Friday 30 December 2011

The Grand Panjandrum of Pundits

 

By Alan Caruba

It’s a little known event, perhaps because its participants want it that way, but as the new year is poised to begin, the Grand Panjandrum of Pundits gathered at an undisclosed location for their annual review of all the predictions they made regarding things that did not occur, all the events that did occur—taking them by complete surprise, and to exchange notes on their thoughts regarding 2012.

The philosopher Aristotle had it right when he said “Stuff happens.”

This particularly applied to the third year of Barack Hussein Obama’s extended vacation as President of the United States of America. He ended the year comparing himself to previous presidents whose shoes he is not fit to shine and whose bathwater he is ill equipped to draw.

On January 2, 2010, I wrote that I thought Obama’s life, at least in the chronology and facts that were presented to the public, was a pure fiction, make believe.  By then Americans had experienced a year’s worth of ineptitude that left anyone paying any attention astonished. It was just one blunder after another.

Even more astonishing is that no court, no one in Congress, and no one in the Republican Party has dared to say that the man was and remains ineligible to be President. Plenty of other people have said it. My friend, Dr. Jerome Corsi, wrote a whole book about it; two in fact.

The glaring truth that no one wants to address is the fact that his father was a citizen of Kenya and, as such, the terms of the U.S. Constitution which require that only “natural born” citizens—those whose both parents are U.S. citizens—can hold the office of President.

When you add in the serious doubts over the authenticity of his birth certificate—declared a fake by document experts and the dubious authenticity of his Social Security number, issued in Connecticut where he never worked a day in his life, and you have enough evidence to send him packing in less than 24-hours.

Even so, the Democratic Party will put him on the ballot again to run for office in 2012. The legality of this is no more likely to be challenged than it was in 2008, though some are trying. The Grand Panjandrum of Pundits was left to scratch their heads and mumble about the strangeness of this.

There was one thing they agreed upon. Barack Hussein Obama is the worst President the nation has ever had to endure.

No other president even comes close. He is the first to preside over the first U.S. sovereign debt downgrade in American history.

He has been responsible for the highest level of federal spending (25% of GDP) since World War Two and, in a comparable fashion, the highest level of federal debt (67% of GDP) since then as well.

Employment is the lowest since 1983 and long-term unemployment (45.9%) is the highest since the 1930s, the years of the Great Depression.

The rate of home ownership (59.7%) is the lowest since 1965 and the percentage of taxpayers paying income tax is the lowest in the modern era. At the same time, the level of government dependency (47%), those persons receiving one ore more federal benefit payments, is the highest in American history.

Obama and his economic advisors have achieved this in just three years while others in his administration were authorizing millions in loan guarantees to “Green” companies going bankrupt with alarming predictability or producing heavily subsidized products that no one wanted to purchase. Others we’re told were unaware of a Department of Justice program to run guns to drug cartels in Mexico. Plans to shut down Gitmo were quietly shelved. The Bush-Cheney policies were quietly extended.

Within twenty-four hours of the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Baghdad was besieged by bombings while the prime minister was busy trying to arrest and indict the vice president. You cannot make up stuff like this.

We are now mere months away from the Supreme Court hearing a case regarding the constitutionality of Obamacare. It is normal for judges who have had any previous involvement in a case or those close to it to recuse themselves from participating, but the Obama administration is so marked by a lack of ethics that his former Solicitor General Elena Kagan, now an Associate Justice, has still not announced her decision.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Obamacare, the federal government can require you to spend your money on things you do not want and may not need.

This is why the Grand Panjandrum of Pundits ended in a state of mass confusion and despair. Just like it did in 2010.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

To be fussy technical, BO's father was British. Kenya as a nation did not come into existence until several years after our Resident was born.

LifeoftheMind said...

You are wrong on your basic assumption of fact.
"Natural born" citizenship does not and never has required two parents who were American citizens. For those born after the independence of the US it does have two components.
1) Citizenship under jus soli, that is under the sun meaning a legal birth as a citizen within the territory of the United States.
2) Continuous citizenship uninterrupted by any renunciation or claim of dual citizenship or loyalty after the age of majority.

To reaffirm any child born as a citizen within the US is a natural born citizen. Any child born a citizen outside the territory of the United States is deemed "naturalized at birth" and is not natural born although they are still a citizen.

By that standard the children of illegal alien mothers may be excludable. That has never been determined in a court of law or by statute. The XIVth Amendment standard may not apply to illegals. No one has argued that illegal alien fathers cannot have US citizen children. It is possible that Obama's father was ineligible for citizenship and could not legally marry, being a polygamist. However his mother was a citizen and unless you are arguing the Kenyan birth story, which is ridiculous, his natural born citizenship at birth is undeniable.

It is possible to remain a citizen and lose the natural born status by claiming dual loyalty. That is where Obama is at risk. It is probable that he traveled on a foreign passport after his 18th birthday. It is also possible that he claimed foreign nationality on financial aid and graduate school applications. Any statement made before his 18th birthday, such as by an adult acting on his behalf, would not matter. What matters is what he claimed himself after that age.