The Origins Of The Birther Theory

by: DaveJ

Mon Jul 27, 2009 at 15:00


OK, sit down for this.  The root of the "forged Obama birth certificate" idea is that Obama was created as part of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy to take over the United States.  More on this later in the post.

We all know that the "birthers" are gaining momentum.  Senator Inhofe is pushing it now.  CNN and FOX have people pushing it on the air.  The followers of the conspiracy theory are becoming increasingly fanatical.  It's all over YouTube.  

They disrupted a Congressman's town hall meeting the other day.  Watch this to see the intensity they have:

And here is the great Mike Stark chasing down a few elected Republicans in DC, asking them to go on the record about this:


(continues)
DaveJ :: The Origins Of The Birther Theory
A recent component is they that a birth announcement in Hawaii papers back when Obama was born was planted there by someone.  Yes, a conspiracy so vast that someone on the other side of the planet posted this item in a Hawaii newspaper for a child born in Kenya to make it look like he was born in Hawaii because they knew that one day he would need to be a "natural born" citizen in order to be President of the United States.  

Seriously.  This is serious nut stuff, but we saw nut stuff when Clinton was President and it was able to go as far as an impeachment.  And then they won the Presidency on a campaign of "restoring honor and integrity to the White House."  So don't discount nut stuff.

Why does it matter whether Obama was born in the United States or in Kenya?  After all, as the child of a citizen he is automatically a citizen.  And as for being born outside of the United States disqualifying him to be President, John McCain was also born outside of the United States and both Bush and Cheney were from Texas, which violated the 12th amendment.  So exceptions are easily made -- IOKIYAR.

Here is the story of why this is so important to them:

The origins:

I wrote about the origins of this weird attack on Obama last year at my blog Seeing the Forest, when it showed up in right-wing magazines and websites.  See Seeing the Forest: "Who Sent You?" -- The Coming Attack on Obama.

I'll call it the "Who Sent You" campaign. As weird as it sounds -- and it is weird stuff -- the gist of it is that Obama's birth was part of a secret plan by communists, Jews and one-worlders to take over the world. As you read this it is going to sound so fanatically wingnut/John Birch Society/black helicopter/precious bodily fluids weird that you are likely to dismiss it as the rantings of crazy people. But I have learned over the years that this stuff resonates with a certain crowd, and they are remarkably effective at tapping the fears of Americans.

Was I right a year ago when I said this is the kind of story that "resonates with a certain crowd"?  Heh.

It is a long post there with background and links, but to sum it up sites like National Review's The Corner and others started pushing a weird conspiracy theory, laying the groundwork for the attack on Obama that you are seeing today.

In February, The Corner at National Review Online posted Obama's Political Origins.

   . . . all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League.

   . . . I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama's family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual.

   . . . Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student.


This story refers to this from Accuracy in Media, Obama's Communist Mentor,

   In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit." But what about Obama's secret political life? It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.

   [. . .] Obama's communist connection adds to mounting public concern about a candidate who has come out of virtually nowhere, with a brief U.S. Senate legislative record, to become the Democratic Party frontrunner for the U.S. presidency.

   . . . AIM recently disclosed that Obama has well-documented socialist connections, which help explain why he sponsored a "Global Poverty Act" designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, in order to meet U.N. demands


There is more there, and you can click through to the sources...  

So this story with its claim that Obama wasn't born in the United States, and his birth certificate was "forged," etc. isn't coming out of nowhere.  There is an actual reason that some of them give for why anyone would do this, plant phony birth announcements, etc.   This comes out of the incredibly paranoid and weird "John Bircher" core of the conservative movement.  Yes, the ones who coined the phrase "Democrat Party."  I'm not saying that your everyday birther is even aware of this as the basis of the complaint.  But there it is.

It is nut stuff.  It is serious nut stuff.  But nut stuff works for them so watch out.

Update - See Talk to Action: New World Order Conspiracy is not disseminated by white supremacist groups alone


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Quit picking on Crazy Eileen! (4.00 / 1)
Its not her fault if no one will listen to her about the aliens walking among us.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...


Please don't take this as sympathy for the "birthers"... (0.00 / 0)
Has Obama's actual birth certificate (rather than a copy thereof) ever been examined by a something like a panel of experts at authenticating documents?

