Tonight on Special Report with Bret Baier both Tucker Carlson and Charles Krauthammer were excoriating Cruz over the issue of Obamacare defunding. That’s fine.
If you think he’s wrong or foolish or whatever, make the case.
But as part of their arguments each brought up that Cruz was born in Canada. Carlson mentioning that there were questions as to whether Cruz could be president and Krauthammer joking that Cruz could be Prime Minister of Canada.
What did that have to do with anything? The topic was defunding Obamacare and Senate strategy.
...You can make the case against Cruz’s tactics, if you want, without going where you went.Jacobson seems to find the subject of birth status and eligibility far beneath the dignity of our political discourse. Well, he does now, anyway --here's Jacobson, April 26, 2011:
The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump is doing damage to Republicans by raising the birth certificate issue. I think it’s way too early to tell, but it is just as likely that Trump is doing major damage to Obama.
Obama may be winning in some circles, but the polling indicates that increasing percentages of Americans — including substantial percentages of independents — do not believe Obama was born in the U.S. or are unsure. I’ll have more on the polling tomorrow, but you never hear about the numbers for independents, you only hear about the numbers for Republicans.
Hint, go out to dinner with four independent voters; then try to guess which one of them thinks Obama was born elsewhere. Because if the polls are accurate, one of them does.
Worse than that, the release or not of the original birth certificate now has become a test of wills. The dispute has morphed from “where was he born” to “why doesn’t he just release the damn thing, we have to do it.” It has become a metaphor for the overall image of Obama as viewing himself as above the rest of us, as reflected in his now-famous line about people in small towns clinging to their guns and religion...You may also see Jacobson's later post announcing that the White House had released -- or, as Jacobson had it, "purported to release" -- Obama's long-form birth certificate, which Jacobson claimed made the media look foolish and vindicated him.
I was going to call this post "Christ, What an Asshole" but really, I could call any of them that.
Okay, Jacobson's brush with Birtherism is odd, to say the least. On the one hand, he acknowledges that the President is certainly a natural born citizen, but he maintains the right to Just Ask Questions about the subject. So it sounds as though he considers the issue a useful political position rather than something he actually believes, yet the claims that it's a loser of an issue that distracts from what he really wants to discuss, but at the same time he insists that people who obsess over the issue should be given respect as people asking for important information. Also, he has no sense of humor and thinks that people talking about Cruz et al are being serious, but then we've known that ever since the infamous mustard post (No one knows it's not a parody).
ReplyDeleteIf anyone can make sense of this, I'd love to hear about it.
Jacobson is man crushing. Again. To have his latest man crush questioned in anyway makes him cry.
ReplyDeleteOn one level, re: Cruz, it's just protecting the Tea Party brand, and whining on behalf of a favored politician. On another, it's a tacit denial that he's playing partisan politics. It's okay to "just ask the question" when the object of that question is Obama. It's definitely not okay when the object is Cruz. It's still whiny, but with a different purpose in mind.
ReplyDeleteIIRC, we were all supposed to sort of ignore the very obvious constitutional disqualifications of Ahnold when some people were bandying about his other supposed (and highly suspicious) qualifications for the Presidency, as if to say, "sure, we can overlook these minor technical difficulties when such a wonderful guy comes along," sort of a "lookee over here" routine. I think Jacobson's doing much the same thing with Cruz. I honestly don't know at this point if Cruz meets the legal definitions that went into effect in, when, 1936?, because I try to avert my eyes when encountering anything by or about Cruz, since he's the Devil's reincarnation of Tailgunner Joe and is therefore evil. But, clearly, Jacobson thinks that introducing doubt--even in jocular fashion--about Cruz's qualifications is very, very wrong. Doubt could damage his prospects.
What's really funny about this is that Jacobson apparently is unwilling to acknowledge that, all questions of eligibility aside, to significant portions of the electorate, Cruz is about as popular as getting a root canal while suffering from gonorrhea.
The way the law currently stands, it's not enough for Cruz to be the child of a US citizen; the parent must also have lived in the US for a sufficient time after the age of 14 in order to transmit citizenship to their overseas kids. This is why the bonkers conspiracy theory surrounding Obama's birth would, were it not a bonkers conspiracy theory, have had some actual teeth - I don't think his mother met the residency requirement. (I haven't bothered to check the dates because it's a moot point for Obama and as far as I can see Cruz is well in the clear.)
