Obama was also responsible for this controversey regarding his birth certificate because he proceeded in a manner that created more doubt. From the beginning it was clear that irrespective of where Obama was born no one in the line of fire would have said otherwise. What pleases me is that Trump forced the issue. As I stated in another post I am delighted he is thinking about runnning and I hope he runs because he will make quick sport of the polticial correctness Democrats use to fend off rather than address real issues such as people don't like Obama because they are racist. I am hopeful that we can have a presidential debate between Trump and Obama Again I say Obama is half white. so if a person who doesn't like Obama truly because they are racist then do they half not like him or half like him? You Dems keeping spouting that multi-culture manatra because that is what the European did and now they are in trouble up to their...you know what. When it comes to rights it seems Democrats are the only ones who have understand which rights are right. As to the issues VK raised that are valid but don't waste your time worrying about them because neither party will move to resolve them. If you want to do something useful read a good book

Originally Posted by graciegirl

Until I started reading the political forum and getting email from my teaparty friends, I thought a birther was an heterosexual couple who planned on having children or...

A person who believed firmly in "right to life".

I didn't know anyone would ever see anything wrong with being a moderate anything until I heard someone use the term RINO.

I will just continue to not lap up anybody elses truth serum and just try to figure this all out pretty much by myself. Sometimes I ask Sweetie. He is a sensible man. He says you can never win a ****ing contest.

graciegirl, Sweetie is a wise man indeed! My Dad used to say, "Don't get into a ****ing contest with a skunk."

I don't know what got into me. I know that I shouldn't be here in the Political Forum, but I just couldn't help myself. I think I'll take leave until I get bored again.

Xavier

Originally Posted by djplong

Umm.. The Air Force is all over the Middle East. A couple of people I work with are being deployed there shortly. They cycle in and out of here all the time. For example, those Predator drones? Air Force. High altitude and space recon? Air Force.

OK, good examples. But do we need 350,000 people in air force uniforms to fly Predator drones and be "all over the Middle East"?

The U.S. Air Force has about 5,600 airplanes in it's fleet. Of that number, there are only 180 unmanned drones. There are only 94 creaky old B-52's and 21 B-2 Stealth bombers which carry only one bomb--a nuke. Oh, and the Air Force is also responsible for the remaining 450 nuclear ICBM's that are housed in various locations around the U.S. Does this in any way justify keeping 350,000 men and women in Air Force blue?

That's the problem, I think. If it were a business, the top managers would be thinking about how to combine operations, multi-task facilities, find multiple uses for both men and machines etc. And they'd be incented to do that. The problem we have with the military is that they top officers are incented (thru promotions) to make the military bigger, more bloated, more specialized, and more expensive.

As much as I disliked Donald Rumsfeld, he had it right when he almost single-handedly took on the military-industrial establishment and was well along towards forcing them, thru his own steel will, to get smaller, more flexible and cheaper.

As much as there are lots of things I think Rumsfeld did wrong, we need more thinking like his if we are to reduce our military expenditures while maintaining a proper amount of military capability. I'm glad that we're not going to put David Petraeus in as Defense Secretary. As smart as he is, I'm convinced he'd be more of the same old "get stronger by getting bigger" mentality that has dominated in the Pentagon for decades.

Originally Posted by Xavier

Birthers rejoice, your best hope to the rescue...Birthers rejoice, your best hope to the rescue!

Click Here to save the day

Oh boy!

Unbelievable, isn't it? Do you ever hear either of them intelligently discussing or debating the kinds of important questions I suggested above?

Did I really use the word "intelligent" to describe the conduct of either of them?

For the record...I am sure that nobody cares but it makes me feel better...

1. I have never ever said anything even remotely bad or negative about the man Barrack Obama..not once...never even implied it so those who say there is hate on here I beg to differ with you totally. Fact is, you actually read very little in the way of PERSONAL criticism of the President, so stop with the HATE talk about the President. Disagreeing with policy and hating are different but perhaps to those who so quickly jump to that verbage there is no difference.

2. I, personally, have never ever..not once...questioned the President's birth place, never upset me as the question over how the Bush's fixed the election in Florida did not bother me. Remember how the Bush family had this influence over the computer companies and there was all this evidence. Went on in the background for years.

3. I would hope that we have not reached the point in this country where if we criticize the President we are immediately tabbed a racist because of the color of his skin. I would hope that my absolute negative feelings about the WH policies and attitude are not taken as being racist as some would on here conclude. I am so sick of that term being rolled out basically on schedule by people who obviously are so shallow that is the extent of their rherotic. Actually the quick use of that term makes me wonder a lot about those who use it and their attitudes on race.