I want to run away from this grassy knoll just as fast as I can, but I can't recall any expert authentication of the document itself, except at the registrar's office, and that's probably good enough, but wouldn't ten experts from a variety of backgrounds and institutions weigh a lot more heavily upon the burgeoning little industry of the birthers?


seriously? ok, i guess you are serious... (4.00 / 3)
and to answer your question: no.  they would come up with reasons why this panel was biased and in on the conspiracy.  they would devote thousands of blog posts to countering the claims of this body.  in short, they would be better fed, and more dogmatically convinced as to the rightness of their cause.  

the whole point is that this conspiracy is not actually about the birth certificate, or about obama's citizenship status narrowly conceived.  it is about a much more fundamental refusal to accept obama as a legitimate representative of the nation.  the birth certificate is a pretext.  


[ Parent ]
I understand that. (0.00 / 0)
I know who the "birthers" are just as well as you.

Does that mean that a panel of experts wouldn't exercise some influence on some other people closer to the mainstream, who may have heard about this nonsense without knowing exactly what to make of it?

So I'll repeat my question, even though it looks like the answer may be no.

Has Obama's birth certificate ever been examined by a panel of experts, and if not, why not?


[ Parent ]
why, yes (4.00 / 4)
FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship.

http://www.factcheck.org/elect...

next question.


[ Parent ]
Also (4.00 / 2)
The man has a passport, which means at some point the State Department already went through this whole episode.


[ Parent ]
Wrong. Did you even read your own link? (0.00 / 0)
What the "Factcheck staffers" saw was a certified "short-form" copy...

The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.

We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that's when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and "all the records we could get our hands on" according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn't release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama's citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number.

So my original question has not been answered.

Has Obama's birth certificate ever been examined by a panel of experts, and if not, why not?

And yes, morons, when we're talking about authenticating documents, there's a very significant difference between the original in Hawaii and a copy in Chicago, which is what Factcheck saw.

Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago.


[ Parent ]
So what? (4.00 / 1)
SO what if they saw a certified short-form copy?

When you ask for a birth certificate from a hospital this is what they give you now.

So what?

--

Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson


[ Parent ]
His birth certificate is (4.00 / 1)
mysteriously missing, because the Hawaii Secretary of State went paperless in 2001, and destroyed all paper documents in favor of electronic ones.

Or so they want you to believe ...


[ Parent ]
Did you post a link for that anywhere? (0.00 / 0)
Has the original birth certificate really been destroyed?

This is the first time I heard that, which isn't exactly surprising, since I usually don't follow this "issue" at all, and the only element of it that interests me is...

Why doesn't Obama kill this thing (in the minds of everybody except the looniest of the loony) by nailing it down with a real examination by experts?

But discussion on this thread has been garbage!

"A gang psychos is getting weird about Obama's place of birth, and therefore nobody else should ask any questions! Shut up!"


[ Parent ]
Well, perhaps you oughtta (4.00 / 2)
follow the issue before raising objections that precisely track those of a racist fringe.

At this link:

*In 2001 - the state of Hawaii Health Department went paperless.*Paper documents were discarded*The official record of Obama's birth is now an official ELECTRONIC record Janice Okubo, spokeswoman for the Health Department told the Honolulu Star Bulletin, "At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said.

However, Obama hasn't provided a DNA sample proving he's human. Why not? Why doesn't he just nail that down, once and for all?  


[ Parent ]
Yeah, that means anybody who asks a question is a racist! (0.00 / 1)
I asked if Obama's original birth-certificate has been destroyed, and you just can't focus you tiny little brain on anything except making racist innuendos.

Shove it up your ass!

And meanwhile, your link is junk!

I asked the political researchers to dig into the question "why couldn't Obama produce the ORIGINAL birth certificate?"

This is what they forwarded. It seems to definitively answer the question. Since the show's mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead - because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.

Thx

*****************

In 2001 - the state of Hawaii Health Department went paperless.Paper documents were discarded*The official record of Obama's birth is now an official ELECTRONIC record Janice Okubo, spokeswoman for the Health Department told the Honolulu Star Bulletin, "At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said.

