Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ender502 wrote:
I think it's a bit more than that. The birther thing existed because they wanted to paint Obama as an "Other" a "Not us". They couldn't, in polite society, come out and say "he's black!" so they had to show how he was not connected to "us". It was basically just race baiting.

And the Cruz "issue" was only raised to point out the hypocrisy of the people arguing against Obama's citizenship. I don't think very many people sincerely believed that Cruz is not a US citizen or eligible to be president, but it was a rather effective way of pointing out the insincerity of republican claims about "it's not about race" when the white guy with equally reasonable citizenship doubts is accepted without question as a legitimate candidate.

...and Hillary Clinton's supporters.

 ender502 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:


Then why the hell was the "Birther" stuff with Obama and Cruz even an issue?

Because some people are really fething dumb.

I think it's a bit more than that. The birther thing existed because they wanted to paint Obama as an "Other" a "Not us". They couldn't, in polite society, come out and say "he's black!" so they had to show how he was not connected to "us". It was basically just race baiting.

Though the "natural born" clause is actually pretty interesting. It was also an issue when the elder romney ran. If you follow the thread sback it comes from english common law. It literally means to have been born within the sovereign territory. Not protectorates or colonies..the actually territorial lnd of the state. So, Cruz (by the oldest definitions) while not canadian was not "natural born" (he was actually hatched from an evil plant but that's an other issue). Mccain, born in the panama canal zone (us territory at the time) was natural born. Also, if you look back at the changes that happened to that particular clause, it was originally "natural citizen" and was changed to "natural born." It suggests a distinct difference between "ntural citizenship" (at the time "natural citizens" could have been "naturalized") and "natural born citizenhip."

ender502

Why does your country entertain the absurd outrage of racists as though it held any value?

I mean, you can obviously let them be racist so long as they're not hurting anyone, but you don't actually HAVE to give them a mouthpiece to the entire country as though their outrage is something the country absolutely needs to seriously consider as a legitimate issue.

 Pouncey wrote:
Why does your country entertain the absurd outrage of racists as though it held any value?

I mean, you can obviously let them be racist so long as they're not hurting anyone, but you don't actually HAVE to give them a mouthpiece to the entire country as though their outrage is something the country absolutely needs to seriously consider as a legitimate issue.

Because we have people who are sympathetic to their beliefs, if not outright racists themselves, and some of those people are in the media/have popular websites/etc? It's not like nobody in the US is challenging what the racists are saying, so what exactly do you think we should do?

 Pouncey wrote:

 ender502 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:


Then why the hell was the "Birther" stuff with Obama and Cruz even an issue?

Because some people are really fething dumb.

I think it's a bit more than that. The birther thing existed because they wanted to paint Obama as an "Other" a "Not us". They couldn't, in polite society, come out and say "he's black!" so they had to show how he was not connected to "us". It was basically just race baiting.

Though the "natural born" clause is actually pretty interesting. It was also an issue when the elder romney ran. If you follow the thread sback it comes from english common law. It literally means to have been born within the sovereign territory. Not protectorates or colonies..the actually territorial lnd of the state. So, Cruz (by the oldest definitions) while not canadian was not "natural born" (he was actually hatched from an evil plant but that's an other issue). Mccain, born in the panama canal zone (us territory at the time) was natural born. Also, if you look back at the changes that happened to that particular clause, it was originally "natural citizen" and was changed to "natural born." It suggests a distinct difference between "ntural citizenship" (at the time "natural citizens" could have been "naturalized") and "natural born citizenhip."

ender502

Why does your country entertain the absurd outrage of racists as though it held any value?

I mean, you can obviously let them be racist so long as they're not hurting anyone, but you don't actually HAVE to give them a mouthpiece to the entire country as though their outrage is something the country absolutely needs to seriously consider as a legitimate issue.

Do look to your own country and answer your question before demanding it of another. I don't know why some Canadians believe they live in a post racism country.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
Why does your country entertain the absurd outrage of racists as though it held any value?

