Certifiable

This image is of the back of my birth certificate, or what I always thought was my birth certificate. I have always called it my birth certificate and have used it whenever there was a request to see my birth certificate. I have never been told that it is a forgery or not adequate. Whatever this document is, I can use it as proof of my citizenship. It states that in BIG LETTERS. To confirm, it is impressed with the seal of the Office of the Registrar of Vital Statistics.

I mention all this, of course, because of the proportion of people who insist that there is no proof of Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship, the birthers in other words. By way of example, here is  birther Larry Johnson's online blitherings about doubt over Obama's proof of citizenship. Then there is this digital space consumption written by Obama-hater Jerome Corsi on what a real Hawaiian "long-form birth certificate" looks like.These give a fair sampling of the questions being raised by the birther community.

I am sure that both Johnson and Corsi are highly, highly intelligent men. As a matter of fact Johnson's bio says that he used to work for the CIA. Given this, let's see if we can keep up with their frighteningly advanced logic. For starters Johnson avers that what Obama has offered as proof of his citizenship by birth is not a birth certificate. He says that the birth certificates of his daughter and son born on Missouri and Washington, D.C. respectively are both labeled "CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH" as opposed to Obama's which is labeled "CERTIFICATION OF LIVE BIRTH." But wait a minute! Doesn't anyone have a birth certificate? Johnson's kids have certificates of live birth. Obama has a certification of live birth. Billionaire birther Donald Trump has a certificate of birth. Looks to me like everyone is in the same boat.

Here is the fact--birthers are not concerned citizens trying to bring attention to a constitutional violation. They are people who either despise Obama personally or they hate the idea of having a black president (duh) and want to believe the worst plausible scenarios about him. They think the birther conspiracy is sturdy enough for them to latch on to, but the conspiracy unravels so easily.

I am making an educated presumption that each state's Department of Health keeps on file a detailed or "long-form birth certificate" of every person born while distributing an official short-form version that serves as equal validation as the version held in the state vaults. When you apply for a passport, the State Department does not send you to the state archives for a photostat of the original record if you show up with your certified record of birth from Massachusetts or your certification of birth from Iowa or your notification of birth registration from Pennsylvania (but if you were born in California or Texas, you do need a copy of the long form for some reason). The long-form provides the information detailed in the Corsi article which features a woman who atypically has long-form copies issued for her children.

I figured this out with just a little curiosity. I assume the birther community will not take it upon themselves to get the same clarity. They are not curious, but hopeful. If they did some digging and found the truth it would disappoint them. It was like me when I found out that Donald Rumsfeld actually did serve in the military. I was trying to tally the number of draft-dodgers in the Bush Administration. Rumsfeld turned out not to be one, but at least I found it out on my own instead of presuming the negative was true just because the truth I was hoping for wasn't made obvious to me.

And they may still wonder why there has been no release of Obama's long-form birth certificate. Because fuck 'em, that's why. Would not the entire birther nation then claim that the long form was a forgery just as people like Larry Johnson insist his certification of live birth is a fraud? Besides, what would it look like to the far larger number of people who approve of Obama if he began bending over backwards for the 23% of people who will never like him anyway. It would not be too impressive.

From the State Department passport info site.

2 comments:

  1. Forget Corsi and forget his book “Where’s the Birth Certificate” (nothing but a diversion with zero answers and ripped-off from real internet researchers). Don’t waste your hard-earned money, instead read a BANNED book like “America Deceived II” by a real rebel and the “World’s Most Hated Author”, E.A. Blayre III.
    Last link (before Google Books bans it also]:
    http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526

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