Pintek Hits The Big Time!

Local embarrassment Mike Pintek has apparently been sitting in for two other local embarrassments, Quinn and Rose, on their highly entertaining radio show.

Good to see he's not limiting his "foot in mouth" disease to television.

Media Matters has the story:

On The War Room With Quinn & Rose, guest host Mike Pintek echoed right-wing websites in questioning the authenticity of Sen. Barack Obama's birth certificate, claiming: "I still keep wondering about his birthplace and his birth certificate. I'm still not convinced that he actually was born a natural-born citizen."

We've written about this smear before. Here's John Steigerwald's version of the smear and here's Pintek's.

The bottom line comes from Politifact:

At PolitiFact.com, we’re all about original sources. We don’t take anyone at their word or take the reporting of other media organizations as proof. We go to the heart of the story, the source of the truth — original, corroborating documents.

When the official documents were questioned, we went looking for more answers. We circled back to the Department of Health, had a newsroom colleague bring in her own Hawaii birth certificate to see if it looks the same (it’s identical). But every answer triggered more questions.

And soon enough, after going to every length possible to confirm the birth certificate’s authenticity, you start asking, what is reasonable here?

Because if this document is forged, then they all are.

If this document is forged, a U.S. senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois and many other government agencies.

Indeed Jim Geraghty at the NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE who says that the rumor is "unlikely":

as it would require everyone in his family to lie about this in every interview and discussion with those outside the family since young Obama appeared on the scene.

And:

I spoke to Ms. Okubo late Wednesday afternoon, and she said she had seen the version of Obama’s certificate of live birth posted on the sites. While her office cannot verify the information on a form without the permission of the certificate holder (Obama), she said "the form is exactly the same" and it has "all the components of a birth certificate" record issued by the state. In other words, she sees no reason to think the version posted on Obama's web site and Daily Kos is not genuine.

That's the NATIONAL REVIEW. Pintek should read more, I guess. For Pintek to be right, all those people would have to by out and out lying.

Which is more likely? The certificate is genuine or all those people are lying and have been lying for years.