If Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., would you still vote for him?

[strollingbones]

ah i think the constitution that yall love to boast you want to return to...says.....only natural born citizens can be president. Mccain was born in panama but his father was on military duty so he counts as a natural citizen. Obama was born in Hawii. So he is a natural citizen. All this debate is sillie both are natural citizens of the United States.

 

[Article 15]

ah i think the constitution that yall love to boast you want to return to...says.....only natural born citizens can be president. Mccain was born in panama but his father was on military duty so he counts as a natural citizen. Obama was born in Hawii. So he is a natural citizen. All this debate is sillie both are natural citizens of the United States.

Did you hear that Barack Obama is a Muslim?

 

[Angel Heart]

To clarify, please refer to this post earlier in the thread.

It is possible to be born a US citizen outside of the US under certain conditions, such as that one of the parents is a citizen that has lived in the US for a year.

Being born a citizen is enough to fulfill the constitutional birth requirement for presidential eligibility.

Therefore, it is possible for someone born outside of the US to be president.


The reason Arnold can't is that he wasn't born a citizen; he became a citizen later in his life.

By the way, so far everyone who was elected president has either been born in the US or was a citizen when the US was created. So if McCain wins he will be a historic first.

He will be. Even the first presidents where born in the colonies.

 

[Shogun]

holy SHIT!


Obama's middle name in Hussein! I wonder if he's related to that one guy...

 

[AllieBaba]

But wait..I thought the issue was that his birth certificate was not legit, and he has not produced a legit one yet.

So has he?

 

[manifold]

holy SHIT!


Obama's middle name in Hussein! I wonder if he's related to that one guy...

Yeah! And his last name rhymes with Osama! There's gotta be something skullduggerous afoot!

 

[CA95380]

He will be. Even the first presidents where born in the colonies.

That just earned you a postive rep point! Thank you very much!!!

Just think how those "Indians" felt when a "White Man" was made President of his country!!

 

[Article 15]

holy SHIT!


Obama's middle name in Hussein! I wonder if he's related to that one guy...

Well you don't get a name like that by accident ...

 

[manifold]

I wonder how many kids were named Adolf in the thirties that had a helluva time later?

 

[AllieBaba]

Lots. It was a pretty common name, before, during and actually, I think it still is.

 

[Gunny]

Not saying this is the case but just hypothetical, if we found out that Barack Obama was actually not born in the U.S. but say Indonesia, would folks still vote for him? I'm curious to hear from the Democrat and Independent voices out there.

He would not be legally qualified to hold the office of the President of the US. Your question wouldn't matter.

 

[greenpartyaz]

Not saying this is the case but just hypothetical, if we found out that Barack Obama was actually not born in the U.S. but say Indonesia, would folks still vote for him? I'm curious to hear from the Democrat and Independent voices out there.

Yes!

 

[Chris]

I'd still vote for him. McCain wasn't born in the U.S. either.

Good one!

 

[TeachMe]

Good one!

What do you mean "good one"? You are willing to be complicit in corruption? Vote for somebody else. Somebody qualified.








Someone named "Ron."

 

[sealybobo]

Not saying this is the case but just hypothetical, if we found out that Barack Obama was actually not born in the U.S. but say Indonesia, would folks still vote for him? I'm curious to hear from the Democrat and Independent voices out there.

Every presidential campaign has its share of hard-ball political tactics, but nothing is more discomforting than a smear campaign. The deeply personal, usually anonymous allegations that make up a smear campaign are aimed at a candidate's most precious asset: his reputation. The reason this blackest of the dark arts is likely to continue is simple: It often works.

The premise of any smear campaign rests on a central truth of politics: Most of us will vote for a candidate we like and respect, even if we don't agree with him on every issue. But if you can cripple a voter's basic trust in a candidate, you can probably turn his vote. The idea is to find some piece of personal information that is tawdry enough to raise doubts, repelling a candidate's natural supporters.

It's not necessary, however, for a smear to be true to be effective. The most effective smears are based on a kernel of truth and applied in a way that exploits a candidate's political weakness.

Having run Senator John McCain's campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary. We had just swept into the state from New Hampshire, where we had racked up a shocking, 19-point win over the heavily favored George W. Bush. What followed was a primary campaign that would make history for its negativity.

In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.

It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"

Campaigns have various ways of dealing with smears. They can refute the lies, or they can ignore them and run the risk of the smear spreading. But "if you're responding, you're losing." Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.

We chose to address the attacks by trying to get the media to focus on the dishonesty of the allegations and to find out who was making them. We also pledged to raise the level of debate by refusing to run any further negative ads -- a promise we kept, though it probably cost us the race. We never did find out who perpetrated these smears, but they worked: We lost South Carolina by a wide margin.

