Regarding Presidential Eligibility and Suitability
Was Obama born in the U.S.? It’s a valid and important question, as it Constitutionally determines his eligibility for office (and re-election). It’s also not settled, despite adamant claims to the contrary by sycophants of this administration.
Where do I stand on this issue? Firmly agnostic! I’m neither a “birther” nor a “birther” denier.
My position is that we don’t know enough yet to be sure. I’m saying the evidence is insufficient to say, and that alone is disturbing. Yes, there’s a digital “birth certificate” freely available, about which there is strong evidence it has been Photoshopped. Yes, there are testimonials both ways–all hearsay. He said, she said…
There are a lot of “fact-checking errors” (where the subject was asked to submit his own biographic info!), and supposedly “mistaken” claims of Obama’s Kenyan origins from sources friendly to him, including his own literary agency. Maybe that was a multi-year error on their (and others’) parts. Maybe not. Who knows? One man does.
As this British BLOG sensibly notes:
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If we accept that Obama didn’t provide the biography, it would seem highly unlikely that he didn’t get a chance to vet it. Accepting that he didn’t do that either, it’s incredibly strange that the literary agent approached by Breitbart.com does not remember Obama calling the agency to register a complaint and make a correction.
We know Obama has admitted to “compositing” his old girlfriends, which is a five-dollar euphemism that means “lying for literary effect”. Is that permissible in the part of your worldview that pertains to honesty and integrity?
With the natural-born issue, either Obama really was not born in Hawaii, or he has fictionalized (lied) and approved the fictionalization (tacit dishonesty) of his life story by supporters and biographers. Which is it? Depending on the answer (and there are NO gray shades here, it is a pure either/or!), this makes him either ineligible for his existing office or morally unfit for re-election.
Given all the conflicting information, I don’t blame Arizona election officials for getting suspicious. I think all states should require tangible, certified birth certificates of all candidates for President, in strict enforcement of the Natural Born Citizen Clause.
[Furthermore, this recently retired Constitutional attorney makes a compelling argument that even being technically born on U.S. soil is not necessarily sufficient. ]
Folks, this issue is not dead. It is not moot. It is not something to be swept under the rug, much as Big Media on the East and West Coasts may try. Those who legitimately and fairly raise this issue should not be marginalized and stereotyped as wacky conspiracy theorists.
This isn’t a game. This is serious. It is alive, important and relevant today, and must be resolved with no ambiguity whatsoever! If Obama isn’t a natural born citizen, historically speaking, we would be witnessing the greatest betrayal since Judas. I actually do hope and wish that Obama indeed was born as stated in Hawaii, in order for this nation to avoid the deeply disruptive Constitutional crisis that would arise otherwise. Wish in one hand…
I am not running for President or Vice-President; but if I were, I would be quite willing, ready and able to provide the certified hardcopy of my Texas birth certificate that I possess to anyone (who would agree in writing to return it intact and unaltered) for analysis and examination.
Why can’t BHO do this? It’s not hard. The solution is so straightforward. If I can, he can. That’s all. And yet, he lets it fester, on and on. What’s up with that?
Journalism 101: Get it Right.
BLOGs are partly for venting and I’m about to do it.
Let’s illustrate the sloppiness, carelessness and laziness of modern “journalism” with a prime example. First, note the fact that there is no such place as Westwood, OK.
Yet that didn’t hinder Bryan Walsh from Time in making a seemingly small but utterly inexcusable mistake that spreads Web-wide. Failures have consequences, Bryan, as I shall illustrate. Do a Google search for “Oklahoma town of Westwood” (linked here for your convenience) and see for yourself.
Here’s a screen capture that shows some of the propagational stupidity (it’s an image, so the links don’t work).
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As of this writing, over three weeks after the event, none of those stories contains a same-site correction–not a single one.
Get it straight, big-media ignoramuses everywhere. The town’s name is not “Westwood”. It’s Woodward. I should repeat it so that even an East Coast city-slicker “journalist” can’t screw it up. Woodward. Woodward. Woodward. Spell it out as the imaginary ball bounces across the letters: W-o-o-d-w-a-r-d. Sing a little song in your head, if you must, to keep it straight.
