Teh (Latest) Birther Crazie

Of course it's from World Net Daily and of course OF COURSE it's from Jerome Corsi.  (Either point, let us remember) is enough to undermine its credibility.  But here we go - let's go take a look at teh latest Corsi Crazie.

From WND:

Self-proclaimed international intelligence expert Michael Shrimpton plans to launch a vigorous defense on charges of making false claims to British government officials that a terrorist nuclear attack was under way during the 2012 Olympics in London, raising the possibility documents and testimony he plans to subpoena will embarrass the U.K., German and U.S. governments.

As WND reported, Shrimpton, who faces a Nov. 10 trial, also appears in a 2008 video that began re-circulating earlier this year on the Internet in which he claims to have been privy to shocking intelligence information on Obama’s origins. Shrimpton contends to this day that the CIA collected DNA from then-Sen. Obama and a grandparent establishes that Stanley Ann Dunham was not Obama’s biological mother. He intends to subpoena from the CIA and British intelligence any records either agency may have on Obama’s DNA. [Emphasis added so you can more clearly see teh crazie.]

Yea, you remember the nuclear attack at the 2012 Olympics, right?  Here's what Shrimpton contends:

Meanwhile, Shrimpton has been indicted for having telephoned in 2012 the secretary of state for defense in London and declaring that a nuclear weapon stolen from the Russian submarine Kursk that sank in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12, 2000, had been smuggled into Britain.

Shrimpton said the smugglers were agents of a top-secret German intelligence agency that intended to detonate the weapon to cause massive damage and murder members of the Royal family and top government officials attending the London Olympics.

As part of his defense, for some reason, he's claiming the CIA knows that President Obama's mother wasn't actually his mother.  And according to the 2008 video linked above, Obama's father WAS his actual father (and not Frank Marshall Davis, as Corsi has reported here) but that his mother was one of his many mistresses.

Oh and some of the Presidential campaigns in 2008 (Giuliani, Clinton and so on) also knew that Obama's mother wasn't his mother.

Yea, you remember when that hit the news, too.  Right?

Does Shrimpton have any credibility?  No.  Does Corsi have any credibility by reporting on him?  No, again.

Trackin' teh crazie.

Tracking Teh Crazie - Cruz And The Birthers!

Over at Talkingpointsmemo, Josh Marshall has been spending some time on Senator Ted Cruz' presidential eligibility (given that the Senator was born in Canada to an American mother).

For the record Marshall writes:

I can tell you Ted Cruz’s politics are awful. And having had significant life overlap with him I can tell you that at virtually every point in his life - at least from his late teens through mid-thirties (after that I have less evidence) - he’s quickly developed a reputation as a raging a-hole. His new workplace - the Senate of the United States - just continues the pattern. But he’s definitely a ‘natural born’ citizen and thus constitutionally qualified to serve as President of the United States.

And for the record I am total agreement with Marshall on this.

That's not to say that that it's not great fun to watch Cruz squirm on his own eligibility question.  If there's no issue about his eligibility then why did he feel it necessary to release his birth certificate?  Or renounce his Canadian citizenship?

This is why.  From World Net Daily (aka birther central):

Conservative icon, radio host and author of the No. 1 book in the country right now, Mark Levin said he’s sick of “birthers” after encountering a particularly “obnoxious” one at a hot, crowded book-signing event.

The man, whom Levin described as “disrespectful” toward him and the other fans, reportedly pointed at Levin and told him he was wrong in concluding that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is eligible to be president.

The issue of constitutional eligibility, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times during Barack Obama’s runup to the White House, now is surging again, only the target this time is Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father.

But you'll note the attack is not coming from the left (see Josh Marshall, above) but from the birthers now confronting other conservatives (like Levin) using the same "logic" that they used to prop up their previous Obama-birther frenzy.

For example, let's look at the "dual citizenship" part of the story - from the flawed camera obscura that is Jerome Corsi:

The State Department is maintaining a “counter-misinformation” page on an America.gov blog that attempts to “debunk a conspiracy theory” that President Obama was not born in the United States, as if the topic were equivalent to believing space aliens visit Earth in flying saucers.

However, in the attempt to debunk the Obama birth-certificate controversy, the State Department author confirmed Obama was a dual citizen of the U.K. and the U.S. from 1961 to 1963 and a dual citizen of Kenya and the U.S. from 1963 to 1982, because his father was a Kenyan citizen when Obama was born in 1961.

