Slashdot Mirror
The Internet's New Alternate Reality
Hugh Pickens writes "Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times that when President Obama released his long form birth certificate last week, one of the striking things about the reaction to the president's calm and — to reasonable minds — entirely persuasive appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday was the rapidity and ease with which so many leading birthers rejected the evidence he presented. 'Until very recently, if every professional news organization in the nation examined a charge and found it baseless, it was — for all intents and purposes — dropped,' writes Rutten. 'Today, the growth of the Internet has drained the noun "news" of its former authority. If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs.'"
You are supposed to trust the police, but then one of them treats you like shit. Then you end up not trusting any of them.
It is easy to criticize people for not trusting the media, but who hasn't been intentionally lied to by the media? The blame belongs on a lot of people here. Don't just blame the birthers.
KENYA, Indonesia, Wednesday (WorldNetDaily) — Barack Obama's alleged long-form birth certificate has been declared fraudulent by the noble and patriotic "Birther" movement, who claim firm evidence that the President is insufficiently white.
"I've seen a few Photoshops in my time," said immigrant Birther and world's oldest emo kid Orly Taitz. "I can tell from a few of the pixels. They're nowhere near light enough."
Donald Trump, the next Sarah Palin, takes credit for provoking the release of this initial documentation of the mysterious Obama, and has now asked if Obama's college transcript is all that, and something about basketball as the President's favourite pastime. Betting pools are now forming on when Trump will allude to watermelon and fried chicken.
Birthers are routinely outraged at suggestions that blatant racism is at the heart of their disquiet with Obama's landslide victory in the 2008 presidential election. So it's really worth saying it to them, every time.
The Birther movement was originally started by Party Unity My Ass, a group of disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters during the 2008 Democratic primary. They note that Obama has, on his track record so far, been a first-class Republican president.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I call bullshit... I find it hard to believe that people only like to be told what they want to hear.
I completely disagree. I think the internet is very authoritative and "news"-y enough for me. I'll brb...I'm going to look for an article that supports my view.
Who knows, maybe the BC is fake but accurate.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
"If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs."
That's the way it has always been. People choose the newspaper or TV channel that selects / presents / distorts / invents the news in the way most fitting to their own world view. All that has changed is that the number of available publications has increased.
I can't be the only one who sees the irony in the URL being /news/opinion/...
"But everyone should know everything." -markab
Many revelations in later years have show us that the news establishment don't care for the truth at all. Many of the things reveled in the wikileaks cables was known but not reported. The war against Iraq was totally baseless but nobody seemed to care in the media. All they did was distributing what officials told them, without even bothering a simple fact check. All in all i think the problem described comes from the total lack of moral fiber in the media.
When you know almost everybody is lying to you, its only human to be drawn to news you think sounds most plausible.
HTTP/1.1 400
The internet invented conspiracy theorists.
This is simply the course for any conspiracy theory. The more facts you throw at it, the more the believers claim deeper evidence of deception. People wrap themselves tightly in their beliefs. They will never shed that blanket, no matter how hot it gets.
dull-eyed footstool-temporary octopus
People find the facts they want to and then stop. This is so ground-breaking (*cough*) that it shouldn't be classed as "news" either.
What's more worrying is what people bother to dig ABOUT. People seriously sat down on a fact-finding mission (no matter how contrived) off their own backs to prove their president wasn't American (and, hey America, what happened to all men created equal when it comes to who can be president? Or does that "rule" only apply if you're American, born in America, never set foot outside the borders?).
Meanwhile, they are still running a torture / concentration camp in a foreign country TEN YEARS after a terrorist incident which most inmates can't be linked to (if the US even wanted to bother to put them to trial), to the disgust of almost every nation except themselves. But please, continue arguing about whether his birth certificate is fake or not, not whether he's condoning torture of untested innocents via a supposed legal loophole.
Anybody who cares about someone's opinion of whether he is American or not really needs to get out in the real world a little and find something called "an issue worth debating".
"The new Internet reality seems bent on summarily dismissing the hard work of this commission. I'd wish they'd drop it already" - Earl Warren
"So I left out the word 'a'. Doesn't mean the rest of it didn't really happen. Fucking bloggers." - Neil Armstrong, Time Magazine interview 1970
"I'm pretty sure I killed all those Jews. Final Solution. Google it." - Adolf Hitler
There is a real problem of people selectively tuning in to news sources that cater to their bias, but the summary has a tone implying that established news sources are more correct or neutral than new media when this isn't always the case. The scare quotes around 'facts' clearly suggest that new media are wrong and established media is right. Using the term 'birthers' paints the believers as conspiracy theorists, which may be accurate but is unnecessary.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I think the traditional mass media has done plenty to damage their own credibility. Why blame the internet?
I guess what should happen is the government should set up a honeypot, easy to find, birther website, and then track the IP addresses of the birthers, and then send out some men to collect the mentally incapable and ensure that they are looked after in an environment that will not continue to harm them.
Is there any reason why the fortune quote at the bottom of the page seems to be stuck? I don't mind a bit of Linux bashing in the quote file but could there must be more than one quote we can use.
Yeah, it's a bit of both... We are being lied to by media / governments and by our self delusion online... Neither is the full story. The problem is distinguishing the lie from the truth is becoming more and more impossible for people...
We must not underestimate the importance of reputation and multiple sources. Modern technology, sleight of hand and a convincing smile mean that any claim can be well supported by physical "evidence" and we need independent tests of the reliability of the evidence.
For example, OBL was killed within the past week. We know this because the US government says so. The US government say they've confirmed it because they performed DNA tests. This means that we must trust the US government and, if the DNA test data is released, that the data is not fabricated. Why should we do that? What about the alternatives: that he is not dead, or - per Benazir - that he has been dead for several years already? We do not have sufficient reliable evidence for any of these claims, so we should not assume that any are true.
Similarly, what does OBL's birth certificate say? It says that a piece of paper was produced resembling a birth certificate. Is this sufficient evidence that he was born in the US? No. Is there credible evidence that he was not born in the US? No. We must either trust him, not care, or explore further. I've always thought the "where you're born" rule about the Presidency is against the principles on which the US was founded, so I'd pick the "not care" option.
I'm going to say the news has been frequently used by governments to mislead and is itself rarely accurate. We frequently take journalists as an authority on an issue based on sources which they have little knowledge or understanding of. How do you correct for this? I don't know. A journalist needs to be able to identify fraudulent information (fake birth certificate) if we are really going to trust it. Stories and journalists pick up each others articles and repeat. We constantly hear how information was misreported and multiple organizations have to update. Stories aren't fact checked no matter how much the industry wants us to think. If we can't even rely on someone to fact check information how can we trust the news. They are merely repeating what they've been told. Wrong or right. Just because multiple sources report the same thing if that information is from one source (the government) it is going to be the same. And this is often where journalists get info from. Government (even when unofficial under the table leaks occur) is being reported from some politicians perspective. A bunch of lairs. What would be interesting is how much of the major events have been reportedly truthfully. I'm talking about events like 9/11 (was the US aware and just intentionally ignoring the hijackers actions so to use it as an excuse for war with other nations, oil, etc?), pearl harbor (which we have pretty good info was misreported- we were notified by Japan of the coming attack. The only question is was our reaction intentional or an actual mistake.), amongst lots of others. We have frequently used minor attacks as an excuse to go to war even when little or no evidence existed. Claims were almost certainly made knowingly that Iraq was unlikely to have weapons of mass destruction for instance and yet the president still used it as a reason for us to invade.
Since TFA cites the example of Miller, may I remind everyone that the rapture is happening this month: http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/may21/ and I predict a recalculation on May 22nd.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Over where I come from we have 3 main Tv channels. One is run by an independant group, and two others are run by different political parties.
If you watch the three news programs in series, you'll go from a country which is collapsing due to corruption and bad stuff the PM is doing, a country which is perfect because of what the PM is doing, to something in the middle.
So yeah, this is pretty much the case everything has been in for years.
http://www.amazon.ca/Into-Buzzsaw-Leading-Journalists-Expose/dp/1417671300/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1301616051&sr=8-2
"In this uneven yet illuminating anthology, editor Borjesson succinctly explains the journalist's predicament: "The buzzsaw is what can rip through you when you try to investigate or expose anything this country's large institutions be they corporate or government want kept under wraps." Indeed, if members of the general public read this book, or even portions of it, they will be appalled. To the uninitiated reader, the accounts of what goes on behind the scenes at major news organizations are shocking. Executives regularly squelch legitimate stories that will lower their ratings, upset their advertisers or miff their investors. Unfortunately, this dirt is unlikely to reach unknowing news audiences, as this volume's likely readership is already familiar with the current state of journalism. Here, Murrow Award-winning reporter Borjesson edits essays by journalists from the Associated Press to CBS News to the New York Times. Each tells of their difficulties with news higher-ups as they tried to publish or air controversial stories relating to everything from toxic dump sites and civilian casualties to police brutality and dangerous hospitals. Some, like BBC reporter Greg Palast's, are merely rants against "corporate" journalism, but others, like New York Observer columnist Philip Weiss's, will serve as meaningful lessons to nascent and veteran writers alike. Most of the sentiments here are especially relevant given the current reports of the war in Afghanistan and questions of their validity, making this timely and essential reading for students and scholars of journalism. (Mar.)Forecast: With Bernard Goldberg's Bias riding high on bestseller lists, Borjesson's offering on news media manipulation is bound to attract serious attention and sales.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition."
The release of the "long form" birth certificate is a perfect example. In a day in age when someone says "Show me what you have" and then you take 3 years to release the info" when the correct response should have been, "hold on give me a second to scan it." People are justified in being skeptical of your motives and your message over something that should have been "news" for no more than 24 hours.
So they finally scan the damn thing and release it. People take one look at it and realize the thing looks like shit and justifiably immediately say "THAT LOOKS FAKE!"
