Eric asks the GOP candidates if they are birthers:
As you know, there are some on the right who have serious concerns about whether President Barack Obama qualifies as a “natural-born citizen.” They question the validity of his birth records and therefore the legitimacy of his presidency. To what degree, if any, do you share those concerns?
Adam Andrzejewski— I do have concerns about Obama’s policies, which I think run counter to the American mainstream. I would hope that the many conservatives who are “concerned” about Obama’s citizenship exercise their citizenship more effectively by pointing out their differences with his policies rather than with his birth certificate.
Bill Brady–I frankly don’t hear that much about it. I continue to hear people talk about how they’re worried about the economy and jobs. Obama will be judged on his actions and if I were him I’d just provide the proof. One action he should do is provide the proof. I really haven’t seen any proof, but I haven’t been following this issue closely.
Kirk Dillard — (via a spokesman) Senator Dillard has no comment with respect to this issue. He’s out talking to the voters about the economy and the enormous issues facing Illinois.
Matt Murphy — (awaiting answer)
Dan Proft –I’ll defer to Kirk Dillard on this matter as I’m sure he was fully briefed prior to cutting his endorsement commercial for Barack Obama.
Bob Schillerstrom–(via a spokesman) The short answer is no. From the economy to soaring unemployment to runaway spending, we have real challenges that require serious attention – that is not one of them.
Credit to Andrzejewski and Schillerstrom who didn’t take the time to point out how ridiculous the whole discusssion is, but were clear in pointing out they don’t agree with the Birthers.
Dillard fails miserably. Proft finds a way to attack someone completely unrelated to the question. And Bill Brady buys into the Birther conspiracies by calling on the President to produce what he has already produced.
Leave it to the jackass from my hometown.
There you go again—allowing an entire town to be smeared because of one jackass!
LOL–there are lots of jackasses who elected the clown in the first place. 😉
I’m a lifelong Democrat. As you know, a certificate of live birth (COLB) is NOT a birth certificate. Mr. Obama has never produced an authenticated BC, his student records from any of his colleges, medical records, Selective Service registration, Illinois senate voting records, etc, etc. Please ask yourself why Mr. Obama has spent roughly ONE MILLION DOLLARS to fight the release of these records, as well as backing down to Major Stefan Cook. My mother always said: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Rebecca, I’m not a lifelong Democrat and I question why you feel the need to describe yourself as one since you’ve so clearly IGNORED the facts surrounding the conspiracy theories you picked up from right-wing talking points.
1. The “authenticated birth certificate” is NOT Pres. Obama’s to produce. It is a state record controlled by the State of Hawaii and the laws of that state preclude public dissemination of such records, for good reason (if it were ever lost or accidentally destroyed by some ignoramous “birther” conspiracy theorist the state would no longer have its only original record of Pres. Obama’s birth).
Instead — like every other state in the union — a certificate of live birth based on that original birth certificate is made available to the citizens for whom it is pertinent, in this case one Barack Hussein Obama. (I don’t have my own birth certificate. Illinois does… actually, probably the county where I was born does.)
Irregardless, Mr. Obama has produced this cert. of live birth document. It was never kept from the public. The campaign and (now) the White House never suppressed it. (The conundrum here is that conservative anti-Obamists are deliberately misrepresenting a FactCheck.org story related to then Sen. Obama’s cert. of live birth from 2008. FactCheck requested it but the campaign did not literally have it in their hands to give to FactCheck for independent verification so FactCheck simply reported they were not able to see it for themselves. Somehow that is being misrepresented by conservatives into something more sinister, that Obama was “denying” or “suppressing” his birth certificate. FactCheck was later able to physically examine the colb and verify it as real.)
This certificate of live birth document has been verified by a variety of members of the press and has been certified as genuine by the secretary of health of the State of Hawaii as well as the REPUBLICAN Governor of Hawaii.
With this certificate of live birth Mr. Obama is able to get a passport, a driver’s license and other state and Federally required documents.
