Calling all Birthers

[vol_scouter]

So Beavah, you would have no concerns if a candidate in the 2016 election was taken to Iran as a young child, their citizenship was revoked, and they returned sometime in high school years? Would you not be concerned about core values? Those values have to do with the way all problems are approached. Would you not have concerns about the way that they see this country? Open microphones have shown us that our politicians hold some groups in contempt and are arrogant (not a surprise). What if that attitude affected the candidate's idea of ALL Americans? Such things concern me and I believe many others. We at least should have a clear picture of what the person's background really is. Many people do not know or believe that Obama was taken to Indonesia and apparently his mother renounced his citizenship.

[Beavah]

Vol, da thing of it is that these citizenship issues have been resolved by law and precedent decades if not centuries ago, eh? A parent renouncing the citizenship of a 3-year-old has no legal effect. Having a non-citizen father does not affect citizenship status. Juvenile records in this country are generally sealed, so we've never known anything about da juvenile life of any other president (includin' the last president's likely introduction to alcohol and drugs as a middle-schooler ). Nobody considers middle school records for employment or background. These issues are settled law, and settled norms.

 

Which leads us back to why a considerable group wants to re-raise long-settled issues in this particular case. What motivates that? Who profits by keepin' that goin'? What ends does it promote to question not this president's competence, but his legitimacy by birth?

 

Beavah

[Scoutfish]

" Many people do not know or believe that Obama was taken to Indonesia and apparently his mother renounced his citizenship."

 

I know what you are getting at Vol...But My own mother renounced half my friends, my love of rock and roll, the mullet hairdo I had a LONG LONG time ago and my pierced ear.

 

But that didn't mean I renounced it. I had my own thoughts and feelings.

 

Point here being that he ended up growing up in America. Had he truely stuck with a renonced citizenship state of mind, he'd still be elsewhere.

 

 

[CalicoPenn]

Scoutfish - your mother was right to renounce your mullet - you should have listened to her.

 

 

BS - 87:

"CalicoPenn -

 

You're both right and wrong.

 

We are just like those previous superpowers.

 

You are wrong by saying that this position is not sustainable."

 

I've got thousands of years of human history as evidence behind my statement - what have you got other than you're declarative statement that I'm wrong? Please enlighten me how I'm wrong - what is so different this time that we're going to succeed where no other civilization has ever succeeded in exceptionalism?

[BS-87]

You're right to be skeptical of our exceptionalism.

 

However, if we're not willing to fight and preserve it, we will lose it. If we do not keep other nations at arm's length, we will lose it. If we fail to be on the cutting edge of progress in our world politically and socially, we will lose it.

 

You're right that we're slipping, but our question should be how do we fix it, not how do we relinquish it.

[skeptic]

It seems to me that the point is that all these previous "super powers" built their highest level of success on focusing on their own infrastructures and people first. Only when they allowed themselves to reach too far, either militarily or politically did they begin to lose their grip on success. The expense for over reaching ultimately led to the demise of their central core, and the eventual slide to mediocrity or lower; and in some cases uprisings of the the citizenry.

 

We have all been reminded that those who forget or ignore history are doomed to failure.

[vol_scouter]

Scoutfish,

 

You clearly do not have concerns but I and many others find that a negative. In my opinion, someone how has lost their citizenship even if a parent or legal guardian did so should not be eligible to be Pres,, V-P or Speaker. That is not currently in the constitution but I believe that it should be in the future.

 

Beavah,

 

My internet reading in the past would indicate that there is not a definitive ruling determining what the term 'Natural Born Citizen' actually means. If the current precedent for the other standards are so low, then they should be changed for future presidential candidates.

[Beavah]

It seems to me that the point is that all these previous "super powers" built their highest level of success on focusing on their own infrastructures and people first. Only when they allowed themselves to reach too far, either militarily or politically did they begin to lose their grip on success.

 

Actually, I think on reflection that all da previous super powers built their highest level success on conquest, eh? They invaded neighboring lands and incorporated their resources into the empire. Had they just stayed home and built their own infrastructure and people, they would have been like China, eh? They'd just get invaded by someone who wanted to incorporate their well-developed infrastructure and people into the empire.

