Is it just me or does head-birfer Orley Taitz sound eerily like Arianna Huffington? (She comes on at 7:34 of the audio.)
I didn’t get through that much of the program, but Ben Smith does a pretty good job of explaining the entire conspiracy.
Another question: is the birfer stuff any crazier than the Clinton body count stuff? I tend to think it may be less crazy. I also vaguely recall the WSJ publishing some pretty nutty Mena stuff. Have things actually improved?
dmsilev
I would argue that the birther nonsense is crazier than the Clinton Death List nonsense. The birther nonsense, at its core, involves a fraud perpetuated by Obama’s parents. A fairly extensive one, including placing fake notices in local papers, etc. All for no tangible benefit unless the baby might someday run for President.
Either that, or Barack Obama is a Time Lord, and retroactively changed the circumstances of his own birth.
For all of its insanity, “Hillary had Vince Foster whacked” doesn’t require bending the fabric of space-time.
-dms
cleek
an ever-deepening conspiracy theory is the last refuge of the powerless partisan.
steve s
At its peak, many of my dumbass relatives wanted the military to stage a coup and overthrow/imprison/execute Clinton. Such an extra-constitutional step was necessary, they explained, because the Founding Fathers didn’t write the constitution with the expectation that anyone as monstrously evil as Beel Cleenton could have become president. I mean, Clinton was training hidden Chinese soldiers to put Americans in secret FEMA reeducation camps, had passed a law suspending the Constitution, was a rapist murdering drug dealer who participated in Satanic Bohemian Grove rituals, and was going to use Y2K to force Americans into dense cities where they could be more easily controlled, for instance by having their food supplies cut.
So the birthers are off to a good start, but it’s a high bar to reach.
Nash
@steve s:
Give them time. Just give them time.
This is definitely a case of giving them enough rope. Hell, we don’t even have to give it to them, they’re braiding their own.
PeakVT
Have things actually improved?
I think the Clintons provided more issues that could be blown up into pseudo-scandals and woven together in a seamless web of insanity. Other than being proximate to the alleged complete corruption of Chicago politics (it’s just above average) there’s nothing to accuse Obama of besides the birther BS.
catclub
Steve s@ 3
When he went to murdering rapists, Clinton went too far.
“was a rapist murdering drug dealer”
The drug dealing is just the Big Dog being Big Pharma
steve s
What I want to know is what’s their hypothesis? You don’t overthrow the dominant paradigm by criticising it, you have to have a better model to replace it. What’s the birfer explanation of what really happened?
gwangung
Wouldn’t that include erasing all records of travel, both in government and private records during that time period? And erasing people’s memory of them in Hawaii during that time (or paying them off)? And erasing all traces in the banking systems so you CAN’T follow the money?
Comrade Darkness
@dmsilev: Wait… Obama is the 24th Doctor? (Or whatever count we are up to on that, I’ve kinda lost track…)
@steve s: All of this crazed scrutiny (to be generous with grammar here) and suddenly the pampered, underachieving son of an aristocrat comes along and they’re all like: oh, hey, whatever you wanna do to me, is fine by me. I didn’t need that constitution anyway… That’s the most maddening part of it all. I can take all kinds of things if they come wrapped in something resembling consistency.
gwangung
Only if you’re liberal and buy into that tainted methodology of science.
JGabriel
DougJ: @ Top:
No. The birther stuff is not as crazy as the Clinton body count accusations.
However, give it a year or two. It is an absolute certainty (Wingularity Correlation #209) that there will be an Obama body count. And it will be even crazier that the Clinton count, linking Obama to terrorists worldwide, in addition to the drug runners and murders that Clinton was linked to.
.
r€nato
I disagree with dmsilev; the birther stuff at least has some rooting in reality, however tenuous.
I have never, ever figured out where all that Clinton Death List business came from, or the alleged Clinton drug-running operation in Mena for that matter. Both seem to have been made up nearly entirely out of whole cloth.
