More On Birther Diana West And The Trib

On November 22, The Tribune Review published this piece by Diana West.

We've written about her before.  In that blog post we let you know that she thinks that Rush Limbaugh is reluctant to discuss President Obama's "eligibility" because Rush "has a comfort zone" and (obviously) the birth certificate is outside of it.

Yea.  I know.  That's funny.

The current piece is about how FDR, by "normalizing" relations with the USSR in 1933 opened the door to:

[T]his Soviet war on America, spearheaded by traitors directed by Moscow, would intensify. A veritable army of Stalin's secret agents, agents of influence, fellow travelers and dupes entered the U.S. government and related institutions. They would fight an unceasing stealth war against this country, even — I should say, especially — during World War II.

Blah, blah, blah.  To quote the title of neoconservative historian Ronald Radosh's review of West's book: American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character, this is "McCarthy on Steroids." And that's from Frontpage.com which is published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  The David Horowitz Freedom Center has received $7.75 million in Scaife foundation money (about 36% of the total foundation money received by DHFC).

So she's not liked by at least one conservative at at least one Scaife-funded media outlet.

And this is where it gets interesting.  If we go onto her website, we find this:

On Wednesday, November 20, I received the Mightier Pen Award from Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy at the Union League Club in Manhattan. It was a truly spectacular event. As I noted in my remarks, in early September when Frank announced the award, which is dedicated to the doctrine of peace through strength, it came not only as a great honor, but also as a welcome missile shield against continuing attacks on me and American Betrayal. I can't thank Frank and CSP enough for their unwavering support and friendship throughout, and now, for this unforgettable celebration.

Hmm...Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy.  We've seen them before, haven't we?

And you do know that the Center for Security Policy has received about $5.9 million in Scaife foundation money over the years, right?  Or that that's about 58% of the CSP's total?

Then there's this from Heritage:

In American Betrayal, Diana West argues that – current policies today notwithstanding – America began to abandon its core ideals and march toward Socialism nearly 75 years ago. Starting in the late 1930s, at the time of FDR, the Soviets were already in a position to take advantage of the many communist sympathizers in the U.S. Not only FDR, but also Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and those in their inner circles played roles in enabling the U.S.S.R. as well as concealing the massive Moscow-directed penetration of American society. West shows that the system of spies designed to denigrate the American way of life was deep and extensive.

And as we all know, the Heritage Foundation's received tens of millions from the various Scaife controlled foundations ($27.944 at last count, or about 25% of the total).

It's astounding (time is fleeting) how much Scaife money is swirling around both sides of this story.

But it's still McCarthy on steroids.  And West's still a birther - that alone should invalidate anything (ANYTHING) she's written since.

The Company Scaife Keeps

It should be but given how badly the conservative noise machine mangles reality it's not surprising that the long debunked birther myth remains alive.

And yet birthers yet thrive and indeed are taken seriously across the conservative universe.

Take yesterday, for example.

Yesterday, the Tribune-Review published this column by Diana West.

And Diana West is a birther.  Take a look at this from her own blog from last April:

Almost exactly one year ago – with Donald Trump on top of presidential polls and author Jerome Corsi on top of Amazon’s best-seller list, both for asking where President Barack Obama’s “real” birth certificate was – Judith Corley, the president’s personal attorney, flew to Hawaii. She went there to pick up two certified copies of the president’s long-form birth certificate from the Hawaii Department of Health.

At least, that’s what then-White House Counsel Robert Bauer told us last April 27 at a White House press briefing called to unveil the new, certified document. Multiple copies were passed out to the press, while NBC’s Savannah Guthrie became the one witness I know of to touch the certified document. (She reported she “felt the raised seal.”) A computer image of this Obama long-form birth certificate appeared on the White House website, where now you and I can download it for ourselves as proof of the president’s bona fides.

Or is it?

And (AND) she has an explanation for why big name media conservatives "aren't covering" the story.  In the same blog post, she quotes a conversation she had with a "Famous Conservative" (hereafter: "FC"):

New tack for Famous Conservative: If (the birth certificate story) were true, why hasn't Rush or Hannity taken it on?

Me: They're afraid.

FC: (Scoffs.)

Me: Look, Rush won't talk about a lot of things: Islamization, for one. Sharia. Muslim Brotherood, those kinds of things. He has a comfort zone. [Emphasis added.]

