I have been trying to figure out what is so wrong with the way Obama handled the killing of Osama bin Laden.  This should have been his shining moment.  Much of the country rejoiced at the news.  Republicans feared this great victory would propel Obama to an easy re-election.  However, that has not happened.  I wondered why?

Obama immediately set about on a campaign to make sure he got all of the credit.  The Navy Seals were told to keep their mouths shut, while the people representing Obama had diarrhea of the mouth.  In their rush to make sure Obama got all the credit, they released information that damaged our national security.  The response was disorganized and clumsy, but I don’t think that is the real problem.  I think the real problem is Obama himself. I believe this incident exposed a lack of character.

President Obama authorized the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. It is hard to criticize that decision, because most of us think it was a necessary decision.  We expect, a President to make the difficult decisions.  Sometimes those decisions result in the loss of human life.  But there is more to the story.   

I suspect that the Navy Seal who actually shot Osama bin Laden is glad he did his duty, but he is not bragging about it.  He probably doesn’t even want to talk about this, other than with his fellow Seals who understand how he feels.  The people who protect us don’t do so because they like killing people, they do so because it is their duty and because sometimes it is necessary.  Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bomb against Japan, but he didn’t brag about it.  He believed this was the right decision and he never wavered from the responsibility for making that decision, but it was obvious that the enormity of this weighed on him.

That is what is wrong with Obama.  He does not appear to have the slightest moral qualm about this.  That is why he is so willing to talk and talk and talk about it.  The equivalent would be for the Governor who signed the death certificate authorizing an execution to go around bragging about it:  “Yup.  I was the one who signed Ted Bundy’s death certificate, just like I promised.”

There is also a big difference between:  “wanted dead or alive” and “wanted dead.”  It appears as if Obama wanted Osama bin Laden dead, because he didn’t know what to do with him if he was captured alive.  He didn’t want to take him to Guantanamo, because that would be admitting that Bush got that right.  Yet he couldn’t risk giving custody of him to someone else and he sure couldn’t bring him to the U.S.   He didn’t want to use an air strike because he wanted proof Osama bin Laden was dead.     Ultimately, he authorized a high risk mission designed to just kill him, document the death, and move on.  That is not a reflection on the Navy Seals involved.  The Seals did their duty.  If the Seals had been ordered to try and take Osama bin Laden alive, they would have done that.  No one has ever said the Seals were told to try and capture him alive.

George Bush had a policy of saying that the U.S. would do whatever it took to get Osama bin Laden and if he got killed in the process that was acceptable.  But, I think that if Bush ordered the Seals to go on that mission he would have told them to at least try and take Osama bin Laden alive.  He would have done so because it would have been an important moral distinction to him.  He would also have done so because while killing Osama bin Laden would have been justified, capturing him might just have given us information to completely destroy al Qaeda.

Let me be clear, with someone like Osama bin Laden there is no duty to put our people at risk to try and spare his life.  If Obama had ordered an airstrike that killed everyone in the area, that would have been acceptable.  He also would have been justified in authorizing the Seals to use whatever force is necessary to complete the mission, including killing Osama bin Laden, if required.  But, both of those are very different from an assassination.  Obama is well aware of the distinction.  That is why the U.S. denies that it is trying to kill Gadhafi.  We are blowing up buildings all over Tripoli and killing his family members, while solemnly declaring Gadhafi is not a target.

Those who are required to kill, in the line of duty, don’t brag about it.  They know they have done the right thing, but they are still impacted by the reality that they have killed someone, justified or not.  Obama apparently has no such qualm, which is why he is so willing to embark on what is now an international victory lap.  A truly moral man would never feel like bragging about ordering an assassination.

I know several people who are genuine combat veterans from Vietnam and have also met several imposters.  As a combat veteran myself, the difference is instant and obvious.  I have never met a genuine combat veteran who bragged about killing anyone.  In fact, they don’t want to talk about that at all.  But the imposters are quick to give vivid details of events that did not occur. 