What gets me is that Obama is pretty much squeaky clean, and that is the standard any Democrat has to meet. There will never be any bimbo eruptions with him, none of that faint whiff of sleaze which always accompanied Clinton. So the best the hardcore wrong-wingers can do in the Faux Scandal department is this nutty birth certificate business. Pretty weak tea. If Obama was like any run-of-the-mill pol in the sleaze/personal failings department, you better believe we’d be watching a replay of the new-faux-scandal-of-the-month routine from the right-wing noise machine.
Bush, on the other hand, had all kinds of skeletons in his closet – military desertion, chronic drug and alcohol abuse, terrible student in college, a wife who killed an ex-boyfriend with her car, shady insider stock trading conveniently covered up by Daddy, multiple failures as a businessman – and he got to be president twice, and you never saw the kind of conspiracy theorizing with him, that you saw with Clinton.
(apart from the 9/11 truthers, who were NEVER pandered to by Democratic politicians nor left-leaning media figures)
IOKIYAR. It is as axiomatic as the law of gravity.
Jody
“is the birfer stuff any crazier than the Clinton body count stuff?”
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/10/how-could-stanl.html
Yes.
Simple answers, etc.
Jody
…and I’m getting the bare bones Balloon Juice again. Dammit all.
Comrade Dread
Well, he did kill his grandmother just before the election because she knew the truth about his Kenyan birth, remember?
Scott
Yeah, give ’em time. They’ve just gotten started.
At this point in Clinton’s presidency, I don’t think they’d gotten much past getting coverage of “TravelGate” on the TV, much less the lunacy of the Clinton Death List.
eric
@steve s: three words: Boys From Brazil. Obama was born in both places: the Birfers’ theory cannot gain a foothold because it is not crazy enough.
eric
geg6
I honestly am not sure. I remember some crazy stuff in the Clinton years, but none at the level of this birther stuff. It’s even more mind-boggling than the batshit Vince Foster stuff. I mean, two colleges kids, a biracial couple in the early 60s, with little in the way of finances plan and flawlessly execute a 48 year conspiracy involving the state of Hawaii, the local hospital and its staff, the local newspaper, the US State Department, three major universities, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, the Department of Defense, and numerous other people and institutions on the bet that their mixed race child will run for and become POTUS? Seriously? This is hands down the nuttiest shit I’ve ever seen get serious play in the Weekly World News, let alone in the halls of Congress.
Comrade Darkness
@geg6: Well, and if he is the progeny of such brilliance, doesn’t that speak highly of his ability to get shit done under impossible circumstances?
r€nato
@geg6:
It’s an absolute truth that people with sleazy morals often tend to project their own sleazy tendencies and motivations, onto the motivations of others.
steve s
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/occidental.asp
some guy
“@dmsilev: Wait… Obama is the 24th Doctor? (Or whatever count we are up to on that, I’ve kinda lost track…)”
Or… The Master! /cue scary music/
Nah, that’s been done.
jibeaux
@dmsilev:
My husband likes to picture Obama’s mom explaining to the paper that she’s placing this fake birth ad, but they need to not ask any questions and just get in on the conspiracy, because her half-Kenyan son is going to be president someday.
MattF
Maybe you had to be there to really see the craziness of Clinton’s attackers. The Washington elites were attacking the Clintons as well– and for no reason that was ever actually clearly articulated. There was a large section of the DC political class that just plain despised Bill and Hillary. It was the two-minutes-hate– and that was that.
The current situation with the Birthers is stupid and crazy, and arguably dangerous– but I think the Clintons really had it worse.
r€nato
…could we possibly ask for a better group of anti-Obama conspiracy theorists:
1) the birther theory itself, nutty as a Payday bar
2) the chief proponents of it are a gaggle of folks who either have law degrees from correspondence school diploma mills, or aren’t even admitted-to-the-bar lawyers
3) chief among them is a goofy woman named Orly Taitz, which I often read as, “ORLY Taints”.
