An Open Letter to We The People Foundation...and the Cult of the Certificate of Live Birth

[struggle4progress]

Christina Cedeno
Managing Editor
http://yestodemocracy.com

... How many memoirs does this man need to write about his adolescence, teenage, and college years before it's believed to be his actual story? How many times does he need to repeat the phrase, "a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas?" How many times does this man need to tell America what "Barack" means before he's "known" enough? I'm curious to why it's taken so long for those like you to "know" Barack Obama. It seems Sarah Palin was deemed "all-American" after a 20 minute speech she gave two weeks after being thrust into the political spotlight. Obama rigorously campaigned all over this nation for 2 years.

Let me ask, have you ever seen any other president's birth certificate? Any other certifications of birth at all? Bush Sr., W. Bush, Clinton, Carter, etc. Did anyone ever get a glimpse? Why wasn't there a crusade against these men to release their information for the world to witness? Where were the "experts" to "examine" their birth certificates? Couldn't they just as easily have lied? ...

This theory that the entire American Government- even the most extreme right-wing of the political spectrum would never bother to look into/validate Obama's eligibility, or worse, hide his ineligibility is absolutely absurd. His presidency would go against integral portions of their ideologue. Yet, using the conspirators logic, they were willing to look the other way while Obama and his henchmen went to work on "operation birth cover-up?" And just what exactly would these right-wingers in the upper echelon of the Bush administration gain from that?

Furthermore, to think that the Democratic Party itself would fail to look deeply into the background of a candidate that is running to represent their party is so idiotic that I'm running out of adjectives to describe it! You would think, using again, conspirators logic, that this is the first year of political races in the history of this nation. Would the Democratic Party really risk their "brand" by hiding a secret of this magnitude? Would they really risk losing another election if the "secret" of Obama's illegitimacy were discovered by anonymous "experts" on the internet that go by the nom de plumes "Polarik" and "Techdude?" I mean, these are the cases you cite, correct? The cases of Philip J. Berg (9-11 truther who touts Obama's COLB to be his sister's) and Leo Donofrio, yes, they are ...

http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/12/03/the-cult-of-barack-obamas-birth-certificate/

[Hissyspit]

1. Obama's Birth Certificate:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html



Certificate




Verification Signature




Official Seal




Birth Announcement

[struggle4progress]

2. I dunno: the birth certificate in your picture is for some kid named Barack Hussein Obama II

who was born in Honolulu, but I wanted to see Barry Muhammed Soetoro's Kenyan birth certificate

Also, the birth certificate in your picture is only 2" x 3" on my monitor, and the hands are suspiciously tiny, too

And whatever happened to Barry Muhammed Soetoro? Why can't anybody find him? Did the Clintons kill him?

[Felix Mala]

8. It's ironic that the wayward right has all these conspiracies mapped

out that Obama is some kind of Manchurian Candidate planted here by shadowy forces when it was actually John McCain who was held many years by an enemy nation that subjected him to all kinds of psychological and physical torture. Wonder what would happen if your ever flipped the Queen of Hearts in front of McCain's face?

[Vinca]

3. On top of everything else. Obama would need to be a time traveler.

He'd have to go back to the time of his birth and make sure the birth certificate was planted with the Hawaiian government and the birth announcement was planted in the newspaper.

[struggle4progress]

4. Yes. He probably did that with the help of illegal aliens from outer space:

that's why we need to build a wall around earth to keep out the UFOs

[MineralMan]

5. Well, see, the thing is...

Barack, when he was supposed to be in Hawaii to see his dying mother, was actually flying around the planet at very, very high speed. That turned time back. Then, when he got to 1961, he donned his cloak of invisibility and planted the Birth Certificate in the records.

Very few people know this, so keep it under your hat, OK?

[Itchinjim]

6. Obama's mother was an American citizen.

Therefore Obama is an American citizen from birth.

[struggle4progress]

7. The general strategy for rightwing huff-n-puff involves ever-changing claims,

which replace one another, like the heads of the mythical Hydra: whenever one nonsense claim is demolished, several more appear in its place

So having falsely claimed that Obama was born in Indonesia or Kenya, the wingnuts are not in the least dissuaded when those claims are debunked but simply make new false claims: Obama is living under a false name, or Obama renounced his citizenship, or Obama's actual citizenship is determined by some arcane provision of British colonial law, or ... or ...

Refuting one bit of nonsense after another is a pointless exercise: the intent of the huff-n-puff is simply to gather attention -- and every attempt to refute the nonsense provides such attention

To discuss the citizenship of Obama's mother is really a senseless waste of time, not only because (in light of the actual facts) her citizenship is completely irrelevant, but also because what the shrieking wingnuts really want is, not a real conversation, but just an opportunity to create noise and anxiety: at the very moment one refutes whatever idiotic assertion is being made about (say) the supposed relevance of the citizenship of Obama's mother, further idiotic assertions will replace it

[Miss Authoritiva]

9. Absolutely.

Refuting one bit of nonsense after another is a pointless exercise: the intent of the huff-n-puff is simply to gather attention -- and every attempt to refute the nonsense provides such attention.

I asked one of these birth-certificate conspiracy people two simple questions: (1) What evidence/documents would convince you that Obama was a natural-born citizen; and (2) Whose expert opinion would you accept as binding regarding the existence and authenticity of the evidence/documents (since obviously each and every voter is not going to get a chance to play this game). Clearly, he had a list of items for question #1, but he couldn't or wouldn't answer question #2.