Since no other President has ever been hounded to produce his birth certificate, there must be something different about Obama that would drive all these people crazy like this. I wonder what it is about Obama that is different from every other President? They didn’t even do this to Clinton, and they hated him.
I just can’t figure out what it is, but I’m sure it is right there in front of me.
*** Update ***
Sullivan is priceless today:
I’m tired of these public officials believing they have some right to privacy. They don’t. It’s the price of public office. If you don’t like it, don’t be president. And for goodness’ sake, don’t run for president on a platform of transparency.
So who gets to film the President while he is on the toilet? Will they just pool this?
Warren Terra
Gotta be the ears.
asiangrrlMN
You know, the traditional media is just starting to murmur about racial undertones to this matter. You think they might be onto something? Naaaaaaaaah. It’s because he eats Dijon mustard, bitchez!
Just Some Fuckhead
Duh, have you ever seen a thin and athletic hawaiian?
asiangrrlMN
@Warren Terra: I was actually gonna say that, but then I decided to play the race card.
Colonel Danite
He’s tall? No. He’s male? That’s not it. He’s a Protestant Christian? Naw. I can’t think of a single thing. What could it be?
Balconesfault
it’s the basketball thing. everyone knows that blacks born in America just can’t ball … if here were really American, he’d be a great soccer player
John Cole
@asiangrrlMN: I’m going to have to ask Rick Davis if you played that card from the bottom of the deck.
It is worth reminding yourself daily what assholes the McCain/Palin team were.
schrodinger's cat
He is Vulcan, that’s why. Live long and prosper.
dmsilev
Obama somehow emits a crazification field, which causes all of his opponents to go stark raving mad. See Jack “Parisian sex club” Ryan, Alan “Just plain nuts” Keyes, Hillary “too many examples to mention” Clinton, John “Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber” McCain. We’re now seeing this on a national scale, what with the birthers and things like John Boehner claiming that the government will be buying ice floes in bulk for marooning senior citizens.
Never mind political jiujitsu or supernatural calmness, this is his true superpower.
-dms
Balconesfault
Or marathoning. If he were born in America, instead of Kenya, you know he’d have been a great marathoner.
Billy K
It’s because he’s a muslin, dumbasses!
Michael D.
He is tall.
General Winfield Stuck
It’s kind of a perfect storm of wingnut hell if you think about it. Servile worship to an incompetent dumbass for eight years, who left them with their electoral dick in hand, then an exotic brother with a silver tongue and liberalism in his heart comes along to hand them their electoral asses too. A big load to carry for such little people.
RSA
Obviously it’s because Obama has a parent who was an immigrant. I have it on good authority that another son of immigrant parents, the Scotch-Irish Andrew Jackson, was subjected to a comparably close examination before and during his Presidency. Wha–? That didn’t happen? Oh.
Comrade Jake
Sully’s latest explanation.
You have to wonder if any of his assistants/colleagues over there at The Atlantic has the guts to tell him he’s insulting everyone’s intelligence.
Ash
I think it’s because he’s better at basketball than baseball.
inkadu
It’s the mustard, stupid.
wilfred
You’re forgetting wingnut poetics. The race card can only be called such when it is introduced at the very end of Act II, whose theme “Can’t you people see what’s happening here?” establishes the emotive impact of Act III “Persecuted for Patriotism and selfless devotion to Homeland, nothing more than this”
Comrade Jake
Sorry, trying again with the link to Sully.
Zifnab
Oh please. Let’s not make the mistake that if this was Bobby Jindal in the White House we’d be hearing all about how Indians aren’t real Americans. They called Clinton a drug dealer, a money laundering mob-tied loan shark, a rapist, and a murderer on multiple occasions. That they didn’t float this particular nonsense line doesn’t make this any less about the (D) in front of his name.
Dave
It’s because he can’t bowl.
Warren Terra
OT: cue up the outrage: according to All Things Considered jut now at their meeting tomorrow Prof. Gates plans to drink Red Stripe, a Jamaican beer, and Crowley plans to drink Blue Moon, a Belgian white beer.
Obama will be drinking a Bud Light, which isn’t that appealing but is perhaps less freighted a choice.
Comrade Jake
I’m just surprised that ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome) hasn’t picked up steam as a description of this sickness.
Trinity
This is just a distraction from the impending release of the whitey tape. My sources tell me it will be released any day now. Yep, any day now…
Ash
I’m pretty sure Good Ol’ Bobby doesn’t even think of himself as Indian, so no problem there.
dmsilev
Just for giggles, I took a look at the very first version of the Wikipedia article on Obama, from March 2004 (before the DNC speech, and thus before any serious talk of a Presidential run). The article is here, and says that
So obviously, Wikipedia was in on the conspiracy 5+ years ago.
-dms
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
He claims he’s from Hawaii, a “state” whose existence I have every reason to doubt. I’ve never been there. The photographs supposedly taken there make it look like Heaven, another place whose existence there is no reason to believe in. Photographs are easily doctored. And yes, many people say they’ve been to Hawaii, and my brother claims he lives there; but many people are liars, especially my brother.