It’s as if the whole thing was cooked up by Mel Brooks.
r€nato
@MattF:
you wanna know why? Just reference that famous quote of Sally Quinn’s, as related by David Broder (talk about the epitome of a Villager circle jerk):
“He came in here and trashed the place, and it’s not his place.”
You wanna fix DC? Burn the Village down. With all the Villagers in it.
smiley
I would love it if the Hawaii Department of Health would place a copy of the certificate under glass in their lobby for all to see. And then see how long it takes for some birther to break into it and tear it up or try to steal it.
JB
Aren’t the body count and birfers really lots of the same people? Have you ever known anyone – one single person – who ever gave up a conspiracy theory and laughed about it later? As in, “Man, I was so sure that Clinton off’d Foster, but I did some research and that turned out false. I felt so dumb.” No! They just grab whatever theory’s coming round the next bend.
dmsilev
@geg6:
AHA! That’s IT! Barack Obama is not actually the son of the people he calls mother and father! Instead, the baby Obama was inserted into our society by the Russians/Red Chinese/OPEC/Illuminati/Catholic Church/Grays from Zeta Reticuli, and with their hidden support, became President. Soon, the secret programming that was genetically engineered into him will begin to execute, and we’ll all get barcoded with the Mark of the Beast.
-dms
r€nato
@smiley:
according to TPM, Hawaii no longer maintains physical copies of the long form birth certificate records; in 2001 they were all converted to digital format and the physical copies were destroyed.
How CONVENIENT!
…for the birthers…
catclub
Comment on Fox website about Ann Coulter
calling the BC crazies – crazy.
“Who is this woman???
Throwing us under the bus, Ann C ?
You’re in the wrong party, join your lib friends…………”
Who knew? Maybe that is why her ads show up here…..
Anton Sirius
Yeah, the birther stuff is crazier. It’s not even close.
At its core, the Clinton Death List is just typical mafia whacking-your-enemies behavior. You could find examples of similar body counts in the annals of organized crime.
The closest thing I can think of to the birther plot in all its glory is the “Adam Weishaupt was really the first president” Illuminati stuff, or maybe the Pope Joan legend. There’s just nothing like it in actual history. It’s pure paranoid pseudo-history.
Zifnab
I’m still waiting for them to bring out the Rezko scandal again and start playing it up as “Obama’s Whitewater” ad nauseum.
Won’t the Democrats look like fucking tools if the GOP retakes the House and immediately launches into Impeachment inquiries again.
media browski
Dougj, you are to iding accents as jon stewart is to impressions.
steve s
I didn’t know until reading Snopes a minute ago that there was a lawsuit back in the day alleging that Barry Goldwater didn’t qualify because he was born in Arizona before it became a state.
Michael
Ah, yes – I remember. From such things posted earnestly on diverse websites was the midwifing of the birth of WND and NewsMax accomplished.
“Its on the Internet, so it must be true”.
The best part was how the nuts would always find some other nut site to “source” their stupidity; it was a neverending daisy chain of ignorant.
You never could find the Zero Point for the rumor.
smiley
@r€nato: I know. I meant the official facsimile that was posted on the internet and made available by the campaign.
Edited.
Lowkey
First, there already is an Obama Death List. It just hasn’t gained much of the spotlight in the wingnut world, yet. Birferism is just now starting to come to a critical mass (of attention). When its grip on the fevered wingnut hive-mind starts to wane, the Death List, or some other paranoid fantasy, will get its moment to dazzle.
Second, I’m not certain any of this is any better or worse than the Clintons had it. If William Clinton had been Guillaume Clinton or Bill Corazon, there would have been Birfers arguing that his Arkansas birth certificate was obviously a certificate of live birth, and that we were all blinded by our idol worship. We still have the hysterical paranoia, grumbled threats, the lazy racism… it’s simply more easily focused this time around.