If George Bush had given the order to assault Osama bin Laden, he wouldn’t be bragging about it.  He probably would have deferred questions to the military, just like he did when Saddam Hussein was captured.  Bush would have accepted responsibility, but he would have deferred credit to those who went on the actual mission.  There could not be a more stark contrast between the characters of a George W. Bush and a Barack H. Obama.  

This is why the killing of Osama bin Laden did not help Obama and may actually hurt him. It exposed a lack of character.  Even if people don’t understand why, instinctively they know something is very wrong. 

On this Memorial Day weekend, may we all pause to remember to honor those men and women of character who have kept this country free.  May we also be sure to understand the significance of character in those who lead us.

TDM

For decades the Democratic Party has succeeded by convincing people to believe things that are not true.  Their strategy for 2012 is to continue the same strategy, only they will increase the volume.  However, no matter how loud it gets, they are still telling lies.  If the Republicans stand up to those lies, instead of trying to tip toe quietly out of sight, they will run the table in 2012.  However, if the Republicans follow their prior practice of using the prevent defense, they could easily lose the next round of elections.

Democrats are, once again, trying to win an election by scaring senior citizens into thinking Republicans will cut Social Security and Medicare.  But this time, Republicans can turn that around.  Barack Obama, not a Republican, was the first President who did not approve a cost-of-living increase in Social Security.  Barack Obama, not a Republican, is the President who proposed cutting billions of dollars in Medicare spending.  The Republicans need to fight back and fight back hard.  The argument should be that Barack Obama is more interested in making sure that the government handles your health care benefits than in making sure there are health care benefits to handle.  It is  mismanagement by the government that has resulted in skyrocketing medical costs.

Republicans need to point out that government programs don’t cut costs, they increase costs.  As Ronald Reagan observed, government doesn’t solve problems, government is the problem?   If we don’t get the corrupt, arrogant, incompetent, greedy fingers of the federal government out of our health care system, we are all going to have a problem obtaining affordable health care treatment in the future.

We need someone with the courage to ask Americans:  Who do you trust:  the federal government or private industry competing on a level playing field in a free market?

It is easy to explain this in terms everyone can understand.  Just a few years ago a flat panel television cost several thousand dollars.  Today that same television can be bought for a fraction of the original price.  Was that the result of government regulation, or industry innovation?

It should be obvious that the highest regulated industries in this country have the highest costs.  The lowest regulated industries have the lowest costs.  That is why televisions are cheap and cars are expensive.  There is a desperate need to eliminate unnecessary regulations, focus on what really matters and stop clogging the gears of commerce with needless and sometimes harmful regulations.  

If Republicans can explain these issues, without apologizing, in terms people can understand, the Democrats are doomed.  As FDR once said, the only thing the Republicans need to fear is fear itself.  The good news is that we have a new breed of Republicans who appear ready willing and able to challenge the status quo. 

I would not underestimate Sarah Palin for several reasons.  One is that the Democrats have already shot their wad at her and she is still standing.  If they haven’t found a smoking gun by now, there is no smoking gun.  A lot of people, including Republicans, thought she was down for the count.  They were wrong. Another is that these vicious attacks have done her an enormous favor.  When you have been painted as naïve, inexperienced and stupid, it doesn’t take much to prove that analysis wrong.   Those people who have formed their opinion of Sarah Palin from the biased reporting of the main stream media are in for a shock.   She is very bright.  She is extremely quick and she has been doing her homework.  This is a far cry from the deer in the headlight creature presented by the main stream media during the 2008 election.  Finally, she has become very skilled at campaigning in an internet world.  She frequently shakes up the political universe with 144 character “tweets.”  No one else is remotely capable of doing that.  Obama spends 45 minutes giving a boring speech staring at a TelePrompter, reading a speech written by someone else, and Sarah Palin skewers him with one paragraph written with one hand while the other is cooking dinner.

