(The final entry on this saga - I think):
mhenrydunn says:
I have no problem with a pursuit of the truth regarding President Obama’s birth. As I said above, the speech is not really about Obama, or his eligibility. It is about energizing a vision of the global transformation toward which so many are working. When I used the phrase “birther madness” I was addressing what I see as the misplaced focus on an issue that appears to have so little substance, and which is, to me, merely another symptom of our “partisan insanity.” I have no interest in pursuing the question. I will say that if Obama was white, if, say, his father’s name had been Barry O’Bannon, a white Protestant Anglo-Irish subject of the UK, it is safe to say that the question would never have come up.In any case, I am happy to withdraw the phrase. No offense intended. People of integrity and good intent can disagree about such things. Given his mother’s presence in Hawaii at the time, and the notice of the birth in the local papers, I see no merit in the pursuit of this issue. Others do.Meantime, a great shift is waiting to happen, and needs our energy and focus. You obviously feel passionately about this issue. If you can indeed prove that Obama’s citizenship is a fraud, by all means do so. Most Americans regard the case as closed, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.But for me, the issue has nothing to do with the speech that I hope some American leader gives soon, or with the global transformation that we can help to bring forth.MichaelMichaelOhnwentsya says:
As to Obama committing an offense against the Constitution, I still cannot understand HOW. He was born in Hawaii, to an American woman which makes him a natural born American. His birth certificate has been certified as real by multiple people, and in fact to many many people it seems strange that our German born pres was never forced to show HIS birth certificate but even after having his privacy so invaded (as has no other president in our history) he is still blamed for something I cannot fathom what he has done other than to be a mixed race non-white person sitting where some people simply cannot stand the idea of a non-white person being.The Constitution has been shredded by Reagan, Bush I(the German born non American who apparently violated the Constitution more ways than we even realized while we were complaining about it back then), Clinton, and BushII(with loads of help from Cheney the NWO master who has been around violating our Constitution and anything else he could from Nixon on)I think we all agree the rule of law, democracy and Constitution are good things, but I don’t think any of us except the two original commenters about that have any clue what the problem is with Obama, or how he violated anything simply by becoming President, (other than the KKK rule that no one non white should ever have any power.)From the first mention of people wanting to see his birth certificate it seemed to me motivated by both partisan desire to disqualify a good candidate and incipient racism, neither of which comes from a spiritual place or leads us anywhere good.When I first encountered Obama I thought him TOO far right for me, too mainstream, not enough of an environmentalist. I’m more of an Indigenist Green than a democrat and he does not live up to my partisan political desires, but he is obviously a good caring man who has the best interests of the people at heart.(I say the above as a dedicated practitioner of ahimsa and nonviolence who has just watched a debate where he said all sorts of things i would never say-but I don’t have to agree with him all the time to see he is a good, caring person who has done a lot of good for the people, even if the Bison did not get the good outcome I was praying for)I don’t see how a persons birth even GHWBush’s German birth, makes a big difference to our rule of law. Did you notice that Treaties are Laws? Did you know that the United States of America has BROKEN **Every Single Treaty** they ever signed with the First Nations? EVERY ONE.How are such *consistent* and damaging violations of the rule of law not the downfall of the Constitution and the rule of law in the US? What about all the violations of the rule of law to Hunt and persecute socialists and anarchists and put them to death?
What about COINTELPRO an ongoing horrible, violent and destructive violation of the rule of law?To be honest the United States has NEVER obeyed the rule of law except when it suited the interests of the ruling elite to do so. I mean from the minute they signed the thing, not just recently.There is a reason we call the US President Town Destroyer, and if after a genocide of between 38 million and 150 million people, plus the extinction of so many species, destruction of the lands and ecosystems of our peoples resulting in ongoing poisoning suffering and death-we can accept and be at peace with, be friends with, work with the colonizers, how can a bunch of ordinary white Americans not get over Barack Obama becoming president?As far as the law says, and as far as anyone I know can tell, if you come out of an American’s uterus, what else are you going to be except a baby American? Its not like tigers give birth to squirrels after all;;-)( I have seen no dispute about the fact that his Mom gave birth to him. Stanley was his Mom, Stanley was an American therefore Obama = natural born American.)If you have to split hairs with an electron microscope to prove how it even violates a law much less damages the integrity of a document designed to give power ONLY to land owning white males, it seems more of an exercise in futility than an effort to come from a spiritual perspective in healing our world.(at least in my opinion-but I am a girl who carried my copy of the US Constitution everywhere with me and quoted from it directly so much I was kicked out of high school civics class…..)ok sorry to go on about it:-( I just go on about things when i really cannot understand. thank you to michael for your explanation-and I apologize for my long additions to the discussion on Obama’s birth for some reason I thought I was on the thread about why people were planning to arrest my President-which I still do not understand:-/I look forward to hearing this speech or one very like it soon, and I do hope it comes from Obama and that it comes completely peacefully.
