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Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Don’t you recognize your son?

Don’t you recognize your son?

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There’s a full page ad in the New York Post alleging that Obama’s real father is a guy named Frank Marshall Davis.

For once, I agree with Mark Halperin:

As Election Day gets closer, there is going to be more of this kind of stuff in direct mail, TV, radio, emails, web ads, and print.

I’m pretty certain that, in the end, it will help the President’s re-election effort.

Reader Interactions

117Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    I guess to them, all black people look alike.

    My money is still on Obama’s grandfather as the look-alike.

  2. 2.

    CaptainHaddock

    Crap – I don’t feel too hot about Halperin saying ” I’m pretty certain that, in the end, it will help the President’s re-election effort.” Sounds too close to “Good news for McCain”, and we all know how well that worked out…

  3. 3.

    Tonal Crow

    Hey cons! Obama’s ahead, and he’s getting further ahead every day! Don’t let him win! You know he wasn’t born here, or even born at all! But no one else knows. So shout it from the rooftops! Don’t let you friends rest! Make signs and march in front of the White House! And don’t stop the birther trolling!

  5. 5.

    Soonergrunt

    Well, since Mr. Davis was apparently a US Citizen, that should put paid to the particular pile of bullshit.

    …
    Who am I kidding? The nuts are getting crazier. I expect to see an assassination attempt if the President wins a second term, given all of the crap they tell each other that he’s supposedly going to do.

  6. 6.

    pete

    Ah, but Frank Marshall Davis was a natural-born citizen. Oops. There is nothing in the Constitution that says Commies can’t run for President.
    ETA: Curses! Scooped again!

  9. 9.

    HRA

    I saw that earlier and even went to where they have the picture of the president and Frank Marshall Davis side by side
    as for comparison. I am not convinced for I remember a picture of a young Barack Obama with his grandfather on the beach where you can see the resemblance in that photo.

    We saw all the malarkey in 2007-2008 and we we did not buy it then and we don’t buy it now. They really are desperate.

  10. 10.

    Ben Franklin

    So what happened to the meme his father was a Kenyan communist whose views forced the CIA to assassinate Mboya?

    Too late for the rationale…

  11. 11.

    JoyceH

    I’m pretty certain that, in the end, it will help the President’s re-election effort.

    What?! You mean slandering your opponent’s dead mother is NOT a winning strategy? I’m shocked!

  12. 12.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    It may help his re-election effort. But it’s still vile poisoning the well shit that will likely have effects past the election as far as the ‘OOGIE BOOGIE EVIL COMMIE!’ or ‘OOGIE BOOGIE EVIL BROWNIE!’ bullshit that’ll plague the next four years.

  13. 13.

    Nellcote

    I can’t ever remember a candidate’s dead mother being disparaged like this. It’s just nauseating.

  14. 14.

    quannlace

    First thought, why should anybody bother ginning up this conspirecy theory, then went to Wiki-land to look up Davis. Ah, it all comes clear. He was a labor leader, had Communist sympathies (gasp) and had anti-Christian views. It’s a three-way!
    And damning for Obama, cause everybody knows political views are passed down throught the DNA

  21. 21.

    Schlemizel

    OY! Any time I think the wingnuts can’t possibly come up with something stupider, more soulless, less connected to reality they find a new pit deeper than the last & prove me wrong.

    They scraped through the bottom of the barrel 12 years ago and have not slowed down a bit as they bore toward the center of the earth

  22. 22.

    Quarks

    I think we should start taking bets on just how many fathers Obama will end up having by the election.

  27. 27.

    JustAnotherBob

    Well, other than different foreheads, different noses, different mouths, different chins and different ears, yes, I’d say they look exactly the same.

    Now, put up pictures of the person who paid for that ad and a horses’s ass and let me see if I can see the resemblance….

  31. 31.

    Schlemizel

    @Mike in NC:
    The NRA is counting on it! These poor bastards are simply the marketing arm of the gun manufacturing industry. For years they whipped up fear and hate and twisted every tail they could. But they have pretty much maxed out the number of new owners they can create so that means they need current owners to buy more. Nothing will do that better than a Dem President.

