I Can't Believe Philip Berg Did This

WARNING, WARNING: This blog contains references to abortion and to Obama that do not cast those two topics in entirely positive lights. Proceed at you own risk. DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!

I don't know how much of the idiocy that passes for politics these days you guys are actually paying attention to, but there have been rumors floated by wackos nominally on the Right that say Obama is not a citizen. Apparently, some bigwig in the Democrat party filed a lawsuit against Obama and the Democratic Party, claiming that he isn't a citizen and therefore can't be the president (Article 2, I think, plus the 14th Amendment). Anyway, this guy (Philip Berg) filed the lawsuit claiming that the Republicans already know about this, as does Obama himself, and he feels that it is important that he do this before the Democratic Convention, because when Obama is nominated, he figures the Republicans will pull this as a trump card a month or so before the election...

This all seems a tad on the unbelievable side to me. If Obama was not a citizen, then he wouldn't have qualified as a senator, either, and you would think that the Democratic Party would have enough sense to check this out on their presumptive presidential candidate. The very assertion stretches credulity to the breaking point, and I can't tell if it is just a power play by a Hillary supporter or what, but it just doesn't seem to make much sense from any side.

I mean, it makes sense from nutters on the Internet, but for a Democrat to actually file a lawsuit he must actually believe it - the risk is too great otherwise - it couldn't be just a political ploy. What that means is that Philip Berg is either monumentally naive or he is on to something. I tend to doubt that he is on to something, because the level of either stupidity, incompetence, and disingenuousness that this would imply about a candidate, a party, and a government (say, for example, in doing the background checks for his security clearances in the Senate) is really difficult to swallow.

Those of you who know me, probably know that I am not an Obama supporter, nor am I a Democrat, but I find it very hard to swallow that any of this could be true. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to not like the man as a candidate, but I will be utterly flabbergasted if any of this piffle turns out to be true (if it does, I will be more than happy to apologize for that statement, but that apology looks like it will be totally unnecessary). Most likely it is an overzealous Hillary Clinton supporter who got duped with some phony documents like Dan Rather did with the George W. Bush thing. If you want to see for yourself check out what this guy has posted from his lawsuit (by the way, if I were him, I would check my grammar and diction before I ever submitted anything to a court - another thing that makes me doubt the veracity of the claim):

http://www.obamacrimes.com/

And, gee, do you think the guy's got an axe to grind by naming his website "Obama Crimes"? That's a bit much.

Something funnier, however, just in terms of humorous gaffs, is Obama's mistake about the states:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws

In it he claims to have visited 57 states, and having one to go but mentioning that his campaign didn't want him to go to Alaska and Hawaii. Obviously, this is just a flub because he is tired and misspoke; he meant to say 47 states - really, not a big deal, just a little bit funny. Had G. W. Bush said it, we would have heard quite a bit more about it... and I know what you are thinking out there, " That's because Bush is stupid and has made so many of these kind of mistakes". In all honesty, every person who speaks in public for a living makes these kinds of mistakes... people don't like Bush, so they make fun of him more. In addition, he is the sitting President, which means those errors will be made fun of more. The more coverage we have of people constantly, the more often simple mistakes will come up. None of them really reflect on the intelligence of the people involved (not in the traditional Stanford-Binet sense, anyway; maybe according to Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences). Think of how smart you are, and how many flubs you make with words - then see if you would like everything you say analyzed by a 24-7 news media. Most politicians aren't rocket scientists, but they aren't idiots either. By way of comparison, we have IQs of quite a few Presidents: JFK scored 119 (well above average, given a standard deviation of 15 points), George Bush senior scored 98 (almost dead average) and G.W. Bush scored 126 or 129 depending on what conversion you use (he did not take an IQ test, rather his SAT scores were converted given the strong correlation between IQ and SATs at the time he took them (historically, the SATs were based of off IQ tests, but that's for another time)), and, hell yes, I went for a double parenthetical statement!

All of that doesn't really matter as there is no correlation between IQ and being a good president, anyway. They are just numbers people bandy about to say that my guy is better than yours, or your guy is an idiot, etc, etc, etc.I find it humorous, however, that people start to lob around IQ numbers when it suits them, but shy away from them when it doesn't. For example, there was an Internet scam that showed that Red states had a lower IQ average than Blue states, and I heard many Democrats touting how smart they were, while at the same time dismissing results of a book like The Bell Curve. I am neither a particular supporter or detractor from either view, but please be consistent. If you like the IQ thing, then you have to take the bad with the good. If you don't, you can't have your cake and eat it to, as it were.

Now for a real reason I do not care for Obama (incidentally, I don't care for McCain, either, but that is for another day). It is also the reason I thought he might pick Joe Biden, because in the particular interview, he used a Bidenism, as it were. The Bidenism in question was "above my pay grade". I have heard Biden use that in the past (with your instead of my) to excoriate and vilify people he was questioning on the Senate floor, and it could be a legitimate calling into questions of a person's willingness to make a judgement call that is beyond his/her capabilities. But Obama uttered this about himself when he was in an interview with a pro-life pastor in an evangelical forum. He knew going in that he would be asked questions on this issue (if he didn't he's an idiot, and I don't believe anyone could get to where he is being an idiot), yet he seemed woefully unprepared.

The question he was asked was, “When does a baby get human rights?”

