Obama Releases long form birth certificate

[Lord MJ]

It appears now that Trumps new issue is looking into Obama's education background: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Tr ... 57869.html

Manhattan real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended.

Trump, who is mulling a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, offered no proof for his claim but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the president's birth certificate.

"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983 with a degree in political science after transferring from Occidental College in California. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude 1991 and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Obama's 2008 campaign did not release his college transcripts, and in his best-selling memoir, "Dreams From My Father," Obama indicated he hadn't always been an academic star. Trump told the AP that Obama's refusal to release his college grades were part of a pattern of concealing information about himself.
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"I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard," Trump said. "We don't know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president."

Katie Hogan, a spokeswoman for Obama's re-election campaign, declined to comment.
Trump, a wealthy businessman and reality TV host on NBC, has risen to the top of many polls in part by his outspoken call for Obama to release his long form birth certificate.

The state of Hawaii has released a certificate of live birth indicating Obama was born there on August 4, 1961, but that has not quelled critics who believe Obama was born outside the United States and is therefore not qualified to be president.

The so-called "birther" controversy has dominated the early stage of the 2012 GOP nominating contest, with Trump leading the charge.

"I have more people that are excited about the fact that I reinvigorated this whole issue," Trump said, adding "the last guy (Obama) wants to run against is Donald Trump."

Trump is scheduled to travel to the early primary states of New Hampshire and Nevada this week and said he will make a final decision about a presidential bid by June.

Also in the AP interview, Trump:

— Said Republicans had made a mistake by embracing a budget proposal crafted by Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan that included deep cuts in Medicare. "The seniors are afraid. The plan Paul Ryan put forth has made the Democrats so happy," Trump said.

— Declined to disclose his net worth, saying he'll do so if he decides to run. "You'll see what it is, possibly, very likely, in the next 4 weeks. I don't want to say because I don't want to ruin the press conference," he said.

— Expressed surprise that the 2008 GOP nominee, John McCain, had suggested Trump's effort was a publicity stunt. "I congratulate him for getting the attention he's getting," McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.

Trump said he had been a big supporter of McCain. "I would find it hard to believe he would say anything bad because I raised a fantastic amount of money for him," Trump said.

[open_sketchbook]

I hope you are joking.

I really can't fathom how anyone could take that seriously.

I know but it's very hard to tell just from text on the internet without the [Sarcasm] tag added on. I've seen Birthers making just that demand.

Dude, I invoked faeries. You need to read a little closer before you call people out, or you'll look like a fool.

[Simon_Jester]

I hope you are joking.

I really can't fathom how anyone could take that seriously.

I know but it's very hard to tell just from text on the internet without the [Sarcasm] tag added on. I've seen Birthers making just that demand.

...Isolder, using sarcasm on me is usually like dynamiting fish in a barrel, too easy to be sporting. I have one of the least reliable sarcasm detectors of anyone I know.

Even I got the joke this time.

Also, i think CaptainChewbacca is trustworthy enough to be trusted not to make stuff up as he goes along.

Trustworthiness isn't necessarily the issue, skewed perceptions can arise through a number of factors, but since Simon said he's content with Chewie's reply I'll retract my demand.

In this case, what's at issue is whether there really are any significant number of people who can actually be convinced by the birth certificate, on an individual level on the ground. For that purpose, the opinion of one person who knows and understands people in a highly Republican area, and who is in a position to ask questions over a long period of time in a 'longitudinal study' context, is worth a good deal.

[J]

Just wait until you see people saying "Sure, it's the long form certificate, but it could still be forged, because it's a copy!"

Well that didn't take long at all...It's a Photoshop! And a lousy one at that!

[CaptainChewbacca]

In this case, what's at issue is whether there really are any significant number of people who can actually be convinced by the birth certificate, on an individual level on the ground. For that purpose, the opinion of one person who knows and understands people in a highly Republican area, and who is in a position to ask questions over a long period of time in a 'longitudinal study' context, is worth a good deal.

God, you make it sound like I'm a field anthropolgist studying the habits of the Republican tribe.

[Dalton]

Just wait until you see people saying "Sure, it's the long form certificate, but it could still be forged, because it's a copy!"

Well that didn't take long at all...It's a Photoshop! And a lousy one at that!

