The Birther movement may be dead before I had a chance to mock it--as so many others already have--but I doubt if it will go quietly. (A post on Huffington states that the news director at CNN told Lou Dobbs to kill the story since the proof was conclusive.) This insane conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama has no US birth cerificate and therefore is not legally our head of state has gained credence because seemingly normal conservatives such as Liz Chaney and some in Congress are saying stuff like, "Well, there are some questions here, there's room for doubt. Why can't you liberal media types listen to the other side?" Because there is conclusive proof of Obama's birth in Hawaii--like the birth certificate authenticated by the state's Republican govenor and contemporaneous birth announcements in the Honolulu papers. The fact that the state has produced only the short form rather than a long version has added fuel to the birthers' furor. What they don't see is that the State Dept. of records went paperless in 2001 and discarded all the longer forms of records including --probably--the original long version of Obama's certificate.
Some of these whack jobs have taken the tremendous leap from no original long form of birth certificate to Obama being really born in Kenya as that whacky lady in Delaware suggested. At least I think that's what she was getting at. She's the one who hijacked Rep. Castle's town hall meeting on health care to quiver in rage about her country being stolen from her by this foreign, socialist, Muslim guy. Maybe she meant that because the original long form had been destroyed by the Hawaii people in order to save paper, Obama's birth did not really happen or that he's really a Kenyan because that's his father's country of origin. What? She went on to scream about her father fighting in WWII and Americans sacrifising at Valley Forge only to have a non-American take over. I thought her head was going to explode. (This video is surely on YouTube. I first saw it on the Rachel Maddow Show. I'm too hungry right now to find you lazy people the link. It's pretty scary.) This woman needs help. I hope she is seeing someone for anger management.
Liz Chaney is the most disingenous of all the mainstream, non-whack job Repubs pushing this birther thing. Larry King asked her if she believed Obama was not the rightful president. She didn't answer but instead said the birthers had a right to express their displeasure with a president who was not protecting us from terrorism and palling around with our enemies and leading us down the socialist path to hell. (She later admited to Politico.com that Obama was the rightful President. Look it up yourselves, people, I'm still hungry.) Of course they have a right to state their opinions if they think Obama's the worst thing since mouldy old sliced bread. Go ahead, say he's the devil incarnate and have all the tea parties you want with the Mad Hatter (Rush), the March Hare (Joe the Plumber) and Alice (Sarah Palin) thrown in--hey, that would be a great political cartoon if I could draw. But don't pretend you really believe all this nonsense and expect us to take you seriously. The fact is these people just cannot stand to think an African-American with a broader world view than Dubya is their President so they cook up crazy schemes to explain that he's really not.
Remember when all the talk was about Obama being a Muslim, then he was too close to Rev. Wright, then Bill Ayers, not he's not really an American. Get over it, right wing flakes, you lost. Your image of America as an all-white country club has forever been changed and you'll just have to live with it.
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What they don't see is that the State Dept. of records went paperless in 2001 and discarded all the longer forms of records including --probably--the original long version of Obama's certificate.
ReplyDeleteFalse. On November 1, 2008, Hawaii Department of Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued this statement:
"Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."
If state officials examined the original in 2008 to verify the contents of the short form, they could not have destroyed it in 2001. So either they are lying about having destroyed it (so that they don't have to release it), or they are lying about having confirmed Obama's birthplace with the original last year.