God, I hate to wade into the idiotic “birther” issue but this report from AP, which takes the most basic journalistic approach to the controversy, seems to shut the door on this nonsense. Please read and, if you’re one of the delusional birther Republicans, please say 10 Hail Marys on Easter Sunday asking for forgiveness for getting mixed up in such nonsense.
Here’s the AOL report:
“Lost in the renewed scrutiny into President Barack Obama’s birth records is the fact that anyone can walk into a Hawaii vital records office, wait in line behind couples getting marriage licenses, and open a baby-blue government binder containing basic information about his birth. “Highlighted in yellow on page 1,218 of the thick binder is the computer-generated listing for a boy named Barack Hussein Obama II born in Hawaii, surrounded by the alphabetized last names of all other children born in-state between 1960 and 1964. This is the only government birth information, called ‘index data,’ available to the public.
“In this photo (above) taken April 20, President Barack Obama’s name is seen highlighted in a computer-generated birth index from 1960-1964 in a Hawaii state government binder held at the state Department of Health in Honolulu.
“So far this month, only The Associated Press and one other person had looked at the binder, according to a sign-in sheet viewed Wednesday in the state Department of Health building. The sheet showed about 25 names of people who have seen the document since March 2010, when the sign-in sheet begins.
“Those documents complement newspaper birth announcements published soon after Obama’s Aug. 4, 1961, birth and a ‘certification of live birth’ released by the Obama campaign three years ago, the only type of birth certificate the state issues.”
Donald Trump take notice — certification of live birth is the only document released to the public to confirm place of birth. Hawaii officials also confirm that Trump’s so-called investigation of Obama’s birthplace is a sham. But I’m getting ahead of the story.
Let’s let the AP continue: “So-called ‘birthers’ claim there’s no proof Obama was born in the United States, and he is therefore ineligible to be president. Many of the skeptics suggest he was actually born in Kenya, his father’s home country, or Indonesia, where he spent a few years of his childhood.
“Possible Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly stoked the birther fires recently, and last month called on Obama to ‘show his birth certificate.’ Trump said he has investigators in Hawaii searching for more information.
“‘Nobody has come in and said they’re investigating for Donald Trump,'” said Department of Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo, who acknowledged they could’ve come in without identifying themselves as representing Trump. “What the would-be sleuths won’t find is Obama’s ‘long-form birth certificate,’ a confidential one-page document containing his original birth records kept on file in the first floor of the Department of Health. “Those original birth records typically include additional birth details, such as the hospital and delivering doctor, said Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the state’s former health director, who twice looked at and publicly confirmed Obama’s original long-form birth records. “But those documents are state government property that can’t be released to anyone — even the president himself, said Joshua Wisch, special assistant to the state attorney general. Obama would be able to inspect his birth records if he visited the Health Department in person, but original records of live birth are never released, he said. “Fukino, who served as the state’s health director until late last year under former Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, said in an interview with The Associated Press she’s convinced the long-form document is authentic. She issued public statements in 2008 and 2009 saying she had seen the original records. “‘It is absolutely clear to me that he was born here in Hawaii,'” Fukino told the AP. “‘It should not be an issue, and I think people need to focus on the other bad things going on in our country and in our state and figure out what we’re going to do about those things.'” “Before Obama’s campaign released his certification of live birth in 2008, he or someone with a tangible interest had to make a written request and pay a $10 fee to receive it, Okubo said. Wisch also said Obama obtained a copy of his own certification of live birth and publicly released it. “State privacy laws prevent a certification of live birth from being released to anyone except those with a tangible interest, such as the person named by the birth record or a close family member. “The document is generated by computer, based on original birth records on file with the state, Fukino said. “… But the birther conspiracy theory refuses to go away. The latest New York Times-CBS News poll found that 45 percent of adult Republicans said they believe Obama was born in another country, and 22 percent said they don’t know. Only one-third of Republicans said they believe the president is native born. The same poll a year ago found that a plurality of Republicans believed the president was born in the U.S.
“… Newspaper birth announcements appeared in both The Honolulu Advertiser and The Honolulu Star-Bulletin in the weeks after he was born. “The Aug. 13, 1961, announcement in the Advertiser appears on page B-6 of the Sunday edition, next to classified ads for carpentry work and house repair. “‘It says, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4.’ The address belonged to the parents of Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother. “A similar announcement appeared the following day on page 24 of the Star-Bulletin.”
Again, I hate to belabor the point, but what does it say about Americans politics when those who adhere to one of two political parties believes a conspiracy theory something along these lines:
In 1961, when segregation and Jim Crow laws were still alive and well in parts of America, when most colleges would not even let blacks suit up to play sports, when police used water cannons and attack dogs to counter civil rights protests, when blacks were not allowed to sit in a diner or drink from a water fountain, how plausible is it that a plot was hatched in a new state called Hawaii to set the stage so that a black baby with the name of Barack Hussein Obama would eventually become president?
Implicit in the idea that the birth certificate and the newspaper notices were created out of whole cloth is that a conspiracy was hatched at a time when portions of America were still struggling with the idea that blacks were full-fledged human beings who should be granted all the rights enjoyed by whites.
In 1961, the idea that we would have a black president in less than 40 years was essentially ridiculous. In some parts of the South, blacks weren’t even allowed to vote.
Yet, this Obama-for-president scheme was hatched in Hawaii — not in New York or LA or Chicago — but in some far-away land consisting of islands with names that most Americans could not pronounce? What’s more, the conspirators supposedly chose a baby with a strange name who was spawned by a bi-racial couple at a time when the vast majority of Americans opposed legalizing bi-racial marriage?
Meanwhile, Obama’s mother, a well-educated woman, agreed to travel to a poor African country to give birth, rather than relying upon a Hawaiian hospital? Can you imagine what the state of medical care was in Kenya in 1961?
In addition, the state Health Department plotted with two newspapers to publish announcements of a birth that never happened on Hawaiian soil? And none of the many people involved have ever stepped forward to reveal that we have a president who is part of a 50-year scam and is, in fact, ineligible to hold office?
If you believe that, maybe you will believe that the black helicopters, enroute from Kenya, swooped low into Hawaiian airspace on Aug. 4, 1961, and dropped the Barack baby into the arms of his mother, ala The Stork.
