Re: The American Presidential Election thread 2012 aka PMSL at Seppos

[Bradman]

Actually the biggest problem with McCain is which hospital he was born in (believe it or not). His eligibility could've been dependant on whether he was born on the base or in a civilian hospital outside. (Go figure)

Sooner or later there's going to be a case of a kid born outside the US to two US parents, serving outside the US at the behest of the US (diplomat, miltary etc), then they're going to have to rule. The rest were more or less nuisance cases though some did rewrite history. Dredd-Scott for one in a big way.

But until then courts aren't allowed to even consider hypotheticals. I'm assuming that rule applies to the US as well as British common law countries.

[taipan]

Actually the biggest problem with McCain is which hospital he was born in (believe it or not). His eligibility could've been dependant on whether he was born on the base or in a civilian hospital outside. (Go figure)

Sooner or later there's going to be a case of a kid born outside the US to two US parents, serving outside the US at the behest of the US (diplomat, miltary etc), then they're going to have to rule. The rest were more or less nuisance cases though some did rewrite history. Dredd-Scott for one in a big way.

But until then courts aren't allowed to even consider hypotheticals. I'm assuming that rule applies to the US as well as British common law countries.

And you get the reverse case that a person born in the US to two non-US parents, is presumably eligble.

[Bradman]

Actually the biggest problem with McCain is which hospital he was born in (believe it or not). His eligibility could've been dependant on whether he was born on the base or in a civilian hospital outside. (Go figure)

Sooner or later there's going to be a case of a kid born outside the US to two US parents, serving outside the US at the behest of the US (diplomat, miltary etc), then they're going to have to rule. The rest were more or less nuisance cases though some did rewrite history. Dredd-Scott for one in a big way.

But until then courts aren't allowed to even consider hypotheticals. I'm assuming that rule applies to the US as well as British common law countries.

And you get the reverse case that a person born in the US to two non-US parents, is presumably eligble.

Yep. Wierd that as the idea was originally to preclude allegiance to a foreign power.

[Allan D]

Mitt Romney's dad was born outside the US to two US parents who were living there not at the behest of the US Government but because they found Mexico more tolerant of their religious faith than the US in the early years of the last century (they changed their minds following the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1912 and returned to the US). Nevertheless George Romney still considered himself eligible for the Presidency in 1968.

Although he didn't win the Republican nomination he would have presumably saved his cash had he been given legal advice to the contrary at the start of the campaign. He was also reportedly under consideration by Nixon (the eventual winner) as a possible V-P pick and although he wasn't successful there either (Spiro Agnew, the son of a Greek immigrant father but a native Virginian mother was selected) Nixon's staff must have considered him eligible too since there was no point in picking a V-P who was ineligible to be President.

The only major party nominee, I think, to have been born to immigrant parents (who migrated to the US separately) in the US is Michael Dukakis who was the Democratic candidate in 1988.(when George Bush Snr. won).

[Allan D]

Trump: I'll Release My Tax Returns When Obama Releases His Birth Certificate

Scroll down for video.

[Allan D]

Public Policy Polling - 14 April 2011

The GOP’s front-runner is…Donald Trump?

Raleigh, N.C. – Every month, PPP polls Republican primary voters nationwide about their preferences for the GOP presidential nomination. Almost every month, the top four candidates have been in a statistical tie, with various candidates jockeying back and forth for slim leads. But for the first time in three months, when Mike Huckabee had a tenpoint lead over Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, PPP has found a candidate who puts serious distance between himself and the rest of the field: Donald Trump. Trump leads with 26% over Huckabee’s 17%, Romney’s 15%, Newt Gingrich’s 11%, Palin’s 8%, Ron Paul’s 5%,
and Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann’s 4%.

23% of these voters say they would not be willing to vote for a candidate who stated clearly that Obama was born in the U.S. 38% say they would, and a 39% plurality are not sure. Among the hardcore birthers, Trump leads with 37%, almost three times as much support as anyone else. He comes in only third at 17% with those who are fine with a candidate that thinks the President was born in the country. Romney, who recently stated he believes Obama is a citizen, leads with 23% with that group but gets only 10% with birthers.

