you damn well better be right.”
No sympathy for Lakin, BC or no BC.
I can’t believe they only surveyed chicks; since approximately half the population is dudes their input is needed to make an accurate assessment.
Slightly OT:
Deferments Helped Trump Dodge Vietnam
How the presidential aspirant avoided fighting for his country
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/deferments-helped-trump-dodge-vietnam
Trump will regret his flirtation with birtherism…
Or, as I remember my drill instructor putting it, back in the day: “If you’re ever going to disobey an order, it had better not be because you think it’s unlawful. It had better be because you know for a fact it’s unlawful. And you damn well better be right.”
I don’t think that rule applies in the Birtherstani Armed Forces.
For the public AND media at large, I think it is becoming clearer and clearer that this weeks events were truly a watershed moment and that Birtherism is finally being relegated to being viewed as stupid and ultra-fringe loopy, as it always should have been.
The editorial cartoons continue to be merciless in pointing this out.
Here’s the latest, worth a good chuckle:
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/04/30/cartoon_of_the_day.html
I was wondering what superlatives were appropriate regarding the verification of the president’s birth certificate… Is it fair to say that this is the most meticulously validated document in the history of the universe, or is that going too far? What other documents have required this level (or any high level) of verification? This is a point that the birthers cannot possibly address – the absurd difference in their double standard.
Nah, thousands of documents have been subjected to forensic examination in an adversarial legal or legislative proceeding. Obama’s birth documents have not had that level of scrutiny…yet.
If birthers are to be taken seriously, they must demand that their new Tea Party members in the House call for a congressional investigation of Obama’s eligibilty and subpoena nationally recognized forensic experts on forged/altered documents to examine the Obama Certification of Live Birth and testify on their findings, under oath before a committee of the House of Representatives.
After all, that’s the least we should expect with regard to the greatest constitutional crisis/scam EVER in the history of the republic. 🙂
It that wasn’t such an absurd waste of money, the spectacle would make for great ‘theatre of the absurd’… plus it would be certain to cause some birthers’ heads to explode from the increased cognitive dissonance. 😉
Ain’t THAT the truth! (But if you visit birther sites, they are already calling for forgery experts to examine the long form) and the Washington Times, right wing newspaper is calling the Obama long form a forgery.
Donald Trump is on record as saying, “The word is, according to what I’ve read, that he was a terrible student when he went to Occidental.” “He then gets to Columbia; he then gets to Harvard. … How do you get into Harvard if you’re not a good student? Now, maybe that’s right, or maybe it’s wrong. But I don’t know why he doesn’t release his records.”
Well, I also read that Obama was a terrible student — right here in the online political journal Hillbuzz.
The headline: “Obama got all C’s and D’s in college and law school.” (Oct. 20, 1910)
How did we get there?
Four easy steps:
(1) Start with a Michael Gerson op ed column in the Washington Post (Oct. 19, 2010) calling President Obama an intellectual snob. (2) Then move to a Jennifer Rubin column in Commentary Magazine (Oct. 20, 2010) asserting that the president is a snob but no intellectual. (3) From there, go to an opinion piece in HillBuzz (also Oct. 20) in which the writer, taking off on Rubin’s piece, says (without citing any proof): “We bet this intellectual’ will, in the end, ultimately be proved to be that C or D student we suspect …” and finally arriving at the headline, above the piece, that unequivocally states what the e writer only speculates: “Obama got all C’s and D’s in college and law school”
A student with all C’s and D’s does not graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law; in fact he doesn’t graduate at all but flunks out. And of course, it’s totally laughable to suggest the presidency of the law review goes to an all-C and D student.
And of course, the same goes for undergraduate school. No one obtains a degree from any school I know of with some D’s and nothing higher than C’s; any D must be counterbalanced by B’s and perhaps an A or two bring the GPA up to the minimally acceptable 2.0 on a 4.0 scale.
BTW, a flatly false statement in the HillBuzz piece: George W. Bush DID NOT release his Yale transcript; it was outed illegally and without his permission. See The New Yorker, Nov. 8, 1999, Page 30-32.
But when have facts ever stood in the way …
In order to call the document a forgery, it is first necessary to secure a conviction of Dr. Alvin Onaka for the crime of forgery. That is now the bar that must be cleared in order for the document to be a forgery.
And yet somehow, this C student graduates in the top 4%-5% of Harvards law grads…..
Dr. Onaka could have unknowingly put his registrar’s stamp on a document that was forged by someone else in the Hawaii state government.
Anyone at any stage of the process can commit forgery. (However no one did).
There is even a silly birther theory that the president’s personal attorney substituted a forged document for the real one on her way to Washington DC from Hawaii.
