Tag Archives: Birthers

national news

Who would have thought this could happen?

So help me I hadn’t planned on saying anything about the image posted on this blog item … but I just cannot help myself.

Former President Barack Obama and first lady Melania Trump sat next to each other at former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral this weekend.

I am struck — along with millions of other Americans — by the smile on Mrs. Trump’s face as the former president is telling her … something.

Why mention anything about this? Well, Mrs. Trump’s husband, Donald, has been highly critical of his immediate presidential predecessor. He at times has been intensely personal in his criticism. And let us not forget, too, that Trump also has fomented the “birther” lie about former President Obama’s constitutional eligibility into whether he was qualified to hold the office to which he was elected twice.Ā I am compelled to note that Mrs. Trump has contributed to the birther defamation by demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate.

A part of me, therefore, is glad this picture has gone viral on social media. It surely has shown up on the president’s Twitter feed. What’s more, I also am inclined to believe the president might be more than just a tad bit ticked off at his wife for speaking to — let alone smiling broadly — at Barack H. Obama.

If only any of us could be a fly on the wall in the room where the first couple talks about their respective weekend activities.

national news, political news

Trump no more believable now than before

Donald J. Trump has leveled a patently preposterous notion that Barack Obama “ordered” a wiretap at Trump Tower in New York City.

The president wants us to believe him. He’s a truth-teller. He’s the man now. He says it’s a “fact” that the former president broke the law, committed a felony. Does this individual — Trump — have a record of believability?

How about a quick review. Donald Trump has said:

* Thousands of Muslims cheered the collapse of the Twin Towers during the 9/11 terrorist attack. They didn’t.

* President Obama was born in Kenya and was not qualified to serve in the office to which he was elected twice. Another falsehood.

* U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in the murder of President Kennedy. False.

* “Millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton, providing her with her significant popular vote plurality over Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Didn’t happen.

Must I add that at no time did the candidate-turned-president offer a shred of proof for any of the things he had uttered out loud? Yet many voters believed him. Trump “tells it like it is,” they insisted. No, he made it up. He fabricated it. He lied through his teeth.

I also should remind you that when he said during his press conference three weeks ago that he scored the biggest Electoral College victory “since Ronald Reagan,” he said that it was something “I was told.” That was the defense he mounted after being challenged directly by “enemy of the people” media reps that his assertion about his electoral vote victory was patently false.

With that string of prevarications and lies, we now are being told to believe this latest whopper, that Barack Obama “ordered” wiretaps.

I cannot believe to this very moment that Donald John Trump was actually elected president of the United States.

But he was.

And no … I won’t “get over it.”

national news, political news

Pence breaks with Trump on Obama’s birth

FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015 file photo, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence announces that the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services has approved the state's waiver request for the plan his administration calls HIP 2.0, during a speech in Indianapolis. Pence said Wednesday that he regrets the "confusion" caused by a memo about a planned state-run news website and will scrap the project if it doesn't "respect the role of a free and independent press." (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Ā 

The Republican Party’s presidential ticket has at least one voice of reason, and it’s not the man at the top of the ticket.

No. The reasonable, sane voice comes from the vice presidential nominee, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who has broken with presidential nominee Donald Trump on the most outrageous element of his campaign for the White House: that Barack Obama was born somewhere other than Hawaii, one of the nation’s 50 states.

Pence said he accepts that President Obama is duly qualified to hold his office, that he isn’t a foreign-born imposter that Trump has alleged for longer than Obama has been president.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/pence-trump-obama-birther-comments-2278404

So, there you have it. Pence is on board. Will his running mate — the goofball reality TV celebrity/real estate mogul/politician buy in?

I don’t really care. Trump’s assertion of President Obama constitutional illegitimacy is laughable on its face.

national news, political news

Birtherism will live forever

obama

I thought I was done writing about birthers, those individuals who keep insisting that President Barack Obama was born in a country other than the United States of America.

Silly me.

A new poll is out. It says that more than 70 percent of Republicans believe the president was not born in the United States, that he was born in a foreign country, that he’s somehow not a legitimate president.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-persistent-partisan-divide-over-birther-question-n627446?cid=sm_tw

This might be the last time I’ll ever write about it. Then again, it might not be.

Allow me to make a couple of points.

First, the president produced a long-firm birth certificate that declares he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in August 1961, two years after Hawaii became one of the 50 states. He showed it to all of us .

