Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Clearing the Smoke on Obama’s Eligibility: An Intelligence Investigator’s June 10 Report
This is long but very very interesting...you will want to read this, it explains allot of what has been going on with obama and his birth certificate. I saw yesterday that the courts have finally agreed that they need to hear the case.....all I can say is IT"S ABOUT TIME!! If the courts get involved then the U.S. Attorney General will need to get involved and maybe something will get done!! Here is the report:
Editors Note: In December ‘08 a retired CIA officer commissioned an investigator to look into the Barack Obama birth certificate and eligibility issue. On July 21, 2009 westernjournalism.com obtained a copy of the investigator’s report. Here is an unedited version of the report.
June 10, 2009 Report, updated July 18, 2009
The Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii
I think that I now understand the legal background to the question of where Obama was born.
Let’s begin with the statement that Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health released on October 31, 2008. The television and print media used this statement as a reason to prevent and treat with contempt any investigation into whether Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii. But the language of the statement was so carefully hedged and guarded that it should have had the opposite effect.
“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record. Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
It is understandable that after such an apparently definitive statement most news outlets, whether conservative or liberal, would accept this as sufficient grounds to relegate the controversy to the status of a fringe phenomenon. Unless they happened to take the trouble to look into the “state policies and procedures” as laid down by the relevant statutes. If they had done so, they would have seen that Dr. Fukino’s press release was carefully hedged and “lawyered” and practically worthless. But the media in general should not be faulted. The statement seems to roll out with such bureaucratic certainty and final authority. I believed it to be significant until a Honolulu attorney mailed me the relevant statutes. I was so surprised that I laughed out loud.
Here is a summary of Hawaii’s “state policies and procedures” in 1961.
In the State of Hawaii, back in 1961, there were four different ways to get an “original birth certificate” on record. They varied greatly in their reliability as evidence. For convenience, I’ll call them BC1, BC2, BC3, and BC4.
BC1. If the birth was attended by a physician or mid wife, the attending medical professional was required to certify to the Department of Health the facts of the birth date, location, parents’ identities and other information. (See Section 57-8 & 9 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii which was in effect in 1961).
Actual long form Certificate of Live Birth similar to one Obama refuses to release
BC2. In 1961, if a person was born in Hawaii but not attended by a physician or midwife, then all that was required was that one of the parents send in a birth certificate to be filed. The birth certificate could be filed by mail. There appears to have been no requirement for the parent to actually physically appear before “the local registrar of the district.” It would have been very easy for a relative to forge an absent parent’s signature to a form and mail it in. In addition, if a claim was made that “neither parent of the newborn child whose birth is unattended as above provided is able to prepare a birth certificate, the local registrar shall secure the necessary information from any person having knowledge of the birth and prepare and file the certificate.” (Section 57-8&9) I asked the Dept of Health what they currently ask for (in 2008) to back up a parent’s claim that a child was born in Hawaii. I was told that all they required was a proof of residence in Hawaii (e.g. a driver’s license [We know from interviews with her friends on Mercer Island in Washington State that Ann Dunham had acquired a driver’s license by the summer of 1961 at the age of 17] or telephone bill) and pre-natal (statement or report that a woman was pregnant) and post-natal (statement or report that a new-born baby has been examined) certification by a physician. On further enquiry, the employee that I spoke to informed me that the pre-natal and post-natal certifications had probably not been in force in the ‘60s. Even if they had been, there is and was no requirement for a physician or midwife to witness, state or report that the baby was born in Hawaii.
BC3. In 1961, if a person was born in Hawaii but not attended by a physician or midwife, then, up to the first birthday of the child, a “Delayed Certificate” could be filed, which required that “a summary statement of the evidence submitted in support of the acceptance for delayed filing or the alteration [of a file] shall be endorsed on the certificates”, which “evidence shall be kept in a special permanent file.” The statute provided that “the probative value of a ‘delayed’ or ‘altered’ certificate shall be determined by the judicial or administrative body or official before whom the certificate is offered as evidence.” (See Section 57- 9, 18, 19 & 20 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii which was in effect in 1961).”
[In other words, this form of vault birth certificate, the Delayed Certificate, required no more than a statement before a government bureaucrat by one of the parents or (the law does not seem to me clear on this) one of Barack Obama’s grandparents. If the latter is true, Ann Dunham did not have to be present for this statement or even in the country.]
BC4. If a child is born in Hawaii, for whom no physician or mid wife filed a certificate of live birth, and for whom no Delayed Certificate was filed before the first birthday, then a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth could be issued upon testimony of an adult (including the subject person [i.e. the birth child as an adult]) if the Office of the Lieutenant Governor was satisfied that a person was born in Hawaii, provided that the person had attained the age of one year. (See Section 57-40 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii which was in effect in 1961.) In 1955 the “secretary of the Territory” was in charge of this procedure. In 1960 it was transferred to the Office of the Lieutenant Governor (“the lieutenant governor, or his secretary, or such other person as he may designate or appoint from his office” [in 1961]).
Certification of Live Birth, released by Obama
In 1982, the vital records law was amended to create a fifth kind of “original birth certificate”. Under Act 182 H.B. NO. 3016-82, “Upon application of an adult or the legal parents of a minor child, the director of health shall issue a birth certificate for such adult or minor, provided that the proof has been submitted to the director of health that the legal parents of such individual while living without the Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.” In this way “state policies and procedures” accommodate even “children born out of State” (this is the actual language of Act 182) with an “original birth certificate on record.” So it is even possible that the birth certificate referred to by Dr Fukino is of the kind specified in Act 182. This possibility cannot be dismissed because such a certificate certainly satisfies Dr Fukino’s statement that “I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.” If this is the case, Dr Fukino would have perpetrated so unusually disgusting a deception that I find it practically incredible (and I greatly doubt that anyone could be that shameless). On the other hand, if the original birth certificate is of types 2, 3, or 4, Dr Fukino’s statement would be only somewhat less deceptive and verbally tricky. I only bring up this possibility to show how cleverly hedged and “lawyered” and basically worthless Dr Fukino’s statement is.
Sections 57-8, 9, 18, 19, 20 & 40 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act explain why Barack Obama has refused to release the original vault birth certificate. If the original certificate were the standard BC1 type of birth certificate, he would have allowed its release and brought the controversy to a quick end. But if the original certificate is of the other kinds, then Obama would have a very good reason not to release the vault birth certificate. For if he did, then the tape recording of Obama’s Kenyan grandmother asserting that she was present at his birth in Kenya becomes far more important. As does the Kenyan ambassador’s assertion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, as well as the sealing of all government and hospital records relevant to Obama by the Kenyan government. And the fact that though there are many witnesses to Ann Dunham’s presence on Oahu from Sept 1960 to Feb 1961, there are no witnesses to her being on Oahu from March 1961 to August 1962 when she returned from Seattle and the University of Washington. No Hawaiian physicians, nurses, or midwives have come forward with any recollection of Barack Obama’s birth.
The fact that Obama refuses to release the vault birth certificate that would instantly clear up this matter almost certainly indicates that the vault birth certificate is probably a BC2 or possibly a BC3.
It is almost certainly a BC 3 or even a BC 4 if the “Certification of Live Birth” posted on the Daily Kos blog and the fightthesmears.com website by the Obama campaign is a forgery. Ron Polarik has made what several experts claim to be a cogent case that it is a forgery. There have been a couple of attempts to refute his argument and Polarik has replied to the most extensive of them. I do not claim expertise in this area, but I think it would be best for journalists and politicians to familiarize themselves with the arguments on both sides before they casually dismiss Polarik’s position without taking the trouble to understand it.
Here are 2 of Polarik’s websites: http://bogusbirthcertificate.blogspot.com/
http://bogusbithcertificate.blogspot.com/
Because the disputants know far more about this subject than I do, I am an agnostic about Polarik’s argument. However, the likelihood that this computer-generated “Certification of Live Birth” was forged, is, I believe, increased by the fact that it has been pretty clearly established that Obama “either didn’t register for the draft or did so belatedly and fraudulently. The documents indicate that it’s one or the other.” http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/004431print.html The forgery of Obama’s selective service registration was necessary, because according to Federal law, “A man must be registered to be eligible for jobs in the Executive Branch of the Federal government and the U.S. Postal Service. This applies only to men born after December 31, 1959.” http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/draft2.htm)
It is also very strange that Dr Fukino’s statement in no way attested to (or even addressed the issue of) the authenticity of the “Certification of Live Birth” (and the information that appears on it) that the Daily Kos blog and the Obama campaign posted on line. Dr Fukino merely stated that “I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
If there is no hospital or physician record in the vault birth certificate, then he wasn’t born in a hospital in Hawaii. And a home birth or non-hospital birth can then be ruled out for the following reason.
When someone has a home birth or is not born in a hospital, this becomes a part of his family’s lore and is now and again spoken of by his parents. He and his siblings grow up knowing that he was born at home or his uncle’s house, etc. The fact that someone in the campaign told a Washington Post reporter that he was born in Kapioliani hospital and his sister said he was born at Queens hospital indicates that there was not and is not any Obama/Dunham family memory of a home birth or non-hospital birth in Hawaii.
And if there is no hospital record in the original vault birth certificate, then he was not born in a hospital in Hawaii.
Instead of the birth certificate on file at the Hawaii Dept of Health, the Obama campaign posted on the Daily Kos blog and the Fightthesmears website a “Certification of Live Birth”. The Certification of Live Birth is not a copy of the original birth certificate. It is a computer-generated document that the state of Hawaii issues on request to indicate that a birth certificate of some type is “on record in accordance with state policies and procedures”. And there is the problem. Given the statutes in force in 1961, the Certification of Live Birth proves nothing unless we know what is on the original birth certificate. There are several legal areas (involving ethnic quotas and subsidy) for which the state of Hawaii up until June 2009 did not accept its computer-generated Certification of Live Birth as sufficient proof of birth in Hawaii or parentage. Why should the citizens of the United States be content with lower standards for ascertaining the qualifications of their President?
If you combine an awareness of what the Certification of Live Birth posted on the internet really is with 1) a knowledge of the relevant statutes in 1961 and 2) Obama’s stubborn refusal to permit the release of the real birth certificate and his determination to fight any legal actions that would compel him to do so, it becomes clear that there is no logical explanation for Obama’s refusal without taking into consideration the relevant statutes. Then his behavior becomes clear. The Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii is the missing piece of the puzzle.
Most people think of a birth certificate as a statement by a hospital or midwife with a footprint, etc. (That may be why some main-stream journalists have straight out lied about this. Jonathan Alter, senior editor at Newsweek magazine, for example, told Keith Olbermann on MSNBC on Feb 20, 2009 that “They [the Republicans] are a party that is out of ideas so they have to resort to these lies about the fact that he’s not a citizen. This came up during the campaign, Keith. The Obama campaign actually posted his birth certificate from a Hawaii hospital online.” But it is Alter who resorted to lying to the American people on television. “The Obama campaign” never “actually posted his birth certificate from a Hawaii hospital online.” On July 17, 2009 CNN’s Kitty Pilgrim lied when she stated that the Obama campaign had produced “the original birth certificate” on the internet and that FactCheck.org had examined the original birth certificate; whether it was forged or not, the Certification of Live Birth that was posted by the campaign and FactCheck.org is not, and by definition, cannot be the original birth certificate or a copy of the original birth certificate. There were no computer generated Certifications of Live Birth in 1961, the year Obama was born. Obama’s original birth certificate (whether it was filed in 1961 or later) was a very different document from the Certification of Live Birth on FactCheck.org. On the FactCheck.org web site, the claim is made that “FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate.” So FactCheck.org is lying about this as well.
FactCheck.org gets its prestige from a reputation for objectivity. Why would those who run this site choose to tell so obvious a lie and so endanger the site’s reputation? The answer is in the date of the posting, August 21, 2008. It was in mid-August that questions about the Certification of Live Birth began to reach a critical mass and threaten to enter the public discourse. The mostly pro-Obama television and newspaper/magazine media had to be given an excuse and cover for their collective decision to dismiss or ignore the substantial questions about whether Obama met the qualifications for the office set forth in Article II section I of the Constitution. And those reporters and editors who were not in the tank for Obama had to be deceived. After Labor Day the swing voters would begin to pay attention to the Presidential campaign. The truth had to be killed. And with its lie about “how it examined and photographed the original birth certificate“, FactCheck.org killed it.)
Most people would not consider a mailed-in form by one of his parents (who could have been out of the country or whose signature could have been forged by a grandparent) or a sworn statement by one of his grandparents or by his mother or even a sworn statement by himself many years later to be sufficient evidence (when set next to the statements by his maternal grandmother and the Kenyan ambassador that he was born in another country). Unless the American people are shown the original birth certificate, all of these are possibilities. And if Obama refuses to allow the state of Hawaii to release the original birth certificate, it begins to look like he was not born in a Hawaii hospital or at home with the assistance of a doctor or midwife. A reasonable person would acknowledge that there are serious reasons to doubt that Barack Obama was born in the United States. This is especially true because, if Obama was born in a foreign country, his family had a compelling reason to lie about it.
In 1961 if a 17 year old American girl gave birth in a foreign country to a child whose father was not an American citizen, that child had no right to any American citizenship, let alone the “natural born” citizenship that qualifies someone for the Presidency under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.
In 1961, the year that Barack Obama was born, under Sec. 301 (a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, Ann Dunham could not transmit citizenship of any kind to Barack Obama.
“ 7 FAM 1133.2-2 Original Provisions and Amendments to Section 301
(CT:CON-204; 11-01-2007)
“a. Section 301 as Effective on December 24, 1952: When enacted in 1952, section 301 required a U.S. citizen married to an alien to have been physically present in the United States for ten years, including five after reaching the age of fourteen, to transmit citizenship to foreign-born children. The ten-year transmission requirement remained in effect from 12:01 a.m. EDT December 24, 1952, through midnight November 13, 1986, and still is applicable to persons born during that period.
“As originally enacted, section 301(a)(7) stated: Section 301. (a) The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (7) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years: Provided, That any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States by such citizen parent may be included in computing the physical presence requirements of this paragraph.”
The Immigration and Nationality Corrections Act (Public Law 103-416) on October 25, 1994 revised this law to accommodate “a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years”.
But in 1961, if Barack Obama had been born outside of the country, the Dunham family had no way of knowing that in 1994 Congress would pass a law that would retroactively make him a citizen. At that time, the only way to get citizenship for him would be to take advantage of one of the loopholes in the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act.
People can debate the meaning of the term “natural-born citizen” as long as they like but this is clear: If, in 1961, 17 year old Ann Dunham gave birth to a child on foreign soil whose father was not an American citizen, then the Immigration and Nationality Act at that time denied Barack Obama any right to American citizenship of any kind. Therefore if at the time of his birth Obama was ineligible for American citizenship of any kind, then he cannot be a “natural-born citizen”. This is true even if the Immigration and Nationality Act was changed 33 years after he was born. Even if the law was retroactively changed to grant citizenship (but not “natural-born” citizenship) to some of those who had at birth been denied it. If a person is not at the time of his birth an American citizen, he cannot be a natural-born citizen. Therefore, that person is ineligible under Article II, Section1 for the Office of President of the United States.
It is only by examining the 18th century usage and definition of a term that we can ascertain its meaning in the Constitution. In the 18th century, and at the time of the framing and ratification of the Constitution by the states, the term “natural-born” subject or citizen was always used or defined in such a way as to exclude the child of a British or American girl or woman when that child was born in a foreign country and that child’s father was a foreign citizen. No 18th century jurist would have thought the term “natural-born” citizen or subject could have been extended to the child of a British or American girl or woman when that child was born in a foreign country and that child’s father was a foreign citizen.
Here is Blackstone’s classic exposition in 1765 of the legal meaning of the term from the Commentaries on the Laws of England.
