Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio yesterday launched a “fresh” investigation into whether or not President Obama is in fact an American citizen. According to the hateful lawman and his Tea Party allies who have long been trumpeting conspiracy theories about the president’s origins, the long form birth certificate Obama released last year may be a forgery.
Now, we’ve heard this story before; in fact, we’ve heard this story ad nauseum since Obama first stepped onto the presidential stage. The President was born in Kenya, many say; He is a Mau Mau revolutionary, Mike Huckabee declared last year; Birther queen Orly Taitz has filed multiple lawsuits on the matter; and Donald Trump used the controversy to raise his profile last spring, an incident that concluded with Obama releasing the aforementioned long form document. That should have ended the conversation, but of course it didn’t.
Anyone with half a brain knows that Obama is an American citizen, and knows that these tricks are both politically motivated — Arpaio is running for his sixth term — and based in racism. The fact of the matter is that Arpaio and his allies simply cannot accept, cannot even fathom, that a black man could be as successful as President Obama. He must be a Manchurian candidate or something, right? There’s no way he could have become president on his own, and there’s no way they will show him even a modicum of respect. Some even go out of their way to be completely transparent in their racist leanings about the president. Remember last year, when California Republican Marilyn Davenport sent around a picture of chimps and said it was an Obama family portrait? Absolutely heinous.
But this isn’t only about President Obama. It is about the entire nation and the fact that in the nearly 150 years since slavery ended, a notable amount of the population are still completely racist. They have no respect for the president and certainly no respect for their more melanin-heavy countrymen. The heinous murder last year of a black man named James Craig Anderson by two white teens is perhaps one of the most high profile and recent examples of this sad fact.
Yes, racism is alive and well in the United States. Arpaio, Taitz and the rest of the birthers are simply the most well-publicized, well-funded and well-organized.
March 02, 2012 at 2:42 pm, Peter Pickering said:
I would like to formally support either moving the Grand Canyon or allowing arizona to secede… At this point I don't really care which.
March 06, 2012 at 1:09 am, Mike Black said:
that is the silliest think i have seen from an adult male
March 02, 2012 at 2:45 pm, Joe Berger said:
"Anyone with half a brain knows that Obama is an American citizen"? How would we know that? Only by birth records. If they're faked, then he is not eligible to be President, any more than Arnold (a white guy) could be. I would object to either one…and I'm not racist, so don't go playing THAT card just to try to gain sympathy. Obama is a good public speaker. He's very personable. I like SOME of the things he says, but I don't think he's pro-America, and perhaps that's because he's NOT American. The burden of proof should be on him, but I don't think his 'proofs' are valid, as evidenced by this challenge.
March 02, 2012 at 2:59 pm, Robert Gatewood said:
Innocent until proven guilty, remember? He doesn't have the burden of ANYTHING. He is our president, for christ's sake.
If you're Pro-America you'd know that.
March 02, 2012 at 3:00 pm, Michael Jarantilla said:
"The burden of proof should be on him, but I don't think his 'proofs' are valid, as evidenced by this challenge."
He DID provide proof. That's the birth certificate.
If some nutjob wants to claim that the birth certificate is false, then the burden of proof falls on that nutjob to support his claim.
March 02, 2012 at 3:01 pm, Robert Gatewood said:
The very fact that it was questioned is based on a racial bias. No one ever questioned any other candidate's citizenship, and many of them (like Mitt Romney) actually may have a more realistic angle for getting questioned.
March 02, 2012 at 3:22 pm, Corine Martinez said:
Robert Gatewood
When did Romneys parents/father get there citizenship? His father was Mexican!
March 02, 2012 at 3:22 pm, Tony Allison said:
Robert Gatewood Well, there was John McCain…they questioned him because he was born in Panama… So, no, I don't think it is racially motivated. Some people, I think, just want the POTUS to be a "natural born" citizen and know he is not.
March 02, 2012 at 5:30 pm, Lynne Warden said:
Corine Martinez Mitt is an anchor baby
March 02, 2012 at 5:33 pm, Robert Gatewood said:
Tony Allison show me the investigation on John McCain's ability to be President. Any link would do.
Corine, my point was Mitt is LEGITIMATELY questionable, and people aren't questioning it. I just wonder why.
March 02, 2012 at 6:48 pm, Ibn Q Rassooli said:
Actually Robert, “the very fact it was questioned” does NOT necessarily prove any racial bias whatsoever, and actually over the last couple of hundred years several people’s citizenship (so far as I know all of them White) has been questioned, e.g. it was very widely discussed and debated in the case of John McCain (a white man) in 2008. If you don’t remember (or didn’t know) take a look for example at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/world/americas/28iht-28mccain.10514626.html
Furthermore, you may be shocked (or perhaps in denial) to hear that actually Hillary Clinton is very much on record as being the first person to aggressively question and demand answers to Obama’s citizenship and place of birth whilst she was still running against him (and thinking herself in with a chance of becoming POTUS) prior to his formal Democrat nomination and her decision to join him since she apparently couldn’t beat him…… but I don’t suppose you’d accuse her of initially questioning his eligibility out of purely racist motives?
