Posted on 07/28/2009 10:20:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The GOP, reduced to hosting loonies who obsess over Obama’s birthplace, is slipping into the ash heap. The Daily Beast’s John Batchelor on why Republican incoherence may doom the party to the fate of the Whigs.
The romantic yarn that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not in the United States, and is therefore an illegitimate POTUS is the core of a still-evolving conspiracy theory that now explodes like a neutron stink bomb splashing on the right wing while leaving the center and left idly smiling and curious.
What is going on with the despondent Republican Party that it hosts loonies called the birthers in its ranks?
The answer may be that the birther phenomenon is a mutation of a political virus called incoherence. Incoherence is fatal. It killed the Whigs (and led to the creation of the Republicans); it killed the Klan and the American communists. The birther mutation looks to erase what remains of the GOP’s credibility with the electorate, already at an all-time low and still sinking to third- and fourth-party numbers, if there were a third or a fourth party.
In sudden alarm Monday night, 158 House Republicans voted with the Democrats to endorse the self-evident fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. No whipping by the GOP leadership was necessary. The House Republicans understood that birtherism has jumped to a pandemic Phase 6, multiple infections in all states, much too late to stop with a quarantine on the Hill.
Already, a handful of House Republican members show signs of succumbing to the symptoms of brain fever—wagging fingers, dry-mouth stammering—by co-sponsoring a bill to require presidential candidates to submit a birth certificate. The primary patient is California Republican John Campbell, who showed tertiary impatience with his triteness on TV when he proposed, “It doesn’t matter if I have doubts or not, OK?”
August recess means that the Hill Republicans must go home to their districts to face the birtherite pod people, and there will be additional farcical confrontations similar to what the chump moderate Republican Rep. Mike Castle faced recently at a town-hall meeting in Delaware, when birthers flourished their birth certificates at him.
The pandemic is out of control, and those who argue cynically that birtherism is being stoked by the media, or fed by the cunning White House political operation to gain sympathy for a panicky presidency, are not examining the peculiar details of the potency of the illness.
This is not a pandemic that spreads only by the airplane, the Internet, or even by word of mouth, because a single exposure to the central whopper is not usually sufficient. Daily reinfection is needed or the disease goes dormant like algebra. Birtherism has found a durable vector, ubiquitous like insects and slippery like long-tailed mammals, in the institution of talk radio and its cable-TV compadre. The boss vectors just now are the burlesque artist Rush Limbaugh—“Barack Obama has yet to prove he’s a citizen”—and Limbaugh’s parasitic rival of bloviation, faux rueful Lou Dobbs: “I don’t know what the reality is. No one does.”
What is also striking about this mutation is that, as a talking vector, you do not need to endorse the birther template that the president was born of an 18-year-old girl who raced to Mombasa in time to deliver in an unnamed setting. You are just as effective a vector if you deny the birtherite creativity, if you produce the Hawaii documents, if you say the magic words “smear” or “tin-foil.”
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is a fertile source when he uses the briefing room to evince exasperation: “…this question in many ways continues to astound me.” Cable-TV stars such as the giddy Chris Matthews—“The birthers don’t let the facts get in the way”—and the stern Bill O’Reilly—“The Factor investigated it and found out that it’s bogus …”—become like Typhoid Marys, spreading an illness to which they claim immunity. Ratings, anyone?
Grimly, the birther episode is not a media story, or even a story about Barack Obama’s unique youth, but rather it is another illustration of the slow-motion decomposition of the GOP. The party, having lost its principles, its confidence, its courage, and then having lost an election, now experiences what it is to lose its mind, too, while it slips into the ash heap with other novelties.
The conduct of the Republicans in Congress since January has been astonishingly frail, as if the party had lost immunities to race-baiters like Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, to liars like John Ensign and Mark Sanford, to yammerers like Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann, to the goofily vain like Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee.
The party has wasted away to the point where opportunistic eruptions like the birthers and much worse are natural sorrows. Republican incoherence didn’t begin with Mombasa. There is logic to the closing down of a great political party that has abandoned its own greatness to cheer on churls. Perhaps what appears terminal cowardice is only venality; perhaps what sounds like a death rattle is only the wrinkled ranting of crones in the Senate; perhaps the polls showing the Republican brand not as well regarded as Drano are just outliers. Perhaps, too, like miscreant HAL 9000, the GOP is warming up to sing, “Daisy, Daisy.”
*******
John Batchelor is radio host of the John Batchelor Show in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
That would be true if there were no other possibilities. If the birth facts were supplied to the State of Hawaii back in 1961 by Ann Dunham or Grandma Whitey then what Fukino saw could be bogus as hell.
Unraveling this controversy begins with the vault copy being released. (Or all the rest of the heads being stuck in sand.)
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Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it!
www.AnySoldier.com
More insults when it would be so easy to just produce the birth certificate, and answer what citizenship did he claim in college. Thats it; its that easy.
Or, just have your toadies do your dirty work, insulting anyone who would even think to ask. I guess that works too.
So that's it? The word of some government bureaucrat is all the proof you need that Obama was actually born in Hawaii?
Seriously.... most of the Obama employees around here actually work for their paychecks. I'd fire you, if I were Obama. That was pathetic.
When Sarah Palin was nominated as McCain's running-mate, the SRM gave her the equivalent of a journalistic enema. This is basic eligibility and background paperwork. There is no in depth investigation of who Obama is, by the NY Times, ABC/NBC/CBS, anyone.
Anyone who has something to hide, can be manipulated and blackmailed. We are the most powerful country on the planet. Does that not beg to properly vet our elected officials? Especially the one who holds the nuclear football?
So, this bureaucrat's word qualifies as "evidence" to you?
Crikey...