ReplyDeleteShockingly, Tucker Carlson doesn't seem to have given the matter much thought.
The big difference between speculation about Cruz's birth and Obama's is that it's clearly false that Obama was not born in the United States, and absolutely true that Cruz was born in a foreign country. The two things are not alike at all. On right wing blogs, it's reasonable to speculate about things that are obviously false, but facts are stupid things which are too embarrassing to mention.
ReplyDeleteI need to know what kind of mustard Ted Cruz likes. Bring me his long-form refrigerator.
ReplyDeleteI have been waiting and waiting for the big walkback on what a "natural born citizen" really is once the question of Cruz' eligibility became a bigger topic of discussion. The problem is that Cruz is such a complete jerk and asshole that pretty soon nobody's going to want to defend him and I'll lose the bundle that I put on popcorn futures. :-(
ReplyDeleteBut Cruz is d-r-e-e-a-m-y-y-y-y.
ReplyDeleteAnd white. Very, very white.
What, btw, happened to the RWNJ argument that place of birth doesn't mean anything, thereby guaranteeing Pres. Schwarzenegger? Its not like he cheated with men...
ReplyDeleteIdiot derides other idiots for saying off-topic things about a magnificent idiot, and in the process mentions, off-topic, he's hit an idiotic milestone of idiot tweet-twats.
ReplyDeleteThat's a shitload of idiocy right there. Or, as I like to call it, the right wing of America.
Ah, but arguably Hispanic. That's one of the things that some Teabaggers love about him: presumed immunization against accusations of racism.
ReplyDeleteWe're going to see a lot of efforts from wingnuts in the coming months to conflate two different things: 1.) speculating that Ted Cruz is ineligible for the Presidency, which is silly but which I haven't seen anyone on the left actually doing and .2) making fun of Ted Cruz for being from Canada, which is not only acceptable but borders on mandatory
ReplyDeleteSo it sounds as though he considers the issue a useful political position rather than something he actually believes
ReplyDeleteSo a Republican.
I hear he prefers Canadian bacon which is not really bacon its ham. Fraud!
ReplyDeleteThere goes that theory that Canadians are nice.
ReplyDeleteThe battle for Internet's Most Mentally Defective Law Professor is now at a three-way tie.
ReplyDeleteWorst. Three-way. Ever.
Everyone knows that Canadians don't use mustard - they put mayonnaise on everything. One photograph of Cruz greasing up a hamburger with Hellman's, and his presidential run is sunk.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think I know just the man to dig it up...
I'm waiting for Jonathan Coulton to slightly modify his song 'Tom Cruise Crazy' to be 'Ted Cruz Crazy'. Very few of the lyrics would have to be changed.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J9KRZ0PnAs
[Lovejoy] WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CANADIANS?!!!! [/Lovejoy]
ReplyDeleteYeah, but you don't want to go on his dido boat.
ReplyDeleteOrly Taitz weighed in on Cruz's eligibility:
ReplyDelete"[M]y response in regards to Ted Cruz, that it does not matter any more, whether the candidate is eligible. We have no rule of law any more."
http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=429869
And very very pear-shaped.
ReplyDeleteI just saw a right winger on some long comment thread relating to Cruz refer definitively to Obama having "admitted" in his "biographer's press release" that he was born in Kenya. I already knew that this was one place the rumor had started--that there supposedly had been an "error" in a biographical note that was sent around by Obama's publisher. But its clear that this rumor is alive and well and cited and re-cited as proof, iron clad proof, that Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya--even though these guys have long since forgotten why they think it matters. Now, in light of Cruz's situation, they probably think they are pushing back on Democratic attempts to de-link Cruz's lawful situation from Obama's lawful situation, rather than simply repeating an original accusation that Cruz's situation parodies.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm...I don't remember that one, but I am familiar with the one where Obama's grandmother - who doesn't speak English - mistakenly claimed to have been present at his birth. Actually, she said something to the effect of "I was here when he was born" which of course, is technically correct, since she was "here" (in Kenya) when he was born, even though he wasn't born there where she was. As I recall, she corrected any potential misimpression her statement may have created in the very next sentence/response. But as we all know, a simple mistranslation or slip of the tongue is all that's required to launch a thousand retarded rightwing conspiracy theories.
ReplyDeleteYou know why us Canadians do it doggy-style on Saturday nights? Because we both want to watch the hockey game.