In a number of court cases challenging Obama’s eligibility, dual citizenship has been raised as a factor that could compromise his “natural born” status under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution. The cases argue dual citizenship would make Obama ineligible even if documentary evidence were shown the public, such as the hospital-issued long-form birth certificate that indicates the place of his birth and the name of the attending physician. [Emphasis added.]

It's the same for the "American mother gives birth abroad" side.  If it didn't work for Obama then how can a true American (like the one who confronted Levin) think it's OK for anyone else?

This has been the birther discourse for years.  We shouldn't be surprised that they're going after one of their own.

Funny how that works out, eh?

More On Representative Jeff Duncan

Remember this from yesterday?

The braintrust spread yet another wingnut conspiracy theory by way of Representative Jeff Duncan.

Well they should be more careful who they quote as it turns out that Duncan's a birther:

Another Republican is accusing President Obama of secretly being a Kenyan man who forged his birth certificate in order to get elected President of the United States. This time the theorist is Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC), chairman of the House Homeland Security Oversight Subcommittee.

Duncan appeared on the radio program TruNews with Rick Wiles on Friday where the host asked the South Carolina congressman whether the House would go after Obama’s “phony identification papers.” Duncan initially demurred, but then agreed with Wiles that Obama could be lying about his birth certificate, calling for Congress to “revisit” the issue of “the president’s validity."

While it's hardly surprising that Duncan (who's seen quickly shifting from the "guv'ment's buyin' up all the ammo!" story to the "guv'ment's arming the IRS with assault rifles!" story in yesterday's Trib) is fertile ground for any number of other crazie conspiracies, nothing invalidates credibility faster than being a birther. 

The Trib really needs to be more careful who they're quoting as they're dancing dangerously close to World Net Daily on this one.

Question for Mike Pintek

I got to hear a large chunk of today's program and Mike, TO YOUR CREDIT, you shouted down a caller who tried to bring up the by now long debunked "issue" of President Obama's birthcertificate.

You treated the birther with all the credibility his position required (which is none).

Bravo, sir.  Good for you.

Here's my question:  Considering your own past-birtherism (for instance 4 years or so ago, you danced the birther dance like the best of them), when did you change your mind?

You can email me if you'd like - I'd love to find out how you did it, what made you re-enter reality.

I'll post your answer at the blog.

Tracking Teh Crazie - Jerome Corsi. Again.

The wingnut birther conspiracy continues.

From Jerome Corsi at WND (of course):

NEW YORK – John Brennan, the Obama counter-terrorism adviser nominated this week to head the CIA, played a controversial role in what many suspect was an effort to sanitize Obama’s passport records.

On March 21, 2008, amid Obama’s first presidential campaign, two unnamed contract employees for the State Department were fired and a third was disciplined for breaching the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate and then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Breaking the story, the Washington Times on March 20, 2008, noted that all three had used their authorized computer network access to look up and read Obama’s records within the State Department consular affairs section that “possesses and stores passport information.”

And the connection to Brennan?  Take a look:

The New York Times noted the two offending State Department contract employees who were fired had worked for Stanley Inc., a company based in Arlington, Va., while the reprimanded worker continued to be employed by the Analysis Corporation of McLean, Va.

The newspaper gave no background on either corporation, other than to note that Stanley Inc. did “computer work for the government.”

At that time, Stanley Inc. was a 3,500-person technology firm that had just won a $570-million contract to provide computer-related passport services to the State Department.

Analysis Corporation was headed by Brennan, a former CIA agent who was then serving as an adviser on intelligence and foreign policy to Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign.

And since Brennan's "connected" to the intrusion it didn't take much for Corsi to paste in a conspiracy:

Investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman said a well-placed but unnamed source told him that the real point of the passport breach incidents was to cauterize the Obama file, removing from it any information that could prove damaging to his eligibility to be president.

Information like Obama's birthplace, of course.  Two things you should know about the source of Corsi's scoop above - it's Newsmax and it's from January of 2009 about events that took place almost a year earlier.  Was there any sort of investigation in to this?  Is any of it even possible?  Corsi, gives us a clue:

In July 2008, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a 104-page investigative report on the passport breach incidents, stamped “Sensitive But Unclassified.” The report was so heavily redacted, it was virtually useless to the public. Scores of passages were blacked out entirely, including one sequence of 29 consecutive pages that were each obliterated by a solid black box that made it impossible even to determine paragraph structures.