Harvard graduates in the top 5% graduate “summa cum laude.” (with Highest Honor). Obama was in the top 10% of graduates which is “magna cum laude” (with great honor) and those in the top 20% graduate “cum laude” (with honor).
While I think that Obama was probably a very good student in college, I would point out that at Harvard, Obama might potentially have had the benefit of legacy admissions, given that his father had earned a masters degree in economics at Harvard.
He certainly would not be the first US President to have had a leg up on college admissions due to legacy status. (Other examples: both Bushes, at Yale via Prescott Bush; JFK, at Harvard via Joseph P. Kennedy).
Remember that his stamp is only a reproduction that is used by clerks in the vital records office. With any kind of “certified record” there’s always the possibility of someone stealing the security paper or creating fairly good reproductions. I’ve always thought that birth certificates were lousy ways to prove identity, age, etc. As we’ve seen, there has been rampant birth certificate fraud using legitimate Puerto Rico birth certificates. Who the heck can prove that a birth certificate belongs to a certain person?
Leaving one to wonder why the Hawaii Dept of Health would choose to link to the White House version from its web site at http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html
Good points!
I doubt they made a scan of one of the certified copies. I don’t think they’re normally in the business of doing that when they produce certified vital records. They didn’t directly link to any scans/photos of the 2007 form, but that wasn’t ordered by special request with a specific mention that they were requested to be made publicly available.
They did provide scans of the WH/attorney letter and the response. Those seem to be of higher resolution than the scans provided by the WH.
Expelliarmus: Point well taken about the legacy advantage Mr. Obama may have enjoyed in gaining admission to Harvard Law. If that made the difference, he has nothing more to be ashamed of than JFK or the junior Bush. I think George Herbert Walker Bush, however, had a strong enough prep record — he seemed to have been all-everything at his school — that he could have cleared the admissions hurdle all by himself. But having Prescott Bush as his father probably made admission a lead-pipe cinch.
I surmise that in the ’40s, admission to Yale and the other Ivies was a lot less competitive than it is now, because a smaller percentage of kids even graduated from high school back then, and a much smaller percentage entered college then than now.
Boys from well-to-do families had another advantage, as most very bright poor boys never even considered the possbility of attending an Ivy League school.
Remember, Richard Nixon would have attwended Harvard if his dad could have paid his room and board, as young Dick was awarded a scholarship from the local Harvard club.
Actually, I was being a little bit tongue-and-cheek, as I’m sure Obama got into Harvard on his own merits. I’m just pointing out that it’s illogical to jump to the conclusion that he was the beneficiary of affirmative action, giving that he was 2nd generation Harvard.
Obama had terrific credentials to apply to Harvard. He was a graduate of an Ivy League university with 3 years of inner city community organizing experience — probably had a great letter of rec from the guy who hired him to work in Chicago. He probably had reasonably good grades at the college level and excellent LSAT scores. (Why not? his natural parents were both highly intelligent, highly educated people — his mother tutored him daily in Indonesia and he attended a top private prep school in Hawaii from age 10 on, so we know he had excellent preparation for his exams. The LSAT’s are all about verbal acuity and problem-solving skills.)
Trump is just spreading malicious rumors – “I heard” — not facts. Law school is hugely competitive environment — and Harvard is particularly rough as far as law schools go, in terms of the competition among students. There is no way Obama would have made law review, much less been elevated to the position of editor, if he wasn’t extremely capable as well as being well-respected by faculty and other student. It’s pretty reasonable to assume that the student who is at the top of the class in his third year had pretty strong credentials coming in.
In terms of this blog post topic, on what effect the HI LFBC release has done to affect the conversation on the issue, I give you last night’s White House Correspondence Dinner event as evidence that moment was a watershed and the Birthers are forever relegated to being nothing but the butt of jokes:
http://www.c-span.org/WHCD/
Watch the entire main event from the intro of Obama’s speech through Seth Meyer’s presentation – they skewer the Birthers and Trump extremely effectively.
Truly, last night’s joke fest was the cherry-on-top aftermath to the complete bubble bust that the birthers have been dealt this week.
The whole show starts out with Hulk Hogan’s famous “I’m a Real American” song playing, with various patriotic montages interspersed with the HI LFBC showing on the screen… and that’s just the beginning!
Worthy of a blog post by Dr. C on its own merits for the number of clever images, references and jokes they did on the issue.
Truly a must watch event and sure to be a hot topic of watercooler buzz for days to come. All the early reviews and “tweets” have been raving about how well both Obama & Meyers nailed it and pointing out how totally pwned Trump was!
Do we need to prosecute the treasury secretary each time somebody creates a fake US dollar bill?
Huh?
We do if there was any evidence that the treasury secretary was behind the forgery….