I've always assumed Trump is a fraud as business man. He played with his Dad's money at pretty much the only time in history when NYC real estate prices were declining and made a killing when they went back up.
I don't see the genius in that, and his casinos have gone bankrupt numerous times (and that's a rigged game for Pete's sake).
Why do people think that Obama has spent considerable time and money avoiding this issue? This is a giant myth that is perpetuated by the political right. Can you show any documentation to back up this claim, other than anecdotal evidence or allegations?
Quote from one of Obama's lawyers, in the article Bob posted above:
"In the interview with Roll Call, Sevugan confirmed that some of the legal fees were needed to defend the campaign against what he called "unmeritorious" lawsuits, including one that challenged Obama???s citizenship"
Bon Vivant said:
I ask again, Why is Obama held to a different standard than every other President in the history of this country?
He's not. Most people born before 1930 don't have any birth certificate at all. I think Clinton and Bush Jr are the only previous presidents who would have had them. We are now entering the era where all citizens born in the U.S. have birth certificates and ten states are already moving to require Presidential candidates to reveal them, not the copies.
In the next election candidates will most likely have no choice if they want to run.
You may be right about the lack of BCs for people born before 1930, but Wikipedia (not the greatest source, I know) says 1900. But that's not the point. I am unaware of any President in US history whose citizenship status has ever been questioned, particularly after they have already been elected. That, to me, means that Obama is being held to a standard that no other President has.
However, your other claim, I have to respectfully disagree with. "Some" is not equal to "Considerable", IMO, particularly when allegations of millions of dollars are being tossed around. Unless you can point to a dollar figure, and so long as the description of the amount of money spent remains "some", I stand by what I said.
Birth Certificates were instituted in 1900, but I said 1930 because before that most people were not born in hospitals and did not receive them. I'm pretty sure Clinton was the first President to have a birth certificate. From what I've read, neither Reagan nor Carter had one.
Again, this not really about citizenship, imo. I don't think that there could be anything shocking on his birth certificate to me, but I'm not the average voter. If it turned out that somebody else was his father, for example, it could easily cost him the election. Wrongly so, in my book, but that doesn't change the fact that the Republicans could effectively use it against him. Obama's refusal has some people sensing a weakness and they are going to zero in on it, just like they would on any perceived weakness.
As for the money, 'some' may or may not be 'considerable', we don't know because nobody will say, but I doubt those guys work for cheap. What amount would qualify to you as considerable?
As for the money, 'some' may or may not be 'considerable', we don't know because nobody will say, but I doubt those guys work for cheap. What amount would qualify to you as considerable?
Good question. It depends. How much money did Obama have set aside as a defense fund (which all candidates have), how much was actually used, and how many actions were brought against him? I think that's a good place to start.
Again, this not really about citizenship, imo. I don't think that there could be anything shocking on his birth certificate to me, but I'm not the average voter. If it turned out that somebody else was his father, for example, it could easily cost him the election. Wrongly so, in my book, but that doesn't change the fact that the Republicans could effectively use it against him. Obama's refusal has some people sensing a weakness and they are going to zero in on it, just like they would on any perceived weakness.
His father's name shows up on the birth certificate Hawaii provided, and it's Barack Hussein Obama, not Dudley Do-Right or Foghorn Leghorn or even Mick Jagger.
And yeah, you're "not the average voter." The average voter isn't giving credence to this crap, but you are.
I broke my new rule; "I do not engage in hypotheticals, reality is vexing enough".
Anyway, most likely, I am guessing, if it came before the courts, the courts would decide that "natural born citizen" means citizen at brith, and anyone who qualified as a citizen at birth could be president.