March 02, 2012 at 8:46 pm, Mike Black said:
I don't doubt that he is.now an American but he used to be Indonesian and I believe we should clarify what the requirements for president are when he was born he was a British subject t on hos fathers side and as I understand it his mom was a minor married to his dad unable to enter into leagle contract so if we declare him an American doesn't that interfere with his dads possible wishes to be as he is if my wife gave birth out of this country I would still want him to be American
March 02, 2012 at 9:17 pm, Mike Black said:
Robert Gatewood http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10006
March 02, 2012 at 9:30 pm, Mike Black said:
The different to me is McCain unlike Obama was only ever a citizen of the USA and arguably any soil we occupy would be like our own. Obama while he may be an American now has not always been American otherwise could not have attended school here as a foreign exchange student or attend school in Indonesia as I understand it he was born both American and British (from mom and dad) then he was Indonesian (stepdad) and now by some magic even though the most beautiful sound he has ever heard (the call to prayer in Indonesia) is foreign to most Americans .I believe he is exclusively American and is without argument 100% loyal to this nation. That is the purpose of the constitutional limitation placed on presidential candidates (I hope my sarcasm is apparent)
March 02, 2012 at 10:00 pm, Corine Martinez said:
Robert Gatewood , I don't believe these conspiracies against the POTUS
March 06, 2012 at 1:05 am, Vern Baker said:
Michael Jarantilla , The Sheriff investigation have proven beyond an reasonable doubt that the documents presented by obama are forgerys. The birth certificate now being used by obama is invalid as proof of citizenship. If obama 'uses it again to vertify birth in Hawaii he is committing an felony. The evidence presented by the Sheriff department is now admissable in any U.S. court as evidence that obama is using fake documents.
March 02, 2012 at 2:54 pm, Amy M. McMullen said:
After watching the entire press conference yesterday I'm convinced that Arpaio has lost his ever-lovin' mind. He's now the laughingstock of the entire nation and an enormous embarrassment to the state of Arizona (as if we didn't have enough of them). This is a sheriff desperate to deflect attention away from himself during ongoing investigations into his racial profiling and witch hunts against people who oppose him. I can only hope we've finally reached the tipping-point that shows he's unequivocally gone off the deep end.
March 02, 2012 at 3:03 pm, Carlos Gonzales said:
Its funny how anyone that has backed this idiot in the past do not want to comment on his findings…I hope he is feeling lonely this morning…Took six months to find out nothing…lol
March 02, 2012 at 4:17 pm, Mel de A said:
What he doesn't know is he just drew MORE attention to himself. Wish some psychiatrist/s would just call for his removal, due to senility, alzheimers and madness.
March 02, 2012 at 5:24 pm, Lynne Warden said:
We discussed this from every angle here at home and came to the same conclusion. Scary…..
March 02, 2012 at 7:05 pm, Ibn Q Rassooli said:
Amy you are mistaken – luckily Joe is still at least as popular and respected throughout the US now as he was before his press conference. But probably he is now better known and more highly regarded than ever!
Also, contrary to your notion that he even needs (let alone wants) to “deflect attention” from any of those heavy handed investigations into his so-called “wrong doings”, well, he realises that the investigations, together with all the attempts by activist like Randy Parraz, are simply politically motivated tactics to try and silence or remove him from office as he is far too honest and outspoken (as he is bold, old and now totally immune to fashion or “political correctness”).
If anything he has been trying to draw attention TO the investigations, and showing them for what they really are, but has also been extremely busy just doing his job (which he seems to do rather well).
I think it would be great if he were still out there doing his stuff in another ten years time (aged 89 by then) when Obama is already long gone and largely forgotten (though still nowhere near forgiven)!
March 02, 2012 at 11:55 pm, Amy M. McMullen said:
Riiight. Really respected. Just like Orly Taitz. But don't let the facts confuse you.
March 04, 2012 at 7:19 pm, Donna Simonetti said:
The scary thing is that people like this have followers that believe this garbage. Arpaio needs to turn his efforts towards solving all those neglected sex crimes!
March 07, 2012 at 2:10 pm, Constantin Rusu said:
and never forget that: LIVING IN A STOLEN LAND !
March 02, 2012 at 3:10 pm, Michael Black said:
What a pathetic attempt at sucking the teat of the federal government I wish all of us had your lack of intelligence so that we could all sit around and write about how dumb everyone else is while collecting welfare from those same idiots.
March 02, 2012 at 3:50 pm, Grok McGrak said:
Just because Obama is hiding something about his birth, that doesn't make him a bad person. We all have things in our past we'd rather not make public for fear of jeapordizing our jobs and reputation.
March 02, 2012 at 8:21 pm, Joe Berger said:
IF he is hiding something about his birth, (and I am not maing that claim myself) and what he's hiding is that he is not in fact a "Natural Born" citizen of the USA, it doesn't make him any worse than my own grandfather, who came here from Bavaria. What it DOES mean, however, is that he is not eligible to either run or be elected President of the USA. And since he has obviously done both, he is guilty of a massive fraud (in the case that he is actually NOT a citizen).
