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They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

People are complicated. Love is not.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

He really is that stupid.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

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You are here: Home / More Fodder for the Birthers

More Fodder for the Birthers

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He’s not Kenyan, he’s Irish:

A small Irish village is pulling out all the stops and making sure it’s spotless in anticipation of one of its most famous sons.

Moneygall in County Offaly is getting a facelift, as the rural village prepares to welcome the most powerful man in the world, Barack Obama, next month.

The impending visit to Ireland by the U.S. President has transformed the appearance of Moneygall.

President Obama’s great, great, great grandfather came from Moneygall and the president plans to swing by to his ancestral home during a two-day visit to Ireland.

Honestly don’t know which is worse.

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  1. 1.

    JGabriel

    John Cole @ Top:

    Honestly don’t know which is worse.

    I honestly didn’t know there was a place called Moneygall. It sounds like it should be a haven for banksters and other crooked financiers.

    .

  2. 2.

    handy

    O’Bama, the secret Mick! Was it any surprise Bono loved this guy during the campaign. Damn you Irish usurpers.

  3. 3.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    Can I just say O’bama here and get it out of the way?

    Edit:Too late!

  7. 7.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    “Honestly don’t know which is worse.”

    Oh, come on. Anyone can be at least 1/365th Irish, if they want to be. On March 17th, every year.

    The Irish are generous that way. Generous to a fault.

  8. 8.

    lamh34

    Does it make me an O-bot if I’m really looking forward to this trip the most. I think it’s cute that this town and another town were actually “fighting” over which town was truly “O’bama’s” ancestral home..

    I still remember the song that the Irish group sang during the campaign. “There’s no one as Irish as Ba-rack O-bam”

  9. 9.

    Emma

    Is it sane that I’m having a fit of the giggles? it’s wonderfully funny! Once he steps down as President of the U.S. he can reclaim Irish citizenship and run for President of Ireland!

    edit: I’m running on four hours of sleep in the last 72 hours. don’t mind me.

  10. 10.

    RossinDetroit

    Brings to mind the little noticed film The Matchmaker, which had Janeane Garofalo, and Jay Sanders as an American pol traveling to Ireland to find a politically necessary spouse.

  13. 13.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    During the 2008 campaign, I thought that he and Biden should have been called O’Biden. The fact that he is part Irish just reinforces my belief.

  19. 19.

    JGabriel

    @hildebrand:

    Didn’t some enlightened folks in the 19th century consider the Irish as non-white?

    19th C.? You can find some old rich (Ancien Riche?) in New England who still feel that way.

    (Edited to Add: Or at least you could still find them 15-20 years ago in the early 90’s. It’s possible the last of them have since died out, but I doubt it.)

    .

  21. 21.

    BOSS BITCH

    Its actually Muine Gall. I saw a sign with both names on it. I think Obama is very lucky to be able to trace his roots.

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    “Allright, allright, we’ll take the niggers and the chinks, but we don’t want the Irish!”

    Bases covered.

  23. 23.

    lamh34

    @RossinDetroit:

    Oh no u didn’t… I LOVE that movie. It’s one of my fav Jeannine Garafolo rom-coms. Too bad she doesn’t make more of them. Her rom-coms were way more sophisticated and intelligent than the usual.

    my fav is “The Truth About Cats & Dogs”

  24. 24.

    RossinDetroit

    @lamh34:

    Always the second banana, unfortunately. Worst case: Southland Tales, where her part was completely excised except for a single shot. Yeah, I got a crush…

  25. 25.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @hildebrand: Hell it didn’t end that early, but my history could be a bit off. I thought my grandmother could vote before the “INNA” signs were no longer occasionally, if not commonly, seen.

    And, as JGabriel noted, it remained a popular, if not publicly displayed, sentiment for a lot longer in some areas.

  28. 28.

    ciotog

    I guess this means Obama is a BIFFO.

    A big ignorant fucker from Offaly.

    Seriously, the former Taoiseach of Ireland, Brian Cowen, was called that for years. And that was before he agreed that the government would cover the bank debt.

    (And yes, the Irish only became white in America when the Italians, the Slavs, and the Jews arrived.)

