Odd as hell. It’s like Obi Wan Kenobi pulled the old mind-wave trick (“You don’t need to see his identification”), and the birthers suddenly forgot what they’ve been saying, doing and threatening, for three years.
Have you heard any of the most frantic, frenetic, dedicated birthers ask for the birth certificates of Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum?
Why all the tough questions for the Democrat, for the non-lunatic, for the Chicago guy, for the kid from the single-parent household, and none for the White Anglo-Saxon Catholic/Mormon/Lapsed Lutherans?
Where’s the birth certificate for Joe Arpaio? Could he be so tough on immigrants because, secretly, he is one, and hopes not to be discovered?
I think, perhaps, they weren’t really concerned about citizenship qualifications to be president, except to “get” Obama. If they can’t figure out a way to win — and therefore beat Obama — by cheating, they don’t want to play at all. Even Leo Donofrio is folding his tent.
If only Congress would get the message that America’s president is president of all of America, and their efforts to bring down the nation to “get” Obama are not working, and should be stopped, I’d be a lot happier guy.
Minor update, March 17, 2012: Sorta as I feared/expected/realized-from-years-of-experience, the birthers are letting the current group of Republicans slide, so far as I, or they, can tell. Most of them are completely unaware that at least one candidate has a foreign-born father, most of them don’t know where or when the candidates were born or naturalized, and of course, because the Republicans are not Obama, they don’t really care. One birther claims to be sure that “others” are looking hard into these questions, experts. Shades of that other Harrison Ford movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark:” What experts? “Top experts.” And shame on me for even asking the questions calling their bluff.
More (if you can stand it):
- S.E. Cupp Tears Into MSNBC Panel On Whether GOP Leaders Should Condemn Birthers In Congress (mediaite.com)
- Arpaio: I Briefed Santorum on My Birther Conspiracy Investigation (littlegreenfootballs.com)
- David Leopold: As the Presumptive GOP Nominee Will Mitt Romney Reject the Politics of Hate? (huffingtonpost.com)
- Live Video: Sheriff Arpaio’s Ridiculous Birther Press Conference (littlegreenfootballs.com)
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Joe writes:
If being a US citizen from birth is required to be a US president, a birth certificate should be required of all candidates.
Translation: I want to pander to a bunch of right wing idiots and racists because I don’t like the “Scary Black Man in the White House” and want to **** him over on facetious and spurious charges. And because I want to pretend to be a stupid idiot who thinks that Presidential candidates don’t get vetted up the wazoo.
There’s an internet meme, Joe, that applies here. It’s called “Don’t feed the trolls, it only encourages them.”
Well there is a version of that, it’s called “Don’t feed the racist pigs and the conspiracy nutjobs, it only encourages them.”
So..why are you attempting to feed the racist pigs and conspiracy nutjobs?
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Why not just a showing of citizenship? Why bother with this at all — when has it ever been a problem?
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Lower writes:
If being a US citizen from birth is required to be a US president, a birth certificate should be required of all candidates. I agree that consistency should be shown across the board and that all candidates should produce their certificates of birth.
AZ is pushing legislation to that effect to be eligible for the ballot here in AZ. I hope it passes. In fact, I hope the US Congress passes a similar law, not just because of this current birther conspiracy but to keep the whole blasted thing from ever happening again on either side.
What part of vetting do you not understand?
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If being a US citizen from birth is required to be a US president, a birth certificate should be required of all candidates. I agree that consistency should be shown across the board and that all candidates should produce their certificates of birth.
AZ is pushing legislation to that effect to be eligible for the ballot here in AZ. I hope it passes. In fact, I hope the US Congress passes a similar law, not just because of this current birther conspiracy but to keep the whole blasted thing from ever happening again on either side.
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And over at Pseudo-Polymath, the discussion goes on. Mark accuses me of lack of imagination, in failing to imagine the many ways he claims Barack Obama’s citizenship status differs from the Republican candidates’ citizenship status. In my most recent reply, I said:
Ed Darrell | March 21, 2012 at 16:41 |
No rational basis, since the only differences between Obama and the Republicans are demonstrated in the Republicans, too.
But if you wish to claim that having a foreign born father who is not a citizen is a difference, then you’re just ignoring the law — you say I suffer from a lack of imagination. I say you suffer from birther hallucinations. The Constitution rules, and Obama qualifies according to the 14th Amendment, law on citizenship, the Supreme Court, Senate resolutions, and the precedents of President Arthur and Vice President Curtis.
Romney has a foreign born father, too. You claim he was a U.S. citizen? Where’s the long-form birth certificate to prove it? You don’t know. You just extend your imagination to presume, in the absence of knowledge, what you want. Again, it’s not my lack of imagination, it’s your biased hallucinations. The White Mormon is in. The Black Hawaiian is out — in your imagination.