kibitzer3 says:
This is my last comment on this thread, because we’re getting off topic, but I need to say a couple of things in response to Michael and Ohnwentsya, for clarity’s sake.Michael: I appreciate your last comment, and want to acknowledge that. I don’t agree that the issue would never have come up if Obama had been a white man; and that’s certainly not where I’m coming from regarding it. But I hear you in your desire that the ESSENCE of your contribution is what you “hope some American leader gives soon”. I totally agree with you in that. Movement needs to be made in that direction. And I never meant to take exception with the essence of your contribution to ‘the cause’. Apologies if that didn’t come across as clearly as it should have.Ohnwentsya: (1) Nothing was said about the curious background regarding Bush I because it wasn’t known about at the time. And anyway: Two wrongs don’t make a right.(2) You still don’t understand the issue; but I understand how part of that is due to misleading information ‘out there’ (undoubtedly due to political reasons; since both the Democrat and the Republican Parties want the issue obfuscated, each for their own purposes). But for your, and everybody’s information: the definition of a ‘natural born citizen’ – as opposed to just a ‘citizen’, or a ‘native born’ citizen (which just means born in the country), or a ‘naturalized’ citizen – was quite clear in the minds of the Framers of the Constitution who put it in there as a specific requirement for that particular office, and that particular office only. It meant to them – and there has been no amendment to the Constitution to have it mean anything different in our day (although some efforts were made to that end; all to no avail) – that the candidate had to be a citizen by virtue of both jus soli – i.e., born of the soil – and jus sanguinis – i.e., born of the blood: that is to say, needing to have two US. citizen parents. So that the candidate would not have dual loyalties or allegiances (and ESPECIALLY not to Britain; with whom they had just fought a war of independence). The evidence is clear, for anyone who wants to look into the matter.Keys to that evidence: (1) The letter from John Jay (who subsequently became the first chief justice of the newly created Supreme Court) to G. Washington, presiding over the Constitutional Convention, recommending that that term, and condition, be included in the constitutional document that they were coming up with, for the particular office of the presidency; (2) the Framers turning down Alexander Hamilton’s first draft that only required that person to be a ‘citizen’, and opting for the more strict requirement of the candidate needing to be a ‘natural born’ citizen; (3) the evidence that the Framers were familiar with and were using de Vattel’s tome ‘The Law of Nations’, which defined these sorts of issues, and were not going by the common law of England (‘The common law of England” – which refers to natural born SUBJECTS, which the former colonists were no longer by then, were now free and clear from such rule and subjection – “is not the common law of these states”: Founding Father George Mason during the debates in the Virginia Ratifying Convention); (4) the statement by John Bingham, the chief framer of the 14th Amendment (which made the citizens of each State also citizens of the United States), who affirmed that a child “born within the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of the Constitution itself, a natural born citizen”. And the list of clarities and confirmations goes on.Thus, the point of contention about Obama is not really as much about where he was born as who his parents were; and according to his own affirmation, his father was a Kenyan; which made the father a British subject (at the time); which made the son a British subject also. Yes, his mother was an American citizen (although there is a question abut her age, as to whether she was old enough legally to confer American citizenship on her son); but he was born with dual citizenry, meaning, in legalese, dual allegiances, and therefore was never constitutionally eligible to run for that particular office in the first place. Which some people have been fighting about for years, trying to bring this matter to the attention of a basically uncomprehending public, many of whom seem to think – or at least, choose to think – that this is just a ‘racist’ thing.And now I rest my case, and let’s move on. We all know that we have important work to be about. Let’s be about it. Time’s almost up, to help as many of our fellow citizens (
) as possible ‘see the light’, and join the move up in consciousness to a new level – THE new level to allow as many as possible to engage in Ascension into a brighter future than is facing those who don’t choose to engage in a Change for the better. A great gift we have been given. May we engage in this process with all due gratitude, for life with meaning.---P.S. on 23 Oct. (from late last night's submission above):On re-reading my clarification above regarding the definition of an NBC, I wish I had finished my exposition on the subject, and thought, about this not being "just a 'racist' thing", with a concluding, rounding-up comment such as:"It is not. It is a fundamental constitutional issue. And it won't go away."- to demonstrate the depth of my feeling regarding it. I might also have appended the thought:"I will not break faith with the Founding Fathers. Who knows: I may have been one of them. And who knows: YOU may have been one of them. :-)"And "the depth of my feeling regarding it" is beautifully conveyed in a passage from Catherine Drinker Bowen's book 'Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787' which I just came across this morning, and to which I responded with my whole being, and passion. In setting the scene for that convention, and referring to Washington and Madison, she wrote:"It is hard to say which man was the more serious by nature. Reading Madison's long letters on politics with their cool forceful arguments, or Washington's with their stately rhythm, one senses beneath the elaborate paragraphs a very fury of concern for the country. And one takes comfort in this solemnity. One rejoices that these men felt no embarrassment at being persistently, at times awkwardly serious, according to their natures."Thank you, Catherine, for putting it so well.'It:' Love of one's country.A special country.A new nation. Conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...NOT their Overlords.---
