If they did produce the original birth certificate, a lot of birthers will just say that they could have paid someone in Hawaii to forge it at the time.
Probably the same people who placed the phony birth announcements.
Like Frank, I have a somewhat faded copy of the handwritten birth certificate that was issued by the county clerk in October of 1947. It has all the information that the Birthers want Obama to disclose, and if I were in his position (perish the thought!) and provided it, it might shut 0.000000003% of them up. But when it came to getting my enhanced driver’s license — sort of a mini-passport good for reentering the country from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean — I had to present the much-maligned short-form. The reason: the long form lacks a “control number,” which can be used to verify its authenticity with the issuing agency. Without such a verification, the position of the SoW is that the document is a vile forgery.
What makes hospital records “impossible” to forge? What makes them so much more reliable than birth certificates?
I’m going to guess the sheer volume of paper. A birth certificate is one sheet while hospital records could be the thickness of a Stephen King novel and involve faking dozens of different handwriting styles.
I am always hesitant to support an argument that begins with the premise: “They are less smart than us.”
Consequently in my view, the birthers have reviewed the evidence and are fully aware President Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States of America. They simply make a rational calculation that it is more damaging to him than not, to allege there is a conspiracy surrounding his birth.
The truth or falsehood of the proposition does not come into it. So I differ in the view that further evidence is useless to persuade them, only in this: They are already persuaded to the correct position. Rather, birthers simply put an argument they know to be untrue. There is no appealing to integrity because they have none.
This is a pretty good example to use.
If someone were to question your citizenship, you should not have to produce anything but your legal birth certificate. End of story.
If, for some reason, you rose to the Presidency, from a legal standpoint in my view it makes no difference. You are a citizen if you have that piece of paper.
Now along come some nutcases who want to undermine your legitimacy. They take the position your mother had reason at the time to fake your US birth. If that’s the fact you wanted to prove, rather than proving your citizenship, it’s the original records that create credibility. It’s not the “official” Maryland certificate.
The reason is that the “official” certificate is a fairly low-level clerical function, pretty easily manipulated, particularly in years past. It also does not contain nearly the detail of original, handwritten records. Most solid of all are the hospital records themselves, and those are almost never thrown away. They are either in boxes or on microfiche or scanned into electronic images.
If what you wanted to prove is the exact circumstance of your birth, those are the records to go after. They are incontrovertible, and it’s easy to figure out if they exist or not. Either paper files for that period are in a box, or they are on microfiche, or they are scanned images, or they are all lost for all patients of that time period. The head of medical records at your hospital could tell you that in about 15 minutes. Most typically they are archived to a warehouse somewhere; many have been converted to microfilm, though.
It’s not information kept by the State of Maryland. It’s simply corroborating information–actually, source information–that would silence the nutcases questioning the validity of your birth circumstance as listed on the “official” certificate. It’s the kind of source information that a careful Doper would demand be explored were the conclusion in question to come down on the opposite side of his opinion. History is chock full of dubious documents, and ferreting out source information is how they are either verified or falsified.
Apparently Abercrombie wants all corroborating information rooted out to legitimize the President’s Hawaiian birth as absolutely as possible so that his place in history will not be tainted by false allegations. Such a search would begin with a search for hospital records for the birth mother.
However, no legitimate source of “questioning,” (Congress, Electoral College, Supreme Court, etc.) has any reason to question the legitimacy of the president’s citizenship or legal stature to hold the office. That means that every effort to prove the (nutcase) birthers wrong is actually an effort to grant them a legitimacy and standing that they do not possess and certainly do not deserve.
I am not sure why the governor of Hawaii wants to pretend that the government has a reason to give nutcases any appearance of legitimacy, but IMO, he should be publicly laughing at them, not feeding their insatiable lust for more facts to ignore.
Next, we’ll start having Congress holding hearings to determine the legitimacy of court rulings in whch the courtroom flag had or failed to have gold tassels at the bottom.
For those who appear to think that the birthers simply need to be convinced by the right piece of paper of their error, I predict right now that in the next session of Congress, the Republican-majority House will have at least one hearing on this subject. There’s no way they can ignore their birther base completely. And some of the Republican Reps seem to be sincere birthers themselves.
