Has anyone posted this for the Birther Nut-jobs to read yet?

Purple Haze

Literally Stimulated
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Sep 19, 2000
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Sorry, but I refuse to go through a hundred pages of partisan hack crap about about the alleged birthplaces of the President.

Though this piece probably won't satisfy all of the conservative retards, it's enough for me to move on to more important topics, like when will Obama kill all the old white people...

Salon's handy-dandy guide to refuting the Birthers

Now you, too, can silence the annoying Birther in your life -- and in just eight easy steps!
By Alex Koppelman

Aug. 05, 2009 |

There are, sadly, a lot of Birthers out there. A recent poll showed that 11 percent of Americans -- including 28 percent of Republicans -- don't believe President Obama was born in the U.S. Another 12 percent aren't sure.

So, at some point, you're likely to find out that a friend or relative is a Birther. Your Uncle Floyd will forward you a chain e-mail that says Obama was actually born in Kenya and there's a Kenyan birth certificate that proves it and hundreds of government officials and reporters are in on a conspiracy to hide the truth of his ineligibility for the presidency from the public. And you will wonder: How can I possibly deal with all the falsehoods in this e-mail without disappearing down a rabbit hole?

Well, wonder no more. In the spirit of public service, Salon has compiled this list of the most popular Birther myths, along with all the debunking you could ever ask for. Now you can just e-mail this list to Uncle Floyd and get on with your life.

Unfortunately, there is some small print involved in this offer. We can't promise this article will convince Uncle Floyd that Obama was born in the U.S. and is the legitimate president. In fact, we can just about guarantee that it won't have much effect at all. That's just the way conspiracy theories work: Believers are unlikely to change their minds, no matter how much evidence you present.

Still, it's worth a try.

Myth 1: Obama wasn't born in the U.S.

This is the big one. It may also be the most easily refuted. First of all, during the presidential campaign, Obama released a certification of live birth, which is the official document you get if you ask Hawaii for a copy of your birth certificate. There are allegations that what Obama released is a forgery, but state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

If that wasn't enough, two Hawaiian newspapers carried announcements of Obama's birth in August 1961. (Read the Honolulu Advertiser's item from Aug. 13, 1961, nine days after Obama's birth, here.) The traditional joke that Birther debunkers make is that his grandparents must have placed those announcements because they knew that he'd want to run for president nearly five decades later. The truth, though, is that the notices are even stronger pieces of evidence than that. Obama's family didn't place them -- Hawaii did, as it does for all births. The announcements were based on official records sent to the papers by the state's Department of Health.

Myth 2: Obama can't be president because his father was a British citizen

Some of the Birthers -- like de facto leader Orly Taitz -- believe that Obama wouldn't be eligible for the presidency even if he were born in the U.S. That's because, in their infinite wisdom, the Founding Fathers included in the Constitution a fair amount of phrases they never really bothered to define. One of those is this explanation of who can be president: "No person except a natural born citizen."

The Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the question of what "natural born citizen" means. So the Birthers have simply settled on their own definition -- someone born to two citizen parents -- and found a source,"The Law of Nations," a 1758 book by the Swiss philosopher Emerich de Vattel, to back them up.

There are a couple of problems with this. Most important, Obama isn't the first president with a non-citizen parent: Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president, was. His father was from Ireland and apparently did not become a U.S. citizen until more than 10 years after the future president's birth.

Plus, even if the Founding Fathers did rely on Vattel as much as the Birthers say -- always a dubious proposition -- Swiss philosophy books aren't legal precedent in the United States. British common law is. And in 1898, in the case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court looked into the meaning of "natural born" in the common law and concluded that a non-citizen's mere presence in the U.S. is enough to make their child, if born here, a natural-born citizen.

Myth 3: A Kenyan birth certificate for Obama, showing he was born in Mombasa, has been discovered

It's a hoax. Once Taitz released the document, purportedly a certified copy of a Kenyan birth certificate, it took less than two days for Internet sleuths to prove that it had been forged.

The first signs were a couple of small but revealing errors: The certification is dated Feb. 17, 1964, when newly independent Kenya was known as the Dominion of Kenya. It wouldn't start calling itself the Republic of Kenya until December of that year -- but the document refers to the republic. Additionally, the document's header refers to "Coast Province," but as two British professors who are experts in Kenyan history pointed out to Salon, at the time the certificate was supposedly produced, the country's provinces were referred to as regions.

For the final nail in this myth's coffin, one particularly enterprising man, Steve Eddy, located the original Australian document on which the Kenyan certificate was apparently based. The two documents share several identical numbers, including the page and the book of records in which they can be found, and minor changes were made to the names of the registrars responsible for the Australian copy. Taitz claims the Australian certificate "was created to try to discredit my efforts" but it was in fact available on the Internet as far back as 2007.