Sarah Palin had a documentary produced with the goal of providing a more balanced point of view about her term as Governor of Alaska.  No other candidate has launched a campaign with this type of approach.  I do not know if it will work, but it would be wise to pay close attention, since Sarah Palin has often be way ahead of the trends and people ignore her to their peril.  The other problem is that whether one loves Sarah Palin or hates Sarah Palin, they still can’t resist looking at her.

 TDM

Just when it looks like John McCain has reformed from his RINO ways, the old John McCain resurfaces.  His tortured reasoning is very damaging for several reasons:

   1.  There was no reason for him to opine on the subject of water boarding. 

   2.  He is clearly wrong. 

   3.  He gives cover to a weak administration with regard to critical national security issues.

Water boarding is not torture.  One of the statements I heard on Fox News the other night was some loudmouthed liberal saying that no one who has ever been water boarded has called it anything but torture.  Excuse me, but I was personally water boarded as part of my SERES (Survival Escape Resistance Evasion) training in 1968.  Unlike these morons, I understand exactly what happens.  It was a decidedly unpleasant experience, I didn’t want to undergo it then, and certainly wouldn’t want to undergo it again.  But real torture results in permanent injury.  Torture involves things such as pulling out teeth and hooking up electrical power to one’s gonads.  Torture is what the other guys do to our guys whenever they have the opportunity.  Torture is also what Obama is allowing to happen to people we capture now because he is still using rendition tactics.  He doesn’t do the water boarding, he allows someone else to it.  Torture is also what Great Britain, France, Germany and every other civilized nation does when it feels its national security is at risk.  Those who pretend otherwise are naïve fools. 

What Bush did was remarkable.  Clinton was just sending people to garden spots like Egypt where real torture was being done.  But, Bush had two problems with that policy:  1. We encouraged other countries to do things we claimed were illegal and immoral.  2. We lost control of the process and lost critical intelligence as a result.  So Bush said no.  He said we will take them to Guantanamo, and we will get the information from them using techniques that are tough, but which are a far cry from torture.   The ONLY difference between what Clinton did and what Obama is doing is that Bush didn’t play games and pretend it wasn’t happening. 

McCain is parsing words to try and justify a conclusion that is clearly inaccurate.  Numerous experts say that our intelligence didn’t realize the significance of the nickname of the courier until Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tipped them off that this was one of the people who had direct access to Osama bin Laden.  That is an extremely important distinction.  Yes, other people may have mentioned this guy’s name before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did, but that would have meant little to the intelligence community.  It would be the equivalent of someone telling Germany there was a secret military installation at Los Alamos.  That probably happened.  A lot of people knew there was a secret military installation there.  But, what Germany did not know was that this was where the U.S. was constructing a nuclear weapon there.  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was one of a handful of people who knew how to communicate with Osama bin Laden.  Even if he just confirmed information already obtained from another source, it was still incredibly important information.

I, unfortunately, had a lot of personal training with regard to interrogation techniques.  It is true that most intelligence experts believe that information obtained under extreme duress, such as torture, is of questionable value.  There is merit to that position.  But, that is not the complete story.  It depends on the kind of information you want.  For example, suppose police have someone in custody who they know kidnapped a little girl and has stashed her away some place.   If that person is put under duress, they are very likely to tell the police where she is located.  Is anyone really naïve enough to think that the police would not do whatever is necessary to get this information?  This information may not hold up in a court of law, but it may save that girl’s life.  This is exactly the type of information that our intelligence people were trying to get from the enhanced interrogation.  Lives were saved as a result.

I suspect that Osama bin Laden could have been captured alive.  I also suspect that this was not even considered because Obama had boxed himself into a corner and would have had no good option for dealing with a live Osama bin Laden.  What was he going to do, bring him to New York for trial?  So instead, we just killed him to avoid the problem. 