William Blackstone, Commentaries 1:354, 357–58, 361–62 1765
“Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it.. . .
“When I say, that an alien is one who is born out of the king’s dominions, or allegiance, this also must be understood with some restrictions. The common law indeed stood absolutely so; with only a very few exceptions: so that a particular act of parliament became necessary after the restoration, for the naturalization of children of his majesty’s English subjects, born in foreign countries during the late troubles. And this maxim of the law proceeded upon a general principle, that every man owes natural allegiance where he is born, and cannot owe two such allegiances, or serve two masters, at once. Yet the children of the king’s embassadors born abroad were always held to be natural subjects: for as the father, though in a foreign country, owes not even a local allegiance to the prince to whom he is sent; so, with regard to the son also, he was held (by a kind of postliminium) to be born under the king of England’s allegiance, represented by his father, the embassador. To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. st. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king,…might inherit as if born in England: and accordingly it hath been so adjudged in behalf of merchants. But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king’s ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain.” [The italics are Blackstone's]
The irresponsible confirmation in the Senate of the irresponsible tallying of votes in the Electoral College does not supersede the clear meaning of Article II, Section 1. If it is allowed to stand, disregard of the Constitution by all branches of the government would be openly established. To all who believe that the Constitution is the government’s basic law, that the Constitution is the only instrument that gives the enactments of Congress and the commands of the Executive validity, it will be clear that the rule of law in the United States is a fiction.
Journalists and politicians complain that we must avoid a Constitutional crisis, but there already is a Constitutional crisis. It has been caused by Obama’s refusal to take the simple step to clear the matter up. The power of the Executive branch has been compromised. Its right to collect taxes and sign Congressional enactments into law, in fact all of its powers, have become problematic. Since their validity under Section I is now doubtful, they depend on the illegal exercise of force. Since officers of the American military take their oath on commissioning to the Constitution and not the President, their obedience to the Commander-in-Chief has lapsed and, if they challenge or resist his authority, any courts-martial will also be an illegal exercise of force. The only way out of the present Constitutional crisis is for Obama to do as McCain did when he was confronted by far less pressing doubts about the circumstances of his birth. He must disclose his vault birth certificate. Since the document has been so suspiciously withheld for so long, it should be subjected to rigorous forensic tests. Then whatever is on it should be judicially assessed together with the claims that have been made that Barack Obama was born on foreign soil.
It should be added that “Obama’s top terrorism and intelligence adviser, John O. Brennan, heads a firm that was cited in March for breaching sensitive files in the State Department’s passport office, according to a State Department Inspector General’s report released this past July.
“The security breach, first reported by the Washington Times and later confirmed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, involved a contract employee of Brennan’s firm, The Analysis Corp., which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies.
“During a State Department briefing on March 21, 2008, McCormack confirmed that the contractor had accessed the passport files of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain, and that the inspector general had launched an investigation.
“Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to ‘cauterize’ the records of potentially embarrassing information.
“ ‘They looked at the McCain and Clinton files as well to create confusion,’ one knowledgeable source told Newsmax. ‘But this was basically an attempt to cauterize the Obama file.’
“At the time of the breach, Brennan was working as an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign.
” ‘This individual’s actions were taken without the knowledge or direction of anyone at The Analysis Corp. and are wholly inconsistent with our professional and ethical standards,’ Brennan’s company said in a statement sent to reporters after the passport breach was made public.
“The passport files include ‘personally identifiable information such as the applicant’s name, gender, social security number, date and place of birth, and passport number,’ according to the inspector general report.
“The files may contain additional information including ‘original copies of the associated documents,’ the report added. Such documents include birth certificates, naturalization certificates, or oaths of allegiance for U.S.-born persons who adopted the citizenship of a foreign country as minors.”
“The State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a 104-page report on the breach last July. Although it is stamped ‘Sensitive but Unclassified,’ the report was heavily redacted in the version released to the public, with page after page blacked out entirely.”
http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/brennan_passport_breach/2009/01/12/170430.html
The following may be relevant:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/apr/19/key-witness-in-passport-fraud-case-fatally-shot/
Key witness in passport fraud case fatally shot
Saturday, April 19, 2008
“A key witness in a federal probe into passport information stolen from the State Department was fatally shot in front of a District church, the Metropolitan Police Department said yesterday.
“Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, who had been cooperating with a federal investigators, was found late Thursday night slumped dead inside a car, in front of the Judah House Praise Baptist Church in Northeast, said Cmdr. Michael Anzallo, head of the department’s Criminal Investigations Division.
“Cmdr. Anzallo said a police officer was patrolling the neighborhood when gunshots were heard, then Lt. Harris was found dead inside the vehicle, which investigators would describe only as a blue car.
“Emergency medics pronounced him dead at the scene.
“City police said they do not know whether his death was a direct result of his cooperation with federal investigators.
“We don’t have any information right now that connects his murder to that case,” Cmdr. Anzallo said.
“Police say a “shot spotter” device helped an officer locate Lt. Harris.
“A State Department spokeswoman yesterday declined to comment, saying the investigation into the passport fraud is ongoing.
“The Washington Times reported April 5 that contractors for the State Department had improperly accessed passport information for presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, which resulted in a series of firings that reached into the agency’s top ranks.
“One agency employee, who was not identified in documents filed in U.S. District Court, was implicated in a credit-card fraud scheme after Lt. Harris told federal authorities he obtained “passport information from a co-conspirator who works for the U.S. Department of State.” “
There is a possibility that the breaches of the passport files associated with the “credit-card fraud scheme” were a cover for or associated with the breaches of the passport files by the employee of Brennan’s Analysis Corp. This certainly at least should be looked into.
July 11th Addendum to Report
1. Until June 2009, the reasonable doubts about where Obama was born could have quickly and finally been resolved if he had authorized the release by the Hawaiian Dept of Health of his original birth certificate or else applied for it himself and released it to the media. But as these doubts have increased and reached the point where they are no longer a “fringe” phenomenon, the Hawaiian state govt has recently taken certain steps that would create procedural and possibly legal barriers to a resolution of the controversy. Given the slipperiness that characterized the statements of Chiyome Fukino, the Dept’s Director, and Janice Okubo, the Dept’s spokesperson, to the media on this issue, it is, I think, also reasonable to regard these steps with suspicion.
A family that I am acquainted with has a child who was born in Hawaii 6 months ago. They filled out and mailed in a form to the Dept of Health, as did their doctor. In return the Dept sent them in the first week of June, 2009, the same abbreviated computer-generated form that last year on the Daily Kos and subsequently on the Obama campaign web site was called a “Certification of Live Birth”. The form that this family received this year is identical in format to the Certification of Live Birth on the Daily Kos web site with one exception: the title at the top of the form.
On June 12, 2008 the title for this abbreviated form was Certification of Live Birth. The title for the form that this family received in the first week of June 2009 is Certificate of Live Birth. I called The Dept of Health and confirmed that the title of the form had been changed. The bureaucrat that I spoke to said the change had been made “recently”, but could not or would not tell me when. Sometime between June 12, 2008 and the first week of June 2009 the Hawaiian Dept of Health changed the title of this abbreviated form from “Certification of Live Birth” to “Certificate of Live Birth“. Why?
The use of the word “Certificate” rather than “Certification” makes the form feel somewhat more like a traditional birth certificate than the “Certification of Live Birth” that the Daily Kos website and subsequently the Obama campaign posted on the Internet even though, like the “Certification“, it also lacks any information about the hospital, doctor, or midwife. There is no footprint etc. This renaming of the document will be very convenient for the Hawaiian Dept of Health in future stonewalling should any legal pressure be brought against them to produce Obama’s “Certificate of Live Birth”. Instead of producing the original “Certificate of Live Birth”, they will produce the abbreviated “Certification of Live Birth” form that the Dept of Health has now renamed a “Certificate of Live Birth” and claim that they are doing so “in accordance with state policies and procedures” in the words of the Dept’s Director, Dr. Chiyome Fukino.
But whether it is called (as it was last year) a Certification or (as it is now) a Certificate of Live Birth this abbreviated document provides none of the probative information that was or wasn’t on Barack Obama’s original Certificate of Live Birth. Unlike the Certificate of Live Birth of the time when Barack Obama was born, this new Certificate of Live Birth provides no real evidence of where a child was born or indication of where such evidence might be found. It provides no information that would demonstrate to the people of the United States whether there is convincing evidence that he was actually born here or whether a relative or two (or possibly even Barack Obama himself) just made a statement to that effect to a low level bureaucrat. (As is permitted under Section 57-40 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii.)
2. On June 7, 2009, a spokeswoman for the Hawaii Department of Health told a rather obvious lie (or engaged in a pretty transparent verbal deception) in another attempt to discourage further investigation into the issue of whether Barack Obama was born on Oahu. “The state Department of Health no longer issues copies of paper birth certificates as was done in the past”, said spokeswoman Janice Okubo. “The department only issues ‘certifications’ of live births, and that is the ‘official birth certificate’ issued by the state of Hawaii, she said. ” [Honolulu Star Bulletin] http://www.starbulletin.com/columnists/kokualine/20090606_kokua_line.html
This statement was false or deliberately very misleading. Here, from a Hawaii state document that was posted on June 10, 2009, is a description of how to apply for “the original Certificate of Live Birth” (the original birth certificate) as opposed to the Certification of Live Birth:
“In order to process your application [to prove native Hawaiian ancestry], DHHL [Department of Hawaiian Homelands] utilizes information that is found only on the original Certificate of Live Birth, which is either black or green. This is a more complete record of your birth than the Certification of Live Birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original Certificate of Live Birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated Certification requires additional verification by DHHL.
“Please note that DOH [Department of Health] no longer offers same day service. If you plan on picking up your certified DOH document(s), you should allow at least 10 working days for DOH to process your request(s), OR four to six weeks if you want your certified certificate(s) mailed to you.”
http://hawaii.gov/dhhl/applicants/appforms/applyhhl
Ms. Okubo’s statement gave the false impression that Obama could not gain access to or release “the original Certificate of Live Birth”, and that it was the DOH’s policy rather than his own reluctance that was responsible for the holding back of this Certificate. This was an obvious deception. The document at the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands website indicates that at the time she made this statement it was false, and that a procedure was in place for application for “the original Certificate of Live Birth.”
Only the information on the original birth certificate, “the original Certificate of Live Birth”, can demonstrate to the people of the United States whether there is convincing evidence that he was actually born here or whether a relative or two (or possibly even Barack Obama himself) just made a statement to that effect to a low level bureaucrat.
3. On July 8, 2009 the web site World Net Daily reported that “The state, which had excluded the controversial document [the Certification of Live Birth] as proof of native Hawaiian status, has changed its policy and now makes a point of including it.”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=103408
Here is the new statement on the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands web site [July 8, 2009]. “The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands accepts both Certificates of Live Birth [original birth certificates and the recently renamed abbreviated computer printouts] and Certifications of Live Birth [as the abbreviated computer printouts were up till recently called] because they are official government records documenting an individual’s birth… Although original birth certificates (Certificates of Live Birth) are preferred for their greater detail, the State Department of Health (DOH) no longer issues Certificates of Live Birth. When a request is made for a copy of a birth certificate, the DOH issues a Certification of Live Birth.”
http://hawaii.gov/dhhl/applicants/appforms/applyhhl
The web site theobamafile.com picked up this significant change in procedure on the Dept of Hawaiian Homelands website on June 18, 2009. http://www.theobamafile.com/_BogusPOTUS/20090608.htm#HawaiiRuleChange
Sometime between June 10, 2009 and June 18, 2009 the State of Hawaii changed its rule on what documents and data were necessary to prove Hawaiian ancestry, thereby upgrading the apparent status of the abbreviated Certification of Live Birth which it had formerly regarded as insufficiently probative. Why?
4. On June 6, Janice Okubo, the Dept of Health spokeswoman, also told the Star Bulletin that “The electronic record of the birth is what (the Health Department) now keeps on file in order to provide same-day certified copies at our help window for most requests.” There is a troubling ambiguity in this statement. A sophisticated forensic investigation would probably be able to determine whether the original paper Certificate of Live Birth was forged, altered, or authentic. But if the data from the original paper Certificates of Live Birth has been transferred to an electronic record and then the original documents were discarded, part of the data could easily have been changed in the transfer or subsequently altered.
Why did the Hawaiian Dept of Health wait until June 6, 2009 to announce to the world that the original paper Certificates of Live Birth had been destroyed (presumably in 2001)? Shouldn’t this have been part of Dr Fukino’s statement on October 31, 2008 (right before the November election), a statement which deceptively implied the contrary:
“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
We know from a document posted on June 10, 2009 on the Department of Hawaiian Homelands website that, up until very recently, either the original paper Certificates of Live Birth or (as is now implied) scanned images of those paper certificates were maintained by the Dept of Health, and copies of them were provided to confirm claims of Hawaiian ancestry. But if in June 2009 the Department of Hawaiian Homelands has decided that it will no longer require the original Certificate of Live Birth as proof for special privileges and the Department of Health spokesman says firmly that they will no longer provide copies of these original certificates, is it possible that, in the midst of the controversy over where Barack Obama was born, the Hawaiian state govt has destroyed the original paper certificate of live birth? This seems almost incredible to me, but the authorities have been so deceptive and evasive on this issue, that it cannot be dismissed as impossible.
4. On June 6, Janice Okubo, the Dept of Health spokeswoman, also told the Star Bulletin that “The electronic record of the birth is what (the Health Department) now keeps on file in order to provide same-day certified copies at our help window for most requests.” There is a troubling ambiguity in this statement. A sophisticated forensic investigation would probably be able to determine whether the original paper Certificate of Live Birth was forged, altered, or authentic. But if the data from the original paper Certificates of Live Birth has been transferred to an electronic record and then the original documents were discarded, part of the data could easily have been changed in the transfer or subsequently altered.
Why did the Hawaiian Dept of Health wait until June 6, 2009 to announce to the world that the original paper Certificates of Live Birth had been destroyed (presumably in 2001)? Shouldn’t this have been part of Dr Fukino’s statement on October 31, 2008 (right before the November election), a statement which deceptively implied the contrary:
“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
We know from a document posted on June 10, 2009 on the Department of Hawaiian Homelands website that, up until very recently, either the original paper Certificates of Live Birth or (as is now implied) scanned images of those paper certificates were maintained by the Dept of Health, and copies of them were provided to confirm claims of Hawaiian ancestry. But if in June 2009 the Department of Hawaiian Homelands has decided that it will no longer require the original Certificate of Live Birth as proof for special privileges and the Department of Health spokesman says firmly that they will no longer provide copies of these original certificates, is it possible that, in the midst of the controversy over where Barack Obama was born, the Hawaiian state govt has destroyed the original paper certificate of live birth? This seems almost incredible to me, but the authorities have been so deceptive and evasive on this issue, that it cannot be dismissed as impossible.
Editors Note: In December ‘08 a retired CIA officer commissioned an investigator to look into the Barack Obama birth certificate and eligibility issue. On July 21, 2009 westernjournalism.com obtained a copy of the investigator’s report. Here is an unedited version of the report.
June 10, 2009 Report, updated July 18, 2009
The Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii
I think that I now understand the legal background to the question of where Obama was born.
Let’s begin with the statement that Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health released on October 31, 2008. The television and print media used this statement as a reason to prevent and treat with contempt any investigation into whether Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii. But the language of the statement was so carefully hedged and guarded that it should have had the opposite effect.
“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record. Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
It is understandable that after such an apparently definitive statement most news outlets, whether conservative or liberal, would accept this as sufficient grounds to relegate the controversy to the status of a fringe phenomenon. Unless they happened to take the trouble to look into the “state policies and procedures” as laid down by the relevant statutes. If they had done so, they would have seen that Dr. Fukino’s press release was carefully hedged and “lawyered” and practically worthless. But the media in general should not be faulted. The statement seems to roll out with such bureaucratic certainty and final authority. I believed it to be significant until a Honolulu attorney mailed me the relevant statutes. I was so surprised that I laughed out loud.