ReplyDeleteAlso, too, what I have always found so ridiculously humorous about the whole "born in Kenya" thing is everything that has to be ignored to make it true. You have Obama's mother, a teenager about to give birth to her first child, travelling literally halfway around the world to a less-developed country she's never seen to give birth among people she's never met, most of whom speak a different language, rather than staying put in Hawaii with her family and giving birth in a first-world hospital facility.
ReplyDeleteThat's just for starters, though. The kicker is that intercontinental airfare in the early 60s was fabulously expensive. Even today, when airlines are deregulated and the cost of air travel has declined substantially, the cost for round-trip air travel from Hawaii to Kenya runs around $2K; adjusted for 1960 dollars this translates into a roundtrip per-person airfare of $15,800, at a time when the median US income in adjusted dollars was right at $17,000 per individual worker, lower, of course, for women, and from what I understand, Hawaii at the time had a significantly lower per-capita income than the mainland. IOW, this hypothetical trip would have cost the average full-time male worker a full year's salary; Obama's mother obviously was not male and was not a full-time worker, either - at the time she was a student, so you have to figure her income, if she had one, would have been half or less than half of the median.
So where did the money for this quixotic trip come from? Mao, undoubtedly, who through Frank Davis cooked up a plot to place the as-yet unborn Obama in the presidency some 45+ years in the future.
Even if you accept all of that crazy, however, it still leaves open the question of why? What would be the purpose of blowing the equivalent of a full year's salary to go give birth in a foreign country, when you could much more easily - and cheaply - give birth to the antiChrist on native soil? And avoid the headaches of having to fake birth announcements in the Honolulu papers and smuggle the newborn back into the country.
It's just so totally full of shit that it makes your teeth hurt.
So that's an "I'm taking my ball and going home" from Dr. Taitz, then.
ReplyDeleteOf course you're right and the whole thing is and was totally full of shit. But this:
ReplyDelete"Even today, when airlines are deregulated and the cost of air travel has declined substantially, the cost for round-trip air travel from Hawaii to Kenya runs around $2K; adjusted for 1960 dollars this translates into a roundtrip per-person airfare of $15,800, at a time when the median US income in adjusted dollars was right at $17,000 per individual worker..."
can't be right. "1960 dollars" were worth almost eight times MORE than 2013 dollars generally. So I think you did the conversion backwards. But, yeah, air fares were higher in general back then (factoring correctly for inflation). So it would have cost way too much to fly to Kenya, and as you go on to say, why would his mother have done that first place and so on...
A right winger is revealed to be a hypocrite. Who'd a thunk it!?!
ReplyDeleteWell, Alberta IS considered the Texas of Canada...
ReplyDeleteA child born on US soil is automatically a US citizen regardless of the citizenship of either parent - there is no residency requirement. That's why all the conservative heartburn over the little brown so-called "anchor babies" (children born to undocumented workers who are automatically citizens at birth).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.uscis.gov/files/article/chapter3.pdf
For a child to be a US citizen at birth when born abroad to one US citizen parent (like Ted Cruz) the citizen parent had to live in the US for at least 5 years before the birth of the child with at least 2 of those 5 occurring after the citizen parent's 14th birthday. Whether Cruz's mother met the residency requirements or not I don't know, but he was most definitely a Canadian citizen at birth and may still be one, since according to Canadian law one has to explicitly renounce this citizenshipand provide proof of citizenship in another nation to avoid being stateless. Although Cruz said he did renounce his Canadian citizenship there is no indication he actually did so and in fact there is circumstantial evidence that he did not. But really, why would he lie? ;)
Regardless this is interesting for a couple of reasons, because although it would not be illegal to run as a dual citizen (a designation the US government doesn't recognize) it would certainly be politically inconvenient, at best. So if he did run presumably he would either be called upon to provide proof of the renunciation (and potentially have Canada call bullshit on his clam if he lies) OR actually go through the process and provide all of the necessary documentation that proves he is eligible for US citizen (e.g. his mother's birth certificate and proof she lived in the US for the required time period).
As you say it's a bonkers conspiracy theory but Ann Dunham definitely met the residency requirement. Any biography in the Googles notes that she was born in 1942 so 14 in 1956. She married Lolo Soetoro in 1967 and shortly after they moved to Indonesia. But that was 11 years in the U.S. She lived in Hawaii which may be exotic but is part of the U.S.
