and, he also is a Christian. The two things are not related, but since there seems to be a residual cadre of DW members here who doubt Obama’s citizenship, it’s possible that some may also believe the equally ridiculous assertion of Obama’s covert muslim faith.
At any rate, I’ve previously addressed the “non-citizen smear” at City of Brass and here is a summary linkfest for anyone who may still doubt the eligibility of Barack Obama for President according to the Constitution:
- the Obama campaign has already posted a copy of Obama’s birth certificate on his campaign website
- Snopes.com debunks the “non-citizen smear”
- FactCheck.org actually saw the original birth certificate
Since I am clearly a loony left-wing partisan hack, all evidence I presented above is of course suspicious and probably some form of political taqqiya. However, Ed Morrissey has impeccable right-wing, conservative credentials and he says much the same thing, so go read what he has to say instead.
And yes, the Obama “non-citizen smear” does in fact qualify as ODS. If you believe it, you have it.
{ 19 comments }
Aziz:
You can assert what you like. That doesn’t make it so. I haven’t seen a lot of DW commenters accuse Obama of being a non-citizen. I personally have said that there’s some "there" there, but that it doesn’t matter one way or the other to me. Call that ODS all you like, my complaints about Obama are almost purely in his experience, his policies and the people he associates with.
As far as I am concerned, that’s about as rational as you get.
BTW, isn’t this a duplicate post? Didn’t you post almost exactly the same thing before?
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Look Pa, a far-Left radical is running for President?
I see that Aziz Poonawalla at least reads my comments.
And responds furiously and defensively by any suggestion that "Barack Hussein Obama II" may have some residual loyalty to the religion of his forefathers. Or that he may in fact have been born in Kenya rather than in Hawaii, inasmuch as Barack Hussein Obama Sr — his father — was a Kenyan national and that he and Mrs Obama — the american mother of the Illinois senator – were known to be visiting with the Obama family in Kenya during the latter months of her pregnancy, and that international airlines of that era frequently would not take aboard pregnant and imminently expectant females for obvious medical and attendant insurance liability considerations.
Moreover, I find it strange, that Aziz, as a loyal, studious and serious Muslim, would want to go so far out of his normal reach to "prove" that Senator Obama could not possibly be a secret Muslim. Because I can think of nothing more debasing in the human spirit than to feel compelled to run away and hide from ones own cultural heritage, in an attempt to take power over someone else’s country, culture and heritage.Â
If Senator Obama himself had truly wanted to disconnect himself from any such connection at any time during the adulthood of his 47-year lifetime, he certainly could have gotten an Illinois civil court to drop his middle name — Hussein — which is given solely to Muslims.Â
He could have done that, couldn’t he? Instead of having his worldwide political, media and entertainment claque beat up on people for daring to raise any question about that middle name?
All this remains suspect in my eyes, and in the heart and soul of so many scores of millions of Americans. There never has been a presidential candidate who seemed so foreign from our american nation, our american culture, our american land.Â
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WIÂ Â Â Â Â
CosmicConservative, the notion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen is frivolous. Even if one bought into the theory that he wasn’t really born in Hawaii, there’s no question he was born to a U.S. citizen, thereby making him a natural-born citizen no matter where he was born (FWIW, McCain wasn’t born on U.S. soil, either).
Xrlq’s last blog post..Beware of Bargains
Xrlq,
John McCain was a child of two native born Americans. His father was a high-ranking US Navy on duty in the then-US owned and controlled Panama Canal Zone at the time time Senator McCain was born in 1936.
"Barack Hussein Obama II" was the child of a native born American woman and her husband, a Kenyan national. If BHOII was in fact born in Kenya, he would have been born a Kenyan national and could only have become an american citizenship through naturalization.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WIÂ
Hussein isn’t a name given solely to Muslims. And why change it anyway? It’s what he was given at birth.
Also, "secret Muslim" is almost a contradiction in terms, as the only time you’re allowed to hide that under most Islamic customs is under fear of death or severe persecution.
As for his place of birth: it would strike some as more than odd that his mother would somehow be able to sneak a baby into the United States unnoticed by the same airline and customs officials who might have balked at seeing her aboard an airplane in the first place. But to the best of my knowledge people were never forbidden to fly while pregnant anyway, it was just discouraged.
Moreover, let’s pretend for the sake of the argument that competent sources haven’t already confirmed his legitimate birth certificate (which they have). Let’s pretend she did indeed somehow smuggle the child into the United States for obscure and largely unnecessary reasons solely because she thought he might one day wish to be President.
Now what is the point? It is arguable that under the code in force at the time, he would not have been granted automatic citizenship but at this point all that could happen is that it would require the Supreme Court to step in and rule on the Constitutionality of previous code as to who is or is not a citizen and even open up the can of worms as to what a "natural born citizen" is exactly, and whether Congress can really define it as they have. What the ruling would be is unclear, and I’m rather certain the Justices would rather not even hear the case.
