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After all the wailing and keening I hear from the right wing about "thabiasedlibrulmedia," it's interesting the things we DON'T hear a peep about regarding John McCain.
For example, I've been treated to speculation about whether Obama's American enough to be president, because he had vacations on Hawaii (where he has family,) or because his father is Kenyan. I hear the Fox-ites say his middle name a good couple dozen times per "news" hour... we worry about whether he is "safe" and whether a potato-pound is a "terrorist fist jab."
How many of us know that McCain's middle name is Sidney (no, really, Sidney), that he flip-flopped from Episcopalian to Baptist, or that he was not born in the United States? Yah you got it right. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone -- leased land, not owned.
This is how it appears in the NYT online - God only knows if it ever hit print. Squashed, I would imagine, by the right-wing media:
Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.
Pretty funny that I haven't seen this on Fox, MSNBC, the real networks, or of course, these pathetic blogs.
Hey Lou Dobbsians, where's the outrage?!?!?!? How are you going to trust a guy born in Panama on immigration?
Why does McCain hate Episcopalianism anyway?
Since he spent most of his childhood anywhere but America (Navy kid,) how could he have any real connection with the American people?
Why are the networks silent on these important questions?
Now: imagine that the networks were abuzz with this utter tripe.
You would have their putatively "fawning" coverage of Obama.
So I don't ever want to hear a wrong-winger whine ever again about thalibrulmedia or I'll freaking rip your spine out wrap it around your neck and strangle you with it figuratively of course because I'm a peace freak.
Respeck*
PFnV
* any similarilty between this closing and the Ali G show is purely coincidental. Big up yourself.
Last edited by PatsFanInVa; 08-12-2008 at 09:44 PM..
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Q: How can Panamanian-born McCain be elected president?
I understand John McCain was born in Panama. Doesn’t that make him ineligible to be president? I thought the Constitution said you had to have been born in a state. A: Though born abroad, he is considered a natural-born U.S. citizen.
John McCain's father was an admiral in the U.S. Navy who was stationed in Panama in 1936, when McCain was born. This has led to speculation as to whether McCain is a U.S. citizen and whether he can be elected president, a question that was raised during McCain's run for the Republican nomination in 2000 as well.
Section 1, Article II of the U.S. Constitution states:
Article II: “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; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” But McCain is a natural-born citizen, even though he was not born within this country's borders, since his parents were citizens at the time of his birth. As a congressional act stated in 1790: Congress: "And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens."
Another congressional act in 1795 issued a similar assurance, though it changed the language from "natural born citizen" to "citizen." But the State Department clarifies the issue, saying that the 1790 language is honored under section 301(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Sounds like "it depends what the meaning of 'as' is". As in, "shall be considered as a natural born citizen," not "shall be considered a natural born citizen," or "is defined as a natural born citizen."
But I understand what you're saying, he's just a reverse "anchor-baby." Just as you can come to the US, deliver a baby, and be a bouncing baby U.S. natural-born citizen, you can leave the country, have the baby elsewhere, and whereas he would have claim to call himself Panamanian if he so desired, he chose to call himself American.
According to the Times story, however, the constitutional issue is not definitively settled by your website. I doubt there would be a constitutional challenge were he to be elected, but it would tickle me.
But to the point; You cite an article from 1997, and we have this Times article from 2007... but where is the constant bleating coverage of these subjects like we see on Obama's middle name, "terrorist fist-jab," father's nationality/religion, etc.?
What we have (assuming the courts agree, in McCain's case,) is two Americans... yet somehow we have leave to question the patriotism of the one born here rather than the one born abroad. We question the "American-ness" of a guy going to Hawaii where he has family, but not a guy spending his youth almost exclusively on military bases abroad.
It's this loaded set of expectations that underpins damediuh. Because the right is so rabidly jingoistic, they "take their half," (i.e. the assumptions loaded in favor of the right,) and then whine and cry if there is insufficient bleating about one subject or another deleterious to Obama.
Again, the subject here is really the myth of "thalibrulmediah", that old stalking horse of cryptofascists everywhere.
It's old hat to you, you say, that McCain is foreign-born. I learned about this today -- I have seen stories day after day about Obama's religion, his middle name, his early upbringing, whether he attended a madrassah, blah blah blah. Why is this reserved for one candidate only? Answer: because there is a built in subjective bias to worship the military on the part of the media. Nothing more than rooting for the home team; they all do it.
Sen. McCain's supporters draw some comfort from a law passed in 1790 by the first Congress. It provided that the children of US citizens born outside the US "shall be considered as natural born citizens." The law is no longer in effect, but it provides some guidance on what the founders had in mind at the time of the Constitution.
Honestly, it takes a special kind of (fill in the blank) to consider someone not eligible to be President because he were born out of their country because his Dad was serving in the military overseas.
Yeah everything is reducible to "because it was connected to the military."
News flash: connection to the military does not change every law and every situation. Connection to the military does not immediately equal gold-plated and God-annointed.
Do I thank guys in the services? Hell yes. Do you just say "because his dad was in the military" and make the issues raised go away? Hell no.
Why are the media not abuzz with this crap? Why are we constantly seeing these frivolous stories on how "American" Obama is or is not?
Why do the media focus on questions of race, questions of his father's nationality, questions of his religion... and then we're treated to the bleating of wrong-wingers who must repeat in unison "wahhhhh he gets positive coverage nobody asks the tough questions dalibrulmediah has a crush..."
The media is not touching McCain's questionable aspects with a 10-foot pole. There is a question of the constitutionality of his run. They won't touch it. There is a question of his motives for becoming a baptist, if we use the yardstick of media coverage applied to Obama. There is the question of what they hell his parents were thinking when they called him Sidney -- to use the same yardstick.
McCain was not born in the United States. I am not shocked by this fact. I am shocked that I only heard about this fact today, and I watch a lot of news, and read the paper every day... the LIBERAL paper, or so I hear.
And I'm the only one who thinks he got a pass on this?
Do I thank guys in the services? Hell yes. Do you just say "because his dad was in the military" and make the issues raised go away? Hell no.
There is no issue. He was born there because his country told his father to be there. End of story. You're acting like McCain killed someone and is trying to get away with it because he Dad was in the military.
Yeah everything is reducible to "because it was connected to the military."
News flash: connection to the military does not change every law and every situation. Connection to the military does not immediately equal gold-plated and God-annointed.
Do I thank guys in the services? Hell yes. Do you just say "because his dad was in the military" and make the issues raised go away? Hell no.
Why are the media not abuzz with this crap? Why are we constantly seeing these frivolous stories on how "American" Obama is or is not?
Why do the media focus on questions of race, questions of his father's nationality, questions of his religion... and then we're treated to the bleating of wrong-wingers who must repeat in unison "wahhhhh he gets positive coverage nobody asks the tough questions dalibrulmediah has a crush..."
The media is not touching McCain's questionable aspects with a 10-foot pole. There is a question of the constitutionality of his run. They won't touch it. There is a question of his motives for becoming a baptist, if we use the yardstick of media coverage applied to Obama. There is the question of what they hell his parents were thinking when they called him Sidney -- to use the same yardstick.
McCain was not born in the United States. I am not shocked by this fact. I am shocked that I only heard about this fact today, and I watch a lot of news, and read the paper every day... the LIBERAL paper, or so I hear.
And I'm the only one who thinks he got a pass on this?
Screw you, I'm voting for the guy from America!
PFnV
This issue already had it's day in the media, and the concensus is that McLame is legally eligible.
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"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him." Leo Tolstoy, 1897
Not U.S.-born... just the U.S. president?!?!?
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