The only way to stop the expected mud-slinging in 2004 is for both President Bush and Senator Kerry to publicly order their supporters not to go there. But if they do, their behavior would be the exception, not the rule.

Richard H. Davis is president of the Reform Institute and a partner in Davis Manafort, a political consulting firm. He was a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics in 2002. He was campaign manager for John McCain in 2000 and has worked in every presidential campaign since 1980.

 

[MasTequila]

Your right, I did not know that before now. He was born on an American base(at the time) off the Panama Canal.

I will need to investigate the U.S. natural born law for the Presidency.

He is a citizen, and natural born.

"Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in those gaps. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are "citizens of the United States at birth:"

"Anyone born inside the United States
Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person's status as a citizen of the tribe
Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.
Anyone falling into these categories is considered natural-born, and is eligible to run for President or Vice President. These provisions allow the children of military families to be considered natural-born, for example:

 

[KGB]

Not saying this is the case but just hypothetical, if we found out that Barack Obama was actually not born in the U.S. but say Indonesia, would folks still vote for him? I'm curious to hear from the Democrat and Independent voices out there.

irrelevant question, you can't run for President if you weren't born in this country....

 

[Care4all]

i am not an obama worshiper, but this hypothetical, is just garbage and a waste of time....he was born in hawaii, PERIOD.

FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.
Analysis

Since we first wrote about Obama's birth certificate on June 16, speculation on his citizenship has continued apace. Some claim that Obama posted a fake birth certificate to his Web page. That charge leaped from the blogosphere to the mainstream media earlier this week when Jerome Corsi, author of a book attacking Obama, repeated the claim in an Aug. 15 interview with Steve Doocy on Fox News.

Corsi: Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?

Doocy: What do you mean they have a "false birth certificate" on their Web site?

Corsi: The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released, and the campaign refuses to release it.

Doocy: Well, couldn't it just be a State of Hawaii-produced duplicate?

Corsi: No, it's a -- there's been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce.


Corsi isn't the only skeptic claiming that the document is a forgery. Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are:

The birth certificate doesn't have a raised seal.
It isn't signed.
No creases from folding are evident in the scanned version.

In the zoomed-in view, there's a strange halo around the letters.
The certificate number is blacked out.
The date bleeding through from the back seems to say "2007," but the document wasn't released until 2008.
The document is a "certification of birth," not a "certificate of birth."

Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs.



The Obama birth certificate, held by FactCheck writer Joe Miller
FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.



Alvin T. Onaka's signature stamp
FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.




The raised seal
FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.




Blowup of text
FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.

You can click on the photos to get full-size versions, which haven't been edited in any way, except that some have been rotated 90 degrees for viewing purposes.

The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: "your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records." The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above.

The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.

We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that's when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and "all the records we could get our hands on" according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn't release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama's citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number. Says Shauna: "[We] couldn't get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we've found out it's pretty irrelevant for the outside world." The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641.



Blowup of certificate number FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.

Some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated about Obama are quite imaginative. One conservative blogger suggested that the campaign might have obtained a valid Hawaii birth certificate, soaked it in solvent, then reprinted it with Obama's information. Of course, this anonymous blogger didn't have access to the actual document and presents this as just one possible "scenario" without any evidence that such a thing actually happened or is even feasible.


We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect. Instead, some speculate that somehow, maybe, he was born in another country and doesn't meet the Constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen."


We think our colleagues at PolitiFact.com, who also dug into some of these loopy theories put it pretty well: "It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over."

In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:


Obama's birth announcement: FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.



The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama "likely" was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.


Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.

 

[Red Dawn]

If you kept up with the speculation out there, there are some that suggest Obama was not born in the U.S.. That being simply because there hasn't been a significant amount of evidence to show he was truly born in the U.S.

So my question is, if he wasn't born in the U.S., would people care? Assuming you could still vote for the guy as President, would that sway Dems or Independents one way or the other?

Dude, don't you have anything better to do than "speculate" on unfounded internet rumours?

Don't you republicans actually have any real reasons for why you've decided to nominate, and vote for a man that you used to hate as little as 6 months ago?

Barack is a secret muslim. Barack is a racist black christian. Barack is a Hamas sypmathizer. Barack isn't an american citizen.

Do you cons on this board have anything other than lies, innuendo, and falsehoods to discuss?

 

[Zoomie1980]

I wonder how many kids were named Adolf in the thirties that had a helluva time later?

One comes to mind, the GodFather of Kentucky basketball, Adolf Rupp. Of course he was as big a racist as the German guy was...