Whether it is Obama, or another U.S. President, at some point in the future we are going to get our hands on someone else who has information we absolutely have to get.  Sadly, because of people like John McCain, the balanced rational and moral alternative brilliantly developed by George W. Bush is now off the table.  Sad!

TDM

When I was flying out of Pleiku over the Ho Chi Minh trail it was on an EC47.  We communicated on a highly encrypted radio network.  There was one guy who used to call out, “Bawk…Bawk…Bawk… Bawk!  Chicken Man!  He’s everywhere!  He’s everywhere.”   I viewed it as comedic relief; some of our senior squadron officers were not nearly as amused.   It was, after all, a combat zone and this was a secure radio network.  There was always considerable speculation as to the real identity of “Chicken Man.”  The reality, which I feel can be safely disclosed after 40 years, is that there was no single “Chicken Man.” There were several people capable of being “Chicken Man.”  That was how the legend lived on.  Just when the higher powers thought they were closing in on a candidate, someone else would step up to the plate and make it obvious that the primary suspect could not possibly be the guy.  It was really quite simple.  All that was necessary was for the “Chicken Man” call to go out at a time when the primary suspect couldn’t possibly have done it.  Without admitting anything, I can do a pretty fair “Chicken Man” call to this day.

Today, we have the infamous “White House Insider.”  This is supposedly a liberal Democrat who is totally fed up with Obama, so he dishes out the real inside dirt.  Since most of what the White House Insider” has to say is totally consistent with what many of us believe with regard to the character and ability of Obama, it makes for entertaining reading.  It would be great if the White House Insider were a real person, along the lines of “Deep Throat” from the Nixon era.  Before he died in 2008, Mark Felt went public with the announcement that he was the one and only “Deep Throat.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/washington/19felt.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

Although there were numerous suspects with regard to the real identity of “Deep Throat,” it wasn’t until Felt disclosed the information himself that anyone really knew it was him.  There were a lot of people who questioned whether “Deep Throat” even existed.  He just seemed too good to be true.  But, he was real, and the information he leaked brought down a U.S. President.  I have always felt that there was more than one “Deep Throat.”

I have no way of knowing if the “White House Insider” is real, or not.  Some of the things he says are so vivid and detailed that it is hard to imagine someone making this up out of whole cloth.  On the other hand, these descriptions are so one-sided against Obama that they fall into the “too good to be true” (or “too bad to be true”) category, depending on your political perspective. 

The latest version is with regard to the assault on Osama bin Laden.   The link to the story is here.  You can read it for yourself:

http://socyberty.com/issues/white-house-insider-obama-hesitated-panetta-issued-order-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/

Following is a copy of the picture taken in the White House situation room.    Ask yourself, who looks like he just got dragged off a golf course and was asked to be a witness at his own execution?  Who looks absolutely horrified and who looks like they belong there?  If this picture was designed to make Obama look Presidential, I wonder what the bad photos look like!

 There have certainly been reports from this source that have been later verified, but there have also been reports that were ridiculously wrong.  There are a lot of smart people who despise Obama, but think the “White House Insider” is just a hoax.  I have no way of knowing if any of this is true.  It seems a little hard to believe that any President, including Obama, could really be this bad.  But the problem is that this will quickly circle the globe on the internet.  Whether it is true, or not, a lot of people will believe it because it is consistent with their perception of Obama as a leader.   That is a serious problem;  a lack of respect for the office of the President of the United States puts us all at risk. 

The only thing certain is that this is dangerous stuff.  If this is accurate, then we have a real serious leadership problem in our government.  If it is not accurate, then this individual is doing grave harm to our national security, and he should be silenced.

Too many people stood by silently while the liberal left and the main stream media falsely accused Bush of lying about the war in Iraq.   That did great harm to the office of the President of the United States.  If Bush lied, he should have been impeached.  If he didn’t, those who falsely accused him should have been silenced.  There is no safe middle ground. 