You can read the "virtually useless" report here. From the Executive Summary we learn:

In March 2008, media reports surfaced that the passport files maintained by the Department of State (Department) of three U.S. Senators, who were also presidential candidates, had been improperly accessed by Department employees and contract staff. On March 21, 2008, following the first reported breach and at the direction of the Acting Inspector General, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Office of Audits, initiated this limited review of Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) controls over access to passport records in the Department’s Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS). Specifically, this review focused on determining whether the Department (1) adequately protects passport records and data contained in PIERS from unauthorized access and (2) responds effectively when incidents of unauthorized access occur.

So the unauthorized access was through the PIERS system. Now we're getting somewhere.  But can anyone actually do what Corsi says these low level data entry employees did?

Not really.  From page ten of the OIG report:

According to CA [Consular Affairs] officials, almost all PIERS users have “read only” access.

There's a foot note to that sentence which reads:

A small number of CA Directorate Staff can edit PIERS records as required by their positions.

So as it's only those State Department employees on the "CA Directorate Staff" who can edit (which, presumably would include "sanitize" or "cauterize") passport records and as the "connection" between Brennan and the snooping wasn't a State Department employee, Jerome Corsi's thesis (that Brennan "sanitized" Obama's passport records to cover up the "fact" that he was born in Kenya) is virtually useless.

But let's assume it's true.  It would be illegal, right?  But if that's the case then why would this happen?

Still, the New York Times report indicated then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had spent Friday morning calling all three presidential candidates and that she had told Obama that she was sorry for the violation.

“I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file,” Rice said.

If Corsi is right, then Rice must've been in on it - if only to cover it up. Jerome Corsi - he's got teh crazie.

Lil Ricky finds a new home!

Via Think Progress:

Rick Santorum has joined WorldNetDaily, a conspiracy theory blog best known for its indefatigable work advancing the birther movement, as an exclusive columnist.

Here's a sample of headlines from WorldNetDaily taken off the intertoobs:

 

 

 

 

 

Romney lets out dog-whistle: "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate"

Mitt Romney in Michigan today:

"I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where but the both of us were born," Romney said after introducing his wife, fellow Michigan native Ann. "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where we were born and raised."

Yes, I know we are supposed to see this as a joke, but it's certainly not the first time that Romney or his campaign and surrogates have let loose with the racial and "othering" dog-whistles:

Romney's running an ad which falsely claims that Obama has ended work requirements for Americans receiving welfare benefits (Shades of Reagan's "Welfare Queen").

Romney boasts proudly about the NAACP crowd who booed him,  "If they want more stuff from the government, tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff." (Because, you know, all blacks only want free stuff.)

Romney follows up comments made by campaign surrogate John Sununu, that President Obama needs to "learn to be an American" by saying himself that Obama doesn't understand "what it is that makes America such a unique nation."

Romney calls Obama "angry" (right, cause No Drama Obama is such an angry black man) and says Obama wants to "to smash America apart."

A Romney advisor claims that Obama doesn’t "fully appreciate" America’s "Anglo-Saxon heritage."

Yes, yes. Obama is the angry, black foreigner who wants to give all the free shit that real Americans work hard for to the other blacks because he doesn't understand America because he wasn't born here.

[sigh]

And yes, Mitt, you're white and rich so no one has ever asked to see your birth certificate (just the black guy's), but everyone and his brother has asked to see your tax returns -- including fellow Republicans -- so what about that?

Jack Kelly Sunday

Jack's a birther.

This week's Post-Gazette column, in which Jack tries yet again to "prove" liberal media bias with an oh so careful selection of supporting evidence, is difficult to refute. How would one do it? By showing negative Obama coverage in the media?  No matter how much you find, it won't refute Jack's carefully selected evidence.  Like trying to prove Nixon had nothing to do with the Kennedy Assassination.  I mean he was in Dallas that day, right??

He said/he said arguments like this never get anywhere.

So I am leaping over them.  I wanted to point out Jack's birtherism:

Barack Obama was born in Kenya, according to a booklet of clients his literary agency produced in 1991. "This was nothing more than a fact-checking error by me," said Miriam Goderich, who was an editorial assistant then and now is a partner in the firm.