Myth 4: Obama's grandmother said he was born in Kenya

There's a kernel of truth to this one. In an interview with a street preacher named Ron McRae, Sarah Obama, the second wife of the president's grandfather, did say she was there, in Kenya, for her grandson's birth.

Unfortunately for the Birthers, it was the result of a miscommunication -- or perhaps a mistranslation -- and as soon as McRae started pressing the issue, Obama's family realized what had happened and corrected him. Most Birthers simply ignore the corrections, excising them from audio and transcripts of the conversation posted online. McRae just believes it's part of the conspiracy and that Obama's younger relatives were coached to hide the truth.

The full audio can be downloaded here. What follows is a transcript of the relevant portion of the interview:

MCRAE: Could I ask her about his actual birthplace? I would like to see his birthplace when I come to Kenya in December. Was she present when he was born in Kenya?

TRANSLATOR: Yes. She says, yes, she was, she was present when Obama was born.

MCRAE: When I come in December. I would like to come by the place, the hospital, where he was born. Could you tell me where he was born? Was he born in Mombasa?

TRANSLATOR: No, Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America.

MCRAE: Whereabouts was he born? I thought he was born in Kenya.

TRANSLATOR: No, he was born in America, not in Mombasa.

MCRAE: Do you know where he was born? I thought he was born in Kenya. I was going to go by and see where he was born.

TRANSLATOR: Hawaii. Hawaii. Sir, she says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father was also learning, there. The state of Hawaii.

Myth 5: Hawaii allows parents to get birth certificates for their foreign-born children

This one is actually true -- just not in the way the Birthers think. Here's their position, as outlined by World Net Daily, a conservative news site that's become the unofficial Birther Web headquarters: "The 'Certification of Live Birth' posted online and widely touted as 'Obama's birth certificate' does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same 'short-form' document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii."

Children not born in Hawaii can get a birth document from the state. But it won't say they were born in Hawaii, as Obama's does.

"If you were born in Bali, for example, you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali," Janice Okubo, the director of communications for the state Department of Health, told the Washington Independent's David Weigel recently. "You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate."

Myth 6: Obama traveled to Pakistan using an Indonesian passport

When the Birthers tire of arguing that Obama wasn't born in the U.S., they take another tack. At some point during the time he spent in Indonesia growing up, they say, Obama must have taken Indonesian citizenship or renounced his American citizenship or both. As proof, they cite the trip he took to Pakistan in 1981 with a friend from college, and say the U.S. government had issued a ban on travel by its citizens to the country.

Thing is, there was no travel ban. "We have no record of any travel ban between America and Pakistan during that period or since," a State Department spokesman told Weigel. And FactCheck.org's Brooks Jackson notes that the New York Times printed an article about travel to Pakistan on June 14, 1981, which said Americans just needed a visa to travel there. Two months later, the U.S. consul general in Lahore, Pakistan, wrote to the Times to say he'd "welcome an influx of Americans."

Myth 7: Obama hasn't released his birth certificate

Here, we'll admit, Uncle Floyd has a point -- at least a limited one. Strictly speaking, what Obama's campaign released wasn't called a birth certificate; it's a certification of live birth. But there's no functional difference between the two: Ask Hawaii for your birth certificate, and you'll get the certification of live birth back.

"Our Certificate of Live Birth is the standard form, which was modeled after national standards that are acceptable by federal agencies and organizations," Okubo told the Honolulu Advertiser. "With that form, you can get your passport or your soccer registration or your driver's license."

There's been some confusion about whether the original even still exists, but that's now been cleared up. Okubo told the Advertiser that in 2001 the state's paper documents were put into an electronic form, but "any paper data prior to that still exists ... we have backups for all of our backups."

Myth 8: If Obama would just release his birth certificate, he could end all this

So why hasn't the state of Hawaii released the original paper document? By law, the state can't release Obama's birth records without his OK. State law says that the document can only be released to or "inspect[ed]" by someone with a "direct and tangible" interest. (Though, again, except for "permit[ting] inspection," the law refers to the release of copies and certified copies, not the original record.)

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Obama could get the original paper document out of its undisclosed Hawaiian location and show it to reporters. Shouldn't he? Maybe not. He's already released a completely legal form of proof of his birthplace; to cave in to the Birthers' demands now would legitimize them. It would also likely lead to a wave of stories asking why the change in stance had happened, and what had taken so long.

The truth is that it was the original release of the certification of live birth that kicked off the Birther movement to begin with. And some of its leaders wouldn't cease their quest even if they were given the original birth certificate -- along with a video showing Obama being born, lei already around his neck.