TDM

Last week we all gave Obama credit for making the right decision in authorizing the attack on Osama bin Laden (“OBL”).  Some people are assuming that any U.S. President would have given the order to attack OBL.  That is not necessarily true.  Clinton passed on a chance to get OBL before 9-11.  However, after 9-11 any President who failed to authorize a mission to take out Osama bin Laden would be committing political suicide.

Obama who demanded air time on all the networks for an “emergency” statement from the President of the United States.  This was great news, but it was not an emergency.  The only emergency was the fear that someone other than Obama would get to make the announcement.  The plan was for Obama to break the news and receive a spontaneous wave of adoration that would sweep him to re-election, if not deification.  Of course, that strategy didn’t work because the White House leaked like a sieve, and most people knew OBL was dead long before Obama got around to speaking.  Perhaps if he hadn’t delayed giving his speech in an obvious attempt to pre-empt Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice, he might have had more impact. 

It was bad enough that Obama gave the great I AM speech, but then he set about on a national victory tour.  It started with a trip to Ground Zero, a place he had not visited in over two years.  He tried to invite Bush to join him, but while Bush has avoided criticizing Obama, he wasn’t about to put up with that nonsense.  Obama followed up the trip to Ground Zero with a big pep rally where he gave the Presidential Unit citation to the Navy Seals.  This was another obvious attempt to focus the spotlight on himself.

As more and more information is released, it is increasingly clear that this was hardly great Presidential leadership.  According to reports, Obama was told in August that our intelligence people thought they knew where OBL was located.  The next eight months were spent being double damn sure before Obama would authorize any action.  It is important to understand that OBL was in a fenced-in compound that represented no significant challenge to our military.  We didn’t spend eight months planning the mission; we spent eight months making sure Obama wouldn’t risk making an embarrassing mistake.  Really?  It was obvious that the people in the neighborhood knew someone nasty was living there.  They didn’t necessarily know it was OBL, but it certainly wasn’t a place where innocent people lived.  If our guys had gone in and OBL was not there, we would have just eliminated some other nasty people in his place.  Perhaps I am wrong, but I suspect that if George Bush was told in August that our intelligence thought they knew where OBL was located, OBL wouldn’t have made it to Labor Day. 

After eight months, there was finally enough solid evidence that even Obama was satisfied. (The most surprising thing about this whole deal is that we were able to watch this location for eight months without tipping off OBL.) The National Security Staff approached Obama and requested authority to launch the mission.  They were stunned when Obama refused to give the order and had to sleep on it and wait another 16 hours before he could make a decision.  That is the opposite of leadership.

After planning this event for about eight months, they seemed to be totally unprepared for what to do afterwards.  The decision to kill OBL, take the body, do DNA testing, and then give him a first-class Muslim sendoff is just plain dumb.  The Muslim extremists will give us zero credit for handling OBL’s body according to Muslim traditions.  They are more likely to be insulted that we would even pretend to do that.  While I am convinced we got the right guy; there will be conspiracy theories about OBL that will last a lot longer than any of us.  I, frankly, do not understand the thought process.  Why didn’t they just capture him, take him some place really special, and just deny the whole thing?  They could have used him to roll up the entire al Qaeda network.  Just imagine how this would have worked.  Every time there was a successful action against al Qaeda, the administration could leak information that they had OBL and that he was singing like a canary.  Publicly, of course, they would deny it.  Al Qaeda would know that we had OBL, but they probably wouldn’t admit it.  This would have reduced OBL from a Muslim martyr to a sniveling snitch.  In the Muslim world, getting killed for Allah is hitting the big time, but weeping like a woman when things go wrong isn’t all that inspiring.  Even if we had to kill him, we didn’t need to admit it.  It could have been a beautiful thing.  I fear that most of the decisions were made primarily to benefit Obama’s re-election campaign rather than to deal effectively with a national security issue.

