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

On April 19, 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought.  There had been a lot of frustration with the British government long before these battles.  One key event was the Boston Tea Party, which took place on December 16, 1773.  The Tea Party was proof of widespread discontent, but Lexington & Concord demonstrated a willingness to fight to achieve that change.  Everything changed with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.  For the first time, citizens stood up to the British Red Coats, the most powerful military force on earth, and fired back.  It was not a huge battle, and there was no great victory, but the Minutemen stood their ground and it was the British army that retreated.  The Revolutionary War was on.

The modern Tea Party movement was named, appropriately so, after the original Boston Tea Party, because, once again, we are dealing with a government determined to continue raising taxes so it can spend more money on things people don’t want and don’t need.   Real change always faces strong resistance from the people currently in power.  In 1775, it was the British Government and King George.  Today, it is the federal government and the massive bureaucracy developed over the last 235 years.  This bureaucracy is strongly supported by those who depend on its largess.  This is not just about Barack Obama, or even the Democratic Party; it includes the Republican leadership, labor unions, the main stream media, lobbyists, special interest groups and big business.   All of these have invested a lot of time, money and energy in maintaining the status quo.  All of them are strongly resistant to real change.

Now, we are engaged in another “civil war,” and we are about to find out whether or not we can regain the special type of government purchased with the very blood, sweat and tears of our Founding Fathers.   I seriously doubt that our Founding Fathers would be impressed with the hideous transformation of a limited government, offering freedom of opportunity, to the socialist monstrosity that is destroying our country.  This is a different kind of war, hopefully fought with votes rather than bullets.  But, it is a war, nonetheless. 

One of the first major battles in this war is being fought in Wisconsin.  The people in Wisconsin voted for a Republican Assembly, a Republican Senate and a Republican Governor.  To the shock and dismay of the establishment, these newly elected patriots intend to keep their promise to take on the power monopoly represented by the trifecta of the Democratic Party, the Main Stream Media and the Public Sector Unions.  It took an incredible amount of courage to stand up to these powerful forces and, as expected, they fought viciously back.   People used to power seldom give up that power willingly.  Wisconsin is an important reminder of the willingness of the establishment to fight back against fundamental change.

The battle in Wisconsin rages on.  At first the establishment fought back with massive demonstrations, vocal media support and imported protestors.  There have also been reports of threats of violence against the Governor and key Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate.  This has included death threats.  (Contrary to main stream media reporting, there is far more violence from the far left than from the far right.  Those of us who monitor blogs from either extreme quickly realize that while conservative blogs quickly block those who spew hate speech or threaten violence, such rhetoric is common on the liberal blogs. )  When this attempt at intimidation did not work, they poured in about $4 million in a last-minute campaign to defeat a sitting Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice.  They ran vicious attack ads full of outright lies and distortions.  Fortunately, this didn’t work because the good people of Wisconsin went to the polls and voted in record numbers to restore sanity to a state gone wild.  (As we write this the Democratic Party is still trying to win this election through the “recount” process.  They are talking about “under-counted” votes in places like Milwaukee & Madison.  Don’t be surprised if someone “finds” the additional votes necessary to put this in the Democratic column.) The next battle will be a well-funded attempt to recall any Republican who dared stand up to the well-entrenched establishment.

This war started in Wisconsin, but it will not end there.  Contrary to the myths promulgated by the main stream media, the Tea Party movement is the result of pre-existing systemic disgust with the long slide toward socialism, not an illusion invented by a slick political machine.   The anger is all too real and no amount of media spin is going to change that.  A lot of people are sick and tired of watching a long stream of politicians, from both parties, who promise change but only deliver more and more of the same.  Only a handful of extremely brave individuals have the moral courage to stand up to the establishment in both parties, to the main stream media, to the unions, to the special interest groups and to big business and demand systemic change.  They have been mocked, shunned and, in some cases, assaulted by those who are determined to stay in power.  The unprecedented personal attacks on Sarah Palin are proof positive that these people show no restraint in their never ceasing lust for power.  Never before has the main stream media stood silently by while the innocent children of a political candidate were publicly savaged by those incapable anything other than the vilest personal hatred.  Ironically, those who preach the need for tolerance demonstrate almost none themselves.