Here is a summary of Hawaii’s “state policies and procedures” in 1961.
In the State of Hawaii, back in 1961, there were four different ways to get an “original birth certificate” on record. They varied greatly in their reliability as evidence. For convenience, I’ll call them BC1, BC2, BC3, and BC4.
BC1. If the birth was attended by a physician or mid wife, the attending medical professional was required to certify to the Department of Health the facts of the birth date, location, parents’ identities and other information. (See Section 57-8 & 9 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii which was in effect in 1961).
Actual long form Certificate of Live Birth similar to one Obama refuses to release
BC2. In 1961, if a person was born in Hawaii but not attended by a physician or midwife, then all that was required was that one of the parents send in a birth certificate to be filed. The birth certificate could be filed by mail. There appears to have been no requirement for the parent to actually physically appear before “the local registrar of the district.” It would have been very easy for a relative to forge an absent parent’s signature to a form and mail it in. In addition, if a claim was made that “neither parent of the newborn child whose birth is unattended as above provided is able to prepare a birth certificate, the local registrar shall secure the necessary information from any person having knowledge of the birth and prepare and file the certificate.” (Section 57-8&9) I asked the Dept of Health what they currently ask for (in 2008) to back up a parent’s claim that a child was born in Hawaii. I was told that all they required was a proof of residence in Hawaii (e.g. a driver’s license [We know from interviews with her friends on Mercer Island in Washington State that Ann Dunham had acquired a driver’s license by the summer of 1961 at the age of 17] or telephone bill) and pre-natal (statement or report that a woman was pregnant) and post-natal (statement or report that a new-born baby has been examined) certification by a physician. On further enquiry, the employee that I spoke to informed me that the pre-natal and post-natal certifications had probably not been in force in the ‘60s. Even if they had been, there is and was no requirement for a physician or midwife to witness, state or report that the baby was born in Hawaii.
BC3. In 1961, if a person was born in Hawaii but not attended by a physician or midwife, then, up to the first birthday of the child, a “Delayed Certificate” could be filed, which required that “a summary statement of the evidence submitted in support of the acceptance for delayed filing or the alteration [of a file] shall be endorsed on the certificates”, which “evidence shall be kept in a special permanent file.” The statute provided that “the probative value of a ‘delayed’ or ‘altered’ certificate shall be determined by the judicial or administrative body or official before whom the certificate is offered as evidence.” (See Section 57- 9, 18, 19 & 20 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii which was in effect in 1961).”
[In other words, this form of vault birth certificate, the Delayed Certificate, required no more than a statement before a government bureaucrat by one of the parents or (the law does not seem to me clear on this) one of Barack Obama’s grandparents. If the latter is true, Ann Dunham did not have to be present for this statement or even in the country.]
BC4. If a child is born in Hawaii, for whom no physician or mid wife filed a certificate of live birth, and for whom no Delayed Certificate was filed before the first birthday, then a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth could be issued upon testimony of an adult (including the subject person [i.e. the birth child as an adult]) if the Office of the Lieutenant Governor was satisfied that a person was born in Hawaii, provided that the person had attained the age of one year. (See Section 57-40 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii which was in effect in 1961.) In 1955 the “secretary of the Territory” was in charge of this procedure. In 1960 it was transferred to the Office of the Lieutenant Governor (“the lieutenant governor, or his secretary, or such other person as he may designate or appoint from his office” [in 1961]).
Certification of Live Birth, released by Obama
In 1982, the vital records law was amended to create a fifth kind of “original birth certificate”. Under Act 182 H.B. NO. 3016-82, “Upon application of an adult or the legal parents of a minor child, the director of health shall issue a birth certificate for such adult or minor, provided that the proof has been submitted to the director of health that the legal parents of such individual while living without the Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.” In this way “state policies and procedures” accommodate even “children born out of State” (this is the actual language of Act 182) with an “original birth certificate on record.” So it is even possible that the birth certificate referred to by Dr Fukino is of the kind specified in Act 182. This possibility cannot be dismissed because such a certificate certainly satisfies Dr Fukino’s statement that “I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.” If this is the case, Dr Fukino would have perpetrated so unusually disgusting a deception that I find it practically incredible (and I greatly doubt that anyone could be that shameless). On the other hand, if the original birth certificate is of types 2, 3, or 4, Dr Fukino’s statement would be only somewhat less deceptive and verbally tricky. I only bring up this possibility to show how cleverly hedged and “lawyered” and basically worthless Dr Fukino’s statement is.
Sections 57-8, 9, 18, 19, 20 & 40 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act explain why Barack Obama has refused to release the original vault birth certificate. If the original certificate were the standard BC1 type of birth certificate, he would have allowed its release and brought the controversy to a quick end. But if the original certificate is of the other kinds, then Obama would have a very good reason not to release the vault birth certificate. For if he did, then the tape recording of Obama’s Kenyan grandmother asserting that she was present at his birth in Kenya becomes far more important. As does the Kenyan ambassador’s assertion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, as well as the sealing of all government and hospital records relevant to Obama by the Kenyan government. And the fact that though there are many witnesses to Ann Dunham’s presence on Oahu from Sept 1960 to Feb 1961, there are no witnesses to her being on Oahu from March 1961 to August 1962 when she returned from Seattle and the University of Washington. No Hawaiian physicians, nurses, or midwives have come forward with any recollection of Barack Obama’s birth.
The fact that Obama refuses to release the vault birth certificate that would instantly clear up this matter almost certainly indicates that the vault birth certificate is probably a BC2 or possibly a BC3.
It is almost certainly a BC 3 or even a BC 4 if the “Certification of Live Birth” posted on the Daily Kos blog and the fightthesmears.com website by the Obama campaign is a forgery. Ron Polarik has made what several experts claim to be a cogent case that it is a forgery. There have been a couple of attempts to refute his argument and Polarik has replied to the most extensive of them. I do not claim expertise in this area, but I think it would be best for journalists and politicians to familiarize themselves with the arguments on both sides before they casually dismiss Polarik’s position without taking the trouble to understand it.
Here are 2 of Polarik’s websites: http://bogusbirthcertificate.blogspot.com/
http://bogusbithcertificate.blogspot.com/
Because the disputants know far more about this subject than I do, I am an agnostic about Polarik’s argument. However, the likelihood that this computer-generated “Certification of Live Birth” was forged, is, I believe, increased by the fact that it has been pretty clearly established that Obama “either didn’t register for the draft or did so belatedly and fraudulently. The documents indicate that it’s one or the other.” http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/004431print.html The forgery of Obama’s selective service registration was necessary, because according to Federal law, “A man must be registered to be eligible for jobs in the Executive Branch of the Federal government and the U.S. Postal Service. This applies only to men born after December 31, 1959.” http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/draft2.htm)
It is also very strange that Dr Fukino’s statement in no way attested to (or even addressed the issue of) the authenticity of the “Certification of Live Birth” (and the information that appears on it) that the Daily Kos blog and the Obama campaign posted on line. Dr Fukino merely stated that “I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
If there is no hospital or physician record in the vault birth certificate, then he wasn’t born in a hospital in Hawaii. And a home birth or non-hospital birth can then be ruled out for the following reason.
When someone has a home birth or is not born in a hospital, this becomes a part of his family’s lore and is now and again spoken of by his parents. He and his siblings grow up knowing that he was born at home or his uncle’s house, etc. The fact that someone in the campaign told a Washington Post reporter that he was born in Kapioliani hospital and his sister said he was born at Queens hospital indicates that there was not and is not any Obama/Dunham family memory of a home birth or non-hospital birth in Hawaii.
And if there is no hospital record in the original vault birth certificate, then he was not born in a hospital in Hawaii.
Instead of the birth certificate on file at the Hawaii Dept of Health, the Obama campaign posted on the Daily Kos blog and the Fightthesmears website a “Certification of Live Birth”. The Certification of Live Birth is not a copy of the original birth certificate. It is a computer-generated document that the state of Hawaii issues on request to indicate that a birth certificate of some type is “on record in accordance with state policies and procedures”. And there is the problem. Given the statutes in force in 1961, the Certification of Live Birth proves nothing unless we know what is on the original birth certificate. There are several legal areas (involving ethnic quotas and subsidy) for which the state of Hawaii up until June 2009 did not accept its computer-generated Certification of Live Birth as sufficient proof of birth in Hawaii or parentage. Why should the citizens of the United States be content with lower standards for ascertaining the qualifications of their President?
If you combine an awareness of what the Certification of Live Birth posted on the internet really is with 1) a knowledge of the relevant statutes in 1961 and 2) Obama’s stubborn refusal to permit the release of the real birth certificate and his determination to fight any legal actions that would compel him to do so, it becomes clear that there is no logical explanation for Obama’s refusal without taking into consideration the relevant statutes. Then his behavior becomes clear. The Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii is the missing piece of the puzzle.
Most people think of a birth certificate as a statement by a hospital or midwife with a footprint, etc. (That may be why some main-stream journalists have straight out lied about this. Jonathan Alter, senior editor at Newsweek magazine, for example, told Keith Olbermann on MSNBC on Feb 20, 2009 that “They [the Republicans] are a party that is out of ideas so they have to resort to these lies about the fact that he’s not a citizen. This came up during the campaign, Keith. The Obama campaign actually posted his birth certificate from a Hawaii hospital online.” But it is Alter who resorted to lying to the American people on television. “The Obama campaign” never “actually posted his birth certificate from a Hawaii hospital online.” On July 17, 2009 CNN’s Kitty Pilgrim lied when she stated that the Obama campaign had produced “the original birth certificate” on the internet and that FactCheck.org had examined the original birth certificate; whether it was forged or not, the Certification of Live Birth that was posted by the campaign and FactCheck.org is not, and by definition, cannot be the original birth certificate or a copy of the original birth certificate. There were no computer generated Certifications of Live Birth in 1961, the year Obama was born. Obama’s original birth certificate (whether it was filed in 1961 or later) was a very different document from the Certification of Live Birth on FactCheck.org. On the FactCheck.org web site, the claim is made that “FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate.” So FactCheck.org is lying about this as well.
FactCheck.org gets its prestige from a reputation for objectivity. Why would those who run this site choose to tell so obvious a lie and so endanger the site’s reputation? The answer is in the date of the posting, August 21, 2008. It was in mid-August that questions about the Certification of Live Birth began to reach a critical mass and threaten to enter the public discourse. The mostly pro-Obama television and newspaper/magazine media had to be given an excuse and cover for their collective decision to dismiss or ignore the substantial questions about whether Obama met the qualifications for the office set forth in Article II section I of the Constitution. And those reporters and editors who were not in the tank for Obama had to be deceived. After Labor Day the swing voters would begin to pay attention to the Presidential campaign. The truth had to be killed. And with its lie about “how it examined and photographed the original birth certificate“, FactCheck.org killed it.)
Most people would not consider a mailed-in form by one of his parents (who could have been out of the country or whose signature could have been forged by a grandparent) or a sworn statement by one of his grandparents or by his mother or even a sworn statement by himself many years later to be sufficient evidence (when set next to the statements by his maternal grandmother and the Kenyan ambassador that he was born in another country). Unless the American people are shown the original birth certificate, all of these are possibilities. And if Obama refuses to allow the state of Hawaii to release the original birth certificate, it begins to look like he was not born in a Hawaii hospital or at home with the assistance of a doctor or midwife. A reasonable person would acknowledge that there are serious reasons to doubt that Barack Obama was born in the United States. This is especially true because, if Obama was born in a foreign country, his family had a compelling reason to lie about it.
In 1961 if a 17 year old American girl gave birth in a foreign country to a child whose father was not an American citizen, that child had no right to any American citizenship, let alone the “natural born” citizenship that qualifies someone for the Presidency under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.
In 1961, the year that Barack Obama was born, under Sec. 301 (a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, Ann Dunham could not transmit citizenship of any kind to Barack Obama.
“ 7 FAM 1133.2-2 Original Provisions and Amendments to Section 301
(CT:CON-204; 11-01-2007)
“a. Section 301 as Effective on December 24, 1952: When enacted in 1952, section 301 required a U.S. citizen married to an alien to have been physically present in the United States for ten years, including five after reaching the age of fourteen, to transmit citizenship to foreign-born children. The ten-year transmission requirement remained in effect from 12:01 a.m. EDT December 24, 1952, through midnight November 13, 1986, and still is applicable to persons born during that period.
“As originally enacted, section 301(a)(7) stated: Section 301. (a) The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (7) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years: Provided, That any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States by such citizen parent may be included in computing the physical presence requirements of this paragraph.”
The Immigration and Nationality Corrections Act (Public Law 103-416) on October 25, 1994 revised this law to accommodate “a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years”.
But in 1961, if Barack Obama had been born outside of the country, the Dunham family had no way of knowing that in 1994 Congress would pass a law that would retroactively make him a citizen. At that time, the only way to get citizenship for him would be to take advantage of one of the loopholes in the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act.
People can debate the meaning of the term “natural-born citizen” as long as they like but this is clear: If, in 1961, 17 year old Ann Dunham gave birth to a child on foreign soil whose father was not an American citizen, then the Immigration and Nationality Act at that time denied Barack Obama any right to American citizenship of any kind. Therefore if at the time of his birth Obama was ineligible for American citizenship of any kind, then he cannot be a “natural-born citizen”. This is true even if the Immigration and Nationality Act was changed 33 years after he was born. Even if the law was retroactively changed to grant citizenship (but not “natural-born” citizenship) to some of those who had at birth been denied it. If a person is not at the time of his birth an American citizen, he cannot be a natural-born citizen. Therefore, that person is ineligible under Article II, Section1 for the Office of President of the United States.
It is only by examining the 18th century usage and definition of a term that we can ascertain its meaning in the Constitution. In the 18th century, and at the time of the framing and ratification of the Constitution by the states, the term “natural-born” subject or citizen was always used or defined in such a way as to exclude the child of a British or American girl or woman when that child was born in a foreign country and that child’s father was a foreign citizen. No 18th century jurist would have thought the term “natural-born” citizen or subject could have been extended to the child of a British or American girl or woman when that child was born in a foreign country and that child’s father was a foreign citizen.
Here is Blackstone’s classic exposition in 1765 of the legal meaning of the term from the Commentaries on the Laws of England.
William Blackstone, Commentaries 1:354, 357–58, 361–62 1765
“Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it.. . .
“When I say, that an alien is one who is born out of the king’s dominions, or allegiance, this also must be understood with some restrictions. The common law indeed stood absolutely so; with only a very few exceptions: so that a particular act of parliament became necessary after the restoration, for the naturalization of children of his majesty’s English subjects, born in foreign countries during the late troubles. And this maxim of the law proceeded upon a general principle, that every man owes natural allegiance where he is born, and cannot owe two such allegiances, or serve two masters, at once. Yet the children of the king’s embassadors born abroad were always held to be natural subjects: for as the father, though in a foreign country, owes not even a local allegiance to the prince to whom he is sent; so, with regard to the son also, he was held (by a kind of postliminium) to be born under the king of England’s allegiance, represented by his father, the embassador. To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. st. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king,…might inherit as if born in England: and accordingly it hath been so adjudged in behalf of merchants. But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king’s ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain.” [The italics are Blackstone's]
The irresponsible confirmation in the Senate of the irresponsible tallying of votes in the Electoral College does not supersede the clear meaning of Article II, Section 1. If it is allowed to stand, disregard of the Constitution by all branches of the government would be openly established. To all who believe that the Constitution is the government’s basic law, that the Constitution is the only instrument that gives the enactments of Congress and the commands of the Executive validity, it will be clear that the rule of law in the United States is a fiction.