Details about Ben Smith
Ben Smith has been misleading about this issue for months, and refuses to address the other side’s arguments. He won’t even pick up the phone and ask HI some questions that could resolve this matter; his intent is clearly to deceive. See my name’s link for an example of him lying about this issue.
jenniebee
@smiley: The more that birth certificate gets shown on tv, the crazier it gets. G. Gordon Liddy is going on national TV, being shown a Certificate of Live Birth issued by the State of Hawaii and claiming that a Certificate of Live Birth is not the same as a Birth Certificate. They still can’t explain how, even if he were born in Kenya or Panama or anywhere else for that matter, the location of his birth would negate his citizenship claim through his mother.
You put the document under glass for anybody who wants to see it to see it, how will that help BoB who wants nothing less than to TOUCH IT! HE WANTS TO TOUCH IT!
Bas-O-Matic
I’ve always thought it funny that the first name of the front person of the Birther nonsense was an internet meme. Not only that, but she looks kind of like the Orly bird.
Also Taitz pretty easily scans as Taintz.
Orly? Taintz.
I’m pretty easily amused, though.
(Edited to add: Oops. Didn’t see Renato’s comment above)
Brick Oven Bill
If you guys keep going, so will I.
The birfers simply ask why, if Joe Miller of Fact Check, funded by Annenberg, is granted permission to examine the certificate, why is everyone else forbidden from getting anywhere near it? This is not crazy. This is a logical question and important.
The same voices who claimed ‘Bush Lied, People Died’, suddenly have complete faith in an altered Internet image and some low-level Hawaiian government hack who is likely highly conflicted. This is the idiocy.
Good for Sully.
Zandar
I’m going to have to say the birther stuff is crazier, mainly because it’s the screaming denial of an actual documented fact rather than speculation about what happened to people who died, and more importantly it means millions of people believe Obama’s been planning this from inside his mother’s womb like Damien from the Omen, or Stewie from Family Guy.
No contest.
steve s
Wow, Lowkey, I didn’t know about that, but indeed, I googled it, and there is in fact an Obama Death List already.
Cyrus
I don’t generally watch or listen to clips posted to political Web sites, because I can almost always get the gist of them from comments. I think I’ll have to watch this one, though, just to figure out what the actual birther theory is.
Tigerhawk(1) has argued that if there’s anything to birtherism, the records would have been faked in preparation for a custody battle.
Even that would be bizarrely paranoid, since AFAICT the couple was happy(2) for at least five months after Obama’s birth. And how would any fraud at all, even if it never gets discovered, help a custody battle? Obama’s parents are his parents regardless of where he was born. But, fine, to which country is Dunham supposed to have traveled while nine months pregnant in order to give birth? Kenya? Doubtful; she didn’t find out until years later that her husband had another wife.
And remember, this is the most reasonable birther theory out there. Others rely on arguing that both parents have to be citizens (for which, according to Wikipedia, there is settled Supreme Court precedent to the contrary) and arguing that you can only be a citizen of one place at a time, and Obama later gaining Indonesian citizenship would erase his American citizenship. Yeeeah.
As for an Obama death list, didn’t Bernie Mac die just a week or two after an appearance with Obama?
(1) Apparently he’s a middle-aged lawyer, which is depressing; based on his online demeanor and pseudonym, I had him pegged for my own age – 26 – or even younger, a chickenhawk but unusually polite, until I saw some vlog of his a few months ago. Of course, there’s no age limit on stupidity, but still.
(2) That’s based only on reading Obama’s parent’s Wikipedia pages, and anyway I wouldn’t expect a wedding that only lasted less than four years to be very happy, but you know what I mean – there’s a big difference between “married too soon” and “committing fraud in preparation for a divorce.”
Punchy
Wow. Orly Taitz sounds really unhinged. Laughably so.