  32. 32.

    Or something like that.Suffern Ace

    Its always the black side of his origins that cause the controversy. His mothers father was really Nicolae Ceausescu, and nary a peep.

  33. 33.

    gbear

    …back from bad and ruin with my tail tucked ‘tween my legs.

    Lots of points for quoting Rod Stewart from when he was actually really cool.

  34. 34.

    dr. bloor

    @Soonergrunt:

    Well, since Mr. Davis was apparently a US Citizen, that should put paid to the particular pile of bullshit.

    We’re talking about folks who have no problem maintaining the belief that he can be a radical Islamist, atheist, and a minion of Jeremiah Wright all at the same time.

  36. 36.

    raven

    @gbear: You mean this?

    I sit here in my lonely room
    Tears flowing on down my eyes, come on, baby
    As I sit there, sit there,
    sit there in my lonely room You know the tears flowing on down my doggone eyes, oh yeah
    I wonder how you could treat me so low down and dirty You know what?
    Your heart must be made out of ice

  38. 38.

    ? Martin

    @dr. bloor: Not to mention that he’s both weaker than Jimmy Carter and the worst African dictator ever.

    And that he’s a socialist and a crony capitalist. I’ve seen that within the same sentence, even.

  41. 41.

    gbear

    @raven: Nope. Later on with Faces on the Long Player album. Saw the Faces live in St. Paul about that time and they instantly became my favorite band. It is also pretty amazing to listen to those Beck/Stewart/Ron Wood/Mickey Waller records.

    Rod really took a wrong turn in the late 70’s.

  45. 45.

    Baud

    OT yay!

    PublicPolicyPolling ‏@ppppolls
    Elizabeth Warren leads in the MA-Sen poll we will release tonight. Last month we found her down by 5 pts.

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

    @Soonergrunt:

    Who am I kidding? The nuts are getting crazier

    Sad, but true. But not only are they getting crazier, but they are doing it while rehashing and re-combining bits and pieces of old smears. They got nothing new.

    It is sad but not surprising to see that Romney feels very comfortable wallowing in the slime and slinging shit.

    I also note that the anti Obama film, 2016 Obama’s America, has dropped out of the top 10 in the domestic box office. But I expect to see DVDs of the movie dropped onto the swing states like a swarm of locusts, in the weeks leading up to the election.

  47. 47.

    raven

    @gbear: Saw him with Beck and Nicky Hopkins do the Truth album in 68. Had no idea who this skinny little shit with a tangerine tank top was. It was an unforgettable show.

  48. 48.

    Schlemizel

    @gbear:
    Gad I saw them in St. Paul about then too. Wonder if we saw each other? You from around there or just in town for a time?

  50. 50.

    Donald G

    This accusation that Frank Marshall Davis was Obama’s biological father was making the rounds of the wingnut blogs during the 2008 campaign.

    The inhabitants of the fever swamp also tried circulating a black and white nudie picture of a woman from the late fifties/early sixties trying to claim that the woman in the picture was Obama’s mother.

  52. 52.

    arguingwithsignposts

    I only regret that I was not the one to separate this particular stupid idiot from his money. Free market, bitchez! 1 !

  53. 53.

    Roger Moore

    @? Martin:
    I think you’re making a huge mistake by expecting any kind of consistency in their reasoning. The plain truth is that they hate him for who he is, not what he does. All the name calling is just a way of expressing their hatred and doesn’t need to be consistent or reasonable, much less true.

  54. 54.

    JPL

    @gbear: Total change of subject. There was an article in the nytimes on Sandy Lewis and his new life on a farm. I googled him and there was an article in the Essex County paper about a suit with APA. One person who commented on the article was gbear. Was that you?
    Of course, you can answer what are you typing about and that would answer my question.

  56. 56.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Quarks:

    I think we should start taking bets on just how many fathers Obama will end up having by the election.

    “Who’s your daddies?”

  58. 58.

    ? Martin

    @Roger Moore: I don’t expect anything. I think it’s humorous. But it is handy when my mom slips over the wingnut line – and I can ask her “Wait, what do you mean he’s weak – you were just telling me what a dictator he was turning into, taking away all of these liberties? Which is it?”