 

In many ways, we did this as well in our conquest of da native tribes and our war with Mexico. Then we continued to build those regions with immigrant labor.

 

Where empires failed is that they reached a point where they couldn't keep expanding and ran out of human and natural resources. Like us. Our birth rate is down but we don't want immigration, and though we no longer have the natural resources in oil to sustain ourselves we refuse to develop alternatives. We recognize that our population is undereducated, but rather than fix that we extol da virtues of sports and entertainment, and we'd rather select leaders who talk nice or are good to have a beer with than ones who understand advanced economic theory. And on and on...

 

Beavah

 

[packsaddle]

I'm still grappling with all the images, not to mention the irony, of someone with a name like Scoutfish...having a mullet. Mindboggling!

 

I understand inference of racism. I grew up in and have lived most of my life in the South. What I also recognize is that for that inference to work, the idea of racism and a sensitivity to the nature of the concept is required by both those who infer and those who 'read' and accept the inference. Both parties share the interaction and if that's a dance you want to dance, all I can say is that while one party might falsely think they're making points by clever name calling, the other party is equally incorrect in thinking their indignance can substitute for a well-reasoned argument. Both sides lose.

 

I agree with Beavah's notes on empires. I present this to my students at the beginning of every semester, connecting social and economic and political systems to material and energy resources. The historical patterns are troubling to them. Every empire up to very recent times has waxed and waned and for many of them the story is reasonably well-known. But up until the 19th century almost all of them required massive human labor (energy) resources to sustain the empires. I think it is no coincidence that the dependence on forced servitude in whatever form declined rapidly with the industrial revolution. It certainly doomed slavery in this country (although we fought a war to end it anyway).

As Beavah indicated, our failure to use our ingenuity and creativity to develop and pursue alternatives to oil, combined with our anti-intellectual acceptance of superficial things over education...these things may well have started our decline already. And I don't see ANY member of the current political crop as having a solution to this.

 

BS-87, long-term sustainability requires long-term sustainable intellectual, technological, and energy resources in addition to the materials we have always needed. We might be able to continue to dominate through military means for a while. But that, by itself, is unsustainable in the long-term.

[OldGreyEagle]

" the constitution is just a set of suggestions to use if convenient and discard otherwise " THAT is the attitude of most of Washington and the source of most of our problems."

 

Oh come on now, the Constitution, when all boiled down, is just a bunch of what some may regard as silly rules and I have already been told many times that if you think a rule is silly, you just decide not to follow it

 

before the election, many said Obama was not qualified to run the country, that his policies were flawed and here we are, arguing about his "right" to be president while he gets ready to campaign for another term. WHy not spend all the time and energy spent on "birther" agendas on developing actuall solutions and communicating those ideas so we dont have to worry about Obama version 2.0?

 

Would Obama have been elected if there was a real message from the other side

 

We often see said on the forum that when people can't argue view point, they start with the ad hominem attacks. Birther issues are an ad hominem attack, why attack the man when his policies, record and competence are so flawed?

 

[BS-87]

packsaddle - Another lefty indoctrinating our kids, who'd have thought.

 

"our failure to use our ingenuity and creativity to develop and pursue alternatives to oil, combined with our anti-intellectual acceptance of superficial things over education...these things may well have started our decline already. And I don't see ANY member of the current political crop as having a solution to this."

 

 

We agree on this point. I just have the optimism that someone in the field will be willing to address the issue of education.

 

This is a whole other argument, but I'm with Ron Paul who would abolish the Federal Dept. of Education and relinquish all control of education to the States. Hopefully the States would have the sense to put more control into the hands of regional administrators overseeing a few counties. I had the opportunity to listen to one of our AEA officials this past week, and it was outstanding how well he understood the current crisis. He said organizations like his need to be freed to do what they need to do to bring our schools into the information age and out of the mechanical age. We're failing now in education because we have an agrarian schedule, with a mechanical process, in an information age!

 

Kids can learn more from the internet and faster than they can in a classroom.

 

We may see the best possible teachers for subjects doing distance learning to every student nationwide who can attend the virtual class. Classrooms will probably look more like computer labs. The school schedule will probably be extremely flexible.

