Rep. King Goes Birther: Suggests Obama’s Parents Telegrammed Hawaii Birth Announcement From Kenya

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Source: Think Progress



Try as they may, Republicans just can’t seem to kick their birther habit.

The latest GOPer to dabble in the ridiculous fantasy that President Obama wasn’t actually born in the United States: Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

During a tele-townhall meeting late last week, King was asked about his views on whether President Obama is a natural-born American citizen. The Iowa Congressman noted that his staff had investigated the matter and found birth announcements in the two Hawaii newspapers the week after Obama’s birth. However, King went on to float the absurd notion that his parents “might’ve announced that by telegram from Kenya.”

KING: We went down into the Library of Congress and we found a microfiche there of two newspapers in Hawaii each of which had published the birth of Barack Obama. It would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii and get that into our public libraries and that microfiche they keep of all the newspapers published. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some other explanations on how they might’ve announced that by telegram from Kenya. The list goes on. But drilling into that now, even if we could get a definitive answer and even if it turned out that Barack Obama was conclusively not born in America, I don’t think we could get that case sold between now and November.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/01/619371/steve-king-birther/?mobile=nc

---

Once again, the fact that the GOP has become controlled by escaped mental patients is on full display.
Look for Mitt Romney and the GOP leadership to condemn these racist attacks a week from never.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6lfIBTeo0lU

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Nah. The leaders are escaped psychopaths.

Only the followers are escaped lunatics.

[karynnj]

2. Except the hospital itself put the lists of announcements in the papers

Amazing, they don't believe the official response of the state of Hawaii - yet they believe Romney when his position is not consistent with what he signed in SEC documents.

[Botany]

9. No the information in the papers came from the Dept. of Health which they got ...

... from the hospital.

[HooptieWagon]

55. Okay... Maybe the hospital...

flew somebody to Kenya in order to telegram back to the papers the birth announcement, just in case the half-african kid (named Barak Hussein Obama) wanted to run for president one day. Yeah, that's it - the hospital is in on the conspiracy, too! LOL!

[johnd83]

3. Obama's mom was a US citizen

therefore he would have been a US citizen (or at least eligible) even if he WAS born on Kenyan soil. So why the heck does it even matter?

[Blue_Tires]

5. Don't even bother debating

Even King knows it's bullshit he made up on the spot...But he knows how to keep his base buzzing in an election year...

[Raster]

18. And that really is All. He. Has. Is...

[BIGGER]BULLSHIT

[canuckledragger]

16. it doesn't matter & never has...

...it's a racist thing.

& also all about the smears. This is one smear that stuck with the tea bagger racists & they will never let it go

[Scootaloo]

28. That only works if you consider women to be people

Which most Republicans, and all birthers, do not.

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. Due to her young age, it does matter

If you were born on or after 12/24/52 and before 11/14/86, and ONE of your parents was a U.S. citizen at the time of your birth, you may have acquired U.S. citizenship at birth if the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the USA for periods totaling 10 years prior to your birth, at least 5 of which were after their 14th birthday.

http://photos.state.gov/libraries/canada/303578/pdfs/us_citizenship.pdf

She was born 29th Nov 1942; Barack on Aug 4th 1961. So she had not quite completed 5 years in the USA after her 14th birthday. This is why birthers have been forced to come up with more and more bizarre conspiracies to place his birth outside the USA. Most, like this, end up implying an incredibly difficult logistical operation to spirit his mother away while going to great lengths to make it look like she's in Hawaii, for no apparent reason whatsoever, while, I guess, bribing multiple Hawaiians to register the birth in Hawaii.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

35. Confused...

Obama was a U.S. citizen at birth, provided that his mother had been physically present in the US for a total of ten years prior to his birth, assuming that five of the ten years occurred after her 14th birthday.

So the only way to nullify Obama's citizenship would be if Ann Dunham left the US in 1956 and did not return until after Obama was born. Am I understanding that?

So not only must Obama be born in Kenya, but his mother must have been living there for five years prior to his birth. Pretty tough nut to crack, when I'm sure there's a mountain of documentary evidence (school records and such) that shows where Ann Dunham was living in the late 1950's.

[jberryhill]

36. You are incorrect

"assuming that five of the ten years occurred after her 14th birthday."

Which is something of a silly assumption.

She was 18. So it's kind of obvious that she had not lived in the US, or anywhere else, for five years past the age of 14.