They are justified because of all the hair pulling and stalling and name calling and the simple fact that which ever idiot flunky scanned the damn thing used a PDF file generator and had the compression settings set way too high. So to the untrained eye the thing looks wrong. (Even to the trained eye it looks fishy.)
Again the media and the politicians could have fixed the problem immediately by rescanning it and releasing it as a high resolution uncompressed TIFF or other file type. Something that would have taken only hours to do. This would have helped most of the general public understand easier and would have taken away most if not all the doubt, .
But that is not what we get. Again what we get is the media and the politicians wagging their fingers at us calling us names and calling everyone paranoid and racists when it was they who failed to communicate the information on both ocassions in a timely and clear manner.
People are fed up with this crap, so why should they trust them any more when they have repeatedly proven themselves to be at best incompetent much less trust worthy?
I don't see why this would just apply to news. Any establishment cannot be trusted.
The internet has a lot more potential to distribute unbiased news than 'the media', and it's not just Wikileaks, the very proliferation of news sources makes it much more likely that accurate news information will be free. We all still have to do what only we can which is to call bullshit when we see it.
Korma: Good
Which government or faction would have to something to gain if people believe that?
Racist bastards?
which is totally what she said
that takes care of that. back to disarming. that's real. like staying alive, is real. stand-up routine hypenosys talknicians are not real, or even an amusing alternative to the truth, despite exhibiting dramatic arrogance.
So what if they're racist? Freedom of speech, opinion and all that.
Alternate verb: to switch between states or options in a regular manner.
Alternative noun: something different, another option.
This is not advanced English.
"...If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs.'"
There is a difference between a fact and an opinion, and those who go click-hunting for the "facts" they want to see aren't looking for news. They're simply too stupid or blinded by ignorance to see that.
The internet isn't the only thing that is a mere shadow of it's former self.
People remain convinced that GMO is harmful.
People remain convinced that high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than cane sugar.
I keep seeing the debunked table of 'IQ by state and how they voted' be posted.
Plenty of people think Bush claimed there were WMD in Iraq when he knew there were none.
I was keen to see the birth certificate myself, because why wouldn't I be? If the US constitution said that someone who owned more than 20% of a national TV station could not be president, and Donald Trump was voted in, and there was the least bit of doubt whether he breached the rules, Democrats would launch an inquisition. Sure, deny that, but that's the case. I am now satisfied with what was presented (although surprised it wasn't presented earlier to avoid all of this controversy building up in the first place) but it shouldn't be surprising that many people don't accept it.
And mythology works both ways. There are people who believe in "the spirit of the planet". These would probably vote for any green/left oriented party. Even though the 'spirit of the planet' can be debunked over and over.
That is how the world works. Obama isn't a special case or a groundbreaking new discovery. Mythology works both ways.
"...more and more impossible for people."
I think you mean "... more and more difficult for people". There aren't degrees or impossibility.
"Distrust in U.S. Media Edges Up to Record High"
For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/143267/distrust-media-edges-record-high.aspx
Pretty much this. We know we're getting lied to be ALL politicians and ALL media outlets manipulate news to fit some agenda or simply regurgitate the former lies.
Facts and truth are dead and buried. So why bother? At least with the Internet we have an ample choice of liers to pick from. One lie is as good as the other. I reject your lies and substitute my own! ;)
Openleaks is better than Wikileaks because it does not rely on any centralized authority, or have any single place from which to target. It's a general purpose technology (a lot like linux) which can be adapted to any news organization or any organization in general which needs to receive reports or leaks from anonymous sources.
This is yet another story about something we've heard a million times over, but they put "Internet!" in the title and treat it as though it's novel.
"Birtherism" isn't new, nor limited to black presidents. There was a long argument over whether McCain was native born, there were even debates about whether George W Bush was native born, and have been about presidents going way back. Even recently there was a huge amount of discussion over whether Sarah Palin was really Trig's mother. Even after multiple journalists reported that they had seen her pregnant belly, other equally prominent journalists were still Just Asking Questions.
And birtherism is loopy, but nothing compared to trutherism. About one third of Democrats believed that the government intentionally killed its own citizens to start a wars or, at least, that Bush knew about 9/11 and let it happen. Most Democrats also still claim that W was AWOL from his guard duty, and many prominent figures demanded explanations. CBS's Dan Rather, a 40 year veteran reporter, completely destroyed his career trying to pass off some forged documents. To this day, the guy insists that those forgeries were "fake but accurate". And, of course, there are long standing conspiracy theories about the Bush family's involvement with Nazis and such.
This gets play because "ooh, look, the Internet!" but if you look at what various conspiracies have in common, they're all old fashioned fishing expeditions. After Obama presented the long form, Trump *instantly* went to demanding his college records. The weird Palin birthers want all sorts of hospital records. The AWOL Bush people had huge lists of demands.
All these demands seek to scrutinize every possible second of a person's life. What happens when it's put into practice is the unbounded, independent prosecutor. Ken Starr, for instance, started out by investigating serious claims of corruption by the Clintons. When that turned up nothing, it morphed into a fishing expedition that turned up Lewinsky, Jones and Flowers. Incidentally, there are Clinton obsessives who are still Just Asking Questions, I won't link to it, but do a search for the "Clinton Death List" if you're curious to see some real crazy.
I occasionally get a glimpse of US news shows (clips and some cnn), the contrast with bbc or al jazeera is pretty striking:
The most important piece of information is always the name of the host, which is repeated every 5 seconds.
The hosts seem to be picked up straight from plastic surgery, complemented by exaggerated facial expressions.
Its roughly 5 minutes of program then 5 minutes of commercials.
If there are 2 hosts they spend half the time demonstrating their "chemistry" for eachother, its painful to watch.
The graphics remind me of old arcade cabinets, classy like las vegas.
Interviews are rude and annoying, the object seems to be that noone should speak a complete sentence.
I dont think its odd americans dont trust news, theres nothing trustworthy about it.
Yes, until very recently, a few mass media companies controlled the news, and if they collectively decided something wasn't news-worthy anymore, it was dropped. Happily, we have the internet now, and can talk among ourselves without being told what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
By the way, has any "professional news organization" actually dug into the latest birth certificate and examined it, professionally? I've read countless stories like this one about how crazy and all alternate-reality those Birthers are, but actual investigations by electronic document specialists? None that I've seen.
I think anyone who downloads and inspects the long-form certificate PDF [whitehouse.gov] from the whitehouse web site will be struck as I was by its many peculiarities. Not being a PDF expert, I have no idea how to interpret what I'm seeing, but it certainly doesn't look like any other PDF I've seen.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
calling somethings facts, or "alternative" (non?) 'facts' , just shows how manipulated we have become.
The internet has shown people how much bias, propaganda and misleading information the media is spreading on behalf of governments and corporations.
Who said I disagree? I'm not calling for them to be beheaded or jailed.
The remedy for offensive speech is more speech, calling those people out and shaming them for their offensive speech.
It's a bad trend. With diversity comes fracture. People join and hang out on there own groups e.g slashdot, and all news is given heavy spin. They meet people with the same views no matter how far from the normal. Is becomes obvious that everyone else must be insane to believe anything else. From this misunderstanding comes rage from all sides. It's like the right left thing, and being brought up in different families, but now I can surround myself with anything no matter how extreme. This is one thing China has a point on.
Perhaps the US Media could boost their credibility by extending the coverage of the British royal wedding by another week of page to page non stop coverage. We clearly were under informed about something so critical to our daily lives and country.
'Until very recently, if every professional news organization in the nation examined a charge and found it baseless, it was â" for all intents and purposes â" dropped,'
It claims, that only the media as the holders of truth. So if they declare something as true, HOW DARE YOU QUESTION!
Are we all so blinded by partisanship that we cannot see this glaring and problematic arrogance?
It used to be our media presented information, now they decide what is truth. It feels so Orwellian.
The real problem with this is that US citizens give too much importance to the POTUS. In most cases, he does what his consultants tell him to do, and they can serve a wide variety of interests.
The BC issue is very useful to the PTB, actually. While people focus on the BC, they lose sight of the real issues. For example, there is little fuss made about the REAL ID entered through the back door (i.e. via the driving license).
So I suppose he can be forgiven as a matter of self-interest for omitting Rathergate, CNN's deliberate reporting of Saddam's propaganda in order to retain access, NBC rigging pickups to explode to get an "exposé" and the like. Or maybe not, since they directly implicate the real responsible party for the loss of trust in the news media: the constant lies of commission and omission of the news media themselves.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Oh, boo hoo! Another hack writer whose livelihood is threatened by the rise of alternative media. Here's what I see going on: Alternative media exposes the myth that the big news organizations are "reputable". Anybody remember Dan Rather? Someone gave him an obviously counterfeit letter about George W. Bush, and day after day he defended the letter as truth. Finally it became obvious that good ol' Dan was nothing more than a Democrat political operative, and everything he'd ever said became suspect. His career died, and rightly so. I'm guessing there are a lot of other "reputable" news employees that are scared to death by that. This is just their latest outburst.
I don't think that Tim Rutten has ever read The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer. Sure, it's an "old" book, but its contents are still perfectly relevant. Both Tim and everyone else should get it and read it. At least then you'll comprehend this bizarre behavior even if you can't enjoy or condone it.
Wikipedia
Amazon
erichoffer.net
that this can work both ways.
A day after President Obama made his joke about Michele Bachman being born in Canada I found someone on Yahoo Answers seriously asking if she was born there. Muhahahaha
When you know almost everybody is lying to you, its only human to be drawn to news you think sounds most plausible.
But the real problem with that is that so many people just have no critical thinking filter and when every official organisation is considered to be lying then the incredible lunacy that people find on the internet and consider plausible is just breathtaking.
It's not the internet's fault. It's the fault of the so-called news organizations who are more interested in making money than on actual journalism. The simple fact is, it doesn't matter whether the birth certificate was real or a complete and obvious forgery, the reactions of the "news" organizations would have been exactly the same either way. So who can really blame anyone for not taking their word for it?
