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2nd Posting: The Obama Birth Certificate Controversy

By Larry Johnson on July 27, 2009 at 12:30 AM in Current Affairs

Due to the number of comments, we’ve closed the original post and re-posted Larry’s essay in full to allow you to continue your discussion.

The Obama birth certificate controversy emerged again in the last couple of weeks thanks to the questioning of Lou Dobbs:

I think it is important to put to rest the notion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. He was not. He was born in Hawaii, a U.S. state, and by virtue of that fact is a U.S. citizen. So what’s the big deal? The Obama team have refused to release the original birth certificate and that fact fuels speculation that they are hiding something. Well they are. What?

Barack Obama was not named “Barack” in the original birth certificate. He was “Barry” not Barack. But that’s not all. The birth certificate was amended when he was adopted by Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian muslim, around 1968. David Axelrod and Barack Obama decided against trying to explain these issues, worried that the Soetoro birth certificate would reinforce the charge that Barack was a secret muslim. Such a charge would have muddied the waters and alarmed too many folks in the midwest and south. They covered it up and, with the help of an incurious media, kept these questions tamped down.

If you want to read more about Barack’s life as Barry Soetoro you should go back and read a post I did a year ago.

Let me be clear. Barack Obama meets the Constitutional requirements to be President. He was a young boy when he was adopted by Lolo Soetoro. As a youngster he had no say in the amendment to his original birth certificate. He also was introduced to Islam through his step-father. But that relationship ended when Barry Obama Soetoro returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. He never renounced his U.S. citizenship. The refusal of Barack Obama and his political team to forthrightly address these issues has kept the controversy alive.

The following video by video blogger syc1959 illustrates how a birth certificate is legally “updated” to reflect an adoption.

Barack Obama is now caught in the lie. If he comes clean with the original copy of the birth certificate he will be damaged politically because it will be clear he was not forthcoming or transparent about his childhood. People will realize the story he has told is more myth than fact. This in turn will fuel a new meme, namely, that Barack Obama cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

Similarly the rightwing will be damaged if it persists with the nonsense that Barack was born in Kenya. I know many believe this but it is not true. The real reason Barack Obama is evasive about his original birth certificate is that he wants people to forget he once was an Indonesian muslim boy named Barry Soetoro. It is that simple.