The war is on.  The worst fighting is yet to come.  There will be casualties on both sides.  During a time of war, the people look for a very different kind of leader.  Winston Churchill was considered to be the laughingstock of the cultured elite in England, until they desperately needed his leadership during World War II.  The man they mockingly despised is now their most honored hero.   At this time, only a couple of people, like Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Michelle Bachmann and Donald Trump seem to understand what is going on.  The remainder seems to be determined to run as moderates, adored by everyone, desperate for approval by the main stream media.  My hunch is that anyone who wants to be the Republican nominee for President had better figure this out—and fast.  When you’re involved in a war, the most important characteristic of a leader is someone who knows how to win and is willing to pay the price for victory.  When you think about it, nothing else matters, because if we lose, we will have nothing at all.

 I really think Wisconsin is the new Lexington, hence the title:  Lexington Wisconsin.  Now, let’s find a leader who understands what it takes to win this war.

 TDM

Barry Bonds was convicted on obstruction of justice.  He was not convicted of perjury.  He may have lied, but there was not enough evidence to prove that.  Instead, the jurors convicted Barry Bonds for giving a BS answer to a question.  In the words of the jurors, Bonds told a story rather than answer a clear yes or no question.  The link to the story from CBS News is here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/14/sportsline/main20053930.shtml

If the same standard is applied to Obama, he did the same identical thing recently in response to a question from George Stephanopoulos.   (Most politicians routinely fail this standard.)  Obama was asked about Trump’s rise in the polls, achieved as a result of riding “fantasies” about Obama’s place of birth.  Following is the link to the story:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53236.html#ixzz1JcZ3y7k7

Once again, the main stream media starts out by pretending there is no legitimate controversy regarding Obama’s birth certificate.  Following is Obama’s response:

“I think that over the last two and a half years, there’s been an effort to go at me in a way that is politically expedient in the short term for Republicans but creates I think a problem for them when they want to actually run in the general election, where most people feel pretty confident the president was born where he says he was, in Hawaii,” Obama replied. “He doesn’t have horns.”

It is interesting to note that Barack Obama does not say, “I was born in Hawaii.”  Instead, he says:  “Most people feel pretty confident the President was born where he says he was, in Hawaii.”   This is strange wording.  Most people would say, “I was born in Hawaii.”  It is almost as if Obama considers the President to be a different person.   Weird!

The following article from The American Thinker is an excellent summary of the facts about Obama’s birth certificate: 

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/trump_needs_to_shift_to_second.html

I have always believed that the real problem is not where Obama was born, but rather the long history of cover-up.  If The American Thinker article is accurate, it is entirely possible that the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign is a forgery.   The State of Hawaii has never verified that certificate.  Instead, the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health issued two statements, both of which are bizarrely ambiguous.  If the birth certificate produced by Obama was accurate, what was the point?  Obama had already disclosed every piece of information on that certificate.  How could he possibly be damaged by someone verifying information he has already disclosed himself?  One very good explanation would be if the State of Hawaii didn’t issue that certificate.  Then, even if every bit of information on that certificate, other than the certificate number and date of issue, was accurate, it would still be an illegal forgery.

Karl Rove said that Donald Trump is a “joke” candidate because he is focused on Obama’s birth certificate.  Rove is no fool, but neither is Donald Trump.  One of them is really wrong on this one.   I suspect it is Rove, primarily because Trump probably has access to information that is not available to Karl Rove.  If any of the stores about Barack Obama’s background are true, then at some point it will all come out.

In the meantime, Obama continues to “obstruct justice.”  The real question is how long people are willing to let him get away with it.  My guess is that the end is nearer than we think.  If Obama was doing a great job as President, perhaps this might just slide.  He isn’t and it won’t.

TDM

We all know the law of unintended consequences.  Perhaps the best example of this is with the introduction of rabbits to Australia.  It appears that there were some rabbits brought on the first ships back in 1778.  But they apparently did not become a problem until 1859.  Then a farmer named Thomas Austin decided to up the ante.  He was a member of the Acclimatisation Society which believed in introducing exotic animals in exciting new locations, like Australia.  He brought over 21 European rabbits, for hunting purposes and released them on Christmas Day, 1859.  Some present.   The rabbits bred, well…like rabbits, and the rest is history.  By 1869 hunters were killing about 2 million rabbits a year, with no noticeable impact on the population.  The rabbits did so much damage that in 1907 Australia built a rabbit proof fence over 2,000 miles long to try and keep the rabbits out of Western Australia.  The fence was completed in 1907.  Since then, Australia has waged a decades’ long battle against the rabbits using Warren & Harbor destruction, poison, fumigation, explosives, introduction of predators, parasites and even disease.  Results:  killing 80% of the rabbits wasn’t enough to even dent the population.  Most experts report you have to get rid of between 90% to 95% of the rabbits to have any significant long-term impact on its population.