Until I’ve seen Hawaii with my own eyes, I see no reason why I should accept that there is such a place. In fact, having never seen Obama with my own eyes, why should I believe in his existence, either? “Obama,” like the fictional archipelago of Hawaii, is- very likely- a plot by Muslim extremists to destroy America. In fact, the evidence of that is a lot stronger than the evidence for Obama and this fantasy Hawaii/Heaven place.
Comrade Jake
@Warren Terra:
Part of me is glad that it’s the cop who’s drinking the froo-froo beer. But Christ Gates appears to be the only one with any friggin taste!
schrodinger's cat
That’s because Obama is trying to maintain his girlish figure like John and his beloved cat, Tunch
Legalize
‘Cause he’s black. Ask Dan Riehl. Black fellas are not American. Even the good ones.
Bad Horse's Filly
I can’t decide if I wan this asinine nonsense to end now, or if I want it to continue until we get some idiot poll that says 48% of Americans believe Obama is not a US citizen. Then have his team whip out the holy grail, Long Form Birth Certificate, just to quell the rumors. At which point no one with half a brain cell will ever believe anything the 28%-ers say ever again.
CalD
I’d call it a clear-cut case of not having had time to find much else to hate (yet… that they’re able to admit to hating on cable TV). It’s just hate looking for a reason. We saw plenty of that in the Clinton administration and to be fair, the Bush administration as well.
Admittedly, tens of millions were spent employing large staffs of people to spend all their time doing nothing but looking for things to hate about the Clintons, whereas the last administration offered an embarrassment of low-hanging fruit. But that still didn’t stop it from getting a little silly at times. The Skull and Bones thing comes to mind.
ronin122
I think I got it: it’s because he has those two colored kids of his and for once they’re legitimate. Not like the great and wonderful Jefferson (Thomas, not George, though I guess we can the official White House song to be “movin’ on up”). Kinda goes with marrying a colored woman. Why doesn’t he stick with his own race? Err…half race. Get it? Because he’s a Halfrican mulatto Kenyan Chirstian muslim atheist marxist Hitler. Excepting the last line….wow, I struggled even coming up with that, how do freepers and other racist assholes make it so natural?
Ash
asiangrrlMN
@John Cole: Yep. You caught me. I guess I’m not as good a card sharp/shark as I thought! Yeah, Team Palin/McCain really did suck that badly, didn’t they?
@Zifnab: Of course it’s because he’s a Democrat. However, it’s also because he’s black. The two are not mutually exclusive. In addition, this birfer nonsense has made it all the way to Congress. I wasn’t as attuned to politics back then, but did the Congress actually put forth all the nonsense about Clinton, or was it restricted to the fringe?
Balconesfault
Actually, I think that Obama’s birth certificate was altered … to show that he was born on August 4, 1961, instead of August 4, 1959. If the birthers are going to make a conspiracy theory, they should at least make it a little more byzantine.
Just Some Fuckhead
They’ll prolly get sotted and loudly sing Irish folk songs until the wee hours of the morning and then brawl with the capitol police. Fucking Irish.
Ugh
I’m going to a family reunion this weekend in the “heartland” and god help me if one of my relatives (distant or close) brings up this birther non-sense…well, let’s just say my aim in horseshoes isn’t what it once was.
schrodinger's cat
OT: My friend who lives in Durham, NC was at Obama’s townhall meeting this afternoon.
eric k
I think we need to update the famous quote from Atwater, now it would read:
“50 years ago you shouted nigger, 30 years ago you talked about States Rights, now you ask to see the president’s birth certificate”
Ash
@Warren Terra: Bud Light? I like how Obama hates his Irishness just as much as his whiteness.
Napoleon
@asiangrrlMN:
” I wasn’t as attuned to politics back then, but did the Congress actually put forth all the nonsense about Clinton, or was it restricted to the fringe?”
Are you kidding, congressman Dan Burton took to shooting pumpkins in his back yard with his pistol as a method to prove that Bill Clinton was in on the murder of Vince Foster.
Having said that I think a few more of them are joining in on the insanity and I think the press has finally woke up to how fringe and insane some elected members of the Rep. party are.
Legalize
There’s 2 things I can’t stand. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures; and the fucking white Dutch.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Ash:
“However, I was also drunk for a large portion of my time there…”
There you go. You were drunk. For all you know, the plane just pretended to fly you to Hawaii, but actually set you down in Florida. (I’ve been there, so I know it’s real. And while I was drunk most of the time I was there, I don’t think I was drunk enough to imagine being that hot.)
wilfred
Oh say Kenya see, that the guy is half white
and that he’ll still be here, on Chee-to-Munch-ing night
While his distase of fear, and his bad taste in beer
proved to all who could hear, that he sure was born here.
I like birthers and crackpot consipracy theories, they break up the monotony.
ksecus
I remember when they searched thru Hillarys underwear drawer during the clinton presidency assault.
Repubs are hell on people personal lives.
RedKitten
Why, that’s right. Don’t forget, if you take out all of the black people, Obama actually lost the election and/or is hated by all of America, remember? So all of those black people are totally skewing the picture of what Americans REALLY think of Obama.
/wingnut
Jody
Shorter birfers:
Blackity-black-black. Black.
…Black.
