“All I want to see is the guy’s birth certificate.” — Donald Trump

Birth Certificate Image can be found online at Factcheck.org; Factcheck checked the actual physical certificate—see the article here.

Unlike a lot of people, dg takes Donald Trump and the birther movement seriously. DG is part of a new and growing splinter-birther movement called the Extreme Birthers (donations gratefully accepted). Extreme Birthers are not impressed by the “fact” that there is “in fact” an Obama birth certificate (see above) that purports to show that he was born in Hawaii. Extreme Birthers make several additional points:

1) Hawaii only recently became a state (dg can’t remember the exact date; how many of you can?; so it doesn’t matter). And you have to go across water to get to it. So it doesn’t really count as part of the United States in the strict sense. (Similarly, you have to fly a long way to get to Alaska, so it isn’t really part of the United States either in the strict sense.)

2) One of his parents was not American; that makes him HALF NOT-American. Presidents should be GENETICALLY WHOLE Americans. DG thinks these are the words in the Constitution, at least, if DNA analysis had been available then, the Founding Fathers would have written it in.

3) According to lame liberal left-wing academic interpretations of current (fuzzy) immigration law, Obama was, by the evidence of this birth certificate (see above), an American citizen at birth. You’re an American citizen if you were born in the United States (okay, we already have an argument about Hawaii), and you’re an American citizen if one of your parents was an American citizen (even if you were born in Kenya or Indonesia). Clearly these interpretations of the law are wrong. Let’s take the two arguments separately.

“You’re an American citizen if you were born in the United States…” This is clearly problematic because, as many immigration experts have pointed out, aliens are sneaking across the north and south borders (not to mention those from the planet Cepphebox) to have babies in America and then using their babies (American citizens) to sponsor them (and their extended families—hundreds and thousands of people) as legal immigrants (this is an old anti-American immigration trick called “bootstrapping”). These immigrants are taking advantage of a legal loophole to flood American social services agencies and demand free health insurance thus increasing the National Debt. There is a movement to have this law changed and/or clarified so that being born on U.S. soil does not AUTOMATICALLY give you American citizenship, especially if one or both of your parents are not WHOLE Americans. Extreme Birthers go even farther and support a Constitutional Amendment to make the new law retroactive for, say, 200 years. Everyone born to or descended from illegitimate aliens would have to go back to his country of origin. This would ease the strain on social services agencies, Medicare and so on, and decrease the National Debt. Also, of course, Obama would not be able to run for president.

“…you’re an American citizen if one of your parents was an American citizen…” This clearly won’t fly. First of all, it’s an ambiguous and confusing law. In the first instance, it simply means that anyone can take advantage of some naive young pure Christian American girl (why are they always weak in the knees for aliens? it seems basically anti-American) and bootstrap himself into the United States. American women would find themselves a lot less pestered by foreign men if the law were changed so that you couldn’t bring relatives into the country. In the second instance, of course, if you go to another country to have your baby, that’s un-American (an implicit critique of the vastly superior American health care system). So even babies born to American parents should not automatically be accorded citizenship if they are born on alien soil. They should have to pass a language test, security clearances, and means tests. They should also not be fluent in any language other than English (otherwise how do we know what they are really saying?).

4) Extreme Birthers do not believe Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria (dg wants to see the guy’s birth certificate). His accent clearly shows he was born in New Jersey.

5) Anyway Extreme Birthers discount the evidentiary value of a legitimate birth certificate. It makes perfect common sense to ask, HOW DO WE KNOW THIS IS EVEN THE SAME GUY? There is no photo on birth certificates, no bar code. The law needs to be changed to specify ways of establishing CONTINUOUS PERSONAL IDENTITY from birth to death (and this law should be applied to all Americans). Extreme Birthers advocate the use of streaming video much like the Google Street View system for monitoring the lives of individuals so that we can be sure, if the question comes up, that they are who they say they are. (Unfortunately, this would increase the National Debt in the short term, but it would also create jobs for many unemployed Americans.)

Just saying…

dg (PTBB)

See also see dg’s earlier post on his own experience of multiple personality issues in contemporary society.