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Obama's Birth Certificate

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Here's the Tea Party argument in a nutshell: The long-form birth certificate that Obama presented on the internet was not a bonefide legal copy of the original, which means that it was a forgery. Not sure I actually buy that argument, but that is what they are saying. If you made a photocopy of your birth certificate and tried to pass it off as legitimate, then you would be guilty of forgery under the law, because that piece of paper would not have an original signature on it, but only a copy of an official signature. For a copy of birth certificate to be legal, it must contain the embossed imprint of the correct office that keeps the records, and a photocopy would not have that, making it illegal. Likewise, if you made a photocopy of a hundred dollar bill and tried to pass it off as a hundred dollar bill, you would be guilty of counterfeiting. So, it all depends if you buy the argument that a digital copy presented to the world and not presented as a bonefide legal copy of the original is either a forgery or a counterfeit. I think the Tea Party lawyers were fudging a bit, but so was the Obama lawyers; and, yes,I think this can all be tied back in to the dominance of Kantian philosophy in our culture. Maybe the law has not yet caught up with digital technology, but if you put a scanned image of your driver's license on the internet, are you guilty of breaking the law because it is not a bonefide copy of the original? I certainly hope not.

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If you made a photocopy of your birth certificate and tried to pass it off as legitimate, then you would be guilty of forgery under the law, because that piece of paper would not have an original signature on it, but only a copy of an official signature. For a copy of birth certificate to be legal, it must contain the embossed imprint of the correct office that keeps the records, and a photocopy would not have that, making it illegal. Likewise, if you made a photocopy of a hundred dollar bill and tried to pass it off as a hundred dollar bill, you would be guilty of counterfeiting. So, it all depends if you buy the argument that a digital copy presented to the world and not presented as a bonefide legal copy of the original is either a forgery or a counterfeit.

It's true that you need the original original of a birth certificate for certain kinds of bureaucratic transactions (marriage license, Social Security), making it in that sense the "legal" copy (just as you would need an actual hundred dollar bill for its use as legal tender), but that doesn't mean that it is illegal to copy a birth certificate, or to possess said copy, or to use it outside of the context of those bureaucratic transactions (just as, I would hope but do not strictly know, that it would be legal to photocopy a hundred dollar bill for one's private amusement).

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This is a waist of your energy Thomas.

It doesn't matter if Obama wasn't born in the US for the following reasons.

1) I haven't seen anything that would indicate that Obama is "unamerican". His policies fit the majorities opinions and he really isn't as leftist in practice as people feared (compare to lets say, the Anarchists in 1920s-30s spain, any real socialists, or europeans in general). He acts and makes policies like a IV league educated rich old white guy. Sounds like an American president to me.

2) Even if he isn't American this issue is really besides the point on whether or not he is a good president.

A) All Politicians lie. This isn't new and people who act supprised at this aren't naive and idealistic but are actually cynics who are attempting to manipulate people around them. Nixon had people break into a hotel room? Really is this news? Please.

B) If he was a far right near-objectivist politician, who was of great ability, we wouldn't care about his origin.

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1) I haven't seen anything that would indicate that Obama is "unamerican".

You can't be serious, or maybe you're not paying close attention. Do you want a list of the several of the first ten amendments that he's totally obliterated in his first 3 years? Or his previous statements on his opposition to negative liberties? The fact that he hasn't accomplished as much damage as he and other pinkos had hoped is an indication of the genius of the system and has next to nothing to do with his own restraint or moderation. He's every bit as bad as I expected and then some. If you don't feel it now you will later and your children and grandchildren will certainly suffer as a result of his policies.

That's why the birth issue is a minor detail. It pails in comparison to the amount of heinous precedent this piece of work has set for us. Just wait.

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You can't be serious, or maybe you're not paying close attention. Do you want a list of the several of the first ten amendments that he's totally obliterated in his first 3 years? Or his previous statements on his opposition to negative liberties? The fact that he hasn't accomplished as much damage as he and other pinkos had hoped is an indication of the genius of the system and has next to nothing to do with his own restraint or moderation. He's every bit as bad as I expected and then some. If you don't feel it now you will later and your children and grandchildren will certainly suffer as a result of his policies.

That's why the birth issue is a minor detail. It pails in comparison to the amount of heinous precedent this piece of work has set for us. Just wait.