Take Trump out of the equation, and the field is more muddled. Huckabee leads with 22% over Romney’s 16%, Gingrich’s 15%, Palin’s 12%, Paul’s 8%, Pawlenty’s and Bachmann’s 6%, and Haley Barbour’s 3%. In this and other variations of the potential field, Palin and Huckabee are the favorites of birthers. Trump pulls the least support from Romney of any of the candidates.

“Who knows if he’s really going to end up running or not but Donald Trump is certainly getting a lot of traction with Republican primary voters,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “A lot of GOP voters have not been happy with their choice of candidates and Trump is filling that void, at least for the moment.”

PPP numbers released yesterday found Barack Obama leading six potential Republican opponents by anywhere from 5-18 points. PPP surveyed 400 Republican primary voters nationally from April 7th to 10th. The survey’s margin of error is +/-4.9%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify

Health warning - PPP is a Democrat-funded organisation so there may be an element of wish-fulfilment as other polls show Obama beating Trump in any match-up handily by 15 points or more but Trump is evidently gaining traction in a rather lacklustre field of candidates, none of whom have yet finally committed to running, not only over the "birther" issue but also to his proposal to seize oilfields in Iraq by military force as a response to rising petrol prices in the US.

[Allan D]

The story surrounding Chester Arthur, the 21st President (1881-5), is remarkably similar to Obama in several aspects. Arthur succeeded to the Presidency in September 1881 after the assassination of James Garfield (or rather Garfield's death due to blood poisoning due to infected surgical instruments - he had been shot the previous July).

Arthur was the first President to be born in Vermont (Calvin Coolidge [1923-9] was to be the second) on 5 October 1829 to a Vermont-born mother and a Baptist preacher father who had emigrated from Ulster and was not a naturalised US citizen at the time of Arthur's birth. There was no birth certificate only an entry in a family bible and Arthur himself was later to claim he had been born in 1830.

Although following the Civil War the Republicans were the normal party of government the 1880 Republican Convention in Chicago was a particularly divisive affair as the former President, Ulysses S.Grant tried to regain the nomination for a third term as President and the party was divided between its liberal and conservative wings. Garfield was nominated as a compromise candidate on the 36th ballot after not even declaring as a candidate when the convention started and giving the nominating speech for John Sherman of Ohio in opposition to Grant.

Arthur, who was Garfield's second choice as Vice-President, was a controversial selection as he had never held any elective office and had been dismissed from his only Federal post as Collector of Revenues for the Port of New York by the incumbent President Hayes two years earlier for political corruption and a refusal to implement reforms.

Garfield needed to conciliate the party machine in New York, however, which was then an important swing state. During the election Arthur Hinman, a New York attorney, came up with the story that Arthur had, in fact, been born in Ireland and did not enter the US until he was 14 years old which would have meant that Arthur would have been ineligible to run or at least become President if anything happened to Garfield (which is what happened). Hinman later altered his story to claim that Arthur had been born in Canada and his parents had then brought him back over the border to Vermont. However in the absence of supporting evidence Hinman's claims gained little traction.

Like Obama Arthur had a US citizen mother and a non-US citizen father (who however did later become a naturalised US citizen) and it was this that may have caused doubt about his origins. Unlike Truman and Ford Arthur did not receive his party's nomination in the 1884 election (the last incumbent President to be denied nomination). However Arthur receives high marks from historians for carrying through the reform of the Civil Service in which Hayes was frustrated in achieving by, amongst others, Arthur himself.

[Allan D]

The idea that Trump is a Democratic spoiler in the Republican nomination contest designed to make the Republicans appear ridiculous by discussing the "birther" issue and the forcible occupation of the Iraqi oilfields and then running as a third-party candidate drawing off right-wing support from a moderate and sensible candidate such as Romney thus enabling Obama to be re-elected on a split vote appears to have some support from what I learned last night.

In the last 20 years Trump has given some $400,000 in contributions to political causes mainly to Democratic groups such as the Democratic Senate Caucus Campaign Committee but he has also given money to individual Democrats such as John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Charlie Rangel and Harry Reid, all names liable to act as the proverbial red rag to the right-wing Republican bull. He has previously called the former Speaker and currently House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, "the best" and President Obama "terrific". In the past he has supported Obamacare, abortion on demand and increased taxes on the wealthy - all positions he now claims to have reneged on.

