[unrequited love] the winter may pass ...

Kanskje vil der gå både Vinter og Vår,
og neste Sommer med og det hele År,
men en gang vil du komme, det vet jeg vist,
og jeg skal nok vente, for det lovte jeg sidst.

Gud styrke dig, hvor du i Verden går,
Gud glæde dig, hvis du for hans Fodskammel står.
Her skal jeg vente til du kommer igjen;
og venter du hist oppe, vi træffes der, min Ven!

The winter may pass and the spring disappear
The spring disappear
The summer too will vanish and then the year
And then the year
But this I know for certain: you'll come back again
You'll come back again
And even as I promised you'll find me waiting then
You'll find me waiting then


Sarah Brightman?

[obama] the missing six months

I'm not even going to start promoting the implications of this photo

Weatherman and Nation of Islam connection

The last post touched on the birth issue. Leaving that side for the moment, the story gets weirder:

Just prior to the Pennsylvania primary Barack Obama was asked at a Democratic debate about his relationship with unrepentant Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama pretended that he was only casually acquainted with Ayers, describing him as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago...".

Hilary provided a bracing corrective, reminding people that the two men had served on a charitable board together, the Woods Fund of Chicago. This exchange was newsworthy enough to provoke coverage in the Chicago Sun-Times, and the NY Times; earlier stories had sparked The "Fact Checker" at the Washington post.

However:

Barack Obama and Bil Ayers worked together for several years on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational reform group co-founded in 1995 by Bill Ayers and chaired by Barack Obama. How did Obama forget this?

Plus:

In addition to Auchi, Ayers, Dohrn, Pfleger, Rezko, Wright, etc...we now have Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian bagman for Yassar Arafat that secured megabuck from the Woods Fund while Barack H. Obama and Ayers were on the board.

Barack and Michelle Obama and the Khalidis swapped dinner parties and Michelle Obama would babysit the Khalidi's kids, this was not some casual professional relationship they were good friends as Sean Hannity reports.

And:

I live in Obama's neighborhood and know some of the Obama / Ayers crowd. Ayers and Dohrn have babysat the Obama kids personally. The families are personal friends, not just professional acquaintances.

Posted by: hydeparker | August 13, 2008 at 01:41 PM

Bernadette Dohrn is the one who said, in response to the Manson family murders:

"Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in pig Tate's belly. Wild!"

Ayers claimed she'd only said it as a joke.

Dohrn went underground in early 1970, engaging in bombing activities. In a 1994 interview, Dohrn said that while the group carried out some bombings of buildings, it did not target people, and the group's actions were justified as a proper response to violent government actions.

Further, from Atlas Shrugs:

Dohrn was once on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List and was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America." Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of Weathermen terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for participating in a 1981 murder and robbery that left four people dead.

These were babysitters and dinner guests for the Obamas?

In a recent interview, Obama called his mother "the dominant figure in my formative years. . . . The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."

Stanley Ann Dunham chronology

Obama born August 4, 1961.

“The University of Hawaii at Manoa is only able to provide the following information for Stanley Ann Dunham: Dates of attendance:

Fall 1960 (First day of instruction 9/26/1960)
Spring 1963 - Summer 1966
Fall 1972 - Fall 1974

Spring 1978
Fall 1984 - Summer 1992

Degrees awarded:
BA - Mathematics, Summer 1967 (August 6, 1967)
MA - Anthropology, Fall 1983 (December 18, 1983)
PhD - Anthropology, Summer 1992 (August 9, 1992)

Sincerely,
Stuart Lau”

Then:

Ms. Stanley Ann Dunham was enrolled at the University of Washington for:

Autumn 1961
Winter 1962
Spring 1962

The records responsive to your request from the University of Washington are above as provided by the Public Disclosure Laws of Washington State. This concludes the University’s response to your Public Records request. Please feel free to contact our office if you have any questions or concerns.

Madolyne Lawson Office of Public Records

Ann Dunham became pregnant approx. Nov 1st, 1960 while still 17 years old. This was while she was at UH.