Her "fact checking error" went undetected until Mr. Obama began his campaign for president. In the interim, the biography was revised three times.

The policy at Dystel & Goderich, as at most literary agencies, is that authors provide biographical briefs. How plausible is it that Mr. Obama failed to notice for 17 years that his birthplace was listed incorrectly?

Why would Mr. Obama say he was born in Kenya? A clue is his refusal to release his college transcripts, thinks Roger Simon, author of 11 detective novels. Did Mr. Obama claim to be a foreign student to claim a scholarship or slot only for foreign nationals?

You'll note a couple of things; that Jack never actually tells the truth: - he never says that Obama was actually born in Hawaii and that Obama never actually told Goderich that he was born in Kenya.

How do I know that last part?  It's from Godrich herself:

Miriam Goderich edited the text of the bio; she is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich agency, which lists Obama as one of its current clients.

"This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me--an agency assistant at the time," Goderich wrote in an emailed statement to Yahoo News. "There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more." [emphasis added.]

Huh.  Omitting some important facts there, Jack.  Including them would have undermined your (false) argument,  doncha think?

Birther.

So, according to Jack, Obama was telling people in the very early 90s that he was born in Kenya.

Except he didn't.  Take a look at this from about a year before Godrich's "fact-checking error."  It's from the New York Times and so it had a much much wider audience than that of the Acton & Dystel (not Dystel & Goderich as Jack Kelly incorrectly asserts) bio:

The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii. [Emphasis added.]

If Obama was looking to score some favor by lying about his birthplace, wouldn't he have done it in the pages of the Times?

And if he knew that the truth was already in The Times, then why would he lie to Godrich?

Difficult questions for a birther to answer.  The easy answer, of course, is that it was a fact-checking error on Miriam Godrich's part that no one bothered to fix for a long time and that this birther conspiracy (like all the others) is false.

Which was is closer to reality?  And which way was does Jack go?

Birther.

A Birther Update

Me, on April 26:

Here's the latest from Jerome Corsi, chief birther at Birther Central (aka World Net Daily): Barack Obama Sr was NOT Barack Obama Jr.'s real father.

Frank Marshall Davis was.

That absurdity aside, think of what that means for the whole birther industry when you realize that Frank Marshall Davis was born in Kansas.

Talking Points Memo, today:

“Birthers” are flipping their tinfoil hats over a new film that claims President Barack Obama’s father was not a Kenyan goat herder but rather a communist journalist nearly four decades older than his mother. The problem? It undermines a bedrock of birther lore: that the president is ineligible to be commander-in-chief.

“Dreams From My Real Father,” a 97-minute film narrated by an Obama impersonator, weaves the narrative that Obama’s grandfather wasn’t a furniture salesman but an undercover CIA agent who convinced Barack Obama Sr. to marry his teenage daughter to hide the fact that she was impregnated by a 55-year-old communist named Frank Marshall Davis.

There's a disclaimer on the film, by the way.  TPM writes that it includes:

...re-creations of probable events, using reasoned logic, speculation, and approximated conversations in an attempt to provide a cohesive understanding of Obama’s history.

So you know the research is rock solid.  Just rock solid.

Tracking Teh Crazie

The Racist Birthers -

This from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

An Alaska man who is challenging President Barack Obama’s eligibility for office on the grounds that the president is a “mulatto” based his complaint on an argument common to the neo-Confederate and antigovernment “sovereign citizen” movements, Hatewatch has learned.

In a complaint filed Tuesday with the Alaska Division of Elections, Gordon Warren Epperly of Juneau argued that Obama isn’t eligible for office because, as a person of mixed-race descent, he is not a “natural-born citizen” of the United States.

“As Barack Hussein Obama II is of the ‘Mulatto’ race, his status of citizenship is founded upon the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Before the (purported) ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the race of ‘Negro’ or ‘Mulatto’ had no standing to be citizens of the United States under the United States Constitution,” the complaint says. “As the Fourteenth Amendment is only a grant of ‘Civil Rights’ and not a grant of ‘Political Rights,’ Barack Hussein Obama II does not have any ‘Political Rights’ under any provision of the United States Constitution to hold any Public Office of the United States government.”

The Anti-Semitic Holocaust Deniers -

This from The Oak Lawn Patch:

A congressional candidate running as a Republican in the upcoming Illinois primary says the “Holocaust never happened.”