Yea, that's right.  Rush Limbaugh is afraid to raise the Birth Certificate story because it's out of his "comfort zone."  The fact that he's indeed talked about it undermines West's thesis, doesn't it?

It also kind of undermines her overall credibility, doesn't it?  I mean to get something so easy so wrong (about Rush Limbaugh, no less!), one has to wonder why she'd be taken seriously by her Conservative Comrades.

Like Ann Coulter (another columnist who's published by Scaife's Trib).  As she said to Sean Hannity (another one of West's conservatives who are afraid to speak the truth about the birth certificate):

Obama has produced his birth certificate. There were announcements that ran in two contemporaneous Hawaiian newspapers at that time. The head of the Hawaiian medical record has announced I have seen the long-form you all want. I don’t know why the long form is considered more credible than the short form. They are both from the same office. The State Department accepts the short form or as we call it the birth certificate. Hawaii accepts the birth certificate short form. So, I mean, it is a conspiracy theory that won’t die on the Internet, but every responsible, conservative organization to look at it and shot it down...

And yet birther Diana West made her way onto the pages of Scaife's Tribune-Review.

Another embarrassment for Richard Mellon Scaife.

Tracking Teh Crazie - Jerome Corsi. Again.

The wingnut birther conspiracy continues.

From Jerome Corsi at WND (of course):

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

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

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

And the connection to Brennan?  Take a look:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not really.  From page ten of the OIG report:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mitt Romney in Michigan today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[sigh]

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

Jack Kelly Sunday

Jack's a birther.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Birther.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Birther.

Governor Rick Perry's A Birther

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

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

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

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

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

And?
That came up.

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

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

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

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

Rick Perry's a birther.

World Net Daily: Still Peddling Teh Birther Crazie

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

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

On June 2, Politico reported:

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

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

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

Pretty cut and dried, right?

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

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

And here's Corsi's conspiracy:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take a look:

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

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

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

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

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

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

WND: Crazie, crazier, craziest.

The Zombie Lies That NEVER Die (World Net Daily and the Obama Birth Certificate)

When times get boring, just head on over to World Net Daily to see what teh crazies' up to.

Did you know they're still flogging the Birth Certificate? They're still putting it in irony quotation marks so it shows up like this: Obama's "birth certificate".

As of this date and time (7:14 am on May 25) we see these articles in this order:

Above the date there's this non-Birth Certificate story:

U.K. celebrates Obamas, but Michael Savage is another story

The rest is red meat for the birthers:

A QUESTION OF ELIGIBILITY
WND Exclusive
Trump pumps Corsi
for latest on Obama
Requests information from author
of 'Where's the Birth Certificate?'

WND POLL
Combing over the facts
What is Donald Trump up to now with his questioning of Jerome Corsi?

A Poll asking WND readers what they think of the previous story.

WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Store clerk: Best-selling book probing Obama 'withdrawn'
Borders representative bases answer on fake Esquire article

A story on Corsi's book being out of stock in one Borders in California.

WND Exclusive
Obama camp pushes to sell birth-certificate images
'Don't miss out on this chance to get yours'

A story on how the "push" to sell "birth-certificate images" has actually driven up the sales of Corsi's book.

WND Exclusive
'Criminal' Obama secret gets no media attention
'Hawaiian' president has mysterious Connecticut Social Security Number

A story on the back-up birther story: Obama's Connecticut Social Security number

WND POLL
Coverage you can't count on
Why are news media paying no attention to Obama's Connecticut Social Security Number?

A reader poll on the previous story.

WND Exclusive
Now popular Republicans 'not natural-born citizens'
Rising stars of GOP in doubt because parents from overseas

A tangental birther story. How Governors Rubio and Jindal might not be natural born citizens (even though they were born in the US) because, like Obama, both men's parents were not American citizens.

WND
Corsi interview on Clear Channel Radio
Listen now to what Obama and crew are trying to hide

An interview with Jerome Corsi on Obama's birth certificate.

