I don’t think everyone who thinks President Barack Obama hasn’t been completely open with the American people with regards to his birth certificate is crazy or a loon. The problem is that the crazies have latched onto this topic and they will not let go. Also, the MSM cannot or will not do its job, which is to investigate. (We could get evidence of illegal wiretapping but not Obama’s BC.) It is the same people who believe that Clinton killed Vince Foster and 30 or 40 others, depending on which e-mail you read. In my mind, Obama should explain why he does or does not have the long form of his birth certificate. That’s it. He should announce it in Hawaii while standing in front of the hospital in which he was born. He should take one of those knuckleheads from Fox News to look at the document and be done with it.
On the other hand, this will not go away. I don’t believe that if Obama were to deliver his birth certificate (the long form) that the crazies would go away. They have a list of stuff (see the bottom of this post) that they want to see. The list is getting longer every day, like why did Hilliary Clinton go to Kenya? Was it to look for Obama’s “real” birth certificate?
BTW, although I believe that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and that he should come clean, I don’t think that he will. This is disappointing, especially because I thought we were ushering in a new era of openness. How much information should we expect our president to give us before taking office. Birth certificate. What about medical records? McCain’s records were incomplete and viewed by a select number of reporters. Is that okay? How about school records and papers? Where does it end?
Below is a continuation of the Salon.com article that I referenced before.
Myth 6: Obama traveled to Pakistan using an Indonesian passport
When the Birthers tire of arguing that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., they take another tack. At some point during the time he spent in Indonesia growing up, they say, Obama must have taken Indonesian citizenship or renounced his American citizenship or both. As proof, they cite the trip he took to Pakistan in 1981 with a friend from college, and say the U.S. government had issued a ban on travel by its citizens to the country.
Thing is, there was no travel ban. “We have no record of any travel ban between America and Pakistan during that period or since,” a State Department spokesman told Weigel. And FactCheck.org’s Brooks Jackson notes that the New York Times printed an article about travel to Pakistan on June 14, 1981, which said Americans just needed a visa to travel there. Two months later, the U.S. consul general in Lahore, Pakistan, wrote to the Times to say he’d “welcome an influx of Americans.”
Myth 7: Obama hasn’t released his birth certificate
Here, we’ll admit, Uncle Floyd has a point — at least a limited one. Strictly speaking, what Obama’s campaign released wasn’t called a birth certificate; it’s a certification of live birth. But there’s no functional difference between the two: Ask Hawaii for your birth certificate, and you’ll get the certification of live birth back.
“Our Certificate of Live Birth is the standard form, which was modeled after national standards that are acceptable by federal agencies and organizations,” Okubo told the Honolulu Advertiser. “With that form, you can get your passport or your soccer registration or your driver’s license.”
There’s been some confusion about whether the original even still exists, but that’s now been cleared up. Okubo told the Advertiser that in 2001 the state’s paper documents were put into an electronic form, but “any paper data prior to that still exists … we have backups for all of our backups.”
Myth 8: If Obama would just release his birth certificate, he could end all this
So why hasn’t the state of Hawaii released the original paper document? By law, the state can’t release Obama’s birth records without his OK. State law says that the document can only be released to or “inspect[ed]” by someone with a “direct and tangible” interest. (Though, again, except for “permit[ting] inspection,” the law refers to the release of copies and certified copies, not the original record.)
But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Obama could get the original paper document out of its undisclosed Hawaiian location and show it to reporters. Shouldn’t he? Maybe not. He’s already released a completely legal form of proof of his birthplace; to cave in to the Birthers’ demands now would legitimize them. It would also likely lead to a wave of stories asking why the change in stance had happened, and what had taken so long.
The truth is that it was the original release of the certification of live birth that kicked off the Birther movement to begin with. And some of its leaders wouldn’t cease their quest even if they were given the original birth certificate — along with a video showing Obama being born, lei already around his neck.
Conspiracy theorists cling to their theories in the face of all evidence, and in this case the groundwork for disputing an original birth certificate has already been laid. In October of 2008, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Obama’s trip to Hawaii to see his dying grandmother might really have been made in order to do some quick forgery. Limbaugh’s fellow talk radio host Michael Savage jumped on that bandwagon, too.
Plus, the Birthers have a long list of other demands. Here’s one sent out by Gary Kreep, who’s representing Alan Keyes in his lawsuit challenging Obama’s eligibility. Read it, and abandon all hope:
- Actual long-form birth certificate (NOT an easily-forged electronic copy of a short-form document that is not even officially accepted in Hawaii)
- Passport files
- University of Chicago Law School scholarly articles
- Harvard Law Review articles
- Harvard Law School records
- Columbia University records
- Columbia University senior thesis, “Soviet Nuclear Disarmament”
- Occidental College records, including financial aid that he may have received
- Punahou School records, where Mr. Obama attended from the fifth grade until he finished high school
- Noelani Elementary School records, where Barack Obama attended kindergarten (according to the Hawaii Department of Education, students must submit a birth certificate to register — but parents may bring a passport or student visa if the child is from a foreign country)
- Complete files and schedules of his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004
- Obama’s client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard
- Illinois State Bar Association records
- Baptism records
- Obama/Dunham marriage license
- Obama/Dunham divorce documents
- Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
- Soetero/Dunham adoption records
