What birthers need to do now

The argument of many birthers goes like this: the documents that would establish Obama’s natural born citizenship do not exist; therefore Obama is not eligible for the presidency; therefore honor and right and the Constitution require that we take steps to remove him from the presidency.

This, as I have said, is terribly premature. It is premature for the simple reason that most people have not kept up with this issue and are not aware of the facts. They are not aware that the documents that would establish Obama’s natural born status do not exist. Therefore what must be done at this stage is not to aim at the activist, disruptive, insanely divisive goal of removing a sitting president, but rather to inform and persuade people of the FACTS that have come to light.

And here is what has come to light. As a result of Gov. Abercrombie’s lurching behavior and statements, we now know with virtually absolute certainty that Obama’s birth certificate (the long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate) does not exist in the state of Hawaii records. How do we know this? We know it because in December Abercrombie noisily announced his intention of finding and releasing Obama’s birth certificate. Then he immediately went silent on the issue for several weeks. Then, at the end of a newspaper interview on political matters, a reporter asked him how the search for the birth certificate was going, and the governor mentioned some “recording” he had found “written down” in the state records. He didn’t mention the birth certificate. If he had found the birth certificate, he would have said so. Then a day or two later the governor announced that he was terminating his search for the birth certificate because Obama had not given his consent for the birth certificate to be released. Obviously that last announcement—that the birth certificate could not be released—contradicted the governor’s inadvertent confession to the reporter that the birth certificate could not be found.

If the governor of Hawaii, with all the apparatus of the state government at his fingertips, cannot find Obama’s birth certificate in the records of the state of which he is the governor, then we can take it as an established FACT that the birth certificate does not exist. Or, if it ever did exist, that it has been removed and hidden. Either way, there is no official record showing the truth about Obama’s birth.

This is the new information that most people are not aware of, and that we birthers need to spread. What we need to spread is not a call for Obama to be removed from office, a call which immediately results in birthers being dismissed as mere enemies of Obama, but the FACT that Obama’s birth certificate does not exist in the files of the state of Hawaii, that there is no official record of the time and place of Obama’s birth.

The ascertainment of that fact leads to certain conclusions:

1. The people who have been doubting the official story all along, the rational birthers (I do not speak here of the irrational birthers), have been right.

2. The people who have been mocking and dismissing the birthers have been wrong.

3. Barack Obama has been misstating and concealing the truth of the circumstances of his birth.

4. Everyone who has contemptuously dismissed all questions about Obama’s birth have been, willingly or not, Obama’s accessories in this concealment.

We don’t need to go to the next step, that Obama is therefore ineligible for the presidency and should be removed. Shifting the discussion to those extremely controversial assertions will distract attention from the facts which have been established. Let other people draw those conclusions. All we need to do is get people to see the FACT that contrary to what the entire media and official world have been telling us, there is no official record of Obama’s birth in Hawaii. Once that fact sinks into the public consciousness, then the discussion will be ready to move on to the next stage. But to try to move to the next stage when most people have not absorbed that fact, is premature and counterproductive.

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Roland D. writes:

It’s easy to dismiss Abercrombie as a buffoon—but at least he seems to be an honest man, in contrast with all the rest of Obama’s enablers who work to sweep the birth certificate issue under the rug.

Jim C. writes:

Fabulous post—couldn’t agree with you more.

Rick Darby writes:

I admire your ability to make critical distinctions. You have described the state of play exactly. One, the evidence strongly suggests that some information about the circumstances of Obama’s birth is not on the table. Two, we do not know what that information is, and while it’s only human to speculate, we should emphasize the known unknowns rather than spin theories about unknown unknowns. Three, it is reasonable to infer that that Obama and probably some in his circle have suppressed the information.