What I found in Wiki looking into to this was interesting. Obama is not the first presidential or vp candidate to have faced this:
Eligibility challenges
[edit] Standing in eligibility challenges
Several courts have ruled that private citizens do not have standing to challenge the eligibility of candidates to appear on a presidential election ballot.[34] Alternatively, there is a statutory method by which the eligibility of the President-elect to take office may be challenged in Congress.[35]
Some legal scholars assert that, even if eligibility challenges are nonjusticiable in federal courts, and are not undertaken in Congress, there are other avenues for adjudication, such as an action in state court in regard to ballot access.[36]
[edit] Presidential candidates whose eligibility was questioned
While every President and Vice President to date (as of 2010[update]) is widely believed either to have been a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 or to have been born in the United States, one U.S. President (Chester A. Arthur) and some presidential candidates either were not born or were suspected of not having been born in a U.S. state.[37] In addition, one U.S. Vice President (Albert Gore) was born in Washington, D.C. This does not necessarily mean that they were ineligible, only that there was some controversy (usually minor) about their eligibility, which may have been resolved in favor of eligibility.[38]
* Chester A. Arthur (1829???1886), 21st president of the United States, was rumored to have been born in Canada.[39][40] This was never demonstrated by his Democratic opponents, although Arthur Hinman, an attorney who had investigated Arthur's family history, raised the objection during his vice-presidential campaign and after the end of his Presidency. Arthur was born in Vermont to a U.S. citizen mother and a father from Ireland, who was eventually naturalized as a U.S. citizen. Despite the fact that his parents took up residence in the United States somewhere between 1822 and 1824,[41] Chester Arthur additionally began to claim between 1870 and 1880[42] that he had been born in 1830, rather than in 1829, which only caused minor confusion and was even used in several publications.[43] Arthur was sworn in as president when President Garfield died after being shot. Since his Irish father William was naturalized 14 years after Chester Arthur's birth,[44] his citizenship status at birth is unclear, because he was born before the 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment, which provided that any person born on United States territory and being subject to the jurisdiction thereof was considered a born U.S. citizen, and because he was a British subject at birth by patrilineal jus sanguinis.[45] Arthur's natural-born citizenship status is therefore equally unclear.
* Christopher Sch??rmann (born 1848 in New York) entered the Labor primaries during the 1896 Presidential election. His eligibility was questioned in a New York Tribune article, because he was born to alien parents of German nationality. It was stated that "various Attorney-Generals of the United States have expressed the opinion that a child born in this country of alien parents, who have not been naturalized, is, by the fact of birth, a native-born citizen entitled to all rights and privileges as such". But due to a lack of any statute on the subject, Sch??rmann's eligibility was "at best an open question, and one which should have made [his] nomination under any circumstances an impossibility", because questions concerning his eligibility could have been raised after the election.[46]
* The eligibility of Charles Evans Hughes (1862???1948) was questioned in an article written by Breckinridge Long, and published in the Chicago Legal News during the U.S. presidential election of 1916, in which Hughes was narrowly defeated by Woodrow Wilson. Long claimed that Hughes was ineligible because his father had not yet naturalized at the time of his birth and was still a British citizen. Observing that Hughes, although born in the United States, was also a British subject and therefore "enjoy[ed] a dual nationality and owe[d] a double allegiance", Long argued that a native born citizen was not natural born without a unity of U.S. citizenship and allegiance and stated: "Now if, by any possible construction, a person at the instant of birth, and for any period of time thereafter, owes, or may owe, allegiance to any sovereign but the United States, he is not a 'natural-born' citizen of the United States."[47]
* George Romney (1907???1995), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico to U.S. parents. Romney's grandfather had emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and children after Utah outlawed polygamy. Romney's monogamous parents retained their U.S. citizenship and returned to the United States with him in 1912. Romney never received Mexican citizenship, because the country's nationality laws had been restricted to jus-sanguinis statutes due to prevailing politics aimed against American settlers.[48] George Romney therefore had no allegiance to a foreign country.
