My speculation is that between a doctor's practice and a wine business there are a lot of business expense deductions. If you can clear 4% of AGI that becomes a huge tax break and you can start deducting all of the wacky things you read about. For most who just get w-2s you are never going to be near the threshold.

Obama ran against Bush, but now governs like him | McClatchy

For me, this is less about the individuals and more about the system. It is simply too big and runs itself so meaningful "change" is rhetoric more than reality.

Agreed.

President Obama has released a copy of his long-form birth certificate. Hard to believe that it got to the point where he had to acknowledge the critics on it. Common sense always told me that if he had been born outside the U.S., either the Clintons during the Democratic primary or the Republicans during the general election would have unearthed proof.

In other news, Leon Panetta will be Obama's nominee for defense secretary and Gen. Petraus will be the nominee to replace Panetta as CIA director: Panetta and Petraeus in Line for Top Security Posts - NYTimes.com

Dola... and I have no doubt that a sizable percentage of folks will still believe that Obama was not born in the U.S. :)

It's fake!

I find it just as hard to believe that he was hard-headed enough to let it drag on this long. I never personally questioned his status, but if you have the damn thing on hand, just release it so everyone stops with the stupidity. Sometimes I think politicians are so busy trying to make the 'other side' look bad that they totally lose focus on their real job. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's an absolute truth.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this won't stop the stupidity.

The White House also kind of admitted the purpose of withholding it all these years was politics:

"Earlier Wednesday, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the debate has been "really bad for the Republican Party."

The so-called "birther" debate is "good politics" but "bad for the country," said Pfeiffer."

I know that's what most people here thought - I didn't think the president would be that tacky though, I had just assumed that there was some kind of private info on there he didn't want the world to know (something to do with his name, or his parents).

From whitehouse.gov:

The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country. It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country. Therefore, the President directed his counsel to review the legal authority for seeking access to the long form certificate and to request on that basis that the Hawaii State Department of Health make an exception to release a copy of his long form birth certificate. They granted that exception in part because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting.

How is he losing focus if he is just ignoring them for a while like he did? It doesn't take much effort to ignore a bunch of nutjobs.

Sure it was something that the pundits spent time on, but who really cares?

And we're full circle and birthers are the fault of Obama.

in less than 2-hours, to boot! :)

And in other news today, esteemed military man Leon Panetta is reportedly going to be the next SecDef.

My Way News - AP sources: Panetta to Pentagon, Petraeus to CIA

Except he didn't have it on hand. It took an exception of state law, requested by the President of the United States to get them to make an exception to the release a scanned copy of the original for the public.

That said, I don't think folks thought he'd do it now and so, in that way, he's called their bluff. I don't think the white house folks are naive to think that this will shut people up or end the controversy. What I do think it ought to do is ensure that legitimate candidates and/or members of Congress can no longer be taken seriously when they say "well, I take the President at his word."

I don't think it's about wingnuts, it's about so-called politicians who are afraid to call up really issues to talk about.

That said, Trump is now taking credit for it and his fans are essentially saying "if Trump can do this...then imagine what he can do for America." But I sincerely doubt that'll have legs for two more years.

It was a distraction. It was like a festering sore. No one HAS to look at it, but at the same time, you have to do so.

Like I said, I believe the argument was without merit, but why not just release it? And Pfeiffer's comments obviously validated that my belief was correct concerning political purposes.

If he had that power to do that now, he could have done that 18-24 months ago when elected and saved us two years of stupidity.

It's not really so much a "fault" as it is an ongoing theme. Birthers, the tea partiers with misspelled signs - this stuff is WAY more important to a big group of Obama supporters than any of this pre-election deceit or post-election failures. Pretty much everyone, including the white house, agrees on this - putting the extreme right in the forefront is great for Obama. Maybe that's just great politics and we should commend it. When the tea party stuff kicked off, it was actually considered "wacky" to be concerned about about government spending and debt - I'm glad at least that part has become more accepted amongst a broader group of people.

Yes, it's most certainly his fault that people are virulent batshit crazies. I agree.

Here's that fault thing again. Let me ask you this - why do you think Obama withheld this? Do you think that he just got around to it and it wasn't a priority, or do you think, as the white house spokesman implied, it was "good politics". If it's the latter, do you agree 100% with that approach? If everyone agrees on the latter, that's really the only question here. Is it all fair game? I can understand that argument if it is all fair game (because there was no real harm by it), by that's really the point here, not "fault".

This is fantastic.

It's an argument without merit, but the President has to respond or else he's playing politics and demeaning the office of the President.

