Maybe
He's just giving the birthers a little tweak?
Obama says his birthplace is 'in Asia'
In a recent speech President Obama has described his birthplace as being "in Asia": but even the maddest "birther" – the term for people convinced that Mr Obama was not born in the USA and thus is not eligible to be President – probably can't draw much comfort from the error. In a recent press conference given in Hawaii (the …
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Monday 21st November 2011 22:42 GMT Michael Wojcik
Ratification of amendments to the US constitution
Amendments must be ratified by either the legislatures of 3/4 of the states (so 38, currently), or by constitutional conventions in 3/4 of the states.
Obviously it's a fairly high barrier, which is why the Constitution's only been amended 27 times (and once just to reverse an earlier amendment). The last time was in 1992, and that amendment was originally proposed in 1789. So for those of you with a pet amendment in mind, there's always hope...
About ten years ago or so, there was some bipartisan talk of removing the natural-born requirement by amendment, for the benefit of Arnie on the Republican side, and on the Democrat side Jennifer Granholm, the Canadian-born then-governor of Michigan. That died down as both their stars fell - largely due to macroeconomic conditions outside their direct control. (FWIW, I've seen worse governors from both parties, and I dare say worse potential presidential candidates.)
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Thursday 17th November 2011 20:09 GMT Dave 15
Morons everywhere - especially in the electorate
The biggest single flaw in 'democracy' is that the stupid and ill informed are allowed to choose. As they are too stupid and too ill informed the choices they make are quite often also stupid and ill informed. We have it here - a parliament of back stabbing, money grabbing, greedy and usually quite stupid politicians who have no knowledge about anything beyond fiddling expenses and hiding the back handers they get. Yet the stupid idiot electorate time and again puts these discredited individuals in a position of power.
In the case of America this stupidity is almost boundless and is really just a competition to see who has most money from people who think that owning the president will give them an advantage (it usually does). In the UK the media are the ones who choose - remember 'The Sun' and their 'last person out turn off the lights' headline - blatant and discreditable bias, but of course they were not only allowed to publish but never run off the street for it. (other media is just as bad - including the BBC).
How long before the great unwashed mass of idiots finally realise what a ride they are being taken for? Over here our government have just handed the already rich Richard Branson at least another 800,000 poinds of tax payers money in the form of a cheap cut price bank. The only promise made is not to sack any of the few thousand workers for a couple of years (perhaps cut their pay and bonus and let them leave, just don't sack them). The average British idiot thinks this is fine!
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Saturday 19th November 2011 04:16 GMT Tilman Ahr
Actually...
"Berliner" is used to refer to that jelly-donut-like confection in most of Germany - except for Berlin.
In full, it's "Berliner Pfannkuchen" (something like "Berlin-style-pancake"), which got shortened to "Berliner" in the rest of Germany, while actual Berliners just kept calling them Pfannkuchen. Kind of like the situation with"Döner", "Wiener", "Frankfurter" etc.
And before anyone asks: yes, they were traditionally baked (fried, really) in pans, and what the rest of the world calls "pfannkuchen" (or pancakes) is known as "Eierkuchen" in Berlin.
Yes, it actually makes some kind of sense; No, it probably doesn't seem to do that to anyone from another country.
Or significant parts of this one, as it stands. Oh, well...
Icon, cause it kinda looks like ie...
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Thursday 17th November 2011 16:01 GMT Bob 18
Continent vs. Country
US Law specifies you have to be born in the United States (a country) to be president. Asia is a continent, not a country. If parts of the USA are in Asia, then being born in those parts will qualify you to be president.
But of course, as someone else pointed out... Hawaii is not part of any continent.
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Thursday 17th November 2011 20:28 GMT Craigness
US Law...
...states no such thing. you have to be a natural born citizen, which includes anyone with a parent who is a US citizen and had lived in the US for x years past the age of y at the time of the birth. I forget what x and y are but Obama qualified under that law when y was changed in the 90s, nomatter that he was born in the US.
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Thursday 17th November 2011 20:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
A liar, a bigot, and an idiot post a comment on ElReg, and everybody says "You're an asshole".