* Barry Goldwater (1909???1998) was born in Phoenix, in what was then the incorporated Arizona Territory of the United States. During his presidential campaign in 1964, there was a minor controversy over Goldwater's having been born in Arizona when it was not yet a state.[39]
* Lowell Weicker (born 1931), the former Connecticut Senator, Representative, and Governor, entered the race for the Republican party nomination of 1980 but dropped out before voting in the primaries began. He was born in Paris, France to parents who were U.S. citizens. His father was an executive for E. R. Squibb & Sons and his mother was the Indian-born daughter of a British general.[49]
* R??ger Calero (born 1969) was born in Nicaragua and ran as the Socialist Worker's Party presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008. In 2008, Calero appeared on the ballot in Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Vermont.[50]
* John McCain (born 1936), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station[37][51][52][53][54][55][56] in the Panama Canal Zone. McCain never released his birth certificate to the press or independent fact-checking organizations, but did show it to Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, who wrote "a senior official of the McCain campaign showed me a copy of [McCain's] birth certificate issued by the 'family hospital' in the Coco Solo submarine base".[53] A lawsuit filed by Fred Hollander in 2008 alleged that McCain was actually born in a civilian hospital in Colon City, Panama.[57][58] Dobbs wrote that in his autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, McCain wrote that he was born "in the Canal Zone" at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Coco Solo, which was under the command of his grandfather, John S. McCain Sr. "The senator's father, John S. McCain Jr., was an executive officer on a submarine, also based in Coco Solo. His mother, Roberta McCain, now 96, has vivid memories of lying in bed listening to raucous celebrations of her son's birth from the nearby officers' club. The birth was announced days later in the English-language Panamanian American newspaper."[59][60][61][62] The former unincorporated territory of the Panama Canal Zone and its related military facilities were not regarded as United States territory at the time,[63] but 8 U.S.C. ?? 1403, which became law in 1937, retroactively conferred citizenship on individuals born within the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and on individuals born in the Republic of Panama on or after that date who had at least one U.S. citizen parent employed by the U.S. government or the Panama Railway Company; 8 U.S.C. ?? 1403 was cited in Judge Alsup's 2008 ruling, described below. A March 2008 paper by former Solicitor General Ted Olson and Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe opined that McCain was eligible for the Presidency.[64] In April 2008, the U.S. Senate approved a non-binding resolution recognizing McCain's status as a natural-born citizen.[65] In September 2008, U.S. District Judge William Alsup stated obiter in his ruling that it is "highly probable" that McCain is a natural-born citizen from birth by virtue of 8 U.S.C. ?? 1401, although he acknowledged the alternative possibility that McCain became a natural-born citizen retroactively, by way of 8 U.S.C. ?? 1403.[66] These views have been criticized by Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, who argues that McCain was at birth a citizen of Panama and was only retroactively declared a born citizen under 8 U.S.C. ?? 1403, because at the time of his birth and with regard to the Canal Zone the Supreme Court's Insular Cases overruled the Naturalization Act of 1795, which would otherwise have declared McCain a U.S. citizen immediately at birth.[67] The U.S. Foreign Affairs Manual states that children born in the Panama Canal Zone at certain times became U.S. nationals without citizenship.[68] It also states in general that "it has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural-born citizen [???]".[69] In Rogers v. Bellei the Supreme Court only ruled that "children born abroad of Americans are not citizens within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment", and didn't elaborate on the natural-born status.[70][71] Similarly, legal scholar Lawrence Solum concluded in an article on the natural born citizen clause that the question of McCain's eligibility could not be answered with certainty, and that it would depend on the particular approach of "constitutional construction".[72] The urban legend fact checking website Snopes.com has examined the matter and cites numerous experts. It considers the matter "undetermined".[73]
* Barack Obama (born 1961), 44th president of the United States, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a U.S. citizen mother and a British subject father from what was then the Kenya Colony of the United Kingdom (which became the independent country of Kenya in 1963). Before and after the 2008 presidential election, arguments were made that he is not a natural-born citizen. On June 12, 2008, the Obama presidential campaign launched a website to counter what it described as smears by his opponents, including conspiracy theories challenging his eligibility.[74] The most prominent issue raised against Obama was the claim made in several lawsuits that he was not actually born in Hawaii. In two other lawsuits, the plaintiffs argued that it was irrelevant whether he was born in Hawaii,[75] but argued instead that he was nevertheless not a natural-born citizen because his citizenship status at birth was governed by the British Nationality Act of 1948.[76] The relevant courts have either denied all applications or declined to render a judgment due to lack of jurisdiction. Some of the cases have been dismissed because of the plaintiff's lack of standing.[34] On July 28, 2009, Hawaii Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued a statement saying, "I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen."[77] On July 27, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.Res. 593, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood, including the text, "Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961".[78] The vote passed 378???0.[79]
I still find it ridiculous that people are still discussing this. McCain born in Panama - not a problem. Obama born in Hawaii - apparently a huge problem. Anyone would think there was some other factor motivating the conspiracy theorists...