Arthur Jones, 64, a Lyons, IL, insurance salesman who organizes family-friendly, neo-Nazi events around Adolf Hitler’s birthday, hopes to be the Republican candidate chosen to run against Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District.

“As far as I’m concerned, the Holocaust is nothing more than an international extortion racket by the Jews,” Jones said. “It’s the blackest lie in history. Millions of dollars are being made by Jews telling this tale of woe and misfortune in books, movies, plays and TV.

"The more survivors, the more lies that are told."

And the (at best) Racially Ignorant -

This from The Great Falls Tribune:

Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Wednesday admitted to sending a racially charged email about President Barack Obama from his courthouse chambers.

Cebull, of Billings, was nominated by former President George W. Bush and received his commission in 2001 and has served as chief judge for the District of Montana since 2008.

The subject line of the email, which Cebull sent from his official courthouse email address on Feb. 20 at 3:42 p.m., reads: "A MOM'S MEMORY."

The forwarded text reads as follow:

"Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.

"A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?'" the email joke reads. "His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

Though to be fair to Judge Cebull, he's already apologized for the joke, though his apology seems to miss the point:

"The only reason I can explain it to you is I am not a fan of our president, but this goes beyond not being a fan," Cebull said. "I didn't send it as racist, although that's what it is. I sent it out because it's anti-Obama."

Um, what? So sending the email is not a racist act even though he's admitted the email itself is racist?

And we wonder why the political climate is so polarized.

Teh Birther Crazie In Pennsylvania - Locally

They say all politics is local.  Perhaps all teh crazie's local, too.

From Birther-central, World Net Daily:

A complaint has been filed asking Pennsylvania state officials to set aside Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential candidacy, because he cannot meet the state’s eligibility requirements.

It’s another case in what is developing into a long list of states in which Obama’s candidacy is being challenged legally. A complaint recently was filed in Indiana, and Georgia’s dispute already is moving to the appellate level. Cases also are reported to be developing in Mississippi, Alabama and other states.

The Pennsylvania case was raised by Dale Laudenslager and Charles Kerchner, whose previous legal challenge to Obama’s term in the White House also was based on eligibility concerns and reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices refused to look at any evidence.

Because there isn't any, but let's not go there just yet.

More On Rick Santorum's Birther Flirtations

In case you missed it, here's Lil Ricky at a recent event in Florida:



The woman's voice in the clip says a number of things, among them:

I never refer to Obama as President Obama, because, legally, he is not.

And:

And my question is: why isn’t something being done to get him out of our government? He has no legal right to be calling himself President.

Two obvious birther references.  Neither of which Rick refutes.

Teh Birther Returns

In case you missed it, here's the official announcement:

Newsmax Media and ION Television, one of the nation's largest broadcast networks, will collaborate to host a Republican presidential debate on Tuesday, Dec. 27, moderated by businessman Donald J. Trump.

The Newsmax ION Television Debate will be held at the Hoyt Sherman Theater in Des Moines, Iowa, from 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. ET – and will be the last forum of major Republican presidential candidates a week before the Jan. 3, 2012 Iowa caucus.

Let's just review some of the players here, shall we?

First there's Newsmax - 40% owned by local media mogul Richard Mellon Scaife.
Second, there's Donald Trump - Birther.

A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

I just wonder how Scaife's paper will be covering it.

Governor Rick Perry's A Birther

Via Talkingpointsmemo, we get to this interview in Parade and the conversation there turns to birth certificates:

Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
I have no reason to think otherwise.

That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

But you’ve seen his.
I don’t know. Have I?

You don’t believe what’s been released?
I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

And?
That came up.

And he said?
He doesn’t think it’s real.

And you said?
I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

While he does say "It doesn't matter" he's still doubtful that the long form birth certificate's been released (it has).  Unless I am mistaken, this device is what's known in the rhetoric trade as apophasis.  It's an assertion by denying the importance of the thing being asserted.

The subtle is there.  All rhetoric aside, he doubts the long form birth certificate is legitimate.

Rick Perry's a birther.

World Net Daily: Still Peddling Teh Birther Crazie

As it's been a week or so since we took a peek into birther central, World Net Daily, I thought it might be a good idea to take another peek.

Man oh man oh man, you will not believe what they're peddling now.

