Sunday, October 26, 2008

Political Nonsense and all that Jazz


The one topic that has taken over all available advertising space has been the November 4th election. Everyone (or at least everyone in America) seems to be obsessed with this day, and for good reason! This election will decide the fate of America for the next four years. Personally, I'm supporting John McCain. Why? Because I (mostly) agree with him on social issues, and I think he is the lesser of two evils. Anyway, I don't want to talk about who I'm voting for.

Instead, I want to bring to light a topic which I just now found out about. A Facebook group is advocating the stance that presidential candidate Barack Obama is not eligible for the presidency. There are several links on their page listed as evidence for their claim that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. They quote the Constitution as part of their evidence, along with some shady-looking court papers and a Youtube video.

Apparently, Obama gave up his citizenship when he lived in Indonesia, because Indonesia didn't allow dual-citizenship when he lived there. According to this group, the only way he could be a US citizen now is if he became a naturalized citizen.

Now, I just found out about this group today. Why haven't I heard of this before? Well, to be honest, I'm not the most informed person out there. However, I am connected to some fairly plugged in people, who follow the candidates quite closely. And still, I've heard nothing. Honestly? I'm not convinced this argument is legit. Basically everyone is looking for dirt on candidates these days, and this may be just another attempt to blacken an innocent person's name.

Even if this isn't the case, and there is a legitimate issue here, I don't think that it will be resolved by election day. Courts take a while to resolve such issues, especially when the defendant is supposedly "not cooperating." Thereby, I am not going to worry myself over it. If Obama gets disqualified from being President, well then that's worth a laugh. But I doubt it'll happen.

Regardless of what happens, I will be perfectly happy with fulfilling my role of trundling off to the voting booths and casting my vote for McCain. :-)