Also, how is it that anyone is treating Donald Trump as a serious contender for the presidental nomination? And how does anyone conduct any business with him without laughing in his face? Dude is an idiot.
I wholeheartedly agree that his TV persona makes him look like a supreme douche and a total windbag...
but before all that he managed to build up an incredible business empire (twice!) and I have a hard time believing that he could be an "idiot".
But do I think he's president material? of course not. The fact that anyone in the US even thinks thats a good idea lets me know who the real "idiots" are.
All this elections talk sent me to 538.com.
I did not find the statistical analysis of polls and trends I go to 538 for. Maybe it's too early, or maybe NYT has ruined it. Or maybe Nate has moved on to other things.
I see the pundits are on about 2012 hard and heavy.
Looking at 2012 through lens of other election years
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
Washington Post
April 21, 2011, 8:52PM
WASHINGTON ??? Handicapping an election 19 months away seems relevant only to political junkies except for this: Expectations, as shrewd investors know, affect actions.
The Republican presidential field might be more formidable if President Obama were less strongly favored. And over time, what Congress does will be shaped by the presidential campaign's direction.
Views of 2012 are heavily influenced by the metaphors that prognosticators invoke. Will it be 1984, 1988 or 1992?
Obama's camp loves 1984. President Ronald Reagan's popularity plummeted during the economic downturn of his first two years, and Republicans did badly in the 1982 midterms. Then the economy roared back and so did Reagan. He won the landslide Obama's handlers dream about.
Republicans like 1992. In the year before the election, the smart money was on President George H.W. Bush's re-election. But out of nowhere came a young Democratic governor named Bill Clinton. He took advantage of economic discontent and the way Ross Perot's independent candidacy shook up the campaign. Bush lost with only 37.5 percent of the popular vote. Republicans want to believe Obama is as invisibly vulnerable now as Bush was then.
Both comparisons are flawed. Obama will get stronger as the economy improves but he won't be able to get close to a Reagan-like triumph, given how many core Republican states seem impossible to crack.
The problem with the Republicans' 1992 metaphor is that while Bush may not have seen Clinton coming, many Democrats had identified him as an awesome talent years before he ran. None of the current GOP contenders can claim this.
I like 1988 (the year the first President Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis) as a metaphor for the Republicans' stature problem. That year, the Democratic hopefuls came to be known as "the seven dwarfs." This wasn't fair to them, and it may not be fair to this year's Republican field, whatever its eventual size. But the dwarf line speaks to an image deficit shared by both fields.
Of the current GOP bunch, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is the Dukakis of 2012. I say this as someone who is fond of Dukakis and believes he was an excellent governor of Massachusetts. He just wasn't a great presidential candidate. The strength Pawlenty and Dukakis share is the absence of any glaring shortcomings. Dukakis was the remainder candidate, the guy most likely to be left standing. That looks like Pawlenty's role this year. But it's also hard to see Pawlenty escaping Dukakis' eventual fate in a general election.
Mitt Romney, the sort-of, kind-of frontrunner, is intelligent and well-organized. But his lack of constancy on certain issues and the Massachusetts health care plan (which he should be proud of fathering, but has had to disown) hurts him with primary voters. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is the guy you would most want to have a drink with, but that's not necessarily the key to winning a nomination. Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana is bright and substantive. He should run, but I don't think he will.
Then there's the rest - Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump and Jon Huntsman. I can't see any of them making it, but keep an eye on Trump's economic nationalism and his tough-on-China rhetoric. If he cans the birther nonsense, The Donald might surprise people.
For the election, here's the math: With the new census, the states Obama carried last time (plus the lone elector he won in Nebraska) start him with 359 electoral votes. From his original states, Obama can lose Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia and North Carolina and still win exactly the 270 electoral votes he needs - as long as he holds his other states, notably Pennsylvania and Florida, and that single elector from Nebraska. Under this scenario, if he also lost the one Nebraska vote, the Electoral College would be tied, 269-269.
This gives Obama a lot of maneuvering room, but note that Pennsylvania and Florida both trended Republican last year. So Obama is certainly the favorite, but I'm not in the camp that sees the election as over before it starts.
