Free Frank Warner

Secret Service guns frighten crowds in Virginia

This Secret Service Counter-Assault Team apparently has been around since at least the George W. Bush administration, by I admit I never noticed it.

Two days ago, the team's automatic weapons frightened protesters along President Obama's motorcade in Bristol, Virginia. I don't recall anyone previously reporting the team had pointed their assault weapons directly at crowds, but maybe there are more specific threats these days.

The shots fired on Kennedy, Ford and Reagan made something like this likely. Suicidal glory hogs like al Qaida even made it necessary. But maybe the Secret Service could keep their barrels a little higher or their tinted windows shut.

Frank Warner

You give ‘cash for clunkers,’ and you get clunkers

When I read yesterday about all these giddy car-buyers getting $4,000 each to turn in their “clunkers,” I thought, “They really went through with this?”

Figure it out. If every family in America got a $4,000 rebate to trade in a gas guzzler for a new car, the federal government would have to borrow $480 billion to cover the bill.

How much money was actually allocated (borrowed from China) for the “cash for clunkers” program? $1 billion.

Sudden death. The program is one day old, and it’s ready to collapse. Tens of thousands of buyers have committed to purchases under the program, but last night the fearful whispers grew loud. The Associated Press reports: The rebates might be cut off.

Is this the model for federally regulated health care? Pretend all of us will have shiny happy medicine, but then pull the plug because someone forgot the bill?

Frank Warner

Beer in the Obama Rose Garden

President Obama: “Jim, I never meant that you were a stupid person, just that you acted like a stupid person.”

Sgt. Crowley: “Skip, I was only trying to protect you by arresting you.”

Professor Gates: “Barack, maybe it was I who stereotyped.”

Vice President Biden: “Watch, this time the quarter bounces in.”

Frank Warner

Nancy Pelosi says insurance companies are ‘villains’

The Hill:

“They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said of private insurers. “They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”

Let’s think seriously about this. We’ve all had our troubles with health insurance companies, and sometimes we dream it would be so nice without insurance companies at all. But who has a more powerful incentive to provide the most services for the least money, an insurance company or a government agency?

Any new health care system will have to build in the same economic incentives already applied by the insurance companies. Otherwise, the system will find itself plagued with painful jolts of overspending and rationing.

Frank Warner

Lost hope of nuclear power

Companies in the nuclear power business are being denied once-promised loan guarantees. CO2-free nuclear plants can and should be improved, and many more should be built.

Unrestrained borrowing and the lack of economical energy supplies produced the recession we're in today. Maybe there's a good reason to limit loan guarantees (except that much bigger federal guarantees are going to so-far uneconomical sources of energy). There is no good reason to hold off nuclear power expansion, and every good reason to encourage it.

Adding nuclear plants also would help utilities pay for the soaring cost of decommissioning the old plants.

Frank Warner

The AARP business

Does the AARP, which often acts like a charitable organization for senior citizens, really look out for its members' interests first? Or is it principally a business with an army of lobbyists to keep the profits growing?

Frank Warner

Andrew Sullivan agrees: Show us the 1961 Obama birth certificate

Americans should want to see President Obama’s 1961 birth certificate -- the original paperwork -- if for no other reason than we haven’t seen it.

Andrew Sullivan agrees:

I want Obama to instruct the Hawaii officials to release the official original document they say they have in their hands. Why not?

And after Sullivan took some heat on this, he added:

The reason for demanding it is the same reason for demanding basic medical records proving Sarah Palin is the biological mother of Trig.

Because it would make it go away and it’s easily done.

I’m tired of these public officials believing they have some right to privacy. They don’t. It’s the price of public office. If you don’t like it, don’t be president. And for goodness’ sake, don’t run for president on a platform of transparency.

So let’s see it. Let’s see one news reporter ask the president to show us the original 1961 birth certificate, not some official document created in 2007. What ever happened to curiosity? How did the press come to celebrate secrecy?

Frank Warner

National Review: Obama’s 2007 birth certificate is good enough

I guess this makes it unanimous. The National Review Online doesn’t want to see President Obama’s original 1961 birth certificate. Its editors say the Hawaii document printed out in 2007 is good enough.