Janice Okubo's statement appears all over the internet, but she never says that the paper records were destroyed, and the only source for that factoid is anonymous "political researchers."

The birthers may be stupid, but it's hard to imagine how they could be any stupider than the commenters on this thread, or any slimier than a slime-ball like Joel, with his unfounded racist innuendos.


[ Parent ]
You make a good point. (0.00 / 0)
Perhaps 'discarded' means 'stored indefinitely.'

Really, until such time as he makes the DNA test available, bold bold bold bold bold.


[ Parent ]
And the source of "discarded" is...??? (0.00 / 0)
Can you name that source, moron?

[ Parent ]
Yet again, I bow to your (4.00 / 1)
superior intellect and link-clicking ability.

Additionally, I admit I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this so-called newspaper, the Honolulu Star Bulletin, and it's more than possible that 'June Watanabe' is not an actual journalist. I have no reviewed her J-school diploma, though I made a few calls. As for the ostensible Janice Okubo, I have not yet seen her birth certificate; she may be a talking ficus of some variety, or even a cloud of sentient vapor.

Also, one presumes that 'going paperless' implies 'keeping paper records and discarding nothing,' of course, so I'm afraid you've been right all along.


[ Parent ]
If I accused you of having a liver made of cheese (0.00 / 0)
How much time would you feel you need to spend proving to me that you do not?

--

Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson


[ Parent ]
How about one minute? (0.00 / 0)
That's longer than it would take Obama to authorize examination of his original birth-certificate by a panel of experts.

[ Parent ]
Original? (4.00 / 1)
His ORIGINAL birth certificate?  It has to be the ORIGINAL?  It isn't enough that the hospital issued a certificate based on their records?  (It is against the law for a hospital to do anything else than give a copy to Obama.)

And what about the announcements of his birth that were in the newspapers at the time?  Were they planted by communist agents who knew that a black man would be elected President?

--

Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson


[ Parent ]
what is with the conspiratorial form of your question? (4.00 / 1)
(and if not, why not...).  

it hasn't because that would be unprecedented, and because the courts have thrown out birther cases, and because the vast majority of people think the birthers are a bunch of loons and their ideas don't deserve to be taken seriously.  

also, apparently, it hasn't because such forms no longer exist.


[ Parent ]
I don't have cites handy, but (4.00 / 3)
my understanding is that all original documents were destroyed after authentication and subsequent registry into an electronic database in the year 2000.  All heads of the responsible agencies all the way up to the Republican governor of Hawaii have determined beyond any doubt that Obama was born in Hawaii.

John McCain won't insure children

[ Parent ]
What you're conveniently overlooking is that they (4.00 / 3)
were destroyed by the Afroslamic Paperless Bromance Front.

[ Parent ]
people are always (4.00 / 2)
underestimating the APBF. I'll never get it.

[ Parent ]
That's bullshit! (0.00 / 0)
From USA Today today...

In an attempt to quash persistent rumors that President Obama was not born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, Hawaii's health director reiterated this afternoon that she has personally seen Obama's birth certificate in the Health Department's archives.

In an attempt to quash persistent rumors that President Obama was not born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, Hawaii's health director reiterated this afternoon that she has personally seen Obama's birth certificate in the Health Department's archives.

"I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai'i State Department of Health verifying Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen.

So how many posters on this thread claimed over and over and over that the original birth-certicate had been destroyed? Probably not more than five or six.

Harharharhar!!!

What a bunch of stooges!


[ Parent ]
no tickee, no washee (4.00 / 1)
The state Department of Health no longer issues copies of paper birth certificates as was done in the past, said spokeswoman Janice Okubo.

The department only issues "certifications" of live births, and that is the "official birth certificate" issued by the state of Hawaii, she said.

And, it's only available in electronic form.

Okubo explained that the Health Department went paperless in 2001.

"At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said.

"At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said.

Information about births is transferred electronically from hospitals to the department.

"The electronic record of the birth is what (the Health Department) now keeps on file in order to provide same-day certified copies at our help window for most requests," Okubo said.

Asked for more information about the short-form versus long-form birth documents, Okubo said the Health Department "does not have a short-form or long-form certificate."

"The birth certificate form has been modified over the years and decades to conform to national standards and models," she said.