    The waffling is infinitely entertaining.

  59. 59.

    Roger Moore

    @Soonergrunt:

    Who am I kidding? The nuts are getting crazier.

    Not quite. I don’t think they’re any crazier than they were 4 years ago; they’re just less inhibited in expressing their crazy. I think that the really crazy fringe truly believes that they represent majority opinion in America, but that Obama has somehow pulled the wool over people’s eyes about what he really is. They think that if they can only wake the rest of us up to the danger, they’ll win the election in a walkover. They’re using wilder and wilder language because the more temperate stuff hasn’t worked.

  60. 60.

    gbear

    @JPL: That wasn’t me.

    @Schlemizel: I’ve always lived in St. Paul but in retrospect, the concert was at the old hockey arena where the Mall of America is now. It was 70 or 71. Faces played in between The Grease Band and Savoy Brown. I saw their next two shows in Mpls. so we were probably at the same show at some point.

    I was the hippie in the audience…

  61. 61.

    Mike G

    @quannlace:

    And damning for Obama, cause everybody knows political views are passed down throught the DNA

    I don’t see much evidence that birthers have put much “thought” or “reasoning” into developing their political views, which appear to be mindlessly absorbed from their family or tribe; so they think everyone else is the same.

  62. 62.

    Schlemizel

    @gbear:
    Interesting. I grew up in St. Paul (Governor ’70). I might have been the guy selling agricultural products as that was how I supported myself for a time.

    Moved around a bit since then but ended up on the West side of the Cities.

  64. 64.

    catclub

    @Mike G: So what the fuck happened to Mitt Romney? His father actually Joe McCarthy?

    Also, I just read the “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, 2008 editorial.

    1. No one is asking Romney if the US should devote $20B/yr on car research.

    2. Romney was 10 years old when his father took over AMC and saved it. he says in the editorial that he ‘watched his father doing that”, another lie, I suspect. What privileged 10 year old has any idea what his father does at work?

  65. 65.

    Jay C

    @Quarks:

    I think we should start taking bets on just how many fathers Obama will end up having by the election

    A lot, I figure: remember the old saw: the one that ends

    “…but defeat is an orphan” ?

  66. 66.

    Brachiator

    @D0n Camillo:

    RE: I can’t ever remember a candidate’s dead mother being disparaged like this.

    I can.

    The link is to an incredibly foul statement made about Bill Clinton’s mother by a person identified as Republican activist Barbara Olson.

    Barbara Olson was the wife of Ted Olson. She died in the plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

    @Roger Moore:

    Not quite. I don’t think they’re any crazier than they were 4 years ago; they’re just less inhibited in expressing their crazy

    No, they are becoming dangerous. They actively fight off the facts and refutations of their nuttier beliefs, and become more agitated that people don’t believe them. So, they get angrier and more insistent that Obama and the Democrats are destroying the country. Their anger even intensifies as Obama succeeds and finds small ways to get around Republican obstacles.

    Some of these people are working themselves up into a frenzy. They have to, otherwise the lies they keep telling themselves would cease to give meaning to their miserable lives.

  68. 68.

    MrSnrub

    @Brachiator: A guy I used to work with is pimping the movie quite heavily on his Facebook and Google+ feeds. I knew he leaned Republican, but my heart sank a bit when I realized that he had been skinny-dipping in he crazy.

  71. 71.

    Patricia Kayden

    So in Rightwing World, you are your father? If your father has a certain political or religious viewpoint, you are stuck with having the same and are stained by your father’s ideology for your entire life?

    Doesn’t even make any sense.

    I don’t curse but “keep blanking that chicken” comes to mind right now as my advice to the Rightwingers.

  72. 72.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    There are some people at Democratic Underground butt-hurt over some rodeo announcer making a racist joke about Michelle Obama, you know, life is too short to worry about these stupid racists Du’ers, besides I want to see President Obama win so the momo’s like that announcer lose their shit, the talk radio is going to be fun!!!

  73. 73.

    Carl Nyberg

    If the foreign policy is on your side, argue foreign policy. If the economic policy is on your side, argue economic policy. If neither are on your side, call the Democrat’s mother a ni-clang loving whore.

