What You’re NOT Told By the Mainstream Media
Todd C. Salzer
Free American Citizen and Patriot
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Mainstream Media has given a name to what they refer to as a “fringe group of the Republican base” that is defining the party by their craziness and unwillingness to let go of a conspiracy theory. The theory, they say, is that Barack Hussein Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore ineligible to be president. They go on to state that this has been proven NOT to be true and the fringe group is just unwilling to let go of the fact that they lost the election and now a black man occupies the white house. According to them, most if not all are racist and all of them have no business occupying the country’s time with their silliness and nonsensical argument. The courts have thrown out their cases because there is nothing to them. The mantra is: Barack Obama has proven his eligibility and if he hadn’t – someone other than this small group of losers, someone a lot smarter than them, would have figured it out by now. Their argument centers around a digital image of a Hawaiian “Certificate of Live Birth” that debuted during the summer of 2008 on a recently defunct Obama Campaign website,
http://fightthesmears.org/. The term they have given the members of this group is meant to derogatory. It is “Birther.”
Well, I humbly disagree. My name is Todd Salzer and I am a Birther. I wear the label proudly.
First of all, I am neither a racist nor crazy. I am not prone to subscribing to the latest conspiracy theory. I did not think either John McCain or Barack Obama would make a good president regardless of personal heritage. I am just a normal guy, a former active duty marine, proud father, adoptive parent and foster parent. Three of my children are adopted from the foster care program and one of them is of mixed race. A current foster child that joined our family prior to the presidential election is 100% African American and may eventually be adopted by us. Not to brag, but I have a high enough I.Q. to have been invited to join Mensa, a venture that I consciously chose not to pursue. I am a “Birther”, I am proud of it, and I apply my own definition to “Birther” that has been constantly evolving.
Research into the matter of Obama’s eligibility now occupies much of my free time when I am not working or playing with my children. I have not written as much as I have over the last several months in all of the rest of the past ten years. My writing includes letters to my congressman, and senators, a little bit of posting and discussion on a few blogs and news sites, emails to a few news organizations and a little dabbling on my own blog at
http://draft.blogger.com/www.politigogo.com. Now, as the mainstream media awakens in defensive posture to the subject of Obama’s eligibility, I am compelled to write this essay in order to explain my position, a position that I can voraciously defend with my research and the research of others like me, and to get it out to as many people as possible. I would love to find out tomorrow that I am wrong, but the deeper I dig the more convinced I become that I am right.
If I am right, then our republic has been stolen in a very well planned and executed coup de ‘tat. A complicit media is ignoring and/or obfuscating facts that are easily researchable and has embarked on a campaign to discredit and destroy any who would challenge their position. The CNN chief, John Klein, has even released an internal email as “news” where he outright lied to his staff by telling them that the original Hawaiian birth records of Obama were destroyed after Hawaii converted such records to a digital database in 2001. This was immediately refuted by Janice Okubo, the public information officer for the Hawaii Department of Health. Hawaii has NOT even confirmed that they provided the Certificate of Live Birth that first surfaced via the Obama campaign during the presidential election. Every American, regardless of political persuasion, should be pushing back against this with every last ounce of energy that they have.
This matter would already be settled if the press was acting honorably as it has in the past. The reasons that it is not operating thus currently are a matter of a different discussion that I will not address here. Fortunately, this applies only to the “mainstream” media and those of particular note. The Achilles' heel to their entire presentment is the proliferation of the internet. The alternative media has usurped much of the role of traditional media. That is why newspapers are failing and television viewership is down. The competition for viewership or readership, and therefore advertising dollars, has become increasingly stiff among the traditional outlets as the discerning consumer seeks alternate forms of informing themselves. Sensationalism has become the order of the day among the major networks in an attempt to attract this audience. One thing that can therefore be concluded from the monotonous response to the “Birther Movement” is that there IS an overarching continuity of coverage on the matter that is WAY out of the norm.
The single themed answer in all the major media outlets is essentially, “Obama produced his birth certificate during the campaign and it was verified by independent organizations such as Factcheck.org, Snopes.com and Politifact.com. If there were something the matter with his eligibility Hillary Clinton or John McCain would have used it in their campaigns. No more discussion, therefore, need take place.”