Journalists and politicians complain that we must avoid a Constitutional crisis, but there already is a Constitutional crisis. It has been caused by Obama’s refusal to take the simple step to clear the matter up. The power of the Executive branch has been compromised. Its right to collect taxes and sign Congressional enactments into law, in fact all of its powers, have become problematic. Since their validity under Section I is now doubtful, they depend on the illegal exercise of force. Since officers of the American military take their oath on commissioning to the Constitution and not the President, their obedience to the Commander-in-Chief has lapsed and, if they challenge or resist his authority, any courts-martial will also be an illegal exercise of force. The only way out of the present Constitutional crisis is for Obama to do as McCain did when he was confronted by far less pressing doubts about the circumstances of his birth. He must disclose his vault birth certificate. Since the document has been so suspiciously withheld for so long, it should be subjected to rigorous forensic tests. Then whatever is on it should be judicially assessed together with the claims that have been made that Barack Obama was born on foreign soil.
It should be added that “Obama’s top terrorism and intelligence adviser, John O. Brennan, heads a firm that was cited in March for breaching sensitive files in the State Department’s passport office, according to a State Department Inspector General’s report released this past July.
“The security breach, first reported by the Washington Times and later confirmed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, involved a contract employee of Brennan’s firm, The Analysis Corp., which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies.
“During a State Department briefing on March 21, 2008, McCormack confirmed that the contractor had accessed the passport files of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain, and that the inspector general had launched an investigation.
“Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to ‘cauterize’ the records of potentially embarrassing information.
“ ‘They looked at the McCain and Clinton files as well to create confusion,’ one knowledgeable source told Newsmax. ‘But this was basically an attempt to cauterize the Obama file.’
“At the time of the breach, Brennan was working as an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign.
” ‘This individual’s actions were taken without the knowledge or direction of anyone at The Analysis Corp. and are wholly inconsistent with our professional and ethical standards,’ Brennan’s company said in a statement sent to reporters after the passport breach was made public.
“The passport files include ‘personally identifiable information such as the applicant’s name, gender, social security number, date and place of birth, and passport number,’ according to the inspector general report.
“The files may contain additional information including ‘original copies of the associated documents,’ the report added. Such documents include birth certificates, naturalization certificates, or oaths of allegiance for U.S.-born persons who adopted the citizenship of a foreign country as minors.”
“The State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a 104-page report on the breach last July. Although it is stamped ‘Sensitive but Unclassified,’ the report was heavily redacted in the version released to the public, with page after page blacked out entirely.”
http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/brennan_passport_breach/2009/01/12/170430.html
The following may be relevant:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/apr/19/key-witness-in-passport-fraud-case-fatally-shot/
Key witness in passport fraud case fatally shot
Saturday, April 19, 2008
“A key witness in a federal probe into passport information stolen from the State Department was fatally shot in front of a District church, the Metropolitan Police Department said yesterday.
“Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, who had been cooperating with a federal investigators, was found late Thursday night slumped dead inside a car, in front of the Judah House Praise Baptist Church in Northeast, said Cmdr. Michael Anzallo, head of the department’s Criminal Investigations Division.
“Cmdr. Anzallo said a police officer was patrolling the neighborhood when gunshots were heard, then Lt. Harris was found dead inside the vehicle, which investigators would describe only as a blue car.
“Emergency medics pronounced him dead at the scene.
“City police said they do not know whether his death was a direct result of his cooperation with federal investigators.
“We don’t have any information right now that connects his murder to that case,” Cmdr. Anzallo said.
“Police say a “shot spotter” device helped an officer locate Lt. Harris.
“A State Department spokeswoman yesterday declined to comment, saying the investigation into the passport fraud is ongoing.
“The Washington Times reported April 5 that contractors for the State Department had improperly accessed passport information for presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, which resulted in a series of firings that reached into the agency’s top ranks.
“One agency employee, who was not identified in documents filed in U.S. District Court, was implicated in a credit-card fraud scheme after Lt. Harris told federal authorities he obtained “passport information from a co-conspirator who works for the U.S. Department of State.” “
There is a possibility that the breaches of the passport files associated with the “credit-card fraud scheme” were a cover for or associated with the breaches of the passport files by the employee of Brennan’s Analysis Corp. This certainly at least should be looked into.
July 11th Addendum to Report
1. Until June 2009, the reasonable doubts about where Obama was born could have quickly and finally been resolved if he had authorized the release by the Hawaiian Dept of Health of his original birth certificate or else applied for it himself and released it to the media. But as these doubts have increased and reached the point where they are no longer a “fringe” phenomenon, the Hawaiian state govt has recently taken certain steps that would create procedural and possibly legal barriers to a resolution of the controversy. Given the slipperiness that characterized the statements of Chiyome Fukino, the Dept’s Director, and Janice Okubo, the Dept’s spokesperson, to the media on this issue, it is, I think, also reasonable to regard these steps with suspicion.
A family that I am acquainted with has a child who was born in Hawaii 6 months ago. They filled out and mailed in a form to the Dept of Health, as did their doctor. In return the Dept sent them in the first week of June, 2009, the same abbreviated computer-generated form that last year on the Daily Kos and subsequently on the Obama campaign web site was called a “Certification of Live Birth”. The form that this family received this year is identical in format to the Certification of Live Birth on the Daily Kos web site with one exception: the title at the top of the form.
On June 12, 2008 the title for this abbreviated form was Certification of Live Birth. The title for the form that this family received in the first week of June 2009 is Certificate of Live Birth. I called The Dept of Health and confirmed that the title of the form had been changed. The bureaucrat that I spoke to said the change had been made “recently”, but could not or would not tell me when. Sometime between June 12, 2008 and the first week of June 2009 the Hawaiian Dept of Health changed the title of this abbreviated form from “Certification of Live Birth” to “Certificate of Live Birth“. Why?
The use of the word “Certificate” rather than “Certification” makes the form feel somewhat more like a traditional birth certificate than the “Certification of Live Birth” that the Daily Kos website and subsequently the Obama campaign posted on the Internet even though, like the “Certification“, it also lacks any information about the hospital, doctor, or midwife. There is no footprint etc. This renaming of the document will be very convenient for the Hawaiian Dept of Health in future stonewalling should any legal pressure be brought against them to produce Obama’s “Certificate of Live Birth”. Instead of producing the original “Certificate of Live Birth”, they will produce the abbreviated “Certification of Live Birth” form that the Dept of Health has now renamed a “Certificate of Live Birth” and claim that they are doing so “in accordance with state policies and procedures” in the words of the Dept’s Director, Dr. Chiyome Fukino.
But whether it is called (as it was last year) a Certification or (as it is now) a Certificate of Live Birth this abbreviated document provides none of the probative information that was or wasn’t on Barack Obama’s original Certificate of Live Birth. Unlike the Certificate of Live Birth of the time when Barack Obama was born, this new Certificate of Live Birth provides no real evidence of where a child was born or indication of where such evidence might be found. It provides no information that would demonstrate to the people of the United States whether there is convincing evidence that he was actually born here or whether a relative or two (or possibly even Barack Obama himself) just made a statement to that effect to a low level bureaucrat. (As is permitted under Section 57-40 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii.)
2. On June 7, 2009, a spokeswoman for the Hawaii Department of Health told a rather obvious lie (or engaged in a pretty transparent verbal deception) in another attempt to discourage further investigation into the issue of whether Barack Obama was born on Oahu. “The state Department of Health no longer issues copies of paper birth certificates as was done in the past”, said spokeswoman Janice Okubo. “The department only issues ‘certifications’ of live births, and that is the ‘official birth certificate’ issued by the state of Hawaii, she said. ” [Honolulu Star Bulletin] http://www.starbulletin.com/columnists/kokualine/20090606_kokua_line.html
This statement was false or deliberately very misleading. Here, from a Hawaii state document that was posted on June 10, 2009, is a description of how to apply for “the original Certificate of Live Birth” (the original birth certificate) as opposed to the Certification of Live Birth:
“In order to process your application [to prove native Hawaiian ancestry], DHHL [Department of Hawaiian Homelands] utilizes information that is found only on the original Certificate of Live Birth, which is either black or green. This is a more complete record of your birth than the Certification of Live Birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original Certificate of Live Birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated Certification requires additional verification by DHHL.
“Please note that DOH [Department of Health] no longer offers same day service. If you plan on picking up your certified DOH document(s), you should allow at least 10 working days for DOH to process your request(s), OR four to six weeks if you want your certified certificate(s) mailed to you.”
http://hawaii.gov/dhhl/applicants/appforms/applyhhl
Ms. Okubo’s statement gave the false impression that Obama could not gain access to or release “the original Certificate of Live Birth”, and that it was the DOH’s policy rather than his own reluctance that was responsible for the holding back of this Certificate. This was an obvious deception. The document at the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands website indicates that at the time she made this statement it was false, and that a procedure was in place for application for “the original Certificate of Live Birth.”
Only the information on the original birth certificate, “the original Certificate of Live Birth”, can demonstrate to the people of the United States whether there is convincing evidence that he was actually born here or whether a relative or two (or possibly even Barack Obama himself) just made a statement to that effect to a low level bureaucrat.
3. On July 8, 2009 the web site World Net Daily reported that “The state, which had excluded the controversial document [the Certification of Live Birth] as proof of native Hawaiian status, has changed its policy and now makes a point of including it.”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=103408
Here is the new statement on the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands web site [July 8, 2009]. “The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands accepts both Certificates of Live Birth [original birth certificates and the recently renamed abbreviated computer printouts] and Certifications of Live Birth [as the abbreviated computer printouts were up till recently called] because they are official government records documenting an individual’s birth… Although original birth certificates (Certificates of Live Birth) are preferred for their greater detail, the State Department of Health (DOH) no longer issues Certificates of Live Birth. When a request is made for a copy of a birth certificate, the DOH issues a Certification of Live Birth.”
http://hawaii.gov/dhhl/applicants/appforms/applyhhl
The web site theobamafile.com picked up this significant change in procedure on the Dept of Hawaiian Homelands website on June 18, 2009. http://www.theobamafile.com/_BogusPOTUS/20090608.htm#HawaiiRuleChange
Sometime between June 10, 2009 and June 18, 2009 the State of Hawaii changed its rule on what documents and data were necessary to prove Hawaiian ancestry, thereby upgrading the apparent status of the abbreviated Certification of Live Birth which it had formerly regarded as insufficiently probative. Why?
4. On June 6, Janice Okubo, the Dept of Health spokeswoman, also told the Star Bulletin that “The electronic record of the birth is what (the Health Department) now keeps on file in order to provide same-day certified copies at our help window for most requests.” There is a troubling ambiguity in this statement. A sophisticated forensic investigation would probably be able to determine whether the original paper Certificate of Live Birth was forged, altered, or authentic. But if the data from the original paper Certificates of Live Birth has been transferred to an electronic record and then the original documents were discarded, part of the data could easily have been changed in the transfer or subsequently altered.
Why did the Hawaiian Dept of Health wait until June 6, 2009 to announce to the world that the original paper Certificates of Live Birth had been destroyed (presumably in 2001)? Shouldn’t this have been part of Dr Fukino’s statement on October 31, 2008 (right before the November election), a statement which deceptively implied the contrary:
“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
We know from a document posted on June 10, 2009 on the Department of Hawaiian Homelands website that, up until very recently, either the original paper Certificates of Live Birth or (as is now implied) scanned images of those paper certificates were maintained by the Dept of Health, and copies of them were provided to confirm claims of Hawaiian ancestry. But if in June 2009 the Department of Hawaiian Homelands has decided that it will no longer require the original Certificate of Live Birth as proof for special privileges and the Department of Health spokesman says firmly that they will no longer provide copies of these original certificates, is it possible that, in the midst of the controversy over where Barack Obama was born, the Hawaiian state govt has destroyed the original paper certificate of live birth? This seems almost incredible to me, but the authorities have been so deceptive and evasive on this issue, that it cannot be dismissed as impossible.
4. On June 6, Janice Okubo, the Dept of Health spokeswoman, also told the Star Bulletin that “The electronic record of the birth is what (the Health Department) now keeps on file in order to provide same-day certified copies at our help window for most requests.” There is a troubling ambiguity in this statement. A sophisticated forensic investigation would probably be able to determine whether the original paper Certificate of Live Birth was forged, altered, or authentic. But if the data from the original paper Certificates of Live Birth has been transferred to an electronic record and then the original documents were discarded, part of the data could easily have been changed in the transfer or subsequently altered.
Why did the Hawaiian Dept of Health wait until June 6, 2009 to announce to the world that the original paper Certificates of Live Birth had been destroyed (presumably in 2001)? Shouldn’t this have been part of Dr Fukino’s statement on October 31, 2008 (right before the November election), a statement which deceptively implied the contrary:
“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
We know from a document posted on June 10, 2009 on the Department of Hawaiian Homelands website that, up until very recently, either the original paper Certificates of Live Birth or (as is now implied) scanned images of those paper certificates were maintained by the Dept of Health, and copies of them were provided to confirm claims of Hawaiian ancestry. But if in June 2009 the Department of Hawaiian Homelands has decided that it will no longer require the original Certificate of Live Birth as proof for special privileges and the Department of Health spokesman says firmly that they will no longer provide copies of these original certificates, is it possible that, in the midst of the controversy over where Barack Obama was born, the Hawaiian state govt has destroyed the original paper certificate of live birth? This seems almost incredible to me, but the authorities have been so deceptive and evasive on this issue, that it cannot be dismissed as impossible.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Health Care - Repairing A Broken System
Hello Readers. The following post is from a very longtime friend of mine who is looking at our health care crisis from a perspective that none of the morons in Washington are taking.
Thank you to my guest contributor DH for his valued input here:
I am very concerned about the fact that we are quickly losing our freedoms and seem to me moving in the wrong direction in many areas of our social and economic life here in the states. One of my concerns is the broken health system and the incorrect direction we seem to be moving in an attempt to repair the problems. If our politicians were really attempting to correct a broken system why don’t they look back a few years when it was working?
I don’t claim to be the smartest person in the world or to know all the answers but I do observe and pay attention to life. I have a simple story about my family that will illustrate my point very well. I am 66 years old so I think I can say I have seen the evolution of the health care system in the United States in the last 60 years or so.
First let me say that as a child growing up I had a great family. We were poor but my parents could afford a doctor office visit and they could pay for a tonsillectomy. We could afford to go to dentists and hospitals, and the usual things that happen from having six children.
I got married in 1966 and we had our first child in August of 1967. Our total out of pocket cost for the hospital and doctor was around $375, and by the way my wife was in the hospital 3 days. We had group insurance at the time through my wife’s work. Some may say that was a lot of money for that time but I was young and only making about $600-$700 per month, so about half a month’s wages was the total cost, well within my ability to pay out of my pocket. At this point and time almost everyone paid for their own doctors office visits and lab tests . Also short time hospital stays were also paid for out of pocket, in other words they were in the free market system, they could not charge more than people could or would pay. At this time some of the unions and a few others had first time coverage by their insurance but by-in-large most people were in the market system.
It was about this time when many started to push for insurance with office visits, prescriptions and first time hospital stays included. In effect doctors, drug companies and hospitals were moved out of the free market system into a social system operated by insurance companies. Insurance companies are nothing more than large social groups to spread the cost of something among its members. Also about this time large and ridiculous law suits were instigated and judgments awarded against doctors. Doctors started to send patients out to labs and specialty places to protect themselves. Malpractice insurance rates became extremely expensive. Of course the people did not care because the insurance paid it all or so we thought.
So in effect we have been moving into a socialized medicine for over 40 years, the system is now broken and completely out of control. Moving from insurance to the government just removes it that much further out of the free market system. We need to move the other direction.