Numerous Republican sources have dismissed this claim as frivolous, including some very harsh Obama critics. This matter is almost certainly without merit so far as I can see, but maybe I’m wrong.
Barack Obama is clearly not an American Citizen because he is an african-american with a muslim name. There are no african-americans with muslim names in this country that are US citizens.
Well, I don’t want to touch on the subject of the title of the post as I am completely annoyed with bloggers on "my side" in this election bringing this up. The overwhelming majority haven’t but some small percentage has.
I want to to comment on the "Muslim" charge even though I’m completely sure Obama is a Christian.
Here it is. Obama is a Christian under the American definition of personal faith: he professed he was, end of story for almost all Americans. However, Obama is a Muslim under the definition of many (most?) Muslims around the world: He was born into the faith, there is no "out" unless one wishes to commit the crime (punished in many Muslim countries) of apostasy (English translation).
I actually had an argument with a lefty on a comment thread about this. He was contending that Obama being a crypto-Muslim would actually help us with the radicals and AlQ as they’d see him as one of them and love us more (seriously). I had to explain to the idiot that Obama professing a belief in Jesus as Christ and Savior and being born to a Muslim Father would enrage the extremists even more than McCain would.
Xlrq:
The question of Obama’s citizenship hangs on two very plain legal realities.
When Barack was born his mother was under the age of automatic citizenship for a child. I think she was 17, and an American citizen, at that time, had to be 18 to have a child be a citizen if born outside of the country. That may sound crazy, or unfair or whatever, but that was the law.
Secondly, if Obama was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii, then paragraph one kicks in.
As I said, I don’t care, but whether I care or not, or Aziz feels it is ODS or not, IF Obama was truly born in Kenya then his citizenship is a legitimate legal issue.
McCain, having two US citizen parents of adequate age can have been born anywhere in the world apparently, and still be a citizen…
Except, according to some Lefty blogs I’ve seen, for one place. For some reason the law allowing this supposedly excluded the Panama Canal Zone at the time of McCain’s birth…
Interesting, no?
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Guilty pleasures?
Scott: Uhm, well, just saying you’re a Christian doesn’t mean you’re a Christian to all Christians, although most sects these days are broadly ecumenical enough to basically accept that definition–many quite grudgingly and hesitantly, however. It is a form of theological liberalism that has its roots in certain forms of Protestantism, and is clung to most fervently by Evangelicals and Fundamentalists (who, it should be said, DO NOT and NEVER HAVE represented all or even most Protestants), although most mainline Protestant churches now basically affirm it–at least until you get into certain specifics, like, it’s hard to get a lot of people to agree as to whether or not Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons or Christian Unitarians should be called Christan or not.
Culturally, it used to be the case that being born a Christian and becoming a heretic was a much, much bigger deal than just being born an infidel or a heathen (and all of those–heretic, heathen, infidel–are originally Christian terms by the way).
Even now if you travel to other countries that are Christian you’ll find this same mentality; being a Catholic in Poland means you’re damn well Catholic and becoming a Protestant would be a *huge* scandal, maybe even a bigger scandal than becoming, say, a Buddhist or something. There was a time when there were Protestant nations where that was also true–it was certainly very true in England for a while that it was a VERY big deal if you renounced the Church of England (a Protestant denomination)–but I don’t know of any where it’s still true now.
The point being, this is all much more cultural than people realize. Most Muslim denominations say all you need to do to be a Muslim is to say you are one and to follow what are known as the "five pillars." But there are Muslim denominations which don’t recognize those and are much more extreme than that. There are also those who broadly denounce any Muslims who aren’t of their stripe as not being Muslim at all; Osama bin Laden’s sect is much like that, just for example. There are Sunnis who’d sooner cut off a Shia’s head than acknowledge him as a fellow Muslim, and vice-versa; a Jew or a Christian is just a heathen or a fool, but the wrong kind of Muslim is a traitor.
So yes it’s true that this cultural force exists, but it’s not true to say that Muslims around the world will automatically be enraged to learn that his dad was a Muslim but left his mom and his mom raised him Christian. Some might view it as a tragedy, but few I think would see much to be angry about there.
Aziz:
Let’s go for some common ground.
To question the technical legality of Obama’s status as a citizen is not proof of "Obama Derangement Syndrome".
But to assert that he is somehow a closet Muslim hiding his true religion from America until he’s elected, where he’s going to suddenly institute Sharia law… THAT would be "ODS."
My personal opinion of his religion is that there is no need to accuse him of belonging to a Muslim church, the Christian church he attended for 20 years is, imho, worse than the majority of Muslim churches in this country. What we KNOW about his ACTUAL church more than disqualifies him from polite company, much less the Oval Office. There’s no need to paint him as a Muslim. Being a member of "reverend" Wright’s flock is more than enough.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Guilty pleasures?
By the way, the lawsuit brought (by a Democrat) against Obama’s citizenship was just thrown out of court. The judge’s ruling was not based on the technical merits of the case, but on:
"Surrick ruled that Berg lacked standing to bring the case, saying any harm from an allegedly ineligible candidate was "too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters.""