Not that I believe one iota of birther bullshit, but is what they say about the PDF having layers true? Was this document purely a straight-up scan? Because if it's been altered, if even to enhance it, then Obama just handed the Birthers an early Christmas present.

[Simon_Jester]

Sorry. I didn't mean it like that, it's just the way I talk.

What I mean is, N&P isn't just left-leaning, it's really really really slanted against any statement or opinion of the form "Republicans don't suck." For purposes of the question that's actually being asked here, I am quite satisfied with one man's assessment of whether the people he knows did once believe there was any doubt about Obama's citizenship, but are now convinced.

I'm not going to go looking for a Gallup poll, because there's no point to it.

That is all.

[FSTargetDrone]

Yes, and now that they're being forced to shift their argument this becomes apparent to the masses. It doesn't add to their credibility, it visibly undermines it.

Sorry, Chewie, they never had any credibility to begin with. With the first squealing about this issue, they immediately put themselves on the same steaming pile as Truthers, NASA Faked The Moon Landing-believers or people who claim to have been abducted by aliens.

[Patrick Degan]

"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

And did Obama graduate from Columbia and then Harvard? Yes? Then go fuck yourself, Donny.

As has been pointed out, the Birthers will never be satisfied. Trump was already questioning how the long-form certificate had just "materialised". I'll wager that when Obama is reelected, House teabaggers will start drafting the impeachment bills against him on the basis of his "really" being Kenyan. Or anydamnreasonwhatsoever.

[Duckie]

The 'college' thing trump is pursuing sounds to me like "affirmative action!!!". It's not exactly a dog whistle because anyone can tell it but the average person will take it differently than a conservative ideologue who imagines that there are tonnes of underqualified black people taking white people's spots (because the spots are apparently inherently white unless otherwise occupied)

[Knife]

Obama did this to frame the debate, IMO. The News was running with this story whether he liked it or not, mostly calling the birthers loonies but some not. Tossing out his long form frames the debate, the News can't run a birther story now without mentioning that he did indeed provide his long form. Sure, knuckle draggers will still drag their knuckles, but now when it comes up it makes them look like nutters.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Yeah anyone still believing that bullshit after three plus years is never going to be talked out of it, birthers are on the same level as the international zionist conspiracy.

You say that like Obama's Kenyan birth isn't a part of a Bolshevick Jew plot to take away more of our freedoms...

Edit: Oh my...

In a statement after Obama spoke, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called the issue a distraction — and yet blamed Obama for playing campaign politics by addressing it.

"The president ought to spend his time getting serious about repairing our economy," Priebus said. "Unfortunately his campaign politics and talk about birth certificates is distracting him from our number one priority — our economy."

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/

Yup, totally Obama. Obama was the one making all the shit about his birth certificate.

[bobalot]

So apparently it's not as illegal to release as we've been told? I hope this now shuts up the birthers- we've got more important things to do.

I said it before; The seemingly 'reasonable' people have said 'Produce X and we will be happy'. Now that he's done that, either they have to let the issue drop or lose all the middle-of-the-road people who thought the story MIGHT be true.

Actually, it served a useful purpose. It indicated to the rest of us the fucking imbeciles who thought releasing the long form of the document was a reasonable demand.

[Dominus Atheos]

The 'college' thing trump is pursuing sounds to me like "affirmative action!!!". It's not exactly a dog whistle because anyone can tell it but the average person will take it differently than a conservative ideologue who imagines that there are tonnes of underqualified black people taking white people's spots (because the spots are apparently inherently white unless otherwise occupied)

Huh? Of course it's a racist dog whistle. The entire birther debate has been a racist dog whistle, made for people who believe a black person can never be a real American.

[Count Chocula]

The President of the U.S. Fuckin'-A. just got pwned buy a three-time loser! Obama and staff have paid a couple of million of dollars over the last 2+ years to block the release of his long form birth certificate, successfully. Then Trump comes along saying "I'm thinking about running for President," "Obama is the Worst President EverTM" and "You know, there's enough to make me wonder. Where IS Obama's long form birth cert?" Voila! After 2+ years of stonewalling and suits, Obama whips out his long, um, form BC and basically says "Let me be clear...you've nagged me over this...birthcertificate...long enough! Let's move on to...umm...higher taxes and deficits!" A guy whose greatest talent is self-promotion (he inherited Daddy's business and ran it into bankruptcy - 3 times!) got the effing President to dance to his tune! This makes President Obama look even weaker in my eyes.