It's just like the internet is the new bible.
I toggled a toggle and buttoned a button, but when I got done, I was done doin' nothin'.
professional news organization
argument from authority.
of the striking things about the reaction to the president's calm and — to reasonable minds — entirely persuasive appearance in the White House briefing room
rhetorical nonsense.
yes, it appears obama's citizenry is legitimate.. However, the community here being what it is, it should realize how easily documents can be faked, especially in high level government. No, I'm not saying he isn't legit. I'm saying a paper document proves nothing. The fact this nonsense went on for months should be a red flag at the very least. obama handled this very poorly for someone who had an interest in claiming legitimacy.
People rarely attach themselves to political ideologies (and persons) for rational reasons, so it is no surprise that such an obvious point is ignored by most people. Most of them will divert such questioning with ad hominem directed at those asking like "you must be paranoid" etc. Those running the press are no different.. Even if individuals within the press want to tell the complete story, as long as their career-survival depends on them not stepping on 'too-big-to-fail' political and economic organizations, they most often will not do so. There are exceptions like Assange. Typically, the US government has been trying to sully his reputation with allegations of sexual abuse. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant. at least he and those who are involved with wikileaks are attempting some investigative reporting. no they don't have smooth talking prettypeople with flashy graphics and sound on their own cable channel, but at least they get some of the truth out there so people can make up their own minds. The harder the US government tries to lock it down, the more hypocritical they appear to the public. They are cowards.
Follow the money trail. follow the power trails. Track actions taken. this is how you discern real intent..from anyone. The 'professional' news outlets didn't lose their legitimacy because of selection bias on the part of viewers, they lost it because their whole power base is fallacious. They have momentum, slick headlines, nicely dressed prettypeople, and in the written world, good writers with excellent vocabularies. None of this means they're telling the complete truth. If anything, they are the ones guilty of selection bias at the very least, due to outright greed (selling out) or emotional commitments to ideology. (or fear of reprisal from those above). Ask yourself about the intentions and real desires of those who own the major news outlets. What are their priorities? What are they afraid of?
That was a very unique statement.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
This isn't about the internet. It's just basic human behaviour. Look at religion for an example of the same types of thinking for the last few thousand years. Any time one of the basic beliefs of a religion is proven false, they either route around it or ignore it.
I'd go further even: People need a concept like "God" to explain the unexplained. It is the reason that religion exists. And regarding what particular belief people choose: it doesn't really matter. All beliefs have ways to explain the unexplained sufficiently for their followers (as in: the followers accept it as the truth and the only truth).
Now the news. Global warming, world politics, changing demographics and a black president to name a few. In a way, that's also very complicated. It gets even worse if you include the more controversial science. All that requires an explanation that is simple enough to understand. If you don't really understand the bigger picture anyway - does it matter then which alternate reality you believe in?
Obviously, it does not matter which religion you're a part of (if any). Or, regarding the news, it doesn't matter which set of truths you believe in (because everybody has at least some misconceptions - we're *all* guilty of that)... And obviously, you're gonna fight all the other factions as if they are filthy heathens... You cannot win it on facts, because the truths are based on different sets of core-assumptions. So, all that remains is an endless fight.
Are you kidding? Trust the news media (any media)?
They all have an agenda. They will only report stories and polls that fit their agenda. In addition, facts have nothing to do with the media - they don't create ratings, so they are irrelevant. Sensationalism is what sells ad time.
Case in point - the Japanese nuclear reactor (no deaths and complete lack of facts replaced with scaremongering) VS the tsunami and the thousands of real deaths and huge destruction. Which got more air time?
The internet has done a great service in eliminating the middle-man new media and allowing intelligent people to go to the source and actually see what is happening and decide for themselves what the story is. The established "news" media is now irrelevant.
This certainly has been my experience whilst debating with the in-office conservatives on a wide range of issues; they stop when they find something they like and proceed no further, dig no deeper. I'm just half afraid I'm doing the same thing without even realizing it.
in the age of the internet, you are guilty until proven innocent.
I'm sorry for the quip, but really this has been a reality from even before the internet. At first, CNN (read Cable TV) seemed to straighten out the other big three, now that is toast.
As far as the Birth Certificate goes, I believe the undo attention came when a one million dollar retainer was put in place to protect it. I was latter led to believe that it became two million. Now one has to wonder if this was to divert the attention from something else.
I hope Allen West runs and wins the presidential election. It would go far in erasing much FUD that has been spread through the decade.
The Internet just makes it easier for the criminally stupid to get together into echo chambers and reinforce their own stupid and illogical beliefs.
False balance in the media is partly responsible. As is the rather stupid common mistaken belief that just because the US has free speech, then everyone ought to voice their stupid uninformed opinions as loudly and often as possible.
I have proof Obama is a socialist! He had Osama bin Laden killed on May 1st! COINCIDENCE???? I think not!
Well before the Internet you could find as much "alternative" information as you could ever possibly read on all kinds of news events, including the Kennedy assassination, the Moon landing, and the Cold War, as examples. Racists (which is what "birthers" are) have always had their own kooky sources of "information." The Internet adds no new dimension to this ages-old human characteristic to believe something in spite of all evidence. As another example, the world's religions had absolutely no problem promulgating their views before the Internet, and for centuries the sun orbited the earth.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
This is the Internet of Borg. You will be come one with insight. Resistance is futile.
Currently Goatse is on the Russian Channel. In chrono order, he used to be on Christmas Island, then France. (Those were the leading copies hosting being directed to).
IANAPolitician, but depending on why those copies were taken down for legal reasons, and the Russian copy is still up, mideast and chinese protesters trying to get a base to anchor news of protests may want to get stuff onto Russian servers.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
We used to play a game a few years back , that was simply, you had to take opposite ends of an argument and find supporting evidence online for the benefits of your position. Its amazing what you can find pro and against online. Anything from which colour is best to seriously unpleasnt stuff.
Try it
Wait - this is from the LA Times?!?
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!!
Article II - The Executive Branch
Section 1 - The President
"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;"
Question: who is "natural born"? I propose all candidates must prove they are natural born.
A caesarean section is obviously not a natural way of being born, therefore all candidates must prove they were born by vaginal birth, otherwise they are not eligible.
The internet is not the problem. It simply allows the problem to be more easily exploited. The problem is the defeat of the chain of trust. It used to be, everyone trusted X, (whether X was NASA, walter cronkite (sp), or the president). However, people have always disageed with what those trust ancors have said. Those who disagree figured out there are many ways to instill doubt in a trust ancor. They have exploited them and now anyone can do it. (NASA is just lieing about Y because they need the budget). The internet simply allows thoughs with weaker exploitations of trust ancors to connect with people who are more easily swayed.
Listen you dumb republican a$$ holes. You can still think the president wasn't born a legal US citizen if you want, even though the proof that he IS has been shoved in your face. Just remember that G."W". Bush WASN'T actually elected president either, Al Gore WAS and the election was stolen by a republican packed supreme court. Ditto for his REELECTION. So shut up!
The problem is distinguishing the lie from the truth is becoming more and more impossible for people...
Abandoning rational thought is pretty much a one way trip. Kind of like drugs. A bad decision eliminates the possibility of future good ones.
...one of the striking things about the reaction to the president's calm and — to reasonable minds — entirely persuasive appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday was the rapidity and ease with which so many leading birthers rejected the evidence he presented.
All of the evidence, and there was plenty of it, pointed to Obama being born in Hawaii. There was no evidence to the contrary at all (just invented silly rumors). Therefore, the birthers were clinically delusional. Therefore it was completely 100% to be expected that they would reject any new piece of evidence counter to their delusion--that is the hallmark behavior that defines what it means to be delusional to begin with. People who are surprised this are simply naive.
I'm sure Obama understood this, and it's why he never bothered before. I doubt he was attempting to convince birthers. I think he was just goading Donald Trump.
...to having Walter Cronkite feed me the official truth. The loonies were always there and were not convinced by the media consensus: they just had no way to get their message out. Unfortunately, the same applied to some not-so-loonies.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Human nature hasn't changed, but the ease of finding like minds (whether it's to exchange rhubarb recipes, terrorist plots, or shared delusions) and likelihood of information bias is unprecedented.
One of the great ironies of living in the information age is that we have so much information that it's a little overwhelming without some filtering. And most people don't have the maturity/intellect/meta-cognitive insight (pick one or more) to see that they're self-selecting only ideas that confirm what they already believe, while actually forgetting the facts that don't fit (or as psychologists put it, falling victim to Confirmation Bias). It's a very easy trap to fall into.
Here's a nice TED talk from the author of "The Filter Bubble," about the danger of personalized search narrowing our worldview. http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
Ask me about my sig!
Do the authors of this article have any knowledge of the JFK assination theorys ? Entirely pre internet (and entirely pre personal computer or cell phone) the JFK theorists did exactly what the author claims people do on the internet - when the "news" didn't accord with their beliefs, they simply went to a different newspaper or magazine or book untill they found one they liked.
Further , this is well known to psychologists as a standard part of human behaviour.
anyone who thinks they are better then the birthers in this regard is either an egotist, self deluded or a saint.
me personally, this being slashdot, I'm goin with self deluded
When you know almost everybody is lying to you, its only human to be drawn to news you think sounds most plausible.
There is such a thing as critical thinking. When the Bush administration was ramping up for the war in Iraq, it was easy enough to read The Jordan Times and see that it was obviously false that Sadam Hussein, a secular Sunni Muslim, would provide material support for Al Queda, a radicalized group Shiite Muslims. Jordan are allies of the US, but they won't hesitate to point out mistaken logic or facts when they see them. Let me ask, if interested in the Royal Wedding, does it make sense to look at NBC, or maybe the BBC coverage?