“In the media.” Really? What news outlet asked to see the document then wondered about its authenticity? None.
There were imaginary questions, hallucinations, but no “questions in the media.”
There was never any question. There were at least six different legal presumptions of the validity of the claim that Obama was born exactly as the documents said, in Honolulu. To claim, or believe, that there was any doubt required that one assumed several different agencies were, simultaneously, and completely, incompetent to carry out their legal duties in checking birth certificates: The State Department under Ronald Reagan, the Selective Service, the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the Illinois State Bar, the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the U.S. Senate Rules Committee, the U.S. Senate, Hilary Clinton’s opposition researchers (you clearly don’t know them!), John McCain’s opposition researchers, the National Republican Party, the Hawaii State Department of Public Health, the Honolulu Public Library, the 1961 publishers and editors of the Honolulu Advertiser, the 1961 publishers and editors of the Honolulu Star (if I recall the name correctly), the Republican governor of Hawaii in 2008, and a lot of other people along the way.
That large group of organizations and people probably do not agree on anything at any other time — the simultaneous failure of each and every one of those entities is a mathematical impossibility.
Under our laws and Constitution, there is nothing more reliable than a document from a government, under seal. That is what the State of Hawaii issued to Obama — twice very publicly. That you think any of these agencies might be unreliable is more a measure of your paranoia, lack of common sense and common decency, or insanity, than it is an indictment of any of them.
Check the facts. Not all claims on the internet, nor anywhere else, are equal. Truth is out there, and especially under the rigorous evidence rules of U.S. courts both state and federal, a close evaluation can make a solid determination of what that truth is.
In this case, the truth is laid out no fewer than six ways from . . . Hawaii.
None of the Republican candidates has been subject to equal scrutiny. You cannot say about any Republican candidate that he is a “natural born” citizen of the U.S. with the same degree of assuredness that you can say that about Barack Obama — if you stick to the law, to the evidence, and to the Constitution.
You may “imagine” something else, but that’s just your wild imagination, not the facts.
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And birtherism would be one of those things that Joe should have the intellectual honesty to condemn.
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Mark and Boonton probably won’t come over here to discuss, alas; here’s my most recent response to their ramblings at one of Mark’s sites:
In any case, we now know that apart from Orly Taitz, who is in my humble opinion certifiably insane (and should have her law license investigated at least, if not lifted — and maybe her dentist license, too) — all the birther flap was just flak, unwarranted propaganda designed to mislead honest but not-paying-much-attention Americans, like the large group of GOP voters in Mississippi who think Obama is Muslim.
It appears to me that the birthers are anti-American democracy so much that they don’t care who they mislead into voting badly, just so long as it damages America.
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To quote the birther:
Hmm, one has a foreign parent, no reason to imagine that might make a difference, eh? […]
Since Obama having a foreign parent doesn’t change the fact that the other parent was a US citizen and the fact he was born in Hawaii..what the hell do you think you’re doing? Other then proving the adage that a fool shouldn’t open his mouth?
Do you want to know where Mitt Romney’s father was born? Mexico. And yet not only do the birthers have no problem with his son running for President no one had an objection when Mitt’s father ran for President too.
But apparently the standards, on the right wing, are different if the person in question is black. Surprise surprise.
If having a parent born in a foreign country disqualified someone to run for President we’d have to disqualify at least 6 former Presidents including the first 5.
It isn’t where the parents were born that matters..it’s where the person who is running for President was born that matters under the law.
Time for you and your fellow birthers to stop making up **** just because you don’t like the “Big Scary Black Man in the White House.”
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No, Mark, there are no substantial differences in the “family past” of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Barack Obama that suggests any one of them deserves to be insulted and hounded to prove they are really American citizens. All of them were born on U.S. soil.
So why does Barack Obama get extra-special scrutiny on the issue? Say all you can without noting that Obama’s foreign-born father is black, and Romney’s foreign-born father is white. Or that Gingrich’s dysfunctional family was all white, and not interracial. Or that Santorum’s poor family was white, and Obama’s was interracial. Or that Paul’s exodus from Christian practice at least didn’t take him to a church with a ::gasp!:: dark-skinned pastor. (Heck, maybe you think Paul is a follower of Islam, too.)
Let me have some fun pointing out the hypocrisy and insanity of the birthers, will you? Don’t put an ice pick through your orbital and join them.
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[…] Failure of imagination … gosh is there any difference in the family past between GOP candidates and Mr Obama? Hmm, one has a foreign parent, no reason to imagine that might make a difference, eh? […]
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[…] of imagination … gosh is there any difference in the family past between GOP candidates and Mr Obama? Hmm, […]
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