 

However, when we have a federal system that's trying to tweak the status quo, we cannot receive the massive overhaul in thinking and habit that a fix in our education system will take.

 

We can be the most creative, entrepreneurial, and managerial people and nation in the world. We just have to let ourselves be.

 

I'm not settling for the fall of our superiority.

[BrentAllen]

"...our failure to use our ingenuity and creativity to develop and pursue alternatives to oil,.."

I don't agree with this - we have plenty of resources for energy. Congressional Research Service just came out with a report saying that the United States has the most energy reserves in the world by far, more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia, more than anybody.

 

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=04212e22-c1b3-41f2-b0ba-0da5eaead952

 

As for Obama being American or un-American, I found this article interesting:

 

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/22/about-the-birth-certificate/

Excerpt:

How could so many people question President Obamas birthplace? How could they wonder about his origins? Are they all simply racist?

 

The answer, of course, is that Americans are desperately seeking an answer to a simple question: why does President Obama appear to be so un-American? The term un-American here is not synonymous with anti-American (though Obama has been that on occasion); instead, it merely signifies that President Obama is unconcerned with typical American principles and traditions. He sees capitalism as selfish and evil, religion as dangerous and oppressive; he sees the Constitution as antiquated and entrepreneurialism as exploitative. He is the representative of the Fareed Zakaria ideology at work, celebrating the post-American world.

 

 

[sherminator505]

Un-American? Here's a question. Why do some of us seem so willing to ascribe this moniker to a sitting President we disagree with politically, when we seem so unwilling to apply the same to "American" corporations that do their very best to ship jobs overseas and offshore their incomes to avoid paying taxes? After all, wasn't Citizens United about these "American" corporations' First Amendment rights?

 

[skeptic]

Beavah and Pack; Thank you for clearing my "poorly stated" idea up. I agree with both of you in that regard. What I intended to say was that as earlier empires grew, they initially still focused on their central, starting point, expanding and incorporating land and people into their slave/serf/warrior systems. Those core cities became very advanced, for their period. The core also was the source for continued growth, where the funding and supplies were controlled. But, as they over extended their reach, supply lines got too long, and expansion bogged down. Eventually the malaise of too much comfort too centrally located, along with greed and avarice in the ruling groups led to the demise. The point about "History" is still the main idea; ignore it at our peril.

[packsaddle]

Brent, I've read both the 2010 and the 2009 reports and they are both highly speculative. Moreover, keep in mind that our speculation about our own resouces is far better than similar speculation about resources in other countries.

 

The majority of that estimate is 'undiscovered technically recoverable resources (UTRR)' categories. Moreover, it includes the oil energy equivalent (BOE) for coal, all sources of natural gas, shale oil, and the heavy stuff. A large portion of the proven sources such as shale oil is noted as not economically recoverable, as is a lot of the conventional oil, so until the price goes way up, it isn't feasible. In addition, the problem with some of the sources (such as shale oil or coal) is that to convert it into a usable form (liquid fuel for example) not only is expensive in terms of dollars, it might even require more energy for the conversion than is contained in the product (a negative EROI or energy return on investment).

Yes, some of this stuff is going to be recovered and used. And if the price of energy and the associated demand are great enough, then we'll be willing to pay the price of running those processes even in an energy-negative manner. Some people argue that we're doing that already with the ethanol and biofuel programs.

 

But the conditions that bring us to that status are far different from our current lifestyle. When oil brings $200-300 per barrel and gasoline costs closer to $10-20 per gallon, circumstances will be dictating our choices whereas we could have 'thought' ahead and prepared for that future. At those prices, we may well be removing mountain ranges to extract a few barrels of oil from the rock. But we will be paying a dear price for having woefully ignored the Scout Motto.

 

Edited to add: BS-87, make sure your children are strongly influenced by the internet. The marketplace will eventually make the needed correction.

If you read my posts long ago, you would see that I strongly advocate a purely private education system with a public system for the indigent, also available at cost to the non-indigent. It would allow the marketplace to more quickly select against poor decisions by families in their educational choices.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)