I mean, you can obviously let them be racist so long as they're not hurting anyone, but you don't actually HAVE to give them a mouthpiece to the entire country as though their outrage is something the country absolutely needs to seriously consider as a legitimate issue.

Because we have people who are sympathetic to their beliefs, if not outright racists themselves, and some of those people are in the media/have popular websites/etc? It's not like nobody in the US is challenging what the racists are saying, so what exactly do you think we should do?

I, uh, just realized the implications of what you said. That racists in your country have enough control over the media to cause issues like the Birther thing to be a huge issue of national debate.

Now I understand my partner's fear that after Trump's racist policies toward Mexicans fail to improve America like he promised, he may start to blame other races. Since my partner has a lot of Native American ancestry, he's been worried that Trump might go after people like him next.

...I wonder if he could request being deported to Canada if it came down to that. Maybe he could live near me and we could visit each other IRL on occasion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BrotherGecko wrote:
Do look to your own country and answer your question before demanding it of another. I don't know why some Canadians believe they live in a post racism country.

No, I am well aware that there are plenty of racist Canadians out there, and my dad used to read me the more outrageous stuff from an Ottawa-based tabloid whose comments section he loved arguing with people in.

I just don't recall ever seeing a Canadian news program on TV that catered to racists. But I only watch CBC news and CTVNN, so am I simply unaware of the networks that do it? What natiojn-wide Canadian TV channel do I have to tune into to see racists being racists?

Oh, also, I live in Ottawa. It's difficult to ignore the reality that there are racist Canadians in existence given a particular recent event that has been on the news within the past few months. Someone spraypainted a synagogue with some extremely racist stuff. As a result, the synagogue's local community gathered together in a show of support to let the synagogue know that they were in fact welcome in the community. The police investigated, arrested a suspect. Then after that I heard a quote on the news that reminded me distinctly of Star Trek, specifically how the Federation deals with crime.

What was said was a local community leader saying something like, "Yes, the police arrested a suspect, but it's not over yet. Something in our community made it so that someone felt this was acceptable. Something's wrong, and we're going to find out what it is and fix it."

What made me think of Star Trek is that they once described how the Federation eliminated most crime not by simply punishing offenders, but by looking for the root causes of crimes, the reasons that people commit crimes, then solving the problems there so that fewer people commit crimes in the first place.

If you want to tie the subject into American politics somehow, many Americans are against the idea of rehabilitating prisoners, and believe criminals should only be punished. The express point of rehabilitating prisoners is that when they finish their sentence, they become less likely to commit crimes in the future. The purpose of providing prisoners with education is that someone noticed that a very large portion of prisoners lacked a solid education, and came to the conclusion that a poor education was quite likely a factor in whether a person becomes a criminal or not, so educating them while in prison might end up keeping them out of prison when they get out. I dunno if it works or not, but at the very least it's an attempt to reduce crime by targeting the roots of it, like the Federation does. Of course, the Federation didn't eliminate crime entirely, they still have prisons for the people who did commit crimes, but the primary purpose is in rehabilitation. In essence, whenever the Federation has a criminal, they do their best to fix whatever went wrong that made them turn to crime in the first place. That's the goal of rehabilitation - reducing crime. And the Federation does have a few prisoners who simply cannot be rehabilitated for whatever reason and are too dangerous to allow to roam free. Those prisoners are given life sentences with no possibility of being released, to keep them in prison until the day they die, to prevent them from hurting anyone.

I'm pretty sure he's referring to Canada's (previous, slowly getting better) attempts to absolutely crush our First Nations populations culture, language, and history. We also have a few notable incidents (Komagata Maru, Head Tax, Japanese internment) in our history. Things are a lot better now a days, and I don't personally feel like i owe people of colour anything, but there's always room for improvements. Right now Vancouver is suffering from a bit of racism, blaming foreign (Chinese) ownership on soaring prices (it's a contributing factor, but not the sole factor). No one complains if an American buys property here, or an Englishman. I'm willing to bet Americans own more property in Vancouver/Whistler than Chinese do.