There is a such thing as a search for the real truth, the correct route is typically the closest to the source of the news. If you want news that's the most plausible, find news that's the closest to the source. If I want to know about Muslim's attitudes about events in the Middle East, I'm not going to read Western Media.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
Until very recently, if every professional news organization in the nation examined a charge and found it baseless, it was â" for all intents and purposes â" dropped,
Its only bad when its your guy.. damned hypocrites. I still remember Dan Rather making up news, and only admitting it once he got caught.. At least this is actual news.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Assuming you're not an atheist, there are two fundamental truths in religion. There is a God. I'm not Him.
Act accordingly.
What evidence would the birthers accept as proof that Obama is in fact a US citizen? The actual birth certificate, which as far as I know is legal proof good enough for any court in the country, doesn't seem to be sufficient. So what evidence will satisfy them? I suspect that the answer is "Any evidence presented is fake, because it contradicts my strongly held belief".
I think it's rational to distrust sources that repeatedly lied to you. It's irrational to just believe any source that disagrees with sources you distrust... The problem is that some conspiracies seem fairly rational and have no obvious facts that contradict it. When conspiracies become better and better and regular news outlets become worse and worse there will be a point where you can't distinguish fact from fiction anymore... It's like a news variant of Poe's law!
Just because a person is born on American soil does not make that person a citizen ... um - yeah, that's exactly how it works unless your are here IN SERVICE of a foreign power.
Doesn't he have to file a form during his 21st year asserting his birthright to American citizenship? No....why would he. If he was born on US soil it's done.
I am bothered more by the fact that Obama and his groups have spent millions of dollars trying to suppress attempts to find out the fact ... Citation needed. .... I'm more concerned with people that don't have a clue as to how citizenship works. I've even hear "ZOMG, his dad isn't a citizen that means he isn't natural born and can't run for president"
themselves to be lapdogs - so you can no longer count on them to actually provide any real news - all you get is opinions slanted in one direction. So whereas before you would expect any reporter to get to the dirt and print it on any candidate, today it is expected that they will censor the information they provide to give a skewed picture of reality that more conforms to their particular world-view, whether that be toward the liberal or conservative bent. And if you disagree with their view they will print, lies, innuendo, and any other information they can find. We have see it again and again - especially when it comes to political information. So today, why pay for someone's opinions - I have my own, which are as valid as someone else's, since while they may be provided with arguably more information, they provide only a slanted amount of that information.
This is why news is dropping in ratings - there are about 4x as many liberal news organizations as conservative ones, and the conservative ones have about 4x the readership of any of the liberal ones, meaning the numbers are about equal. Or everyone is doing what I am forced to do - listen to one, then listen to the other and know the truth lies somewhere in the middle., This is why people have cancelled their subscriptions to newspapers - well that and the fact that no one has time to read a paper, and it's a waste of resources to print something just to throw it away.
So I say, good riddance to the death of the so called "news" organizations - as long as the internet is free and you use a filter of understanding you are only getting opinions and a modicum of real news. you can get to the "truth" eventually. Sad - but when the news organizations do not raise red-flags or properly vet politicians - John Kerry and John Edwards come to mind to name two who have received wonderful press till papers like the National Enquirer was needed to break the truth. To me, that shows how far "news" has fallen - in the past any real reporter would have been all over it. Instead the New York Times tries to lie and conceal the truth - so I say good riddance to their "death"...
In the real world the 'truth' isn't always as clear as the audience would like it to be. You only know the name of the murderer for certain in novels because it is the author's story and he or she tells you who did it and how they did it. In the real world it isn't so obvious but it suits the people in power to make it seem as though it is.
In the past those who controlled the media had it too easy and presented a clear cut, good versus bad, version of reality to keep the audience on side. Today, with the internet it is possible to check what we read in the newspapers and surprise surprise, guess what; we discovered that what we are told is not always the truth and the whole truth.
I have spent many hours over the last couple of days reading articles from various sources about the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden. What struck me was that the reports - even from what we might think of as reliable news organisations - varied wildly in detail. The Pakistan ISI did know about the raid; the ISI did not know about the raid; Bin Laden resisted arrest while using his wife as a shield; Bin Laden was not armed but his son and a woman tried to protect him. There were four helicopters; there were two helicopters. There were 70 SEALs involved; there were between 15 and 25 involved. One helicoter suffered a mechanical malfunction; one helicopter was shot down by rocket fire from someone in the compound. Locals were asked to switch off their lights an hour before the raid; no such request was made. Obama was shot once in the chest and once in the head; he was shot twice in the head. It goes on...
We have been told that Obama and others watched the raid develop live via a video feed from the headset of one of the SEALs so we can be fairly confident that there is at least one video of the events. The government could clear up most of the confusion and contradictory accounts by releasing that video but it will not do that because it would muddy the waters where they want to tell a simple story of daring do versus evil.
It's not news we are being fed, it is a story, loosely based on real events.
It is no wonder that the public often questions what they are told by those who are in power.
As for whether Obama's birth certificate is genuine or not. I couldn't care less.
Just because a person is born on American soil does not make that person a citizen. (Take the children of diplomats, for example.)
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." If you aren't here under diplomatic or some other kind of immunity, you're subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; see 83 US 36 and 112 US 94.
Does the fact of one of his parents being a British National confer British citizenship on him? Dual citizenship? Does it depend on the laws in effect at the time of his birth? How does that affect his eligibility?
Maybe; I'm not familiar with British citizenship law, but I imagine that without being born on British soil, application for citizenship under jus sanguinius would be required when he wanted to claim that citizenship. You can have dual citizenship in both the UK and the US. As it turns out, the Constitution only cares that you're a "natural born citizen," which clearly means that you're not a naturalized citizen. Being a citizen by jus soli or jus sanguinius means that you were born into citizenship (by location or by blood), which is about as "natural born" as you can be. Also, 169 US 649 would seem to indicate that he is indeed a citizen by the 14th amendment unless said parent happened to be working for the British government in an official capacity, which isn't the case.
If his mother became an Indonesian citizen, doesn't that mean he, as a minor, was also an Indonesian citizen? Doesn't he have to file a form during his 21st year asserting his birthright to American citizenship? (If he didn't, is he an illegal alien?) Did he attend Occidental College and Columbia as a foreign student? If so, how does that affect his eligibility?
Maybe; I'm not familiar with Indonesian citizenship law. However, in most countries, the mere act of your parents being naturalized doesn't have any effect on your citizenship, in much the same way that a child of a foreign national, born on US soil, doesn't immediately make his or her parents into citizens despite the rabid claims about "terror babies." As we've already established he's a citizen by jus soli, and US law assumes anyone born on US soil is a citizen unless a proper objection can be raised to the contrary (and in this case, that'd be that both of his parents were not subject to US jurisdiction at the time, or that the birth certificate is fake, and both of those objections have been disproven), no forms need to be filled out. I don't know where this "file a form during his 21st year" thing is coming from, since the only relevant form here to assert citizenship in the US is the notification of foreign birth, which is filed by the parents with the State Department after the birth in cases of jus sanguinius where the child is born outside the US.
I am bothered more by the fact that Obama and his groups have spent millions of dollars trying to suppress attempts to find out the facts, than I am by crazy people spreading doubts about where he was born.
Really? Because I think crazy people spreading doubts complicates the political discourse to no advantage and is essentially demeaning an institution and a person with no evidence. In my book, that's rather unethical. Would you be okay with people bringing up doubts here about your sanity, or your recent battles with drug abuse? See how easy it is to "spread doubts" that serve no purpose other than to engage in a cheap shot against someone with whom you disagree?
The Freelance Wizard
I dont think the conspiracie crackpots are getting any better. Its just the release of old CIA and other intelligence records in conjunction with the Wikileaks cables that has shown us all reality being pretty much fscked up beyond most of our imaginations. What many discarded as total tinfoil dilerium back in the 70's was infact true to the letter but still in total opposition with normal media outlets at the time. When reading the wikileaks cables, its even more obvious since they hadnt been filtered and redacted before release.
HTTP/1.1 400
Being born on US soil makes you a full blown natural born citizen with the sole exception of a child of an ambassador or occupying army. This is 400 year old English common law and was affirmed in the Supreme Court decision United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
Neither of these exceptions applies to the president.
Anything else is birther delusions.
"It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born. III. The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established."
Who do you morons think you are?
That's precisely the problem. You're nobody. You've got no qualifications. Zilch. I don't even know your name, I don't want to know your name. And I don't care about anything you have to say. News organizations, government officials, and academics all have qualifications that state "We say stuff that is actually thoughtful and worth your time!"
I'm not going to spend 15 minutes reading some idiot's comment about politics other than to just laugh and point. Until you come out with your qualifications and sources you're nothing but a sideshow that had the fortune to attract my attention with your stupidity.
No one spent any effort concealing anything. Your inquiries are pointless and worthless, and it doesn't cost a nickel to hang up the phone or not reply to someone who consistently refuses to believe reality. You make demands, "Do this do this do this". We say, screw you, you don't exist to me, go back to work.
The American government spent the time and money necessary to do the checks on Obama, checks that were ultimately carried out under the Bush administration.
Frankly what it boils down to, is that I trust the American government A LOT more than some random internet tough guy.
At least one (conservative but not a "birther") writer (not me) has raised the possibility that the birth certificate was digitally manipulated: http://selfevidenttruths-euripides.blogspot.com/2011/04/obama-birth-certificate-released-fogery.html
While I have always believe Obama was born in Hawaii just like he says, this post is a point at least considering. Note: "When I imported the original PDF document into Adobe Illustrator, I found ten different elements which makes up the image, including cut and pasted text and the well-known "Certificate of Live Birth" pasted on top of the green form."
