By Douglas V. Gibbs
Though I am not one to be always in complete agreement with birthers, like the fact that I am not as completely convinced as they are that Obama was born in Kenya (though I believe it may not be completely out of the realm of possibility), I do have questions about the birth certificate. I wonder why Barack Obama has spent a lot of money sealing records, or why something as simple as the long form of his birth certificate has not been produced.
Like the birthers, I do question Obama's eligibility to be President of the United States, largely because of the fact that a part of the definition of natural born citizen requires for the father to be an American citizen so that there are no divided loyalties.
Birthers are an interesting group. In most cases, folks are either in agreement with them, or believe them to be complete crack-pots. However, lately, the largest critic of the birther movement has been new Hawaii Governor, Democrat Neil Abercrombie.
Abercrombie has decided that once and for all, he is going to shut the Birthers up by producing the documents that would be the final proof that Barack Obama was indeed born in Hawaii. He is quoted as saying, "It [the Obama birth certificate controversy] is an insult to his [Obama's] mother and to his father; they were my friends, and I have an emotional interest in that. It's an emotional insult. It is disrespectful to the president; it is disrespectful to the office."
Governor Abercrombie recently asked his state attorney general's office and the director of the state Health Department to see how he can bypass Hawaii's privacy laws and release more information regarding the Obama records that exist there.
Abercrombie claims to have seen baby Obama in Hawaii all those years ago.
Though the governor has admitted that he was not present at the still-unidentified hospital in Honolulu to witness Obama's birth, Abercrombie long has claimed he socialized with Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham Obama when Barack Obama Jr. was yet a baby.
"Maybe I'm the only one in the country that could look you right in the eye and tell you, 'I was here when the baby was born,'" Abercrombie told the Chicago Tribune.
As a graduate teaching assistant in sociology at the University of Hawaii when Barack Obama Sr. arrived in 1959 from Kenya, Abercrombie was in fact in Hawaii during the time that Obama was said to have been born there, or at least that's the way it seems. However, the problem with Abercrombie’s testimony is that Barack Obama Sr. and his wife, Ann Dunham, did not live together as man and wife with their baby son as Abercrombie claims to have witnessed.
Could the anti-birther governor possibly be lying?
Ann Dunham, it turns out, was at the University of Washington in Seattle on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, within three weeks of the baby's birth.
As for those two newspapers that announced Barry's birth in Hawaii, it turns out that the address used was an address maintained by Ann Dunham's parents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. In August 1961, when Barack Obama Jr. was born, Barack Obama Sr. maintained a separate address in Hawaii.
In addition to that inconvenient little fact, there is also no documentary evidence that Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham ever lived at the same address together as man and wife.
Contrary to Abercrombie's assertion that he spent social time with Barack Obama Sr., his wife, Ann Dunham, and their child, Barack Obama Jr., the documentary evidence strongly suggests that while Ann Dunham was in Seattle attending the University of Washington, Barack Obama Sr. lived the life of a bachelor in Honolulu.
Strangely, Abercrombie is the only witness on the public record claiming a recollection of Barack Obama Sr., Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Jr. living together and interacting with him socially as a family in Hawaii.
Now, Abercrombie won't even accept interview requests on the subject.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
Hawaii guv suddenly 'mum' on Obama birth 'certificate': After blizzard of attacks on 'birthers,' Abercrombie now avoids interviews - World Net Daily
Re: "wonder why Barack Obama has spent a lot of money sealing records.."
ReplyDeleteAnswer: He hasn't. None of his records are sealed. His private records are simply private, like the private records of all previous presidents.
Re: "or why something as simple as the long form of his birth certificate has not been produced.'
Answer: Obama has already shown the OFFICIAL birth certificate of Hawaii, which is used every year by thousands of people to get their US passports. Hawaii has not sent out the long-form birth certificate since the short-form certification of live birth became the official birth certificate in 2001. That was the birth certificate that Hawaii sent to Obama in 2007.
Re the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya. It is particularly stupid. Have you any idea what such a trip would have cost in 1961? Tens of thousands of dollars in 2010 terms, and it was a highly risky trip to take late in pregnancy because planes were poorly pressurized, and there was Yellow Fever in Kenya.
IF a person were born in Kenya, she or he would need a US travel document to get to the USA. That would be either a US visa on a foreign passport or the change to his mother's US passport to include him. One or the other would have had to have been applied for at a US Consulate in Kenya and granted before the child would be allowed to enter the USA.
If such a document existed, it would be easy to find because the records of the application for the visa or for the change to the mother's passport would still be in the files of the US State Department, filed under applications for visas and applications for changes to passports in Kenya in 1961. The Republicans were in charge of the US State Department until January 2009. No such document has been found. No such document exists.
Obama was not born in Kenya. He was born in Hawaii, as his official birth certificate from Hawaii shows, and the facts on it were repeatedly confirmed by the officials in Hawaii.