As a “Birther” it is not only my right, but my duty to challenge this. I therefore ask the questions the media should be asking:
1. Since when is producing a digital image the same as producing a notarized document?
2. Why is the digital image that of a document that does not contain defining information such as a hospital name and a doctor’s name?
3. Why was the “document” turned over to Factcheck.org for examination but NOT turned over to any of the people challenging its legitimacy?
4. Why hasn’t it been given to any member of the House of Representatives or a Senator for examination?
5. Why has no member of the House of Representatives or Senator asked to examine the document?
The major media never examine these questions and will not let them be asked in their venues. Yet, the story has broken and now occupies a great deal of marketable time on these networks over the last few weeks, especially among the cable news networks and their various hosts. In this normally very competitive arena common sense would dictate that the above questions be answered and debated among panels on these shows if for nothing else but the pure polarizing effect that these questions have in drawing responses from all sides that would be sure to sensationalize and drive ratings. But the questions are avoided at all costs. The ONLY thing that is ever presented is that there is a “fringe group” of “crazy people” that don’t believe the president is legitimate and they wave printed copies of the COLB as if it were the gospel. This should make the discerning television viewer deeply suspicious as it is such a departure from the norm as to be glaringly obvious.
But the viral growth of the “Birther Movement” is fed on these questions and many more such as:
6. Why has no one in government challenged the fact that the founding fathers’ definition of “natural born citizen” required that both parents be citizens at the time of a child’s birth and Obama’s father was NOT a citizen of any type of the United States before, during or after the birth.
7. The Senate, in regard to John McCain’s eligibility, confirmed the requirement of both parents being citizens with Senate Resolution 511 during the presidential campaign. (A resolution
does not carry the force of law and the modification of Vattel’s definition of a “natural born citizen” in regard to place if birth is constitutionally questionable.) However, the fact that the Senate unanimously confirmed the resolution with the plural “citizens” (as parents) and the fact the THEY DID ADDRESS McCain’s eligibility when questioned but NOT Obama’s is glaringly obvious.
8. Why has no member of the House of Representatives or Senate asked to examine a copy of the long form birth certificate?
9. Why has Obama had his passport records sealed?
10. Why has Obama had his school records sealed?
11. Why has Obama had his medical records sealed?
12. Why has Obama spent so much money, over one million dollars, hiding these records instead of merely producing them.
The logical conclusion is that he knows that there is something among these records that would seriously challenge his claim to the office of the presidency. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Many of you may not know the true story of Benjamin Franklin who was confronted by a Mrs. Powell upon emerging from the last day of the Constitutional Convention. Mrs. Powell inquired, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or monarchy? Franklin’s response was very profound, “A republic if you can keep it.” He knew the dangers of an over reaching federal government and the difficult task that lay ahead. Thomas Jefferson had this to say, “Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government.”
I would submit to you that we have lost our republic. When the elected officials no longer follow the will of the people but view them as a mob and dissenters, even dangerous terrorists, then we have moved to a tyrannical society with the federal government at its head. If any of you think this is extreme consider the evidence.
· The federal government seized ownership and control over two major automobile companies, firing the CEO of General Motors and forcing both into bankruptcy.
· The federal government has taken over more banks then there are states in the union.
· The federal government is attempting to nationalize one seventh of the U.S. economy in the form of “Healthcare Reform.”
· Ranking members of Congress, the peoples elected employees, are defining objectors as “mobs, Nazis, racists, monsters, partisans, terrorists and several other negative names. Everything except what they really are, American citizens exercising their right to “redress grievances”.
· Members of Congress have bussed in organized members of ACORN, Moveon.org, Service Employees International Union and various other groups. These groups have been allowed to fill the town halls prior to the meetings, thereby shutting others out. These “thugs” have been videotaped assaulting people and physically ejecting them from town hall meetings.
Anyone who thinks this is “conspiracy theory” or worse, unimportant, is the worst kind of citizen, “uninformed and uninvolved”. A simple glance at history will show
that these are the same tactics used by totalitarian regimes all throughout the 20
th and 21
st century in their rise to power. The complicity of the press, also a main ingredient in the rise of totalitarianism, can only be defined as treason. The result has always resulted in either one or both of two things. Subjugation of the citizens or civil war.
I am a “Birther”. I am informed. I am involved. I am proud of it.
In the evolution of my definition of the term I have come full circle in my realization of its meaning. It is synonymous with one other word in the English language: “PATRIOT”.