In this case, the law of unintended consequences may have struck Mitt Romney.  Donald Trump surged in the polls because he pointed out the obvious fact that no one really knows where Obama was born.  In response, Mitt Romney did something incredibly stupid.  (Perhaps this is an inherited trait because his father was considered to be a Presidential candidate himself, until he told the world he had been brain washed with regard to Vietnam.)  Mitt Romney said it didn’t matter where Obama was born because his own father was born in a Mormon colony located in Colonia Dublán, Galeana, in the Mexican State of Chihuahua.  His grandparents moved there because the United States had inconveniently outlawed polygamy.  Mitt Romney’s campaign reasoned that if George Romney was eligible to be President, then Obama must also be eligible.   While this may be an interesting legal argument, it is incredibly dumb.  Romney has already been struggling with the Mormon issue.  Trotting out his polygamist grandfather, who moved to Mexico so he could keep all three wives, hardly makes that issue go away.  

So, the first casualty of the Trump birther campaign may actually be Mitt Romney.  I actually like Mitt Romney and don’t really care whether or not he is a Mormon.  Prior to this little dust up, I would have considered him to be the leading Republican candidate.  But this kind of mistake is sometimes impossible to overcome.   His own father never recovered from the brain washing comment. 

 TDM

The trumpet has long been an instrument of war.  It was used by military commanders to communicate commands on the battlefield.  That is why there are so many bugle calls.  Prior to modern radios, the trumpet may have been one of the most important of all military instruments.  A soldier only needed to listen for the trumpet for guidance on the path to victory.

Donald Trump has managed to make the subject of Obama’s birth certificate a topic of conversation.  That alone is a major accomplishment.   His “Trumpet” calls on this issue have the potential to lead the GOP on the path to victory.  When CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and FOX have all commented on this subject, you know that Trump has touched a nerve.  Now the White House is directly responding, which creates a serious problem for them.  The ultimate dilemma for Obama is that shedding light on this subject is going to reveal some ugly truths.

Just recently Tommy Christopher wrote an article explaining how the State of Hawaii had verified Obama’s birth certificate.   The title of his article is “HOW TO INTERVIEW DONALD TRUMP: THE BIRTHER-DEBUNKERS GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE:

http://www.mediaite.com/tag/birther+donald-trump/

But Christopher, like a lot of other people in the media, has his facts wrong.

For example, he says the following:

While Hawaii state officials have sworn that the certified copy is a valid and true copy of the original birth certificate, and have sworn that they have personally inspected the original with their own eyes, they are unable to produce a copy of it for our consumption.

This statement is not accurate.  No one from the State of Hawaii has ever said that the certified copy offered up by Obama is a “valid and true copy” of the original birth certificate.   If you read closely, they have never verified that Obama has a birth certificate of any kind on file.   What they do say is that there is a “record” of his birth.   If you want to read some of my prior posts on this subject, you can read the actual statements from the State of Hawaii and judge this for yourself.

The rest of the article is mostly nonsense about how Obama couldn’t legally release his own birth certificate.  Please!  Obama, just like everyone else, can release his birth certificate any time he wants.  The truth is that Obama is still desperately trying to cover up his personal history, and that is becoming more and more obvious. 

Donald Trump is moving rapidly up the Republican Presidential leaderboard.    Some people watch him because they like him, some people watch him because they hate him.  But, they all watch him.  This reminds me of when Ronald Reagan first started running for President.  The media constantly downplayed him as “just an actor.”  But they soon learned that Ronald Reagan was far more than just an actor; he was a gifted leader and a skilled politician.  Donald Trump is a very strong leader with incredible communication skills.  I believe that the people are hungry for that, and just may be willing to put up with the baggage in exchange for pure competence. 

The main stream media and the DNC are working overtime to destroy Trump by dismissing him as irrelevant while desperately trying to dig up dirt on him.  Such attacks are motivated primarily because they fear him.  The Obama administration wouldn’t bother to comment on someone they did not consider a threat.  The attacks on Trump are similar to the attacks on Sarah Palin, for the same reason.  Both are far better communicators than Obama.   Both are much smarter than Obama.  Both are more effective leaders than Obama.  But Trump is more dangerous than Sarah Palin because he is a proven leader with a long record of accomplishments.   He also has about $600 million of his own money he can spend on his campaign.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe the country is hungry for a strong leader with the ability to communicate.  Trump is that rare breed of person who is both a powerful force behind the scenes and a magnetic personality in front of the TV camera.  He has that extremely rare combination of executive ability and showmanship.    Like other powerful men, he has also left a rather extensive debris field.  The man is not exactly a saint, and there have been some spectacular flameouts.  But Donald Trump is a superstar performer, and it would be foolish to discount anyone with this level of ability.