  29. 29.

    Davis X. Machina

    Irish Muine Gall, meaning “thicket/copse of the strangers/foreigners”

    The latter element is also found in Dún na Gall, Donegal.

  30. 30.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @ciotog:

    That sure is a specific insult. That would be like my Illinoisan self thinking up specific insults for people from Dupage County, Will County, and Lake County (not that they don’t all deserve it, the bastards.)

  31. 31.

    djork

    Honestly don’t know which is worse.

    As an Irishman, I don’t know whether to fight you or vomit on your shoe.

  34. 34.

    opie jeanne

    I think it’s pretty great that they’re so excited.

    Mr O’Bama was very popular when we were in Ireland last spring. Everyone talked to us about him when they learned we were American, and one of the things they all said was “Thank God Sarah Palin wasn’t elected”, and then they’d shudder.

  40. 40.

    Warren Terra

    How is it possible that this thread doesn’t have a link to the adorable O’bama campaign merch, especially used around Saint Paddy’s day in ’08?

    My favorite was the official O’bama campaign button, but there’s a whole page of O’bama Saint Paddy’s Day designs at this T-shirt vendor I’ve never heard of before.

    PS One explanation for the absence of a link to O’bama merch is that it’s there and I overlooked it; in such a case, I apologize.

    PPS and don’t miss the freaky O’bama image on this page

  43. 43.

    LosGatosCA

    Following a fundraising speech on Thursday, President Obama was asked about the case of whistleblower Bradley Manning.

    He responded, “I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source. That’s not how…the world works. If you’re in the military, and — I have to abide by certain classified information. If I was to release stuff that I’m not authorized to release, I’m breaking the law…We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate… He broke the law.”

    The man is a major, major disappointment.

    No prosecutions of any Wall Street criminals that have cost us trillions of dollars but torture detention and public convictions of powerless individuals – without a trial.

    It’s true he’s the lesser evil, but it’s still evil.  The main difference between Obama and every Republican president since Nixon is that there’s no evidence Obama actually relishes inflicting torture on Manning, whereas I’m certain Nixon would be caught on tape asking if his mother was Jewish or if he was some Ivy League faggot. Cheney – fuck him over and send me a copy of the videotape, then destroy the original. Said with a sneer and a chuckle.

    I’m sure any tape of Obama will sound like Judge Ito agonizing over the decision, weighing all of the options, considering all the possible political consequences, and then expressing his personal regret that it had to come to this, but, it’s really bigger than him and,  apparently from the best advice of the people who only have the best interests of the nation at heart, it has to be done.

    So he has that going for him.

  47. 47.

    Waratah

    @opie jeanne: I know but this was the answer I received from my husband when asking about best man who I had just met. His skin color was not as dark as OBama, he had black hair and green eyes.
    I always think of him when they post about the President having Irish blood.

  48. 48.

    Lawnguylander

    @cleek:

    i’m eager to learn how this proves – as if anyone needed more proof (! PUMA! fapfap) – that i should hate Obama.

    I can’t help you. It’s alright with me that O’Bama has his roots in Offaly. They’re mostly harmless there. But if it had come out that he is part Cork or Kilkenny man, I’d find myself outraged over caucus fraud in 2008.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    There was a really funny video of Barack Obama on Conan O’Brien where they joked about O’Bama. The whole interview was rolling on the floor funny. I tried to find it just now to link it, but sadly it has been taken down. Obama has a wicked sense of humor, or at least he does when he does not have the weight of the presidency on his shoulders.

    There is still a 40 second clip from that show, but it’s so short that the only thing it’s good for is to see how much Obama has aged since 2008.

  51. 51.

    Elia Isquire

    @LosGatosCA: The thing is, they’re moving him to a place where he gets to be with fellow military prisoners for meals and have 3 hrs exercise.

    And if someone argues that being around soldiers puts him in danger — well, then there’s no way for the admin. to win. Just “if” someone were to make that argument…

    Overall, I think the treatment Manning got was deplorable, but I also think his transfer might tell us a great deal about whether it was a grand strategy to “break” him — as Greenwald keeps positing with no evidence that I can find — or a more prosaic instance of the Pentagon 1. hating him and 2. hating the protests for him, and deciding to take it out on him in a particularly sadistic manner.