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. Since she was not yet 19 when he was born, she had not completed 5 years after her 14th birthday

in the USA or anywhere. Even if she had only left the USA for the first time the day before he was born, she wouldn't have lived 5 years after her 14th birthday in the USA. It is important for Obama's citizenship that he was born in the USA.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

47. Ah. I see.

Kind of a freaky rule. If a young person crossed the border to Mexico or Canada and gave birth prematurely, her child wouldn't be a US citizen?

[muriel_volestrangler]

48. At that time, and if only one of the parents was American

See the link for the various combinations of date and parents.

[jberryhill]

64. Not really that freaky a rule

The question becomes - where do you draw the line with successive generations?

For example, if you said, "Any person born abroad to a US citizen is a US citizen," then how many generations of people with no substantive connection to the US would you want to go before cutting that off?

Maybe you haven't thought this through, but consider - woman goes abroad, has daughter, daughter is US citizen, daughter never lives in US, has daughter, daughter is a US citizen....

The *other* interesting thing about the rule is that it used to be a fairly common way of dealing with teenage pregnancies in certain families to send your daughter for "a semester abroad". The rule assured that the child brought into the world that way would not be returning to the US as a citizen.

And, oh, that brings up the weirdness of the "Obama born in Kenya" thing. The birthers want to argue that Barack Obama Jr. was born in Kenya, and that Stanley Ann brought him back to the US sometime thereafter. Ummmm...... even in 1961, you couldn't just go to Africa, pick up babies as souvenirs, and bring them back with you. If the child was not a US citizen, then she wasn't simply going to waltz through customs and immigration with him upon her return to the US.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

65. I could see the second generation not being a citizen...

But to say that the women's child is not a citizen simply because she, as a born and life-long resident of the United States, happened to give birth in a foreign country, seems a little arbitrary.

As has been pointed out, the Birther argument is patent nonsense. Ann Dunham never traveled abroad prior to leaving for Indonesia, so it's all a moot point. And by moot I mean idiotic.

[jberryhill]

67. Relative to Obama, yes it is all pointless

Some countries do allow second generation children abroad to claim citizenship, though. Many US citizens with Irish grandparents obtain Irish passports.

It also gets a little more complicated when one considers children born abroad to US citizen fathers. Maternity is relatively simple to determine, in comparison to paternity.

[JDPriestly]

45. I am less than a year older than Obama's mother.

I know the mentality of the times. There is no way that Obama's mother would have gone to Kenya to have a baby. The area was considered to be too violent and, not meaning to insult anyone, but from the point of view of an American teenager and her mother, far, far too primitive.

This birther idea is one of the craziest conspiracy theories of all time. Would an American woman go to Yemen to have a baby at this time? I really don't think so, although travel is far safer today than it was then.

From October 1952 to December 1959, Kenya was under a state of emergency arising from the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule. The governor requested and obtained British and African troops, including the King's African Rifles. The British began counter-insurgency operations; in May 1953 General Sir George Erskine took charge as commander-in-chief of the colony's armed forces, with the personal backing of Winston Churchill.[40]

The capture of Warũhiũ Itote (aka General China) on 15 January 1954, and the subsequent interrogation led to a better understanding of the Mau Mau command structure. Operation Anvil opened on 24 April 1954, after weeks of planning by the army with the approval of the War Council. The operation effectively placed Nairobi under military siege, and the occupants were screened and the Mau Mau supporters moved to detention camps. The Home Guard formed the core of the government's strategy as it was composed of loyalist Africans, not foreign forces like the British Army and King's African Rifles. By the end of the emergency, the Home Guard had killed 4686 Mau Mau, amounting to 42% of the total insurgents. The capture of Dedan Kimathi on 21 October 1956, in Nyeri signified the ultimate defeat of the Mau Mau and essentially ended the military offensive.[40] During this period, substantial governmental changes to land tenure occurred, the most important of which was the Swynnerton Plan, which was used to both reward loyalists and punish Mau Mau.

. . . .

The first direct elections for Africans to the Legislative Council took place in 1957. Despite British hopes of handing power to "moderate" African rivals, it was the Kenya African National Union (KANU) of Jomo Kenyatta that formed a government shortly before Kenya became independent on 12 December 1963, on the same day forming the first Constitution of Kenya.[41] During the same year, the Kenyan army fought the Shifta War against ethnic Somalis who wanted Kenya's Northern Frontier District joined with the Republic of Somalia. The Shifta War officially ended with the signature of the Arusha Memorandum in October, 1967, but relative insecurity prevailed through 1969.[42][43] To discourage further invasions, Kenya signed a defence pact with Ethiopia in 1969, which is still in effect.[44]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya

[johnd83]

50. That is interesting, I wasn't aware that the law was written that way

Is there some provision for if the parent is under 19? Having a kid at 18 isn't uncommon. I agree that it is still really very unlikely she ran off to Kenya 9 months pregnant...