Okubo also emphasized the certification form "contains all the information needed by all federal government agencies for transactions requiring a birth certificate."

She added that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the state's current certification of live birth "as an official birth certificate meeting all federal and other requirements."

http://www.starbulletin.com/co...


[ Parent ]
Why should it? (4.00 / 4)
Seriously, why should it be examined?

--

Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson


[ Parent ]
I'll go further (0.00 / 0)
Since there is a constitutional requirement here, why don't all candidates submit their birth certificates to some panel well before the election? What's the big deal?

I know as well as anyone that Obama is a natural-born citizen, and I know what the birthers are about, but consider the mess we would be in if at some time in the future we elected someone and found out afterward that they were NOT a natural born citizen?  


[ Parent ]
You mean, like McCain? (4.00 / 1)
McCain was not born in the U.S. you know.  They just made an exception.  End of story.

--

Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson


[ Parent ]
another way to approach this is to repeal the requirement that someone be a natural born citizen (0.00 / 0)
i am, but my parents weren't.  there are people who moved to the United States at age 1.  It's a ridiculous law that only exists because the constitution is so hard to amend and no one in power found it convenient to change.

[ Parent ]
Spot-on (4.00 / 1)
For the birthers, the point is to NEVER arrive at an evidence-based conclusion, but to maintain belief and propagate that belief.

[ Parent ]
Which is why (0.00 / 0)
debunking this pre-bunked crap may not be the most productive use of progressive's time .

[ Parent ]
IIRC .. (4.00 / 1)
just today .. The Great Orange Satan ... has a piece on how Hawaii went to an all electronic records database(in 2000 .. or 2001) .. meaning the birth certificate is only available now on computer .. so Obama is far from the only one that doesn't have an "original" birth certificate .. hope that answers your question

[ Parent ]
No, it hasn't been authenticated by a team of experts. (4.00 / 1)
There are many things Obama hasn't done.

He hasn't compared the footprints on the original birth certificate to his feet today.  We don't KNOW that Obama is the same person that was supposedly born in Hawaii.  They could have switched kids in the Madrassa.

He hasn't renounced Islam by profaning the name of Muhammad, to dispel all doubt about his religious affiliations.

He hasn't called for the prosecution and execution of Bill Ayers.

He hasn't subjected himself to a medical exam to determine whether aliens implanted communication devices in his head.

He hasn't answered questions about whether he may have murdered his grandmother to cover up the secret of his true identity.

These are all equally valid suspicions about Obama, and he hasn't definitely addressed any of them.  I don't understand why everyone is hung up on JUST the birth certificate.  I don't want to sound paranoid, but it's almost as if it's a conspiracy or something.


[ Parent ]
Tu quoque? (0.00 / 0)
He hasn't subjected himself to a medical exam to determine whether aliens implanted communication devices in his head.

And if there were questions constantly raised in Congress about alien devices, and the alien devices came up at a press briefing with the White House press secretary, and "implanted devices" turned into an issue that just wouldn't go away, and you could lay it to rest in the minds of everybody except the extreme fringe of the fringe of the fringe, then yes...

It would make sense to deal with it as a real question which could be answered.

But the treatment of this issue on this thread is as fundamentally dishonest as any of the bullshit produced by birthers.

If fifty freaks run into a room screaming "the earth is round, water is wet, two plus two is four," it doesn't discredit any of those facts, but the only argument here is that if a bunch of right-wing loons say Obama was born on the planet Neptune, then it's senseless to ask...

Why doesn't he have his original birth-certificate analyzed by a panel of experts?

Although the ignorant little mob on this thread wouldn't dream that it's possible, all sorts of documents that nobody has any compelling reason to dispute are nevertheless authenticated every day.

Experts at authenticating documents make half their money from wills and birth certificates, and there's always somebody screaming that it's pointless.

So Gibbs is standing in the White House briefing room complaining that this issue won't go away, and yet Obama doesn't do what thousands of other people do to resolve disputes about documents, and have his birth certificate authenticated by experts.

"Why should he?"

Because it would take all the air out of this craziness for everybody except the far fringe.

"But a few crazies wouldn't be convinced by anything."

But those few crazies would have a much harder time getting air time on Fox or elsewhere if this thing were resolved in the same way that thousands of other disputes about documents are resolved all the time.