Y’all have to listen to that bit and just fast-foward to 7:30.
steve s
I’ll have to wait for someone here to roughly describe the birthers’ hypothesis. I burned out on tard, and can’t actually stand to go to the birther websites and read enough to know. Criticisms are inadequate. They need an hypothesis which explains the known facts.
Cyrus
@Details about Ben Smith:
LoneWacko, do you ever link to anything other than your own Web pages? Although, I guess I should give you credit for not leaving out spaces between words this time.
Zuzu's Petals
@r€nato:
It’s more like this:
Zuzu's Petals
I’m unable to watch the clip on this computer, but I don’t trust Ben Smith to do the research required to comment in a meaningful way on a topic like this.
The best source of good information and general birfer rebutting is here:
Obama Conspiracy Theories
It’s a first-rate site. The guy has done a tremendous amount of work running down accurate source information re birth certificate issues, lawsuit questions, and obscure philosophical arguments.
cleek
you need to spend some time with some real-life wingnuts. they’ve got a whole list of things that Obama’s done wrong, starting with : he’s bankrupted the country; he’s not defending us abroad; he’s bought and paid-for by the global warming conspiracy; he’s a secret Muslim; he’s the most radical radical to ever radically walk the fine conservative earth (let alone become pres); he’s going to let the terrorists win; etc..
my inlaws, for example, are nice enough people – we enjoyed many gin-n-tonics together on the porch this past weekend before the conversation turned to politics – are calling for his impeachment, as matter-of-factly as if they were talking about painting the living room.
that he’s going to “destroy this country” is an undeniable fact, to them.
Xero
@BOB
“Joe Miller of Fact Check, funded by Annenberg” a good friend of Ronald Reagan..” (fixed)
..”why is anyone else forbidden from getting anywhere near it?” Um, because its President Obama’s choice who sees his BC, not yours or any of the other nonsense peddlers. Cripes, do hand your BC over willy-nilly to any moron who asks for it?
“..complete faith in an altered Internet image..” Do you have any citation or proof that it was altered (other than the redaction, which was later un-redacted?)
By low level gov’t hack, you mean the DOH spokesman? The dep’t responsible for all vital records in HI?
Gibbs etal are right. No matter what evidence is presented, it will never satisfy because he will still be, you know… black.
cleek
@Details about Ben Smith:
yay! Lone Wacko is here!
jl
@Zuzu’s Petals: omigod omigod omigod omigod!!!! (!) Hawaii doesn’t keep EXFIT ‘cert’ vault copy kerning-authenticated original copies of birth certificates anymore? The Barry Soetero conspiracy has corrupted the vital statistics of Hawaii! We are doomed.
What I really like is that these maniacs are descending into code language that is incomprehensible to the average person, which also signifies stark raving madness to the average person (and I think with good reason).
If the birfer stuff goes total cult, it will be fun. We won’t be able to follow it well enough for any content to be bothersome or irritating. And we can make fun of it, sort of like people make up Klingon oaths and exclamations (or is it the, whaterver the other dudes were. Saurlons? Romulans!
Jon H
Cyrus wrote: “Tigerhawk(1) has argued that if there’s anything to birtherism, the records would have been faked in preparation for a custody battle.”
Which is stupid on its own, because, most likely, Obama’s father would prefer that his son be raised in the US, in order to take advantage of the greater opportunities.
It seems to me that most cases of international custody battles (especially when a poor or developing country is involved) involve either a wealthy parent or very conservative religious beliefs.
Neither would seem to pertain to the elder Obama. Maybe if he was a Saudi prince, or wealthy businessman, but he was an academic economist.
(It occurs to me that the Tigerhawk scenario is… predictable: it’s predicated on a “scary black man”, ie, Obama Sr. and fear of actions he might take.)