ReplyDeleteFurther complicating things is the distinction Cubans themselves make between those who fled when Batista came back into power after the '52 military coup, and those who left after Castro took power.
ReplyDeleteI miss the days of Chief Editor Korir duping all the rabid mouth breathing birthers by claiming to have a tape of the Kenyan grandmother describing the whole birth or something like that. I think he was dangling the Michele "Whitey" tape too.
ReplyDeleteI think he said it doesn't matter if it's a White guy. Or almost white, anyway. Before you start flaming me, a lot of my relatives don't consider him to be white. At least the conservative, Southern ones don't.
ReplyDeleteReally? I thought it was so a guy could put his beer on the chick's back. At least that's why I do it that way.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I phrased that wrong - but bottom line is, if you state it in today's dollars, those are the correct figures - that flight would cost the equivalent of $15,800 at a time when the median income was $17,000 (in today's dollars). Or working it the other way...the median income in 1960 was in the neighborhood of $2200 and the flight would have cost around $2000.
ReplyDeleteFor a child to be a US citizen at birth when born abroad to one US citizen parent (like Ted Cruz) the citizen parent had to live in the US for at least 5 years before the birth of the child with at least 2 of those 5 occurring after the citizen parent's 14th birthday.
ReplyDeleteLink please?
If only she had ended with a "So fuck all y'all."
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, Jacobson and Cruz are two peas in a pod. They're both in a contest to see who can be the biggest asshole in America.
ReplyDeleteWhy? Four words: Illegitimate citizenship = illegitimate Presidency.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, "we Americans" don't have to obey any laws or mandates under this "President", because he's not "legitimate."
TL, DR: Nullification II: Birth Certificate Bugaloo
No link, but it's spelled out by a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that governs “Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent.” Under that provision, a child born abroad only qualifies for citizenship if the American parent was “physically present” in the United States for a total of ten years prior to his birth, five of which have to be after reaching the age of fourteen.
ReplyDeleteYep, it's always been a stupid conjecture when it comes to Obama's mama. She didn't even move to Hawaii until after graduating high school, by which time Hawaii had become a state. So, she had lived in the US her entire life before he was born.
ReplyDeleteGood times, good times
ReplyDeleteIt gives me an idea for a Kickstarter!
ReplyDeleteJacobson seems to find the subject of birth status and eligibility far beneath the dignity of our political discourse. Well, he does now, anyway
ReplyDeleteWhen you can move the goalposts, you always score field goals!
Yup, you can just scoot 'em right under the ball.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Army had him stationed in Fort Gordon, Georgia, my dad's whiteness was in question, and he wasn't exactly olive-complected.
ReplyDeleteShorter Orly: "It's alright, Cruz is white!"
ReplyDeleteIdiots all the way down...
ReplyDeleteAnd that's just his head!
ReplyDeleteYou know who's Canadian? Fucking Charles Kraphammer, that's who.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you have to imagine a pretty weird scene to credit this.
ReplyDelete"Hey Barack the First, my Marxist lover. Why don't we take a midnight plane trip back to your Kenyan stomping grounds and have our baby there so that he's ineligible to be President of the United states. That'll make it absolutely hilarious when he's 'elected' - wink wink - anyway. Obviously we're both going to be dead by that point, but we can cackle evilly while thinking about it."
Luckily these people have been trained by talk radio to suppress any and all knowledge of human behavior.
Of course we have no rule of law anymore. It was eroded by too many Russian ambulance chasers repeatedly filing the same frivolous lawsuit.
ReplyDelete(BTW, sweet avatar. Where it come from?)
Jacobson's a righty blogger with no fixed principles, no sense of humor, and he's entirely full of shit. What was the odd part?
ReplyDeleteThe only way there would even be an argument that she wouldn't have met the residency requirement is if she actually did have the child overseas. Durham was born in November 29, 1942. Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961. Thus, Durham was still 18 when Barack was born. The way the old law read, IF your child was born overseas, and you were an American citizen, and the other parent was not, and you had lived five years after turning 14 in the USA, then the child would be a "natural born citizen" of the USA, but not otherwise..
ReplyDelete"The importance to some in arguing that President Obama was born outside of the United States is that, given that the President’s father was not a U.S. citizen at the time of the President’s birth, the federal laws then, in 1961, would have required for citizenship “at birth” of one born outside of the United States to only one citizen-parent, that such citizenparent have resided in the United States for not less than ten years, at least five of which were after the age of fourteen (8 U.S.C. §1401(a)(7)) (1958 ed.), a requirement that the President’s mother, because of her age, would not have met."
