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The promise of a great new ‘Change we can believe in’ is daily becoming the great “Division we can barely live with.’ Why has the President allowed the question of his birth place to be added to the burgeoning list of doubts America is already facing. The President’s stand on abortion and the newly discovered provisions found in the Health Care Bill for assisted suicide for the elderly indicate that the ‘one’ who promised to heal the divisions in the nation has not only ignored that campaign promise, but has sailed his ship way outside of that empty promise to create a class of entirely disposable citizens. Can we now add the group often being referred to as the ‘birthers’ to the ever growing list of disposable citizens? No healing here. The question raised by the title of this article can be answered with a simple, yes but to be fair we should examine the plight of the birthers. (Those who are demanding to see the long form of President Obama’s birth certificate) More importantly, why hasn’t the President put a stop to it with a simple showing of the document? Anyone who surfs the web has by now become at least nominally aware that a rapidly growing segment of America is quite dissatisfied with the vetting of the President. The question is largely centered on Barack Obama’s refusal to release what is known as the long form of his Hawaiian birth certificate. The birth record is only one of many documents that have raised suspicion about the President’s past. It is ridiculously un-complicated because the commonality of every document in question is the same; they are still missing, or at least unseen by anyone except those who are reported to be holding them. Perhaps there is nothing at all to the entire matter but until the documents can be seen no one will believe that. In a nation founded on laws, evidentiary procedure and documentation for almost all grievances and complaints, applications or identification, missing documents just won’t do it. I will not enter the fine details of all that has been done to procure the records but rather I will try to keep this perusal of the matter on a strictly philosophical basis. I know it is impossible to have a Will Rogers kind of trust in people, a Glenn Beck style of appeal to common sense, all at the same time we are saying that the laws of the constitution may have been breached by the person who holds the highest office in the land. This is a tightrope for anybody to walk. Hawaii has just hit the news and said that they have not destroyed any paper documents just because they have gone into electronic record keeping. It would seem safe to say that the document still exists. What does not seem as safe is that anyone should ask to see it. Newsman Lou Dobbs recently underwent a scolding according to sources for his mention of the missing documents and others have had to endure ridicule and outright scorn for the mention of it. Every day thousands more Americans are joining those who are now calling for the proof but the White House has danced around the issue, the President remains mysteriously silent and the birthers have had to endure the scoffing, belittlement and pooh-poohing of their efforts by everyone in the Obama sphere and some outside it. Equally disconcerting is the fact that some high profile conservatives like Bill O’Reilly and Governor Mike Huckabee think Obama is perfectly OK with the COLB he displayed on Snopes.com We have to wonder why they are so sure about something they have never seen either. We are all quick to point out that Obama supporters hang on his every word like they were hypnotized but are reticent to openly disagree with conservative big boys like O’Reilly who has often said Obama, is very smart. What is smart about creating doubt in the hearts and minds of several million Americans? Concealing the facts about a simple document comes under the heading of ‘pinhead’ not ‘patriot.’ Shouldn’t someone be willing to tell Mr. O’Reilly that? We can all appreciate the stand O’Reilly has taken on many issues but even his word can’t substitute for the constitution and its obvious requirements for the vetting of a Presidential candidate. Thanks for the stand and the tee shirts but the matter of vetting cannot be dismissed by the waving of your hand at the end of a ninety second segment. Grassroots movements require years to gain adherents and strength and no one can wave them off in a second. I am no more of an expert than O’Reilly on the ‘birthers’ but I would bet the farm that they are in this for the long haul and will not be easily dismissed. Struggling to find the truth must never be confused with mere partisanship or labeled as a conservative or liberal cause. It is several levels above simple politics and can never be settled in the endless debates of pundits and news figures. If we could refer the question to the founding fathers I’m sure they would concur that this is the reason they gave us the constitution to begin with. Calling the birthers some less than flattering names shows that we have missed the point entirely. It is the constitution that is primarily calling for the truth not the birthers. Here is the rub. Those who say the document has been seen are wholly unwilling to admit that it not only has been alleged to be a fraud but it is by any standard, totally unusable as an instrument of identification and or verification. The reason it has been rendered useless has more to do with the means by which it was presented rather than the assertion that it is fraudulent. It could not be used to get a passport, a