March 06, 2012 at 6:11 pm, Ryan Richards said:
Joe Berger Innocent until proven guilty
March 06, 2012 at 6:12 pm, Ryan Richards said:
(well that didn't post like it was suppose to)
March 02, 2012 at 3:53 pm, Greg Hency said:
Racist? Our kids play together and intermarry. Black influence now owns pop culture. We have mostly forgotten those bad old days. It's the media and the left that won't let racism die. Fake documentation? Well sure, we all know that the real document was part typed and part handwritten. Fukino told us so. Maybe Hawaii provided the real document to Obama, but what the White House posted is not what is on file in Hawaii, based on the health directors own words. What is he hiding? Who knows? Who cares? Sure, someone broke the law, but the important thing is, his white half and his black half are both spending this country into oblivion. Black unemployment is at epic levels, so what is he doing about THAT?
March 02, 2012 at 5:16 pm, Ibn Q Rassooli said:
Firstly Arpaio and his team are almost certainly correct – the image purporting to be of Obama’s authentic long-form birth certificate that was uploaded by members of Obama’s administration to the White House website last year has been very heavily scrutinised by a vast number of experienced and well qualified people (who are truly expert in the appropriate technical matters) and the overwhelming majority of them independently conclude, for all sorts of different but corroborating reasons, that the image must have been generated on a computer by assembling a number of parts of different document as some as some additional hand made manipulations that exist only in the layered computer file itself. It is not (and cannot be) simply a file generated by scanning a paper copy of an authentic document.
Secondly, it may well be possible that “Anyone with half a brain knows that Obama is an American citizen”, however anyone with a whole brain will realise there is far more to it than that and when they start to think about it properly will quickly discover there are more unanswered questions than ones for which we have a satisfactory answer. Amazingly enough it’s actually possible that Obama isn’t even an American citizen at all (as there is no evidence he ever applied for citizenship and was presumably born with dual American and British, or British only nationality, and later gained Indonesian nationality and may or may not at that time have revoked his British nationality)….. however, the more important point is the huge difference between the technical terms “Naturalized”, “Natural Born” and “Native Born”. Yes, in normal circumstances it does not matter however the basic qualification for even running for presidency is to be “Natural Born” at the very least, and not every American citizen is. (To be sure of being “Natural Born” then BOTH of your parents need to have had full US citizenship at the time of birth and of course being born on American soil or territory might also be important but is not in itself the only requirement).
Even based on Obama’s own claim that Obama Senior was his father effectively rules out that he could, technically, be considered “Natural Born” because his father as a Kenyan would at that time have been a British Citizen (as Kenya was still part of the British Empire back then).
It is an irrelevance and almost certainly an untruth to claim that “Arpaio and his allies simply cannot accept, cannot even fathom, that a black man could be as successful as President Obama”. By many measures (I can’t be bothered to elaborate as this post is more than long enough as it is) Obama is a complete failure and not a success at all, so the last part of the claim is already an unsupportable disaster. But on further scrutiny there is the highly racist and offensive suggestion that Obama is characterised as “a black man” which he is not – by birth he is apparently ½ black, and by upbringing and “nurture” he is completely white and middle class (though of the radical and militantly left-leading sort). Of course Michelle is both black and from a black background but even by marrying her (a fairly shrewd political move by Obama) that does not change the mans own genetics or developmental environment.
(Incidentally, as an Arab I am neither black nor white and therefore feel I am well qualified as an impartial person to judge some of these things – but go ahead and feel free to scream at me and call me a tin-hat wearing racists hater and all the rest of that nonsense).
I don’t think “Arpaio and his allies” were motivated in any way by racial considerations – the claim that they were is merely a poor quality attempt at libelling and undermining them as it is difficult to argue with the merits of the perfectly valid and important questions they have been investigating (has the Obama administration tried to con the world with a computer generated forgery or is it innocent of that accusation and worthy of being cleared of the charge). It is also difficult to dispute the credentials of the people (all well qualified and highly experienced law enforcement and legal investigative people whose testimony is ordinary more than adequate to formally acquit or convict someone, as appropriate, in court) – so far easier instead to try and undermine and ridicule them in an attempt to distract from what they have actually said and done..
The comment about the chimps is predictable enough but also quite revealing; and what does Andrew Belonsky (the author of this blog) have to say about the vast number of cartoons and photo-shopped pictures representing President Bush as some sort of gorilla? Were they racists too, or quite funny and to an extent accurate portrayals?
As a closing comment I should perhaps mention that it is not the “birthers” who are well funded (sadly they are not) but the vast army of serious-money-backed media they face that is endlessly trying to ridicule and marginalise them, as well as all the crooked, or perhaps plain terrified, judges who so far have not dared assess their claims on merit but instead always manage to ridicule then dismiss them on some technicality instead.
One day it will all come out in the open and everyone will be able to see for themselves that the Emperor (Obama?) has no clothes after all – oh sorry, since you didn’t like that was it a racist comment?
Kind regards,
IQ al Rassooli.
(I don't need to be anonymous;.
my personal website is http://www.al-rassooli.org if you would like to check me out).
May 25, 2012 at 2:32 am, Bob Butters said:
Interesting report and right on the money.