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42097.pdf
At least, that is a plausible interpretation of the old law (I have seen some arguments that it could have been interpreted differently, and/or that the matter was never resolved before the law was changed).
The alleged "problem" with Obama's birth being that Durham had not finished her five years of post 14th birthday living in the USA when she gave birth to him, presumably, in Kenya, but, in any event, not in Hawaii or anywhere else in the USA. Durham, being 18 and not yet nineteen, had only lived four years plus in the USA before having a child outside the USA, not the required five years.
Of course it is all BS, as the Congressional Research Service document goes on to show, as there is a mountain of credible, indeed, dispositive, evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii, and not a shred of real evidence that he was born in Kenya or anywhere else outside the USA.
presumed immunization against accusations of racism. AKA "Zimmerman appeal".
ReplyDeleteThat and the idea that the Hawaiian birth was such a well-kept and shrewdly crafted fabrication, with supporting documents like newspaper birth announcements that must of course be completely disregarded because they are supposedly fakety-fake-fake.....and yet one inaccurate press release from a publisher is the shining, un-assailable, unimpeachable TROOF!
ReplyDeleteBecause no marketing person has ever written an inaccurate or poorly sourced press release.
And then, there's the additional wingnut legend that the press release exists because it was an "admission" unconsciously compelled by a young Obama who was emotionally unable to sustain the well-kept and shrewdly crafted fabrication he so carefully constructed.
Seriously, these guys ought to be writing pulp thrillers or romance novels, what with their gift for contrived and emotionally driven conspiracies.
And she was from Kansas, which Middle Americans wouldn't even consider exotic.
ReplyDeleteIf Christmas sneaks up on you again this year, you can make cherished last-minute gifts here:
ReplyDeletehttp://kenyanbirthcertificategenerator.com
"Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock
ReplyDelete"A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) of the INA provided the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen, is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, is required for physical presence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.) The U.S. citizen parent must be genetically related to the child to transmit U.S. citizenship."
http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_5199.html
Y'know, for years, Pugs and Cons have been wailing that if only their presidential candidates were true conservatives, they'd win more elections. Well, wingnuts, now is the time, and Teddy Cruz is your guy. There's no question that Cruz wants the Big Chair and the nuclear football, and he'll make sure that no one out-demagogues him. If he fails, the survivors of The Lost Cause will be booking accommodations on Seamalia.
ReplyDeleteThe theory is bonkers, but not for the reason you state. The issue was where Obama was born in 1961, and, see above, IF he had not been born in the USA there actually would be a question about whether Durham met the residency requirement and thus Obama's "natural born citizen" status. What Durham did afterward, such as moving to Indonesia, has nothing to do with it.
ReplyDeleteObama himself moving to Indonesia, while obviously true, is part of a distinct but equally bonkers theory about him "losing" his citizenship.
Again, that's not really the issue. The fact that she had lived her "entire life" in the USA before giving birth to Obama arguably would not have satisfied the statute then in effect re natural born citizen status of Obama
ReplyDeleteIF she had given birth overseas.
Also, there really was no legal case, under the old statute or the new, that Hawaii "counted" any less as part of the USA (for natural born citizen status) as a territory than it does as a State. So, yeah, Durham had lived her whole life in the USA, but Hawaiian Statehood really had nothing to do with that.
At the very least, he can show is strangely proportioned face in Newfoundland to put mayo on a moose pot pie at the Dildo Dory Grill and exercise a little free market capitalism at the Dildo Trading Post.
ReplyDeleteYeah - his head.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost like it wants to be Bill Murray but is turning into Stephen King.
Or something.
Scary.
And don't get them started on the Marielitos.
ReplyDeleteThat's not even the best part, which is, they have an annual celebration called Dildo Days.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Cruz said he did renounce his Canadian citizenship
ReplyDeleteIIRC he had "renounced" it in the sense of telling reporters he wasn't Canadian any more. When it was recently pointed out that this is untrue -- public apostasy is not enough and he still has dual citizenship -- he announced that he was RIGHT AWAY starting on the formal paperwork of decanadisation.
It went to the same place that their "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" argument went to.
ReplyDeleteThat poor woman who 's got "the most frequent shopper" award.
ReplyDeleteYou want to laugh, but it's tempered by...
No. You just want to laugh.
