In the comments section of the preceding post, Shooting Parrots said, “It’s hard to understand this obsession with Obama’s birthplace for us non-Americans, apart from the obvious -- that it would make him one too.”
I replied at length and decided to elevate my reply to full post status:
Shooting Parrots, I don’t understand what you mean by “the obvious - that it would make him one too.” One what? Please explain. [Editor's note. Later on, I figured out what he meant. Keep reading. --RWP]
For all of my readers, Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution states the following: “The President must be a natural born citizen of the United States or a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, at least 35 years old and a resident of the United States for at least 14 years.”
The rub with BHO is that little phrase “a natural born citizen.” If he was born in Kenya, he was and is ineligible to be President of the United States. Even Mitt Romney’s father, Governor George Romney of Michigan, faced the same problem when he wanted to run for the presidency. Although both of his parents were U.S. citizens, they were living in Mexico at the time George was born, and many believed George’s having been born in Mexico disqualified him to run for President.
Conservatives believe that the wording of the U.S. Constitution should be followed literally. Liberals seem to believe that since it is just a piece of paper written 230 years ago it can be re-interpreted by succeeding generations to mean whatever liberals want it to mean and to further whatever agenda liberals want to further. Liberals, it turns out, ignore the plain wording of the Constitution and interpret “a natural born citizen” to mean the child of at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen, regardless where the child happens to have been born. There is no question of BHO’s citizenship through his American mother. The question is whether he is “a natural born citizen.” That’s all.
The Constitution also describes the procedure for amending the Constitution, and it has been followed successfully 27 times since 1789: The proposed amendment must be passed by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the Senate, and then be ratified by three-fourths of the State Legislatures (of which there are currently 50). An alternate path is that two-thirds of the States petition Congress to call a Constitutional Convention. This method has never been used to date.
So it is very important whether BHO was born in Kenya or in our 50th state, Hawaii. Some idiots known as “birthers” think that even Hawaii should not count, which is completely ridiculous as Hawaii had entered the union two years before BHO was born.
I hope this clears up the confusion rather than making it worse.
That was the end of my comment. Then it hit me. I knew what Shooting Parrots had meant. So I wrote another comment:
Shooting Parrots, I just got it. That it would make him a non-American too.
No, it wouldn’t. As someone with an an American mother and a Kenyan father, BHO is an American citizen. The question, as I elaborated on in the previous comment, is only whether he is “a natural born citizen.”
That was the end of my second comment.
Then I thought of something else I wanted to say. So here goes:
Yes, there is a form showing that BHO was born in Hawaii. But the question persists, because even BHO’s step-grandmother (one of his grandfather's four wives) has said he was born in Kenya, and others say that BHO’s mother flew from Kenya to Hawaii when BHO was just a few days old and registered his birth in Hawaii. The form released by the state of Hawaii is the “short form” but the “long form” with more information has never been released.
My Dear Mr Brague,
ReplyDeleteActually you can breathe easily now because there's a credible rumour bouncing around the worldwide web that Osama bin Laden didn't really die in Pakistan last year and in fact your beloved president actually IS Osama bin Laden! Another rumour says he's an alien from the Planet Zog and yet a third rumour says he's a hologram developed in Silicon Valley. I trust this clarifies matters.
Yours truly,
Nemesis Pudding (Lord)
Yorkshire Pudding, now two of those three are just silly. The one that is obviously true is that he's an alien from the Planet Zog.
ReplyDeleteWere you aware that the King of Albania back in the 1930s was named Zog? I'm married to an Albanian-American and she ought to know.
Dang liberals are running this country in the ground. I say that if you weren't there, you didn't see where he got born, so there's really no way to know.
ReplyDeletemutt romenoly would make a great mexican prsident all those living in mexico, the silvers{my relatives} and mutt.s family all were living poligomy and that is why they were in mexico<><>my relative joseph askie silver ran the foundry works in slc and had my great grandmother elise droubey, and four others to support and was tossed out of our church in 1904<><>i alos wouldn't mind having a kenya president<><>they are all reallly good running and always do well in the new york marathon
ReplyDeleteSnowbrush, you probably said that with a twinkle in your eye. It really is a case of "Vas you dere, Charlie?" (my mother's favorite phrase) in action. I mean, either we trust everyone we know to be telling the truth at all times or we don't. It's as simple as that.
ReplyDeletePutz, leave it to you to put the whole issue into proper perspective. I had forgotten how good the Kenyans are at running. Just about every year one of them (not the same one) wins the Peachtree Road Race here in Atlanta on the morning of the Fourth of July. Good point.
"I mean, either we trust everyone we know to be telling the truth at all times or we don't."
ReplyDeleteThe first option is impossible since even people who try to tell the truth often contradict one another (for instance, by having formed different impressions of what happened). As for the second, I try to figure out where people's weaknesses are so I can be prepared for them. For example, if Peggy grimaces, and I ask her what's wrong, she'll usually say she's okay although she's obviously in pain (I call her John Wayne). But if Peggy tells me something about almost anything else, I believe her.
Isn't it more important whether or not he's a good president of the USA?
ReplyDeleteI must be very naive.
"Isn't it more important whether or not he's a good president of the USA?"
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely NO one who thinks he's a good president worries about this. Absolutely NO liberals worry about this even if they don't think he's a good president. ONLY ultra conservatives who think Obama is doing a terrible job worry about this.
I was obviously being too clever for my own good. I did indeed mean that it would mean he was non-American, but it was just a play on words because as you point, he would still be an American citizen!
ReplyDeleteI am aware that the Constitution commands that the president should have been born in the US and be aged over 35. There may be other qualifications, but I'm not an expert.
I can understand why the authors included the former - to prevent possible foreign rule in the future. The point I was trying and failing to make was that this seems anachronistic, to me at least, that certain citizens are barred from the highest office.
That aside, if O'Bama's birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii, isn't that an end to it? He is what he is according to the official record and it doesn't really matter what others might say.
But a question for you - assuming the allegations were proved beyond doubt, where would that leave the last four years? Would all the legislation O'Bama has presided over become null and void?