Obama had the chance to step up to the plate and act like a President.  Instead, his act was closer to that of a self-absorbed Terrill Owens after he scores a touchdown.  It is the difference between class and crass.  The majority of the people recognize this.  It is obvious that the capture of OBL was the result of great work by our intelligence community and our Special Forces.  Only a really naïve Kool-Aid drinker would consider Obama capable of leading this type of operation.

I remain glad he gave the order.  At first, I feared the wave of joy over the death of OBL would propel Obama into a second-term President.  We don’t have to fear that anymore.  In the long run, all he did was provide a vivid demonstration of the difference between class and crass.

 TDM

When a President gets it right, they deserve the credit.   It sure looks like Barack Obama got this one right.  He refused to let them bomb this compound, he wanted proof that they really got Usama Bin Ladin.   He deserves credit for authorizing this mission, since if it failed it would have been very bad for him personally.

Obviously the real credit goes to the men and women who found Bin Laden and who carred out the actual mission. 

This is a wonderful day and we should all celebrate a great victory.

More details will come out and that could change things.  But regardless, Barack Obama did well and he deserves his share of the credit.

Some people are worried that this will guarantee the re-election of Barack Obama.  It won’t.  The highest approval rating for a U.S. President, ever, was for George H.W. Bush after the first Iraq war.  He even got a standing ovation from Democrats in congress when he spoke to congress following that war.  We all know that within a remarkably short time he was defeated by Bill Clinton in the 1992 election.  If you listened to the “pundits” following the first Gulf War, no one thought it was possible for any Democrat to defeat George H. W. Bush. 

Obama would have knocked it out of the park if he has been a little more gracious.  He was very quick to claim the credit.  That is a smart move for a politician running for office, but not necessarily Presidential.   We will see how that plays out.   But now is not the time to nit pick.  He deserves credit for a job well done.

TDM

I am still checking some things out, but my initial impression of the Obama certificate is shocking:

I believe that Obama was born in the U.S. and the birth certificate issued by the State of Hawaii is legitimate and contains accurate information.

I believe that the Obama administration took that authentic document and immediately set about to deceive the American people.

Here is what I think they did.  They took this legitimate document and deliberately scanned it in such a way that the image was distorted.  Then they used Photoshop to “correct” the errors.  The result is a document that clearly looks doctored.  An 8^th grade student running Photoshop for the first time would easily discover these manipulations.

This, of course, is red meat for the birther crowd.  They will scream lies and distortion and will ultimately be made to look like fools because; although the image posted by the White House is doctored, the document itself is very real.

If this is true, it shows a President of the United States who demonstrates complete and total disregard for the American people.  The White House is a very capable place and they could have quickly scanned this document into a PDF file and ended this.  Instead they deliberately made a genuine document look like a fake, so they could, once again, deceive and misdirect.   It probably will work brilliantly.  This is like the convict trying to get away from a blood hound.  The convict takes off a piece of clothing and tosses it over a fence.  The dog goes berserk following the false trail and the convict jogs off in a different direction.

I have never felt that it really mattered whether or not Obama was born in the U.S.  I never believed he was born in Kenya, because I don’t think his parents ever lived together as husband and wife.  Barack Obama, Sr. already had a wife and children in Kenya and there was little incentive for him to bring back another “American” wife.  There was even less incentive for Obama’s mother to travel to Kenya when she could get first class medical care at home.  If he wasn’t born in Hawaii, he was probably born in Canada.  But in any event, it wouldn’t matter because his mother was a U.S. citizen and ultimately some court would have ruled that he was a natural born U.S. citizen. 

But there are documents that could be huge problems for Obama.  He appears to have attended high school as Barry Soetoro.  He also attended Occidental College as Barry Soetoro.  Did he register as a foreign exchange student from Indonesia?  His selective service record also looks very iffy.  Perhaps Obama didn’t bother to register for the selective service, because at the time he considered himself to be an Indonesian citizen.   What is difficult is to find any aspect of Obama’s personal history that is properly documented.  There are numerous reports of him using highly questionable social security numbers.  All of those issues are far more significant than where and when he was born.  I do not know how serious these problem are, because no one competent has investigated them.