    If the second situation is indeed the case, there could be reason to believe that the admin had Manning moved, but gave the Pentagon some time in the latter’s interest of saving face. An immediate transfer after the story broke or after Obama responded to Tapper would’ve been seen by many as a de facto admission of guilt.

    My overall point is that we don’t know the specifics of the Manning case, and that the events of this week have significantly complicated the straight-forward “soft torture” theory. I just don’t see an admin. committed to a policy of “breaking” Manning transferring him as they did this week.

    And as to Obama saying he’s guilty? That was dumb — he should’ve known better, being a lawyer. But it doesn’t seem to me to be a criminal or vitriolic act by the President. The concept of innocent until proven guilty is a vitally important one and should be considered sacred; but there seems to be little doubt among those without the weight of the US gov’t behind their utterances that Manning’s guilty. I’m certainly not willing to entertain grand theories of a framing; he’s not Dreyfus, after all.

  52. 52.

    jah

    this sounds like one of daddy axelrod’s political stunts. do we have the long form birth certificate for this “great, great, great grandfather from Moneygall?”

  54. 54.

    opie jeanne

    @jah: It’s baptism records, and if you piss off the priest in charge of the parish he won’t give them to you.

    One of my cousins found this out with a Catholic priest in Scotland.

  60. 60.

    ppcli

    Upon hearing about the President’s ancestry, Congressman Peter King remarked “So the Irish were terrorists after all!”.

  63. 63.

    jeff

    I think the visit is fine, and I think Obama is as Irish, whatever that may mean, as Reagan or JFK. He is directly descended from a villager there, so whatever…it’s no stupider than when other US politicians did it. I think Obama made a similar trek to Kenya, where his Kenyan ancestors are from. I bet he’s also English, but nobody claims to be English or visits England as a “homeland”…

    (This actually has started to piss me off…do I not have a “homeland” since my family was English, Scottish and Welsh only? WTF is up with that?)

  65. 65.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    @jeff: Well, of course you do. England, Wales and Scotland are your mother countries.

    The difference for us Anglo types is, in a sense, so is the USA.

    ETA: And thanks to a great grandmother, I get to be a rootless cosmopolitan too.

  68. 68.

    Anne Laurie

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    That sure is a specific insult.

    I was told by a linguist that the saddest thing about the “dumbing down” (his phrase) of the modern Irish language was the elimination of the special form of the verb ‘to be’ used solely for insults and calumny.

  70. 70.

    Yutsano

    @Anne Laurie: Even if they are not “official”, these linguistic quirks have a way of persevering. I’m certain that in the preservation of Gaelic as a language for Eire there are a few oldsters who still teach the young’uns the proper manner of speaking, even if the school nuns disapprove. In fact, the disapproval almost guarantees it will survive. And hopefully someone has the wisdom to make note of that.

    @Sarah Proud and Tall: Trollop. I couldn’t be prouder.

  71. 71.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @Anne Laurie:

    the special form of the verb ‘to be’ used solely for insults and calumny.

    Would that be the one used for various permutations of “yo mama and O’bama’s mama”?

    I wonder what my late grandmother, who would never admit that she was Irish (due to insufficiency of lace curtains, I think) would make of Obama. The only thing she cared about was that a candidate “look like a president,” so she loved Reagan and Clinton, liked Bush 41, hated Nixon and Bush 43, etc.

  72. 72.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @jeff: If you’re English, the proper thing to do is to find some wreck of a third world country and go native. Twenty years ago, I picked Poland.

  73. 73.

    El Cid

    I never knew that the Irish came from Kenya. I want to see their long form shillelagh.

  76. 76.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @El Cid:

    I want to see their long form shillelagh.

    Oh, me too, honey. I’m pretty sure we’d both have to fight off Sarah PT in the Cranky Old BitchViolently Senile Olympics first, though.

  78. 78.