...comes from an expatriate, who moved to Canada and became a psychologist. Along the way, he was accused of dodging the draft, accidentally raised a kid who went in to politics, and discovered an alarming (and measurable) character trait that (among other things) brings along with it a willingness to accept any "logical" conclusion they agree with, no matter how faulty the reasoning, and to assert that the reasoning is valid.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
"The Authoritarians" is available as a free PDF, (~ 250 p), and it's moderatly funny, given that the subject is just what kind of lunacy you can expect when dealing with the hard core neocons and their followers, and where that lunacy comes from. Warning: I lost time reading this, and I normally don't give a rat's ass about psychology. It's that good.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Most major media outlets in the USA are owned by 6 companies...
http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main?gclid=CMz5vrT5y6gCFchJ2godnlqPrw
and the boards of directors of these 6 media companies are also the boards of directors on most of the other major companies in the USA...
http://www.progressiveliving.org/mass_media_and_politics.htm
So you're going to get the news that a bunch of wealthy people want you to hear. Period. End of story. You want reality? Stick with the blogs until those too are corrupted.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You're remembering a golden era that never existed. Newspapers have always been biased. Back when all but the smallest towns had more than one paper, you'd have a Democratic paper, a Republican paper, a Reformist paper, etc... etc... (Substitute political parties of your own country to get localized results.)
How about taking a few minutes to learn a few things before being so bothered?
If a person is born on US soil, and subject to US laws, he/she is a citizen. You've heard of diplomatic immunity - that's why children of diplomats, ambassadors, etc., are not US citizens. Children born in the US of illegal aliens _are_ US citizens. That's never been seriously questioned and is why some are trying to change that constitutional amendment. Period. Dual citizenship,etc. are not impediments - see the constitution.
Parents cannot revoke a child's citizenship. It is a birthright that only the individual can deny. No citizen has to file a form to acknowledge citizenship - it can only be denied.
If you go read Groklaw.net for a bit you'll discover why the Obama legal team has routinely filed for (and succeeded in getting) the birther suits dismissed. Otherwise they could spend months or years & millions of dollars in discovery while the opposing lawyers paw through every detail of his life.
SB
You're a birther, and this is birther propaganda. We call you guys afterbirthers now right?
So now that we see more than one side to reality it's called an alternate reality? No, like in real life, people hold multiple points of view. Different people will reflect on truths differently and have different things to say about it. If they have seemingly opposite views, they could still be both right. For example, nuclear power can be both safe and dangerous, and nobody is comletely right. Or they could simply have a different background and have a different perspective based on different values. Stop trying to paint everything as black and white. There is always a third option. The only way something is not reality is if you're sectioning off reality and trying to say some things are real and some aren't valid. That's when you're nuts.
Twinstiq, game news
Just because a person is born on American soil does not make that person a citizen.
Presumably the courts' opinions have more legal bearing than your opinion.
Don't confuse "the way I think the law of the land ought to be" with "the way the law of the land is". Probably all of us are unhappy about some legality or another, but unless we can take our views to court and win, it's just an opinion about how things ought to be.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
COINTELPRO.
If you are bought and paid for you are not a journalist, what you produce and the outlet you work for ceases to be a trusted news source.
EG: the "journalists" who recorded the Saddam statue being pulled down manipulating the story/video of the event to produce propaganda ... ehem ... a misleading story.
I am bothered more by the fact that Obama and his groups have spent millions of dollars trying to suppress attempts to find out the facts, than I am by crazy people spreading doubts about where he was born.
Do you have evidence?
It's how conspiracy theories have always worked.
If they deny it, you must be on to something.
If they don't deny it, it must be true.
If they prove you wrong, it's a coverup.
There might have been a point here before Dan Rather sunk the credibility of major news networks. I've never bought the birth certificate question, but there is rational thought behind skeptics of the "main stream media".
Plain, simple (really simple) racists.
It's pretty simple.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
"I don't like ass kissers, flag wavers or team players. I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity.'" Avoid teams at all cost. Keep your circle small. Never join a group that has a name. If they say, "We're the So-and-Sos," take a walk. And if, somehow, you must join, if it's unavoidable, such as a union or a trade association, go ahead and join. But don't participate; it will be your death. And if they tell you you're not a team player, congratulate them on being observant."
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Does the fact of one of his parents being a British National confer British citizenship on him? Dual citizenship? Does it depend on the laws in effect at the time of his birth? How does that affect his eligibility?
If his mother became an Indonesian citizen, doesn't that mean he, as a minor, was also an Indonesian citizen? Doesn't he have to file a form during his 21st year asserting his birthright to American citizenship? (If he didn't, is he an illegal alien?) Did he attend Occidental College and Columbia as a foreign student? If so, how does that affect his eligibility?
At birth Obama was a British citizen and an American citizen, however when Kenya became independent in 1963 he became a Kenyan citizen and his British Citizenship lapsed. Since he was a dual citizen and Kenyan law forbids dual citizenship as an adult Obama's Kenyan citizenship lapsed at age 23 when he did not repudiate his US citizenship.
Obama became an Indonesian citizen when he was adopted in Indonesia. Under Indonesian law if you leave the country for 5 or more years and do not return to some period of time you automatically lose your Indonesian citizenship. So Obama is no longer an Indonesian citizen.
The question as to whether Obama's becoming an Indonesean citizen affects his US status is answered by US law as follows:
Loss of U.S. Nationality will occur when:
1. obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon the citizen's own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; AND
2. taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof after having attained the age of eighteen years.
Since Obama was younger than 18 when this adoption occurred there was no status change.
Futhermore the question of having to file an application to claim US nationality is covered by Expatriation Law:
Closely related to need for voluntary action is the requirement that expatriation cannot be accomplished by a citizen who has not attained a specified age of maturity. This conforms with the common law maxim that an infant lacks legal capacity to undertake contractual obligations. Legal maturity generally considered to be the age of 21, unless a different age is specially stated. Paragraphs (1), (2), (4) of INA Â349(a) specifically fix the age of maturity at 18. In addition, INA Â351(b) fixes the age of maturity at 18 for paragraphs (3) and (5) of INA Â349(a). The text of INA Â351(b) is as follows:
A national who within six months after attaining the age of eighteen years asserts his claim to United States nationality, in such manner as the Secretary of State shall by regulation prescribe, shall not be deemed to have lost United States nationality by the commission, prior to his eighteenth birthday, of any of the acts specified in paragraph (3) and (5) of section 349 of this title.
These special provisions do not apply to acts of expatriation not specifically mentioned, and the age of maturity in relation to such other acts of expatriation generally continues to be the common-law standard of 21 years.
Paragraphs 3 and 5 cover enrolment in the armed forces of a foreign nation and making a formal renunciation of nationality before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state.
Since there is NO evidence that Obama took actions under sections 3 and 5, he has no need to file a claim.
Basically there is a truism here. Any claims by a birther that Obama is not a natural born US citizen in good standing and is a citizen of another natiion are complete bullcrap.
When in the hell will this idiot's staff get it right?!? The released pdf has layers int. Bascially similar to an edited photo in Photoshop or Gimp. At lease Bama could have put a competent person in charge of this. Holy shit Batman, get it right next time.
FAIL again....
: (
Reality is nothing more than the balance of lies you choose to believe in and the truths you choose not to.
~X~
You infotainment shill bastards put the nail in your own credibility coffins long ago. Don't blame the bloggers or even simple human nature for wanting an agreeable opinion for the death of "news".
Isn't that the truth!
Where the global economy has become more of a "confidence game" than a true measure of productivity because of fiat money. Where government subsidies, bailouts and entitlement programs create enormous distortions in the true strength of an economy, you have to wonder if anyone really knows what's going on.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
But first, give me your birth certificate. You got 24 hours
Not really. All it takes is healthy skepticism. When the media kept echoing how the Iraq invasion was necessary all you had to do was ask for evidence. When people asked for evidence and none was provided, just assume it was all a lie. Hindsight vindicated that view.
Over where I come from we have 3 main Tv channels. One is run by an independant group, and two others are run by different political parties.
Cable news in the United States is little different. MSNBC is run by the ruling Dems, FNC is run by the opposition GOP, and CNN is run by Porky Pig and the Warner Bros.
Print media feels threatened by self-published Internet news and does anything it can to discredit it. ;)
This is one of those "issues" that will never really go away, and it was obvious that it would be as soon as it was raised. It really has nothing to do with Obama, politics, or the news media but rather with the quality and reliability of records. Simply put, it's trivial to forge records like these. Both low-life criminals and powerful government officials have the ability to do so, and the man in question has legions of loyal agents whose job description includes forgery, fraud, and official lying. Simply put, it is therefore impossible to know whether the documents presented are legitimate or not. Do I believe Obama was born in the United States? No. Do I believe he was born outside the United States? No again. I simply don't believe anything other than that it's impossible to know, or to dislodge someone from such a powerful position even if you happen to be right. This issue is a giant waste of time and energy, because it's irrelevant. Politics is war, and truth remains its first casualty. There are ways to correct this condition, but no one is raising that issue, and no one is likely to do so because the number of people who genuinely want it addressed is very small.
Of course, the birther issue is idiotic; it makes no logical sense to presume the Obamas would forge records in 1961 in the hopes that their son would become president. More importantly, Obama's eligibility to serve as president doesn't depend on his birth certificate anymore, it depends on the election commission and the courts. They have looked at the evidence and said he can and that's the end of the story. The only option left to remove him would be impeachment.
But, apart from Obama, news organizations like the NY Times, the LA Times, FOX, and others are not independent, and they do have their own agendas and points of views. The question of how we can check that governments, news organizations, scientists, human rights organizations, etc. are telling us the truth is an important one, and it needs to get addressed better than by "trust the media". In fact, it is the media that are keeping this story alive. If the NYT, LAT, FOX, etc. stopped talking about this bullshit, the issue would go away.
I don't have an opinion about Obama's official nationality, because it doesn't matter at all at this point, but for me it was the Dan Rather fiasco and the Bush National Guard forged memo. I remember thinking then, "Well, they won't make the same mistake twice. The next forged document to make republicans look bad will be perfect."
And here we are.
He's upset that he's losing his authority.
Seastead this.
Just because a person is born on American soil does not make that person a citizen.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." So what you're saying is that Barack Obama II is not subject to U.S. jurisdiction. However:
Take the children of diplomats, for example.