Rick Taylor
Actually, this is the part of Andrew Sullivan’s post that made me laugh out loud. Why should Obama show the original copy of his birth certificate?
Hehe, yes of course, because these are all reasonable people! True, they weren’t satisfied by the official digital copy released by the state of Hawaii, nor by the testimony of Hawaii state officials nor by people being allowed to inspect the original, nor by the announcement of his birth by local papers at the time. But if you just gave them that original piece of paper (assuming such a thing exists), all those critics would go, well shucky darn, he really was born in Hawaii! I guess we were wrong. Yup that would certainly be the end of it.
Lev
I think it’s partly the race, but also partly the fact that the wingnuts cannot admit that they lost and are intent on finding some reason to set aside the results. If Obama’s a damn foreigner, then it doesn’t count, right?
Then again, so much of the wingularity is about denying things that pretty much everybody else finds uncontroversial. Seems only natural that denying that Obama won fair and square would be at the top of their list.
TR
So who gets to film the President while he is on the toilet? Will they just pool this?
Does the president have soft stool? The American people have a right to know! What is Obama hiding?
Trinity
@schrodinger’s cat: What did she take away from it?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@schrodinger’s cat:
“OT: My friend who lives in Durham, NC was at Obama’s townhall meeting this afternoon.”
Or so this friend tells you, anyway. But how do you know that this townhall meeting really occurred? Do you have any real, first-hand proof of the existence of Obama? Can you truly rule out the possibility that Obama is, in fact, a fictional identity forged by Al Qaeda in a nefarious plot to bring Islamofascism to America?
I doubt that you can. I, for one, have never seen this Obama person. He has no birth certificate, and he was supposedly born on islands that only allegedly exist. I think one would have to be blind not to see the gaps in such an unlikely story.
Comrade Jake
Heh. Check Cole’s update.
One does wonder if there’s even an ounce of Sully that knows he’s full of shit on this score.
Martin
Obama is only dragging this out to keep the attention away from his murder of Vince Foster.
Ugh
I think it’s partly the race, but also partly the fact that the wingnuts cannot admit that they lost and are intent on finding some reason to set aside the results.
ACORN!
TR
Yup that would certainly be the end of it.
Sure. They wouldn’t go Full Metal Kerning on that document in the slightest. No sirree.
tammanycall
Forget Kennedy – I want to see Michelle Malkin’s, Orly Taiz’s, and Glen Beck’s. In fact everyone who gives credence to the wingnuts should voluntarily submit themselves to the Birthers’ nutcase standards. And they should know that no matter how much proof they produce, I will demand more.
LD50
The real question is, as Sully gets more involved in the Birther movement, what color will he change his blog to?
Arlene
I just realized that in the minds of Republicans, in particular the lunatic fringe, the only elections that count are the ones where their candidate is elected. You all remember all the horrible stuff they said about the Clintons, Of course, when one of their candidates, Caribou Barbie, takes some heat they whine she’s being picked on because she’s a woman. So here we go with all this birther nonsense and no amount of verification with satisfy these loons. I’m just glad to see Glenn Beck taking some heat for his ridiculous comments.
Comrade Jake
@Rick Taylor:
That shall now be known as “The Lou Dobbs Defense”. Sort of like an insanity plea.
C Nelson Reilly
Any chance we’ll hear the words “Don’t tase me bro!” at the beer fest tomorrow?
Laertes
Sully: “Because it would make it go away and it’s easily done.”
Serious question: Why on Earth would the President want the birthers to go away? Does Sully think they’re hurting him? Has he seen the clips of GOP reps squirming under birfer questioning?
The August break is going to be a hell of a lot of fun. Every gooper townhall is going to be crashed by birfer wackjobs.
RedKitten
After the bullshit he went through over his choice of mustard, I’m thinking that Obama’s decided to go as inoffensively, blandly American as possible. It’s the top seller in the U.S., so it greatly reduces the odds of anybody calling him an elitist over it.
Either that, or he just has really bad taste in beer, which is always possible as well.
The Saff
Common sense is not so common any more.
Crashman06
Well, looks like Sully’s clamped down on this issue like an obstinate pitbull. Expect to see a lot more of this nonsense.
cj
@RSA: So I guess this disqualify Mitt Romeny since his father was born in Mexico.
Wait… what about Bobby Jindal both his parents are immigrants, so clearly he has no chance at the presidency.
Wait… what the majority of American population made up of immigrants?
It seems like there are so little left of “true Americans” in America nowadays.
John S.
He always does. Behold:
Andrew Sullivan – Birfer.
Tom65
For Xenu’s sake Sully, drop the Trig bullshit.
Martin
I think he’s trying to make his guests look like they have good taste, which really requires scraping the bottom of the barrel in this case.
Anne Laurie
Teh Preznident is SYLAR! ! ! And Tim Kring is a prophet…
Eric K. wins today’s internets.
jl
Let’s ask for all the birfers’ proof of citenzenship, including birth certificates, fitting whatever criteria that we like, and will be free to change as we like.
After all, they could be a sinister movement infested with foreigners, aiming to undermine the lawful democratically elected government of our great United States.