And in the congressional races, something could happen in 2012 that's never happened before: Both houses could switch parties but in opposite directions. The Democrats could take back the House - the GOP is defending a lot of Democratic-leaning seats - while Republicans could take over the Senate, given the difficult array of states Democrats must win.
If this actually happens, remember you read it here first.
Comments
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/in-financial-circles-its-pretty-well-known-that-trump-is-a-deadbeat/237584
I've always assumed Trump is a fraud as business man. He played with his Dad's money at pretty much the only time in history when NYC real estate prices were declining and made a killing when they went back up.
I don't see the genius in that, and his casinos have gone bankrupt numerous times (and that's a rigged game for Pete's sake).
They are job applicants, and those doing the hiring are entitled to information.
I thought GWB should have released his military and academic records. Not to mention his arrest records.
I thought the same about Gore and Kerry.
They certainly are not required to do so. Nor would doing so qualify or disqualify them for the job.
But the reality is, candidates do not release confidential information.
Sitting presidents certainly don't.
Birth Certificates were instituted in 1900, but I said 1930 because before that most people were not born in hospitals and did not receive them. I'm pretty sure Clinton was the first President to have a birth certificate. From what I've read, neither Reagan nor Carter had one.
Again, this not really about citizenship, imo. I don't think that there could be anything shocking on his birth certificate to me, but I'm not the average voter. If it turned out that somebody else was his father, for example, it could easily cost him the election. Wrongly so, in my book, but that doesn't change the fact that the Republicans could effectively use it against him. Obama's refusal has some people sensing a weakness and they are going to zero in on it, just like they would on any perceived weakness.
As for the money, 'some' may or may not be 'considerable', we don't know because nobody will say, but I doubt those guys work for cheap. What amount would qualify to you as considerable?
I have no idea why these guys go around making stuff up.
There are only 3 mandatory requirements to become President and 2 of those can only be verified by a Birth Certificate.
A convicted felon with a third grade education is eligible to become President.
Good question. It depends. How much money did Obama have set aside as a defense fund (which all candidates have), how much was actually used, and how many actions were brought against him? I think that's a good place to start.
His father's name shows up on the birth certificate Hawaii provided, and it's Barack Hussein Obama, not Dudley Do-Right or Foghorn Leghorn or even Mick Jagger.
And yeah, you're "not the average voter." The average voter isn't giving credence to this crap, but you are.
Yes. Even if he was born in Kenya he would still be a citizen.
Then what's the big deal? Why is anybody talking about it????
He would be a citizen, but not eligible to be President since his father was not a citizen.
Anyway, most likely, I am guessing, if it came before the courts, the courts would decide that "natural born citizen" means citizen at brith, and anyone who qualified as a citizen at birth could be president.
What I found in Wiki looking into to this was interesting. Obama is not the first presidential or vp candidate to have faced this:
Eligibility challenges
[edit] Standing in eligibility challenges
Several courts have ruled that private citizens do not have standing to challenge the eligibility of candidates to appear on a presidential election ballot.[34] Alternatively, there is a statutory method by which the eligibility of the President-elect to take office may be challenged in Congress.[35]
Some legal scholars assert that, even if eligibility challenges are nonjusticiable in federal courts, and are not undertaken in Congress, there are other avenues for adjudication, such as an action in state court in regard to ballot access.[36]
[edit] Presidential candidates whose eligibility was questioned
While every President and Vice President to date (as of 2010[update]) is widely believed either to have been a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 or to have been born in the United States, one U.S. President (Chester A. Arthur) and some presidential candidates either were not born or were suspected of not having been born in a U.S. state.[37] In addition, one U.S. Vice President (Albert Gore) was born in Washington, D.C. This does not necessarily mean that they were ineligible, only that there was some controversy (usually minor) about their eligibility, which may have been resolved in favor of eligibility.[38]
* Chester A. Arthur (1829???1886), 21st president of the United States, was rumored to have been born in Canada.[39][40] This was never demonstrated by his Democratic opponents, although Arthur Hinman, an attorney who had investigated Arthur's family history, raised the objection during his vice-presidential campaign and after the end of his Presidency. Arthur was born in Vermont to a U.S. citizen mother and a father from Ireland, who was eventually naturalized as a U.S. citizen. Despite the fact that his parents took up residence in the United States somewhere between 1822 and 1824,[41] Chester Arthur additionally began to claim between 1870 and 1880[42] that he had been born in 1830, rather than in 1829, which only caused minor confusion and was even used in several publications.[43] Arthur was sworn in as president when President Garfield died after being shot. Since his Irish father William was naturalized 14 years after Chester Arthur's birth,[44] his citizenship status at birth is unclear, because he was born before the 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment, which provided that any person born on United States territory and being subject to the jurisdiction thereof was considered a born U.S. citizen, and because he was a British subject at birth by patrilineal jus sanguinis.[45] Arthur's natural-born citizenship status is therefore equally unclear.