A parent's foreign citizenship doesn't necessarily make the parent a diplomat, or employee of the foreign government. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
Does it depend on the laws in effect at the time of his birth?
Yes, and the law in effect at the time was birthright citizenship for all Hawaiian-born children "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States.
If his mother became an Indonesian citizen, doesn't that mean he, as a minor, was also an Indonesian citizen?
If any British or Indonesian citizenship applies to Barack Obama II, it is dual. An act of Congress can't take away one's United States citizenship (Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967)); only a formal, voluntary renunciation of citizenship can do that. And moving with his mother wasn't a voluntary renunciation on little Barack's part.
This is NOT an "internet phenomenon".
People who are irrational and / or stupid believe what fits their world view best.
This has been going on for thousands of years.
I like to tease Mr. Obama about his birth certificate since I am not allowed to make fun of his large ears.
I'm confused how being certain there weren't WMD's in Iraq just boiled down to a "simple fact check" when defectors were screaming that there were due to their own personal agenda and Saddam had an interest in regional powers believing he had them. The whole thing was a giant cluster fuck but I don't think the media could have easily disproved the intelligence communities claims with "simple fact checks".
Newspaper articles have NEVER been sufficient to establish evidence. This is not an issue that should be calmly accepted because someone with a vested interest announced it to the news.
There is a difference between evidence and proof. The birthers want absolute proof which is an impossible standard in this context. There was a Dave Chapelle skit years ago in which he was a potenital juror in the R. Kelly trial. He would not believe the prosecution's videotape as acceptable evidence. When asked what would be required, he responded on the videotape (1) the girl would have to present 2 forms of ID, (2) there would have to be a police officer there, (3) Chapelle's posse would have to be present, and (4) R. Kelly's grandmother would have to ID him. Ultimately the prosecution lost because the victim would not cooperate with the prosecution, but this is the kind of standard that the birthers want.
It should be evaluated by an objective third party, and maybe by multiple third parties. Given the discussions just on /., would we doubt it is possible for some Intelligence, Law Enforcement, or slimy political public relations firm to plant or forge evidence?
It has been investigated by PolitiFact and FactCheck. The Election Commission has not raised any questions about it. Of all the people that do not question his birth that could have benefitted the most are (1) his Democratic opponents like Hilary Clinton that could have had him disqualified before he won the nomination and (2) the Republicans like John McCain who could have had him disqualified after he received the nomination and ran unopposed.
Just because a person is born on American soil does not make that person a citizen. (Take the children of diplomats, for example.)
US vs Wong Kim Ark. It specifically excludes children born to diplomats.
Does the fact of one of his parents being a British National confer British citizenship on him? Dual citizenship? Does it depend on the laws in effect at the time of his birth? How does that affect his eligibility?
Obama was considered to have dual British/US citizenship until Kenya became independent then Obama would have had Kenyan/US citizenship. Dual citizenship does not cancel out natural born status. Living abroad does not cancel out citizenship. See Elk v Wilkins.
If his mother became an Indonesian citizen, doesn't that mean he, as a minor, was also an Indonesian citizen?
I am not clear on the details of Indonesian citizenship but if he received it through his mother, then Obama would have had triple citizenship status in the eyes of the US. Again, gaining the citizenship of another country does not change his natural born status.
Doesn't he have to file a form during his 21st year asserting his birthright to American citizenship? (If he didn't, is he an illegal alien?)
Upon the age of 18, Obama would have had to renounce his US citizenship to lose it. See USC 1481. Or take the oath of citizenship of another country. Or serve in the armed forces of another country. Or becoming a diplomat for a foreign country. Or commit an act of treason. There is no evidence that he ever did this.
Did he attend Occidental College and Columbia as a foreign student? If so, how does that affect his eligibility?
Even if he did, the foreign student status of private colleges does not affect citizenship status in the eyes of the Federal government. The question is why would he do this. All that would mean is that Obama would have to pay much more in tuition.
I am bothered more by the fact that Obama and his groups have spent
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Quite frankly, the president brought this upon himself.
Trying to label the internet as a click till you believe is a bunch of crap.
George Bush, Clinton etc did not issue executive orders sealing all of their records.
Why didn't we have a birther issue with Clinton? Why? There wasn't a need, everyone knew his history and more importantly, there was just way too many people who knew Bill Clinton when he was younger and growing up you could verify his records.
This president is very very odd. Nobody knows him in college, nobody can be located that seems to know his origins that can verify who the man is.
The most puzzling aspect to this whole thing, is why would you spend millions, on law suits preventing the release of your birth certificate and other records, then turn around and announce on T.V....oh....here it is.
It is all very very bizarre.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Slashdot, this headline, the comment, and the article are not about the Internet; or some general impact technology has had on society; this is not news for nerds. It is a political piece about the behavior of birthers, with the greater implication that conservatives/right-wingers have a distorted view of reality and are willing to accept misinformation instead of facts. That's what it's about, plain and simple, and obviously so.
Slashdot, I can go elsewhere for my politics. I come here to get news that is NOT political. But seems every other day or so, there is some thinly veiled political article being linked here. Plus, the comments section just explodes when you do that. This is becoming another ridiculous site like Fark. Can we knock it off already?
The issue is more complicated than you paint it. Although there are certainly people in the media out there who are lazy, irresponsible, dishonest, etc., there are also people out there who are honestly trying to do the best job that they can. The trouble is that in this day and age of consolidation and cost-cutting, those who are trying to do good work can't.
Since reporters are stretched too thin with their bosses breathing down their necks to get something out *right now*, there is often very little time to do all of the due diligence on a story that they might like. The result is that whenever a company/government organization puts out a press release, there may be just enough time to do some basic fact-checking, but there is rarely enough time to verify that the press release is a fair and accurate depiction of the situation.
Compound this with the dropping revenues of news outlets, and you're left with a system that rewards sensationalism and that can't afford to provide good news.
My only hope is that more distributed, peer reviewed approach to the news can emerge. There are already sites like wikinews.org or globalvoicesonline.org or publicnewsforum.org which are taking steps towards such a thing, but none of these seems to be really taking off. Right now, though, the good side is that if you are diligent about searching blogs, etc., you can actually find out a lot about what is going on, especially if you know enough to impose a mental filter when reading anything online. The downside is that we are drowning in noise, where only the big money entities have the resources to speak out.
This is about the feeling a lot of people have that socialists aren't really american. They look at the things Obama and the democrats are saying about taking their money and giving it to other people in the name of fairness and social responsibility, and they feel it is un-american. The birth certificate, and the idea that Obama wasn't born here, resonates with the idea that he's not one of "us" and so it is accepted. It doesn't matter whether or not it's factually true, because it is fundamentally true for them on an emotional level.
The war against Iraq was totally baseless but nobody seemed to care in the media.
Come on. Pretty much all I know about the Iraq war is that it was illegal, all about oil and based on a pack of lies. Where did I get that from if not the media? I know the Internet goes on and on about it but I never pay much heed to what I read there, what with people saying whatever they want without concern for evidence. No, I'm pretty sure there's been plenty of people going on TV and writing in newspapers about the problems with the Iraq war. But I guess that doesn't fit with your world view.
The "problem" is that the increased availability of information is causing the trust held in media organizations and government to fall away. And it's not the problem, it's the solution.
For the time being people are scared and confused because they're beginning realize that they don't know the whole story and that there's no one they can turn to for the truth. So they're searching out anything that makes sense and promises them truth. Over time, hopefully, people will come to terms with the reality that there's only a little bit you can really know, and stop worrying about the rest. Hopefully they will stop putting their faith in the lies people in power have told them over the years. Then the world will be a better place.
Al Qaeda are not Shiites, but ultra-radical Sunites, based in Saudi Wahabism. Al Qaeda considers Shiites as heretics. There made many bombings against Shiites in Iraq and Iran.
They did it to themselves by turning from being a news delivery system into an entertainment media that has too much influence from it's advertisers. I rarely turn to "Professional US News Organizations" to get any real, objective information about goings on in the world. There is simply too much bias ( http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=121 ) and fluff with very little fact. It's simply not worth the time investment to sort through all the crap to get the kernel of news. Maybe some more flashy intro segments and graphics will help.
US professional news often ignores major incidents completely such as the U.S. backed chemical fumigation in Columbia. Which is basically tantamount to the agent orange spraying during the vietnam war. Google us columbia chemical fumigation and not the distinct lack of "Professional US News" entries. Even Wikipedia shows up but still no major news outlets from the U.S. In addition they drastically misrepresent other major issues. The clearest example of this for me is global warming / climate change. Even now it is represented in U.S. news media as an open, still debated issue which does not at all seem to be the case (at least as far as scientific journals are concerned).
Basically they lost my trust. Having lived overseas for a number of years I can say the media in other countries (pretty much all of them) was considerably better than in the U.S. but don't fret the BBC has been on a slow but steady path toward U.S. news quality so that may not be the case for long. I no longer read German news (my German is too rusty) so only can speak to the quality of BBC news (website).
Pointing out Dan Rather is all too easy when the left gets upset at the Internets for failing to fall in line. A more recent (yesterday) example; we've been hearing for weeks about the 'challenge' to conservatives in Canada. The BBC says the race has tightened and Canadian voters will throw the conservative bums out!
Reality: Canada's Conservatives score massive election win. The media had gotten so carried away that "the scale of victory came as a surprise."
Wisconsin voters hate the new Governor and his anti-union crimes. The media has the polls to prove it! That's why incumbent judge Prosser will get voted out. Except he didn't.
Lets not forget NPR execs schlepping around with purported Muslim Brotherhood types, spouting off stereotypical nonsense right out of the moonbat echo chamber. These are the numpties running the media. Mustn't question their credibility...you stupid knuckle dragger.