We need tort reform and we need to move first time coverage including doctors, drugs, and hospitals into the free market system. Insurance is being used as a maintenance program moving it out of the market system, therefore the free market system has little or no effect on medical prices. Insurance should be used for longtime and catastrophic expenses and not first or short time visits. Moving the health care system back into the free market would likely precipitate changes with major reforms and price adjustments. Are our politicians really after medical reform that works, or is it about control and power (I wish I was wrong here folks, but I do not think I am) it is certainly not about freedom and power to the people. Why don’t we try something that has worked in the past instead of an experiment?
Why do we always have to fix something that isn't broken thus creating something that is broken! People, you have heard it for yourselves...straight from the presidents mouth, he will not take his family off the glorious government benefits that he and all his political cronies receive and put them on the new proposed health care system. It's OK for you and me, but not OK for the politicians! I say politicians have to start living like ordinary citizens, not like the kings they think themselves to be!
Thank you to my guest contributor DH for his valued input here:
I am very concerned about the fact that we are quickly losing our freedoms and seem to me moving in the wrong direction in many areas of our social and economic life here in the states. One of my concerns is the broken health system and the incorrect direction we seem to be moving in an attempt to repair the problems. If our politicians were really attempting to correct a broken system why don’t they look back a few years when it was working?
I don’t claim to be the smartest person in the world or to know all the answers but I do observe and pay attention to life. I have a simple story about my family that will illustrate my point very well. I am 66 years old so I think I can say I have seen the evolution of the health care system in the United States in the last 60 years or so.
First let me say that as a child growing up I had a great family. We were poor but my parents could afford a doctor office visit and they could pay for a tonsillectomy. We could afford to go to dentists and hospitals, and the usual things that happen from having six children.
I got married in 1966 and we had our first child in August of 1967. Our total out of pocket cost for the hospital and doctor was around $375, and by the way my wife was in the hospital 3 days. We had group insurance at the time through my wife’s work. Some may say that was a lot of money for that time but I was young and only making about $600-$700 per month, so about half a month’s wages was the total cost, well within my ability to pay out of my pocket. At this point and time almost everyone paid for their own doctors office visits and lab tests . Also short time hospital stays were also paid for out of pocket, in other words they were in the free market system, they could not charge more than people could or would pay. At this time some of the unions and a few others had first time coverage by their insurance but by-in-large most people were in the market system.
It was about this time when many started to push for insurance with office visits, prescriptions and first time hospital stays included. In effect doctors, drug companies and hospitals were moved out of the free market system into a social system operated by insurance companies. Insurance companies are nothing more than large social groups to spread the cost of something among its members. Also about this time large and ridiculous law suits were instigated and judgments awarded against doctors. Doctors started to send patients out to labs and specialty places to protect themselves. Malpractice insurance rates became extremely expensive. Of course the people did not care because the insurance paid it all or so we thought.
So in effect we have been moving into a socialized medicine for over 40 years, the system is now broken and completely out of control. Moving from insurance to the government just removes it that much further out of the free market system. We need to move the other direction.
We need tort reform and we need to move first time coverage including doctors, drugs, and hospitals into the free market system. Insurance is being used as a maintenance program moving it out of the market system, therefore the free market system has little or no effect on medical prices. Insurance should be used for longtime and catastrophic expenses and not first or short time visits. Moving the health care system back into the free market would likely precipitate changes with major reforms and price adjustments. Are our politicians really after medical reform that works, or is it about control and power (I wish I was wrong here folks, but I do not think I am) it is certainly not about freedom and power to the people. Why don’t we try something that has worked in the past instead of an experiment?
Why do we always have to fix something that isn't broken thus creating something that is broken! People, you have heard it for yourselves...straight from the presidents mouth, he will not take his family off the glorious government benefits that he and all his political cronies receive and put them on the new proposed health care system. It's OK for you and me, but not OK for the politicians! I say politicians have to start living like ordinary citizens, not like the kings they think themselves to be!
Feds Target Yard Sales
Thinking of having a fall yard sale to clean out some of the clutter from your house? Be careful, or it could get you in trouble with the Feds, and cost you up to $15 million in fines.
NO, that was not a joke!! The Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched a new enforcement campaign, which it calls “Resale Round-up", ” targeting the resale of potentially harmful children’s toys and other consumer products. Potential violators, the CPSC warns, include “thrift stores, consignment stores, charities, and individuals holding yard sales and flea markets.” Even e-bay sales are at risk.
Are you kidding me???? What horses ass came up with this cleaver bit of rights destroying legislation?? I think it is high time for a good ol fashion stoning in the public square.
I cannot believe that these power hungry morons who the people elected and who work for the people are now turning on them like a pack of rabid wolves. Does it make any sense to target the millions of Americans who re-sell items from their own home each year? Listen to this: Do you have books to sell? OK, says CPSC, as as long as they aren’t printed after 1985 and have a metal spiral binding (which may contain lead paint). Old clothing? Not OK if it has rhinestones or vinyl plastic snaps. Not sure if a toy has lead in it? The CPSC has a booklet that happily explains that it “would make sense to test” for lead, suggesting: “You may want to hire a qualified, trained person in your area who can quickly screen all of your suspect products with a handheld device called an X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) machine.” Or, presumably, you can do it yourself if you have a spare XRF machine in your basement.
No word on how CPSC will be enforcing these rules. Will there be yard sale police going from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac on weekends? Hotlines to report neighbors peddling black market Thomas the Tank Engine trains? I don't know about you, but I am sick to death of these jackasses who live in Washington and think that they were appointed as God when they got elected. Damn the politicians, full speed ahead!!
NO, that was not a joke!! The Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched a new enforcement campaign, which it calls “Resale Round-up", ” targeting the resale of potentially harmful children’s toys and other consumer products. Potential violators, the CPSC warns, include “thrift stores, consignment stores, charities, and individuals holding yard sales and flea markets.” Even e-bay sales are at risk.
Are you kidding me???? What horses ass came up with this cleaver bit of rights destroying legislation?? I think it is high time for a good ol fashion stoning in the public square.
I cannot believe that these power hungry morons who the people elected and who work for the people are now turning on them like a pack of rabid wolves. Does it make any sense to target the millions of Americans who re-sell items from their own home each year? Listen to this: Do you have books to sell? OK, says CPSC, as as long as they aren’t printed after 1985 and have a metal spiral binding (which may contain lead paint). Old clothing? Not OK if it has rhinestones or vinyl plastic snaps. Not sure if a toy has lead in it? The CPSC has a booklet that happily explains that it “would make sense to test” for lead, suggesting: “You may want to hire a qualified, trained person in your area who can quickly screen all of your suspect products with a handheld device called an X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) machine.” Or, presumably, you can do it yourself if you have a spare XRF machine in your basement.
No word on how CPSC will be enforcing these rules. Will there be yard sale police going from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac on weekends? Hotlines to report neighbors peddling black market Thomas the Tank Engine trains? I don't know about you, but I am sick to death of these jackasses who live in Washington and think that they were appointed as God when they got elected. Damn the politicians, full speed ahead!!
Just One Sentence
A young lady named Cathy sent me an email today that had the following statement at the end of her email....I had to grin and I will not elaborate further....she has said it all in just one sentence:
"Never before have we witnessed such calculated, deceitful, manipulative, evil destruction of all things good and American in our lives! What bizarre and frightening times we live in..."
AMEN!!
"Never before have we witnessed such calculated, deceitful, manipulative, evil destruction of all things good and American in our lives! What bizarre and frightening times we live in..."
AMEN!!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Obamunism
I think this is probably the best description of what is happening to this country!!The day after Americans commemorated the suicide bombings of their cities by the 911 terrorists, conservatives and various right forces staged a giant protest march on DC, some estimating turn out at well over two million people according to ABC network.
Here is a post I found in a Russian news site. The article was taken from Mat Rodina's website...I agree with most of it, but I feel contrary to the fact that the conservatives in this country have not what it takes to correct the issues at hand. I believe there is a firestorm coming and that Washington is going to feel the heat. Read on.....
While, for a nation, where conservatives have only recently figured out that they are allowed to protest, this is a great accomplishment, what in truth does this mean or change? As it stands, in an uncomfortable word: NOTHING...not just NOTHING but ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
The socialist president of America, Barack Obama, showed his absolute contempt for these people, by leaving town to make speeches, in the American Midwest, pushing his super control bill: promising to "Call out" his critics and living up to his moniker of "Obeyme". Equally missing were any of the rest of the Marxists from Washington...that is the Marxists from the Democratic wing of the American One Party system. The Marxists from the Republican wing were present, trying to subvert the movement and thus defuse it and doing a very good job of it. Much of the so called conservative leadership was missing and not to be seen. Who planned this?
The problem, of course, is, as I stated, dear reader, nothing has changed. Sure, a lot of right wing citizens may feel better, lots of anger was pushed out and released and there will be a large cleaning bill, but really, nothing has changed. Americans will get their Cap and Trade and they will get their medical rationing whether they want it or not and it will all be law, absolute law, by the time the next elections come and so entrenched that that will be that.
The problem is, these conservatives still do not understand what it really takes to make change or force change, shy of violence. What it takes is a constant, daily presence of hundreds of thousands sitting in front of the government and screaming every day: "NO!". Look how it is done in other capitals, where tent cities pop up and demonstrations go on for months.
A one day mega march is simply a thunder storm, whose boom is already fading from DC, where the masters of Americans lives, will on Monday, move on to business as usual, laughing at the foolish peoples, over bribe paid champagne.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Failure
The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775 - they've had 234 years to get it right; it is broke, and even though heavily subsidized, it can't compete with private sector FedEx and UPS services.
Social Security was established in 1935 - they've had 74 years to get it right; it is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - they've had 71 years to get it right; it is broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - they've had 39 years to get it right; it is broke. Together Fannie and Freddie have now led the entire world into the worst economic collapse in 80 years.
The War on Poverty was started in 1964 - they've had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our hard earned money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - they've had 44 years to get it right; they are both broke; and now our government dares to mention them as models for all US health care.
AMTRAK was established in 1970 - they've had 39 years to get it right; last year they bailed it out as it continues to run at a loss!
This year, a trillion dollars was committed in the massive political payoff called the Stimulus Bill of 2009; it shows NO sign of working; it's been used to increase the size of governments across America , and raise government salaries while the rest of us suffer from economic hardships. It has yet to create a single new private sector job. Our national debt projections (approaching $10 trillion) have increased 400% in the last six months.
"Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009 - - after 80% of the cars purchased turned out to be produced by foreign companies, and dealers nationwide are buried under bureaucratic paperwork demanded by a government that is not yet paying them what was promised.
So with a perfect 100% failure rate and a record that proves that each and every "service" shoved down our throats by an over-reaching government turns into disaster, how could any informed American trust our government to run or even set policies for America's health care system - - 17% of our economy?
I think it has become a personal responsibility to let others in on this brilliant record before 2010, and then help remove from office those who are voting to destroy capitalism and destroy our grandchildren's future.
From Guest Contributor JM
Social Security was established in 1935 - they've had 74 years to get it right; it is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - they've had 71 years to get it right; it is broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - they've had 39 years to get it right; it is broke. Together Fannie and Freddie have now led the entire world into the worst economic collapse in 80 years.
The War on Poverty was started in 1964 - they've had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our hard earned money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - they've had 44 years to get it right; they are both broke; and now our government dares to mention them as models for all US health care.
AMTRAK was established in 1970 - they've had 39 years to get it right; last year they bailed it out as it continues to run at a loss!
This year, a trillion dollars was committed in the massive political payoff called the Stimulus Bill of 2009; it shows NO sign of working; it's been used to increase the size of governments across America , and raise government salaries while the rest of us suffer from economic hardships. It has yet to create a single new private sector job. Our national debt projections (approaching $10 trillion) have increased 400% in the last six months.
"Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009 - - after 80% of the cars purchased turned out to be produced by foreign companies, and dealers nationwide are buried under bureaucratic paperwork demanded by a government that is not yet paying them what was promised.
So with a perfect 100% failure rate and a record that proves that each and every "service" shoved down our throats by an over-reaching government turns into disaster, how could any informed American trust our government to run or even set policies for America's health care system - - 17% of our economy?
I think it has become a personal responsibility to let others in on this brilliant record before 2010, and then help remove from office those who are voting to destroy capitalism and destroy our grandchildren's future.
From Guest Contributor JM
Monday, September 21, 2009
To Whoever Gets My Dog
This story is dedicated to all those who gave their lives to secure the freedoms that we all enjoy living here in America.
To Whoever Gets My Dog
They told me the big black Lab's name was Reggie
as I looked at him lying in his pen. the shelter
was clean, and the people really friendly.
I'd only been in the area for six months, but
everywhere I went in the small college town,
people were welcoming and open. Everyone
waves when you pass them on the street.
But something was still missing as I attempted
to settle in to my new life here, and I thought
a dog couldn't hurt. Give me someone to talk to.
I had just seen Reggie's advertisement on
the local news. The shelter said they had
received numerous calls right after, but they
said the people who had come down to see him
just didn't look like "Lab people," whatever that
meant. They must've thought I did.
But at first, I thought the shelter had misjudged
me in giving me Reggie and his things, which consisted
of a dog pad, bag of toys almost all of which were
brand new tennis balls, his dishes, and a sealed letter
from his previous owner. See, Reggie and I didn't
really hit it off when we got home. We struggled for
two weeks (which is how long the shelter told me to
give him to adjust to his new home). Maybe it was
the fact that I was trying to adjust, too. Maybe
we were too much alike.
For some reason, his stuff (except for the tennis balls -
he wouldn't go anywhere without two stuffed in his
mouth) got tossed in with all of my other unpacked
boxes. I guess I didn't really think he'd need all his
old stuff, that I'd get him new things once he settled
in. but it became pretty clear pretty soon that he
wasn't going to.
I tried the normal commands the shelter told me he
knew, ones like "sit" and "stay" and "come" and "heel,"
and he'd follow them - when he felt like it. He never
really seemed to listen when I called his name - sure,
he'd look in my direction after the fourth of fifth
time I said it, but then he'd just go back to doing
whatever. When I'd ask again, you could almost see
him sigh and then grudgingly obey.
This just wasn't going to work. He chewed a couple
shoes and some unpacked boxes. I was a little too
stern with him and he resented it, I could tell.
The friction got so bad that I couldn't wait for
the two weeks to be up, and when it was, I was in
full-on search mode for my cellphone amid all of
my unpacked stuff. I remembered leaving it on
the stack of boxes for the guest room, but I also
mumbled, rather cynically, that the "damn dog
probably hid it on me."
Finally I found it, but before I could punch up the
shelter's number, I also found his pad and other
toys from the shelter.. I tossed the pad in Reggie's
direction and he snuffed it and wagged, some of
the most enthusiasm I'd seen since bringing him home.
But then I called, "Hey, Reggie, you like that? Come
here and I'll give you a treat." Instead, he sort of
glanced in my direction - maybe "glared" is more
accurate - and then gave a discontented sigh and
flopped down. With his back to me.
Well, that's not going to do it either, I thought.
And I punched the shelter phone number.
But I hung up when I saw the sealed envelope.
I had completely forgotten about that, too.
"Okay, Reggie," I said out loud, "let's see if
your previous owner has any advice.".... .....
"To Whoever Gets My Dog:
Well, I can't say that I'm happy you're reading
this, a letter I told the shelter could only be
opened by Reggie's new owner.
I'm not even happy writing it. If you're reading
this, it means I just got back from my last car
ride with my Lab after dropping him off at the shelter.
He knew something was different. I have packed
up his pad and toys before and set them by the back
door before a trip, but this time... it's like he knew
something was wrong. And something is wrong...
which is why I have to go to try to make it right.
So let me tell you about my Lab in the hopes that it
will help you bond with him and he with you.
First, he loves tennis balls... the more the merrier.
Sometimes I think he's part squirrel, the way he
hordes them.
He usually always has two in his mouth, and he tries
to get a third in there. Hasn't done it yet.
