RAZD just flatly states that the only reason anyone is questioning Obama’s birth is racism. Evidence he gives is that nobody has objected to Cruz’s candidacy. Speaking for myself, I had no idea Cruz was not born in the US until it came up in discussion here. I wonder how many others knew that.
I think I would argue that either the Constitutional provision should be read absolutely literally to mean you have to be actually born on American soil, or mitigating circumstances have to be spelled out better. For instance I could argue that the main issues in the case of being born in a foreign country could involve whether both parents were US citizens at the time, and how long the candidate lived there among other things, and that the Constitution should even perhaps be rewritten to make all that clear. But Cruz was apparently himself a citizen of Canada which may be the main disqualifier in his case anyway. In any case Cruz’s ineligibility had nothing whatever to do with my reaction to Obama’s.
To the accusation that it’s that he’s not one of us, of course we want a President who is one of us, meaning AN AMERICAN and AN AMERICAN AT HEART, with the best interests of the country at heart, which was certainly the intention of the Founders; and a lot of us feel that Obama has been anything but that. To accuse us of racism is really low, it’s not about race, certainly not for me. As I said, I would love to see Alan Keyes as President, for years I’ve thought that, because it’s not about race, it’s about worldview, it’s about being American from the heart.
Next is the post by dwise who mostly argued with a side point I made about IF the claim is true that being born in Kenya doesn’t disqualify him and he went on and on about how I should have done enough research to be convined that it doesn’t. However, this is not anywhere near as open and shut as he makes it sound. It has not been settled at all . There are still many who believe it does disqualify him based on how they read that Constitutional passage.
There’s also a lot more evidence that he was born in Kenya than the few bits I could remember: such as the publisher of his book who wrote that he was born in Kenya, and such as the documents that have come out from Occidental College showing that he requested aid as a foreign student. He’s also listed as a Muslim foreign student.
Modulous went to a lot of trouble to list court cases that decided against arguments for Obama’s foreign birth. That’s pretty impressive I must say but my impression is that a lot of it was dismissed before any case was actually conducted, on the basis of a judgment that it was frivolous and that sort of thing, so actual evidence wasn’t seriously considered. And of course I’d have to read every case to find out what evidence WAS considered, because some evidence is better than others.
This site has quite a comprehensive list of the evidence that has been collected that Obama was born in Kenya, at least that he was a foreigner when he came to the US to go to school. This latest information from Occidental College is pretty damning it seems to me. Indonesian foreign student applied for aid as a foreign student, faith listed as Muslim. I think most of the other evidence that’s been out there for years is good enough despite all the attempts to rationalize it away, but this one is particularly good.
Another thing I just this minute heard about that needs to be checked out is that he traveled as Barry Soetoro from Indonesia to Pakistan in 1981 with an Indonesian passport which proves citizenship. Also in the company of "another" Muslim according to my source.
Even a claim of hoax can be a hoax. "Fake news" was first used by Communist China against dissenters, which is pretty much how it's being used now in America too. It takes more than just saying so to prove it, as you all keep telling me. In any case I think there's quite enough genuine evidence against Obama to prove he was born in Kenya.
I have to answer personal accusations again just for the record. I don't HATE Obama, what I hate is Marxism, Anti-Americanism, and other destructive totalitarian ideologies, and Obama happens to be both a Marxist and a Muslim, Islam being a totalitarian ideology. (To whoever asked why anyone objects to his being a Muslim anyway, I was answering someone who adamantly insisted he's not a Muslim.)
My objections to Obama and the rest of the Left are political, not personal. The Left on the other hand seems to like to make everything personal, answer arguments with ad hominems, the currently most PC being "racist" and "xenophobic," which just as a matter of fact hardly ever fit the target anyway, it's all said for effect. Like the last item on Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: don't attack institutions, attack people, because people hurt, institutions don't. Which is a reversal of centuries of civilized rules of discourse that allow for personal respect even for an opponent whose views you abominate. I'm not a racist or a xenophobe, or any of the rest of the PC epithets, my responses are all about what people think and do, not anything about who they are personally. (But you do have to be a natural-born citizen of the US to run for President).