Hopefully the US voter, especially the primary voter, will see through Trump's campaign for the opportunism and narcissism it undoubtedly is and he will vanish in the Iowa snows rather like Howard Dean did in 2004 but if he doesn't then the Obama campaign could scarce forbear to cheer.

[JKLever]

Trump would cause ww3 if half the shoite he spouts happens!

[eowyn]

The USA voter won't see anything, the world is ******.

[Basil]

Trump would cause ww3 if half the shoite he spouts happens!

He'll be too busy adjusting his combover

[Paul Keating]

Perhaps this thread should be renamed The American Presidential Election thread 2012.

The 2008 version was a ripper. One of the best reads this forum has produced.

[horace]

this from Crikey.com


Benjamin Franklin’s famous trade-off between liberty and temporary safety – for those who deserve neither -- stands itemized in human form in the Gitmo documents, in those many files full of misspellings, malapropisms and justifications, the dream-diary jottings of a superpower nightmare.

In the 14-year-old boy abducted and raped by the Taliban, held by the Americans for over a year.

In the 89-year-old senile man whose neighbour had a phone with numbers of suspected Taliban in it.

In the 70-year-old man, found sleeping at a mosque, for whom no reason could be found as to what he was doing at Guantanamo in the first place.

In the Al Jazeera cameraman, released after six years, held purely because of the Bush Administration’s perverse hatred of the network.

In the inmate with a serious head injury, left, as his file makes clear, to reflexively undress himself and compulsively m-sturbate in public.

In the farmer who shared a name with a suspected terrorist, held over a year after the Americans realized their mistake.

In the sharecropper held because he had knowledge of mountain passes.

In Mamdouh Habib, his detention justified on the basis of such reasons as that he once had a cleaning contract with the Department of Defence.

The stories of men wasting years of their lives in Guantanamo, long after the Americans realized they were no threat, were not “enemy combatants”, should never have been picked up in the first place go on, and on, hundreds of them. These are not a few instances of human error. The US news outlet McClatchy, which for several years has been diligently investigating innocent detainees, provides some numbers today, including that at least 44 individuals were incarcerated despite having literally no connection to militant activity of any kind whatsoever.

The “worst of the worst”, the Bush Administration called them. It’s clear now, was clear, even in the early months after the war in Afghanistan, that many, perhaps most, of the men interned at Guantanamo, with no rights, without even the rights accorded prisoners of war despite the lazy “war on terror” slogans, shouldn’t have been there even under the Americans’ own bizarre logic, even as they were beaten and tortured.

What the hell sort of democracy does this? A 14-year-old kid, for pity’s sake, a victim of the most appalling and savage crime, punished further by the most powerful country on earth.

This is the film Brazil brought to vindictive life, a combination of bloodymindedness and monumental bureaucracy in which individuals were consumed for years at a time for no other reason than an officials’ error, a neighbour’s malice, a soldier’s laziness. It demonstrates not how hard-hearted a wrathful America was in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but how incompetent and irrational it was in its blind fury.

[JGK]

No wonder the seppos was Assange dead.

[Big Dog]

Yes....extremly selective outtakes Horrie. Tell us what they said about Hicks.

[lardbucket]

No wonder the seppos was Assange dead.

'WTAAS'

[skully]

Perhaps this thread should be renamed The American Presidential Election thread 2012.

The 2008 version was a ripper. One of the best reads this forum has produced.

Your wish, yada yada.

[taipan]

The original title was more accurate

[horace]

thanx Sir Forum Elder

Big Dog - no mention of Hicks

the key thing was after they realised they'd nabbed some good guys with the bad guys - they still did not release them

[JGK]

So either Howard was played for a fool by his great mates the Seppos, or he knew as well and still didn't do or say anything.

[horace]

plausible deniability was the standard ljh defence when outright lies didn't work

[skully]

On horrie's headstone....

"Here lies a man named horrie
Whose forum skills were quite sorry
About LJH he would harp
And sprout lots of carp
He really was such an old dorry"

[lardbucket]

not a bad view from up here

[horace]

On horrie's headstone....

"Here lies a man named horrie
Whose forum skills were quite sorry
About LJH ljh he would harp
And sprout lots of carp
He really was such an old dorry"

fixed to the extent possible

[skully]

The original title was more accurate

Fixed.

[Sponsored content]