[jberryhill]

68. In the 50's and 60's...

...teen girls sent abroad when pregnant were not expected to return with a child.

This of course has nothing to do with Obama, as the notion of a 17 year old pregnant girl traveling to Kenya, and bringing back a non-citizen infant is absurd.

[southernyankeebelle]

4. Well how the hell did they do it? By drum maybe.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Is Steve King *the* dumbest member of Congress, or

just one of many dumb members of Congress?

How do these mental midgets even put their pants on every morning? Not that I want to contemplate them pantsless..

[harun]

66. *the* dumbest is an aweful tough crown to get, so much competition

[Botany]

7. It would have been easy to do as long as Obama owns a time machine

because the information in those two Hawaiian papers came from the Dept. of Health
and that information was given by phone to the Dept. of Health from the hospital so
Obama or somebody else had to get into the time machine and go back to 1961 and
then go to the Hospital and pick up the phone call from the dept. of Health and give
the phony birth announcement for Barack along with all the correct birth and death
announcements for that day.



Why don't all these people come out and say that they just don't like Obama because
of his skin color?

[ahg]

8. Rep. Steve King was born on Uranus.

Well... he came out of someones anus.

[eShirl]

10. Oh yeah? What about TIME TRAVEL???

Or ALIENS???

He clearly hasn't explored ALL possible alternative explanations for the microfiche birth announcements.

[bulloney]

11. Methinks the teabagging congressman suffers brain damage from excess inhalation of hog shit fumes.

[LongTomH]

12. As I said in a previous thread....The 'New Normal' in the Republican party is abnormal!

[rurallib]

13. this they can believe because there is so much evidence

yet global warming is a conspiracy as we bake in King's Iowa?

BTW there are 2 crazy fucking Kings in Congress. One must be specific about which crazy fucking King it is.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. Imagine if King put this much determination into something productive.

He'd be a legendary statesman worthy of a page in the history books.

As it is, he reminds me of someone who believes he can walk through walls and keeps pulling himself off the floor, brushes himself off, and runs full speed at it again. I'm so glad he doesn't represent my district.

[Rose Siding]

15. If President Obama were really smart, he'd be retroactively born in Kansas.

[Blue_Tires]

34. I'm sure Kansas would unearth some magical documentation saying

that they weren't "officially" a state for the 30 seconds before and after Obama's birth

[catbyte]

17. Actually, I figured it out

Barack Obama arranged the birth announcements. Here's how he did it: Obama HIMSELF was in cahoots with not only all the hospital employees, but he also managed to strong arm the staff of both Honolulu newspapers to run bogus birth announcements. He also was able to bribe officials of the US and Kenyan governments to smuggle his mother into Kenya for the birth, then make any evidence of her exiting the United States, entering Kenya when hugely pregnant, then back into the USA with an infant completely vanish. All of this was carefully orchestrated by Obama in tandem with a cadre of operatives comprised of disgruntled members of the John Birch Society, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderburg Group and The Sunshine Girls.

In late 2006 or early 2007, they managed to bribe Mr. Wizard and he sent Tudor Turtle back in time to place the bogus announcements just prior to Obama's announcement that he was running for president. Luckily he wasn't caught when Mr. Wizard summoned him back ("Drizzle, drazzle, drozzle, drone. Time for this one to come home!&quot just minutes before UN Black Helicopters swooped down to shoot Tudor Turtle from the sky. The birth certificate could be his undoing, however. Even tho the conspirators were able to time travel, bribe officials on 2 continents and the entire state of Hawaii, Arpiao and his crack investigative team (i.e. the Inane Clown Posse) foiled Obama's evil plot because they discovered someone didn't know how to use Photoshop. See? Cracking it was e-z!

Sorry. They're moving my office from one building to another and it's not going smoothly. I had to box up all my projects, files and every scrap of paper I had and the movers took them away last night. However, there is no furniture in the new office, so I am sitting here with nothing but time on my hands waiting for them to complete my office. I think I have too much of that time on my hands...







Diane
Anishinaabe in MI & mom to Taz, Nigel, and new baby brother Sammy, members of Dogs Against Romney, Cat Division
"Dogs Aren’t Luggage--HISS!”

[COLGATE4]

43. You're completely disregarding

the role of - wait for it - the MASONS in the whole operation! Shame.