Obama is not the first president to have problems with the Constitution. (Roosevelt)

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You can't be serious, or maybe you're not paying close attention. Do you want a list of the several of the first ten amendments that he's totally obliterated in his first 3 years? Or his previous statements on his opposition to negative liberties? The fact that he hasn't accomplished as much damage as he and other pinkos had hoped is an indication of the genius of the system and has next to nothing to do with his own restraint or moderation. He's every bit as bad as I expected and then some. If you don't feel it now you will later and your children and grandchildren will certainly suffer as a result of his policies.

That's why the birth issue is a minor detail. It pails in comparison to the amount of heinous precedent this piece of work has set for us. Just wait.

Hairnet is right in context of today's voter. Too many American's don't understand the Bill of Rights and most don't understand the principles behind them. Too many cheer politicians on when they violate them outright for pet causes. While Obama is certainly in violation of the American Ideal he is certainly a product of the American voters.

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Here's the Tea Party argument in a nutshell: The long-form birth certificate that Obama presented on the internet was not a bonefide legal copy of the original, which means that it was a forgery. Not sure I actually buy that argument, but that is what they are saying. If you made a photocopy of your birth certificate and tried to pass it off as legitimate, then you would be guilty of forgery under the law, because that piece of paper would not have an original signature on it, but only a copy of an official signature. For a copy of birth certificate to be legal, it must contain the embossed imprint of the correct office that keeps the records, and a photocopy would not have that, making it illegal. Likewise, if you made a photocopy of a hundred dollar bill and tried to pass it off as a hundred dollar bill, you would be guilty of counterfeiting. So, it all depends if you buy the argument that a digital copy presented to the world and not presented as a bonefide legal copy of the original is either a forgery or a counterfeit. I think the Tea Party lawyers were fudging a bit, but so was the Obama lawyers; and, yes,I think this can all be tied back in to the dominance of Kantian philosophy in our culture. Maybe the law has not yet caught up with digital technology, but if you put a scanned image of your driver's license on the internet, are you guilty of breaking the law because it is not a bonefide copy of the original? I certainly hope not.

So... you should have named this topic "Obama's Birth Certificate *WAS* Digitally Scanned". I guess when you state it like that, it looks pretty uncontroversial, considering that it was put on the internet digitally. More accurate than "faked" though.

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So... you should have named this topic "Obama's Birth Certificate *WAS* Digitally Scanned". I guess when you state it like that, it looks pretty uncontroversial, considering that it was put on the internet digitally. More accurate than "faked" though.

Actually, considering that the State of Hawaii refused to sanction the internet display of the birth certificate, because they thought it would lead to those printing it out and pretending to be Obama, the scanned copy may not have been a scanned copy of the original. There is no record that Obama or anyone was provided with the original for the purpose of scanning. It is not an official presentation of his birth certificate. But, yes, in retrospect, I was going by the headline of the article and didn't realize the argument behind it because they didn't make that clear in the article. Is it an important issue? In the proper context it could be because I think Obama et al have done incredible harm to the country and it would be important to legitimately remove him from office if that were feasible. Obama is the most explicit Marxist / Nihilist President we have ever had, and with a better culture, he could have been impeached before he did any real damage.

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But, yes, in retrospect, I was going by the headline of the article and didn't realize the argument behind it because they didn't make that clear in the article. Is it an important issue?

Never go by the headline. You fell victim to sensationalism. You did not practice objectivity, which in this case involved nothing more than reading the text and following the links rather than being satisfied with the emotional reaction the headline evoked.

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Never go by the headline. You fell victim to sensationalism. You did not practice objectivity, which in this case involved nothing more than reading the text and following the links rather than being satisfied with the emotional reaction the headline evoked.

Not true...I read the article, which also said that it was a forgery, according to the writer.

Added on edit: From the opening of the article:

Taking an audacious and shocking angle against the constitutional eligibility mandate, Obama’s lawyer, Alexandra Hill, admitted that the image of Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery and made the absurd claim that, therefore, it cannot be used as evidence to confirm his lack of natural born citizenship status. Therefore, she argued, it is “irrelevant to his placement on the ballot”.

So, it wasn't a form of emotionalism, but rather taking the article at its word.

Edited by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.
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The story and the headline can be described by many terms: spin, hype, bullshit, propaganda, lies. You fell for it, few others here did. Check your premises. One of the things I had to learn was that merely knowing about the issue of objectivity was not enough to me objective. Knowing how to do it is an entirely separate skill. It is hard to be objective in the sense that it takes time and effort and some checking and research.