I was struggling to figure out how to phrase basically the same thing. He's one creepy dude.
ReplyDeleteNo way. Really?
ReplyDeleteCruz : ACA :: Reagan : Medicare
ReplyDeleteOh shit, I guess this means hello President Cruz!
Zany tea-party message boards are already awash with Rand Paul supporters poo-pooing Cruz's eligibility. On that weird tea party community site, any time someone says "I like the cut of that Ted Cruz's jib," a dozen people cite birther chapter and verse as to why he's not eligible. I bet Rand Paul's stump speeches will all mention being born in Texas.
ReplyDeleteI always thought it was hilarious that Republicans got all hopped up about Obama's citizenship, but were perfectly ok nominating The Panamanian Strong Man and his running mate with the ties to Alaskan separatists.
ReplyDeletePerhaps even a theme park, I'm thinking.
ReplyDeleteMan, I know he doesn't get as much attention as some of the other contenders, but I still feel like Stephen Bainbridge is underrated for that title. I mean, look at this shit: http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2013/09/ucsf-fundraiser-wishes-death-on-all-obamacare-nonbelievers.html
ReplyDeleteOy, the "bonkers" theory is that Obama was born in Kenya. Which is, ya know, "bonkers". I was responding to Anon's supposition that IF the theory wasn't "bonkers" (which it "was") Ann Dunham MAYBE didn't meet the residency requirement. Which she totally did. mkay? (And could we be more pedantic??)
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking his noggin looks like that creepy fake Unca Sam head in the Koch Bros. anti-Obamacare ads. Or the creepy Burger King head. You know, head too big for the body and at the same time the face looks like a creepy mask.
ReplyDeleteA guaranteed winner I'd say!!
ReplyDeletedecanadisation
ReplyDeleteI truly love that word.
How do you feel about "Canadectomy"?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mitchellbard.com/articles/kraut.html
ReplyDeleteDo they stock Dild Akvavit? AFAF.
ReplyDeletehttp://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/9b/df/91/filename-dsc01262-jpg.jpg
Those were the days. One of my fave birther blogs went totally UFO crazy.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that link. I am not a lawyer, but I am a non-USC and have thus spent more time getting acquainted with the business end of the INA than an American generally would.
ReplyDeleteIn case it needs restating, my use of terms like "moot point" and "bonkers conspiracy theory" were intended to underline the fact that Obama was obviously born in Hawaii. It's important to understand why that may be important, though. One can call it "pedantic", but the law is still the law.
He's got the Joe McCarthy sweating off his first four whiskies of the day look. But the son of a bitch is too vain to actually kill himself with liquor. And there's the fucking tragedy.
ReplyDeleteThe avatar is a Picasso painting.
ReplyDeleteMy racist relatives (and I live nowhere near the US south, being from the Deep South of Canada) wouldn't even consider Cruz to be "ethnic" (code for "not white enough," applied to basically non-WASP white people), let alone actually white, unless *maybe* his parents actually came from Spain. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to a guy here maybe about a year and a half ago, and he said the old-money folks here in town still hate *Italians*.
This is news to me. I'm Canadian and I don't actually like mayonnaise. I thought vinegar was the universal Canadian condiment.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think he's not a Canadian anymore? (Ba dum tish!)
ReplyDeleteTempting. Very tempting. But only if we get to push all the American sympathisers (Stephen Harper, I'm lookin' at you!) over to the US side before completing the operation... :)
ReplyDeleteUm, actually, not m'kay. Because Durham did NOT meet the residency requirement ("totally" or otherwise). Again, IF the theory of the Kenyan birth was not bonkers, which it is, then there would be a real question of Obama being a natural born citizen under the old law.
ReplyDeleteUnder that law, when a child was born overseas to one US citizen parent and one non US citizen parent, for the child to be a natural born citizen, the US citizen parent had to have lived continuously in the USA for five years after he or she turned fourteen. Durham was only 18 when Obama was born, and thus, even though she had lived her whole life in the USA, she had nevertheless only done so for four plus years (not five) before giving birth to Obama.
Again, and to repeat, the whole thing most definitely is bonkers, because there is a mountain of evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii, not Kenya or anywhere else. But the theory is NOT bonkers because Durham "met the residency requirement."
Moreover, Durham's subsequent travels, such as her living in Indonesia (which you referred to in your first post), have nothing to do with this particular bonkers theory.