Though we are still better than those damn Yanks. (:p)

If I understood correctly, some US universities claim they will protect illegals from deportation ? They call themselves "sanctuaries".
Is that right ? How is this possible ?

 godardc wrote:
If I understood correctly, some US universities claim they will protect illegals from deportation ? They call themselves "sanctuaries".
Is that right ? How is this possible ?

It's possible because immigration enforcement (including deportation) is a federal issue, but the federal government does not have the manpower to cover such a vast problem. Immigration enforcement depends on state and local governments handling some of the work. For example, if the city police arrest a person for a crime and discover that they are in the country illegally they can report it to the federal government and begin the deportation process. What sanctuary cities are doing is refusing to provide any assistance. If, say, the police in San Francisco arrest someone but decline to investigate their immigration status then the federal government never identifies a person to deport. The police haven't committed any crime of their own, so there's nothing the federal government can do about it.

Now, in theory the federal government could pass a law requiring the state and local governments to actively investigate the immigration status of all residents, but this would run into the rather significant problem that the party which is most in favor of opposing immigration is also the party which is most in favor of "states' rights" and a limited federal government. It's kind of an awkward problem for that to effectively turn state and local police into nothing more than an extension of the federal government.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-secretary-of-state-reject-john-bolton-moustache-transition-president-elect-cabinet-a7489576.html

Donald Trump passed over a potential candidate for Secretary of State due to his bushy mustache, according to insiders close to the incoming US President.

Several of Mr Trump’s associates said they thought that John Bolton’s brush-like mustache was one of the factors that handicapped the bombastic former United Nations ambassador in the sweepstakes for the role.

“Donald was not going to like that mustache,” said one, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I can’t think of anyone that’s really close to Donald that has a beard that he likes.

... well..

yeah.

TBF i think Bolton is a grade A witch of the worst kind so I'm not exactly gnashing ones teeth here.


... there's reports that Trump has given the job to his nephew but ...???


https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/811778176120668160

I met some really great Air Force GENERALS and Navy ADMIRALS today, talking about airplane capability and pricing. Very impressive people!

They read all of a book and count the numbers. Nobody helps them. They’ve been to abroad, not in a hotel! Uniforms. And then we had ice cream.





Is it possible to somehow buy shares in ALL CAPS at all ? If so, then buy quickly.

 Crazyterran wrote:
I'm pretty sure he's referring to Canada's (previous, slowly getting better) attempts to absolutely crush our First Nations populations culture, language, and history. We also have a few notable incidents (Komagata Maru, Head Tax, Japanese internment) in our history. Things are a lot better now a days, and I don't personally feel like i owe people of colour anything, but there's always room for improvements. Right now Vancouver is suffering from a bit of racism, blaming foreign (Chinese) ownership on soaring prices (it's a contributing factor, but not the sole factor). No one complains if an American buys property here, or an Englishman. I'm willing to bet Americans own more property in Vancouver/Whistler than Chinese do.

Though we are still better than those damn Yanks. (:p)

I still remember that time I turned on CTVNN and they were talking about an ongoing genocide. Literally they were calling it genocide, in bold letters.

I wondered what backwater hellhole it was taking place in.

Eventually I realized they were talking about events going on in Canada.

It, erm, did shatter a large portion of my faith in Canada to watch a story on the national news about genocide taking place in my own country.

Also that was like a couple of months ago.

Funny how the market some times just takes care of itself without POTUS coercion.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/meet-the-chinese-billionaire-whos-moving-manufacturing-to-the-us-to-cut-costs/ar-BBxr39m?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=ASUDHP

 ender502 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:


Then why the hell was the "Birther" stuff with Obama and Cruz even an issue?

Because some people are really fething dumb.