* Christopher Sch??rmann (born 1848 in New York) entered the Labor primaries during the 1896 Presidential election. His eligibility was questioned in a New York Tribune article, because he was born to alien parents of German nationality. It was stated that "various Attorney-Generals of the United States have expressed the opinion that a child born in this country of alien parents, who have not been naturalized, is, by the fact of birth, a native-born citizen entitled to all rights and privileges as such". But due to a lack of any statute on the subject, Sch??rmann's eligibility was "at best an open question, and one which should have made [his] nomination under any circumstances an impossibility", because questions concerning his eligibility could have been raised after the election.[46]
* The eligibility of Charles Evans Hughes (1862???1948) was questioned in an article written by Breckinridge Long, and published in the Chicago Legal News during the U.S. presidential election of 1916, in which Hughes was narrowly defeated by Woodrow Wilson. Long claimed that Hughes was ineligible because his father had not yet naturalized at the time of his birth and was still a British citizen. Observing that Hughes, although born in the United States, was also a British subject and therefore "enjoy[ed] a dual nationality and owe[d] a double allegiance", Long argued that a native born citizen was not natural born without a unity of U.S. citizenship and allegiance and stated: "Now if, by any possible construction, a person at the instant of birth, and for any period of time thereafter, owes, or may owe, allegiance to any sovereign but the United States, he is not a 'natural-born' citizen of the United States."[47]
* George Romney (1907???1995), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico to U.S. parents. Romney's grandfather had emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and children after Utah outlawed polygamy. Romney's monogamous parents retained their U.S. citizenship and returned to the United States with him in 1912. Romney never received Mexican citizenship, because the country's nationality laws had been restricted to jus-sanguinis statutes due to prevailing politics aimed against American settlers.[48] George Romney therefore had no allegiance to a foreign country.
* Barry Goldwater (1909???1998) was born in Phoenix, in what was then the incorporated Arizona Territory of the United States. During his presidential campaign in 1964, there was a minor controversy over Goldwater's having been born in Arizona when it was not yet a state.[39]
* Lowell Weicker (born 1931), the former Connecticut Senator, Representative, and Governor, entered the race for the Republican party nomination of 1980 but dropped out before voting in the primaries began. He was born in Paris, France to parents who were U.S. citizens. His father was an executive for E. R. Squibb & Sons and his mother was the Indian-born daughter of a British general.[49]
* R??ger Calero (born 1969) was born in Nicaragua and ran as the Socialist Worker's Party presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008. In 2008, Calero appeared on the ballot in Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Vermont.[50]
* John McCain (born 1936), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station[37][51][52][53][54][55][56] in the Panama Canal Zone. McCain never released his birth certificate to the press or independent fact-checking organizations, but did show it to Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, who wrote "a senior official of the McCain campaign showed me a copy of [McCain's] birth certificate issued by the 'family hospital' in the Coco Solo submarine base".[53] A lawsuit filed by Fred Hollander in 2008 alleged that McCain was actually born in a civilian hospital in Colon City, Panama.[57][58] Dobbs wrote that in his autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, McCain wrote that he was born "in the Canal Zone" at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Coco Solo, which was under the command of his grandfather, John S. McCain Sr. "The senator's father, John S. McCain Jr., was an executive officer on a submarine, also based in Coco Solo. His mother, Roberta McCain, now 96, has vivid memories of lying in bed listening to raucous celebrations of her son's birth from the nearby officers' club. The birth was announced days later in the English-language Panamanian American newspaper."[59][60][61][62] The former unincorporated territory of the Panama Canal Zone and its related military facilities were not regarded as United States territory at the time,[63] but 8 U.S.C. ?? 1403, which became law in 1937, retroactively conferred citizenship on individuals born within the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and on individuals born in the Republic of Panama on or after that date who had at least one U.S. citizen parent employed by the U.S. government or the Panama Railway Company; 8 U.S.C. ?? 