On June 2, Politico reported:

White House Counsel Bob Bauer will step down from his post and return to private practice, where he will assist President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, the White House announced Thursday.

Kathryn Ruemmler, the current principal deputy counsel to the president, will take Bauer’s place when he returns to the Washington office of the Perkins Coie law firm.

Bauer will resume the role he had during Obama’s 2008 presidential run, serving as general counsel to the campaign and to the Democratic National Committee, and as personal lawyer to Obama, the White House said. The change will allow him to help Obama’s reelection campaign navigate an increasingly complex legal thicket created by a recent Supreme Court ruling that allowed more corporate spending on politics and by the prospect of new, well-funded political committees trying to shape the 2012 presidential race.

Pretty cut and dried, right?

Not so much for Jerome Corsi, PhD. From WND:

The author of the best-selling "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible To Be President" charged today the resignation of White House counsel Bob Bauer is the result of his participation in the release of Barack Obama's "Certificate of Live Birth," which he fears would not stand up to the scrutiny of any serious investigation by the FBI, Congress or the media.

And here's Corsi's conspiracy:

But Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., who authored the "Where's the Birth Certificate?" book that debuted at No. 6 on the New York Times best-sellers list after reaching No. 1 several weeks earlier at Amazon.com, said, "I think Bauer's resignation marks the beginning of the Obama eligibility cover-up starting to unwind."

Corsi believes Bauer "felt compelled" to resign because of the growing substance to worries that the eligibility issue will blow up into a full-scale investigation.

"Bauer sent Perkins and Coie attorneys to Honolulu to pick up from the Hawaii Department of Health what he believed would be two certified copies of Obama's 1961 long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate," Corsi said.

"When the White House released to the public the birth certificate in the form of a PDF computer file obviously created on Adobe software and a Xerox copy, Bauer realized the Hawaii DOH had participated in the fraud," Corsi charged.

Corsi said he had been tipped off early in February that a long-form birth document for Obama had been forged and that the document was to be released.

See, the story is that before the long form certificate was released the birthers believed that the long form certificate said something different than the short form released in 2007.

Now that it's known that the long form and the short form tell the same tale, the long form, according to Corsi and the birthers, must be a forgery.

It's all so simple, isn't it?

As a footnote, the birthers at WND are moving to another area of research - Obama's passport.

Take a look:

In this era of tight airport security, the Transportation Safety Administration typically will not allow a passenger to board an airplane if the name printed on the ticket differs from the way it appears on government-issued identification.

Now that the White House has released President Obama's purported long-form birth certificate, a question arises as to why the name on that document does not match the name on his State Department passport.

It says "Barack Hussein Obama II" on the birth certificates but only "Barack Hussein Obama" on the passport!

As the State Department takes the info off of whatever embossed birth certificates are submitted, there's now a question as to why they don't match. From WND:

Presumably, the State Department intends to use the full name presented on the birth certificate as the name presented on the passport.

Since Obama has refused to release his passport records, it is impossible to determine what documents were submitted to the State Department to obtain the passport.

WND: Crazie, crazier, craziest.

The Trib Brain Trust Just Can't Help Itself

Today, I thought I'd try something new. Here's the whole "Sunday Pops" column from today's Tribune-Review:

So, would those arguing that the federal judge who struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage has a "conflict" because he has a gay partner argue that a federal judge with a wife who upheld the ban is similarly conflicted? ... How can the Keystone Research Center's "independent" Budget and Policy Center claim to be "independent" when its parent is an arm of organized labor? ... After years of speculation over whether he was a natural-born U.S. citizen, President Barack Obama finally released his birth certificate indicating he was born in Hawaii. But given Mr. Obama could have nipped the matter in the bud years ago, why did he wait so long to do so? ... Donald Trump is taking credit for forcing the president to release his birth certificate. But he might have a "birther" problem of his own. We're told some tabloid is about to report that Mr. Trump was born on Mars ... or Venus ... or was it Mercury? ... Lest we forget, the whole "birther" controversy was started by supporters of Hillary Clinton after she lost the Democrats' 2008 presidential nomination. So much for the shibboleth that this was a "right-wing operation." [Bold in original.]

A mixture of spin and just plain silly (and one they get right). Let's go point by point.