Me, I demand birth certificates with footprints (not any old footprints, but ‘vault copy’ EXFIT ‘certified’ footprints. Because I remember my copy of my ‘vault copy’ BLINGEE certified birth certificate had footprints.
I remember it vividly, before throwing it in an old box someplace that still resides someplace (maybe?) on the old family homestead. But I don’t have to show mine. Because. Also. I’m good and noble and they are bad. Besides.
Xenos
Sullivan is walking through the entire dispute this afternoon. Right now he is caught up to September 2008, trying to figure out what exact document Factcheck.org was looking at. There are at least three complete cycles of stupid statements and rebuttals to go through before he figures out what is going on.
Crashman06
@John S.: What the hell does Sully expect him to do? Ship the original to everyone in the country who wants to personally handle it? I mean, come on.
jl
I will also mention that I just decided that I very definitely remember that the footprints on my birth certificate had the kerning appropriate for the technology of the time. I want birth certificates with appropriate kerning, as judged by whatever who whoever will find excuses and obscure mumbojumbo reasons to doubt whatever they see.
jenniebee
These people didn’t need a black president to make them crazy, they were crazy when he got here. They’ve been told for almost thirty years now that God’s plan for America is a permanent Republican majority, for the last fifteen years that Democrats are “congenital liars” dragging the country into the depths of degradation through the Power of the Clenis, and for the last seven that we are now locked in a multi-planar existential conflict and our only hope is a strong Godly deciderer who will protect us all from our enemies. The birthers picked up with Obama pretty much where they left off with a Bubba from Arkansas. Remember, Clinton was accused of rape and serial murder because it was politically convenient to accuse him.
Ash
@Xenos: Seriously. He apparently spent the last couple of weeks going on some sort of bender. His brain has turned into semi-mush.
RedKitten
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winnah!
Even if Obama invited every last birfer to the White House to personally handle and inspect his original birth certificate, you can bet Sarah Palin’s ill-gotten designer handbag that they would immediately declare it to be fraudulent. If someone did find a nurse or doctor who remembers Obama being born at that hospital, that medical professional would immediately receive the Graeme Frost treatment. Hell, if someone found a goddamn videotape of Barack coming out of his mother’s woo-hoo, with the then-Governor of Hawaii, William Quinn, cutting the fucking umbilical cord, they’d declare it a fake.
Nothing will ever satisfy these people. Nothing. Ever.
So Sully is being an utter fool by pretending otherwise.
Mr Furious
I love Sully’s update…Factcheck.org got to handle, examine and photograph Obama’s official copy, but he’s annoyed no one ELSE gets to examine it too? When will it stop?
Does he want Obama to fucking tack it up on a telephone pole, or what?
Comrade Jake
More Sully.
This is the same guy who’s contending that if they just have the Hawaii official show the original, all the questions will go away. You know, because people won’t ask why, for example, CNN and Fox was allowed to interview Dr. Fukino, but not WorldNetDaily? No, nobody would ever do that. I am sure of that. 100 percent.
John S.
@Crashman06:
That is the official demand of the Birfers.
They want to see Obama’s birth certificate with their own eyes and touch it with their own hands.
I’m sure that is where the list of demands will end…
wilfred
Treating Sullivan seriously is the same as treating the birthers seriously. What’s the point?
Hell, we’re all birthers now. It could become a new trend – producing birth certificates, waving them around, rallying around them, wrapping ourselves in them.
It’s about identity, and epistemology, and God consciousness, really.
Joe Lisboa
For a gentleman of the homosexual persuasion (which, for the record, I think is a perfectly reasonable and fine persuasion to possess), Sully sure has a bizarre fixation on Palin’s vagina and what it produces. The Trig stuff was always political anathema and beside the point: figures he’d latch onto it from the get-go. I don’t know where he’s planning on taking this gay Lou Dobbs schtick, but he’s not helping anybody. Or anything. Also.
Keith
Sully’s getting the birther arguments mixed up with what Obama has vs. what Hawaii has/had. Obama has a new copy of the certificate of live birth (short-form), while what Hawaii has/had on file is the full, long-form birth certificate. Birthers (at least the ones I could stomach enough to read) complain that the live birth cert is invalid because (they claim) the DPS wouldn’t take it. This is actually another bit of confusion, as the DPS will take it if it has a non-printed seal on it (at least that’s what happened when I got mine; I had a short-short-form without the seal, got rejected, and needed to return with my original). This is what Obama has, but not what the birthers want.
What the birthers want is going to be whatever Obama does not have – currently, the full, original long-form that Hawaii keeps/kept in a locked vault. I can’t tell if Sully knows the difference (and maybe they do it differently in the UK…very possible, so he wouldn’t necessarily know the diff). However, he’s getting mixed up in the catch-22 trap and only added to the hysteria.
Just Some Fuckhead
Look for Sully to piss in a few more corners before eating shit on this.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I’m still waiting for conclusive proof of the existence of Hawaii. Until I’ve seen something more reliable than the evidence at hand, I’m not accepting it. I won’t accept Hawaii’s existence unless and until I’m personally flown out there and accommodated in a sumptuous hotel for the rest of my life, at taxpayer expense.
Joe Lisboa
Why won’t NASA let every blogger in the world handle the original moon-landing footage? I think you know the answer … MOONSPIRACY.
