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Maynard gets wild & crazy.

Lately there’s been a blip of renewed interest in that birth certificate, thanks first to Donald Trump, and now Jerome Corsi’s upcoming book, Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President.

Is this the debate we want to have? Well, like it or not, the argument continues. There are currently over a hundred discussions on the Amazon forum for this book. I started this one. Here’s my post:

I used to think the birthers were kooks, but now I’m not so sure

Okay, it’s a bit late in the game to be doing birth certificates; maybe too late to matter. At this point I’m a lot more worried about trillions of dollars of debt and other stuff that’s a direct threat to the nation; this is a detail. But just because it’s not the big question doesn’t mean it’s not a question.

Yeah, we’ve got the newspaper announcements and the certificate of live birth. But it’s also a hard fact that the birth certificate — which is different, and more meaningful, than that certificate of live birth — has never been released. And this is because Obama has devoted considerable legal resources (Trump says he’s spent $2 million in legal fees; I heard another reporter put the number at $600,000) to locking it down. Why has he done this when he could have just released it and ended this odd controversy?

Likewise, the actions of the new governor of Hawaii raise reasonable questions. Before he got to office, he said he was going to lay out the facts and end the nonsense. Then he was sworn in as governor and changed his tune; said the records were private and couldn’t be released. This abrupt about-face is on the record; go check the reports.

So, whether or not the birthers are kooks, the fact is that Obama and his allies have put considerable effort into frustrating an investigation that should have been easily laid to rest. Even Chris Matthews, a great admirer of Obama, has asked why he simply didn’t release the birth certificate and end it all.

I think the most reasonable speculation is that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii, but there’s some detail on the full birth certificate that would prove at least troubling if not actually disqualifying. For example, it might indicate a claim to dual citizenship in Kenya, based upon Obama’s father.

In any case, the lingering nature of this question will quite reasonably draw in researchers to dig up the hard facts, and I welcome that. Obama is being attacked and defended by people who think they know the full story, but we really don’t. I’m curious what allegations will appear in this book, and whether those allegations are solidly documented.

I do feel Obama got into office without being adequately vetted; too much of the media fell in love with him, and thus gave him a knee-jerk defense instead of digging into history. They didn’t do Obama or the nation a favor; by going easy on the man, they made it more reasonable to be suspicious of him. That’s why books like this come out, and why a lot of people (far beyond the “right wing conspiracy” crowd) will be curious.

I guess the birth certificate thing represents a metaphorical truth, even while not being likely to be a hard fact. Obama comes across as something other than an American. He signals in so many ways, large and small, that his heart is not in our nation. I think this is why we resonate to the birth certificate issue.

On another discussion, someone made this post, which I think is worth copying:

When have Facts stopped an ideologue?

Both the left and the right have them, and typically embrace their own while deriding the other side for the exact same tactics. A typical tactic of the ideologue is to make a claim, then go on an unrelated tangent to prove the initial claim, [person x] and [person y] do the same in regards to this issue.

• Has President Obama presented some Hawaii form of a Birth Certificate? Yes
• Were non-US citizens (Natural/National) able to also utilize this form? Yes
• Does this same form constitute a definitive legal form of identification as a Natural United States Citizen born in Hawaii? No
• Does Hawaii accept this form as a definitive legal form for its programs? No
• Is it possible, President Obama was issued a Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth, while born in another country? Yes

My thought? He is a natural-born United States citizen (eligible as President) but there is some other potentially embarrassing information he does not want disclosed.

I think it would be a distraction if the birth certificate question were being pushed to the forefront by major Republican candidates. Certainly Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Huckabee, etc., should be focused on life-and-death issues. But I appreciate the birth certificate appearing on the side, rather than being simply forgotten. It has its place, and it would be wrong to ignore it.

Meanwhile, some polls show Trump shooting to the lead in the Republican race. This strikes me as pretty much a protest vote, a “none of the above” statement. I agree with Tammy that Trump is unlikely to be a “real” candidate.

On the flip side, there’s an immediate Hollywood backlash against Trump. Seinfeld and De Niro have been the latest to condemn him, and Whoopi Goldberg said Trump was acting out of racism on The View. That’s Hollywood. It’s perfectly okay to be caught stealing, or betraying friends and family, or addicted, or whatever, and displaying all of the foregoing in the public square. But you’ve crossed the line when you point out that the President has devoted big bucks to burying his birth certificate, especially if you go on to ask that this basic bit of information be revealed instead of hidden. No, Donald Trump must be marginalized; this will make the man in the street realize that there’s a price to pay for asking the wrong questions.

I think I’ll leave the final word to that outspoken curmudgeon, Bob of DrinkingWithBob.com.

Bob speaks not only of citizenship, but of Obama’s religion. You’ll recall that last year, a poll revealed a fifth of Americans believed Obama to be a Muslim. What was interesting was the news coverage of that poll. Here’s a typical report, this from the Washington Post

The number of Americans who believe — wrongly — that President Obama is a Muslim has increased significantly since his inauguration and now accounts for nearly 20 percent of the nation’s population…

Note the delivery. The very first fact the media told us was that the people believing this were wrong. This is part of the knee-jerk defense of Obama. When have you ever read a poll report that rushed to make the point that respondents were wrong before? For all the nonsense people said about name-a-conservative, have you ever seen the news say something like “40% of people believe — wrongly — that George Bush lied us into war”? No, you haven’t. But the media must defend Obama because, as Bob so eloquently explains, the scenario in question is actually not particularly unbelievable. If you weren’t told it was wrong, you might reasonably wonder. So the media needs to make it clear that you shouldn’t even consider it.

Addendum: A WND article clarifying the Hawaiian long form birth certificate. Some of Obama’s defenders allege that the long form is unavailable, and the difference from the CoLB are insignificant; this article concludes otherwise. Seems that even the simplest question becomes a basis for a loud, confusing argument. Why is that? Someone out there is working hard to obfuscate the issue; we deserve to know who is pursuing truth and who is trampling it in pursuit of an agenda.