Mnemosyne
There’s also a claim that your parents (or in this case, stepparents) can renounce your US citizenship on your behalf, but no one has ever been able to come up with so much as a shred of proof that it’s even possible to renounce someone else’s citizenship for them. They can’t even show that there was any kind of formal renouncing, just a claim that if you take your kid overseas to live at any point, they lose their citizenship.
jl
I’m a newly converted birfer, and I am a afraid the birfers have been infiltrated by Hawaiian Vital Statistics Replicants, who will slip EXCON DEFCON dweep non-kernered vault copies of important absence of evidence documents (AEDs) that will confuse the very strong Evidence of Absence documents (EADs).
So, I want all the bifer trolls here to send me their social security numbers, and vault copy bank account info, so I can investigate them.
steve s
Was hanging out in South Florida this weekend with some friends and friends’ relatives. After we were swimming in their pool and had moved to the kitchen to eat dinner and drink booze, one of them said matter of factly that when They start rationing care they won’t have enough money and old people will be sent to incineration chambers. I was a guest, and they paid for the booze, so I decided against telling him that was about the stupidest fucking thing I’d ever heard.
nepat
@ BOB –
Sully updated his position. Will you?
steve s
HAHAHAHAHA.
CalD
I gotta go with less crazy. But it’s early days yet. I wouldn’t take any bets that this is as crazy as it gets.
Facebones
So what exactly do the Birthers expect to happen as a result? I mean, even if every stupid theory turned out correct – Obama was born in the slums of Kenya and raised a Muslim , etc. – so what? Do they really expect a do-over election? Even if Obama had to step down, Sarah Palin would not be appointed President. Biden would take over.
Now, I realize that the endgame of the pundits who should allegedly know better is to cast general doubt on Obama’s legitimacy, and thus taint his achievements. But I don’t think the average birther has thought that far ahead. Really, what does your typical Freeper think should happen?
Fencedude
Actually, if the election were somehow invalidated, its quite likely Biden would step down too.
Which would leave us with…=drumroll= President Nancy Pelosi!
tammanycall
@dmsilev: How cool would it be if President Obama WAS a Time Lord?!! /geek
Alan
Really, what does your typical Freeper think should happen?
Honestly, I imagine they think that if Obama can be shown to have cheated his way into office, they can get five votes on the Supreme Court to just appoint the chief wingnut of the day to finish his term. After all, Biden, Pelosi, Clinton and everyone else in the line of presidential succession must have been in on it, so it will be up to “an impartial decider” like John Roberts to decide who should take office. The birfers, like most Republicans, are all fascists, so why shouldn’t Obama’s replacement be determined by Supreme Court fiat.
Comrade Jake
Edit: wrong thread!
LD50
@Facebones: The birfers are simple folk. I think they assume that if they ‘win’, the entire election is invalidated and Palin becomes President forever.
r€nato
@Alan:
…and that totally wouldn’t be judicial activism. Why not? SUTW*.
*Shut Up, That's Why (not)
Eric U.
The only place I saw the full-blown Clinton body count stuff was in the “liberal” New Republic. I believe they had the body count up to 40, with an assertion of 150, and speculation that it could go as high as 250. I am pretty sure it wasn’t a parody, but who knows?
Zuzu's Petals
@dmsilev:
Well, since the birth announcements came not from the families but from the but from the vital records office in the state Department of Health based on info provided by the hospital, it would have to have been a fraud perpetrated by the hospital or the local and state governments.
Zuzu's Petals
@jl:
I don’t know if they have ’em or keep ’em, but if you ask Hawaii to send you an official copy of your birth certificate, no matter when you were born, you will get the exact same document Obama has posted online. With your info, of course.
Linkmeister
@Brick Oven Bill: Hey, Bill? Shove it.
“some low-level Hawaiian government hack who is likely highly conflicted.”
I don’t work for the Hawai’i State Government, but the people who do don’t deserve that crap from some mealy-mouthed clown like you.
gwangung
@Linkmeister: Nah, they WOULD be highly conflicted…about whether to be polite or shove it up BOB’s ass.