1403 was cited in Judge Alsup's 2008 ruling, described below. A March 2008 paper by former Solicitor General Ted Olson and Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe opined that McCain was eligible for the Presidency.[64] In April 2008, the U.S. Senate approved a non-binding resolution recognizing McCain's status as a natural-born citizen.[65] In September 2008, U.S. District Judge William Alsup stated obiter in his ruling that it is "highly probable" that McCain is a natural-born citizen from birth by virtue of 8 U.S.C. ?? 1401, although he acknowledged the alternative possibility that McCain became a natural-born citizen retroactively, by way of 8 U.S.C. ?? 1403.[66] These views have been criticized by Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, who argues that McCain was at birth a citizen of Panama and was only retroactively declared a born citizen under 8 U.S.C. ?? 1403, because at the time of his birth and with regard to the Canal Zone the Supreme Court's Insular Cases overruled the Naturalization Act of 1795, which would otherwise have declared McCain a U.S. citizen immediately at birth.[67] The U.S. Foreign Affairs Manual states that children born in the Panama Canal Zone at certain times became U.S. nationals without citizenship.[68] It also states in general that "it has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural-born citizen [???]".[69] In Rogers v. Bellei the Supreme Court only ruled that "children born abroad of Americans are not citizens within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment", and didn't elaborate on the natural-born status.[70][71] Similarly, legal scholar Lawrence Solum concluded in an article on the natural born citizen clause that the question of McCain's eligibility could not be answered with certainty, and that it would depend on the particular approach of "constitutional construction".[72] The urban legend fact checking website Snopes.com has examined the matter and cites numerous experts. It considers the matter "undetermined".[73]
* Barack Obama (born 1961), 44th president of the United States, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a U.S. citizen mother and a British subject father from what was then the Kenya Colony of the United Kingdom (which became the independent country of Kenya in 1963). Before and after the 2008 presidential election, arguments were made that he is not a natural-born citizen. On June 12, 2008, the Obama presidential campaign launched a website to counter what it described as smears by his opponents, including conspiracy theories challenging his eligibility.[74] The most prominent issue raised against Obama was the claim made in several lawsuits that he was not actually born in Hawaii. In two other lawsuits, the plaintiffs argued that it was irrelevant whether he was born in Hawaii,[75] but argued instead that he was nevertheless not a natural-born citizen because his citizenship status at birth was governed by the British Nationality Act of 1948.[76] The relevant courts have either denied all applications or declined to render a judgment due to lack of jurisdiction. Some of the cases have been dismissed because of the plaintiff's lack of standing.[34] On July 28, 2009, Hawaii Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued a statement saying, "I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen."[77] On July 27, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.Res. 593, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood, including the text, "Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961".[78] The vote passed 378???0.[79]
but since his parents were married it wouldn't matter. So he could of been born in another country.
It's not that simple. This is a good discussion of the issues involved:
http://www.legalzoom.com/marriage-divorce-family-law/family-law-basics/is-your-child-us
No, that wouldn't do it, not according to this:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:f4SU-jiJN_gJ:www.usconstitution.net/consttop_citi.html+requirements+to+be+president&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com
But since Obama was clearly born here, it's a moot point.
Also, how is it that anyone is treating Donald Trump as a serious contender for the presidental nomination? And how does anyone conduct any business with him without laughing in his face? Dude is an idiot.
Hardly.
He's definitely doing his best to come off like one.
No, he's an idiot. if his wealth and celebrity make you think otherwise then you may need to readjust your standards.
He's not very bright, imo. He's also incredibly arrogant and angry. Watch any interview where he's challenged on any point and he loses it.
I don't see him having a chance to get elected.
but before all that he managed to build up an incredible business empire (twice!) and I have a hard time believing that he could be an "idiot".
But do I think he's president material? of course not. The fact that anyone in the US even thinks thats a good idea lets me know who the real "idiots" are.