Conspiracy theorists cling to their theories in the face of all evidence, and in this case the groundwork for disputing an original birth certificate has already been laid. In October of 2008, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Obama's trip to Hawaii to see his dying grandmother might really have been made in order to do some quick forgery. Limbaugh's fellow talk radio host Michael Savage jumped on that bandwagon, too.

Plus, the Birthers have a long list of other demands. Here's one sent out by Gary Kreep, who's representing Alan Keyes in his lawsuit challenging Obama's eligibility. Read it, and abandon all hope:

Actual long-form birth certificate (NOT an easily-forged electronic copy of a short-form document that is not even officially accepted in Hawaii)
Passport files
University of Chicago Law School scholarly articles
Harvard Law Review articles
Harvard Law School records
Columbia University records
Columbia University senior thesis, "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament"
Occidental College records, including financial aid that he may have received
Punahou School records, where Mr. Obama attended from the fifth grade until he finished high school
Noelani Elementary School records, where Barack Obama attended kindergarten (according to the Hawaii Department of Education, students must submit a birth certificate to register -- but parents may bring a passport or student visa if the child is from a foreign country)
Complete files and schedules of his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004
Obama's client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard
Illinois State Bar Association records
Baptism records
Obama/Dunham marriage license
Obama/Dunham divorce documents
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
Soetero/Dunham adoption records


-- By Alex Koppelman

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/08/05/birther_faq/index.html
 
Michael Medved told me to tell the birthers that they are wrong. President Obama is very much an American citizen.
 
Birthers are soooooo two weeks ago....
Now it's all-deather, all the time.

They want to kill your Grandma and Trig Palin, dontcha know..... :rolleyes:
 
You know I asked what a Birther was and received no answer.

I'm thinking it is some lame Assed attempt to demean or Demonize conservatives or republicans or anybody who doesn't toe the liberal line.

But, what does it mean? :confused:
 
Last edited:
AH!SOOOOOO!


1. Birther 4216 up, 3526 down
July 28, 2009 Urban Word of the Day
A conspiracy theorist who believes that Barack Obama is ineligible for the Presidency of the United States, based on any number of claims related to his place of birth, birth certificate, favorite birthday, or whether or not he has heard the song Africa by Toto.
"Did you know that Barack Obama's parents concealed the location of his birth because they knew he would grow up to be President? What? Of course it makes sense, I'm a birther!"
get this def on a mug
barack obama president birth conspiracy
by Brent Elliott Dec 8, 2008 share this
2. Birther 820 up, 311 down
A racist sore loser who can't deal with having a black president so they make up absurd conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's birth certificate.

These nutjobs actually believe that there has been a conspiracy going back 48 years to fake Barack Obama's birth certificate. Apparently they had a crystal ball and knew that this black child (born in the days of segregation) would someday run for President.
Just ignore that racist nutjob foaming at the mouth. He's a right wing "birther" conspiracy nut.
get this def on a mug
gop racist bedwetter nazi klansman self-hating-gay
by scoobydubious Jul 16, 2009 share this
3. birther 618 up, 201 down
A person who believes that Barack Obama has controversy and/or fraud surrounding his birth, though all theories have been either rejected or proved false.
The birthers gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court - all 20 of them.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/09/birthers-get-another-lifeline/

get this def on a mug
birther forced-birther obama tinfoil hat wingnut
by Nina Stratton Dec 16, 2008 share this

4. birther 164 up, 90 down
A redneck born on American soil in a barn delivered by a drunken veterinarian who also performs abortions. Parents are both American citizens who are usually first cousins if not brother and sister.
Birthers fought for their right to marry their cousins.
get this def on a mug
hillbilly redneck birth conspiracy obama
by billthecat Jul 28, 2009 share this
5. Birther 124 up, 82 down
A knuckle dragging gutter culture warrior related to tea bagging citizens who don't want to pay taxes because they don't support our troops.

"Obama's parents were so smart they planned 50 years ago to have a baby on foreign land and get him elected into the White House so he can raise taxes to pay for our troops. It's true I am a tea bagging birther"
What were those tea bagging protesters complaining about again? Ohh yay they refuse to accept a black man as president and now have resorted to saying Obama can not be president cause he is an illegal alien. Sounds crazy? No I am just a tea bagging "birther."
get this def on a mug
teabagging obama birther conspiracy nutjob troop hater knuckle dragging
by rbeats Jul 30, 2009 share this
6. birther 31 up, 36 down
birth-er
noun