WingNutz
@Zuzu’s Petals: My god, it’s worse than we thought!
Comrade Darkness
@Eric U.: The really sad thing is, it doesn’t need to be a parody.
Brick Oven Bill
Did you know that Professor Gates refused to show Officer Crowley his birth certificate and that’s why he was arrested.
As far as I’m concerned, if your black you are from Africa until you prove differently.
LD50
@Brick Oven Bill: Yawn.
What else ya got?
Comrade Kevin
You’ve got to remember that these are just simple birfers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.
Uloborus
…do these people really think this is a 35+ year conspiracy to take over the Presidency?
I, in my almost obsessive habit of trying to assume that people are more reasonable than they look, figured that the idea was that when the Democrats realized that Obama might possibly someday have a shot at the Presidency, they dug a little, found he wasn’t born in the US, and planted a little evidence on the off chance. It hardly seems impossible. Although the newspapers are tough, since I guess there are libraries with microfilm or hard copies in their records, it’s quite possible they got lucky or arranged *something*.
Yes, it’s silly and there’s no evidence, but if you’re utterly determined to discredit Obama and like to think that people in power have no limits or ethics and like to plot and plan… well, it’s within the bounds of reason.
But they really honest-to-god think this was a plot to take over the Presidency from the beginning?
As for the birtherism being crazier than the crap Clinton got… I don’t know. I mean, basically they’re both just the desperate theories of people with a terminal case of sour grapes. Yeah, some of the Clinton stuff was really nasty, but almost nobody gave it any credence. It was, at most, an occasional ‘Some people even claim…’ mentioned bemusedly on official media. The GOP had a hate on for Clinton at LEAST as big as for Obama, but they at least wanted some legal sham to pursue it with. Actually suspicious looking financial deals, perjury… it was just an excuse, but it was a *legal* excuse. Courts throw birtherism out without looking at it and then go slit their wrists.
I think the difference here is that the GOP have cut their base back so far. They’re at the mercy of the crazies in their constituency, so their media faces and legislators have no choice but to try and legitimize an accusation they know is going nowhere, or watch their party splinter even worse.
To sum up, it’s about the same level of crazy, but it’s all the GOP have got *left* anymore. Back in the 90s they had a party.
Zuzu's Petals
@Cyrus:
I don’t get it. Aside from the sheer ludicrousness of 18 yr old Ann Dunham orchestrating a cover up by a Honolulu hospital from Kenya within days of giving birth … if she anticipated a custody battle, why would she go in the first place?
EJ
I have to admit the way O RLY seemlessly jumps between the two standard birther arguments (his birth certificate is fake/he’s not natural born because his dad is foreign) is pretty amazingly nutso.
In terms of sheer crazy it doesn’t hold a candle to Scaife endorsing Hillary, a decade after spending copious amounts of his own money to brand her as a mass murderer.
Neo
One additional thought as to why we haven’t seen the original … older original birth certificates used to list … the religion of the child. I guess to be more precise, the religion the parents intend to raise the child in.
Cyrus
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Don’t ask me, ask Tigerhawk or some birther.
And @Neo:
Atheist?
RememberNovember
wiki-wiki ( means quick-quick in Hawaiian pidjin )
I don’t have a COLB- it’s gone, but I do have a short form certificate. It’s splitting hairs and trying to parse temporal events which is impossible, but never let that stop a truther!
( Unless of course they’re off to Burning Man to paint their boobs red!)
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_a_certification_of_live_birth_the_same_thing_as_a_birth_certificate_in_Hawaii
RememberNovember
@Brick Oven Bill:
So I guess that rules out Haitians, and any other Caribbean person of non-caucasian descent.
And we’re all Africans, btw as we all trace back to Mitochondrial Eve…
William
I like that people here can consider the birthers as totally nuts, but still have the grace to be polite in person.