"And how fo you resolve a dispute about a document?"

"With a copy?"

No, idiots!

You resolve a dispute about a document by examining the original document.

"But somehow those words don't make sense to us. Are you speaking in some foreign language when you say...

Disputes about the authenticity of documents are resolved by examining the original documents?"

"Why can't you resolve a dispute about a document with a copy?"

Harharharhar!!!

What a bunch of morons, or stooges, or both!



[ Parent ]
there is no dispute (0.00 / 0)
only a lot of swiftboating.

[ Parent ]
Crawl into the computer (0.00 / 0)
Why not have a panel of experts crawl into the Hawaii birth certificate computer to see if Obama's is really there, when it got there, was it altered, etc.? I've been to the movies and I know people can be temporarily miniaturized for this purpose but O refuses to authorize it.

[ Parent ]
Crazy by defintion (0.00 / 0)
Let's assume that the original question about Obama's birthplace was legitimate and sincere.

The state of Hawaii has stated he was born there.  A short form certificate are produced.  Newspaper announcements have surfaced.

The only people not satisfied by this proof are by defintion crazies, because the conspiracy to cover up the secret of his birth must be deep and span nearly fifty years.

It isn't Obama's fault that Lou Dobbs is crazy.  He doesn't owe Dobbs or the rest of them anything, legally, morally, or logically.  He had no burden of proof, and he provided irrefutable proof.  The only question is what is best for Obama politically.

Obama could decide to convene a panel of experts, but that would be stupid.  It's more media time for a nonstory, less for health care, and the nuts, in this case, are doing a nice job of discrediting the Republican brand.  


[ Parent ]
The at large rep from Hawaii is introducing... (4.00 / 3)
....a resolution declaring Hawaii as Obama's birthplace....

Two can play at that game!

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!


What About the Reptilians?! (4.00 / 2)
No analysis of the origins of "birtherism" is complete without drawing a connection to the 9/11 "truth" movement. No explanation of that movement is possible without understanding its origins in talk radio, mixed up with black helicopters and shape-shifting reptilian aliens among us.

http://www.osborneink.com/2009...


good post on the birther phenomenon (4.00 / 1)
by Iowa blogger John Deeth, who compared it to wacko theories of 1928 about Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith (a Catholic) having a "secret tunnel" to the Vatican.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.

what am I, chopped liver? (4.00 / 1)
No one clued this Jewish blogger in on the Commie-Negro conspiracy. I am offended.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.

the origin of the theory is very simple: (0.00 / 0)
Obama is black, so the right wing thinks he can't really be a natural-born citizen of the US. End of story.

No Democrat accepted (4.00 / 2)
The "problem" is not race, it is Party.  Some Republicans will not accept a Democratic President.  This is garden variety stuff compared to "Clinton as a murderer", Kennedy stole the White House (Republican recounts to the contrary) and the attempted coup against FDR.  Meanwhile, the one bogus President in the last 100 years can not be challenged (W, of course).

[ Parent ]
That may be so, but you've got to admit there's a racist element here. (4.00 / 3)
If Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or another white person had been elected, it would be something else and I don't think it'd be nearly as ugly or irrational.  But if Bill Richardson had been elected I'd bet money they'd make some claims about him being in the country illegally or some nonsense like that.  Of course that's largely speculation, or rather a hunch, but there's no doubt in my mind that the fact Obama is a black man gets to these assholes on some deep, twisted level.

Check out Blue Arkansas:
http://bluearkansas.blogspot.com/


[ Parent ]
Hillary would get it for being a woman. (0.00 / 0)
Edwards for being a fag. Seriously, that's what the subtext of the $500 haircut was all about. They were laying that storyline out in advance, in case he won.

Republicans are going to do this every Democrat who wins the White House. Like the sun follows the moon. We might as well get used to it and learn to fight back.

Montani semper liberi


[ Parent ]
I guarantee you (0.00 / 0)
that if Clinton had been born in Hawaii, you would not have heard a peep about his not being a real citizen or his being a secret terrorist. They still would have given him a lot of grief, but nothing like that.