John S.
Fixed that for you, Krista.
jwb
@Crashman06
Why the hell Sully thinks that is the “original” rather than an official copy (which every certificate of live birth is) is beyond me.
Zam
Off topic but the format changed again for me now the ads on the left are covering up part of the text for firefox
Ed in NJ
Can’t we just make a deal for Obama to trade his birth certificate to W in exchange for W’s National Guard records?
Svensker
Sully is often a silly ass. This is one of those times.
That is all.
Bill Arnold
I’ve been assuming that one explanation is that Obama (and maybe his staff too) is toying with the Wingnut-right, a “bring out your crazies” play. Seems somewhat dangerous due to the real possibility of assassination-by-stirred-up-wingnut.
Joe Lisboa
Can’t we just make a deal for Obama to trade his birth certificate to W in exchange for W’s
National GuardBrooks and Dunn records?Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Joe Lisboa:
“Why won’t NASA let every blogger in the world handle the original moon-landing footage? I think you know the answer … MOONSPIRACY.”
Exactly. And how do we even know the Moon really exists, anyway? Sure, we see a big bright-looking thing in the night sky some nights of the month, but how do we know that isn’t simply projected into the sky? (Ancient texts and documents could easily have been doctored to include references to this fictitious celestial orb.)
Until I’ve personally walked on Moon, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to call its existence into question.
And don’t tell me that projecting its appearance up there is impossible, and that those projectors don’t exist. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
shoutingattherain
@Crashman06:
I’d settle for the National Archives in DC. Right next to that Constitution thingy. Think that would be enough?
jl
Sullivan was goof ass on the Palin birth controversy, and he is goof ass on the birfers.
I laughed my ass off a few weeks ago when he printed a reader’s e-mail noting that the unlikely tale of Trig’s birth (it is Trig isn’t it, I do not have time to keep track of nonsense) was most likely just Palin making up a tall tale about the travails of the birth. Because, why not? One thing we are most sure about is that she loves to glorify herself, and is not overly careful about the truth when doing so.
In my very humble opinion, Palin telling a tale tale is obviously the most likely explanation, and which occurred to me about five seconds after I saw pictures of an obviously pregnant Palin taken before her last birth.
But for Sullivan, some one with common sense had to mail it in to him, and he decided it was, maybe, likely enough to print, as an interesting hypothesis.
Fergodsakes. Sullivant has done very good things with his blog. But to paraphrase something Franklin said about Adams (who was also a thoughtful conservative): in some things and in some ways, he is simply mad.
Ugh
Look for Sully to piss in a few more corners before eating shit on this.
At some point he will figure out that Obama has released all the info necessary to put this story to rest and there’s nothing else to be released. He finally accepted that the actual explanation for the whole Trig nonsense was that Palin basically made up the story that her waterbroke before giving that speech in Texas, rather than some grand conspiracy about who was Trig’s father.
My bet is by the end of the week he’ll get it.
jwb
Xenos
I think this is the only thing that makes any sense. On the other hand, didn’t he go through the birth certificate nonsense in real-time during the election cycle?
Comrade Jake
@Joe Lisboa:
The guy was really, really worked up over Palin being selected as VP. Rightfully so. Her selection represented everything that was wrong about the GOP, everything that Sully hates. Many of us were with him on that score.
But for Sully that morphed into this obsession over the weird circumstances surrounding Trig’s birth. He just would not let it go, way way past the point where the bulk of the evidence clearly indicated it was her child.
Now he’s trying to apply the same “logic” he used to justify that obsession to the Obama birth certificate. It’s pretty ugly and clear to everyone who reads his blog. Maybe one day he’ll figure that out.
Ugh
“Trig’s mother”, I mean.
August J. Pollak
I love how Sullivan boasts how he’s asking about the birth certificate “for the same reason I asked for Trig’s medical records” as if anyone with common sense respected him for that either.
Anne Laurie
Don’t be picking on Provincetown; the tourism business this year is lousy enough already. Andrew “I (heart) The Bell Curve” Sullivan has had Intermittent Mushy-Brain Syndrome for at least the last 25 years.
DougJ
I’m tired of these public officials believing they have some right to privacy. They don’t. It’s the price of public office. If you don’t like it, don’t be president. And for goodness’ sake, don’t run for president on a platform of transparency.
What fucking bullshit.
wilfred
When a handpicked Marine escort carries It on a purple velvet pillow to the 50 yard line at halftime of the Super Bowl, after Michael Jackson’s corpse is carried off, and the combined voices of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the New Christy Minstrels and re-assembled cast of TOMMY join in a rendition of See me. Feel me. Touch me., led by Elton John and Michael Jackson’s corpse
After that, the One – the man or woman selected from millions of applicants to represent all birfers – will ascend the stage and eat the document, like the bad guy who ate the Blake painting in that Jodie Foster picture.
Only then.
Rick Taylor
I love how Sullivan chops the legs out from under his own argument. First, if Obama would produce the birth certificate, it would end the whole matter, and everyone would be satisfied. Alright; Factcheck was allowed to inspect it. Ohhhhhh, now it’s even worse; why is he letting factcheck inspect it and not me?