Point 1 -

So, would those arguing that the federal judge who struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage has a "conflict" because he has a gay partner argue that a federal judge with a wife who upheld the ban is similarly conflicted?

Ok, so I have no problem with this one. They even got the irony quotes right. Only one thing: it's obvious that they're assuming that the hypothetical federal judge in that last phrase is male. (A teensy bit of sexism that should be pointed out.) If she were female then the meaning of the sentence is completely changed, doncha think?

So Let's move on.

Point 2 -

How can the Keystone Research Center's "independent" Budget and Policy Center claim to be "independent" when its parent is an arm of organized labor?

Seeing this on the Scaife-funded Trib, I chuckled. Especially when I found this from Commonwealth Foundation:

Everyone loves to hate "special interests." They spend millions of dollars in electing and lobbying public officials in order to gain political or legislative favor.

So it was no surprise when groups like PennFuture and the Keystone Research Center's Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center joined with Common Cause PA and the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters to attack individuals affiliated with the natural gas industry for giving $2 million in state campaign contributions over the past 10 years. Nor was it surprising that they called for a severance tax to punish this "special interest."

But someone forgot to tell these organizations living in glass houses that they ought not to throw stones.

Indeed, the $2 million in contributions given over 10 years by natural gas interests is dwarfed by the contributions of the labor unions that run the Keystone Research Center's Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (KRC/PBPC). Union political action committees gave $27 million in state races in 2007-08 alone and $60 million over the last three election cycles. Of course these special interests expect special favors in return for their "investments." [Emphasis added for dramatic effect]

How much money has Scaife funneled to the Commonwealth Foundation, the foundation that attacks the KRC for being in the pocket of it's "special interest" donors? About $2 million.

Of course the editorial board writers of the Scaife owned paper would never mention this.

Point 3 -

After years of speculation over whether he was a natural-born U.S. citizen, President Barack Obama finally released his birth certificate indicating he was born in Hawaii. But given Mr. Obama could have nipped the matter in the bud years ago, why did he wait so long to do so?

I want you to note the grammatical lack of clarity of that first sentence before we look at its rhetorical misdirection. Was it Obama who was speculating that he wasn't born in Hawaii? Surely looks that way. But the rhetorical misdirection is the greater sin here. In order for this phrase "Obama finally released his birth certificate indicating he was born in Hawaii" to be true, the official birth certificate released 3 years ago has to be something other than an official birth certificate. All they did was to move the goal posts from "he's not one of us." to "what's he hiding by waiting for so long?"

Except he didn't wait. See what the Trib did there?

Point 4 -

Donald Trump is taking credit for forcing the president to release his birth certificate. But he might have a "birther" problem of his own. We're told some tabloid is about to report that Mr. Trump was born on Mars ... or Venus ... or was it Mercury?

The "on what planet was The Donald born?" is actually a Karl Rove talking point. I heard him use it the other night. Other than that, this is just silly.

Point 5 -

Lest we forget, the whole "birther" controversy was started by supporters of Hillary Clinton after she lost the Democrats' 2008 presidential nomination. So much for the shibboleth that this was a "right-wing operation."

THAT'S RIGHT! It's a lib'rul plot! Spread by the lib'rul media best represented by:

• World Net Daily
• Rush Limbaugh
• Sean Hannity
• Michael Savage
• Jerome Corsi
• Michelle Geller
• Orly Taitz
• Alan Keyes
• G. Gordon Liddy
• Jim Quinn
• Rose Tennant
• Chuck Norris
• And about half (depending on how you slice it) of the GOP.

So of course it's NO RIGHT WING OPERATION! Of course not.

That's just silly.

It will never end

If anyone thinks that President Obama's release of his long form certificate of birth will stop the birthers, think again. Twenty percent of the hits we got on this blog yesterday and so far today are people going to a post we wrote back in August of 2009. How did they get there? Apparently, when you google "obama birth certificate fake" and hit "Images" this comes up as the second image on that search:


It's a fake Kenyan Obama birth certificate -- one that Queen Birther Orly Taitz was shopping around in 2009.

Needless to say, the visitors who come to 2pj from that image don't stick around too long.

President Obama Releases Long Form Birth Certificate

For the birthers:


(Click to enlarge)


(Please hold on to your heads)
UPDATE: Jesus H Christ, Trump is on my teevee taking credit for this. Douchebag. Oh, God! He's saying we have to look at it and see if it's really "real" and now we can get back to the issues. Fucking douchebag. He's saying it's "amazing" that it's "finally materialized." He keeps saying he's honored.