I hear Donald Trump fucks goats at parties. If Donald Trump can provide witnesses that say they have been to parties with Donald and seen him not fucking goats, I'll believe them. However, until he answers the controversy there's just too many unanswered questions.

And to be honest, it made a LOT of Republicans look absolutely nutty to independants. By holding it, Obama gained some pretty decent PR against people who entertained Birtherism.

So you don't think he was playing politics? That was definitely the consensus here in the past, I can remember if you thought differently or not.

He said he was born in the U.S

He released the form sent by the Hawaii Dept. of Health.

A Hawaii GOP elected official said he had seen the long form and confirmed it's accuracy.

At what point does a person get to say, I've released the info, now shut the fuck up?

In the end, I'm not sure all that helps the Democrats nearly as much as they think it does. The bottom line is the economy and there's likely no way that it will be improved by 2012.

We've got lots of Democrats locally who harbor a deep amount of resentment against Obama for what amounts to a total takeover of local, county, and state offices. It was very common in last fall's election to see Republican candidates at all three levels who spent $2,000 or less on their campaign go out and beat very good Democrat incumbents who spent $50,000+ on their campaign. They expect similar results this fall.

It absolutely WAS politics, obviously. And there ain't a damn thing wrong with that since that is the field these people are in. Whether you like it or not, part of keeping power is making the other side look bad.

That wasn't the question.

Do you think it was withheld because of politics (to make his opponents look bad), or do you think it was withheld because it just was no reason to release it?

I don't think he's required to do anything to satisfy conspiracy theorists. If the makes the GOP look crazy that's their own damn fault.

Are you mad that Bush didn't release his grades or that he didn't fully explain his time away from the ANG?

Conspiracy theorists shouldn't set the rules of the debate.

So do you think he withheld it because of politics? It's really not a trick question.

He didn't withhold anything. He released the info sent to him by the Hawaii Dept of Public Health, the very same info any person born in Hawaii would be given. He had to make a special request, against the policy of the Dept. to have this info released.

Fair enough - I know that's part of the game. I personally think it think case it was tacky, but whatever. It's just funny to me that some of the hard-core supporters seem to be denying it.

I'll rephrase it then. Did Obama not release the birth certificate earlier because of:

A: Politics
B: There was no reason to so he just didn't bother.

I think you're afraid to say "A" because you think there's some negative implication with that, or you want to believe Obama is some pure, non-political liberal entity of justice.

Edit: Or maybe a better way of putting it, was it a conscious, political strategy, or not?

Agreed. I guess I'm looking for more than politics out of our leaders. I'm fully aware that this is likely a futile hope on both sides of the aisle as it currently stands. :)

I harbor no great love for the reshuffling of Clinton-era types in the current administration, but SecDef has never been a job that's really appealed to the retired military types, probably because of the rule that bars them from serving for seven years after retirement and also because it might be too much like what they did before they retired; especially if they were Joint Chiefs level.

I would consider myself a left leaning independent who is currently not happy with Obama. I would vote republican if a legit one comes forward. But if the candidate is batshit crazy Palin, 4 time bankrupt Trump, or a recycled Gingrich, they are not going to get my vote.

Denying that it is politics is just politics too :)


I'm feeling that way too. I'll admit I bought into some of this Obama new era of politics. But as I slowly leave my 20's, I'm slowly leaving my idealism by the wayside. Unless we blow this whole system up, it's a matter of finding the side you can tolerate the most and doing whatever you can to keep the side you can tolerate least out of power.

edit:changed word

It's more benign than this. The fact that he's been asked to supply more than any other candidate has ever been asked in history simply on suspicion that he might not be who he says he is, despite the fact that we live in an era where such things would be nearly impossible to hide if in fact true...is a level of batshit wingnut absurdity that goes without acknowledging.

The issue isn't whether it's "good politics" or not to ignore people who are detached from reality. It's when it reaches the level of infecting the political discourse that you make the tactical decision to take the so-called issue off of the table.

There was no reason to do this, but he did it anyway. There are folks who support him who say this will do nothing to shut up the wingnuts (seems to be true) and there are others who say he should've done it years ago in a faux outrage that this whole thing offends them when they've never shown any indication of that prior to this moment in time.

I don't think looking at a situation at it's absurd origins makes one a supporter of the current regime though.

My guess is they followed the law as written in Hawaii and didn't want to go down the path of appeasing every conspiracy theorist out there. Which, btw, is what every president does. You can't spend your time providing "evidence" demanded by every nutjob. Trump is already asking for information related to his college admissions. Does he have to provide that or risk being political?