This became in the issue in the first place not because Obama covered up the matter, but because he tried to put it to rest by making the electronic version publicly available. That’s when the birthers started saying it was a forgery; it made the situation worse. Hell, who out there has their birth certificate up electronically for anyone to inspect? And yet now “reasonable” conservatives are saying Obama is fueling this by not being forthcoming. it’s utterly insane.
Who should get the birth certificate? Someone with the resources and authority to rule on its authenticity of course. Someone who could settle the matter for good Someone like, oh I don’t know, the state of Hawaii maybe?
I keep thinking Republicans couldn’t possibly get any more insane, and they keep proving me wrong.
kay
The document demand was always doomed to be incomplete, because there’s no requirement, and consequently no person or entity who validates the document, and verifies that the requirement has been met.
Obama actually tried to solve that, by providing the governmental custodian of the document to attest that it is what it purports to be, but he’s still missing the state-sanctioned person on the other end, so he can’t close the circle of officialdom.
It’s why I think the point is not the answer but to keep asking the question.
Sullivan’s a fool for falling for it. The demand fails the “good faith” test easily, and the logic test too.
BDeevDad
Letter I sent Sully:
Rick Taylor
What Sullivan doesn’t get is this story isn’t being fueled by Obama withholding documents. This story was and is being fueled by him being forthcoming. Putting the electronic version of the birth certificate is what got the conspiracy mongers started. The more Obama attempts to satisfy their demands, the bigger the story will get. The reason it’s so big now is because he has been so forthcoming.
Zifnab
@asiangrrlMN:
The Gingrich-Era Whitehouse probes are legendary. They investigated his Christmas Card List, they investigated the licensing of his pet cat, they investigated his sex life extensively even before Monicagate. These were formal congressional inquiries with full subpeona power (back when that meant something) and millions in funding designed to fly people around the country investigating even the faintest whiff of Presidential impropriety.
You need to go back and read up on it. The investigation of President Clinton was an epic affair. Saying they “went into office trying to impeach the President” doesn’t even begin to touch the surface of what was going on in the early 90s.
demkat620
I think I need some down time until people on the internet and tv are sane again.
Oh, wait…
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Rick Taylor:
“Who should get the birth certificate? Someone with the resources and authority to rule on its authenticity of course. Someone who could settle the matter for good Someone like, oh I don’t know, the state of Hawaii maybe?”
How do you even know there is such a place? And if the place doesn’t exist, how could it have officials who could verify anything?
Rick Taylor
Obama should be forced to make the original copy of his birth certificate available to anyone who wants to inspect it at any time. Just like McCain had to.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Without an authentic birth certificate from an authentic state, I see no reason to believe Obama was born at all…
TummySticks
Comment cookie get!
Thlayli
Well, they couldn’t pull this particular move on him in ’92, because his mother was still alive at the time.
Anne Laurie
Levi Johnston. D’oh! Keep up with your nutball popcult rumors, moonbats.
Actually I kinda liked the rumor that Palin’s cross-continental race back to the AIP Vaterland was a more-or-less deliberate attempt to ensure that her Special Snowflake didn’t survive delivery. All the “pro-life” street cred, and none of the tediousness of raising a Downs Syndrome child! But Ockham’s Razor argues for the “She Made It Up, As Usual” thesis. Not that Friar Ockham is ever a friend to the Palinites…
Tsulagi
Maybe Sullivan can be a bipartisan uniter. Both Obama and Palin can give him a middle finger. In public.
Birther tards, that’s what the country needs.
nepat
As mentioned above, this is all cover for Sullivan making an ass of himself on the issue of Trig Palin’s birth – where, for reasons known only to him, he strangely insisted Sarah Palin prove to him that she actually gave birth to her child. He took a ton of heat for it, so now he’s going to subject us all to Documentation Requirements for Public Officials. Makes him appear magnanimous and consistent and all integrity-ish.
Sullivan is the head of a coin whose tail is Camille Paglia. He’s a liberal who thinks he’s conservative, and she’s a conservative who thinks she’s a liberal. And both of them are birfers.
Anne Laurie
Depends on which orifice those middle fingers are inserted into, doesn’t it?
kay
For example, Brick Oven Bill thinks a general in the armed forces should validate Obama’s birth certificate. But a general in the armed forces has no more authority to validate Obama’s birth certificate than I do. Or you, really.
May as well ask the lady at the dry cleaners, or Andrew Sullivan.
Any authority to announce that this requirement has been met is made-up, because they invented the requirement.
LD50
And once he confirmed it, all of Wingnuttia, including BOB, would say that the general just couldn’t be trusted, that he was just sucking up to/afraid of the Obama administration.
(And it goes without saying the general would HAVE to be white to even be taken that seriously.)
jenniebee
@Zifnab: Not only was the Congress thoroughly and wholly involved, the WaPo spent six years investigating Whitewater, using it as a hook to report nonstop that no criminal activity had been found… so far.
slag
Totally nailed it.
It’s so easy to see why Sullivan hated Palin so much. They’re both narcissistic drama queens of the highest order. Neither could distinguish between public and private issues. And both loved themselves a good conspiracy theory. I can only assume that’s why people find them interesting. Personally, I find them both extremely tiring. Wake me when these people get over themselves.