If he or his staff had any savvy, they would have let The Man With The Standing Wave Hair keep on blathering about birther bullshit, kept an eye on his Presidential aspirations, and then pulled the BC smackdown on Trump in, oh, I don't know, October of 2012! They could have wasted millions of Trump's dollars and made him look like a prize jackass on the eve of the election if they had just kept telling the birthers to fuck off.

[Serafina]

Do you have ANY evidence that Obama was "stonewalling" and "spending millions of dollars on blocking the release"? At all?

Because the "we generally do not release long-term certificates"-theory seems much more plausible. I happen to know how patient-data can be handled in hospitals (worked in filing). You can get the information that is legally and medically relevant. You do not get information that is only relevant to the hospital (which is actually a blessing, since that can be a lot of bureaucratic stuff). All that information is on the short-term certificate - just compare it to the long-term and point out any relevant information you won't find on the short-form.
Heck, i'll just make a list:
-exact file and certificate number: irrelevant, unless you work in filing
-twin/triplet-birth: Could be medically and legally relevant, but since birth certificates for those children would also exist, it's available
-residence details of the parents: irrelevant for medical purposes later in live. Irrelevant for citizenship, as it is not determined by residence. And i don't think it should matter if you're born on a farm when you're running for president.
-Occupation of the parents: irrelevant, and private data of the parents.
-signatures of the parent, one doctor and the registrar. I suppose that could be relevant if you're believing it's forged, but then it's the health departments job to check for that.

There, that's it. All the differences between the short- and long-form certifiate. NONE of this has any relevance whatsoever, neither medically or legally.

[Jim Raynor]

I'd like to say that Obama shouldn't have even entertained this nonsense, but one in four Americans is a birther. Nearly half of all Republicans. Can you imagine how many people in the mindless middle might have bought into this crap, because Obama supposedly acted like he "had something to hide" by not digging this up?

Trump's speech was just ridiculous. Trump's talking about how "proud" he is for doing what nobody else could by forcing Obama to show some evidence, when he ought to be eating crow. Also, did you guys catch his comments on other subjects like Libya during that speech?

And I've always said, I'd go for Libya but I want the oil.

He basically comes out and says that he doesn't give a shit about the Libyan people, openly admitting to that "blood for oil" accusation that anti-war protestors often use.

You know the old days, you win a war, you win a war. Nowadays you win a war, you lose lives, we spend billions of dollars, and then we come out and we go back home. And we'd have all of our wounded to take care of. We'd have all of the dead soldiers and dead military. And what do we get? Nothing.

So in the good ol' days, the nation fought wars without losing troops or spending money? Also, I wasn't aware that American troops had been lost in Libya, especially when the US military is hardly even taking part in direct combat actions anymore.

This is interesting because the Arab League, which is Saudi Arabia and many of the wealthiest nations in the world, told us to go in and take out Gadhafi. Now, they would've said that to me, I would've said five billion dollars right now. You know, just for the question they would've given you all of that money, they would've paid it in two seconds.

Wow, way to not come across as a douche. "Just for the question" of asking for humanitarian assistance, he'd demand money up front from other countries. Hey, at least he was open before about how he wanted to run this nation like a business...

Why isn't China involved? Why are we involved in Libya, and China's not involved

Donald Trump, calling for expanded Chinese military influence!
God, this guy is a joke. His entire strategy is based on demanding Obama to dig up more and more irrelevant crap from his past, or taking the opposite of Obama's decisions and bitching nonsensically.

The reaction to this from others on the crazy Right has also been hilarious. Rush Limbaugh (and several people I know in real life who listen to Rush) was basically laughing about how Obama lost big today because he was "forced" into revealing his birth certificate by Trump. So being asked stupid questions, and shooting down those stupid questions with even more hard evidence, is somehow an embarassment because you had to react to someone else's stupidity...

The immaturity in that kind of thinking is just unbelievable. That's just pure trolling nonsense. Like the random dumbass on an internet forum who says something retarded and then answers all responses with "u mad?"