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    @Patricia Kayden:

    So in Rightwing World, you are your father? If your father has a certain political or religious viewpoint, you are stuck with having the same and are stained by your father’s ideology for your entire life?

    This is the central premise of Dinesh D’Souza’s hateful little dog and pony show.

    In 2012, D’Souza released 2016: Obama’s America, a documentary based on his 2010 book The Roots of Obama’s Rage, both of which posit that Barack Obama’s attitude toward America derives from his father’s anti-colonialism and from a psychological desire to fulfill his father’s dream of diminishing the power of Western imperial states. Critics have said the film contains conspiracy, speculation, and projection.

    Or, in layman’s terms,this stuff is batshit crazy.

    On the other hand, Dubya could drag the country into a disastrous, murderous, pointless war against Iraq to redress a grievance against his daddy, and the wingnuts have imperialism orgasms.

  76. 76.

    cmorenc

    @catclub:

    What privileged 10 year old has any idea what his father does at work?

    A real farmer’s 10-year old children certainly do, since they’re often expected to help dad out with the farm chores themselves, and their house is right on the farm, with the barns and equipment sheds only a short walk out the back door. (My wife grew up on a farm in Surry County, NC, near Mt. Airy where the fictional “Andy Griffith” show was purportedly set., and I spent quite a few days out there while her parents were still alive).

  79. 79.

    Cain

    @quannlace:

    Or the fact, that Obama never hanged with his father in the first place. It was his mother he ran around the world with. And what about that other dad, Sotomayor? Eh? These people are stupid.

  81. 81.

    Montysano

    Excellent column in the Sun-Sentinel about how the Republican party is doomed, both by demographics and by being a bunch of angry, obstructionist, bitter, cruel old white assholes who, in general, contribute nothing positive to society.

    In the comments that follow, every civil/thoughtful comment is met by angry, bitter cruel assholes, whose comments contribute nothing positive to the conversation.

    Self awareness…. they don’t haz it.

  84. 84.

    catclub

    @Cain: First raise the prices 50%, then put up a sign that prices will go up 50% more after Obama is re-elected.

    They may be evil, but those gun manufacturers do know how to harvest a crop.

  85. 85.

    Cain

    @eyelessgame:

    Clearly his real father is James Earl Jones…

    I wish my father was James Earl Jones.

    “My Son, I am your father.. you have failed me for the last time.” uh.. maybe not.

  88. 88.

    Eric U.

    the cool thing about being Republican is that you can believe many mutually contradictory things at the same time. Bad thing is it’s required

  89. 89.

    catclub

    @Eric U.: Well, if you can do six impossible things in the morning, why not top it off with a seventh:
    Breakfast at Milliways! The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

  90. 90.

    Citizen_X

    @eyelessgame:

    Clearly his real father is James Earl Jones…

    If this who’s-his-daddy crap continues, they should seriously do a tongue in cheek ad with Jones, with him saying, “Search your heart, Mr. President, you know it’s true: I am your father!“

  91. 91.

    Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (formerly Horrendo Slapp, Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)

    Yeah, well, to be fair to the dickwads who took out the ad, both Barack Obama, Sr. and Frank Marshall Davis are Negroes, and, shit, everybody knows you can’t tell them darkies apart. And even if you could tell them apart, well, hell they’re still darkies on the inside, anyway, so they’re pretty much the same whatever they look like.

  92. 92.

    g

    Wow. So slandering your primary opponent’s adopted daughter isn’t the nadir of political discourse Karl Rove is willing to undertake, now slandering your political opponent’s dead mother is the new Republican tactic.

    Disgusting. These people are less than human.

  93. 93.

    Roger Moore

    @Cain:

    Or the fact, that Obama never hanged with his father in the first place. It was his mother he ran around the world with.

    And she spent a big chunk of her professional career working on women’s issues and development projects in the Third World. If you’re looking for a source of Obama’s liberalism, she’s the obvious place to look, at least if you aren’t such a sexist that you can’t acknowledge a mother’s role in shaping her son’s political identity.