I must admit that this has been a refreshing change.  I admired George Bush and thought he was a great leader, but he was incapable of “selling” his position.  I thought Bill Clinton was a weak leader, but he was a much better politician than Bush.  It has been embarrassing to watch some really poor performances by people who are supposed to be our leaders.   John McCain’s pathetic performance in the Presidential debates was almost too painful to watch.  We haven’t had a truly powerful personality, since Ronald Reagan, that shares our values and is capable of explaining them in ways people can understand.   Trump is changing that.  

This does not mean that he is destined to win the Republican nomination, but he will change the game.  Anyone who wants that nomination is going to have to compete in a public forum with Mr. Trump.  At a minimum, he is going to require everyone else to elevate their game.  That is good for the Republicans and bad for Obama.

In the meantime, everyone is talking about Obama’s birth certificate and even the lame stream media is likely to figure out that Obama has a serious problem.  People like Christopher can only get away with the kind of nonsense I quoted above when no one challenges them with actual facts.  Trump will not make that mistake.

In a way, the Obama birth certificate issue is a good illustration of what has been wrong with the Republican Party leadership for years.  We have lacked a strong leader, who does his or her homework, and does not back down from assaults from the liberal left.  Donald Trump looked the liberal left straight in the eye and said, “Show me the birth certificate.”  For the first time, in a long time, it was the liberal left that blinked.  The Republicans have had the facts on their side; they just lacked someone with the skill and the courage to fight back effectively.  They needed someone to sound the trumpet and lead the charge. 

TDM

 Verification is the process of actually proving that something is true. Verisimilitude is the appearance of something being true. Our courts have well established procedures for verifying documents. The reason for these procedures is that there is a long history of less than honest people producing fraudulent documents. The measure of the truth of a document is not how pretty it looks, but rather whether or not it has been verified. Most of us learn through experience to cross check documents, particularly with regard to important issues. This is why a title search is required, in most cases, before purchasing property.

In the case of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, much of the main stream media has failed to distinguish between verification and verisimilitude. Barack Obama has produced a document that he claims is his birth certificate. At first he only allowed release of a fuzzy photocopy of the document with the date of issuance and the certificate number redacted. That alone should have sent up a lot of red flags. Later he allowed factcheck.org to handle the document and take several pictures of it. However, Obama has never allowed the State of Hawaii to verify it. Just for fun, we tried to see how difficult it would be to produce a Hawaii birth certificate, similar to the one produced by the Obama campaign. Following is the result. This took nearly five minutes:

The most astonishing thing to me is that this is so easy to check. For example, all one would need to do is deliver a copy of this birth certificate to the Hawaii Department of Health and ask them to verify that they issued this certificate and that the information is identical to what they have on file. But, that has never been done, because Barack Obama will not authorize release of his records. An unverified birth certificate is proof of nothing. NOTE: ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE.

 Let’s compare this to a real world situation. If you have ever had the privilege of getting pulled over by a police officer who wants to describe your driving habits, you know that the officer will always ask for your driver’s license, your vehicle registration and your insurance information. In most cases, they will require you to take your license out and hand it physically to them. The officer will then have that information verified. If the information does not match the DMV records you are going to be asked a lot of additional questions. Just imagine that when the officer pulls you over, you don’t actually have your driver’s license. Instead you give the officer a photocopy of your license with the date of issue and the driver’s license number blacked out. The officer is unlikely to be impressed.

Then you tell the officer you won’t let him see your actual driver’s license, but you will have a friend look at it. Your friend looks at your license, says: ”yup, this looks good to me.” Do you really think the officer would buy that? Yet that is exactly how Obama has handled his birth certificate.

The real story here is why are so many people buying this? Obviously some people accept this because they are true Kool-Aid drinkers and no documentation would ever change their mind. These are similar to the people who were on the first O.J. Simpson jury. Other people accept this because they are afraid of being considered racist. Still others accept this because they are ignorant of the facts. The truth is that Obama has never produced his birth certificate and finally we have someone with the stature of Donald Trump who is willing to state the obvious.

This is hardly the first time someone has tricked a lot of supposed smart people into believing something that is obviously untrue. Bernie Madoff bilked people out of billions by promising investments returns that were mathematically impossible. Yet for a long time, no one dared question Mr. Madoff. Those who did challenge him were quickly silenced by the cultured elite. That is why he was able to steal so much money. It is also why so many people are deeply embarrassed by their obvious stupidity in failing to recognize the difference between verification and verisimilitude.

TDM