BDeevDad
Another conservative signed on to the birther movement and gave Orly Taitz some TV time.
Colbert Is a Proud Member of the “Birther” Movement
scav
Most of the birfers would accept the second coming of jeebus on faith – to be consistent, they should go all GI-Thomas and jam their tazers into the side of Christ to see if he’s really dead or not after the proverbial 3 days. Not that I’m holding my breath for consistency from that lot.
BDeevDad
Forgot to add since she seems to not understand satire, maybe Colbert could verify the birth certificate.
Joe Lisboa
Comrade Jake: I totally concur. That’s almost precisely my take on Sully’s obsession(s).
kay
@LD50:
I don’t have any reason to think a general in the armed forces knows anything more about birth certificates than Andrew Sullivan does.
There’s one governmental official who validates birth certificates, although not for this purpose, because there’s no requirement, and she did that.
Obama was thinking rationally again. His mistake.
It’s like making a national public request for a passport when he travels from one state to another. Who to hand it to. I’ll stamp it. What the hell. I’m as good as anyone else.
randiego
Fuck Sullivan. Take a hint dude, you’re GAY. They HATE you.
Pete
Sully’s really fucking losing it. His very next post on the topic has a picture of… the Obama campaign presenting the hard copy.
Admittedly he only did it to factcheck.org, but what the fuck does Sully want, a guy live on the Glenn Beck show, or a copy in the damn Smithsonian. Sully’s rather dumb query –
“So the Obama campaign has the original, has allowed factcheck.org to look at it, but won’t let anyone else? Or am I missing something?”
It’s at this point that the “just like Trig’s birth certificate” or whatever asinine attempt at “I piss on everybody, so it’s ok” starts to insult everyone’s intelligence. HE’S RELEASED THE ORIGINAL ALREADY…
Or am I missing something?
Rick Taylor
Would that make a difference? Presumably she was complicit if a false announcement of his birth was put in a paper.
kay
@Rick Taylor:
I don’t know about Hawaii, but where I live, birth announcements are not submitted by parents. The local paper picks them up like they pick up the previous evening’s police blotter, grand jury indictments, and lawsuit filings, and prints them.
They went to a signed consent to publish last year.
valdivia
wow. I really think with the latest Sulli really has totally lost it.
Terry Ott
Oh, I don’t know why he’d be the only one “hounded”. I’m sure there are multiple reasons and nuances within the reasons.
Maybe no one before him put some birth records “off limits”. Whaddaya think? Maybe no one before had even waited to be asked; maybe others just volunteered to produce such things for the historical record. Could be.
Chester Arthur pulled a fast one on his way to becoming VP, then PORTUS by chance, and got away with not being a natural born citizen. Guess he ruined it for everyone else.
Rick Taylor
@Terry Ott:
Let me know when you’re able to personally inspect McCain’s original birth certificate.
kay
@valdivia:
He’s a maverick, alright. I can’t wait for the whining on how he’s being persecuted for speaking truth to power. Irrelevant 1st Amendment lecture, up next.
Does he know he sounds like Sarah Palin.
Mnemosyne
@RedKitten:
As an ex-Chicagolander, let me assure you that the problem is that he has terrible taste in beer. We all do. I don’t know why.
Lev
Sullivan’s been all over Obama for the last couple of days. On practically every subject. At this point, by Friday he’ll look at this:
kay
@Pete:
Because Andrew Sullivan is an idiot, and doesn’t have a brain in his head.
It’s not “the original”. It can’t be “the original” because the site he linked says it is signed by the CURRENT registrar of records. It’s a certified copy of a birth certificate, like I have.
I swear to god. He’s a moron. He couldn’t work at the DMV, let alone have a national retard platform.
He posted this morning that Hawaii has the original. Now he thinks it’s in Chicago.
gnomedad
@shoutingattherain:
Yes, please. Part of a National Day of Celebration of the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. Parades and fireworks for the Grand Opening.
Hugh
Sullivan is a dick. He just is. He makes these reactive statements all the time. Narcissist.
The Other Steve
I don’t see the logic behind making this go away. It’s win-win for Democrats to irritate the birthers and make them more vocal and strident in public.
In fact I think I might go to my local Rep’s town hall and say I’m Doug Jones and I have a question.
Dusty
According to Dave Weigel: Parents and relatives don’t, and didn’t, get to place birth announcements in the Honolulu Advertiser or the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. As a Star-Bulletin employee explained to WorldNetDaily, the editors “print what we receive from the Department of Health Vital Statistics System,” and did so in 1961. And the Advertiser worked the same way.
El Cid
How do they expect all us to believe this Moon landing shit when all I’ve ever seen is old film and videotapes of old guys talking?
When is someone going to deliver an original Moon rock to my door so that I can verify it with my basement chemical toy test kit?
kay
@Dusty:
Thanks. I thought so. It looks like something they’d pick up, because it’s just basic info.
People here got bent out of shape because they printed births to unmarried parents. The names. I’m betting there was more of that reluctance to publish in 1961.
cursorial
@gnomedad
and now I’m picturing a traveling show, on tour through swing states in October 2010, with the original under glass and birthers lined up to see it and explain which features make it clearly a forgery.
wilfred
Thank you. I used to wonder if it was some sort of ‘cultural cringe’ that allowed this gasbag to attain his position.
