Are ‘birthers’ so crazy or do they just scare you?

by Nathan Stout

A wonderful new term has entered our lexicon: ‘birther‘. Not the traditional usage of the word but a new one that basically mean ‘I do not believe Obama is legally president because he has no birth certificate proving he is a US citizen’.

The first thing that gets slapped onto people who use this term is ‘nut’ or ‘right-wing wacko’. I am not so sure though.

Let’s look at the who issue:

Obama HAS to be a US citizen to be president (14th Amendment of the Constitution).

No one has yet to lay eyes on the birth certificate.

Now the confusion:

Hawaii ‘sealed’ the birth certificate stating it was a privacy issue (so only the family could obtain a copy). Many people question this.

There is a birth announcement two weeks after his birth in the local Hawaii paper: but (strangely there is no hospital or doctor stated in the announcement).

Obama’s grandmother stated she witnessed Obama’s birth in Kenya.

In 2008 a ‘certificate of live birth’ was produced by Hawaii (a certificate that basically says: ‘we take responsibility and state he was born here’).

So we can take all this be mean either there is something ‘sensitive‘ on his birth certificate that Hawaii feels is too personal to release (like he is a hermaphrodite or something) and that’s why they just won’t show it. Or they can’t find it (and that’s why they released the live birth certificate) or he wasn’t born in the US.

So why are these ‘birthers‘ making such a big issue of it? Are they just as nutty as the ‘loose change’ crowd (the people who think 9/11 was an inside job)? I think their reasons are actually the same. They don’t like the person (Obama/Bush) and want to discount/harm them as much as possible. The ‘birthers‘ are unhappy that Obama got elected and see this was a way to make as much stink about him as possible.

It’s America, they can stink all they want. I don’t think they are nutty and I honestly don’t think anyone else thinks they are nutty either, name calling is just an easy way to be mean about people you don’t agree with.

What if they are right? What if he was born in Kenya (which was a British colony at the time) and then brought into the US (so he could have citizenship and all it implies)? Does it happen, I bet you it happens quite a lot (what with Mexico being so close and all the goodies you get if you are a US citizen). It could happen…

What does it matter? He has lived in the US all this time, he is basically a citizen… Do we throw out the baby with the bathwater (as the saying goes)? Law is law, where do we draw the line, where do we turn a blind eye?

Now on the other hand, why all the fuss in the first place? Where IS the certificate? What is the BIG DEAL about releasing it? What could it possibly say that is so terrible? This whole group could be shut up at once if they would just show it.

Just sayin

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