That seems as far as we can go at the moment. [LA replies: We can go further than that. We know that there is no Barack Obama birth certificate on file in the state of Hawaii.] Something is dodgy about the birth records (and other records of Obama’s life history), but suppressing one’s paper trail from the moment of parturition is probably not a crime, and almost certainly not grounds for impeachment. [LA replies: It’s not just that there is something “dodgy” about the birth records; the birth records DON’T EXIST.] If a “smoking gun” at some point reveals that Obama made up some of the details of his life, well, even that doesn’t rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Only if it should be indisputably proven that Obama was ineligible for the presidency would it make sense to talk about impeachment and the constitutional issues involved in all the bills he has signed. (And “indisputable” proof would itself be controversial: it would have to involve a document or documents, which could theoretically be forged.) [LA replies: I would say you’re understating the case. There is no proof of the facts of Obama’s birth, and thus no proof that he is a natural born citizen.]

It would be much better for Obama to be repudiated for the damage he has done and continues to do to the United States, not for emerging from a mis-located womb.

Leonard Stepanek writes:

You make the birther issue sound as if you’re the only rational inquirer. In point of fact I don’t know of ANY birther who has requested that Obama be removed from office if a birth certificate is not found. That is a fiction you have made up. Show me one article where a birther has stated that if no birth certificate is found, that Obama must be removed from office.

Birthers have not been irrational at all in this regard. They know full well the political difficulties of doing so. What they are doing is showing the moral ambiguity and possibly civic inadequacy of Obama’s candidacy.

As well, you make it sound as if stories such as this one start off from a “rational” base of inquiry. On the contrary, O.J. Simpson’s murder involvement and John Edward’s adulterous affairs did not start with the “rational” media but from “trashy” sources such as the National Inquirer (that engendered all sorts of “wild” suspicions). If those irrational birthers had not made this an issue, I doubt you would have noticed it! Now you’re getting on the bandwagon approximately two years after the fact.

LA replies:

You are an obnoxious fool. In addition to my recent writings about the birth issue, I have been writing about the issue and treating it seriously since summer 2008. These entries were all written in 2008:

Obama citizenship issue finally gets noticed by mainstream media; and my doubts about Philip Berg

Knowing what we don’t know about Obama’s birth certificate

Trying to clarify the imponderables of the natural born citizen issue

McCarthy on the birth certificate and more

Now go look in the mirror and say to yourself five times, “My mother and father gave birth to an obnoxious fool.”

Scott in PA writes:

I think you are incorrect to state that “we can take it as an established FACT that the birth certificate does not exist.”

You are overlooking the fact that Obama had the birth certificate in his possession, as he mentioned in his book Dreams. It’s quoted right there in the Cashill article you posted:

“Curiously, when Obama found the article about Obama Sr.’s departure, he found it “folded away among my birth certificate and old vaccination forms.”“

Therefore, the default position should be that Obama HAD the birth certificate and that he should STILL HAVE it unless a) he disposed of it; or b) he now can’t find it. As far as I know, he’s never been questioned about it.

That is what we should be focused on and I agree that the “what next” scenarios should be left out of the controversy until we get an explanation on the BC’s existence.

LA replies:

Yes, Obama referred to his “birth certificate” in that passage in Dreams. But that passage, which Cashill quotes, in contradicted by the other passage in Dreams which Cashill also quotes and which I quoted yesterday, in which Obama sadly states that he had no records establishing that Barack Obama Sr. was his father. The missing records presumably included his birth certificate.

Second, we don’t know what Obama meant by “birth certificate.” He might have been referring to a “certification of live birth.” Or he may have been misremembering.

Third, we don’t know what this “birth certificate” said about the facts of his birth.

Fourth, that birth certificate, whatever it was, no longer exists anywhere as far as we know. What we do know, and what matters, is that there is no birth certificate for Obama in the records of the state of Hawaii. That is the birth certificate that counts, and it doesn’t exist. If it did exist at some point, it has disappeared. And if, as is highly unlikely, it does exist now in Hawaii’s records, Obama is refusing to let anyone see it.