Doesn't matter where you throw them, he'll
bound after it, so be careful - really don't do it
by any roads. I made that mistake once, and it
almost cost him dearly.
Next, commands. Maybe the shelter staff already
told you, but I'll go over them again: Reggie knows
the obvious ones - "sit," "stay," "come," "heel."
He knows hand signals:
"back" to turn around and go back when you put
your hand straight up; and "over" if you put your
hand out right or left. "Shake" for shaking water
off, and "paw" for a high-five. He does "down"
when he feels like lying down - I bet you could
work on that with him some more. He knows
"ball" and "food" and "bone" and "treat" like
nobody's business.
I trained Reggie with small food treats.
Nothing opens his ears like little pieces of hot dog.
Feeding schedule: twice a day, once about seven
in the morning, and again at six in the evening.
Regular store-bought stuff; the shelter has
the brand.
He's up on his shots.
Call the clinic on 9th Street and update his info
with yours; they'll make sure to send you reminders
for when he's due. Be forewarned: Reggie hates
the vet.
Good luck getting him in the car - I don't know
how he knows when it's time to go to the vet, but
he knows.
Finally, give him some time.
I've never been married, so it's only been
Reggie and me for his whole life. He's gone
everywhere with me, so please include him on
your daily car rides if you can. He sits well
in the backseat, and he doesn't bark or complain.
He just loves to be around people, and me most
especially.
Which means that this transition is going to be
hard, with him going to live with someone new.
And that's why I need to share one more bit of
info with you.... His name's not Reggie.
I don't know what made me do it, but when I
dropped him off at the shelter, I told them
his name was Reggie. He's a smart dog, he'll
get used to it and will respond to it, of that I
have no doubt. but I just couldn't bear to give
them his real name. For me to do that, it seemed
so final, that handing him over to the shelter
was as good as me admitting that I'd never
see him again. And if I end up coming back,
getting him, and tearing up this letter, it means
everything's fine. But if someone else is reading
it, well... well it means that his new owner
should know his real name. It'll help you bond
with him. Who knows, maybe you'll even notice
a change in his demeanor if he's been giving you
problems.
His real name is Tank. Because that is what I drive.
Again, if you're reading this and you're from the
area, maybe my name has been on the news. I told
the shelter that they couldn't make "Reggie"
available for adoption until they received word from
my company commander. See, my parents are gone,
I have no siblings, no one I could've left Tank with...
and it was my only real request of the Army upon
my deployment to Iraq, that they make one phone
call the shelter... in the "event"... to tell them that
Tank could be put up for adoption. Luckily, my colonel
is a dog guy, too, and he knew where my platoon
was headed. He said he'd do it personally. And if
you're reading this, then he made good on his word.
Well, this letter is getting to downright depressing,
even though, frankly, I'm just writing it for my dog.
I couldn't imagine if I was writing it for a wife and
kids and family. but still, Tank has been my family
for the last six years, almost as long as the Army
has been my family.
And now I hope and pray that you make him part
of your family and that he will adjust and come
to love you the same way he loved me.
That unconditional love from a dog is what I took
with me to Iraq as an inspiration to do something
selfless, to protect innocent people from those
who would do terrible things... and to keep those
terrible people from coming over here. If I had
to give up Tank in order to do it, I am glad to have
done so. He was my example of service and of love.
I hope I honored him by my service to my country
and comrades. All right, that's enough.
I deploy this evening and have to drop this letter
off at the shelter.
I don't think I'll say another good-bye to Tank,
though. I cried too much the first time. Maybe
I'll peek in on him and see if he finally got that
third tennis ball in his mouth.
Good luck with Tank.
Give him a good home, and give him an extra
kiss goodnight - every night - from me."
Thank you, Paul Mallory
I folded the letter and slipped it back in the
envelope. Sure I had heard of Paul Mallory,
everyone in town knew him, even new people
like me. Local kid, killed in Iraq a few months
ago and posthumously earning the Silver Star
when he gave his life to save three buddies.
Flags had been at half-mast all summer.
I leaned forward in my chair and rested my
elbows on my knees, staring at the dog.
"Hey, Tank," I said quietly.
The dog's head whipped up, his ears cocked and
his eyes bright. "C'mere boy."
He was instantly on his feet, his nails clicking on
the hardwood floor. He sat in front of me, his
head tilted, searching for the name he hadn't heard
in months.
"Tank," I whispered. His tail swished.
I kept whispering his name, over and over, and
each time, his ears lowered, his eyes softened,
and his posture relaxed as a wave of contentment
just seemed to flood him. I stroked his ears,
rubbed his shoulders, buried my face into his scruff
and hugged him.
"It's me now, Tank, just you and me. Your old pal
gave you to me." Tank reached up and licked my
cheek. "So whatdaya say we play some ball His ears
perked again.
"Yeah Ball. You like that Ball "
Tank tore from my hands and disappeared in
the next room. And when he came back......
he had three tennis balls in his mouth.
To Whoever Gets My Dog
They told me the big black Lab's name was Reggie
as I looked at him lying in his pen. the shelter
was clean, and the people really friendly.
I'd only been in the area for six months, but
everywhere I went in the small college town,
people were welcoming and open. Everyone
waves when you pass them on the street.
But something was still missing as I attempted
to settle in to my new life here, and I thought
a dog couldn't hurt. Give me someone to talk to.
I had just seen Reggie's advertisement on
the local news. The shelter said they had
received numerous calls right after, but they
said the people who had come down to see him
just didn't look like "Lab people," whatever that
meant. They must've thought I did.
But at first, I thought the shelter had misjudged
me in giving me Reggie and his things, which consisted
of a dog pad, bag of toys almost all of which were
brand new tennis balls, his dishes, and a sealed letter
from his previous owner. See, Reggie and I didn't
really hit it off when we got home. We struggled for
two weeks (which is how long the shelter told me to
give him to adjust to his new home). Maybe it was
the fact that I was trying to adjust, too. Maybe
we were too much alike.
For some reason, his stuff (except for the tennis balls -
he wouldn't go anywhere without two stuffed in his
mouth) got tossed in with all of my other unpacked
boxes. I guess I didn't really think he'd need all his
old stuff, that I'd get him new things once he settled
in. but it became pretty clear pretty soon that he
wasn't going to.
I tried the normal commands the shelter told me he
knew, ones like "sit" and "stay" and "come" and "heel,"
and he'd follow them - when he felt like it. He never
really seemed to listen when I called his name - sure,
he'd look in my direction after the fourth of fifth
time I said it, but then he'd just go back to doing
whatever. When I'd ask again, you could almost see
him sigh and then grudgingly obey.
This just wasn't going to work. He chewed a couple
shoes and some unpacked boxes. I was a little too
stern with him and he resented it, I could tell.
The friction got so bad that I couldn't wait for
the two weeks to be up, and when it was, I was in
full-on search mode for my cellphone amid all of
my unpacked stuff. I remembered leaving it on
the stack of boxes for the guest room, but I also
mumbled, rather cynically, that the "damn dog
probably hid it on me."
Finally I found it, but before I could punch up the
shelter's number, I also found his pad and other
toys from the shelter.. I tossed the pad in Reggie's
direction and he snuffed it and wagged, some of
the most enthusiasm I'd seen since bringing him home.
But then I called, "Hey, Reggie, you like that? Come
here and I'll give you a treat." Instead, he sort of
glanced in my direction - maybe "glared" is more
accurate - and then gave a discontented sigh and
flopped down. With his back to me.
Well, that's not going to do it either, I thought.
And I punched the shelter phone number.
But I hung up when I saw the sealed envelope.
I had completely forgotten about that, too.
"Okay, Reggie," I said out loud, "let's see if
your previous owner has any advice.".... .....
"To Whoever Gets My Dog:
Well, I can't say that I'm happy you're reading
this, a letter I told the shelter could only be
opened by Reggie's new owner.
I'm not even happy writing it. If you're reading
this, it means I just got back from my last car
ride with my Lab after dropping him off at the shelter.
He knew something was different. I have packed
up his pad and toys before and set them by the back
door before a trip, but this time... it's like he knew
something was wrong. And something is wrong...
which is why I have to go to try to make it right.
So let me tell you about my Lab in the hopes that it
will help you bond with him and he with you.
First, he loves tennis balls... the more the merrier.
Sometimes I think he's part squirrel, the way he
hordes them.
He usually always has two in his mouth, and he tries
to get a third in there. Hasn't done it yet.
Doesn't matter where you throw them, he'll
bound after it, so be careful - really don't do it
by any roads. I made that mistake once, and it
almost cost him dearly.
Next, commands. Maybe the shelter staff already
told you, but I'll go over them again: Reggie knows
the obvious ones - "sit," "stay," "come," "heel."
He knows hand signals:
"back" to turn around and go back when you put
your hand straight up; and "over" if you put your
hand out right or left. "Shake" for shaking water
off, and "paw" for a high-five. He does "down"
when he feels like lying down - I bet you could
work on that with him some more. He knows
"ball" and "food" and "bone" and "treat" like
nobody's business.
I trained Reggie with small food treats.
Nothing opens his ears like little pieces of hot dog.
Feeding schedule: twice a day, once about seven
in the morning, and again at six in the evening.
Regular store-bought stuff; the shelter has
the brand.
He's up on his shots.
Call the clinic on 9th Street and update his info
with yours; they'll make sure to send you reminders
for when he's due. Be forewarned: Reggie hates
the vet.
Good luck getting him in the car - I don't know
how he knows when it's time to go to the vet, but
he knows.
Finally, give him some time.
I've never been married, so it's only been
Reggie and me for his whole life. He's gone
everywhere with me, so please include him on
your daily car rides if you can. He sits well
in the backseat, and he doesn't bark or complain.
He just loves to be around people, and me most
especially.
Which means that this transition is going to be
hard, with him going to live with someone new.
And that's why I need to share one more bit of
info with you.... His name's not Reggie.
I don't know what made me do it, but when I
dropped him off at the shelter, I told them
his name was Reggie. He's a smart dog, he'll
get used to it and will respond to it, of that I
have no doubt. but I just couldn't bear to give
them his real name. For me to do that, it seemed
so final, that handing him over to the shelter
was as good as me admitting that I'd never
see him again. And if I end up coming back,
getting him, and tearing up this letter, it means
everything's fine. But if someone else is reading
it, well... well it means that his new owner
should know his real name. It'll help you bond
with him. Who knows, maybe you'll even notice
a change in his demeanor if he's been giving you
problems.
His real name is Tank. Because that is what I drive.
Again, if you're reading this and you're from the
area, maybe my name has been on the news. I told
the shelter that they couldn't make "Reggie"
available for adoption until they received word from
my company commander. See, my parents are gone,
I have no siblings, no one I could've left Tank with...
and it was my only real request of the Army upon
my deployment to Iraq, that they make one phone
call the shelter... in the "event"... to tell them that
Tank could be put up for adoption. Luckily, my colonel
is a dog guy, too, and he knew where my platoon
was headed. He said he'd do it personally. And if
you're reading this, then he made good on his word.
Well, this letter is getting to downright depressing,
even though, frankly, I'm just writing it for my dog.
I couldn't imagine if I was writing it for a wife and
kids and family. but still, Tank has been my family
for the last six years, almost as long as the Army
has been my family.
And now I hope and pray that you make him part
of your family and that he will adjust and come
to love you the same way he loved me.
That unconditional love from a dog is what I took
with me to Iraq as an inspiration to do something
selfless, to protect innocent people from those
who would do terrible things... and to keep those
terrible people from coming over here. If I had
to give up Tank in order to do it, I am glad to have
done so. He was my example of service and of love.
I hope I honored him by my service to my country
and comrades. All right, that's enough.
I deploy this evening and have to drop this letter
off at the shelter.
I don't think I'll say another good-bye to Tank,
though. I cried too much the first time. Maybe
I'll peek in on him and see if he finally got that
third tennis ball in his mouth.
Good luck with Tank.
Give him a good home, and give him an extra
kiss goodnight - every night - from me."
Thank you, Paul Mallory
I folded the letter and slipped it back in the
envelope. Sure I had heard of Paul Mallory,
everyone in town knew him, even new people
like me. Local kid, killed in Iraq a few months
ago and posthumously earning the Silver Star
when he gave his life to save three buddies.
Flags had been at half-mast all summer.
I leaned forward in my chair and rested my
elbows on my knees, staring at the dog.
"Hey, Tank," I said quietly.
The dog's head whipped up, his ears cocked and
his eyes bright. "C'mere boy."
He was instantly on his feet, his nails clicking on
the hardwood floor. He sat in front of me, his
head tilted, searching for the name he hadn't heard
in months.
"Tank," I whispered. His tail swished.
I kept whispering his name, over and over, and
each time, his ears lowered, his eyes softened,
and his posture relaxed as a wave of contentment
just seemed to flood him. I stroked his ears,
rubbed his shoulders, buried my face into his scruff
and hugged him.
"It's me now, Tank, just you and me. Your old pal
gave you to me." Tank reached up and licked my
cheek. "So whatdaya say we play some ball His ears
perked again.
"Yeah Ball. You like that Ball "
Tank tore from my hands and disappeared in
the next room. And when he came back......
he had three tennis balls in his mouth.
A Prophecy
James Madison emphasized the necessity to reserve all possible authority within the states and the people. The Constitution delegates to the federal government only that which involves the whole people as a nation.
He made the following statement:
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former [federal powers] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern, the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State."
In other words, the powers of the federal government were very limited, and they were limited for a very definite reason, to avoid a power grab by those who wanted to take over full and complete control.
Thomas Jefferson emphasized that if the oncoming generations perpetuated the Constitutional pattern, the federal government would be small and cohesive and would serve as an inexpensive operation because of the limited problems which it would be assigned. Again, small and cohesive, and inexpensive to maintain. Our federal spending debt is at how many trillion dollars right now? Around 12 trillion, and that is secured debt, they are not telling people about the unsecured debt which is an even higher figure! Far from small and cohesive, and certainly not inexpensive!
One of the greatest American historians was John Fiske. He wrote a prophecy in his day which all Americans today should ponder with profit:
"If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid) when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their local affairs to be administered by perfects sent from Washington, and when the self-government of the states shall have been so far lost as that of the departments of France, or even so closely limited as that of the counties of England--on that day the political career of the American people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably impaired."
So, is there any doubt in your mind that the federal government is completely out of control and is in complete violation of the Constitution of the United States? I didn't think so!
He made the following statement:
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former [federal powers] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern, the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State."
In other words, the powers of the federal government were very limited, and they were limited for a very definite reason, to avoid a power grab by those who wanted to take over full and complete control.
Thomas Jefferson emphasized that if the oncoming generations perpetuated the Constitutional pattern, the federal government would be small and cohesive and would serve as an inexpensive operation because of the limited problems which it would be assigned. Again, small and cohesive, and inexpensive to maintain. Our federal spending debt is at how many trillion dollars right now? Around 12 trillion, and that is secured debt, they are not telling people about the unsecured debt which is an even higher figure! Far from small and cohesive, and certainly not inexpensive!
One of the greatest American historians was John Fiske. He wrote a prophecy in his day which all Americans today should ponder with profit:
"If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid) when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their local affairs to be administered by perfects sent from Washington, and when the self-government of the states shall have been so far lost as that of the departments of France, or even so closely limited as that of the counties of England--on that day the political career of the American people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably impaired."
So, is there any doubt in your mind that the federal government is completely out of control and is in complete violation of the Constitution of the United States? I didn't think so!
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The President Without A Country
This was written by Pat Boone in July of this year, it is verifiable and accurate. I think Mr. Boone did an excellent job in putting Obama on notice of his actions. Thank you Pat Boone, y0u have said it very well for the rest of us Christians here in America!!