".. according to the writer". His standards are your standards if you are going to be so promiscuous with what you allow to enter your mind.

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What are the relevant facts in this case? I think what is relevant is that the birth certificate presented by Obama / The White House was not a State of Hawaii certified reproduction of the original. If I were going to sent my birth certificate to someone official (even for a job) the copy I would have to send would have to be certified by the State of Pennsylvania for it to be a legally witnessed copy of the original. I don't see why a different standard ought to be applied to Obama, just because he is a Marxist Democrat and just because he is the President. So, in a legally technical sense, the digital image he presented on the internet is a forgery, since it wasn't certified by the State of Hawaii, and no one seems to be able to find a witness willing to state under oath that the digital image is in fact a scanned copy of the original (or a legal copy that Obama had). So, I don't think I am being non-objective. What facts do you think are relevant to the case?

Edited by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.
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By the way, those of you who are saying that all politicians lie and that if Obama lied about his birth certificate is just par for the course, are implicitly accepting the Kantian premises that the facts of reality don't matter in issue of pure reason (or with principles not derived from the facts of reality). The more we let them get away with it, the closer we get to dictatorship. Yaron Brook is under the impression that a dictatorship will not happen overnight, but rather gradually, which means, if you understand the connection between individual rights and the facts of reality, that the more they are permitted to get away with it, the more our rights will be eroded.

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By the way, those of you who are saying that all politicians lie and that if Obama lied about his birth certificate is just par for the course, are implicitly accepting the Kantian premises that the facts of reality don't matter in issue of pure reason (or with principles not derived from the facts of reality). The more we let them get away with it, the closer we get to dictatorship. Yaron Brook is under the impression that a dictatorship will not happen overnight, but rather gradually, which means, if you understand the connection between individual rights and the facts of reality, that the more they are permitted to get away with it, the more our rights will be eroded.

Well now there is an interesting possibility in why we do not consider an unproven theory about Obama and the possible implication that it proves he is a liar - Implicit agreement with Kant.

Another interesting possibility is that we simply paid attention to what candidate Obama said four years ago and essentialized the truth about the man from his speeches. Or to prove he was liar we went through the complex process of simply paying attention to what he did when elected and compared the contradictions to his promises as a candidate. Obama as a terrible President, let alone a liar, is news at 11 and the real essential fact is that we need to move on with what we have already confirmed and remove him as President.

Nah… that would be way too ridiculous. It must be Kant blocking us from verifying he is liar because it still needs to be demonstrated.

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What are the relevant facts in this case? I think what is relevant is that the birth certificate presented by Obama / The White House was not a State of Hawaii certified reproduction of the original. If I were going to sent my birth certificate to someone official (even for a job) the copy I would have to send would have to be certified by the State of Pennsylvania for it to be a legally witnessed copy of the original. I don't see why a different standard ought to be applied to Obama, just because he is a Marxist Democrat and just because he is the President.

The problem is that this idea of a birth certificate being a "legally witnessed copy of the original" is just a stipulation set by certain bureaucratic agencies for their own purposes. I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned in in this thread, but I'll say it again: that does not make a "non-witnessed copy" a "forgery" or illegal. It just means that such a photocopy will not suffice for those agencies, for those purposes. (It's kind of like how Universities will only accept sealed transcripts; that doesn't make it a crime -- or a "forgery" -- to possess unsealed transcripts.)

If I possess a photocopy of my birth certificate, that isn't a crime; there is no "forgery" there. If you ask me to see my birth certificate, and I show you my photocopy, I haven't committed any crime. No "forgery" there, either.

So, in a legally technical sense, the digital image he presented on the internet is a forgery, since it wasn't certified by the State of Hawaii, and no one seems to be able to find a witness willing to state under oath that the digital image is in fact a scanned copy of the original (or a legal copy that Obama had).

Do you now see the mistake? It isn't a "forgery" because it wasn't certified by the State of Hawaii. That's not what constitutes a "forgery." This is what you can say of this birth certificate: it is unsuitable for those official transactions which require a certificate certified by the State of Hawaii. But that doesn't make possession of this document, or its informal use (where a certified copy is not required by law), a crime, and it doesn't make the document a "forgery."