So this bullshit is going to be officially accorded some respect in at least the committee rooms of our illustrious Congress. Gaaah…
Exactly. If you produced the long form certificate, hospital records, photos of Obama’s mother at the hospital, whatnot, they’d simply say something like, “Well, why’d it take so long? That seems pretty suspicious.”
So, yeah, there’s no way you’re going shut these assholes up. It’s like trying to convince the moon hoaxers that we really did land on the moon. Short of actually taking them to the Apollo landing sites, you’re not going to make any headway with them, and even then they’d probably insist it was some sort of set up and that you were really putting them on a movie set.
He’s an old friend of Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. and he seems to be personally offended by this stupid conspiracy theory. He also seems to believe these people can be convinced by facts and documentation. So maybe he’s naive or maybe he is well intentioned but misguided. Susanann’s post is a nice indication of how the goalposts will shift if these records are ever produced.
I disagree. I think there may be a few who are pushing the idea for political purposes but I think the vast majority of birthers are sincere.
You’re right that it’s not about the evidence, but they’re not ignoring the evidence for political reasons, they’re ignoring the evidence for emotional reasons.
They’re not consciously examining the evidence and then dismissing it. They’re letting their emotions block logical analysis of the issue.
They want so badly to believe that Obama is not the President that they’re not thinking rationally.
CHIEF ZED: Sorry, guys, we gotta leave this one alone. B’rrr’ooorhakkka’aaa Hssssss Akh-Buumaaiy has a valid Earth residence-and-work permit under the Third Crab Nebula Treaty, and he really was hatched in Honolulu.
You obviously do not understand my post at all.
In fact, I said just the OPPOSITE of your misrepresentation of me. The goalposts would NOT be moved if obama made public his birth certificate, hospital records, school and college records, passports and visas, selective service records, social security records, marriage/divorce records, health records, etc. Even if “a few” of his history records really did come up missing after instructing the schools and various government agencies to release everything, then everyone would accept it and move on to other issues.
What I said was: “if” obama was to honor/keep his promise to be the most transparent administration in American history, and he began by releasing “ALL” of his personal history records (which are all currently kept secret under seal and lock and key by a bevy of law firms) then, and only then, the entire birth certificate/natural born citizenship issue will be completely dissolved and our country could spend time on other things like fixing the economy, getting back millions of jobs, and ending the wars.
The “goalposts”, as you put it, would not be moved, but would disappear as obama’s ineligibility to be President would be resolved. I am agreeing with long time obama supporters and friends like the new Democrat Governor of Hawaii, Democrat Chris Matthews, etc.
There are other more important things America should be dealing with.
Yes, you’ve moved the goalposts. It used to be “we just want to see the birth certificate.” Now you’re asking for a bunch of irrelevant crap that nobody should be required to reveal. Why the hell do you want to see those things? What will his grades and marriage license prove?
This has nothing to do with his administration. They are personal records. You have as much right to see his college grades as Obama does to see yours, which is to say none.
Cite please.
It’s been resolved.
Some of us are focused on those things. Including Barack Obama, despite the mistakes he’s made. Others - and this apparently includes you - simply cannot get over this nonsense about his birth certificate.
He is eligible. You might have noticed he is currently the president.
Let me put it in simple terms.
Obama’s “ineligibility to be president” IS resolved, as false, to SANE AND/OR HONEST PEOPLE. The only people who currently profess doubt as to Obama’s citizenship and eligibility are either insane or lying for political purposes. Period.
The entire birther nonsense is one of the stupidest mass delusions of the last 50 years.
No they wouldn’t. Because birthers are either stupid, insane or willfully ignorant.
Why? What possible reason could you want for those records? Other than to try to nitpick the man to death and make up bullshit issues. The whole birther issue itself is because he released a record, his birth certificate. And stupid, angry, and largely racist people grabbed onto it and ran.
This is not true. Just like your assertion that all hospitals everywhere keep patient records forever.
A pathetic minority of stupid racists are what’s keeping the birther movement alive. Releasing records aren’t going to make those people smarter or less racist.
The issue is resolved. You simply want to pretend it isn’t.
This may be the first correct thing you’ve said in this thread. 
If you believe this than there’s little we can do to help you.
Hey, at least she doesn’t believe they’re hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar under Funke & Wagnall’s back porch…
Where exactly are you getting this bullshit?