The birth-certificate business is not a uniquely conservative phenomenon; the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya seems to have originated with a Hillary Clinton supporter at a blog called The Blue State. Either way, this fantasy is not particularly widespread within the conservative movement, but it has attracted enough interest that it needs to be addressed.

The fundamental fiction is that Obama has refused to release his “real” birth certificate. This is untrue. The document that Obama has made available is the document that Hawaiian authorities issue when they are asked for a birth certificate. There is no secondary document cloaked in darkness, only the state records that are used to generate birth certificates when they are requested. …

The hallmark of a conspiracy theory is that a lack of evidence for the theory is taken as yet more evidence for the theory. Indeed, the maddening thing about dealing with conspiracy hobbyists of this or any sort is the ever-shifting nature of their argument and their alleged evidence: Never mind the birth certificate, his step-grandmother said he was born in Kenya! (No, she didn’t.)

Case closed. So I guess that settles it. No one in the American establishment wants to see Obama’s original birth certificate. I don’t know about you, but that’s good enough for me. I am no longer curious. They’ve told me not to be curious, so I won’t be.

Frank Warner

Fun fact: Sharing Social Security numbers

Each year, between 500,000 and 1 million workers in the United States file tax returns with the Social Security number 000-00-0000. Some of those numbers are filled in by employers waiting for the real numbers, but others are simply fraud by the workers.

Hey, that’s my Social Security number!

(I kid.)

Frank Warner

Don’t believe Obama has a Hawaii birth certificate? You’re a ‘birther’

I concede there is no credible evidence that President Obama was not born in Hawaii.

But I do wonder why, when people like Terry Gross of NPR, Helene Cooper of The New York Times or Lisa Lerer of Politico “report” on the low-burner, slightly whacky controversy, they simply assume an Aug. 4, 1961, Hawaii birth certificate exists and everyone has seen it.

Obama’s original birth certificate may exist, but the public certainly has not seen it. Last year, Democrat Philip Berg of Pennsylvania sued to see the document, but the courts refused to order its public disclosure. According to Berg, Obama’s grandmother said he was born in Kenya. Berg probably is wrong about that, but if Obama was born outside the United States, he would have been ineligible for the U.S. presidency (in fact, still ineligible).

(By the way, questions also were raised last year about John McCain’s eligibility to be president. He was born in Panama at a time when, according to several credible authorities, a Panama birth even to U.S. military parents didn’t automatically make the baby an American “natural-born citizen.”)

Mystifying secrecy. So far, we’ve seen only computer-generated 2007 versions of Obama’s “certification of live birth.” It’s not that this 2007 document isn’t official, but the original certificate is more likely to have evidence of exactly what doctors and officials wrote or typed back in 1961. The original is likely to have more information, such as the name of a hospital.

The conspiracy theorists grow increasingly more suspicious as the original certificate remains hidden and news agencies show zero curiosity about it. News “reports” on the matter only beg the question and assume we “know” Obama is a natural-born American.

I’m not a “birther,” but I don’t understand the secrecy. Let’s see the original birth certificate.  It shouldn’t be hard to produce.

Frank Warner

* * *

Update: CNN's Lou Dobbs on July 23 reported the original 1961 birth certificate was destroyed, but Dobbs cited no source for his story. Others already are saying Dobbs is wrong. Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii Department of Health, last year declared he had "seen the original vital records" and could verify Obama is a natural-born citizen. Fukino better have seen the original birth certificate, or he just gave birth to more "birthers."

Note: Snopes and Factcheck.org ignored the real controversy and decided to attack a few idiots who said the 2007 birth certificate was "forged." That certificate wasn't forged. Hawaiian officials issued it. But the question is not whether the 2007 document was forged. The question is, has the public been allowed to see the original 1961 document, the paper certificate filed in 1961? The answer is, no. Meanwhile, Factcheck.org calls the 2007 document the original. Wrong. Check your facts! Let's see the original paper filed in 1961.

See also: Reward: $5 for proof President Obama’s 1961 Hawaii birth certificate is public.