I think it's a bit more than that. The birther thing existed because they wanted to paint Obama as an "Other" a "Not us". They couldn't, in polite society, come out and say "he's black!" so they had to show how he was not connected to "us". It was basically just race baiting.

Though the "natural born" clause is actually pretty interesting. It was also an issue when the elder romney ran. If you follow the thread sback it comes from english common law. It literally means to have been born within the sovereign territory. Not protectorates or colonies..the actually territorial lnd of the state. So, Cruz (by the oldest definitions) while not canadian was not "natural born" (he was actually hatched from an evil plant but that's an other issue). Mccain, born in the panama canal zone (us territory at the time) was natural born. Also, if you look back at the changes that happened to that particular clause, it was originally "natural citizen" and was changed to "natural born." It suggests a distinct difference between "ntural citizenship" (at the time "natural citizens" could have been "naturalized") and "natural born citizenhip."

ender502

I had heard from quite a few folks who are technically "birthers" that assumed President Obama was older than he claimed. Their argument that he was born in Hawaii before it was a state (disregarding that it was a territory) made him not a citizen. But he was born in 1961, so well into statehood.

In another deplorables case that turns out to be a hoax-church burned by own parishioner.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38404033
Mississippi police arrest churchgoer in 'Vote Trump' arson


An arson and vandalism attack last month on an African-American church in Mississippi was carried out by a black member of the congregation, police say.

Andrew McClinton, 45, has been charged over the incident, in which "Vote Trump" was also spray-painted, a week before the presidential election.

Police suspect the attack at Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church was staged to make it look like a hate crime.

Church leaders say the structure will probably have to be completely rebuilt.


The accused, who has a long criminal record, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with first-degree arson on a place of worship.

He is due in court on Thursday in Greenville, where the arson occurred on 1 November.

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said: "We do not believe it was politically motivated.

He confirmed Mr McClinton was a congregation member

"There may have been some efforts to make it appear politically motivated."

Hopewell Bishop Clarence Green confirmed that Mr McClinton, who lives about six miles from the church, is a member of the 200-strong congregation.

"This is the first I have heard of it," Mr Green told the Associated Press of the arrest.

Mississippi department of corrections records show Mr McClinton has a string of convictions dating back to 1991 for grand larceny, receiving stolen property and attempted robbery.

Greenville Mayor Errick D Simmons said: "There is no place for this heinous and divisive behaviour in our city.

"We will not rest until the culprit is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Last month he called the church burning "a direct assault on the Hopewell congregation's right to freely worship".

The fire made national headlines, such as the Atlantic's "A Black Church Burned in the Name of Trump".

A GoFundMe page raised more than $200,000 of donations in two days for the church, but has since been taken down.

The attack stirred up painful memories of church burnings during the Deep South's Jim Crow era of enforced racial segregation.

Greenville is a predominantly African-American Mississippi River port city and a Democratic bastion in a strongly Republican state.

I do believe that Obama was born in the US. That being said there is a little evidence to support the claim that he might have given up his US citizenship later in life.

When he was adopted by his Stepfather in Indonesia the school records there list him as a citizen (Indonesia does not allow duel citizenship). He also has traveled on an Indonesian passport (only available to Indonesian citizens, and thus the duel citizenship thing again). When he applied for college he listed himself as a citizen of Indonesia.

So, we have two possibilities. Either he gave up his US citizenship, or he is a rampant liar that abuses systems to further himself.

Or three, you're wrong. Our four, you missed something. Or five, not this again.

 Frazzled wrote:
In another deplorables case that turns out to be a hoax-church burned by own parishioner.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38404033
Mississippi police arrest churchgoer in 'Vote Trump' arson


An arson and vandalism attack last month on an African-American church in Mississippi was carried out by a black member of the congregation, police say.

Andrew McClinton, 45, has been charged over the incident, in which "Vote Trump" was also spray-painted, a week before the presidential election.