So we have a virtually absolute truth and an alternative, less likely truth. The virtually absolute truth is that the birth certificate does not exist in Hawaii’s records. The alternative, less likely truth is that the birth certificate exists but Obama is concealing it.

By the way, it is totally unacceptable that Cashill does not supply page numbers for the passages he quotes from Dreams. As I have said about Cashill for years, he makes good contributions to our understanding of Obama, but is often careless in his thinking and writing, and one must check everything he says.

Laura G. writes:

I think that you have it almost, but not quite, right.

The fact that there is no birth certificate is not compelling to many people, and that is because they have no clue as to why there is the specific constitutional provision that the president be “natural born.” They understand nothing about foreign influences (maybe think that it is a good thing) or the likely failure of non-natural citizens to understand American assumptions and expectations.

In my opinion, the next message to the American public should be: “Now that we know that the president has successfully hidden the fact that he does not have a Hawaiian birth certificate, even though we have been repeatedly reassured that he does have one, the question and task for the nation is to discover which persons and groups have made it possible for him to hide all of the usual documentation of his life that the rest of us can easily produce. Who are his helpers, why did they help him do this, and WHAT ARE THEY GETTING FROM HIM IN RETURN?”

Let the worries of the general public about safety and terrorism come to bear on this issue. Give them a reason to start demanding information from the government, Obama, their representatives, courts, and so forth.

Again, I know from experience that many committed Republicans do not have a reflex understanding of the reason for that constitutional provision, and consider it somewhat archaic and possibly bigoted. In the “Did you know that there is no birth certificate” message, we NEED to feed in a reason that they should also be deeply concerned. Outraged, rather. Otherwise, it will be easily buried. Again.

Cheers, and THANKS for hosting information and discussion on this fraught issue.

Mark T. writes:

If people don’t know the enormity of the problem, then mere presentation of the facts won’t convince them of anything. The pragmatists in the media will obfuscate and minimize. Let’s not assume that the general public has the proper context for the facts about the birth problem. It truly means we’d be in Constitutional crisis, and not some little technicality which has been overlooked. Obviously, non-leftists who are presented with the facts and who know the implications, will come to the only rational set of conclusions. But we must not over-estimate the ability of the general public to comprehend the Constitution, chain of command, and the other relevant factors. Therefore, we should also provide context along with the facts. But the trick is to avoid, to the greatest extent possible, being strident and inflammatory.

Ric C. writes:

Laura G. writes:

“Now that we know that the president has successfully hidden the fact that he does not have a Hawaiian birth certificate, even though we have been repeatedly reassured that he does have one, the question and task for the nation is to discover which persons and groups have made it possible for him to hide all of the usual documentation of his life that the rest of us can easily produce. Who are his helpers, why did they help him do this … “

Correct me if I am wrong, but the COLB is said to be a computer generated document to reflect the pertinent information contained on the vaulted long form birth certificate. Someone entered the data from the vaulted form into the data base to be retrieved on the COLB form. No long form, no data to enter.

I am not implying that he was born in Kenya, but that someone either entered data that didn’t exist, or entered inaccurate data from some type of official document should be in the vault.

When was the first COLB generated, and by what authority? An official stated recently that she had seen the vaulted document. So it does exist, or she is a liar. Someone is lying.

LA replies:

The official you are referring to is the then director of the Hawaii Department of Health, Chiyome Leinaala Fukino, who in October 2008 issued a statement saying that she had “seen and verified” that Obama’s birth information was on record in the Department of Health, though she declined to say what information it contained. We were just supposed to accept Fukino’s vague, fact-free statement on faith. Her statement, insofar as it was purported to answer the questions about Obama’s Hawaii birth and his natural born citizen status, was, as I explained, patently misleading and dishonest. It was the sort of thing one expects from a lying-through-her-teeth bureaucrat, or a Soviet apparatchik.

In any case, the governor of Hawaii in December 2010 and January 2011 couldn’t find the birth certificate which Fukino said in October 2010 she had “seen and verified.”