What is unaccounted for is the period from February, 1961 to August, 1961 and at what point she split from Obama Snr. Here is a comment from DeadSerious 12/27/2008, 17:56:38:

Who remembers Stanley Ann Dunham (Obama) in Hawaii?

No relative or friend
No classmate or teacher
No neighbor or landlord
No prenatal care doctor or nurse
No delivery room doctor or nurse
No hosptial admit officer or attendant
No hospital room mate for the shared room
No post natal care for the mother or infant
No co-workers of Grandma's from Bank of Hawaii

Leaving wild theories aside and accepting the Obama camp line, she had the baby in August in Hawaii and then left husband and baby and attended college in Washington State shortly afterwards?

The whole bloody thing doesn't add up.

[obama] this question now becoming critical

Some of the documentation which would help decide this is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight:

"Even the Hawaii Department of Home Lands does not accept a certified copy of a birth certificate as conclusive evidence for its homestead program. From its web site: ‘In order to process your application, DHHL utilizes information that is found only on the original Certificate of Live Birth, which is either black or green. This is a more complete record of your birth than the Certification of Live Birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original Certificate of Live Birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated Certification requires additional verification by DHHL.'"

The essence of the complaint is that the "Certification of Live Birth" that is used by FightTheSmears, the Annenberg Political FactCheck and others does not have the same information as an original birth certificate, including location of birth.

Surprisingly, Hawaii happens to issue birth certificates for babies born outside Hawaii. The Hawaiian law on that states:

"Certificates for children born out of State. (a) Upon application of an adult or the legal parents of a minor child, the director of health shall issue a birth certificate for such adult or minor, provided that proof has been submitted to the director of health that the legal parents of such individual while living without the Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child."

In the comments section of a recent post, Ted Mathis stated:

3. BHO is therefore not a “natural born citizen” (irrespective of Hawaiian birth or whether he may be a 14th Amendment “citizen” of USA) — confirmed in the Senate’s own McCain qualification resolution (that both parents must be citizens of USA) co-authored by BHO.

4. Supreme Court has already docketed two upcoming conferences, 1/9/09 and 1/16/09 — between dates Congress counts electoral votes (1/8/09) and Presidential inauguration (1/20/09) — to address Berg Case and fashion relief on BHO’s eligibility to be President.

The 14th Amendment appears to scupper the Obama challenge until one returns to the material above. Hawaii issues certificates for births outside of Hawaii. My reading of this, to be fair, is that they may mean "in any other part of the United States" but they may also mean exactly what they say, with no futher stipulation. If Obama had been born in Kenya [grandmother and Kenyan Ambassador] or even in transit, then Hawaii would have been satisfied for their own purposes.

However, clearly, given link one above, he would be ineligible for natural born status, for the purposes of federal election. So there is a convoluted case here. SCOTUS accepts a Hawaiian assurance of his birth, as they have precedent in doing. Therefore he is natural born in their eyes and the case goes no further. However, to go back to the setting aside of Dred Scott [link four above], the differentiation between state and federal law was preserved, not overturned.

So there is a logical impossibility here. "Natural born" is not defined and depends on congressional statements or court interpretation and precedent. In federal law, if he was not born in a Hawaiian hospital but Hawaii accepted the "intent" of being Hawaiian, then he is natural born in terms of their acceptance of the Hawaiian statement to that effect but not natural born in terms of their own conditions.

At the very least, this requires a court case. However, private persons have been ruled to have no standing to bring a case against an elected federal official, e.g. Berg. Only congress has that standing and it is Democratic.

The clear answer to this is that Obama was born on Hawaiian soil.

But where? There is no Hawaiian hospital nor presiding doctor or nurse stated anywhere in the Obama camp reply. The name of the hospital has to be on the vault copy and Fact Check [an Obama camp website] says it has viewed it and yet it has not been stated. More than that, they are refusing to state it.

There is a case, with the grandmother and others, claiming he was born at Mombasa Coastal Hospital in Kenya. Records are now sealed in Kenya.