WND.COMMENTARY
What it'll take to resolve natural-born-citizen issue
Exclusive: Monte Kuligowski offers process for assuring justice in 2012 election

As of this writing, this is a broken link. But by the title we see it's still about Obama's "natural-born-citizen issue."B

ETWEEN THE LINES
Obama's 'Made in the USA' campaign
Exclusive: Joseph Farah applies apt definitions to word re-election effort is touting

From Farah himself. A story on how the phrase "Made in the USA" and how it actually hints at Obama not being a real American

WND Exclusive
'The Obama code': Hidden messages in birth document?
Computer experts find anomalies embedded in White House release

Story on some computer manipulation of the Long Form Birth Certificate that proves it's a forgery - or something like that

WND Exclusive
It's out! The book that proves Obama's ineligible
Today's the day Corsi is unleashed to tell all about that 'birth certificate'

Ad for Jerome Corsi's book on the Obama's Birth Certificate

WND Exclusive
From A to Z: What's wrong with Obama's birth certificate?
Examine for yourself mounting evidence that president's document isn't genuine

A primer on the birth certificate story.

THE FULL STORY
WND Exclusive
Is Obama constitutionally eligible to serve?
WND's complete archive of news reports on the issue

Birth Certificate again - WND's complete "reporting"

WND Exclusive
Obama's day of reckoning could end his presidency
Free, landmark summary explains eligibility issue clearly, suggests what you should do

Another primer on the Birth Certificate

DEALS OF THE DAY
Corsi No. 1 bestseller 'Obama Nation' $4.95 today only!
Fantastic $23 discount on other book most hated by Team Obama

Another ad for Jerome Corsi's book on Obama's birth certificate.

Most politically incorrect film of the decade
Documentary explores forbidden issue of president's legal qualifications

Ad for an anti-Obama documentary.

And so on
WND - Birther Central

Still.

It will never end

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


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

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

President Obama Releases Long Form Birth Certificate

For the birthers:


(Click to enlarge)


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

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

(h/t to Talking Points Memo)

The GOP is The Birther Party

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

From Chris Matthews:



He said:

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

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

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

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

Any of my Republican friends want to chime in here?

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

Sorry Ruth Ann, But You're Wrong. Again.

From Ruth Ann Dailey's column this week:

It's been perfectly clear for about three years now that questions about Mr. Obama's nationality have no traction. Whether he is a native-born American or has a valid birth certificate or (most recently, thanks to Mr. Trump) was born at a particular hospital -- reasonable people have long since felt the matter settled.

The only ones being hurt by the regular roiling of these waters are those who oppose Mr. Obama on a higher plane -- namely, the majority of Republicans and independents who do not dwell on the lunatic fringe.

While it's true that reasonable people have long felt the matter settled, what about, you know, Republicans?

In a recent poll by Public Policy Polling of 416 Republican primary voters in Iowa, when asked "Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States?" 48% said no. 26% were unsure. That's 74% who have not settled the matter, Ruth Ann.

But maybe that's just one state. What does it look like nationwide?

In another recent poll by PPP, 400 Republican primary voters were asked, "Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States? 51% said no and 21% were not sure. That's 72% who haven't settled the matter either, Ruth Ann.

Maybe it's the Polling company. So let's look around a little.

Last August in a CNN/Opinion Research poll, when asked, "Do you think Barack Obama was definitely born in the United States, probably born in the United States, probably born in another country, or definitely born in another country? 44% of the Republicans got it wrong. 27% said he was "probably born in another country" while 14% said he was "definitely born in another country" and 3% had no opinion.

That's 44% of polled Republicans who haven't settled the matter, Ruth Ann. Or at least they hadn't settled it in August of 2010.

Does this mean that Ruth Ann Dailey thinks that nearly half of the GOP isn't reasonable?

UPDATE - Straightened out the grammar of that last sentence.

Frank Gaffney - Fear Monger

This past Friday I found my self strolling, as I am sometimes fond of doing at lunchtime, towards Market Square dahn-tahn.

Needless to say I was surprised to stumble over a tea party rally being held there.

For the news details here's McNulty of the P-G:

Entering its second year, Pittsburgh's tea party movement had its now-traditional tax day rally in Market Square today, attended by roughly 500 supporters and a gaggle of counter-demonstrators.

Alas, by the time I got there the gaggle had dispersed leaving the 500 or so tea partiers to be kept wide-eyed and entertained by none other than Rose ("Obama may be the devil because he attracts flies and rats") Tennant.

An interesting morsel from the P-G follow up the next day:

Underscoring the tea party's role in the GOP, [Pittsburgh tea party organizer Patti] Weaver, a former candidate for Allegheny County executive, invited fellow GOP candidates Chuck McCullough and D. Raja onto the stage.