Woodward is a place full of fellow Americans whose residents’ lives have been disrupted, damaged, or even lost, at the foot of a tornado that struck in the night (with warning!), and you can’t even get their town’s very simple name correct? Come on. Do better. Hey, Associated Press (last link) got it right. Even I can spell New York City, where Time, Inc., is headquartered. Surely Bryan can spell Woodward, also a name of English origin that has even fewer letters.
Furthermore, what does this say about all the BLOGS and sites that reproduce the story without checking it? Well, they’re all in doubt too, thanks to their passive laziness and sloppiness. If they’re not fact-checking this, what else are they mindlessly parroting? What other facts, topics and ideas, minor or major, are they getting wrong? These are valid questions.
Here are some of the guilty parties, by name:
Time Magazine (who started it all).
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Real Clear Science
Climate Change World
NewsInformed
Humanist Resources
The News Tree
WeatherNation
I believe that complaints without solutions are invalid. So here’s the solution: Journalism 101. Hey, reporter: It’s your story. Get it right. You’re paid to. It’s that simple.
Savage Bigotry, Intolerance and Bullying…toward Christian Children
Meet Dan Savage (but only at a distance). This is a person who is so “tolerant” that he once advocated truck-dragging a politician with whom he disagreed. He also stated on national TV that he wished all Republicans were “f___ing dead.” Are truck-dragging somebody to pieces, and the desired mortality of millions of people, proper ways to settle a problem? The racist killers of James Byrd, and the notorious genocide architect Adolf Hitler, might say “sure”. Otherwise…
This is a person who once wrote that he volunteered for a Republican presidential primary campaign as a mole, then tried to infect that candidate with the flu by spreading the germs of his illness on items that the candidate (Gary Bauer) would handle. Later Savage backed off that story, calling his account fictitious. This either makes him dishonest, delusional, uncivilized, and an irrational hothead at best–or a dangerous sociopath at worst.
In light of incidents such as these, is Dan Savage someone a responsible parent or educator should want influencing any child of any age? And yet, and yet…
For some reason, this extreme-fringe “queer” activist, admitted liar, violence-advocating anti-bully crusader, and convicted voter-fraud criminal was invited to speak at a national high-school journalism conference held by the National Scholastic Press Association. For the sake of civilized humanity…why? This was the awful and shameful result. What as the NSPA thinking…or were they? Given Savage’s decidedly unstable background, such a cruel and hateful eruption shouldn’t have surprised the organizers.
Insult-infused, gratuitously profane rants against Christians and Christianity seem to be en vogue, satisfying some carnal desire for puppies to kick by insecure bullies of the left. Even given that, Savage’s spew was extreme to the max. Substitute Jew and Torah, or Muslim and Koran, for Christian and Bible in his verbal screed, and this guy would have been pilloried by mobs of mainstream media finger-waggers at every turn. This further exemplifies the dripping hypocrisy of leftist “thought”, where doublespeak is the norm: bigotry is portrayed as anti-bigotry, hatefulness used in the struggle against hate, bullying as part of an “anti-bullying” agendas, and intolerance in the name of tolerance. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth would be proud.
As I’ve written here before, tolerance and acceptance also means tolerance and acceptance of political conservatives, of Christians, of the right wing…in other words, of me–and millions of others like me. The Dan Savages of the world, and the frothing lapdogs of lascivious deviance who march to their tune, are too engulfed in the flames of their own hatred and bigotry to see that their credibility in any such arguments is burned to a crisp as a result.
This sort of extreme-left radicalism, using overt and profane insults and as vectors for spreading the message, would be absolutely unrecognizable and shocking to more sane, level-headed and thoughtful civil-rights activists of the early ’60s. Radical homosexual activists often speciously and disingenuously compare their “struggle” for recognition, approval and attention to that civil-rights era. Really? I mean, really? Talk about delusions. This makes me wonder…
What would the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King say about such tactics as Savage has employed? What would MLK say to the notion that Christian children are being called “pansy asses” in public, by the speaker, for walking out of a hateful and insulting rant against their faith? What would he say? Answer that.