The official Obama camp claim is that he was born at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu. His sister Mary claimed he was born at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children. There is no record of either the birth or the mother having attended those hospitals.

These hospitals were contacted by Republicans and none had records of Obama's birth.

Many reference materials say Obama was born at Kapiolani, including Wikipedia English version under the subject “Barack Obama.” But under the subject “Queens Hospital,” Wikipedia says Obama was born there. And Wikipedia Italian says this:

Barack Obama nacque al Queen’s Medical Center di Honolulu da Barack Hussein Obama Sr….

Wikipedia Geneology says Queens too. And there’s this reference on Yahoo Answers:

Apparently, examination of the hospitals’ records in Hawaii have shown no birthing records for Ann Dunham Obama even though there is a registry of the birth in the public records office a week after his date of birth it does not show his place of birth.

Perhaps that Yahoo Answer explains Ann Dunham’s brief stop-over in Mercer Island with baby Barack when he was only a couple of weeks old. Is it possible that she was on her way back to Hawaii?

The State of Hawaii does provide for “late registration” births.

Does anyone know in which hospital Stanley Ann Dunham delivered Barack Obama?

UPDATE: A reader, Aragon, adds…

Alternatively, I ask, “Can anyone identify a written statement or interview or recorded statement wherein Obama, himself, identifies which hospital he was born in?” I’ve asked this question for a month now. No statement has been idenitified by anyone here or elsewhere. The inference to be drawn from this is obvious. He doesn’t identify a hospital because it is something that can be factually verified or debunked and this would compromise his aura of plausable deniability when it comes to issues of his true birth place.

Add to this the AFI tape. AFI originally produced a transcript in which Michelle Obama states:

My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband's adoption by his stepfather.

That one is easily solved. Did she say it or not? Produce the tapes where it was said and all is resolved. But this has not happened and it has gone into the same circular non-resolution in which all the other questions have now fallen.

This issue won't go away because it has not been resolved. Whatever is on that certificate is sufficiently important for the Obama camp to ignore a SCOTUS member demand that it be produced. At the very least, they are being secretive and it is no defence to say it is a private matter. To hell with that - this man is to become president.

This smells, it truly does. There is untruth by omission in here. It has to be resolved.

On a personal note, there's a very simple test of the intent of this blog on this and the Gaza matter, of whether this is a vendetta of mine. If you were to take out the name of Israel and Hamas and substitute Palestine and Irgun, would this blog's stance have been the same? Similarly, if it had been McCain in this situation and not Obama, would this have still been pursued as it has?

The answer is an emphatic yes. Damned right. This blog has no affiliation one way or the other, except to the ideal called the truth. This is not to say that I am a moral person or a saint - merely that I want to know the truth on any issue.

[new dawn] a hungarian rhapsody

4 a.m. in Budapest

Budapest dance ensemble

Eastern influence is strong too.

[hawaii five o] book em, danno, murder one

Hawaii Five-O, does anyone remember it?

Jack Lord had a dark side but he was certainly The Man in this police series - he'd have found Obama's vault copy birth certificate, no problems. In an act of utter prattiness, the supplier of this youtube of the famous theme song won't allow it to be posted on web pages. Click on the pic above to see and hear it.

The show was hugely popular, running for twelve seasons and much of that was down to the characterization and idiosyncrasies. For example:

Curiously, it [the Five-O department] lacked its own radio network, necessitating frequent requests by McGarrett to the Honolulu Police Department dispatchers to "Patch me through to Danno". McGarrett's tousled yet immovable hairstyle and proclivity for wearing a dark suit and tie on all possible occasions rapidly entered popular culture.

Most episodes of Hawaii Five-O ended with the arrest of criminals with McGarrett's catch phrase to Williams, "Book 'em, Danno!

The popularity of the Hawaii Five-O format spawned various police dramas on all the major television networks since its debut. Another legacy is the popularity of the Hawaii Five-O theme song, composed by Morton Stevens and later covered by surf music band The Ventures and by Radio Birdman, a punk-era band from Sydney.