    ETA: And it’s “hung” with his father, not “hanged”, which is the past tense only when referring to the method of execution.

  96. 96.

    patroclus

    Tomorrow is the hearing of the Kansas Objections Board to determine whether Joe Montgomery’s now-withdrawn birther presentation will be ruled upon regarding President Obama getting on the Kansas ballot because of his alleged non-citizenship. My sister lives in Kansas and I talked to her about it and she thought it was just a joke until I gave her all the facts. Needless to say, she was rather flabbergasted…

  97. 97.

    Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (formerly Horrendo Slapp, Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)

    @SamR:

    I looked at the link, and I even tried to read that shit, but, damn, that is some incoherent, fucking cray-Z-ness there. I couldn’t read more than two or three paragraphs, and then I began to scroll down to see if it got any better, and lo, it was who the hell knows how many thousands of words of random shit, listing every bogeyman what’s-her-name could think of, I guess. What it all was meant to “prove” is beyond me…

  98. 98.

    Central Planning

    @Roger Moore: And, like I heard on POTUS the other day, you can’t reason someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into.

    It’s like conspiracy theory nuts. They believe they know what really happened, if only everyone else would believe them.

    OTOH, who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory?

  99. 99.

    Cain

    @gbear:

    @Schlemizel: Are you in the western fringe that got bumped into Michele Bachmann’s district?

    Speakin of which, polls say that Bachmann is in trouble again. She’s got a big war chest but her democratic challenger is within 3-4 points of her. I think people are sick of her shit.

    Check it out here

  102. 102.

    Cain

    @Roger Moore:

    ETA: And it’s “hung” with his father, not “hanged”, which is the past tense only when referring to the method of execution.

    Doh! Thanks.. too late to fix though.

  103. 103.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Why would Obama chose Obama over Davis as a last name,…never mind. These people are nuts.

  107. 107.

    AHH onna Droid

    @SamR: Never mind Brother Malcolm gave up sex with white women when he gave up pork, so it’s a nice twofer of slander.

    But theyre wingers. Here, let me adjust a fresh pair of tighty whiteys on my head and get into the proper frame: I fink that herp derp.

  108. 108.

    Cain

    @Roger Moore:

    I’ve always admired Chinese speakers who learn english and can speak it reasonably well. English is a sucky language to learn. It would have been better if we all spoke Spanish or something that had more consistent rules.

  109. 109.

    I Am Mitt's Smirk (né Studly Pantload, t.e.u.u.)

    I’d say I love the smell of desperation in (your choice of time of day here), but actually, it kinda smells like old gym socks and that thing I had to clear out of the back of my ‘fridge that one time…

  111. 111.

    Triassic Sands

    The Republican Party represents the worst mental health crisis in history.

    If every Winger in need of therapy and/or medication actually sought help, it would be an unmanageable fiasco. There aren’t enough therapists or drugs in the world to treat the Republican lunatics.

  113. 113.

    PreservedKillick

    @Triassic Sands:

    The Republican Party represents the worst mental health crisis in history.

    I really thought we’d taken a pass Millenarianism, but now I’m convinced this is it. This is not a sane movement.

    I live in Mass, and was at the local grocery store this weekend. There was an Elizabeth Warren table, with nice friendly polite people. And there was a nutjob handing out “Obama is a socialist / I support Israel” flyers. The nutjob was wildeyed and crazy. His flyers were hand printed and amateurish.

    He was not helping his cause.

  114. 114.

    debbie

    They’re rank amateurs. Obama’s got an ad up with a still shot of Romney coming out of an airplane. Behind him is another airplane with “Trump” plastered across it.

    That’s how it’s done, kids!

  116. 116.

    JR in WV

    @g:

    I disagree. Non-human is not the same as less than human.

    These “people” share no DNA with me! Inhuman, non-human, unhuman, but not less than human, that’s what dog and cats are, a little, but Republicans… non-human.

  117. 117.

    Wally Ballou

    @D0n Camillo: Notice how the (anonymous) Slate commentator just couldn’t restrain him/herself from declaring, parenthetically, that Olson’s assessment of Clinton’s mother’s character was “fairly accurate”, regardless. How too-too and very-very.

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