[Dalton]

@Chocula: Hey, stupid-ass, that "couple of million of dollars" was for ALL legal fees since the inauguration, including a goddamn lawsuit filed by birther assholes. Maybe you should do some actual fucking research before spewing whatever bullshit you read on Facebook. Riddle me this: Why would Obama spend two million to block something that's already been fucking released? The short-form birth certificate is a LEGAL DOCUMENT. The hysterical claim that he spent that money just to block the long-form document is a complete horseshit myth. Hawaii had to make a goddamn legal exception to even release it.

[Serafina]

Again, let me repeat this:
I have some experience with medical filing systems (specifically german hospitals). We do NOT hand out full documents quite often, neither to patients, insurances or the police (unless the latter really, really needs it IIRC).
This policy actually benefits the patient, since he'll only get the medically (or legally) relevant information. What do you need for pages detailing how and when your infusions were checked for? Why would you need five pages showing a normal EKG, because your heart was not causing any trouble during your stay? That information is generally not released, because there is no reason to release it. That's why almost all files i handled contained a few pages at the beginning of the folder where the relevant stuff was listed, including cross-references.

It's exactly the same situation here. As i've shown, the long-form birth certificate contains no additional relevant information. So a policy of only giving out short-terms is quite understandable and a carbon-copy of the filing systems i am familiar with.
I'd actually argue that the long-term certificate contains information that should NOT be accessible to the public, such as the occupation of the parents at that time, or their exact residence. Parents have a right for privacy too, after all.


And just for comparison: A full german birth certificate only contains, IIRC:
-Full name of the child, sex of the child, time and place of birth
-full name of the parents, religion of the parents unless they object to it being recorded
-name, place, seal of the civil registry, some other bureaucratic stuff
-i think it is possible to get a copy of the birth-certificate that omits the information about the parents and the sex of the child. That'd be our "short form".

I fail to see how anything else is even remotely relevant.

[J]

Not that I believe one iota of birther bullshit, but is what they say about the PDF having layers true? Was this document purely a straight-up scan? Because if it's been altered, if even to enhance it, then Obama just handed the Birthers an early Christmas present.

I don't know, we don't have any software for editing PDF files so we can't see all the layers & other stuff which it's alleged to contain. I do have a copy of the document and I'll try to find someone with the software needed to look into it.

[D.Turtle]

This whole thing reminds me of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. That was also a blatant and obvious promotion of untruth in order to attack the reputation, etc. of a political opponent. Kerry ignored it almost the whole time, as he didn't want to promote it. In the end it cost him a lot of support and maybe the election.

Obama has pretty much ignored the topic for the same reason, but recently it gained more and more traction. After the poll from the New York Times, which showed only one third of Republicans believing that Obama was born in the US and almost half saying he was born in another country, it seems that the Obama campaign has decided that it is worth the effort and potential immediate political cost in order to try and bury the thing again.

Now it remains to be seen if it will work.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Or maybe he deliberately wanted the Republicans to go hyperfocused on the issue...

[Lonestar]

Chris Core(conservative news commentator on Federal news Radio here in the DC area) said that it was a really stupid thing to release the Birth Certificate, precisely because of mahy of the other reasons people here are giving(it lends credibility to the issue, people will say "why didn't he do this earlier", and true believers will call it a fake anyway).

I would have insisted it not be released, myself.

[Big Phil]

Just wait until you see people saying "Sure, it's the long form certificate, but it could still be forged, because it's a copy!"

Well that didn't take long at all...It's a Photoshop! And a lousy one at that!

Not that I believe one iota of birther bullshit, but is what they say about the PDF having layers true? Was this document purely a straight-up scan? Because if it's been altered, if even to enhance it, then Obama just handed the Birthers an early Christmas present.

It doesn't matter. Altered, not altered, photograph or PDF, the birthers will just keep moving the goalposts and keep believing whatever bullshit they want to believe. They'll deny it's legitimate because it says "Certificate of Live Birth" instead of "Birth Certificate" or because it doesn't list a religion (neither does mine, by the way, or my son's... I guess we were born in Kenya too).

[CaptainChewbacca]

Actually, it served a useful purpose. It indicated to the rest of us the fucking imbeciles who thought releasing the long form of the document was a reasonable demand.

Check your sarcasm-meter, dickface. I put reasonable in quotes for a reason. Now brush up on your reading and go jam a screwdriver in your ear. Hoping an issue is settled by the release of new/better evidence doesn't make someone an imbecile, it makes them an optimist.