And then 8 years later almost nominate a candidate that openly admits he wasn't born in the US?
I don't see how that works.
As I recall I read a defense of Cruz as eligible despite his Canadian citizenship so I stopped worrying about it. Yes I might not have been as ready if someone says the same about Obama because I know Obama to be a Marxist out to undermine America, whereas I know Cruz has America's interests at heart. Again, nothing to do with race, everything to do with ideology.
Sigh. It was a confession, Paul, I wasn't defending it. I guess I just have to be WAY more explicit. Yes I would probably be more ready to accept an argument for Cruz's eligibility than Obama's, BUT NOT FOR RACIST REASONS. That was the point. I assume most of us have such foibles, I'm not defending it, I'm just saying my own weakness IS NOT RACIST.
It's pretty fishy that we aren't allowed to see documents from Obama's school years, don't you think? If the one from Occidental is fake, there's still that problem. Doesn't that bother you?
If somebody is going around faking this stuff that's pretty depressing. But the documents that have been offered from Obama's side have all sorts of problems on them too. I hate to bring it up because I really don't want to have to go through all that again. I spent a lot of time looking at them when they first came out.
What about the publisher of his book, or his agent or whoever she was, who wrote in a blurb to the book that he was born in Kenya?
Same thing as with the grandmother: it takes weird rationalizations to dispense with both of those.
And the mailman's testimony? Was that a hoax too? He said Bill Ayers' wife, don't remember her name, had talked glowingly about their foreign exchange student, or words to that effect, and then he met him on one of his deliveries and he told him he was going to be President of the US some day. Just the fact that he was identified as foreign is enough without the strange "prophecy" but I have no reason to doubt the prophecy either yet. I'm sure you all can find one, of course.
However, your alleged reasons for your prejudice against Obama are in fact just more examples of your prejudice against Obama. So that confession is pretty incomplete.
The prejudice was based on all the stuff that had already come out about Obama's foreign birth, not just some reaction I personally have to the man.
But also of course the reasons I gave, which there shouldn't be any reason to doubt. Why would I have anything against him except for his political views? Why do you guys on the Left have this NEED to smear your opponents with hidden motives you can't prove? What is wrong with the reasons I gave? He's a Marxist, his mother was even an actual Communist, the men in his environment were all Marxists or Communists, -- abe: not to mention Bill Ayers /abe --he is imbued with that doctrine, which is as far from American foundational philosophy as you can get, but also it's specifically and pointedly anti-American. There is absolutely nothing Christian about anything he says, and he clearly favors Muslims in many ways, that also bothers me. There is also no doubt that he spent a lot of time in foreign countries among Muslim family members. What's wrong with THESE reasons for objecting to him? Why do you have to make stuff up about a baseless psychological "hate" to explain something that is openly stated?
You guys really know nothing at all about Islam, or if you do you just automatically discount it for some reason. Muslims are allowed to act like the "infidel" when it would be dangerous to the cause of Allah to expose their Muslim identity. They are allowed to lie to the "infidel." This is all in their "holy" writings.
ABE: However, Obama doesn't need to be a serious practicing Muslim to be Muslim at heart, or biased in favor of Muslims, because of his experience with Muslim family members.
I don't see why questions of Obama's eligibility shouldn't be pertinent at any time. They'll probably be an issue for years to come.
As for how it came up, as I recall somebody brought up Trump's now-repudiated "birther" remarks in the usual pejorative manner and I said I hadn't seen them convincingly disproved. That's enough to start an argument at EvC that lasts for weeks.
But you are right, the more pressing issues of the moment concern this election.
The prejudice was based on all the stuff that had already come out about Obama's foreign birth, not just some reaction I personally have to the man
But foreign birth doesn't distinguish Obama from Cruz. The only relevant distinction I know is that there were questions about whether Cruz's mother was a U.S. Citizen at the time of his birth.