Police suspect the attack at Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church was staged to make it look like a hate crime.

Church leaders say the structure will probably have to be completely rebuilt.


The accused, who has a long criminal record, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with first-degree arson on a place of worship.

He is due in court on Thursday in Greenville, where the arson occurred on 1 November.

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said: "We do not believe it was politically motivated.

He confirmed Mr McClinton was a congregation member

"There may have been some efforts to make it appear politically motivated."

Hopewell Bishop Clarence Green confirmed that Mr McClinton, who lives about six miles from the church, is a member of the 200-strong congregation.

"This is the first I have heard of it," Mr Green told the Associated Press of the arrest.

Mississippi department of corrections records show Mr McClinton has a string of convictions dating back to 1991 for grand larceny, receiving stolen property and attempted robbery.

Greenville Mayor Errick D Simmons said: "There is no place for this heinous and divisive behaviour in our city.

"We will not rest until the culprit is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Last month he called the church burning "a direct assault on the Hopewell congregation's right to freely worship".

The fire made national headlines, such as the Atlantic's "A Black Church Burned in the Name of Trump".

A GoFundMe page raised more than $200,000 of donations in two days for the church, but has since been taken down.

The attack stirred up painful memories of church burnings during the Deep South's Jim Crow era of enforced racial segregation.

Greenville is a predominantly African-American Mississippi River port city and a Democratic bastion in a strongly Republican state.

I'll see if I can find the article, but a while back I read about "hate crimes" that were covers for something else. Apparently the number of hate crimes reported have a shockingly high percentage of them actually being cases of fraud in order to collect insurance, donations, sympathy, or attention.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I do believe that Obama was born in the US. That being said there is a little evidence to support the claim that he might have given up his US citizenship later in life.

When he was adopted by his Stepfather in Indonesia the school records there list him as a citizen (Indonesia does not allow duel citizenship). He also has traveled on an Indonesian passport (only available to Indonesian citizens, and thus the duel citizenship thing again). When he applied for college he listed himself as a citizen of Indonesia.

So, we have two possibilities. Either he gave up his US citizenship, or he is a rampant liar that abuses systems to further himself.

According to who? His college student records have not been released so there is no way anyone could have that information except for Obama himself and the College.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/occidental.asp

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Or three, you're wrong. Our four, you missed something. Or five, not this again.

So, you're saying that there is a way he was an Indonesian citizen, but still a US citizen? Please, tell me how? Frankly, I think the guy just lied to get himself into college.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Or three, you're wrong. Our four, you missed something. Or five, not this again.

So, you're saying that there is a way he was an Indonesian citizen, but still a US citizen? Please, tell me how? Frankly, I think the guy just lied to get himself into college.

Why would he list himself as an Indonesian Citizen in order to get into a college in the US?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
I do believe that Obama was born in the US. That being said there is a little evidence to support the claim that he might have given up his US citizenship later in life.

When he was adopted by his Stepfather in Indonesia the school records there list him as a citizen (Indonesia does not allow duel citizenship). He also has traveled on an Indonesian passport (only available to Indonesian citizens, and thus the duel citizenship thing again). When he applied for college he listed himself as a citizen of Indonesia.

So, we have two possibilities. Either he gave up his US citizenship, or he is a rampant liar that abuses systems to further himself.

According to who? His college papers have not been released.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/occidental.asp

Additionally at one point his CV at university (where he was lecturing) noted Kenya. There likely was some Elizabeth "I'm a native American-honest!" Warren huxtering to get a favorable acceptance and employment at the university but thats it.

The whole situation is stupid. Its an invalid question as I never saw anything arguing his mother was not a US citizen (sounds like a wackjob but thats completely separate). As Whembly noted, thats that for that under US citizen laws.

Okay, I looked into the claims a bit, and the college as a foreign citizen thing was actually a hoax. I apologize for that. The same is true of the Passport issue.