A person who derives sexual pleasure from covering him- or herself in fresh placenta while having intercourse with a woman immediately after she has given birth.
Sane person #1: Did you hear that guy on Fox News who kept insisting Obama was born in Kenya?
Sane person #2: Don't listen to him. He's a birther. Those people are into some really sick stuff.
get this def on a mug
birfer freeper palintologist neanderthal young republican
by builtingirl Aug 4, 2009 share this
7. birther 44 up, 122 down
A term for the frothy liquid mixture formed in the vagina when a baby is born. It is a foul smelling combination of maternal blood, vernix, and meconium (baby poop) that drips down over the mother's anus during the third stage of labor. It is thought to be a contraction of the words "birth" and "lather."
Nurse, would you please wipe that birther off the crack of my patient's ass?
get this def on a mug
asshole dumbfuck idiot racist fool
by drsteevo Jul 28, 2009 share this

« Previous 1 2 Next »


8. Birther 38 up, 208 down
Jargon term, or buzz word used by mainstream media to discredit, and marginalize the legal battle of Philip Berg, a registered democrat operating out of PA. The term was most recently pegged in an attempt to divide, a bi-partisan investigation into the legitimacy of Barack H Obama's Presidency.
If you don't like mafia leaders, and respect the rule of law, then you are a birther.
get this def on a mug
propaganda control buzzwords add pop
by Zealot Nihilist Jul 28, 2009 share this
9. birther 162 up, 678 down
Derogatory term used by those that oppose requiring President Obama to produce the long-form version of his birth certificate against those that do desire such proof. In 1961 Hawaii would produce a short-form version of its birth certificate for those born in foreign countries, however the long-form version would produce such facts as attending physician, hospital, time of birth etc. The short-form Hawaiian birth certificate only certifies the fact of a live birth on a certain date without giving the aforementioned details. "Birthers" would like President Obama and all subsequent candidates to be required to produce the long-form, which President Obama refuses to do.
"Birthers don't believe President Obama has proven his legitimacy." See above derogatory examples.
 
You know I asked what a Birther was and received no answer.

I'm thinking it is some lame Assad attempt to demean or Demonize conservatives or republicans or anybody who doesn't toe the liberal line.

But, what does it mean? :confused:

Yeah, it's a liberal conspiracy all-around.
 
Sorry, but I refuse to go through a hundred pages of partisan hack crap about about the alleged birthplaces of the President.

Though this piece probably won't satisfy all of the conservative retards, it's enough for me to move on to more important topics, like when will Obama kill all the old white people...


I want you on my death panel. :heart:
 
Birthers are soooooo two weeks ago....
Now it's all-deather, all the time.

They want to kill your Grandma and Trig Palin, dontcha know..... :rolleyes:

Actually the birthers are sooooooo 2007, but they don't ever go away.

I don't think this will end well...
 
- There are allegations that what Obama released is a forgery, but state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

but didnt they destroy the original?
 
- There are allegations that what Obama released is a forgery, but state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

but didnt they destroy the original?

Yes, but with time travel they were able to fix a lot of stuff, like the Honolulu newspaper announcements and those college enrollment thingies...
 
Yes, but with time travel they were able to fix a lot of stuff, like the Honolulu newspaper announcements and those college enrollment thingies...

lets face it, Obama wasn't born in the US of A. Thats just fact. That said, I have no doubt that he won't be around for the next 4 years. But I'm hoping the people speak in this country and bounce the democrats out of office, and right soon. They seem to be drunk with power and misread their 2008 election victory as a mandate to push through liberalism on a grand scale, while being stunned that there is opposition to their radical plans.

can you imagine their level of arrogance and self-destructive narcissism
 
Birthers are the conservative equivalent of the 9/11 inside job whackos.
 
lets face it, Obama wasn't born in the US of A. Thats just fact. That said, I have no doubt that he won't be around for the next 4 years. But I'm hoping the people speak in this country and bounce the democrats out of office, and right soon. They seem to be drunk with power and misread their 2008 election victory as a mandate to push through liberalism on a grand scale, while being stunned that there is opposition to their radical plans.

can you imagine their level of arrogance and self-destructive narcissism

Which town hall will you be appearing at next?
 
They seem to be drunk with power and misread their 2008 election victory as a mandate to push through liberalism on a grand scale, while being stunned that there is opposition to their radical plans.

can you imagine their level of arrogance and self-destructive narcissism

Yeah, it's not as if reform is an easy thing. Just take it from Sarah Palin's own mouth:

From her interview with Sean Hannity
Yes it is gridlock and that's ridiculous. That's why we don't have an energy policy, that's why there hasn't been the reform of the abuse of the earmark process. And real reform is tough, and you do ruffle feathers along the way. But John McCain has that streak of independence in him that I think is very, very important in America today in our leadership. I have that within me also. And that's why John McCain tapped me to be a team of mavericks, of independents coming in there without the allegiances to that cronyism, to that good ole' boy system.

The problem conservatives have is that it's not their agenda that's trying to be pushed through Congress. I guess that's what happens when they don't get the mandate they need.
 
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