The MSM is spin. Mostly statist left wing spin, with some equally heinous counter spin from the right (Fox et al.) That the non-existent credibility of our media doesn't somehow instantly dispel all "birther" conspiracy is a surprise to fools alone.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
They like to think that they are a bit smarter than the next guy for knowing something he doesn't. And often these theories are far more intriguing than reality; thus it becomes a perverse entertainment for most.
The thought that there is one world order manipulating things behind the scenes also helps makes sense of an often confusing world where the apparent chaos can make one feel nervous. In that way it is like religion.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Some of the things you refer to as tinfoil hat theories are established historical fact. To whit, the Bush family (George H. Bush's father) DID have strong business ties to the Nazi party.
While there is no direct evidence one way or the other regarding the various 9/11 conspiracies, there is strong circumstantial evidence that the official story of the 9/11 events is false. Evidence WAS concealed and destroyed. Dick Cheney DID write, in the 1990s, that the USA needed a 'New Pearl Harbour' in order to galvanize public opinion to support an invasion of Iraq. The routine air-defense response was caused to stand down. The Bush adminitration DID receive direct and specific warnings (from the intelligence services of Japan, Australia, possibly others) in advance that Al Queda operatives were going to attempt to hijack airplanes and crash them into the World Trade Center in the week of 9/10/2001 - 9/17/2001, and either did nothing or obfuscated investigations. Conspiracy by Dick Cheney to allow the 9/11 attacks to proceed seems to be the simplest explanation that fits the facts. Had this author been in Dick Cheney's shoes that day then this author might well have allowed the attacks to proceed, too, given the major political advantage that would result. Does any of that prove a conspiracy to allow the 9/11 attacks to proceed? No, it proves NOTHING. However, there is enough circumstantial evidence that there might have been a conspiracy that it is not appropriate to immediately conclude these are wild tinfoil hat theories.
Keep in mind, the historical record contains MANY instances of REAL conspiracies of the same order of magnitude. For example, Operation Northwoods
Operation Northwoods[Wikipedia] ,
which bears a striking resemblance to the 'Bush Knew about 9/11' conspiracy theory, was seriously proposed to JFK, who was horrified at the prospect, rejected it, and was then assassinated.
You might be confused by the very successful disinformation campaigns that are frequently used to discredit investigation of legitimate theories. For example, after the 9/11 attacks there were (blatantly false, not fact based) claims that the Pentagon was not struck by a passenger airline. Numerous other blatantly false and preposterous theories were promulgated. This disinformation had the effect of discrediting more reasonable, fact-based inquiries. One of the best ways to discredit legitimate investigation into a possible conspiracy is to advocate obvious tinfoil hat ideas, causing the press and the public (which has a short attention span and is not good at understanding complex situations) to conflate the obviously-false with the possibly-true.
Personally, this author tends to reserve judgement on 'conspiracy theories', unless there is an overwhelming preponderance of evidence. It is very hard to separate the disinformation from the misinformation from the truth. There are many historical examples of REAL conspiracies, and many historical examples of utterly whacky conspiracy theories that large groups of people believe are true. The 'birther consipracy' smacks or of racism, requires inordinate complexity, and has no supporting facts, so I reject it. This author tends to use Occam's Razor as a primary determinant about whether a conspiracy is probably true or false. One day this author might reveal some background on the (known to be real because I was there and sank my life's fortune into it) conspiracy surrounding the formation of Wikileaks, and the links between Joseph and Valerie Plame-Wilson and how Julian Assange was chosen for the job. Hint: Valerie Plame-Wilson stayed at my house in 2004, where she had long conversations with the author of this document.
My personal favorite known-to-be-true-long-after-the-fact conspiracy theory (actually
Why is it necessary to trust, to believe anything to a metaphysical certainty? We don't even know we're real people or just brains in vats, after all. Generally it seems to me that we need only provisionally, operationally trust things. I got up this morning because I believed the outside world would still be there -- even if I didn't know it for a certainty, I acted as if it were true, and that's all the trust I needed. If I chose to believe otherwise, maybe I'd still be in bed. Or at least,
But here's a situation where, as far as I can tell acting under the belief that "Bin Laden has been killed" yields identical results, on my part, as the belief that "Bin Laden was already dead." So I have no grounds to behave with disbelief. I (provisionally) trust, not because I'm gullible, but because I gain nothing from not trusting. In this instance.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I read it on the internet.... D'oh!
I am surprised that people here just accept the evidence without even looking at it. Have you seen it? Would you accept a birth certificate that did not even have a seal on it like every other copied certificate? As a few others have pointed out, it is quite easy to fake a digital document and the one released by the White House has tons of obvious "quirks" that need explanation. Had it been a standard photocopy, no questions would have been raised, but as is, it seems to have been tampered (literally Photoshopped). I would like to see the Natural Born Citizen clause removed from the requirements so I could care less if he's one or not... but I do take exception to deliberate forgeries. I wonder if I supplied that PDF to the Post Office if I would receive a passport...
America is DOOMED.
The problem is distinguishing the lie from the truth is becoming more and more impossible for people...
That's not quite it, many of these people are perfectly capable of distinguishing the truth from fiction. It's just that they don't want to, because they don't like the truth for whatever reasons.
This is really funny coming from the same camp that accepted the version that Iraq in 2003 had working WMD and strategically significant delivery vehicles even when the military budget of the country barely afforded uniforms for soldiers and they used shocks instead gloves in parades. If they had spread the rumor that Obama was a lizard from Venus they would have believed it too.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Obama could have nipped all this speculation in the bud, back in 2008, if he had released all the stuff, such as birth certificate and academic records that people who run for president typically release. I don't blame the internet or Fox News. I blame Obama for sitting on this and making it an issue in the first place.
Instead, it's "dance of the seven veils."
Birthers would have been near nonexistent, if he had done that. Of course, he might have had to explain something in his academic record which he's still hiding. Why else play this game?
As I see it, for someone running for president, it is our obligation to assume the worst when they withhold information without good cause.
This is rather unsurprising considering there is no evidence that beliefs are inspired by, well, evidence. There is considerable material suggesting otherwise - that beliefs are formed first, independently of evidence or even conscious decision, and evidence is then interpreted through the lens of said belief. Not a problem that exclusively affects the right-wing, either, but more of a very unfortunate pattern in general human thought.
The same media that told us JFK's murder was a single guy in book depository? Yeah, people are stupid for not believing them!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwE9m37T6F8
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27 ---scroll down about 2/3 of the way to find a link to his long form birth certificate.
Check out this video. A friend of mine personally did something similar before this video came around...so I believe this is a legitimate investigation.
Try it yourself.
Is it not fraudulent to alter a certified document?
Mostly the right wing extremists exist in a paranoia whipped froth of nonsense. Actually, their methods against those they hate is little different than the dreamed up excuses and reasons for the final solution that the nazis used. All fantasies to justify what one wants to be fact when all it winds up being is a bunch of nonsense to terrorize people. Duplicity is not a new "art". It has been practiced for a very long time.
I find it amazing, we went to war in Iraq based of deliberately fabricated "intelligence". We're still there. Meanwhile, we have our government at varoius levels crying poverty. Perhaps we should quit flushing money and lives down the toilet in Iraq, eh?
The news is supposed to be the watchdog that prevents this sort of thing by digging for the truth people in power would rather we not hear, but instead they acted as a volunteer PR department.
Strictly speaking, I would say that POSSESSION of any of those things should not be illegal per se. USE of them in increasingly many ways (more ways the further down the list you go) should be illegal.
But someone who would be undeterred by the illegality of their use would be equally undeterred by the illegality of their possession, so the only people caught by anti-possession laws who wouldn't be caught by anti-use laws are the people who possess them but aren't using them for any illegitimate purpose. That is to say: anti-use laws catch everyone misusing such things; and adding anti-possession laws on top of that only catches additional people who were NOT abusing them, i.e. not doing anything wrong with them.
However, on top of all that, as there are increasingly fewer legitimate uses for such things the further down the list you go, possession should increasingly be grounds for SUSPICION of illegal activity. It makes perfect sense to be much more cautious and careful and suspicious about someone walking around with a gun than someone walking around with a three foot pole. Someone with a nuclear bomb better have a really good excuse or he can expect to be under surveillance 24/7. And more than just ordinary police surveillance from public places that can be done on anyone: as suspicion of illegal activity is grounds for special search and surveillance warrants, if possession of something is grounds for suspicion of illegal activity (even if the possession is not ITSELF illegal activity), then possession is grounds for special search and surveillance warrants.
In short, if you want to own a nuke, that's fine, but since it is very unlikely that your are neither ill-intentioned or dangerously incompetent with regards to that nuke, the courts are perfectly justified in allowing trained scientists and nice men with guns to come into your home several times a day to look at your nuke and make sure that you're not going to accidentally blow up the city with it, and for the police to regularly check your papers and communications etc to make sure that you're not planning to intentionally blow the city up with it. If it turns out that you are being dangerously incompetent in the care and maintenance of this nuke that you own for some reason, then you can be found guilty of negligence so gross that "gross negligence and reckless endangerment" doesn't begin to cover it. And of course if the police checking your communications find you are planning on using that nuke in any way that might affect anything you don't personally own (have your own private micro-continent somewhere, with self-contained weather to accommodate fallout? no? then good luck with that), then you are in the deepest of deep criminal shit.
Of course, most people wouldn't want to own a nuke just for no reason; most people who want to own a nuke plan to use it to do bad things, and those bad things would be discovered when their possession of the nuke was discovered and they were investigated. Of the remaining set, most of those who do, for some reason, want to own a nuke and have no intention of using it for any nefarious purposes, are probably nowhere near competent enough to keep and maintain it in a way that does not recklessly endanger millions of people, and so will get busted for that. Of the tiny fraction of people who want a nuke for non-nefarious purposes and are competent enough to handle it safely... well, those people are most likely nuclear scientists, the kind of people we already allow to handle nukes. And even then we keep a real close eye on them.