That doesn’t seem to satisfy Republicans who continue to insist that he’s a foreigner.

Second, we also had this discussion with former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who actually was born in another country. He was born in Canada — to an American mother and a Cuban father. Cruz, though, said he was a U.S. citizen by virtue of his mother’s citizenship.

Which brings me back to the point about Obama’s citizenship. His mother was a U.S. citizen, too; his father — who he barely knew — was Kenyan.

And that brings us to the final point.

If Barack H. Obama had been born on, oh, Mars to an American mother and a foreign-born father, he still would be eligible to run — and serve — as president of the United States.

But that partisan divide keeps this non-story alive and kicking.

The ConstitutionĀ doesn’t stipulate precisely that a presidential candidate must be born within the nation’s borders. It says only that a “natural-born” citizen is eligible to run and serve.

In both instances,Ā Sen. Cruz and President ObamaĀ are eligible to runĀ for and serve as president.

However, inĀ theĀ matter involving the current president, he’s produced aĀ U.S. birth certificate.Ā It’s too bad, though, that most RepublicansĀ still seem to refuse to believe their lying eyes.

political news

Birthers now targeting Sen. Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks during the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, on Aug. 10.

Ted Cruz wants to be president of the United States.

Is he constitutionally qualified to run for the office, let alone occupy it?

That is the question of the moment.

The birther movement has returned. This ought to be fun.

The freshman Republican senator from Texas was born in Canada. His mother is an American citizen; Daddy Cruz is from Cuba. My understanding of the U.S. Constitution tells me that Momma Cruz’s U.S. citizenship makes him eligible, regardless of the fact that he was born in another country.

But what the heck. That apparently isn’t quite as clear as it seems.

Mom and Dad Cruz might have become Canadian citizens prior to young Ted’s birth. The question that needs to be answered is this: Did Ted’s mother surrender her U.S. citizenship if she became a Canadian citizen?

If she didn’t, then there’s no problem. If he did, well, then Sen. Cruz has a problem.

This problem has dogged Barack Obama ever since he emerged as a possible presidential candidate prior to the 2008 election. Those on the right insisted he needed to prove he was born in Hawaii and not in Kenya, where his father was born. If we apply the same logic to Cruz’s citizenship — that he earned U.S. citizenship merely because his mother is an American — then such a question never should have mattered as it regarded Barack Obama; his mother was an American, too.

The birthers are back.

They’ll pursue Ted Cruz with the same passion they pursued Barack Obama … I’m quite sure.

national news, political news

Birthers beware: Obama going to Kenya

1 Comment

This story is utterly hilarious and I cannot wait for President Obama to jaunt down the steps of Air Force One in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, of all places.

The president is visiting the African country and is likely to stick straight in the eyes — and ears — of the so-called “birthers” who keep yapping that he wasn’t born in the United States and that he is somehow not qualified to be president.

To which I say: So bleeping what?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/237384-former-nh-gov-obama-is-inciting-birthers-with-kenya-trip

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a player in the Republican Party hierarchy, thinks the president’s trip is going to energize the birthers. These are the clowns, such as Donald Trump, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas and perhaps a majority of the Texas Legislature for all I know, who keep implying that if Obama was born in Africa that he’s somehow disqualified from holding the office to which he was elected twice.

I have a two-word response: Ted Cruz.

The junior senator from Texas and GOP presidential candidate was in fact born in Canada. His mother is American, his father is Cuban. He’s been declared a U.S. citizen by every constitutional scholar under the sun. President Obama’s mother was American, his father was Kenyan. However, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii — but that hasn’t stopped the crackpot wing of the Republican Party from continuing to raise this birth issue whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Gov. Sununu thinks it well might rise again when the president jets off to Kenya later this year. ā€œI think his trip back to Kenya is going to create a lot of chatter and commentary amongst some of the hard right who still donā€™t see him as having been born in the U.S.,ā€ he said on Fox News’s ā€œAmericaā€™s Newsroom.”

The place of his birth doesn’t matter. He was born in Hawaii, U.S.A. Even if he wasn’t born in one of our 50 states, his mother’s citizenship makes this entire chatter moot.

The president’s upcoming Kenya trip only illustrates one thing: He’s got his mojo back.

Enjoy yourself, Mr. President.

 

national news, political news

Come clean, Mme. Secretary

Hillary Rodham Clinton can put the email controversy to bed today. It might be finished. Then again, her foes well might decide to keep the flames going.