El Cid
@Dusty: And I suppose they want us to think that the Hawaii Department of Vital Statistics wasn’t run by Bolsheviks?
Nellcote
I don’t ever want to hear Sully EVER compare gay equality to the civil rights movement again if he can’t see the racism behind the birthers. He doesn’t have the right.
kay
@wilfred:
If he’s going to be this sloppy and stupid, he can’t validate that anyone meets any requirement for anything.
Let’s all be thankful he doesn’t have a job that requires careful reading.
Nellcote
@Warren Terra:
>Crowley plans to drink Blue Moon, a Belgian white beer.
Blue Moon Belgian White is a shitty beer brewed by Coors.
Nellcote
@The Other Steve:
>I don’t see the logic behind making this go away.
I worry that they’re stockpiling guns & ammo.
Neo
Maybe we can get a 3-way release, Trig’s long form BC, Obama’s long form BC and John Kerry’s SF-180
Enquiring Minds Want To Know
Ash Can
@Just Some Fuckhead:
If they did that, they should be canonized.
@eric k: I second Anne Laurie. Win, win, win and WIN.
As for why the birthers want to see Obama’s birth certificate, and not any other prez’s…hmm. Ya got me there. Exotic name? Eisenhower and the Roosevelts should have that covered. Exotic parentage? We’ve been over that too. Hyde Park? Nah, UofC economists have been worshipped in DC for years. Think, think, think… I’ve got it! The guy grew up in Hawaii, but ended up in Chicago. Nobody in their right mind would settle for Chicago’s climate after getting used to Hawaii. The birthers don’t think he was born in Kenya, they think he was born in another fucking galaxy. ::cue spooky music::
Warren Terra
@ Nellcote #52
I wasn’t making an aesthetic judgement about the value of the beers involved (well, except for Bud Light); I was wondering whether the race-baiters would fixate on Prof. Gates choosing a Jamaican beer while Sgt. Crowley chose a white beer.
sparky
the posters above who pointed out the resemblances between Palin and Sullivan are spot on. the only difference is that for some reason the educated classes seem to think that a self-indulgent twit who apparently cannot be bothered to decide if an argument is true so long as it is presented with a nice bow on it (see Tim’s post) is somehow worth paying attention to even though he’s wrong or irrelevant most of the time.
so who is the greater fool? the Sullivan reader or the Palin supporter? remember, only one of them THINKS they are sophisticated.
incidentally, i give the blog’s owner a pass. he has to keep up his blog slogan somehow, and reading Sully is as good a way as any.
sparky
@eric k: win. also.
ps: whycome even after posting the edit function is disabled? is this something new or was i asleep when the memo was passed around?
kay
@sparky:
Writing on health care is difficult. It takes specialized, specific knowledge or the effort and will required to find that knowledge.
It isn’t like opining on “freedom” or “liberty” or “equality”, not that there’s anything wrong with opining on those things, but you can’t contribute anything useful without an informed opinion on health care, and Sullivan hasn’t done any of the work required.
It doesn’t lend itself to broad principle, as we all found out, now that a lot of us think our non-system has failed.
I feel about health care like I did about the economic crisis. That pundits like Sullivan were suddenly faced with having to KNOW something, and they just didn’t. If he had a measure of humility he would either learn something about the subject, or link to people who know something.
schrodinger's cat
I iz home and I need a cookie.
Comrade Darkness
@asiangrrlMN: I wasn’t as attuned to politics back then, but did the Congress actually put forth all the nonsense about Clinton, or was it restricted to the fringe?
If the fringe includes congressional representative Dan Burton who invited the press to his yard to shoot a melon in proof of Hillary killing Vince Foster, then, I guess, yeah, you could say it was limited to the fringe.
I really don’t think it’s worse this time around, just that we all blocked out parts of the past to retain our sanity.
Comrade Darkness
These were formal congressional inquiries with full subpeona power (back when that meant something) and millions in funding designed to fly people around the country investigating even the faintest whiff of Presidential impropriety.
Which is all well and good, honestly, as long as they do that to all presidents, all the time. Suddenly Bush gets in there, lies his ass off and pisses all over congress’ authority and they just beg and plead for him to screw them over again tomorrow, pretty please with sugar on it. The 101st Flying Kerners sure couldn’t spot an elementary school-quality crap document regarding Niger yellowcake, now could they?
neal peart
Damn if Sullivan isn’t a self-righteous little bitch who has such piques and fits of anger dismay.
schrodinger's cat
My friend who went to Obama’s townhall in NC this afternoon,
was impressed with his grasp of the issues and at how unscripted and free-flowing the whole event was.
PurpleGirl
Remember that all those investigations into the Clintons cost some 40 Million dollars… 40 Million dollars. The party of fiscal responsibility indeed.
OriGuy
@RedKitten:
He’s probably just cleaning out the stuff left by the previous occupant.
James
I still want to see Dubya’s birth certificate.
Scuffletuffle
Scruffy McSnufflepuss keeps making me spit out my coffee…
malta
yo quiero galleta