I do try not to get caught up in arguing the ridiculous rumors about presidential candidates in big election years that make the rounds of the blogs, but sometimes one will keep peculating into my sphere of daily internet visits, and one of them is starting to drive me batty. Therefore, I must have my say to get it out of my system.
In order to present this latest ridiculous argument as concisely as possible, here’s a comment from out on the internet that explains the opposition’s opinion:
Barack Obama’s father was not a U.S. citizen and Obama’s mother was only 18 when Obama was born, which means though she had been a U.S. citizen for 10 years, (or citizen perhaps because of Hawaii being a territory) the mother fails the test for being so for at least 5 years **prior to** Barack Obama’s birth, but *after* age 16. It doesn’t matter *after* . In essence, she was not old enough to qualify her son for automatic U.S. citizenship.
At most, there were only 2 years elapsed since his mother turned 16 at the time of Barack Obama’s birth when she was 18 in Hawai’i.
His mother would have needed to have been 16+5= 21 years old, at the time of Barack Obama’s birth for him to have been a natural-born citizen. As aforementioned, she was a young college student at the time and was not. Barack Obama was already 3 years old at that time his mother would have needed to have waited to have him as the only U.S. Citizen parent.
And now some facts that blow this argument out of the water:
Stanley Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother, was born in Kansas.
Stanley Ann Dunham graduated in 1960 from Mercer Island High school in the state of Washington.
Post graduation, Stanley Ann Dunham moved to Hawaii to attend college.
Hawaii became our 50th state on August 2, 1959.
Therefore, Ms. Dunham was a US citizen moving from one US state to another, eventually marrying and giving birth in the second state, thereby making Barak Obama as “natural born” as any of the rest of us born in the USA or its territories. They can’t seriously be arguing that this is true? Of course not, because not a one of them has bothered to look up the simple dates and facts that it took me 5 minutes to find using Google and are clinging to that particular bit of code they have pulled out of context … which does not in any way apply to US citizens giving birth either in a US state or US territory/possession.
Unless, of course, they honestly believe that children born to mothers under the age of 21, who are US citizens and living in US states, are not giving birth to “natural born” US citizens. That’s such a stupid concept, I can’t even bother to rant about how stupid it is. I’d suggest they all go ask their own mothers how old they were when they gave birth to them and then apply a little common sense. Giving birth under the age of 21 isn’t exactly a rare occurrence, even less so in previous decades than now. My mom didn’t have me until she was 28, and I assure you my parents are/were far, far older than the parents of almost all my friends.
I’d suggest, if they really want McCain to beat Obama in November, they should be spending some time focusing more of the issues and what they perceive as positives of McCain rather than things like this. All this does is make them look like a bunch of uneducated and ignorant twits. I realize they really, really want to run him against Clinton, in hopes that would be an easier win, but arguing that a baby born to a US citizen on US soil is not a “natural born” citizen? Please. We went through this with McCain too. I’d have thought they’d have learned something from that.
I actually heard this being mentioned on one of the 24 hour news channels (I’ll let you guess which one), which is when my head officially exploded. No one does any fact checking at all anymore anywhere apparently.