The point was that Obama's foreign birth had been made a big issue for some time and was hotly contested on the level of facts. "All the stuff that had already come out" DOES distinguish Obama from Cruz. The argument about Cruz didn't involve layers of denial, it was argued on the basis of easily ascertained facts, a matter of the interpretation of those facts. Unlike the Obama situation where over and over the facts themselves seemed to be hidden under layers of deceit. And still are.
Ya know, Paul, I have a hard time following all your convoluted paranoid accusations of me. They make no sense. They reveal nothing about me but suggest loads of dark things about your own mentality, beyond my fathoming.
Nothing you said is true. None of those things are argued on the basis of "documents" saying this or that, they are argued on the basis of the known facts about the situations.
If Muslims are threatened with the choice of conversion or death they can pretend to convert.
This means that you cannot successfully convert Muslims by force.
You object to it.
As I said I have a terrible time understanding your weird thinking about all this. I have no interest in converting anyone "by force," it's utterly alien to the Christian mindset. You can't become a Christian that way, you have to be born again, that's not something that can be accomplished by force or by anything I could do or say. Your thinking is bizarre. Islam, on the other hand, started out with forced conversions at swordpoint. Mohammed got his followers by murdering everyone who refused to accept his doctrine. Perhaps you are confusing the two entirely different religions.
If you aren't interested in converting Muslims by force, why would it even be relevant?
Why would what be relevant? Their lying? I thought this came up because of the post about how Obama couldn't be a Muslim because he behaves like an infidel. I was explaining why that could be the case with a genuine Muslim, having to do with Islamic teachings. Lying to infidels is a problem whether there's any attempt to convert Muslims or not. Why wouldn't it be? If their true agenda is to enslave or subjugate or kill infidels and they are pretending to be like those infidels, such deceit is dangerous. But that hadn't come up anyway. Your accusation comes out of the blue, out of your own weird assumptions, unrelated to anything I've said.
Obama's behavior wouldn't be the response to attempts to convert him, it would be a deceit to make it possible for him to become President in an atmosphere understood to be alien to Islam. It isn't just the "threat" of conversion that causes the deceit, it's anything considered to be important to further the causes of Islam.
I don't know Obama's agenda, although I would assume that if he is a Muslim his agenda is to promote Islam. What I said was a general statement about why lying to infidels is taught in Islam. Not all Muslims know all of the agenda of Islam, they just obey it.
You couldn't have these questions if you knew the truth about Islam, its history and doctrines and the agenda of taking the world for Allah by all kinds of different methods. It's sad that so many refuse to learn these things, preferring -- what? -- to believe it's just another benign religion?
Denying the facts means imputing false personal motivations to knowers of the facts
This is getting off topic already, but I hope it's just a temporary digression and we can get back to the question of Obama's birth. But really, that's probably already been discussed enough anyway.
Decided to post this relatively short video (7 minutes) because I'm being accused of the same things Bill Warner is discussing in it, and because my answer is the same: my focus is not on individual Muslims except as it comes up in context and I have to give a hypothetical answer -- but the answer is based on what I know about Islam, its doctrines and history. Individual Muslims can have any degree of understanding of their religion and any degree of commitment to particular doctrines, and even different ideas about what the doctrines mean -- which isn't going to stop other Muslims of a stricter interpretation from forcing them to accept their own interpretations if they differ, and do it by violence, which is why there are so many Muslim refugees out there.
Bill Warner talks about Islam, not against Muslims. He's far more knowledgeable about all this than I am, having studied it all very closely for years. Muslims do what they do because of their understanding of Islam. It's Islam the ideology I'm always talking about, and so is Bill Warner. This has nothing to do with any personal attitude at all, it's totally the result of having learned facts about Islam, it's the result of knowledge. Which apparently many here lack, or feel compelled to deny. You could learn something from the following video, but more likely many here will just do what you always do, call the man the usual names and refuse to learn anything about Islam.
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