UPDATE 2: Good Lord! Now Trump is pimping his teevee show.

(h/t to Talking Points Memo)

The GOP is The Birther Party

As much as I heartily employ some local conservative republicans' outright rejection of the birther conspiracy theory, I have to point out that the theory, such as it is, is going mainstream GOP.

From Chris Matthews:



He said:

A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States.

The numbers come from this CBS/NYTimes poll (though it's actually 45% and not 47% who "know" Obama wasn't born in the US).

That's still very close to 7 out of 10 republicans who don't know that the President of the United States was born in Hawaii.

Here's a thought: any Republican you meet on the street you should ask them if they're a birther, because chances are, they are.

Any of my Republican friends want to chime in here?

What a sad state of affairs for a once great political party.

Follow-Up On Teh Crazie Birther

World Net Daily (aka "Birther Central") has an exclusive on Theresa Cao - the woman who made a name for herself yesterday in the House Gallery.

The OPJ wrote this up yesterday.

From Birther Central:

The woman who burst out with "except Obama" when New Jersey Democrat Rep. Frank Pallone today read in Congress the Constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural born Citizen" says she felt compelled to let representatives know of the absence of proof for Barack Obama's eligibility.

Theresa Cao, who was arrested by Capitol police, given a court date and then released, told WND in a telephone interview after her release, while she was standing in front of the Hart Office Building near the Capitol, that the only hope for the United States is a return to the faith of the Founding Fathers.

And that direction, she said, is opposite from the one Obama is leading the nation, citing his "socialism," such as a nationalized health-care system and the takeover of private companies including banks, insurance companies and car companies.

Except he's not a socialist, he didn't nationalize the health-care system, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, and there is evidence of his being born in Hawaii. Official evidence. Even Speaker of the House John Boehner agrees:

[NBC's Brian] Williams noted that 12 Republicans are co-sponsoring legislation expressing concern about Mr. Obama's birthplace, and asked Boehner if he would be willing to say, "this is a distraction, I've looked at it to my satisfaction. Let's move on."

"The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there," the speaker responded. "That's good enough for me."

I suspect, however, that that won't be enough for teh crazie Cao:

"Literally if this question of the natural born citizenship, if this question does not get answered, then I am allowing a tyrannical dictator – the spirit of the anti-Christ, the new world order system that has their plans right this second to collapse the U.S. economy, and we know their plan, the new world order system's plan is to literally destroy humanity," she said.

She said "God made sure" that such a message "got out to every single American leader and every leader [now] knows the truth.

"He [Obama] has fought it not only for two years, not only has he fought it pre-election but historically all of his connections, every single connection [has been] blacked out."

Her description of the day's events was permeated with explanations of her belief that the God of the Bible is being abandoned by America, especially under Obama's rule because of his leanings toward "one-world" endeavors, through the United Nations and other channels.

"It's prophesied this new world order system will devastate America and the world, and Satan's plan is to take as many people to hell with him as he can," she said.

"God is saying, 'no way,'" she said.

There's a saying. You gotta dance with the one that brought ya.

These are among the folks who brought Boehner & Co. to power. And while he's willing to admit that the President was born in Hawaii, he's not willing to tell the birthers they are, in fact, wrong to believe otherwise:

Williams asked if Boehner would be willing to express that same message to the dozen Congressional Republicans who don't seem to feel it's good enough for them.

"Brian, when you come to the Congress of the United States, there are 435 of us," Boehner responded. "We're nothing more than a slice of America. People come, regardless of party labels, they come with all kinds of beliefs and ideas. It's the melting pot of America. It's not up to me to tell them what to think."

According to some recent poll data, a sizable chunk of the GOP are birthers:

On President Barack Obama’s birthday, a new CNN/Opinion Research released Wednesday shows 41 percent of Republicans believe Obama was “probably” or “definitely” born in another country.

The poll of 1,018 adults shows 27 percent of Americans believe the president was “probably” or “definitely” born in another country, compared with 71 percent who think he was born in the United States.

Among the 285 self-identified Republicans polled, however, the percentage who think Obama was born outside of the country spikes to 41 percent, with 57 percent believing he was born in the United States.

The GOP - Party of Teh Crazie.