job, a security clearance, a travel visa, a credit card, a bank account, or a tryout for the little league. What it can be used for is to get a direct and unhindered passage to the White House. Should we really be surprised by the doubt it has raised in the minds of millions of Americans? Please don’t insult your own intelligence with a glib answer of yes. The more important question is why is the birth certificate posted on the internet useless? Here is where vetting 101 helps us along with the basics. No document posted online can be used to vet anything or anyone; think about it! When you go to help your child get their first drivers license or when you go to the interview for the much coveted job you trained for all too many years, or when you make your next application at the bank for a loan try this. Just tell them they can look up all the pertinent information on you on your website, on your Facebook or Twitter page or wherever it is posted on the World Wide Web. If you are not laughed at you will at least be shown the door. The internet is still the one media that gets laughed at as it pertains to accuracy and reliability. Here is the media that is home to a billion pages of filth, porn and general gobbledygook. The web is a long way from fully establishing its credulity as a news source but there is where our President chose to show the nation his papers. Yes, most reasonable people would tend to doubt this, how dare we label them ‘birthers’ and assign them to the fringe. Going from Snopes to a posted COLB and directly to the White House without passing go; that is what’s fringy. Most of us won’t order a twenty dollar music CD from an internet website unless it has a major outlet like Amazon or EBay behind it with some kind of triple strength encryption on the check out page. But hey, want to be the President of the United States just post your birth certificate online and start spending the $600,000,000 in your campaign coffers to gain the White House. I am not trying to make it sound absurd, it doesn’t need my help to sound that way. The Presidents silence continues to drive a wedge between the rapidly growing number of Americans who want to see the certificate and those who just don’t give a hoot. His credulity is suffering but no one seems to be advising him that if he continues to lose their trust it will undoubtedly show up hard against him in the 2012 election results. The million or two votes and growing cast against him for his indifference will be well earned and could be the difference between a second term and early retirement. So what is the bottom line? Is it a court order to produce the document; is it a Senate or Congressional hearing to demand the papers? Can you snuff your nose at millions of Americans for four years and think it will all just go away like the fading of the morning glory at the rising of the sun? No one can say what series of complicated legal maneuvers will actually work to produce the big secret document but one thing is a foregone. Before they were called ‘birthers’ they were called citizens. Until the constitution is completely discarded it is the citizens who have to choose and work with their President and it is the President who has to deal with the citizens. So deal with them Mr. Transparency! President Obama has shown us that he has never met a minority that he doesn’t like. He comes from the black minority and has shown special care to Latinos, immigrants and gays. Are the ‘birthers’ the one exception to the rule. Oddly they are the one with the simplest problem and it can be solved in a New York minute. What part of the simple request to see the document does the President not understand? If he wants the whole matter to just go away he could obtain the document submit it to a few reliable news sources and put the entire matter to bed. Adding to his promise to become Mr. Transparency, Barack Obama has also earned the title of Mr. News Conference. Why not shut the mouths of the naysayers with a single stroke, a single news conference and thereby perhaps pick up a few votes in the process. Holding up the highly disputed document for all to see and perhaps with a smile and a ‘hey boys, look at this’ would nip the entire matter in the bud. Birthers would go home silenced but happy and the confidence of several million Americans would be restored. All that remains after that is to see if the President invites people like Philip Berg, Mario Puzzo and Orly Taitz along with some of the most vociferous birthers to the White House for a beer. But even if it takes until someone finally locates the documents for the inauguration of the new Obama Library the truth will one day be known. What will that legacy be? I said that I will keep the approach here on a purely philosophical level but I cannot leave the room without at least one small item lifted up from the theological level. If nothing should happen on the Obama birth certificate question until the very end of time there is one who will demand a look see; and he will get it. Christ said, “For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad.” (Mt 4:22) http://www.americanprophet.org is the place for news, articles, movie and book reviews and other insights for life. Rev Bresciani is a columnist for online and print publications and has over two million readers and counting.
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Birthers, COLB, Mike Huckabee, O’Reilly, News Conference, Barack, World Wide Web, Presidential Library, Lou Dobbs, Mr. Transparency, vet, Snopes, New York, Latino,
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