That being said, He was enrolled in school as a child as an Indonesian citizen. That would make his parents liars, not him I guess.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Haight wrote:
Solar Thermal can be used to heat water, but cannot be used to generate electricity.

How can it heat water but not be able to generate electricity? As long as it can evaporate water into steam which can then be sent through a turbine it can generate electricity.

This is a very complicated answer, but i'll try to be brief for the sake of forums... there's actually a lot that goes into this.

Solar does not produce temperatures hot enough to evaporate water into steam utilizing systems pressurized great enough to effect electricity generation through turbines. Residentially it's both material and construction impractical (do you want a 220 PSIG pressurized vessel in your house? I sure as hell don't.), to say nothing of the impact on ROI of adding this material to a residential system. Most solar thermal packages are really heating fluid contained within the systems piping: this fluid is heated by the suns rays, and is transmitted through a system to a DHW tank of some sort, which then heats by "coils" that are inside of the tank, which is filled with DHW for your house for instance. (Again: this is REALLY dumbed down, i'm not attempting to get into the weeds... i fully admit that if someone wants to have a shirt tucking, eyeglass up-pushing moment with what i'm describing, this is 100% possible, as i'm keeping things simple on purpose).

Steam is also not an efficient energy generation vector, the commercial heating industry is moving away from centralized steam heating plants because of efficiency reasons. In order to use steam generation via solar you'd have to generate a lot more heat and pressure than is currently practical, more efficiently than is currently possible.

You might be thinking that there's something analogous to a CHP/MCHP plant (combined heat and power) which is not the same thing. CHP's turn waste heat from mechanical operation into useful heat (say for instance, space heating) in an effective manner. Unfortunately the same really isn't possible practically with Solar to electricity.

It works for photovoltaic though not solar thermal because the technology is specifically geared to create electricity from solar energy, rather than creating heated fluid from solar energy.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Okay, I looked into the claims a bit, and the college as a foreign citizen thing was actually a hoax. I apologize for that. The same is true of the Passport issue.


That being said, He was enrolled in school as a child as an Indonesian citizen. That would make his parents liars, not him I guess.

A hoax! My face, so shocked it is.

Maybe it's just me, but I've always found it necessary to look into claims more than just "a bit" before I post. With all the click-bait crap and faux news sites floating around, thorough investigation of source material is de rigueur nowadays.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Okay, I looked into the claims a bit, and the college as a foreign citizen thing was actually a hoax. I apologize for that. The same is true of the Passport issue.


That being said, He was enrolled in school as a child as an Indonesian citizen. That would make his parents liars, not him I guess.

How old was he at the time? Most countries don't require children of mixed nationality to choose a country of citizenship until their age of majority (18 or older). This allows them to claim citizenship in both countries, creating dual-citizenship in essence until such time as they have to decide.

Here's a real world example. My wife is Japanese, I am American, this makes our daughter 1/2 Japanese and 1/2 American. American law allows for dual citizenship; however, Japanese law does not. The Japanese govt issued her with a Japanese passport and recognizes her as a Japanese citizen, the same for the US. Japanese law is such that she'll need to decide on her nationality when she's 18 (or possibly 19, my memory is spotty).

This appears to be the case in Indonesia as well:
The Indonesian nationality law does not recognize dual citizenship except for persons under the age of 18 (single citizenship principle).

This was from the 2006 Nationality law in Indonesia; I don't know what the laws were when Obama lived there nor am I interested enough to dig further. Suffice it to say that it's entirely plausible for a child to hold dual-citizenship in countries where it's not legal for adults.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Or three, you're wrong. Our four, you missed something. Or five, not this again.

So, you're saying that there is a way he was an Indonesian citizen, but still a US citizen? Please, tell me how? Frankly, I think the guy just lied to get himself into college.

Why would he list himself as an Inonesian Citizen in order to get into a college in the US?

Probably not as an 'Indonesian Citizen'...