I more or less agree with this ruling.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Guilty pleasures?
Well, McK, for one, certainly wouldn’t never want to contradict the apparent official and presumedly authentic, but not the original birth records.
If one checks: here, one will find in fine print at the bottom:
This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.
I don’t trust that assertion.
Here is what is interesting:
The paper on which the document was typed on Obama’s site, has authenticating and presumably non- copyable lines and dashes as in:
ie. II==II==II== repeat continuous…
Look again at only the green background.
That paper authentication never existed at the time of Obama’s birth.
What is needed to establish proof of birth are actual photocopies from microfilm or the original records signed by the attending physician.
While I weakly doubt Obama’s citizenship, he hasn’t been exactly transparent on the issue.
Cosmic:
Philip J. Berg, Esquire, the Attorney who filed suit against Barack H. Obama challenging Senator Obama’s lack of “qualifications†to serve as President of the United States, announced today that he is immediately appealing the dismissal of his case to the United States Supreme Court.
See:
http://www.obamacrimes.com/
Dean,
RE: Christianity. I was speaking about how AMERICANS of TODAY regard a person’s faith. I was not looking at the broad historical or international record or how people view faith. That’s because it’s Americans and not Poles who will decide who leads our government agencies.
RE: Muslims. I was speaking of how MOST Muslims regard people born to Shia/Sunni parents. Most, non-extremists even, would regard a Muslim born to parents in the faith as Muslim; end of story. Â
I see this as a bad issue.
There are real and serious issues about Barack Obama. This distracts from discussions of them and makes those who question him look crazy.
I’d much rather talk about more important things.
Dishman,
It isn’t a bad issue. Its really quite simple.
Barack Obama has had one year and more to produce an original document or microfilm signed by the attending physician authenticating his birth and citizenship in Hawaii which is advailable from the Hawaii Birth Records.
That ought not be very difficult.
This all is one of a number of relevant questions that won’t go away simply because a judge determines that the questioner does not have basis for asking the question. Or because so much of America has become overcome with the self-evident need to practice affirmative action in a national presidential election.
If Obama wins, and if it ever were determined that he had in fact been born in Kenya? Then what? This would in fact be treated as a constitutional crisis of a magnitude not experienced since secession of the southern states in 1860 led to the start of the the civil war in April 1861. His occupation of that office would be illegal not because of a federal law that could be changed, but because of a basic tenet of the Constitution of the United States — the basis of all government and all law in this country. And all this because this whole society had been too timid to ask the hard questions and for the national news media to dig deep enough into the background of their latest hero.
The social and cultural fabric of this country as I right this is being stretched. One day it will reach a breaking point, and there could ensue a new civil war here.
This country and its society going back 400 years of European settlement and development of this land and this continent had a culture that was European-American, English-speaking, predominantly established for Chiristians, by Christians and with the mutual agreement of Christians not to repeat the deadly wars of religion of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Now, we perceive we are in danger of losing our own country to Spanish-speaking mexican Indians, to people from elsewhere in the world with whom most of us cannot readily identify, and facing an increasingly purposely anti-american and menacing islamic world culture that many Americans are certain wants to devour us in the name of submission to their concept of the monotheistic deity. And all this in the ruin of our national economy and most uncertain national future.
So how in hell do any of you expect ordinary Americans to think and to react? It was on much smaller societal crack-up issues that brought communism to Russia, fascism to Italy, and national socialism to Germany all within little more than 15 years from October 1917 to January 1933.
Be warned.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
"Surrick ruled that Berg lacked standing to bring the case, saying any harm from an allegedly ineligible candidate was "too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters.""
I won’t comment on whether or not Obama is a citizen – I just don’t have enough information. I have questions, but that’s all I can really say.
However, the ruling bothers me in one respect. It hinges on the statement "…any harm from an allegedly ineligible candidate was too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters."
I disagree. The consequences of a person winning the election who is then proven ineligible are, to me, grave. What happens legally? I suppose Biden would become president, but are there any other ramifications? Maybe a few million people would have not voted for Obama had that information been made available before the election.
Also, the Democrats make a big deal out of "restoring our standing" in the world. What would having an ineligible person elected president do to our standing?
Like I said, I don’t have enough information to pass judgment on this issue of citizenship for Obama, but I think he could do a little more to ease people’s minds.
I actuallly have no problem with him using his middle name of Hussein – I’ve critiqued Obama heavily for his refusal to tackle the muslim smear head on, and I think his avoidance of his middle name is a manifestation of that.
Obama lacks character, Aziz, and you damned well know it. Â
How would you be able to face yourself in the mirror every morning if you had dropped the name ‘Aziz’ as too islamic for life in a predominantly christian society such as the USA?
I personally think he is a conflicted man, with roots he cannot reconcile. Half black, half white. Half muslim, half christian. Half Chicago ward healer, half would-be savior of the american nation. And on and on.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WIÂ
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