Also, I had a reader write to me today insisting in all seriousness that Fukino’s statement was a full and adequate resolution of the birth controversy, and accusing me of bad faith for not accepting her statement as proof of Obama’s birth in Hawaii. He probably thinks I’m one of the sowers of discord.

LA writes:

While some correspondents think that the whole birth controversy is a fraud made up by people of bad faith such as myself who refuse to accept the assurances of Obama, the MSM, and Dr. Fukino that all questions have been satisfactorily answered, other correspondents today have been charging me with denigrating birthers. There was one correspondent who denied that any birthers favor removing Obama from office, who said it was an insult on my part to say there were such birthers, and who insisted that I produce proof that there are such birthers.

VFR readers should count themselves fortunate that VFR does not have open commenting, so as to spare them this trash. I dig through the trash myself. That’s why they call me Dirty Larry.

Also, some of the e-mails have been so similar that I suspect they’re from the same person using different names. Anyway, here’s the latest:

“Burt Samovsky” writes:

Oh come on, get off this Cartesian “We know what we don’t know” thing about Obama’s birth certificate. Is this what Columbia did to your brains where you reduce things to syllogisms to produce an air of certainty. “I know what we don’t have so we shall speak of that which we know does not appear.” And you’re trying to convince those wild and irrational birthers who cling to their guns and their religion how they ought to think about the issue? Oh how snooty of you Monsignor Auster.

RD writes:

“I had a reader write to me today insisting in all seriousness that Fukino’s statement is a full and adequate resolution of the birth controversy.”

Well if Fukino was wrong about the End of History, then Fukino could be wrong about the birth controversy.

LA replies:

That’s funny.

Clark Coleman writes:

My comment in the old 2008 entry that begins, “There has been some speculation,” was pretty much where I left this issue for good. Barack Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham did not have a legally valid marriage, because B.O. Sr. was legally married to a Kenyan woman at the time. Therefore, Barack Jr.’s status is determined solely by his mother. As she was an American citizen, and Barack Jr. was illegitimate, she does not have to satisfy the requirement of five years residency after age 14 (else every child born to an 18 year old in America for several decades would have had to undergo naturalization!)

Therefore, the only thing the birthers can accomplish is to embarrass Obama Jr. in some way. They can force him to admit in public that he is illegitimate, at the least. They also might be able to force him to admit that he fabricated his stories about how close he was to his father. Maybe the birth certificate says something else embarrassing as well. But the birthers cannot establish that he is ineligible to be president.

Once I realized this, I moved on, because I am not interested in ad hominem embarrassment of political opponents, even though some of them deserve it. Or, let us say, I am not highly interested in such embarrassment, although I don’t have any great objection to it, either. Phonies who write phony autobiographies such as Dreams From My Father deserve some embarrassment, but it is not a constitutional crisis.

I remind you of the illegitimacy issue because the legal implications seem to be ignored by most of your respondents in the discussion.

LA replies:

While I, like you, have tended to believe that what he was covering up was his illegitimacy, not his non-natural born citizen status, your points nevertheless are not responsive to the central and legitimate concerns raised in this discussion. As I have said recently, correcting my own prevous thought, if he is illegitimate, that would probably not be shown by his birth certificate. Also, his illegitimacy is established by the fact that his father was married to a Kenyan woman and therefore any marriage with Stanley Ann would be void. The birth certificate would not show any of that. So evidently there is something else that is being covered up besides illegitimacy. Furthermore, whatever it is that’s being covered up, the fact remains that the birth certificate of the president of the United States is non-existent or hidden, and therefore we don’t know the circumstances of his birth and whether he is a natural born citizen.

So, pace your dismissive view of the matter, there is much more going on here than a mere attempt to embarrass someone. Basic information that the country needs to know is being hidden from it, and a massive system of lies is in place denying the fact that this information is being hidden.

There are more points to be made in response to your comment and I’ll try to make them tomorrow. But for now,

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 26, 2011 08:14 AM | Send