Of course the birther thing isn't really about his birth, it's just an expression by political enemies of their belief in Obama's illegitimacy to be the President. Releasing this info won't stop that. They could have video of the birth and it wouldn't matter.

So in the end I don't know or care whether this was political, but to blame the controversy on the President is just another expression of your continuing game of everything is eventually the fault of a Democrat.

Anybody who believed prior to today still does (presumably). Anyone who didn't believe, or had doubts (which is where I'd land), isn't likely to.

This accomplishes nothing in that regard, although I'd say it's an interesting political play to hand Trump something that might be worth a point or two in some early polls of likely voters. Last thing Obama wants to see is an actual conservative who could inspire turnout, something a guy most famous for multiple spectacular bankruptcies seems unlikely to do.

Might as well release the birth certificate now - there's no way Obama is going to be able to prevent his identity from being stolen now that the hackers have his Playstation Network information.

I'd say he's much more likely to be a Wii guy.

Well that's almost a "C" option that I hadn't considered but is reasonable - that a president obviously can't respond to specifically to every claim out there, yes, and its better in some cases just to ignore all that stuff. That's all I'm asking. But I was just surprised to hear the white house spokesman call this "good politics". I was just wondering if that was the thought here too (and I'm sure I remembered Obama supporters here disagreeing with you, and saying this was striticaly political, and that they agreed with that approach.) I don't think that's some huge trick or anything. It's possible to justify the action/inaction on strictly political grounds. It's not a crime or anything to make the other team look bad - though I think we're a little obsessed with it, and both parties use it to distract their supporters from their own failings.


There was nothing about blame or fault. You continue to try to turn spin this around that way. I'm responding to your sentiment here, "it's his fault for ignoring nutjobs", and I'm just asking if that's really what he was doing - ignoring, or exploiting, and if there's anything wrong with exploiting.

The straight answer is both and all. He had no legal reason to release it. He met any obligation he had. He had won every legal case brought against him out-right, and had released the only legal document needed to prove he was born in Hawaii. He had no real reason to this point to get the "long-form" document, so he didn't.

Politically, till now the only groups still crying about this was the fringe wing-nuts. The press had already looked into it and said he was born in Hawaii. The major political players in both parties when they had been running against him (Clinton and McCain) had looked at and passed on challenging it. It was left to the nuts to keep harping on it. So, why would you answer? It only keeps the nuts looking nutty. Ignore it, and let them look like the racist xenophobes they are.

Trump changed the landscape. He is the first major player making it a bigger noise. Trump kept bringing it up, the press kept repeating it, the polls kept ticking the numbers questioning it higher. At this point, you have to move to try to take it out of the landscape. Now, if Trump keeps running on it, he looks a little nuts. It gives him a little victory now, but if it shuts him up about it, it will stop the bleeding on the issue. You don't respond to the fringe, but have to respond to a challenger. Trump may be a challenger, as crazy as that seems right now. At least, he has a big pulpit right now to speak.

I didn't think so either, but the white house seemed to indicate differently - that's the only thing I found noteworthy. I wasn't somebody that was calling for more proof, I'm just always interested what these parties are doing to keep this big team competition going - was this indeed a "whatever" thing that has no meaning, or a calculated political thing. I think it does matter, not in terms of "blame" or "fault" (its not a crime to have a political strategy), but in terms of how democrats and republicans keep us at each others throats while they keep the big party of non-acountability going.

If there was a political reason for not releasing, I think there's a political reason for releasing it today. Empowering Trump, at least briefly, might convince Trump to run. Which would be great for Obama, I would think.

Wait...Obama is black?

Plus, didn't Trump agree to release all his tax info if Obama released his birth certificate? :)

:lol:

Seriously? Seriously. Jeezus Jon...I know we don't agree politically, but on a practical, common-sense standpoint I had always assumed you were more intelligent than this.

*shrug*

Guess not.

This is the #1 reason why Trump won't run (IMO) and why this is all a game for him that's involved with milking NBC for more cash for the renewal of his show based on more viewers.

If he has to release all of his tax info then we'll all have the opportunity to see just how much this "great businessman" has been succeeding in between his 4 bankruptcies.

Tell you the same thing I told my dad this morning: I can't say for sure where the SOB was born. Won't tell you it was Hawaii, Honduras, Honolulu or Havana. Can't say he's a citizen, can't say he isn't, I can only tell you that I simply don't know for sure. But a document he's had this long to have "produced" with the resources to do so convincingly doesn't change that. I'd also go to the window & look if he told me it were raining. That said, we're far enough along into his term that even proof of something nefarious wouldn't be resolved until his term was up, so the energy is better spent making sure we put the country out of his misery less than two years from now.