Sorry to be pedantic, but, if you don't want me to be, please stop making untrue statements.
only done so for four plus years (not five) AFTER TURNING FOURTEEN
ReplyDeletephiladelphialawyer, I am familiar with this obscure law and how it hinges on the actual overseas birth in Kenya or Indonesia or wherever. I have had this very argument trotted out by a an acquaintance who still maintains the birth announcement in the Hawaiian paper was somehow faked. So I asked him: "If she wasn't a citizen of the US--what? What country's citizen was she?"
ReplyDeleteNot sure I'm getting the point here. No one with even an ounce of credibility or connection to reality questions whether Durham was an American citizen. She obviously was one, having been born in the USA (under the fourteenth amendment, that's all it takes--except for certain technical exceptions such as children of foreign diplomats, etc).
ReplyDeleteThe key is that Obama was born in Hawaii. That makes the obscure, currently obsolete law, moot.
IF it were true (which it is NOT) that Obama was NOT born in Hawaii and not in the USA at all, THEN, see my other posts for how that law applies.
But Durham's citizenship? Huh?
Sorry, I probably wasn't clear. I was under the impression that a certain brand of birther (which includes the acquaintance that I mentioned) dug up the text of this law to indicate that Ann Dunham didn't meet some kind of age requirements and therefore her natural born citizen status was in question. Did I misunderstand that?
ReplyDeleteAlso, please understand my acquaintance was full invested in the fact that Obama was born in Kenya.
ReplyDeleteHer citizenship is not remotely in question. The residency requirement is for transmitting citizenship automatically to kids born outside the US at the moment of their birth (thereby making them "natural-born" in the general understanding of that term, as opposed to subsequently being "naturalized", which is the other way of being a US citizen). As philadelphialawyer says the law has changed since then - I think it's now five years total including two after age 14? Some sort of residency requirement to automatically pass on citizenship is not crazy or necessarily unjust; it's quite possible for people to be US citizens by birth (via a US-expat parent) and to have no idea of the fact (unless and until the IRS decides to go after them). A residency requirement ensures that their kids, grandkids, etc will not automatically be US citizens as well. So the number of people who are happily living their lives unaware of their obligations to the US is thereby minimized somewhat.
ReplyDeleteBut anyone born in the US (uh, almost anyone - not the kids of foreign diplomats, and some exceptions like that) is automatically a natural-born citizen regardless of their parentage. (In many countries this is not the case - for example, being born in Britain does not automatically make you British.)
Btw, I've never before heard the impressively crazy claim that leaving the US can somehow result in citizenship mysteriously being lost. That's really not how it works at all.
You'd have to take back Bieber.
ReplyDeleteAh, thanks. I had it narrowed down to cubist.
ReplyDeleteWorse than that, the release or not of the original birth certificate
ReplyDeletenow has become a test of wills. The dispute has morphed from “where was
he born” to “why doesn’t he just release the damn thing, we have to do
it.” It has become a metaphor for the overall image of Obama as viewing
himself as above the rest of us, as reflected in his now-famous line
about people in small towns clinging to their guns and religion...
Baixar SpyBubble
Mr. Cruz has attested that at his birth, his Mother filed the necessary documents with the US consulate in Calgary, confirming his US citizenship at birth. That was the only thing that was lacking in the matter. He is certainly a Canadian citizen - and he is certainly a US citizen -at birth-.
ReplyDeleteFair enough, since he has a valid US passport we can assume she did the requisite paper work on the American size , so if the Canadians accept this as proof of American citizenship (and there is no reason why they wouldn't afaict) then he won't have to provide the other documentation, but I wasn't arguing his valid American citizenship in any case.
ReplyDeleteI'm saying he probably didn't renounce his Canadian citizenship, contrary to what he has said publicly. Now it would be easy enough to do if he hadn't yet but it would seem to be politically difficult to do so after initially lying about it but something he would have to do if he was to run.
But what do I know, some of his supporters have already said they don't care if he was born in Canada and not a citizen, because that's different than being born in Kenya and not a citizen, for obvious reasons. His "base" would certainly vote for him as a dual citizen, and blatantly lying about such a thing wouldn't either,
I thought it was curling. That's what seems to be on the telly there 24X7 when I was up there working....
ReplyDeleteBainbridge once argued against criminal regulation of the financial industry because prison rape.
ReplyDeleteThere's always room for Dild-O.
ReplyDeleteFiguratively speaking.