4. I will also repeat what I have said many times....I am so angry at those who come on here with nothing but little short bits of "shots" at other posters or public figures (MOST not even elected officials) never offering anything of any substance concerning POLITICS and then turning around and making light of and criticizing anyone on the political forum.

This has become the home of those who jump on here with a little short note making light of somebody (again seems to be either other posters OR NON elected officials) having a good chuckle at someone else's expense and off they go. It would be wonderful if those folks took somethings on here and actually looked into them...maybe you would learn something about what is REALLY happening in this world and could offer some comments of substance other than the ridicule which is just plain childish.

That pretty much does it for me....bye and thanks for listening

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

[*] Do we need an Air Force at all? Navy and Marine aviation does almost all of the combat support missions. We haven't employed high-level bombing by the Air Force since Viet Nam. Other than flying materiel and ammunition all over the world, what does the Air Force really do these days?

What is the basis for your statement that Navy and Marines are doing all of the combat mission support? My nephew is a pilot in the Air Force and rotates in and out of the Middle East to support combat missions all the time.

While I appreciate the outside of the box thinking, I hope that the notion that we don't need an air force gets back into the box real quickly. The military gets accused of preparing for the last war; unforunately, civillians can be much more dangerous if they start thinking that the world is a safe place that doesn't require such things as an air force.

Originally Posted by NJblue

....I appreciate the outside of the box thinking...

That was my point, really. I certainly don't have it in for the Air Force. Not anymore than I do for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.

My point is that we simply can't afford to continue to "do business" and continue government spending as we have in the past. Every department should undergo scrutiny and their spending should be prioritized and cut to levels justifiable by our national interests.

Should the drones or your nephew's air group be cut? Maybe not. But no one will convince me that all 350,000 people dressed in Air Force uniforms and scattered all over the world are critical to our national interests. When't the last time we performed a combat bombing run with a B-52? Do the prospects of having to drop a nuclear bomb somewhere justify keeping 21 Stealth bombers flying or getting ready to fly?

For that matter, of what strategic use are the fleet of 18 Ohio-class Trident nuclear ICBM launching submarines? Sure, the four 4 nuclear-powered SSGNs (cruise missile submarines) seem justifiable. But where in the national defense strategy are 18 big ICBM-launch platform submarines running around the world's oceans?

Who's thinking about this stuff? Certainly not anyone who's worrying about whether or not Barack Obama has a birth certificate, do you think?

Bucco-

Yeah, right. 'Nuff said.

Now that the "birthers" were caught with their shorts around their legs, they are trying to deny. Ain't gonna work this time, bubba.

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

My point is that we simply can't afford to continue to "do business" and continue government spending as we have in the past. Every department should undergo scrutiny and their spending should be prioritized and cut to levels justifiable by our national interests.

Should the drones or your nephew's air group be cut? Maybe not. But no one will convince me that all 350,000 people dressed in Air Force uniforms and scattered all over the world are critical to our national interests. When't the last time we performed a combat bombing run with a B-52? Do the prospects of having to drop a nuclear bomb somewhere justify keeping 21 Stealth bombers flying or getting ready to fly?

For that matter, of what strategic use are the fleet of 18 Ohio-class Trident nuclear ICBM launching submarines? Sure, the four 4 nuclear-powered SSGNs (cruise missile submarines) seem justifiable. But where in the national defense strategy are 18 big ICBM-launch platform submarines running around the world's oceans?

I totally agree with your first point above.

As for the armed services I do believe it is time to re-evaluate our military bases outside of the US and see if we can relocate/consolidate them. The B-52 bombers were used in Afganistan early on but I am not sure they are still flying missions there. With the range they are capable of flying they certainly could reach a target in a reasonable time or even be moved closer prior to a strike.

For the 18 Trident subs I tend to think even in this current global environment that 18 is not a high number. Consider if you will that each sub is on a 6 month patrol. Just looking at my globe I can easily come up with 6 - 8 patrol areas for them. That would mean a need of 12 - 16 to cover one year of patrol with some "spares".

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

As long as people who are so bitter and vindictive over the election of the man who will be the President of the United States until at least January 20, 2013...at the expense of discussing and deciding what the really important issues are that are facing this country...they will deserve the consequences. While I hope the consequences don't involve the rest of us, I suspect they probably will.

Might I suggest just a couple of other issues for people to talk about other than Barack Obama's birth certificate?

How about thinking about and debating the following...

• What discretionary federal spending are we willing to cut in an effort to create a balanced federal budget? The national parks, PBS, the FBI, DEA and Border Patrol, the air traffic controllers, a bunch of the duplicative social programs, the departments of Energy and Education, foreign aid? Where should we cut spending?