Chuck McCullough was there? I wonder if someone from this anti-establishment crowd asked him about his impeding trial. I wonder if anyone in the crowd asked him about his being charged with taking money from an elderly client to make political donations in her name but without her authorization.

I wonder.

I didn't see that if it happened. What I did see was blazing fear mongering by Center for Security Policy President, Frank Gaffney. Some things to keep in mind when ascertaining the credibility of Mr Gaffney:

• He's a birther. In 2008 Gaffney wrote:

Another question yet to be resolved is whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. There is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii. There is also a registration document for a school in Indonesia where the would-be president studied for four years, on which he was identified not only as a Muslim but as an Indonesian. If correct, the latter could give rise to another potential problem with respect to his eligibility to be president.

Curiously, Mr. Obama has, to date, failed to provide an authentic birth certificate which could clear up the matter.

• His Center for Security Policy is heavily supported by foundations controlled by our very good friend Richard Mellon Scaife:

$175,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009.
$300,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008.
$300,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007.
$350,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2006.
$350,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2005.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2004.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2003.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2002.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2001.

Nice to know that such a grass roots movement can host a crazie speaker connected to some very old school conservative money.

Then there's Gaffney's certainty about Saddam's WMD.

Now that we've established Frank Gaffney as completely infected with teh crazie, let's move on to what he was talking about. Gaffney's yelled, screamed, and ranted about how SHARIA LAW IS RUINING THIS COUNTRY.

Sharia's EVERYWHERE! AND IT'S TAKING OVER!

Except it's not. From Reinbach at the Huffingtonpost:

Here's how Gaffney described what he calls the threat to the New York Senate's Homeland Security and Military Affairs Committee on April 8th: ."The threat...is best described, I believe, as a politico-legal-military threat whose express purpose is to have it imposed world-wide, subject to a theocratic ruler called a Caliph. That is of course a program that is completely at odds with our Constitution, our form of government, our way of life, our freedoms."

I'll admit that sounds pretty grim. Even if it does seem a lot like the threat of Global Communism I used to hear about as a kid.

The truth? Sharia is religious law, and no religious law can be imposed on the US without amending the Constitution -- twice -- to repeal both the opening clause of the First Amendment, and the Supremacy Clause in Article 6.

Something he never got round to telling the crowd. Here's the opening clause of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

And here's the Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

Huh. I thought the tea partiers knew the Constitution.

I guess when it comes to billionaire-funded WMD finding birthers like Frank Gaffney, the truth is something to be jettisoned in favor of fear.

More Birther Crazie

Check this portrait of teh crazie from Public Policy Polling.

After looking at the results I have to ask, What the heck happened to the GOP? It used to be a party of ideas. Granted, few of those ideas I agreed with but at least William F. Buckley knew BS when he saw it. He wrote about the Birchers' "paranoid and unpatriotic drivel" way back in 1965.

There were level headed adults in the GOP back then, it seems.

Not so much these days. PPP interviewed 400 Republican Primary voters and found that when asked this question:

Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States?

Only 28% said yes. 51% said no and 21% were not sure.

Think of that for a minute. A well documented historical event, (meaning there's official paper work to support the report) and 72% of Republican primary voters don't accept its validity.

Bertrand Russell wrote about how to rate the appropriate level skepticism for historical events his solution was to imagine what would unknown stuff would have to be right in order for a well documented event to be false. He didn't use this example, but try to imagine what would have to be true in order for this statement "Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre in April of 1865." to be false. Once you do that, reality is easy to accept.

Think of what conspiracy has to be in place in order for the statement "Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961." in order to be false. That's what that majority of GOPers must believe.

What happened to the GOP?

One last thing. If you're sitting at a table where there are 4 Republicans who say they'll be voting in their state's upcoming primary, there's a good chance that 2 of them are out-right birthers and another is too clueless to know better.

What happened to the GOP?

Update From Teh Crazie Birther Front

From CNN:

The Supreme Court has again cast aside an appeal that raised doubts about President Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship, a grass-roots legal issue that has gained little legal or political footing, but continues to persist in the courts.

The justices without comment Monday rejected a challenge from Charles Kerchner Jr., a Pennsylvania man who sought a trial in federal court forcing the president to produce documents regarding his birth and citizenship.