Moreover, since some states in the union ALREADY require verification of citizenship by birth, the certificate of live birth is THE document Mr. Obama used to register for ballot access in those states in order to run for President of the United States.
Even the Honolulu Advertiser (the city’s main newspaper) has found Mr. Obama’s birth announcement that ran in their paper in 1961.
Why you and others choose to ignore ALL these facts is unclear. For your concerns to be valid, practically the entire government of the state of Hawaii and the biggest newspaper in that state would have had to have prepared a whole bunch of phony material in 1961 just to play a trick on you in 2008.
If you honestly believe that, I’ve got a great bridge to sell ya …
2. What student records would you like to see?
And, more importantly, how many student records do YOU still have from college? I threw a lot of mine out years ago. About the only pertinent ones I can produce for you right now are my diplomas and (if I dig through a few boxes) I can probably even find a xerox of my final transcript.
Even more importantly, what does this prove to you? That Mr. Obama, who was president of the Harvard Law Review, actually went to Harvard?
Why can’t you believe the gobs of Harvard Law Review printed material which already says he not only was president of the Review but also attended the school?
3. He did show the press his medical records. They were short. He’s a healthy guy.
McCain, on the other hand, had volumes of records and only allowed a few members of the press into a closed room for a very short time to “see” the records.
4. Selective Service registration? Are you kidding?
I threw out my SS card years ago too. I think I kept it for a year or two after I was required to do so but then shredded it. Mr. Obama is a decade+ older than I am.
What makes you think he even has his SS card still?
And other than that card, the Pentagon or some other bureacracy in DC is going to be the only place to go for Selective Service “records”.
5. Illinois Senate voting records are pretty easy to look up if you bother.
They are public records after all. Here’s your first clue: the Illinois General Assembly’s website is at http://ilga.gov/
Now, you might want to ask yourself how it was that Alan Keyes, Hillary Clinton and John McCain were all able to find his Illinois State Senate voting records but you somehow are incapable of doing so.
6. Please ask yourself why conservative nutjobs are spending millions upon millions themselves to promote completely and utterly bogus disinformation about Pres. Obama — even going so far as to call his grandmother in Kenya and then (deliberately or not) mistranslating and mistranscribing the conversation with this woman who does not speak English.
(Although she also did clearly say that Pres. Obama WAS BORN IN HAWAII IN 1961.)
7. What is wrong with you? Your mother may have always said “where there’s smoke there’s fire…” but there is neither smoke nor fire here, just a bunch of people trying their damndest to ignore EVERY SINGLE VERIFIED AND DOUBLE- AND TRIPLE-CHECKED FACT presented to them.
In fact, where’s there’s a head there’s supposed to be a thinking brain. Where’s yours?
A certificate of live birth is a birth certificate. I now understand the basic problem–a lack of command of the English language.
Instead of using birth as an adjective it is utilized in a prepositional phrase. As anyone with a 4th grade education could explain–it means the same fucking thing.
Arch,
The birthers who “know” what they’re talking about make the distinction between the cert of live birth (aka, “short form birth certificate”) and the actual birth certificate document which is a state or county record (aka, “long form”).
There is a minor, technical difference even though the short form is what is most commonly used in these 50 United States as proof of citizenship in order to obtain other official state and Federal documents such as passports and the like.
Regardless, COLBs are simply a distillation of the pertinent facts listed on the long form and the most pertinent fact, place of birth, is listed as Honolulu, Hawaii which — despite all the vowels 😉 — was indeed a city and county located in a State in the Union in 1961 meaning he was born “here” and so he ain’t one of them ferriners no matter what.
Smoking a nun here. What the birthers are after is elusive and subterranean, requiring Herculanean effort and unwavering force of will to to unearth. Apparently they’ve been told that there exists a Kenyan birth ritual which requires a sacred cowhide parchment known as the “be-born” to be smeared with the co-mingled blood of the parents and the newborn. In this case the MacGuffin is known as the “Obama be-born” and it’s very existence, though shrouded in dark mystery, continually threatens to topple his Imperial Majesty!