[treestar]

70. Frankly, I think you may be part of the conspiracy

Wasn't that you who I saw photoshopping infant Obama out of those photos taken in Kenya? I say that because I'm part of the conspiracy, too. I supervise time travelers.

[AtomicKitten]

19. King is a straight-up dumbass.

[dballance]

20. I think a bigger question is: why are "reporters" still asking reps about this? /eom

[jayfish]

21. "The Iowa Congressman noted that his staff had investigated the matter"

So was this done using taxpayer money? Should this be investigated?

[Angry Dragon]

26. +6,946

[Blue_Tires]

32. "Investigate" = Lurking on Alex Jones' site and stealing the latest theories

[treestar]

71. And it has been investigated by so many different people

take sheriff Arpaio or whatever his name is.

[denverbill]

22. Stanley Ann Dunham never left the US prior to Obama's birth.

They have absolutely NO proof she ever travelled to Africa EVER, yet they insist it's true because it's the only way Obama would not be a US citizen.

[JDPriestly]

46. If she had requested a passport at the appropriate time, there would be a record

of her application. Since no such application has been produced it is virtually certain she never asked for one.

You could not leave from and return to the US without a passport, not then, not in modern times. How would you do that?

[The Wizard]

23. Ther is still no cure for

Teabagger Tourette's.

[allan01]

24. re:Rep. King Goes Birther: Suggests Obama’s Parents Telegrammed Hawaii Birth Announcement From Kenya

ok show me your proof and we will meet in court under a standard called burdon of proof. and if u cant provide , next case .

[Angry Dragon]

25. One has to remember that king and bachmann are twins

[JoePhilly]

27. King is the intended result of Reagan emptying the mental hospitals.

[part man all 86]

59. You are correct, sir!

Why was King at mental ward? His mom dropped him on his head and it stayed stuck in his ass.

[AllyCat]

29. These people are lunatics

Completely nonsensical.

[cindyperry2010]

31. just for giggles

just saying all of this horseshit is true(which it isn't) how is it that she got to kenya without a passport and no record of said passort being used?

[cin63]

33. Were not

the presidents parents attending college when he was born? Wouldn't there be records there of them? Just wondering.

[madrchsod]

38. the iowa heat wave has done fried what`s left of that boy`s brain

[cabot]

39. According to some right-wingers

Obama's father really is Frank Marshall Davis. These people are idiots. And Steve King is their mentor.

[cindyperry2010]

40. yeah follow that logic

they are all crazy

[cabot]

58. definitely!!

the funny part is if it were true, the birther argument would die because frank marshall davis was an american. i don't know what they'd find worse: a kenyan "communist" or an american "communist." hehehe. i'd love to see their heads explode.

[treestar]

69. The most hilarious part about that is that it would

undermine the birth in Kenya arguments, and the son of a non-American is not a natural born citizen arguments.

[magic59]

41. King is a racist KKK fascist

These people are as dangerous as the fascists and nazis of the 30's.

[center rising]

42. Hey Steve, FUCK OFF!!!!!

[tanyev]

44. No! It was carrier pigeons! Really tough carrier pigeons!

[tblue37]

62. C'etait le pigeon, Joseph! nt

[sakabatou]

49. Augh....

[brewens]

51. As if a regular newspaper Joe would recieve a telegram and go ahead and put in a fake birth

announcement. Of course if he somehow KNEW that it was helping a secret Muslim, communist takeover in the future, he just might!

[abelenkpe]

52. It would not matter

His mother is a US citizen. Birthers are ugly stupid racists.

[Xipe Totec]

53. It has not been conclusively proven yet, that Steve King was born and not shat. nt

[and-justice-for-all]

54. Really? This shit again..

or should I say STILL?

[Turbineguy]

56. The In-patients

are out in force tonight.

[Jim Lane]

57. This is actually LESS crazy than I would have expected from King.

He's really just paying lip service to birtherism. He even says, "It would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii . . . ." That would be enough to get him denounced as a sellout (probably paid off by Soros) in some RW circles.

It wouldn't surprise me if someone on FR is denouncing him for his spinelessness in refusing to press the issue between now and November.

[ElbarDee]

60. This is so stupid.

How can anyone believe this crap. The President has released his BC! The far right goes crazier as the election gets closer. It's all they have left.

[Heather MC]

61. Of course they did, because

they knew when Barack was born he was going to be president
just like Mary knew her son was going to be the Savior for all
It's the same thing
right????????

As a mother I knew for a fact the day both my children were born they were going to go to Hollywood and make more money than Will Smith by remaking all his movies. I could see it in their eyes
Right??????

[area51]

63. Oh, brother.

Now I've heard everything.