And:

Kerchner, a retired military officer who describes himself on his website as a "genetic genealogy pioneer," argues the framers of the 1789 document intended a "natural-born" citizen to mean someone born in the U.S. to parents who were both American citizens.

Needless to say, teh crazies are still pounding away at this "argument":

"I don't think the court helped heal the country," said Mario Apuzzo, the New Jersey attorney who argued the case on behalf of retired Navy CDR Charles Kerchner. "We still don't know Mr. Obama's status. … The court is supposed to take cases that are important, and I can't imagine a case more important than this one."

"You need justice to resolve conflicts between people, and when justice is denied people continue to go after each other in a savage way. We did not get justice, " Apuzzo told WND. "For the court to deny our justice sets the country back terribly."

And from Kerchner himself:

"This matter should have been addressed by the media and political parties early in the spring of 2008 during the primaries. It wasn't," wrote Kerchner Monday morning. "Congress should have addressed this when asked and when constitutionally it was required to. It didn't. The courts should have addressed the merits of the questions when appealed to early on. They didn't. Everyone in our system of government chose appeasement over confrontation and punted the ball to someone else."

"Now it is far worse," Kerchner continued. "The Supreme Court has chosen appeasement and inaction over action and dealing with the issue and questions openly in a court of law under the rules of evidence and law. Our constitutional republic and legal system is now compromised and broken."

But this is the part I lo-o-o-o-ve!:

Kerchner v. Obama argued that Mr. Obama is not a "natural born citizen," which article II, section 1 of the constitution requires any U.S. president to be. According to Swiss political theorist Emer de Vattel, whose writings heavily influenced the founding fathers, an American "natural born citizen" must be the child of two parents who were both American citizens. Mr. Obama's father was a British subject, a Kenyan student living temporarily in the United States.

Never mind that the Constitution says nothing about the parentage of a citizen. Here's Amendment XIV, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Since when does the wingnut right take the word of a foreigner when it comes to interpreting the US Constitution?

Birther Crazie.

Special Comment About The Election

Since I have nothing original to say (ever), I found some snippets of what some other folks have written around the blogosphere to reflect what I am thinking right now.

David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars:

...I blame the geniuses in the Democratic Party -- both in the White House and elsewhere -- who failed to establish firmly the narrative after the election that needed to be hammered home daily and relentlessly and fearlessly: that Americans had repudiated conservative rule because it had manifestly proven itself a failure. Instead, Democrats thought "bipartisanship" was more important. Sure it was.

This clearly was The Fox Election. This was a political victory entirely engineered by a fake "news network" that in reality is a relentless and powerful right-wing propaganda machine. Democrats need to wake up and figure out how they're going to beat it.

Then from a few days before the election there was Jodi Jacobson at Reality Check. She starts out saying she was a "soccer mom" for Obama but now has hung up her cleats (it's a metaphor - it means the Dems have lost her support).

She explains her disappointment with the Obama administration.

I never thought for a split second that it would be easy for Obama to turn things around after eight years, or that any of it would happen over night.

I certainly never thought it would happen without a fight.

But the bottom line is I expected him to fight. I expected him to understand that the change many of us sought was the use of political power for good, that we had delivered this Administration and the Democratic Party massive election turnout and a Democratic House and Senate to lead effectively, proactively, strongly, and vocally on economic change, health reform, climate change, energy use, education, women's rights, gay rights, science and evidence. This was not wishful thinking--Obama was on the record for every one of these things in the campaign. [Italics in original]

She goes on:

I did expect him to take action, not to spend months--in fact nearly two years--vacillating between preemptive compromises with a Republican party that set out on November 3rd, 2008 to destroy him before he even took the oath and continuous pleading with them to give him "their ideas." I think we already knew what those ideas were.

One more on "bipartisanship" with the GOP:

I did expect him to put John Boehner, Mitch McConnel and the rest of the wrecking crew in their place, making them compromise with him, instead of the other way around.

If there was an "enthusiasm gap" it's found in places described by Neiwart and Jacobson. Add to that the noise emanating from the propaganda machine known as Fox "News" and the Democratic Party's apparent lack of interest in denouncing every "death panel" lie, every "Obama raised taxes on everyone" lie and you get something close to last night's results.