Here is what is going to happen.  The birthers will make complete fools of themselves by pointing out the flaws in the document posted by the White House (all flaws are very real) only to have the White House trot out the real deal and say:  “We just used Photoshop to make it easier to read.  Give me a break.  Now go home.”   Then this whole thing will be spun as a meaningless racist witch hunt and the main stream media will try to give Obama a permanent pass.  The first step in this process has already started with the main stream media trying to paint Donald Trump as a racist.  They know that they must destroy Donald Trump, or he will destroy Obama.

Fortunately, Donald Trump is no fool, he is no racist and he is not easy to intimidate.  I think Trump will push on and he will gain more and more support from the American people.  If someone just points out what the Obama administration did to try and deceive everyone by deliberately distorting a genuine document this will backfire big time.

The most important thing right now is to develop a national wide movement saying “go Donald go.”  We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.  We tired of the lies, the distortions, the cover-ups, the arrogance and the incompetence.  We are even more tired of a main stream media that is either unwilling or unable to report the truth about the current occupant of the White House.  Perhaps Bill Clinton nailed it in 2008 when he said this is a big joke.  What he meant was that it should have been obvious to everyone that Barack Obama wasn’t remotely qualified to be President of the United States.  But Bill Clinton was quickly silenced with the false accusation of racism.  The Obama administration and the main stream media are using the exact same strategy to try and silence Donald Trump.  But Donald Trump is not Bill Clinton and this fight is far from over.

TDM

Finally, President Obama has released his birth certificate.  Now we will see how quickly this is verified.  It is obviously consistent with the short form birth certificate released previously.

This looks authentic, but there are going to be questions.  The first question is with regard to the certificate number itself.  It is number 61 10641.  We have a copy of another birth certificate issued around the same time.  It is number 61. 10637.  But, it was issued 3 days later than Obama’s certificate and it was signed, by both the doctor and the mother, after Obama’s certificate.  Like all Obama documents, there is always “something.”

But now, for the first time, researchers have very specific information.  This will be very easy to verify.  The first step will be to verify the doctor.  This is certainly is not the Dr. West previously reported by the Obama campaign.  The next is to verify the Hospital records.  Numerous sources say there are no such records.  In any event, these are things that are easy to verify.  The hunt is on.  Either this is a legitimate document and this ends the birther issue, or it is not and the problems will have just begun. 

If it is authentic, and it sure looks authentic, then one has to wonder why, exactly, Obama withheld this for so long.  Why spend millions of dollars if the solution was this simple?  I watched CNN and they are not exactly celebrating this.  They are reminding people that these questions did not originate with Donald Trump and they are openly questioning why Obama didn’t do this a long time ago.  In some ways if this checks out completely, it makes Obama look worse.  What was the big deal?  Did he think he was so special that he couldn’t be bothered to release this harmless document?   A lot of people think this will backfire on Donald Trump and “birthers.”  But there is a potential for this to really hurt Obama.  Why all the games.  Why the fuzzy photo shopped birth certificate.  Why the stubborn refusal to do the obvious.  Why put the country through this nonsense.

In addition, just yesterday the State was saying they couldn’t release this, yet they just did.  At best, we have an arrogant, egotistical narcissist who spent millions of dollars and wasted a lot of people’s time with his stubborn refusal to release a harmless document routinely provided by everyone else.  Why?  Suppose you were one of those Obama supporters who twisted themselves into pretzels on live TV trying to explain why Obama shouldn’t have to release this document.  Now he just says, ok…here it is.  No problem.  I would suspect some of those people feel “used.”  This doesn’t add up.  Stay tuned.