    El Cid

    @asiangrrlMN: The long form requires work, slathering it up with butter and shoving it up a chimney. If you’re really into it you can add some more mass to it and call it a loaded stick. But you have to be careful about really heavy knobs. If the knob’s too heavy, you might need to strap it to your risk.

    (The preceding double entrendres have been brought to you today by Traditional Irish Folklore, and by Wikipedia, and by the letter 7.)

  83. 83.

    Midnight Marauder

    “Of course he comes from a place with money in the name!”

    /Democratic Underground

  87. 87.

    satby

    And it’s well known that his mother’s side of the family were of Irish descent, at least in Chicago.
    Chomh luath agus a mac na hÉireann …

  88. 88.

    LosGatosCA

    @Allan:

    Glad to see you got a porn concern trolling gig. My question is do you like your Cheetos crunchy or plain while you’re bent over in your Mom’s basement with your boyz?

  91. 91.

    Glen Tomkins

    Well, if Obama’s Irish ancestor came over to the states early enough, he probably entered without any formal naturalization. That’s certainly true of all the ancestors of mine that I know of in any detail who came in before the late 19th Century. If Obama’s ancestor was a Potato Famine refugee, odds are he didn’t get papers.

    So, they’ve got him both ways. He wasn’t actually born in this country, and he descends from an anchor baby on his mother’s side, and therefore would have his claim of citizenship by birth invalidated if they get their anti-anchor-baby law written to make the denial of anchor-baby citizenship retroactive.

  94. 94.

    Anya

    @Glen Tomkins: Also, too, the Irish were anti-colonialists longer than the Kenyans. Surely, Obama has inherited the anticolonial ideology the ancestor from Moneygall has espoused centuries ago. Maybe Donald Trump’s investigators will discover Obama’s travels to Ireland in the 80’s.

  95. 95.

    the fenian

    “…whether it was a grand strategy to “break” him—as Greenwald keeps positing with no evidence that I can find—or a more prosaic instance of the Pentagon 1. hating him and 2. hating the protests for him, and deciding to take it out on him in a particularly sadistic manner…”

    I admire your abiity to make this measured a choice.
    No, wait. I don’t.
    And for President I Taught Con Law to say “he broke the law” without ever having brought the poor bastard to trial is very bad form.

  96. 96.

    Nellcote

    @the fenian: @the fenian:

    And for President I Taught Con Law to say “he broke the law” without ever having brought the poor bastard to trial is very bad form.

    so Bradley’s confession is irrelevant?

  97. 97.

    Another Steve

    What’s so surprising? From the way the BBC reporters have pronounced his name Barrrrick O’Bama since before the election and all the generalized Brit anxiety that he’d somehow insult the Queen, moon the PM and generally upend the Special Relationship at the first opportunity, I figured they’d had him pegged as an Irishman since sometime in ’08.

  98. 98.

    ruemara

    As Fenian-Jamerican, I call dibs on O’bama after this presidency to send him to Jamaica and give it some help.

    With regard to Manning, his lawyer asked for a competency hearing. He was held because of that request until the investigation was finished. I’m not sure why those who view his treatment as a human rights violation don’t know that, but, that’s the fact. As far as “he broke the law”, do you think that military laws are different than civilian law? I know they are. Do you also understand that he’s on record leaking documents via the Adrian Lamo conversations? If his statements are true, then he broke the law.

  99. 99.

    IrishGirl

    Black Irish actually refers to the Irish born who have dark hair and tan well. They are believed to have the blood of shipwrecked sailors from Spain who stayed and married a Colleen.

  100. 100.

    salacious crumb

    he cant be Irish…he certainly doesnt drink like one…

    its all a ploy by the libruls to make him look white.

  101. 101.

    Dr. Psycho

    @ciotog: As the Hispanic fraction of the population grows, they will become white, too.

    Not sure who will be next, but we can be certain that working-class African Americans will be last. At which point they will double down against the women….

  102. 102.

    Allan

    @LosGatosCA: You didn’t answer my question. Is it Bill Clinton taking a lit cigar to his nipples, or Jimmy Carter shoving peanuts up his nose?

    Inquiring minds want to know what floats your freak boat.

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