BONUS! There's at least one Confederate flag fan in this.
Enough Trump.
All this elections talk sent me to 538.com.
I did not find the statistical analysis of polls and trends I go to 538 for. Maybe it's too early, or maybe NYT has ruined it. Or maybe Nate has moved on to other things.
I see the pundits are on about 2012 hard and heavy.
Here are 2 v
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
Washington Post
April 21, 2011, 8:52PM
WASHINGTON ??? Handicapping an election 19 months away seems relevant only to political junkies except for this: Expectations, as shrewd investors know, affect actions.
The Republican presidential field might be more formidable if President Obama were less strongly favored. And over time, what Congress does will be shaped by the presidential campaign's direction.
Views of 2012 are heavily influenced by the metaphors that prognosticators invoke. Will it be 1984, 1988 or 1992?
Obama's camp loves 1984. President Ronald Reagan's popularity plummeted during the economic downturn of his first two years, and Republicans did badly in the 1982 midterms. Then the economy roared back and so did Reagan. He won the landslide Obama's handlers dream about.
Republicans like 1992. In the year before the election, the smart money was on President George H.W. Bush's re-election. But out of nowhere came a young Democratic governor named Bill Clinton. He took advantage of economic discontent and the way Ross Perot's independent candidacy shook up the campaign. Bush lost with only 37.5 percent of the popular vote. Republicans want to believe Obama is as invisibly vulnerable now as Bush was then.
Both comparisons are flawed. Obama will get stronger as the economy improves but he won't be able to get close to a Reagan-like triumph, given how many core Republican states seem impossible to crack.
The problem with the Republicans' 1992 metaphor is that while Bush may not have seen Clinton coming, many Democrats had identified him as an awesome talent years before he ran. None of the current GOP contenders can claim this.
I like 1988 (the year the first President Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis) as a metaphor for the Republicans' stature problem. That year, the Democratic hopefuls came to be known as "the seven dwarfs." This wasn't fair to them, and it may not be fair to this year's Republican field, whatever its eventual size. But the dwarf line speaks to an image deficit shared by both fields.
Of the current GOP bunch, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is the Dukakis of 2012. I say this as someone who is fond of Dukakis and believes he was an excellent governor of Massachusetts. He just wasn't a great presidential candidate. The strength Pawlenty and Dukakis share is the absence of any glaring shortcomings. Dukakis was the remainder candidate, the guy most likely to be left standing. That looks like Pawlenty's role this year. But it's also hard to see Pawlenty escaping Dukakis' eventual fate in a general election.
Mitt Romney, the sort-of, kind-of frontrunner, is intelligent and well-organized. But his lack of constancy on certain issues and the Massachusetts health care plan (which he should be proud of fathering, but has had to disown) hurts him with primary voters. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is the guy you would most want to have a drink with, but that's not necessarily the key to winning a nomination. Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana is bright and substantive. He should run, but I don't think he will.
Then there's the rest - Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump and Jon Huntsman. I can't see any of them making it, but keep an eye on Trump's economic nationalism and his tough-on-China rhetoric. If he cans the birther nonsense, The Donald might surprise people.
For the election, here's the math: With the new census, the states Obama carried last time (plus the lone elector he won in Nebraska) start him with 359 electoral votes. From his original states, Obama can lose Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia and North Carolina and still win exactly the 270 electoral votes he needs - as long as he holds his other states, notably Pennsylvania and Florida, and that single elector from Nebraska. Under this scenario, if he also lost the one Nebraska vote, the Electoral College would be tied, 269-269.
This gives Obama a lot of maneuvering room, but note that Pennsylvania and Florida both trended Republican last year. So Obama is certainly the favorite, but I'm not in the camp that sees the election as over before it starts.
And in the congressional races, something could happen in 2012 that's never happened before: Both houses could switch parties but in opposite directions. The Democrats could take back the House - the GOP is defending a lot of Democratic-leaning seats - while Republicans could take over the Senate, given the difficult array of states Democrats must win.
If this actually happens, remember you read it here first.
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2011/04/22/charles-krauthammers-election-racing-form-see-note-please/
I am not a fan of Dionne, and I can't stand Krauthammer, but they are both more interesting to me than Trump.
Thank you. I did.
No one seems to think he's running this time.