POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

A Great Reckoning in a Little Room [UPDATE]

Jeff's got an important post up about the ridiculous lengths that commentators ideologically opposed to Obama will go to in order to prove how reasonable they are, against all evidence. Specifically, he focuses on the authorship of Dreams from My Father, in which Jack Cashill's linguistic and tropological analysis shows convincingly the hand of Bill Ayers. Your alternative to believing that Ayers contributed significantly to the book would be to believe that Obama, having missed his deadlines and pleaded poverty because of student loans to avoid having to pay back his advance from one publisher, flew to Bali with the wife and suddenly buckled down, learning to write in the process, then forged it all together into the book at the kitchen table of a guy in the neighborhood.

And that's your right, of course.

Ayers, for his part, likes to break out the "I wrote it, and if you can help me prove it, I'll give you a portion of the royalties" line whenever he disagrees strenuously with the administration, letting them know that he could spill the beans at any time. When people have a message to send under censorship imposed from without or within, they often resort to such displacements, wink wink. Obviously, the latest provocation is Libya.

The censorship has been general in the MFM, which is how we ended up with Obumble in the first place. Through a strict regimen of self-censorship and judicious playing of the race card, the media managed to overlook the vast number of questions and lacunae in Obama's background, and to charge anyone who brought them to question with racism. Obumble's lack of achievement, political or otherwise, would be a matter for comedy, were we not tragically shackled with this ninny and his absurdist serial idiocies.

The calculation that most in the MSM made was simple: Obama's presidency would be so successful, so much a subject for hagiography, that everyone would love the media that had delivered the presidency for him. The reality has been very different, and very slowly they are waking up to the nightmare hangover that they so richly deserve.

Among the principal examples of "reasonableness" has been the MSM's and the blogosphere's attitude toward Obama's birth certificate. It seems reasonable to suppose that Obama is in fact a natural born citizen, yes? Well, it seems pretty reasonable that any American citizen who wishes to see a copy of his birth certificate (as opposed to his certificate of live birth) should be able to do so. The many millions of dollars in legal fees this administration has spent trying to prevent people from having a gander at this document seem odd. The Obama pronounciamento declaring a particular Hawaiian hospital that most people hadn't thought of as his birthplace the actual place of his birth is another oddity. In what alternate reality is this normal? Is it really reasonable not to ask such questions in order to avoid being labeled a conspiracy theorist or racist?

To return to a favorite hobby horse of mine that I haven't mentioned in some time, how, exactly, did Obama pass Columbia's foreign language requirement? He readily admits that he doesn't know any foreign languages, though he wants American students to learn them--and I'm fine with the idea, once we get them up to speed reading and writing English and performing basic math. Who paid his tuition? Why can we not see his transcripts from Harvard? What variety of Social Security numbers has he used? Why do his selective service records seem . . . selectively serviced?

The left, generally so quick to assert and postulate rights, seem strangely unconcerned about the lack of disclosure. So, I ask again, should people who wish have the right to see such documents, should they wish, from a President of the United States, however ridiculous you may think their request? I know that you believe that their motives for wanting to see the documents are nefarious, but we generally don't deprive people of their rights based on our interpretation of their political or racial agendas, do we? Is this a one off, or are we supposed to consider that the same rules regarding disclosure will now apply to any presidential candidate? If it is a one off, why is it?

Considering the kinds of information that Obama and Company think ought to be available to the government, including very detailed financial and health information, retinal scans and DNA (for being arrested, rather than charged or found guilty of a crime), this is a matter where it's important to have a rational consideration of when privacy ought to be protected or not. Instead . . . RAAAAACIST!

Also, just who is Trig's real mother?

But, you know . . . with Jeff, I'm just not reasonable, like all you people who agree to a civilized circumscription of the questions you're allowed to ask. Oliver Stone, on the other hand: challenging our assumptions.

Others, meanwhile, are thrilled to see him return to Harlem. "It's not like he's a stranger to Harlem -- when he was a student at Columbia, he used to work these streets all the time," said Assemblyman Keith Wright.

He used to work the streets? Uh, doing what?

Well, that's about as much as we've ever found out about Obama's stint at Columbia.

UPDATE: Seems Ace is OUTLAW!

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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