The usual hate for Democrats aside, the fact that our president is a black man really pisses off the far right. Leaders of hate groups have explicitly said that Obama's election has been a recruiting godsend, because it would serve as a "wakeup call" that people of non-white ethnic groups were becoming prominent in America.


[ Parent ]
Amen! (4.00 / 1)
And Clinton was a white man. A Southerner even.

They had this in the works regardless of which Democrat won. If Hillary or Edwards had won, they would've found some reason to declare them illegitimate, too

It's what they do

Montani semper liberi


[ Parent ]
I remember a couple of weeks ago... (4.00 / 1)
some A-list bloguero at OL (Bowers? Lux? anyway...) had a front-page post where they wrote that bloggers should focus their attention on conservative democrats, and not spend so much time deriding/debunking right-wing nut-logs. I agree completely, so it's hard for me to see why OL is wasting so much time telling us what we already know, to wit: The Birther conspiracy theory is stupid, nonsensical, race-based B.S.

So can we get back to bashing Blue Cross democrats, now?


It's a conspiracy (0.00 / 0)
I posted this to distract everyone from health care because I actually secretly work for a stealth health insurance company.  By posting this and having you come here to leave a comment, we were able to sneak into your computer while you were distracted and typing.  SWe knew that exactly this combination of letters and spaces and punctuation would be irresistible to you.

--

Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson


[ Parent ]
I didn't mean to go all "the left" on you... (0.00 / 0)
I realize that I have no business telling you what to post, but really...

I sincerely like this blog, and a big reason for this is that, usually, OpenLeft avoids all the memeorandum crap. There's tons of lefty blogs out there every day skewering the products of the wingnut noise machine. One of OL's strengths is that it doesn't just do descriptive, it tries to get prescriptive as well, by recommending strategies for progressives, targets for direct-action etc.

I don't have to tell you any of this, I guess I just look for other sorts of content from OL, that's all.


[ Parent ]
another danger is that this kind of discourse (0.00 / 0)
which 'others' obama is a stepping stone towards some 'random' nutcase to eliminate him and for mobilising random nutcases for this and other work like anti-immigrant efforts.  it's really f"£ked up - and the anology to clinton is perfect, except i seriously doubt this would end in just an impeachment, because they don't feel powerful enough (or else they wouldn't come up with this kind of nutty stuff).  Any kind of threat or psychologically unstable or pathological behavior needs to be taken seriously both for the sake of obama and for really everyone, including the people who are engaged in it.

If they win back the House, (4.00 / 1)
like they did in '92, hell yeah they'll try to impeach him. They don't care if the effort fails, like it did with Clinton, the point is to weaken and distract him.

Some of us have seen this movie before.  

Montani semper liberi


[ Parent ]
maybe (0.00 / 0)
i doubt they'll win back the house.  but i'm not a progosticator on these things because i dont' know the seats one by one.

I would be much more worried about the base of nutcases that make up about 20% of the republican party and associated groups getting more and more frothy at the mouth.  I think rhetoric that encourages impeachment and legal proceedings are reserved for white men who have provided at least some nominal grounds for doing so, whereas for black men who haven't, desperation and race and emotional instability on the part of the people involved become an ugly combination.  They're not just questioning his legitimacy, but the idea that he is entitled to any rights - which is one step from just simply dehumanising him altogether.

I don't understand why these people receive any more credibility than the 9-11 conspiracy theorists or for that matter any number of other conspiracy theorists unless there is some process that is sanctioning their work (not a conspiracy of people, but a collective failure to renounce this kind of thing).  The people who are not discouraging them are playing with fire and should start doing so loudly and appropriately - something john mccain belatedly realised, but there's 30 years of playing with fire to undo.


[ Parent ]
Maybe Obama is the Messiah? (0.00 / 0)
According the the right wing talk, Obama had quite a miraculous birth, one illusory in Hawaii, the other biologic in Kenya. Perhaps the right fears that he really is the Messiah, or the anti-Christ (who has to come from the East; Kenya fits). They really might believe this scenario of anti-Christ/messiah.

But in reality it's that other group you have written about - the Family/Fellowship - who pump up these stories to make public discourse in this country irrational and thereby leave real pubic policy making to their fellows. All they have to do is distract and make Americans despair of government = an the media, but mainly government.


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