In US colleges, you get preferential admittance and access to more $$$ if you're of African ancestry. Not sure he'd claim he was a 'foreigner' as he'd likely had to pay 'out-of-state' tuition... which is massively more expensive than 'in-state' tuition. Unless there were programs that offered 'in-state' if he met certain requirements.

I think it's more likely that he claimed he was Kenyan/Indonesian during his professorship days, ala Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Warren.

Exactly.

 Peregrine wrote:

 godardc wrote:
If I understood correctly, some US universities claim they will protect illegals from deportation ? They call themselves "sanctuaries".
Is that right ? How is this possible ?

It's possible because immigration enforcement (including deportation) is a federal issue, but the federal government does not have the manpower to cover such a vast problem. Immigration enforcement depends on state and local governments handling some of the work. For example, if the city police arrest a person for a crime and discover that they are in the country illegally they can report it to the federal government and begin the deportation process. What sanctuary cities are doing is refusing to provide any assistance. If, say, the police in San Francisco arrest someone but decline to investigate their immigration status then the federal government never identifies a person to deport. The police haven't committed any crime of their own, so there's nothing the federal government can do about it.

Now, in theory the federal government could pass a law requiring the state and local governments to actively investigate the immigration status of all residents, but this would run into the rather significant problem that the party which is most in favor of opposing immigration is also the party which is most in favor of "states' rights" and a limited federal government. It's kind of an awkward problem for that to effectively turn state and local police into nothing more than an extension of the federal government.

Furthermore, I'm not sure it'd be constitutional if Congress passed laws to force the states to investigate immigration status... as immigration is solely a Federal issue.

To me, the only recourse a federal government can do to 'encourage' participation, is to withhold federal fundings of other programs. But beyond that, there isn't really all that much the feds can do...

 whembly wrote:


I think it's more likely that he claimed he was Kenyan/Indonesian during his professorship days, ala Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Warren.

Any proof of that or just in the mood for some Obama bashing on a cold, Thursday morn?

 agnosto wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Okay, I looked into the claims a bit, and the college as a foreign citizen thing was actually a hoax. I apologize for that. The same is true of the Passport issue.


That being said, He was enrolled in school as a child as an Indonesian citizen. That would make his parents liars, not him I guess.

How old was he at the time? Most countries don't require children of mixed nationality to choose a country of citizenship until their age of majority (18 or older). This allows them to claim citizenship in both countries, creating dual-citizenship in essence until such time as they have to decide.

Here's a real world example. My wife is Japanese, I am American, this makes our daughter 1/2 Japanese and 1/2 American. American law allows for dual citizenship; however, Japanese law does not. The Japanese govt issued her with a Japanese passport and recognizes her as a Japanese citizen, the same for the US. Japanese law is such that she'll need to decide on her nationality when she's 18 (or possibly 19, my memory is spotty).

This appears to be the case in Indonesia as well:
The Indonesian nationality law does not recognize dual citizenship except for persons under the age of 18 (single citizenship principle).

This was from the 2006 Nationality law in Indonesia; I don't know what the laws were when Obama lived there nor am I interested enough to dig further. Suffice it to say that it's entirely plausible for a child to hold dual-citizenship in countries where it's not legal for adults.

But here is the catch, neither of his parents are of Indonesian heritage. Let's use your example. Let's say you re-married to a woman from Canada, then immigrated there. Your daughter is half American, half Japanese. Even if she was under 18, there is no way Canada would consider her Canadian unless you jumped through Canadian immigration laws.


Not that I really believe the birther theories, I was just saying that one or two things they claim weren't 100 bat gak crazy (just 95% or so).

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 whembly wrote:


I think it's more likely that he claimed he was Kenyan/Indonesian during his professorship days, ala Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Warren.

Any proof of that or just in the mood for some Obama bashing on a cold, Thursday morn?

The questions was made about the birther thing. He was responding to it, as I did. If you don't like the topic take it up with the person that brought it up in the thread.