The former secretary of state will conduct a press conference in New York. She’ll take questions about the email tempest — the one involving her use of a private account while she ran the State Department.

I refuse to call this a “scandal” because it doesn’t rise that level. It is a problem, though, for the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-address-email-controversy-115903.html?hp=t1_r

Congressional investigators are trying to link some missing emails to the Benghazi matter involving the deaths of four Americans in September 2012 at the U.S. consulate in Libya. That’s the politics of it:Ā Republicans keep smelling blood and keep looking to inflict a mortal wound to Clinton’s budding presidential candidacy.

In a strange way, I see this controversy developing the way the Barack Obama “birther” controversy was kept alive before withering away.

Those on the far right kept insisting that Obama wasn’t constitutionally qualified to serve as president because, they said, he was born in Africa. He wasn’t. The president said he was born in Hawaii. The controversy persisted until the night of Obama’s re-election in November 2012.

I have a strong suspicion that the email matter will keep boiling throughout this year and most of next — until when or if Hillary Clinton is elected president of the United States.

Still, it’s good that she’ll seek to quiet the storm today.

We’re all ears, Mme. Secretary.

 

Uncategorized

Benghazi = Birtherism

It’s beginning to sound, to me at least, that the Benghazi story is going to stay in the news through the 2016 election cycle.

After the election, it will disappear.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/06/01/fox-panel-laughs-at-laura-ingrahams-unrelenting/199529

Why then? It’s becoming clearer by the week that right wing think tanks, media outlets and politicians want to keep the issue roiling as long as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the hunt for the presidency during the next two years.

If she decides to run, which most folks think is a given, it will continue to be a discussion topic right up to Election Day. Then we’ll have the result. She’ll either be elected or defeated by a Republican; I’m assuming, of course, that she’ll be the Democratic nominee for president.

After that, the issue goes away. Quietly. Suddenly. Just disappears.

It kinda/sorta reminds me of the birtherism issue that dogged Barack Obama through two election cycles. There were those on the right who questioned whether he was constitutionally qualified to serve as president, alleging he was born in Kenya, rather than Hawaii.

We all heard the yammering, yes? Forget that we’ve heard very little from the left on the issue regarding another possible presidential candidate, Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who actually was born in Canada. Mama Cruz is an American, however, which makes him a U.S. citizen.

Hey, wait a minute. Wasn’t President Obama’s mother an American, too, which made him qualified to serve as president — even if he had been born in a foreign country?

Whatever. The birthers stopped their preposterous notion the moment he was re-elected in 2012.

I’m betting the same thing will happen with this Benghazi matter, no matter the outcome of the House select panel’s investigation into that horrible Sept. 11, 2012 fire fight that killed four Americans at the consulate in Libya.

These “scandals” do have a way of materializing — and vaporizing — at politically opportune times.

Uncategorized

Is Cruz qualified to run for POTUS?

National political media are starting to probe the issue of a possible presidential candidate’s constitutional qualifications.

The target this time is junior U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas.

http://us.cnn.com/2013/08/13/politics/natural-born-president/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook

Let’s flash back to 2008 when another candidate came under amazing scrutiny. He was then-junior U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. Some folks on the right said he couldn’t run for president because, they alleged, he was born in Kenya, homeland of his late father. Obama’s late mother, however, was an American citizen. Sen. Obama had said all along he was born in Hawaii, the 50th state of the U.S., in August 1961. That wasn’t good enough for the critics, who kept harping on his birth.

Eventually, Obama settled it by producing his birth certificate. He was re-elected in November 2012 and the yammering — save for a few crackpots on the far right — has stopped.

Now we have Cruz. The senator indeed was born in Canada. His father is Cuban. His mother is American. Cruz acknowledges he was born north of our border. And that has some folks questioning whether Cruz — who might run for president in 2016 — is qualified under the Constitution.

Article II stipulates that only a “natural born citizen or a “citizen of the United States … shall be eligible for the office of president.” Scholars have interpreted that to mean that Cruz could serve as president, given that his constitutional qualifications were earned at birth by virtue of his mother’s citizenship.

I tend to believe Cruz is qualified under the Constitution to serve as president, which means Obama would have been qualified to serve as well — had he been born in a foreign country, which he wasn’t.

Let’s wait to see how this Cruz story plays out. My bet, as I’ve noted already, is that the left won’t make Cruz’s birthplace nearly the issue that those on the right sought to do with Barack Obama.