This same pattern scales down the list of items you gave. By the time you get to guns, there are enough legitimate reasons why someone might own a firearm that mere ownership is not grounds enough for suspicion. I could see an argument being made for a warranted inspection of the weapon's storage for safety against negligent, reckless endangerment. Carrying the weapon on the street could be an additional element of suspicion if you are stopped by the police for any ot
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"... If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations...." Unfortunately this statement assumes that the established news organizations are interested in finding and presenting the objective truth, which, as we know, is not an accurate assumption at all.
I come from a country which knows nothing about American laws or the rules about the presidency. I also know nothing about the apparent argument, beyond what I can gather here - that there is some level of belief that Obama was not born in the USA, which would make him ineligible to be president.
If there was a similar issue with my birth, I could produce a lot of corroborating evidence beyond a .pdf of my birth certificate. I could produce the original document, for one thing. I could point to hospital and doctors' records. I could produce witnesses who knew my mother at that time, and other evidence that she was resident at my birthplace. I could produce early photos with recognisable backgrounds, like a house. I could produce government records showing that my father was employed and paying income tax in that area.
Can Obama produce some of this? And if not, why not?
I don't think anyone believes he's not actually a US citizen. The point of conflict is that the US President is required to be a natural-born citizen. That means that if you immigrate and become a US citizen, you can become a citizen with all rights and privileges, except for one, becoming President. Like many things, the Constitution stipulates that, but doesn't really define the term in complete detail.
Natural Born is quite clear to me. You must have been born in the US. Naturally. So this would mean John Adams would qualify for President, and Alexander Hamilton would not (for sake of example ignoring the “or a citizen of the United States, at the time of adoption of this Constitution" clause). After that generation passed on, it would be impossible for anyone to immigrate to the US and then become President. I don't understand how this has become a gray area for so many lately.
"...the growth of the Internet has drained the noun "news" of its former authority..." No, the "news" did that to itself. It long ago ceased to be investigative journalism.
I am not a birther, but I am pretty sure the MSM lied about all kinds of things concerning 911, which ruined their credibility in a lot of peoples' minds. Unfortunately, some of those people are either insane, or racist, or both, hence the existence of birthers.
Infact, it'd make more sense if one would insist that to be eligible for president, one must hold *ONLY* American citizenship. (the current rules don't have any ban on a two-citizenship person becoming president, aslong as one of the two is American, and he's born with it).
That would be a big mistake, at least as formulated, for two (intimately related) reasons.
First, foreign citizenship is determined by foreign laws. Your proposal, as stated, would require the US government to disqualify presidential candidates based on the laws of a foreign country. This means that foreign nations get to say who can be US president.
Because of the previous point, you can be an involuntary foreign citizen. The natural-born US citizen children of the immigrants of several countries have this problem; e.g., there have been several cases where young natural-born Korean-Americans have traveled to South Korea without knowing that the government considers them to be its citizens and demands that they complete their obligatory military service. Similar (and worse) things happen from time to time with dual American-Iranian citizens traveling to Iran. Heck, US law itself actually provides for involuntary citizenship of minors; parents cannot renounce their children's US citizenship on their behalf, citizenship can only be renounced by an adult.
It would be terribly unfair to forbid a natural-born US citizen from being president who doesn't even know that they have a second citizenship in a country they may have never even visited.
To make your proposal get off the ground at all we have to modify it to forbid the presidency from people who have voluntarily and knowingly been sworn as citizens of another nation, or done something equivalent to that (e.g., accept an officer's commission from a foreign military, or become part of the high political leadership of a foreign country). This sort of thing used to be grounds for loss of US citizenship, but the Supreme Court struck it down some decades ago (which might actually be precedent against the modified forms of your proposal).
For the record, this whole thing shoots down a secondary birther canard that Obama can't be a natural born citizen because he is or was a dual citizen of the US and the UK, Kenya and/or Indonesia at some point. The answer is that (a) Obama evidently has been a citizen of at least one other country, (b) he was so involuntarily, (c) he never did anything to affirm any citizenship other than his American citizenship, (d) he lost any other such citizenships long ago, and (e) it's not relevant to US law anyway.
Are you adequate?
Only natural born citizens are qualified to be US Presidents. Natural born citizens are born in US of A of 2 US citizens. Born of a Kenyan or born of a UK subject does not make one qualified as natural born citizen.
All the date, # & name discrepancies on BCs & immigration documents just add irrelevant controversy. Our President is illegal.
Fuck you.
" If Fox News just lied they would be out of business rather quickly."
Not in the US.
However because they lie, there not allowed in Canada as a news source. Because in Canada the News must be reasonable factual.
Fox has said, in court, they are not a news show, and less then 2 hours a day is actually news; which is why they should be forced to lose the news portion of their title. IN fact, News should be a protected term.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Even if we nuked the whole news establishment there would still be a need to establish societal consensus around facts and truth. The news media used to help us do that, and maybe they've made too many mistakes and bad decisions to do that anymore. But what if that process is breaking down in general? How can a society self-organize to solve hard problems if we cannot even establish and agree on basic facts? Anything remotely tough seems to tie us in endless knots these days as people bring up the same arguments again and again and again.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Which brings up an interesting question... if the press, especially the (multi)national corporate kind present today, is driven by profit, can it be considered a free press?
Not true at all. Depending on the precise conceptualization of God given, you could possibly prove that concept to be logically inconsistent and thus impossible to realize, i.e. nothing could possibly exist matching that concept. You could, in principle, instead show the negation of such a concept to be inconsistent, and thus the concept to be necessary, proving with mathematical certainty the reality of something matching that concept of God. But valid proofs of such an affirmative nature rarely if ever exist for non-trivial concepts; and if you manage to prove only some trivial concept of God (e.g. precisely equivalent to the material universe as even atheists understand it), then be prepared to answer for why that concept really deserves the name of "God".
For example, I believe:
Therefore the only thing which could be God would have to be apart from the universe, which cannot exist; therefore God cannot exist. The closest thing that could exist would be in the limit of some enlarged concept of mundane personhood; as a mundane person (like a human) becomes more knowledgeable and more powerful, and closer to encompassing the whole of the universe within itself in the process, it becomes closer and closer to being God, but can never actually reach that stage, though it can always get arbitrarily closer.
Anyway, if one's concept of God is consistent and thus possible, but not necessary, merely contingent, then we look for empirical evidence. This kind of evidence cannot under any circumstances establish certain proof in the same sense as the logical proofs described above, and this is where things like null hypotheses come into play...
No proposition is inherently a null hypothesis or not. "Null hypothesis" doesn't mean "common sense assumption we should accept unless proven otherwise"; it means "the way things would be if the thing we're testing for were false". Empirical 'proofs' work by showing the evidence to be inconsistent with something: merely showing that the evidence is consistent with a hypothesis does not make that hypothesis any more probable, because there are always infinitely many other, at least subtly different hypotheses which are also consistent with any given evidence. So to show evidence for a hypothesis, you must formulate the negation of it, that being your null hypothesis, and then try to
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
How about realising whether not some things that are true and false aren't really that important? There are a lot more important things to worry about without having to worry about where the US President was born. People don't just have a serious problem with determining right from wrong, they also have a serious problem with determining the important from the trivial.
Reality is a messy business, especially when you get humans involved! You really have to love the Internet for all its flaws, and to take its accuracy with a grain of salt.
Thinkingman.com New Media
This was actually a good discussion. Some of the responses were very informative. (And some of them were complete crap, of course.) the presence of FACTS in response to those questions makes it easier to identify frivolous claims and faulty arguments, and I would like to thank those who took the time to compose complete and factual answers.
I knew a woman in Alaska who had to decide, before she turned 22, whether to be a US citizen or Japanese. I thought she had to file a claim asserting her US Citizenship, but it may be that she had to assert a denial of US Citizenship.
A friend of mine, who is an immigration lawyer, says that the phrase, "under the jurisdiction of the United States" is a matter of controversy for the courts. Diplomats are not the only exemption to US Citizenship derived from being born on USA soil, and that the criteria are not as cut-and-dried as a non-lawyer may think.
In some people's minds, this won't be settled without a forensic examination of the birth certificate. Some pople won't be convinced even then, but I lump those people with the folks who think Elvis is still alive.
Also interesting, I noticed that I was modded 'way down (even though I thought the article was a presentation of reasonable questions). I have noticed in the past, that other posters get modded down on the basis of the popularity of their posts, rather than the quality of question or argument. I recently read an article where the psychologist claimed that the Internet was a major source of crowd-influenced, crowd-compliant opinion shaping. Are the sheep leading the discussions these days?
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I am torn on the natural citizen clause. I don't want a president who has sworn allegiance to another country. The U.S. President should not be conflicted by the interests of two countries.
You don't have to swear allegiance to a second country to be a dual citizen. You can be a dual citizen involuntarily and unknowingly simply because the law of a second country says you're it's citizen. As an example, many Iranian-Americans and Korean-Americans have had this sort of problem when traveling back to their parent's countries—e.g., you go visit your grandparents in South Korea and the government forces you to stay and do military service...
OTOH, a baby has no say in when and where it is born - that is determined by its parents and doctors. Obama was in Hawaii by his second birthday (or possibly even born there if you accept the released document), attended elementary school in Indonesia (state-run school required him to pledge allegiance to the government), back in Hawaii for high school, then on the mainland for most of his adult life. Did Obama spend enough time in Indonesia to put its interests above American interests? I personally don't think so.
You're free not to vote for Obama on those insane grounds, but US citizenship law does not recognize the ability of US citizen children to renounce their citizenship, nor that of parents to do it on their behalf. Whatever pledges Indonesian schools required him to make as a child simply don't matter.
Are you adequate?
Check out this thread and this thread from Slashdot user GNUALMAFUERTE, who seems to be your man.
Being a strong agnostic myself, I found his emotional rants a rather interesting contrast to my cold position of indeterminacy --- and to top it off, I can now be proud that I've actually managed to have someone "foe" me on Slashdot!
and the stupid add with donald trump in the corner makes this post moot. I wish y'all would stop this s#t