The president without a country By Pat Boone
"We're no longer a Christian nation." - President Barack Obama, June2007
"America has been arrogant." - President Barack Obama
"After 9/11, America didn't always live up to her ideals."- President Barack Obama
"You might say that America is a Muslim nation."- President Barack Obama, Egypt 2009
Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of president. I keep wondering what country he believes he's president of. In one of my very favorite stories, Edward Everett Hale's "The Man without a Country," a young Army lieutenant named Philip Nolan stands condemned for treason during the Revolutionary War, having come under the influence of Aaron Burr. When the judge asks him if he wishes to say anything before sentence is passed, young Nolan defiantly exclaims, "Damn the United States! I wish I might never hear of the United States again!" The stunned silence in the courtroom is palpable, pulsing. After a long pause, the judge soberly says to the angry lieutenant: "You have just pronounced your own sentence. You will never hear of the United States again. I sentence you to spend the rest of your life at sea, on one or another of this country's naval vessels - under strict orders that no one will ever speak to you again about the country you have just cursed." And so it was. Philip Nolan was taken away and spent the next 40 years at sea, never hearing anything but an occasional slip of the tongue about America. The last few pages of the story, recounting Nolan's dying hours in his small stateroom - now turned into a shrine to the country he fore swore - never fail to bring me to tears. And I find my own love for this dream, this miracle called America, refreshed and renewed. I know how blessed and unique we are. But reading and hearing the audacious, shocking statements of the man who was recently elected our president - a young black man living the impossible dream of millions of young Americans, past and present, black and white - I want to ask him, "Just what country do you think you're president of?" You surely can't be referring to the United States of America, can you? America is emphatically a Christian nation, and has been from its inception! Seventy percent of her citizens identify themselves as Christian. The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were framed, written and ratified by Christians. It's because this was, and is, a nation built on and guided by Judeo-Christian biblical principles that you, sir, have had the inestimable privilege of being elected her president. You studied law at Harvard, didn't you, sir? You taught constitutional law in Chicago? Did you not ever read the statement of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and an author of the landmark "Federalist Papers": "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers - and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation - to select and prefer Christians for their rulers"? In your studies, you surely must have read the decision of the Supreme Court in 1892: "Our lives and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this sextent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian." Did your professors have you skip over all the high-court decisions right up till the mid 1900's that echoed and reinforced these views and intentions? Did you pick up the history of American jurisprudence only in 1947, when for the first time a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson about a "wall of separation between church and state" was used to deny some specific religious expression - contrary to Jefferson' s intent with that statement? Or, wait a minute, were your ideas about America 's Christianity formed during the 20 years you were a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ under your pastor, Jeremiah Wright? Is that where you got the idea that " America is no longer a Christian nation"? Is this where you, even as you came to call yourself a Christian, formed the belief that "America has been arrogant"? Even if that's the understandable explanation of your damning of your country and accusing the whole nation (not just a few military officials trying their best to keep more Americans from being murdered by jihadists) of "not always living up to her ideals," how did you come up with the ridiculous, alarming notion that we might be "considered a Muslim nation"? Is it because there are some 2 million or more Muslims living here, trying to be good Americans? Out of a current population of over 300 million, 70 percent of whom are Christians? Does that make us, by any rational definition, a "Muslim nation"? Why are we not, then, a "Chinese nation"? A "Korean nation"? Even a "Vietnamese nation"? There are even more of these distinct groups in America than Muslims. And if the distinction you're trying to make is a religious one, why is America not "a Jewish nation"? There's actually a case to be made for the latter, because our Constitution - and the success of our Revolution and founding - owe a deep debt to our Jewish brothers. Have you stopped to think what an actual Muslim America would be like? Have you ever really spent much time in Iran? Even in Egypt? You, having been instructed in Islam as a kid at a Muslim school in Indonesia and saying you still love the call to evening prayers, can surely picture our nation founded on the Quran, not the Judeo-Christian Bible, and living under Shariah law. Can't you? You do recall Muhammad's directives [Surah 9:5,73] to "break the cross" and "kill the infidel"? It seems increasingly and painfully obvious that you are more influenced by your up bringing and questionable education than most suspected. If you consider yourself the president of a people who are "no longer Christian," who have "failed to live up to our ideals," who "have been arrogant," and might even be "considered Muslim" - you are president of a country most Americans don't recognize.
Could it be you are a president without a country?
The president without a country By Pat Boone
"We're no longer a Christian nation." - President Barack Obama, June2007
"America has been arrogant." - President Barack Obama
"After 9/11, America didn't always live up to her ideals."- President Barack Obama
"You might say that America is a Muslim nation."- President Barack Obama, Egypt 2009
Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of president. I keep wondering what country he believes he's president of. In one of my very favorite stories, Edward Everett Hale's "The Man without a Country," a young Army lieutenant named Philip Nolan stands condemned for treason during the Revolutionary War, having come under the influence of Aaron Burr. When the judge asks him if he wishes to say anything before sentence is passed, young Nolan defiantly exclaims, "Damn the United States! I wish I might never hear of the United States again!" The stunned silence in the courtroom is palpable, pulsing. After a long pause, the judge soberly says to the angry lieutenant: "You have just pronounced your own sentence. You will never hear of the United States again. I sentence you to spend the rest of your life at sea, on one or another of this country's naval vessels - under strict orders that no one will ever speak to you again about the country you have just cursed." And so it was. Philip Nolan was taken away and spent the next 40 years at sea, never hearing anything but an occasional slip of the tongue about America. The last few pages of the story, recounting Nolan's dying hours in his small stateroom - now turned into a shrine to the country he fore swore - never fail to bring me to tears. And I find my own love for this dream, this miracle called America, refreshed and renewed. I know how blessed and unique we are. But reading and hearing the audacious, shocking statements of the man who was recently elected our president - a young black man living the impossible dream of millions of young Americans, past and present, black and white - I want to ask him, "Just what country do you think you're president of?" You surely can't be referring to the United States of America, can you? America is emphatically a Christian nation, and has been from its inception! Seventy percent of her citizens identify themselves as Christian. The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were framed, written and ratified by Christians. It's because this was, and is, a nation built on and guided by Judeo-Christian biblical principles that you, sir, have had the inestimable privilege of being elected her president. You studied law at Harvard, didn't you, sir? You taught constitutional law in Chicago? Did you not ever read the statement of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and an author of the landmark "Federalist Papers": "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers - and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation - to select and prefer Christians for their rulers"? In your studies, you surely must have read the decision of the Supreme Court in 1892: "Our lives and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this sextent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian." Did your professors have you skip over all the high-court decisions right up till the mid 1900's that echoed and reinforced these views and intentions? Did you pick up the history of American jurisprudence only in 1947, when for the first time a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson about a "wall of separation between church and state" was used to deny some specific religious expression - contrary to Jefferson' s intent with that statement? Or, wait a minute, were your ideas about America 's Christianity formed during the 20 years you were a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ under your pastor, Jeremiah Wright? Is that where you got the idea that " America is no longer a Christian nation"? Is this where you, even as you came to call yourself a Christian, formed the belief that "America has been arrogant"? Even if that's the understandable explanation of your damning of your country and accusing the whole nation (not just a few military officials trying their best to keep more Americans from being murdered by jihadists) of "not always living up to her ideals," how did you come up with the ridiculous, alarming notion that we might be "considered a Muslim nation"? Is it because there are some 2 million or more Muslims living here, trying to be good Americans? Out of a current population of over 300 million, 70 percent of whom are Christians? Does that make us, by any rational definition, a "Muslim nation"? Why are we not, then, a "Chinese nation"? A "Korean nation"? Even a "Vietnamese nation"? There are even more of these distinct groups in America than Muslims. And if the distinction you're trying to make is a religious one, why is America not "a Jewish nation"? There's actually a case to be made for the latter, because our Constitution - and the success of our Revolution and founding - owe a deep debt to our Jewish brothers. Have you stopped to think what an actual Muslim America would be like? Have you ever really spent much time in Iran? Even in Egypt? You, having been instructed in Islam as a kid at a Muslim school in Indonesia and saying you still love the call to evening prayers, can surely picture our nation founded on the Quran, not the Judeo-Christian Bible, and living under Shariah law. Can't you? You do recall Muhammad's directives [Surah 9:5,73] to "break the cross" and "kill the infidel"? It seems increasingly and painfully obvious that you are more influenced by your up bringing and questionable education than most suspected. If you consider yourself the president of a people who are "no longer Christian," who have "failed to live up to our ideals," who "have been arrogant," and might even be "considered Muslim" - you are president of a country most Americans don't recognize.
Could it be you are a president without a country?
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The United States Constitution - Adopted on September 17, 1787
The Constitution of the United States of America, it is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the Federal Government of the United States. It provides the framework for the organization of the United States Government and for the relationship of the Federal government to the States, to citizens, and to all people within the United States. Today we celebrate 222 years since it was created. God Bless America!!
ABC News & Obama's Health Care Speech
First, lets look at what George Stephanopoulos, ABC News had to say about about Obama's health care speech:
"I...think this might have been the most emotional speech I've ever seen President Obama give. He was right on the edge of anger, it seemed, at times, especially when he was rebutting some of the charges made about his plan. And I don't think I've ever seen him get caught up emotionally in the way he did in those final couple of paragraphs, where there was even a catch in his voice -- not even in his inaugural address in January. This is very close to President Obama's heart."
Ya think so George??? Obama is on the edge of anger all the time.....you can see the anger and the hatred in his eyes and on his face when he is not getting his way, kind of like another political figure from the past who was on the edge of anger and hatred all the time when he didn't get his way. Oh, by the way, I feel that you should know that your summation of Obama's speech was also very emotional.... as a matter of fact, I think I'm going to barf!
Now, Barack Obama got ABC to move their news division into the White House in order to make the big pitch for his egalitarian, everyone-gets-treated-equally ObamaCare push.
Instead, Obama fumbled into a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite. ABC itself leads with Obama’s response that he wouldn’t stay within his own plan for his family:
President Obama struggled to explain whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people — like the president himself — wouldn’t face.
The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News’ special on health care reform, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” which of course was anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.
Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.
The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care." Hummmmm, no ObamaCare for his family......
Big foopah Mr. President! So it goes......ObamaCare for thee, but not for me?
There you have it.... Hope and Change, baby!
"I...think this might have been the most emotional speech I've ever seen President Obama give. He was right on the edge of anger, it seemed, at times, especially when he was rebutting some of the charges made about his plan. And I don't think I've ever seen him get caught up emotionally in the way he did in those final couple of paragraphs, where there was even a catch in his voice -- not even in his inaugural address in January. This is very close to President Obama's heart."
Ya think so George??? Obama is on the edge of anger all the time.....you can see the anger and the hatred in his eyes and on his face when he is not getting his way, kind of like another political figure from the past who was on the edge of anger and hatred all the time when he didn't get his way. Oh, by the way, I feel that you should know that your summation of Obama's speech was also very emotional.... as a matter of fact, I think I'm going to barf!
Now, Barack Obama got ABC to move their news division into the White House in order to make the big pitch for his egalitarian, everyone-gets-treated-equally ObamaCare push.
Instead, Obama fumbled into a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite. ABC itself leads with Obama’s response that he wouldn’t stay within his own plan for his family:
President Obama struggled to explain whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people — like the president himself — wouldn’t face.
The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News’ special on health care reform, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” which of course was anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.
Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.
The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care." Hummmmm, no ObamaCare for his family......
Big foopah Mr. President! So it goes......ObamaCare for thee, but not for me?
There you have it.... Hope and Change, baby!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit
Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit
Peter Robinson, 08.28.09, 12:01 AM EDT
Considering the late senator's complete record requires digging into the USSR's archives.
Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.
"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."
Kennedy's message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations," the memorandum stated. "These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."
Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.
First he offered to visit Moscow. "The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA." Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.
Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few interviews on American television. "A direct appeal ... to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. ... If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. ... The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side."
Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time--and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.
Kennedy's motives? "Like other rational people," the memorandum explained, "[Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations." But that high-minded concern represented only one of Kennedy's motives.
"Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988," the memorandum continued. "Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president."
Kennedy proved eager to deal with Andropov--the leader of the Soviet Union, a former director of the KGB and a principal mover in both the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring--at least in part to advance his own political prospects.
In 1992, Tim Sebastian published a story about the memorandum in the London Times. Here in the U.S., Sebastian's story received no attention. In his 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, historian Paul Kengor reprinted the memorandum in full. "The media," Kengor says, "ignored the revelation."
"The document," Kengor continues, "has stood the test of time. I scrutinized it more carefully than anything I've ever dealt with as a scholar. I showed the document to numerous authorities who deal with Soviet archival material. No one has debunked the memorandum or shown it to be a forgery. Kennedy's office did not deny it."
Why bring all this up now? No evidence exists that Andropov ever acted on the memorandum--within eight months, the Soviet leader would be dead--and now that Kennedy himself has died even many of the former senator's opponents find themselves grieving. Yet precisely because Kennedy represented such a commanding figure--perhaps the most compelling liberal of our day--we need to consider his record in full.
Doing so, it turns out, requires pondering a document in the archives of the politburo.
When President Reagan chose to confront the Soviet Union, calling it the evil empire that it was, Sen. Edward Kennedy chose to offer aid and comfort to General Secretary Andropov. On the Cold War, the greatest issue of his lifetime, Kennedy got it wrong.
Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a former White House speechwriter, writes a weekly column for Forbes
Jimmy Carter Sites Racism In Wilson Outburst
So the on every internet news page the headlines read: "Carter Sites Racism In Wilson Outburst"
You know what....I am so sick of hearing the word "Racist" I could puke! Everyone, according to the Democrats, who doesn't agree with their politics and attempts to derail this country is a "Racist" and frankly, I think the award for the largest group of racists in this country goes to the Democrats! I find that people who scream the loudest about something are generally doing so because it is a major fault of their own and they feel that because they are at fault, everyone else is also!
I think Mr. Carter should take a good look in the mirror before he goes out throwing stones at others who he claims to be "Racist".
Here is a short excerpt from an article written by Julia Gorin back in 2006, I think you will find it rather interesting, as it offers a glance at Carter's public record.
First you have to read the following story for the whole thing to make sense.
The story has never been verified by Ms. Gorin but was told to her by an acquaintance from Watertown, NY, a place situated way upstate, well north of Syracuse. The acquaintance had heard it from two barflies who were there the night in 1975 that Jimmy Carter passed through town in his first New York appearance during the "250-day 1975 portion of the presidential campaign," as Carter had called it.
The story goes that after giving a speech at the Holiday Inn, Carter stopped by the Rebel Room Tavern, a bar that once existed near the old Woolworth building and catered to southern servicemen based near by. Not knowing that an employee from the local paper was present, Carter joked around with the locals and, as two of those locals related the story to my friend, "every other word out of his mouth was 'nigger' or 'kike.'" But styling itself after The New York Times, the paper didn't print undignified information about candidates it was friendly toward, and the potentially damaging tidbit never made it into print.
At least that's how the story goes.
Corroborating it isn't easy. One of the barflies is long dead, the other long lost. A call to the Watertown Historical Society confirms that Carter did pass through Watertown in 1975 (a town only slightly better known for 1976, when Joan Mondale's motorcade hit and killed a woman). Yes, there did once exist a Rebel Room Tavern near the old Woolworth and yes it served a lot of southern military. Dredging up the November 19, 1975 article that covered the evening in the Watertown Daily Times, one sees only that Carter "joined in the laughter and music at the Rebel Room." Titled "Candidate Carter: Homespun, Urbane, Sure of Himself," the gushy article reads like a PR job for the presidential hopeful, with the candidate's name opening three consecutive paragraphs.