In summary:

While the location, theme song, and esemble cast made "Hawaii Five-O" one of the longest running police dramas in television history, the show is also noted for its liberal use of exterior locations as "sets" throughout the entire 12 seasons, breaking the tradition of filming indoors as with the case for a typical TV series. A typical episode, on average, would have at least two-thirds of all footage shot outdoors.

Here is the Radio Birdman version of the theme:



I loved the deadpan McGarrett [Jack Lord] who reminded me of Robert Stack in some ways. Does anyone recall Stack in The Untouchables? Here he reprises and caricatures his film persona:

[serious people] and bully boy punks

A few people have asked me to continue my series of posts on life in Russia from time to time. I'd like to but not being there now, I don't have the daily incidents to draw from. This one is from what I recollect.

The essential thing to remember in Russia is that the network of family and friends is everything. It provides support systems, which the state does not provide and it also provides protection, an absolute necessity over there.

This is not to say that daily life is like that for anyone but the local gangs. Most people go about their business, going to the market, kids going to school, grandparents playing their roles. Most now have cars and the rest usually go by the now quite satisfactory bus system.

There is a golden rule that you don't go out looking for trouble but if it does come upon you, you need to have a "krisha" [roof] or two in place to help you. Krisha is an outmoded word these days and most people speak of "par' ni" or "rob' yerta" [the guys]. The thing for you to ensure is that the krisha is appropriate for the occasion.

Let me illustrate this. I was going to buy a place in a carpark not far from my home but what it did was put me on the other side of the new development block I was living in [maybe 250 000 population]. While it was safe enough to walk around the well-lit periphery of this block, it wasn't so good to go through it because of the punks.

In Russia, there are egotistical young punks dotted here and there, everywhere, who imagine themselves as hard men and use bully boy tactics which work on the majority ... and then there are the seriously hard men, known as "seriosniye lyudi". I was introduced to a few of these latter and the thing which characterized them was that they were generally softly spoken, with a sense of humour and were nice guys to know.

Only their history and physique gave them away.

The thing is that the punks generally do get away with threatening and standing over the ordinary citizen and so it's best to avoid them. If you can't or if they come to you, then you have to respond and so I asked one of my 'seriosni' acquaintances how to deal with the punk problem in that 'dvor' or yard between the main roads.

His solution was to get a carpark berth at a place which wouldn't require walking through there. If, by some unfortunate chain of circumstances, you did find yourself face to face with them, then there were certain key jargon phrases to know and say, to the effect: "Let's come back here tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. and settle the matter. You bring your people and I'll bring mine."

The absolute essential was that you did go back there the next day at 10:00 a.m. If you failed to, then you'd created a major ongoing problem for yourself. Anytime anyone saw you alone after that, they'd know they could do as they wished. So to use your krisha seemed the solution but this was a double-edged sword. My particular krishi were a bit too high powered for punks in a yard and it would have to have been a major threat to utilize them.

They knew that too because if they did act for you, then there was the standard payback required in some way. Life revolves round favours done and returned over there. So people generally tried to resolve a matter like gentlemen. However, if you were really forced into a corner, there was only one thing for it and that was to utilize your krisha with maximum prejudice and no beg pardons.

Most people knew that a punk might get a result for his bullying but it didn't help much in the long run if he ended up crippled for life. Only nutters ignored silent warnings and it illustrates something which has been said many times in the last few days on the Gaza issue - ongoing violence, such as the Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, only begets violence.

It's better to come to the table in a strong position and not demand anything outrageous which could not be accepted by the other side. Then it's a case of standing by the agreement, otherwise it all starts over again.

Above all, in Russia and perhaps elsewhere too, it's best not to threaten, even obliquely. That leaves you with one of two choices - either remove yourself from the threat as far as possible [which is not weakness - it's intelligence] - or else hit hard out of the blue, when they least expect it.

There is a concept of Russia as a lawless land but that's to misconstrue it. There is a law at ground level and as long as all are au fait with the ground rules, things generally stay calm.