His response:

“Well, uh, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or, uh, a scientific perspective, uh, answering that question with specificity, uh, you know, is, is, uh, above my pay grade.” - Sen. Barack Obama

First of all, this is not really an abortion question, it is an infanticide question. He could have maintained a solid pro-choice stance by saying that a baby gets human rights when it is born. The reason he didn't make this simple statement was because of his opposition to the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act”. While he was a state senator, one practice for late term abortions was an induced labor abortion. The process involves inducing labor early (say at 6 months) and hoping that the process of labor crushes the fetus. It is a fairly reliable and safe procedure for the mother, however, it does not always result in the death of the fetus. Since it is then out of the birth canal alive, it is no longer considered a fetus and is legally considered a baby. However, there is some legal gray area here. The intent of the operation was to kill the fetus (or terminate, or get rid of - chose whichever semantics with which you are comfortable), and the operation failed. You are left with a badly damaged and unwanted live-born fetus (or baby, semantics again), and several nurses witnessed incidents at several hospitals where these infants were left to die.

The act was deliberately crafted, by pro-life advocates at federal and state levels, to curtail this practice, but many versions of the law attempted to slip language in that extended rights to unborn fetuses. Obviously, many pro-choice folks objected to this as it would entail an encroachment on the right to choose. The federal bill had that language removed in a compromise to make it specifically applying to infants that are born. In his state Senate, Obama was the head of the committee that drafted the compromise legislation, and then he still opposed the bill.

There are still plenty of reasons for someone who is pro-choice, and pro-partial birth abortion to oppose this bill. If you believe that this was a backdoor attempt to limit options for a woman wanting a late-term abortion by making it so that doctors will not want to perform this procedure, just say so. That is a legitimate argument on the pro-choice side; that is, do not allow any encroachment on the right to choose because it could have dire consequences later. Say that you are willing to take a stand on an uncomfortable issue that may have unwanted side effects now, but that is good for a woman's freedom now and into the future.

Or you could say that you still believe that a woman has the right to choose, but that you made a poor judgement on that particular of the issue. You have now reconsidered, and see that as a baby, it gets full human rights once it has been born (or some other such statement).

Either one of these statements would have been palatable to his base, and at least explained your rationale to the undecided voters. Nothing he could have said would sway ardent pro-lifers to believe him, so he shouldn't try to pander to them anyway. Instead he gave a wishy-washy response that just made him look like he was ducking the issue, and made it seem like he was unwilling to accept the responsibility that would be his once he gets "bumped to a higher pay grade".

Here is an actual clip of his response to the question (almost in its entirity, it cuts off a bit early) where he talks about opposition to late term abortion as long as the exception for the "health of the mother" are taken into account. The problem that this poses is that it actually takes out any restriction at all - even ardent pro-lifers put exemptions in for the life of the mother, but in laws, the health exception is so broad that it has been interpretted widely enough to include an inconvenient headache or the symptoms of a normal pregnancy (these are technically adverse health effects).

But, for me, it is not the pro-choice or pro-life stance that would impact my backing him as a presidential candidate - I don't think either ideology will be greatly impacted by the President (20 out of the last 28 years we have had pro-life presidents, and even Bill Clinton was pro-life as a governor, and women still have the right to choose an abortion). He knew what he was getting into going into this interview, and he knew his own record on how he has voted on/supported certain issues. His lack of preparation for these kinds of questions make me wonder whether he is capable of any kind of sophisticated diplomacy. If some nobody evangelical preacher can rattle him, how will he deal with foreign dignitaries who may come at him sideways with issues, rather than confront him head on. It is this apparently monumental lack of preparation that gives me pause.

Incidentally, I don't buy that crap about "He's only been in the Senate for 143 days". If he had no experience at all but showed the capabilities of a good leader and diplomat, I would be more likely to support him. Inexperience in the political arena is not necessarily a disqualifier, however, inability to handle oneself in difficult situations is a disqualifier. And if he is really a candidate for change, why did he choose a Senator who has been in office since 1972? I'll tell you why - the Democratic Party is having kind of a schism between the Clinton Wing and the Kennedy Wing. Biden is a staunch Kennedy Dem. and has no love for the Clintons - this selection seems more like a response to Hillary's push for the role-call vote at the Convention to show the Clinton wing where they stand in the party right now - seems like a typical power play to me, but I could be wrong.

By way of comparison, for those of you who didn't like my interchanging of baby and fetus in the earlier portion of this blog, this will bring it to a certain level - imagine if the doctor's, after extricating theCraftsman's son via C-section, rather than hooking him up to a respirator, they let him slowly asphyxiate, and you have an idea of what that issue was all about. It also had a tinge of eugenics that was enough to make me profoundly uncomfortable - most of the fetuses who were being aborted with this procedure had Down's syndrome. One can argue whether or not it is okay to terminate a pregnancy based on a potential birth defect or developmental disability, but it is harder to justify letting an infant who has been born (whether by induced labor or not) slowly aspirate just because it has a birth defect. That treads a bit too close to eugenics for me and is uncomfortably close to infanticide as well. And yes, the baby could not survive on it's own without close supervision and assistance, but the same could be said about any premature infant (or any infant really) - should we be able to discard them as well?

Sorry about the dip into controversy, and I hope I do not inflame too many passions with this post, but if you made it this far, I hope it was thought provoking, and I look forward to your responses. I will probably do a full on blog on abortion, church and state, bio-medical ethics, religion and atheism sometime soon. That should be fun and will probably raise more hackles on all sides, but what the hell.

Oh yeah, supergoober, I read through half of the Obama book the day after you gave it to me, and I will finish the second half soon, but it seemed repetitive and mildly interesting, when I had a list of very interesting fiction and nonfiction titles to get through (I read 7 other books after putting that one down, but I promise I'll finish it, even though I know you won't do me the same courtesy with the book I loaned you - despite your beliefs, it is neither extreme nor is it filled with apocryphal stories).

See you all real soon.