Carter won the governorship of Georgia in 1970 via a race-baiting campaign. In his 2004 book The Real Jimmy Carter, Steven Hayward writes that Carter's campaign staff sent an anonymous mailer "to barbershops, country churches, and rural law enforcement officers containing a grainy photo of [his Democratic opponent Carl] Sanders, part owner of the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise, at an after-game locker room victory celebration. Two black players were pouring champagne over Sanders's head. The Atlanta Constitution noted, 'In the context of the sports pages, it was a routine shot ... But in the context of this political campaign it was a dangerous smear that injected both race, alcohol, and high living into the campaign.' Carter's senior campaign aides Bill Pope, Hamilton Jordan, and Jerry Rafshoon were behind the mailing; Pope was even spotted passing out the flyers at a Ku Klux Klan rally ... The Carter campaign also produced a leaflet noting that Sanders had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. "... Carter also implied that he met privately with the head of the States Rights Council, a white supremacist group, and campaigned in all-white private schools that were known as 'segregation academies,' where he promised that he would do 'everything' to support their existence. 'I have no trouble pitching for [George] Wallace [segregationist] votes and the black votes at the same time,' Carter told a reporter. Carter also said to another reporter, 'I can win this election without a single black vote."
Hayward goes on to cite this post-election anecdote recorded by Carter's most sympathetic biographer Peter Bourne: "'Affecting a South Georgia accent and humorously mimicking his campaign colleagues, Rafshoon would say, "We coulda won by a lot more if we'd bin able to stop Jimmah saying so many nahs things abaht nigguhs."' Carter's other senior campaign aide, Bill Pope, was even more blunt, telling the Washington Post that they had run a 'nigger campaign."
Upon getting elected governor, however, Carter shocked Georgia when he included in his inauguration speech that the time for discrimination was over. It was a race bait-and-switch, and though it was a cynical approach to victory, one can make the argument that it was the only way to win Georgia in 1970, and change it. (Sounds sort of like the "Change" campaign)
In April 1976, however, a glimpse of the old Carter shone through when he answered a question about integration issues, blurting out, "I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained." According to Hayward, the NY Daily News buried the quote in a jump paragraph that picked up on page 134.
Now as for the "kike" half of the rumor, Carter took a decidedly opposite approach.
How does an old-fashioned Southern Democrat say, "Damn those Jews!" in today's world and get away with it? He says, "Give Hamas a chance!" How does a bigot adapt his prejudices to the modern world? He sets his sights on Israel.
This sentence in the 1994 book Electing Jimmy Carter by campaign speechwriter Patrick Anderson reveals the general attitude of Carter's circle toward Jews: "A presidential candidate delivers two basic types of speeches: substantive and rhetorical. In the former, he goes before various interest groups-made up of Jews, teachers, farmers, whomever-and demonstrates his mastery of their issues..." Note that Anderson didn't say "Native Americans," "Hispanics" or "women," but specifically "Jews" have "interests." It's also clear from the book that Carter tended to roll his eyes at the mention of the plight of Soviet Jewry.
In 1979, according to writer Hugh Fitzgerald, while pressing Menachem Begin to make concession upon concession to Anwar Sadat, Carter erupted that he was "'sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust."
Later, in the late 1980s, notes Hayward, "Carter kept in touch with the PLO through the Carter Center's Palestinian financial backers." (Other backers include notorious Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the Sultan of Oman, and the Saudi bin Laden Group.) The author quotes Carter biographer Douglas Brinkley: "'Carter began the long process of trying to persuade Arafat to make statements that would be regarded as responsible in the United States,'" and eventually wrote the PLO leader a long letter "outlining a speech Arafat should give for Western consumption."
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, Carter wrote in the New York Times that the whole war could be avoided if only Israel would withdraw from the West Bank. Because Arafat also sided with Hussein and therefore lost financial support from other Arab leaders, Carter flew to Saudi Arabia for what Brinkley described as "essentially a fund-raising mission for the PLO."
In 2000, when Arafat walked away from an unprecedented offer by Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton, Carter said he understood Arafat, who "could not have survived politically if he had accepted." In a 2002 op-ed in the New York Times — which obliges in providing a pulpit for Carter whenever he wants to put the screws to Israel-Carter advocated that the U.S. take "more forceful action" with Israel, and wrote that Arafat "may well see the suicide attacks as one of the few ways to retaliate against his tormentors." [Emphasis added.] He then blamed Ariel Sharon for the popularity of suicide bombers, whom he described as "counterproductive."
In the same writing, Carter suggested taking away Israeli aid and establishing a legal requirement that American weapons be used by Israel "only for defensive purposes," as opposed to the Jenin terror raid — the door-to-door operation that resulted in more than 30 dead young Israeli soldiers and were a response to the Passover massacres, which Carter didn't mention. After all, today's Jew-killers are just "misguided young men and women," but withholding aid to Palestinians for electing Hamas is a "crime."
In his tireless quest to isolate Israel, Carter traveled to a Geneva conference in 2003 to help formulate a "peace plan" that columnist Charles Krauthammer described as a "suicide note" for Israel. At the end of the conference, Carter famously proclaimed, "Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution." [Emphasis added.]
In a March article in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Carter wrote that the "preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine ... Palestinians must live in peace and dignity, and permanent Israeli settlements on their land are a major obstacle to this goal." Living in peace and dignity, according to a racist, is achieved by expelling Jews.
Last month Carter closed an op-ed in USA Today by saying that peace between Israel and the Palestinians would "remove one of the major causes of international terrorism and greatly ease tensions that could precipitate a regional or even global conflict." Not only are Jews to blame for dead Jews, they are to blame for dead everyone else.
That the man finds Jews irksome is indisputable. Engaging in a more didactic and hell-sure moralizing than any Republican politician in recent memory, this bigot found an outlet in Middle East peace brokering, believing on some level that things really would be easier for the rest of humanity without Jews.
"I'm basically a redneck," Carter told reporters as he sought the redneck vote in his Georgia campaigns. But this redneck with hippie politics gives the south a bad name. He is called a humanitarian, but the worst human rights violations are those that are deliberately inflicted, and in the "Palestinian-Israeli" conflict, Israelis are the ones targeted for dismemberment and death. Carter's humanitarianism enshrouds a hatred. Then again, from a man widely summed up as having "never met a dictator he didn't like," hatred of Israel can be taken as a ringing endorsement of the Jewish State.
Carter has quoted Martin Luther King, but Dr. King would tell him what he told a student at Harvard who criticized Zionism: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."
The world continues to suffer from Carter's handiwork as president and beyond while he continues to sermonize at Sunday school and build habitats. There was a movement for an official congressional censure of Carter for his lifetime of achievement against American values and international security, hosted by a group called Move America Forward. In response to its petition drive for a censure, the organization received a wave of death threats and hate mail defending Carter with emails such as "Are you motherf — — — nuts, crazy, or some Jewish group?"
Today, Jimmy's son Jack wants to follow in his daddy's footsteps, and is making a run for Senator of Nevada this year. Good luck. If he wants to fill those shoes, he can start by learning how to pronounce "Jew." It begins with a 'K'.
You know what....I am so sick of hearing the word "Racist" I could puke! Everyone, according to the Democrats, who doesn't agree with their politics and attempts to derail this country is a "Racist" and frankly, I think the award for the largest group of racists in this country goes to the Democrats! I find that people who scream the loudest about something are generally doing so because it is a major fault of their own and they feel that because they are at fault, everyone else is also!
I think Mr. Carter should take a good look in the mirror before he goes out throwing stones at others who he claims to be "Racist".
Here is a short excerpt from an article written by Julia Gorin back in 2006, I think you will find it rather interesting, as it offers a glance at Carter's public record.
First you have to read the following story for the whole thing to make sense.
The story has never been verified by Ms. Gorin but was told to her by an acquaintance from Watertown, NY, a place situated way upstate, well north of Syracuse. The acquaintance had heard it from two barflies who were there the night in 1975 that Jimmy Carter passed through town in his first New York appearance during the "250-day 1975 portion of the presidential campaign," as Carter had called it.
The story goes that after giving a speech at the Holiday Inn, Carter stopped by the Rebel Room Tavern, a bar that once existed near the old Woolworth building and catered to southern servicemen based near by. Not knowing that an employee from the local paper was present, Carter joked around with the locals and, as two of those locals related the story to my friend, "every other word out of his mouth was 'nigger' or 'kike.'" But styling itself after The New York Times, the paper didn't print undignified information about candidates it was friendly toward, and the potentially damaging tidbit never made it into print.
At least that's how the story goes.
Corroborating it isn't easy. One of the barflies is long dead, the other long lost. A call to the Watertown Historical Society confirms that Carter did pass through Watertown in 1975 (a town only slightly better known for 1976, when Joan Mondale's motorcade hit and killed a woman). Yes, there did once exist a Rebel Room Tavern near the old Woolworth and yes it served a lot of southern military. Dredging up the November 19, 1975 article that covered the evening in the Watertown Daily Times, one sees only that Carter "joined in the laughter and music at the Rebel Room." Titled "Candidate Carter: Homespun, Urbane, Sure of Himself," the gushy article reads like a PR job for the presidential hopeful, with the candidate's name opening three consecutive paragraphs.
Carter won the governorship of Georgia in 1970 via a race-baiting campaign. In his 2004 book The Real Jimmy Carter, Steven Hayward writes that Carter's campaign staff sent an anonymous mailer "to barbershops, country churches, and rural law enforcement officers containing a grainy photo of [his Democratic opponent Carl] Sanders, part owner of the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise, at an after-game locker room victory celebration. Two black players were pouring champagne over Sanders's head. The Atlanta Constitution noted, 'In the context of the sports pages, it was a routine shot ... But in the context of this political campaign it was a dangerous smear that injected both race, alcohol, and high living into the campaign.' Carter's senior campaign aides Bill Pope, Hamilton Jordan, and Jerry Rafshoon were behind the mailing; Pope was even spotted passing out the flyers at a Ku Klux Klan rally ... The Carter campaign also produced a leaflet noting that Sanders had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. "... Carter also implied that he met privately with the head of the States Rights Council, a white supremacist group, and campaigned in all-white private schools that were known as 'segregation academies,' where he promised that he would do 'everything' to support their existence. 'I have no trouble pitching for [George] Wallace [segregationist] votes and the black votes at the same time,' Carter told a reporter. Carter also said to another reporter, 'I can win this election without a single black vote."
Hayward goes on to cite this post-election anecdote recorded by Carter's most sympathetic biographer Peter Bourne: "'Affecting a South Georgia accent and humorously mimicking his campaign colleagues, Rafshoon would say, "We coulda won by a lot more if we'd bin able to stop Jimmah saying so many nahs things abaht nigguhs."' Carter's other senior campaign aide, Bill Pope, was even more blunt, telling the Washington Post that they had run a 'nigger campaign."
Upon getting elected governor, however, Carter shocked Georgia when he included in his inauguration speech that the time for discrimination was over. It was a race bait-and-switch, and though it was a cynical approach to victory, one can make the argument that it was the only way to win Georgia in 1970, and change it. (Sounds sort of like the "Change" campaign)
In April 1976, however, a glimpse of the old Carter shone through when he answered a question about integration issues, blurting out, "I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained." According to Hayward, the NY Daily News buried the quote in a jump paragraph that picked up on page 134.
Now as for the "kike" half of the rumor, Carter took a decidedly opposite approach.
How does an old-fashioned Southern Democrat say, "Damn those Jews!" in today's world and get away with it? He says, "Give Hamas a chance!" How does a bigot adapt his prejudices to the modern world? He sets his sights on Israel.
This sentence in the 1994 book Electing Jimmy Carter by campaign speechwriter Patrick Anderson reveals the general attitude of Carter's circle toward Jews: "A presidential candidate delivers two basic types of speeches: substantive and rhetorical. In the former, he goes before various interest groups-made up of Jews, teachers, farmers, whomever-and demonstrates his mastery of their issues..." Note that Anderson didn't say "Native Americans," "Hispanics" or "women," but specifically "Jews" have "interests." It's also clear from the book that Carter tended to roll his eyes at the mention of the plight of Soviet Jewry.
In 1979, according to writer Hugh Fitzgerald, while pressing Menachem Begin to make concession upon concession to Anwar Sadat, Carter erupted that he was "'sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust."
Later, in the late 1980s, notes Hayward, "Carter kept in touch with the PLO through the Carter Center's Palestinian financial backers." (Other backers include notorious Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the Sultan of Oman, and the Saudi bin Laden Group.) The author quotes Carter biographer Douglas Brinkley: "'Carter began the long process of trying to persuade Arafat to make statements that would be regarded as responsible in the United States,'" and eventually wrote the PLO leader a long letter "outlining a speech Arafat should give for Western consumption."
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, Carter wrote in the New York Times that the whole war could be avoided if only Israel would withdraw from the West Bank. Because Arafat also sided with Hussein and therefore lost financial support from other Arab leaders, Carter flew to Saudi Arabia for what Brinkley described as "essentially a fund-raising mission for the PLO."
In 2000, when Arafat walked away from an unprecedented offer by Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton, Carter said he understood Arafat, who "could not have survived politically if he had accepted." In a 2002 op-ed in the New York Times — which obliges in providing a pulpit for Carter whenever he wants to put the screws to Israel-Carter advocated that the U.S. take "more forceful action" with Israel, and wrote that Arafat "may well see the suicide attacks as one of the few ways to retaliate against his tormentors." [Emphasis added.] He then blamed Ariel Sharon for the popularity of suicide bombers, whom he described as "counterproductive."
In the same writing, Carter suggested taking away Israeli aid and establishing a legal requirement that American weapons be used by Israel "only for defensive purposes," as opposed to the Jenin terror raid — the door-to-door operation that resulted in more than 30 dead young Israeli soldiers and were a response to the Passover massacres, which Carter didn't mention. After all, today's Jew-killers are just "misguided young men and women," but withholding aid to Palestinians for electing Hamas is a "crime."
In his tireless quest to isolate Israel, Carter traveled to a Geneva conference in 2003 to help formulate a "peace plan" that columnist Charles Krauthammer described as a "suicide note" for Israel. At the end of the conference, Carter famously proclaimed, "Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution." [Emphasis added.]
In a March article in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Carter wrote that the "preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine ... Palestinians must live in peace and dignity, and permanent Israeli settlements on their land are a major obstacle to this goal." Living in peace and dignity, according to a racist, is achieved by expelling Jews.
Last month Carter closed an op-ed in USA Today by saying that peace between Israel and the Palestinians would "remove one of the major causes of international terrorism and greatly ease tensions that could precipitate a regional or even global conflict." Not only are Jews to blame for dead Jews, they are to blame for dead everyone else.
That the man finds Jews irksome is indisputable. Engaging in a more didactic and hell-sure moralizing than any Republican politician in recent memory, this bigot found an outlet in Middle East peace brokering, believing on some level that things really would be easier for the rest of humanity without Jews.
"I'm basically a redneck," Carter told reporters as he sought the redneck vote in his Georgia campaigns. But this redneck with hippie politics gives the south a bad name. He is called a humanitarian, but the worst human rights violations are those that are deliberately inflicted, and in the "Palestinian-Israeli" conflict, Israelis are the ones targeted for dismemberment and death. Carter's humanitarianism enshrouds a hatred. Then again, from a man widely summed up as having "never met a dictator he didn't like," hatred of Israel can be taken as a ringing endorsement of the Jewish State.
Carter has quoted Martin Luther King, but Dr. King would tell him what he told a student at Harvard who criticized Zionism: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."
The world continues to suffer from Carter's handiwork as president and beyond while he continues to sermonize at Sunday school and build habitats. There was a movement for an official congressional censure of Carter for his lifetime of achievement against American values and international security, hosted by a group called Move America Forward. In response to its petition drive for a censure, the organization received a wave of death threats and hate mail defending Carter with emails such as "Are you motherf — — — nuts, crazy, or some Jewish group?"
Today, Jimmy's son Jack wants to follow in his daddy's footsteps, and is making a run for Senator of Nevada this year. Good luck. If he wants to fill those shoes, he can start by learning how to pronounce "Jew." It begins with a 'K'.
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