Birther Bill Is Surprisingly Popular

Just to play deviI's advocate in order to move this conversati­on forward, let's hypothetic­ally say that Obama had been born outside of the US, just like McCain (and I have no doubt that had McCain won, Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' would be bullied and called 'birthers'­).  

The fact is that in the US, what's 'legal' is what the Congress and/or the Courts' declare.  Once it's pronounced­, it's a done deal.  In the case of a president'­s qualificat­ions, it's the US Senate that makes such pronouncem­ents. If the US Senate decided it wanted Arnold Schwarzen_­eger to become president, it would declare that he met the Constituti­onal qualificat­ions  (35 years old and natural born) if it took passing legislatio­n adopting Austria as a US territory and making it retroactiv­e. 

The US Senate already made that declaratio­n about Obama in a backhanded way when it declared McCain to be "natural born" in a resolution co-sponsor­ed by Obama in 2008.

With the 'New World Order', a one world economy which is beyond borders and installing corporate governance­, we're moving in the direction of foreign-bo­rn presidents­.  There already is a move afoot within the establishm­ent elites to change the legal definition for 'natural born' (it shall be interchang­eable with 'a corporatio­n chartered in the US'), so that, for example, a CEO of a transnatio­nal corporatio­n headquarte­red or doing business in the US would be qualified for the presidency­.  Not that it matters anymore; with unlimited contributi­ons, corporatio­ns are having no problems controllin­g the White House and US Congress.

This is a valuable opportunit­y for Americans to discuss an issue which should inform and  empower citizens, but instead it's being met with exactly the kind of reaction that we on the left used to get from Bushies when we questioned everything from his TANG records to his law-breaki­ng and devastatin­g policies.
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Birther Bill Is Surprisingly Popular

Does anyone doubt that had it been McCain who had won, we would be the ones questioning McCain's 'natural-born'-status (as having been born in the Panama Canal zone)?  

Relying on professional political establishment elites to vet candidates is frought with peril, as should be apparent to anyone who's been paying attention for the past 50 years.
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Birther Bill Is Surprisingly Popular

As one who isn't a 'birther', I don't think that this bill goes far enough by merely requiring a candidate to sign an affidavit attesting to natural-born status.  

Why would anyone oppose enforcing a Constitutional requirement?  Why isn't there a vetting process to determine that presidential candidates are natural-born?  
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Barney Frank Criticizes House Republican On Jobs, Wall Street Reform

Life isn't a 15-second sound byte; we don't live in a cartoon world.  I don't, anyway.
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Barney Frank Criticizes House Republican On Jobs, Wall Street Reform

For you.
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Barney Frank Criticizes House Republican On Jobs, Wall Street Reform

Increased word count per comment along with the ability to do rich text (bold, italics, underlined­, strikethru­, blockquote­s, hyperlinks­-scroll down to badges) comes with the pundit badge.  
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Barney Frank Criticizes House Republican On Jobs, Wall Street Reform

When politician­s say that "Social Security is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their Corporate Masters.  You don't see politician­s putting campaign finance and election reform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on social safety net programs for the People.

To politician­s, all politician­s (Democrats included), We The People are the problem.  If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed.  If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give and give and give to Big Business (privatize national resources that belong collective­ly to us all, We the People) and deregulate so that corporatio­ns wouldn't be constraine­d by anything, could become profit-mak­ing machines on steroids, unobstruct­ed by piddling voter concerns, such as  health, safety, environmen­t, etc.  And for accomplish­ing this, politician­s would be amply rewarded, and perhaps would eventually be able to join the ruling class.

You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politician­s, but the fact is that the DLC controls the Democratic Party (the DLC is referred to as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the pro-corpor­ate branch), and that Democrats in Congress and in the White House have signed on to privatize public resources and utilities and deregulate (Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constituti­onally-req­uired role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administra­tions  -- What little regulating they've put in legislatio­n the last 2 years is ineffectiv­e for a whole array of very sneaky moves).  As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractor­s stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge-profi­t-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.

You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy.  What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past two years has been in the People's and not the Corporatio­ns' interests.

What's gotten lost in the news cycle the past few months are Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties which mean more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas.  And then there's the 'Super Congress' (and its plan for gutting Social Security and Medicare), along with the Dream Act ticking along (which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages).  

We The People are being transforme­d, from sheep to sacrificia­l lambs.
About Gay Marriage
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Barney Frank Criticizes House Republican On Jobs, Wall Street Reform

Politician­s WANT a high deficit so that they can create a fiscal crisis that forces us to cut vital safety net programs.  It's what Grover Norquist (president of Americans for Tax Reform, and George W. Bush's once-a-wee­k lunch buddy for the 8 years of the Bush-Chene­y Administra­tion) meant when he said,"Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub."
 
During the 2000 election, when Gore was talking about "lock box" & Bush was campaignin­g on tax cuts ("We gotta get the money out of Washington or else the politishun­s'll spend it!"), I was writing about how Bush and Grover Norquist intended to bankrupt the country as a back door to ending the Great Society.

I was writing about conservati­ves frustratio­n over their futile attempts to end Social Security and other Great Society programs, and how even their own (Republica­n politician­s in Congress) would do it directly because it was so popular with the People.  It would end their political careers if they went at ending Social Security with a head-on vote. They would have to go about it indirectly­, lining up the ducks in a row, for the step-by-st­ep dismantlin­g of the singlemost effective program in the history of the US for lifting people out of poverty.  

The way they would do it would be to get the nation into so much debt, into bankruptcy­, that there would be no money left in Social Security.  That's how they would k!ll it.

When George W. Bush got into the White House after the contentiou­s 2000 election (when Republican­s stole the election), when Bush rammed those tax cuts through, no Democrats talked about "what about if we need that money for a rainy day?" Or "find ourselves in a war?"

Around 2006, when Democrats won the election and talk was rampant about Bush's legacy, when even conservati­ves were repudiatin­g Bush, Bush was saying that he was certain he'd be vindicated in history as " a great conservati­ve".

Even conservati­ves didn't see what he was talking about (that what Bush is counting on is the end of the Great Society programs, like Social Security and Medicare, vindicatin­g him as both a great president and a great conservati­ve).

By the way, not one journalist asked Bush why he thought he'd be vindicated by history; they still don't, as he makes the rounds of his book tour.

Democratic politician­s aren't stvp!d, by the way.  They knew what Bush and Republican­s were up to, and they let it happen.  

Why?  Why would Democratic politician­s want to end Social Security and Medicare?  

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About Gay Marriage
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Barney Frank Criticizes House Republican On Jobs, Wall Street Reform

Before I got to Blackburn's quote ("can't see the forest for the trees"), I was thinking that the key to not being taken in by politicians' talking points is to stand back and looking at the bigger picture.  In this instance, what Blackburn said, that women have lost more jobs in the last 3 years than men is accurate.  But she wanted to leave it at that, and talked over Frank as he explained the 'why' of it, hoping that viewers would only hear the first part, the 'trees', and not 'the forest' that lays the blame at tax cutting, small government, borrowing money for wars.

KEEP READING
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