Comment by 55555 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 55555 | Hacker News Reader

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Let me first say that I don't particularly care if Obama was born outside of the US. George Washington, perhaps our greatest president, was obviously an immigrant of sorts. Let me also say that I don't believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Obama wasn't born in America, as there are several other reasons for faking a birth certificate; perhaps the original has been lost and you've decided that it's worth doing in order to satisfy the electorate. But with those disclaimers, as someone who has done a lot of document editing in Photoshop for the past 15 years, I found this video beyond convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWmWO18GTc8

Regarding Trump's claim that Trump Tower(?) was tapped, I find it very suspicious that Obama's reaction was a lawyered non-denial-denial relayed by an intermediary. Whenever people are accused of crimes and they do anything other than simply deny it, you should be somewhat suspicious. When they use weasel words or clever phrasing, be suspicious. I predicted Theranos' issues something like 8 months in advance due to this; Elizabeth Holmes never simply said "these reports are wrong because our technology works" (because she knew she would be open to lawsuits after the fact if she said as much). Just my 2 cents; ofcourse nobody knows for sure at this point.

You watched a video that is over an hour long and you generally seem to have put a lot of thought into the veracity of Obama's birth certificate for someone who claims to "not particularly care" about it.

Then you move on to discuss your feeling that Obama wiretapped Trump, based only on the fact that Trump said it and you find the "style" of Obama's denial unconvincing. It doesn't seem to matter one bit that Trump himself offered zero evidence of this claim and is even trying to walk it back.

The short is that you seem to believe whatever fits your personal narrative. Worse, you try to convince others to blindly believe divisive, destructive, nonsensical conspiracy theories without a scintilla of proof.

Saying "we don't know for sure" is dissembling nonsense that can be stated of any claim. It's a transparent device for sowing disinformation without challenge. One could just as easily say, "I think you're a rapist. Of course, I don't know for sure."

Unchecked disinformation wreaks havoc on democracy. This nonsense is literally destroying our country.

> Saying "we don't know for sure" is dissembling nonsense that can be stated of any claim. It's a transparent device for sowing disinformation without challenge.

This needs to repeated more!

Thank you internet stranger, your words have lifted my spirits today.

> Saying "we don't know for sure" is dissembling nonsense that can be stated of any claim. It's a transparent device for sowing disinformation without challenge.

It is that at times. At other times, it is simply something people say when they suspect something but do not know it for sure.

Agreed. I suppose you have to simply consider the context to help determine which it is. If it follows a load of other dissembling nonsense, then it's probably the former.

George Washington was born in Virginia colony.

Right. Doesn't that make him British? Asking honestly... How could he have been American if the USA didn't exist yet. Obviously he was North American, but his citizenship at birth would have been British, no?

When the area you were born or live in changes governments, does that make you an immigrant?

It's in the Constitution: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President". - Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 5

As you can see, this covers the corner case you've identified.

Interestingly, the term citizen wasn't defined until the 14th amendment: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"

> George Washington, perhaps our greatest president, was obviously an immigrant of sorts.

No, he wasn't an immigrant of any sort. He was a native born citizen of one of the states that formed the United States, and one of the leaders of the movement by which they became the United States.

Immigrant is possibly the wrong word, but wouldn't he technically have been a British citizen prior to the founding of the USA?

Repeat after me:

It does not where he was born. His mother is a US Citizen, and that makes him a US citizen.

> It does not where he was born. His mother is a US Citizen, and that makes him a US citizen.

There is a dispute whether citizenship-by-maternityy is "natural born" under the Constitution (there's an argument that that "natural born" is equivalent to the birthright guarantee of the 14th Amendment, and no decisive case law.)

    Would there be any dispute if my wife gave birth while we were on vacation in France?  

    I suspect that those who really hold to that definition are primarily concerned about the amount of melanin in his skin.

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