Born To Run

"Five hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was flat and fifteen minutes ago you knew that people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."*

A typical detective's day begins slowly, almost casually. Visit with friends, grab a cup of coffee (no donuts - haven't you read about the national obesity crisis?) and settle into the cubicle. TV detectives, bent on crushing crime just in time to sleep with the new hot girl working "uniform," would already be out the door.

No, modern "detecting" is about workflow. The first real duty-related thing would be booting up the computer, signing onto the network and finding out what cases the boss has assigned. So, imagine if you will, a case where a prominent citizen - perhaps the president of something - has stated on separate public occasions that he was born in Kenya...Hawaii. "Wait, it will come to me," he exclaims. The detective turns off the computer, takes an Advil and heads for the gym.

Forget context, how this isn't really an issue and we all know that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Forget that our hypothetical detective (actually, in Arizona, a very real task force exists) in our hypothetical police department wouldn't get this case in any normal way. Any trained investigator would begin with a simple question.



"Why?"

Why would a man born in Hawaii allow his literary agency to publish and distribute, not once but through numerous revisions, that he was born in Kenya? (Breitbart has more). Maybe he didn't read it? It was a typo? A big misunderstanding?

Get real. One of the big moments in a writer's career is their first time signing with an agency (still waiting, but a friend at work just signed and was on cloud nine). Friends, family - "Hey, look what my agency wrote about me!" Seriously, this "error" would not have passed unnoticed.

Then, in a radio debate when he was running for state senate - his opponent accused him of being foreign born, to which he is purported to have replied, "So what? I'm running for Illinois senator, not the presidency." (From Infowars.com)

None of this is offered to prove that President Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya. At least, not here. We have a different agenda. The question our detective hero would ask him/her self is what does the man have to gain?

Maybe the answer is everything. Maybe it's nothing, that the Kenya thing was an affect. One of the striking things about Barack Obama is the various worlds he has moved through, the identity struggles. One need not have tingles running down legs to empathize with his upbringing. And it seems that merely being bright and adroit doesn't cut it at Harvard (see, Elizabeth Warren's ancestor issues via Powerline).

There are other examples, none of which the MSM seems inclined to touch. But.... Our detective character would not care. He/she would take nothing at face value, trust no document, accept no explanations merely because of who uttered them. Getting back from the gym, reading the case assignment again, they would begin the grim task of explaining these two conflicting data points.

Which are, at the moment, unexplained. Because, if the answer is personal or political gain....

Is Barack Obama at all credible?

*K (Tommy Lee Jones), Men in Black, 1997.