 TDM

For several years I managed the tort litigation nationwide for a very large company.  This involved several thousand claims each year.  One of the things I learned, when negotiating on a claim, was to watch for the blink.  That is when the person negotiating on the other side suddenly shows willingness to move.  Once I saw the blink, I knew we were heading in the right direction.

Eliot Spitzer, former Governor of New York, is a dweeb; but, he is also an attorney and former prosecutor.  It is interesting to watch this interview, because Spitzer starts from the premise that Obama was born in Hawaii:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/04/25/birthers.obama.hawaii/index.html?hpt=C1

Quite simply, Spitzer blinked.  He asked the same, obvious question several times.  Why doesn’t Obama just pay the $7 and get a certified copy of his birth certificate?  The answer given by the Obama White House is ridiculous.  Obama won’t do that because it wouldn’t matter; people won’t believe it anyway.  That is nonsense!.  The reality is that if Obama tells the state to release a certified copy of his birth certificate, and it matched the certificate he produced before, there is little chance anyone serious would pursue this further.  There simply is not enough solid evidence to prove that Obama was born anywhere other than Hawaii.  However, it’s obvious that Obama does not want to let the state release a copy of his birth certificate.  There is no good explanation for that decision.  One possible reason is that the certificate issued by the State of Hawaii may not match the certificate already released, which would make that document a forgery.  Even if the differences are minor, it would still be a forged document. 

Spitzer started out by saying he was positive that Obama was born in Hawaii, but he does not understand why Obama won’t release his birth certificate.  He clearly is not buying the White House argument.  You can see it in his eyes, his prosecutorial alarm bells are ringing big time.  Like Donald Trump, Spitzer has dealt with fraud, and he knows that it often comes in pretty packages.  When you run into someone who resists responding to a reasonable request, it is time to do more investigation.   Once again, CNN is going to try and paper over this by having the former Hawaii Director of Health interviewed.  She is apparently going to “explain” why she knows Obama was born in Hawaii.  But, what she will not do, and what Obama will not authorize, is the issuance of a $7.00 copy of his birth certificate.

(I just watched Anderson Cooper and he also blinked.  He let the Obama supporters spout their nonsense and then he said, several times:  “why not just release the birth certificate?”)

Don’t be surprised when a whole lot of other people start asking the same question:  Mr. President, why?  We believe you when you said you were born in Hawaii, but why won’t you release your birth certificate?  Donald Trump knows why, which is why he keeps asking the question.   He would never risk the embarrassment of Obama releasing a birth certificate that confirmed everything Obama was saying.  Trump knows what is there and he knows what is not there.  It is becoming more and more obvious that Obama is hiding something big.  The most important thing to note is that while the economy is collapsing, the dollar is diving, the war in Afghanistan is imploding, the Middle East is exploding, gas prices are soaring and Gadhafi is roaring, CNN is spending more and more time asking questions about Obama’s birth certificate.  This cannot continue much longer.  One opinion poll showed that 62% of Americans already question whether Obama was born in the U.S.  Either Obama will finally give an answer that satisfies his critics, or he is going to get more and more pressure to just release the $#@% birth certificate. 

When that happens, I don’t know what we will find, but it is pretty obvious that Obama is spending a lot of time and money trying to prevent that.  That alone is reason enough to keep demanding an answer.  Eliot Spitzer blinked.   So did Anderson Cooper.   Sometimes a blink is a lot more important than most people realize.

Let me put this in perspective.  A man is suspected of killing his wife.  He tell the police that he loves his wife and he would never hurt her.  He has friends tell the police that he is a loving husband who would never harm his wonderful wife.  But the police ask him where he was when the murder occurred.  They say:  “I believe you when you tell me you didn’t kill your wife, but where were you, exactly, when she was murdered.”  That what investigators do.  And the more time and effort someone spends refusing to answer a simple question, the more reason to find out why.

Don’t ignore the blinks.

TDM