Not surprising, really. But they blew it. Blew it big time. The biggest Congressional margins in decades and they blew it because they didn't realize that the GOP was never looking to play nice with them in the first place.

And because of that, for the next two years (at the very least) we'll be seeing House hearings on Climate-gate, Hawaiian Birth Certificates, and how Obama's racist Department of Justice turns a blind eye to voter intimidation when the intimidators are two black men in Philadelphia. We may even see hearings on how George Soros funded all that ACORN voter fraud.

And no compromises, no bipartisanship whatsoever from the GOP. John Boehner has already promised that one.

They blew it.

WND: Teh Crazie (Still!)

Joseph Farah is still at it.

He's STILL droning on about the Birth Certificate.

Really.

And in supporting his case, the stuff he leaves out is simply breathtaking.

Really.

Here's Joey:

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

Well, it is. As one has to be rational to recognize this, I can't expect anyone from WND to understand.

Really.

The "counter-misinformation" page, written by Todd Leventhal and dated August 21, 2009 (good thing they got right on it at WND, huh?) can be found here.

But as you read Joey's prose, take note the verb tenses when describing the president's "dual citizenship." It's always in the present tense. Even when what he's quoting always puts it in the past. For example, Joey writes:

In a number of court cases challenging Obama's eligibility, dual citizenship has been raised as a factor that could compromise his "natural born" status under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution. The cases argue dual citizenship would make Obama ineligible...[emphasis added.]

But way way way way down the bottom of the piece, he writes:

Finally, Leventhal cites FactCheck.org to state, "Obama was originally both a U.S. citizen and a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies from 1961 to 1963 (because his father was from Kenya, which gained its independence from the British Empire in 1963), then both a U.S. and Kenyan citizen from 1963 to 1982, and solely a U.S. citizen after that." [emphasis added.]

So even if Obama once held a dual citizenship, he no longer does. But as part of Joey's argument, he's ranting about how Obama's dual citizenship would make him ineligible.

See? That's teh crazie right there.

By the way factcheck.org goes a bit farther:

In other words, at the time of his birth, Barack Obama Jr. was both a U.S. citizen (by virtue of being born in Hawaii) and a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (or the UKC) by virtue of being born to a father who was a citizen of the UKC.

Obama's British citizenship was short-lived. On Dec. 12, 1963, Kenya formally gained its independence from the United Kingdom.

When he held also held a Kenyan citizenship. However :

[T]he Kenyan Constitution prohibits dual citizenship for adults. Kenya recognizes dual citizenship for children, but Kenya's Constitution specifies that at age 23, Kenyan citizens who possesses citizenship in more than one country automatically lose their Kenyan citizenship unless they formally renounce any non-Kenyan citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance to Kenya.

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1984.

So he hasn't been a "dual citizen" since he convinced Weather Underground member Bill Ayers to ghostwrite a book for him - eleven years later.

That's teh crazie.

Really.

It's a joke

That would be much of public discourse now (and some of the policy proposals out there).

The War Against the Poor
It's not enough to give the ultra rich huge tax breaks, you must actively punish the poor:

Carl Paladino, Tea-Party-backed Republican candidate for governor of New York (who has showed up on these pages before for is racist and hardcore porn emails), advocates for the creation of prison dorms for welfare recipients where they can receive training including lessons in "personal hygiene" (because everyone knows that the poor are stinky).

Utah state Sen. Dan Liljenquist wants to cut all elective epidurals and elective C-sections for women on Medicaid (I'm going to take a wild guess here that he's also "pro life" in addition to being pro pain).

The War Against US Muslims

What does it say when the voice of sanity in the Republican party on the Ground Zero Mosque Burlington Coat Factory Non-Mosque is Ron Paul? '...Paul argues that the opposition to the mosque “is all about hate and Islamaphobia,” stoked by “neo-conservatives” who “never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars."'

And, just in case you think it isn't all about "hate and Islamaphobia," you can view a video here of "a person of color wearing a skull cap and wandering through the crowd was targeted with insults and nearly attacked by protesters for the offense of looking vaguely Muslim" at an anti Burlington Coat Factory Non-Mosque protest. You can also hear a person chanting "Mohammad is a pig."