• What changes to Medicare and Social Security are we willing to accept--changes that will actually effect us as well as coming generations? How about means testing for any of these benefits? If people have incomes well above an average level, should they get Social Security or Medicare at all?

• Should we be withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan and let the rest of the world take the lead on settling the unrest in the Middle East? How many troops do we really have to have deployed all over the world? Why?

• How much should the defense budget be cut? Do we need eleven carrier groups? Do we need 18 active ballistic missle submarines which have no other purpose than to serve as a platform to launch ICBMs? Why are we actually building six more submarines as this is being written? Do we need an Air Force at all? Navy and Marine aviation does almost all of the combat support missions. We haven't employed high-level bombing by the Air Force since Viet Nam. Other than flying materiel and ammunition all over the world, what does the Air Force really do these days?

• How can we actually reduce the cost of healthcare in this country, which is already double that on a per capita basis than almost all other developed countries and growing at a clearly unsustainable rate? Is either Medicare or private insurance really the answer? What has either program done to actually contain the cost of healthcare and slow the rate of such expenditures as a percentage of our GDP?

• How can we develop and adopt an energy policy that will truly be long term and not be effected by the political whimsy that happens ever two or four years? We don't have any such policy now? I wonder why?

I suppose if I had a few more minutes I could come up with a few other questions that seem more important to Americans than whether or not Barack Obama has a birth certificate. But then, maybe there are a lot of people who so hate our current President that they would prefer not to even think about questions such as these.

Please tell me it was a simple oversight that you didn't include something like this...

* Do we have the resolve to follow the suggestions of billionaires like Buffett and Gates and revise the tax code so that the top 2-5% of the population pays more? A start would be to return their tax liability to what it was only twenty years ago. Progress would be to apply VATs which would compare to those applied in other countries. More progress would be to close those loopholes available only to the superrich. etc., etc., etc.

So I guess that the 20 plus years that I spent in the Military was a waste of time and money according to your reasoning. Sorry to have wasted your money on the small salary that I made while in the service and the retirement that I get now. After 4 tours in RVN, remember that little "Police Action" I think that I earned what I get from the VA and the medical service.

As for the Tax Code, just have a VAT. That way everyone pays their fair share. You buy a 15,000 dollar car your pay the VAT on that if you buy a 250,000 dollar car you pay the VAT on that. Good system, but that is the reason that the super rich will never let it pass. That would mean that they have to pay their fair share and that ain't never gonna happen.

http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress....h-certificate/

Richie,you seem like an intelligent man,you have to move on. The birther issue is dead,done, finished. I realize you hate Obama and thats OK but please stop with this nonsense.The vast majority of Americans voted for him and do not want this issue and others like it to come up .Americans are weary of this garbage and the racial overtones surrounding it. Yes,I said it racial. Maybe Trumps questioning Obamas admission to Harvard also might have to do with his race. We all know blacks aren't smart enough to get in. This will be the last time I address the birther issue because now it's just getting stupid to talk about.

Interesting little tidbit about the certificate you can download direct from the White House web site.

When you take a document like a "birth certificate" or any document for that matter and scan it (like I assume they did to distribute the copy in digital format) it's a gif, tiff, jpeg, png, etc format. The document the White House put out for distribution is in a pdf file.

Many companies exchange graphics in this format (pdf). It's very common.

However, if you are familiar with graphics and design (my sister in-law is a graphic designer) you can extract the original image file from the pdf file then load it into your desired image program like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

When you load "this" file into Illustrator the original graphic has all kinds of layers in it. You use layers to manipulate, change and design graphics and documents.

The original document has all kinds of embedded layers in it. My syster-in-law did just that and sure enough, full of layers. Scanned images like raw jpeg, bmp, etc don't have layers, they are added after the fact.

How many of you ever took a photograph or a document, scanned it an emailed it to a friend or family member? No layers.

Food for thought.

Originally Posted by waynet

Richie,you seem like an intelligent man,you have to move on. The birther issue is dead,done, finished. I realize you hate Obama and thats OK but please stop with this nonsense.The vast majority of Americans voted for him and do not want this issue and others like it to come up .Americans are weary of this garbage and the racial overtones surrounding it. Yes,I said it racial. Maybe Trumps questioning Obamas admission to Harvard also might have to do with his race. We all know blacks aren't smart enough to get in. This will be the last time I address the birther issue because now it's just getting stupid to talk about.

I love tweaking self righteous liberals. The race card doesn't work with me. Not in a world of Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, and yes, Barack Obama. That's all done, brother.