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By the way, those of you who are saying that all politicians lie and that if Obama lied about his birth certificate is just par for the course, are implicitly accepting the Kantian premises that the facts of reality don't matter in issue of pure reason (or with principles not derived from the facts of reality).

That is not Kant's position. As I've pointed out many times, you've read Kant with extreme hostility and therefore have not understood anything he wrote. You prejudged Kant based on your accepting on faith Rand's mistaken judgments of him, and then you went out looking to find justification, whether it existed or not, which led you to wildly misinterpret almost everything he wrote.

It's your standard operating procedure. You leap before you look, and then twist yourself into pretzels in trying to justify your erroneous leaping.

J

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The story and the headline can be described by many terms: spin, hype, bullshit, propaganda, lies. You fell for it, few others here did. Check your premises.

Hey hey, keep it civil! As I noted here, it took mere seconds to debunk this latest birther story. One just had to take an interest in seeking out an opposing view; immediately I found a site where evidence was provided. But that’s clearly not Thomas’s M.O., and this coming after his public mea culpa over the baby eating business, leaves one tempted to quote the prose stylings from, of all places, Checking Premises: “Well, the game is up: we are onto you, and we are not going to let this go unnoticed and without a fight.” And now me pound chest, arrrrrrr…

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What are the relevant facts in this case? I think what is relevant is that the birth certificate presented by Obama / The White House was not a State of Hawaii certified reproduction of the original.

Stop right there. There never was a presentation by Obama, and therefore no one to receive a presentation. Officials of the State of Hawaii gave to Obama a copy of his birth certificate (the so-called long form). Obama then put a copy on the internet so millions of people could see what that document looked like. Should any other state's official need a birth certificate for proof of citizenship then this document (in paper form) is what he will present, or have Hawaii officials mail an Official Notarized Copy of it direct from Hawaii. Because of the "full faith and credit" clause of the U.S. Constitution the state government of Hawaii is the final authority on whether Obama was born within Hawaii or not. So long as Hawaii stands behind its own record keeping system, which is fully computerized and not a warehouse of paper documents, that is the end of any possible legitimate dispute.

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Does anyone here, besides Thomas, take this birther stuff seriously? It takes a matter of seconds to debunk with a little googling. In this case, an attorney notes that she doesn't have to discuss whether the birth certificate that was released is genuine, since it's irrelevant to the case. It simply wasn't evidence in the case being argued. This goes into the birther spin-echo chamber, and becomes attorney admits birth certificate is a forgery!

!

Listen starting about 42 minutes in, if you don't mind wasting a few minutes of your life. If you were alive and conscious in 2008, you must know that if there was anything to the birther story, Hillary's goons would have dug it out.

I skipped over this before because of the 42 minutes, (way more time than this issue deserves) I preferred to go over a transcript or unofficial written account of the proceeding. But this is good evidence and thanks for finding it.

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I'm not going to follow all of the links in the Wiki article (since there are just too many), but on the very first reference there is a link to an article whereby the proper official of Hawaii was willing to claim to be an eye witness to the original. I'm still waiting for the transcript of this threads opening article to see exactly what Obama's lawyer admitted to.

"I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawai'i State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai'i State Department of Health verifying Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawai'i and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008, over eight months ago."

In short, if it is a real conspiracy to keep Obama in office, he's got a lot of government officials willing to lie for him.

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Obama loves the birth certificate issue because anyone who takes the bait of buying into the conspiracy immediately brands themselves as a wack job. I think it's fair really, since a 30 second Google search shows there is no credance to the whole thing. Obama held off so long releasing the certificate so that viable rivals would undermine their own campaigns. "Birthers" are not taken seriously in the public discourse and agreeing with Birther ideas only serves to discredit other, legitimate complaints about the President.

If you believe in the Birther nonsense, please don't describe yourself in public as Objectivist or as liking Ayn Rand, since all you do is make it that much harder for the rest of us to get rational ideas taken seriously.

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Yes, I am an Objectivist, and proudly assert that. I did not expect a Tea Party associate newspaper to come out and claim the birth certificate was a forgery as confirmed by Obama's lawyer to be hype over a technicality. However, technically, since the long-form was not endorsed or certified by the State of Hawaii, then it is a forgery; as it would be if any of us tried to get away with that.

Added on edit: Try to get away with it when filing for a driver's license or any other official documentation of your place of birth as required by law.

Edited by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.
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