The War Against President Obama
Last week I spent some time in my old stomping grounds (Jeannette, Hempfield, Greensburg -- or as I like to refer to it -- The Heart of Darkness). While there, the following marred the lovely landscape:

A group of four billboards. One said "Obama Care Shovel Ready" over a picture of a cemetery. Another announced a 9/11 T.E.A. Party at Bushy Run Battlefield. Right under that, was one with a graphic of the US Capitol dome with the words "Throw the bums out" (I'm guessing based on the other two signs that "bums" referred to Dems). A little further down Route 30 was a billboard which proclaimed "Marriage...God's plan for Safe Sex" (you can be sure that the picture was of one man and one woman). There were also more yard-size T.E.A. Party signs on the back roads of Greensburg than I cared to count.

A man I met who, while telling me that he didn't follow politics, was absolutely certain that Obama didn't have a US birth certificate. When I told him that a copy has been available online for two years, he looked like I told him his parents were really Santa Claus.

.

Jim Quinn - Teh Crazie

Yep. Jim Quinn's still crazy. Have a listen:


The text:

There has long been a rumor in Washington, circulating ever since the advent of the ascension to the throne of the Messiah, that He's paying off the President of Kenya to keep his mouth shut about and to keep the birth certificate under wraps. Uh, because you know frankly in Hawaii, uh the reason we can't see the birth certificate is probably because there isn't one.

Teh Crazie - Jim Quinn style.

More On Daryl Metcalfe (He's Got Teh Crazie)

Here's Dennis Roddy in the P-G:

State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican firebrand from Cranberry known for controversial remarks, yesterday refused to back down on comments in which he suggested a group of veterans were "traitors" for promoting a message about climate change.

And:

Rep. Metcalfe, who served in the U.S. Army from 1980-84, defended the remarks, saying "if the type of policies that an individual promotes undermines the Constitution and the law of the land in our country, then they are not patriots." He said cap-and-trade proposals on carbon emissions interfere with the rights of businesses and states and violate Constitutional principles. "It looks like, from their violent reaction from their statement, they haven't disputed that it's leftist propaganda," he said of the veterans group.

One member of the group, Alex Cornell Du Houx, a decorated Marine combat veteran who joined in the battle of Fallujah three years ago, said he was troubled by Mr. Metcalfe's remarks.

"It's disappointing that a fellow service member would make such comments. We're just waiting for him to have a chance to apologize for those remarks," Mr. Du Houx said.

He said both the Department of Defense and the U.S. Marine Corps have begun programs to reduce carbon emissions in their own facilities. "The unfortunate reality is that he stands opposed to our military leaders. They know this is a threat and he should, too."

A buncha Commie pinkos, those Marines.

Roddy then reminds his many readers of a few of Metcalfe's other "controversial" statements.

Like this one:

Mr. Metcalfe previously triggered controversy this year when he opposed a resolution declaring Domestic Violence Awareness month in Pennsylvania because, in addition to the mention of those abused by spouses, the resolution included a reference to men suffering domestic abuse as well. Mr. Metcalfe said he interpreted that to mean people involved in homosexual relationships and said he would not support it because it "had a homosexual agenda."

Or this one:

Last year he refused to support a vote to honor the 60th anniversary of a Muslim group in the state because "Muslims don't recognize Jesus Christ as God."

Got me to thinking, I wondered what the other paper in town (the one with all the conflicts of interest on its editorial board) had to say about the odious Metcalfe?

Here's Eric Heyl today:

Whatever your thoughts might be on global warming, branding as traitors soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan because they exercised their free speech rights is extreme.

And Eric Heyl in April of 2006:

Let's Metcalfe for a moment today.

Observant readers might have noticed that I just transformed Republican state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe's last name into a verb. For this column's purposes, the word is defined as wantonly engaging in acts of stupefying redundancy.

When Eric Heyl think's you're extreme and has verbified your name into something that uses the phrase "stupefying redundancy," it's time to up the meds or check your meds or go see someone to prescribe you better meds or something because man, you've got teh crazie.

And oh yea, he's a birther:

"As a veteran and an elected official who takes an oath of office, just like every past and future President of the United States, to uphold and defend the Constitutional rights of the citizens I represent, it is greatly perplexing and beyond troubling that a political candidate can ascend to the White House without providing sufficient documentation verifying his or her place of birth or American citizenship," state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler County) said in a statement. "This legislation is intended to send the message that even those candidates who are running for our nation's highest office are not above the law."

Teh Crazie continues.