And I'm pretty sure the racist is the one who is just emotionally unable to accept that a black man could honestly have won the presidency. If you support democracy, you have to accept the results of elections even when they don't go the way you want them to, and if you don't accept the results then you don't accept democracy and you don't accept the constitution, so you can't call yourself a patriot.
In conclusion: if you hate America so much, why don't you leave it?
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Friday 18th November 2011 11:53 GMT Mr. Byte
Oh yeah, whip out the racist card...
...whenever anyone disagrees with a black man. Is that how it works?
But he's half white, too. Funny how both sides gloss that part over.
I don't say the election was rigged, in the sense of stuffed ballot boxes and the like. But the media sure did their best (and it was good enough) to rig the vote, simply by waving the "You're a racist if you don't vote for the Articulate Black Guy" flag all over the place.
I think he sucks, not for his race, but because he policies are uninformed, badly executed, and just as full of concessions to the special interests on his side as any other politician. All that Hope and Change was gone when he picked Biden as his VP, and any fool that thinks otherwise is truly a fool.
Oh, one more thing, the statute of limitations for blaming President Obama's incompetent attempts to correct the US economy on President Bush's mismanagement (under a democratic Congress, but let's just forget that too, ok) has passed. Please move on, nothing more to see there.
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Friday 18th November 2011 00:03 GMT Chad H.
Anyone who thinks Obama is a communist...
Clearly doesn't actually know what a Communist is... Other than it was a word attached to those in positions of authority attached to people who they didn't like, and thus think its a generic insult.
If you actually knew a thing about Communism Neil, you'd know Obama isn't one. In fact, he's about at the same point in the political spectrum as the GOP was about 10-20 years ago.
But since he's someone you don't like you trott out all the big scary words you think are insults.
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Monday 21st November 2011 08:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Chad H
i agree, which may be a first for you an I? :) intrestingly most people dont have a clue about the idea of Communism, or Socialism, democracy Nationalism, left, right, anarchy.
They havent a clue, The idea of most of them is actually sound, less so for far left socialism and extreem right nationalism. But the idea of communism is perfect, that is until you add Humans to the mix, the same can be said for Democracy, its flawed by the very thing it trys to protect, us.
Anarchy is a good one too, almost all people think of the word as disorder and chaos, but it couldnt be further from the truth,
But its all meaningless now anyway, Democracy has given birth to a new style of politics
its called sitting on the fence, usually comes in to play during elections by shifting left and promising everything, then shortly after we move to the centre/centre right for the next 2/3 years where nothing serious gets sorted so as not to upset the public, then we move towards the left again for the next election.
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Thursday 17th November 2011 16:04 GMT Matt Piechota
US-born
"In a recent press conference given in Hawaii (the US state where Mr Obama was born), the president said "here in Asia", a statement which – had he been correct – would have disqualified him from office."
Not true. Any person born within the borders of the US *OR* to a parent that is a US-citizen is considered a natural-born citizen. Obama's mother was born in Kansas, QED. This comes up most often births on overseas military bases.
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Friday 18th November 2011 00:02 GMT Peter Murphy
It's a funny mistake to make
I would put Hawaii in "Oceania", which is not a true continent, but a category for all the surplus countries in the Pacific that don't fit elsewhere. But if he thinks the state is in Asia, let's look at the demographics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii#Population
"According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Hawaii had a population of 1,360,301. In terms of race and ethnicity, the state was 24.7% White (22.7% Non-Hispanic White Alone), 1.6% Black or African American, 0.3% American Indian and Alaska Native, 38.6% Asian, 10.0% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 1.2% from Some Other race, and 23.6% from Two or More Races. Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 8.9% of the population."
Hawaii is the most Asian state in the union - and not just by geography, but by the people.
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Friday 18th November 2011 11:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Seriously - I'd hoped for better, but it seems that word got out over on CNN.com that there was a juicy partisan flamewar to be had. Only problem is that here it's just one side doing the flaming.
Also, if this were a REAL American partisan flamewar, people would be saying "Odumba" and "Dummicrats" and... well, OK, sometimes it DOES happen here, but not very often.
Sigh.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