“Devastate” is subjective. the metric here is impeachment and removal. I will bet you any amount you want that Obama will not be impeach on the basis of any of this.
Does he have stuff in these records to hide? Sure. That’s probably why they didnt come out in the campaign. But that doesnt make Obama ineligible or make those matters ‘devastating’.
“There is no in depth investigation of who Obama is, by the NY Times, ABC/NBC/CBS, anyone.” What, one hour of NBC following Obama like a puppy dog wasnt ‘in depth’?!? LOL. Of course the Obamedia isnt doing its job.
“his is basic eligibility and background paperwork. “ Should have been done in 2007. a bit late now. I recall how only Hannity would talk about Rev Wright, nobody else on TV would talk about that, until it broke open.
“Especially the one who holds the nuclear football?”
And he’s not a good pitcher either!
.
One time, I heard John Batchelor describe himself as a “Blue Dog.”
“Crikey” that’s it? A dismissive plug your ears response?
Of course the statement of an official on the record is evidence. You can choose to dis-believe this evidence, you can choose to believe she is part of some conspiracy to deceive you, but if we had a court case we could call her on the stand and the evidence would be admissible in court.
“I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen,” Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino
I called Obama a liar an hour, so yeah he should fire me.
I am about to call him a socialist in 5 minutes.
But right now ... I’d point out that the only ‘pathetic’ thing is your name-calling.
Keep an open mind and stop falling into the conspiracy theorists trap of rejecting contrary evidence as based on lies. You have no basis to call this state of hawaii official a liar except that they said something that fractures your conspiracy theory. The “word of some government bureaucrat” is not all the proof that Obama was actually born in Hawaii, it is one piece of several pieces of evidence:
1. Stanley Dunham and Barack Obama Sr lived, met and were students in Honolulu. That was there hometown. As students, they had little money, so the natural conclusion would be that they would have very likely had their baby in Honolulu.
2. Marriage in Feb (shotgun wedding?), baby in August; honeymoon was on another hawaiian island; if they were going to travel anywhere else, THAT would have been the time to do it.
3. Newspaper announcement of birth one week after birth, Aug 4.
4. Family recollections that he was born in Honolulu.
5. The COLB
6. Obama obtained US passports for overseas travel. He needed valid birth certification that proved US citizenship to do so.
7. State officials from Hawaii vouched for his birth records being on file and him being born in Hawaii.
So, as I said, I’ll bet any birther 10 to 1 odds, any money, that any vault BC will show his birthplace as Honolulu. Are you on?
Devastate to me means “render politically impotent”. I doubt very much that even if proven ineligible for the office, Obama would willingly leave. Look what's going on in Honduras with Zelaya. Obama supports Zelaya while he tramples the Honduran Constitution. This from a so-called Constitutional Scholar.
[”Why should we be demeaned and stigmatized for merely demanding transparency and the release of all birth, school, college, law school, state senate and other records that pertain to the highest public servant and the most powerful person in the land?”]
1. After all, one of Obama’s main priorities seems to be government access to the private records of his ordinary citizens.
Question: Is there legal any way to compel universities and government institutions to release this guy’s records?
2. Concerning his schools. Why hide his transcripts? OK, there’s supposition about radical ideas or maybe his grades weren’t so outstanding.
But maybe it’s something concrete? Like maybe he was a foreign exchange student?
You call those items you posted "evidence"? They're conjecture and supposition, at best, and the jpeg of Obama's COLB can't be called evidence, because the actual document (if it exists as anything but electrons) has never been inspected by qualified experts, or officers of a court of law.
You are accepting hearsay, claims, and conjecture as evidence, and this is what makes your posts draw so much fire.
Real evidence would be Obama's LFBC, college records, primary school records, passports held, Annenberg Foundation records, Harvard Law Review writings, law practice records, Illinois Senate schedule, community organizer records, etc.
Until this enigma produces some or all of these items, we will continue to have NO evidence about his origins or his life before the US Senate.
Keep an open mind and stop falling into the conspiracy theorists trap...
The only conspiracy is the conspiracy of silence on the part of Barack Obama. We who are asking Mr. Obama to come clean with his past are making a very simple and legitimate request of someone who holds the highest position of authority in our country. He works for the American people. Not the other way around. This isn't Kenya.
That is not evidence. It's a statement. She did not make that statement while under oath in a court of law, but to the media.
Evidence is the LFBC - not statements of affirmation from government bureaucrats.
Use your head, man. If the BC is all that she and everyone on the left says it is, then there's absolutely no reason for Obama to continue to withhold it, is there?
As a matter of fact, if Obama's BC proves that he's a natural born citizen, and was born in Hawaii, then there's NEVER been a reason for him to withhold it, right?
So why has he withheld it all this time?
“The question was first raised by the Democrats about John McCain.”.
And a very bizarre episode that was, too.
Remember WHO sponsored the resolution in the Senate that “John McCain is eligible to be President of the USA???”
Barack H. Obama
Gee, I wonder why .......
(His name tells you everything you need to know.)
The conduct of the Republicans in Congress since January has been astonishingly frail, as if the party had lost immunities to race-baiters like Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, to liars like John Ensign and Mark Sanford, to yammerers like Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann, to the goofily vain like Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee.
Thus spake John Batchelor, of whom I had not heard.Only a flaming ass would call "Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich" "race-baiters"--
Having so identified himself as a sputtering Alinskyite, we may close the case on John Batchelor.
From anonymity to ignominy in a single blog.
The take-away is that ali Hussein is a fraud and his adherents are self-immolating.
On the basis that he refuses us to let us see his long form birth certificate, thus calling into question the means by which it was obtained. If was based on hospital records, great let’s see them. I’d love to know how much the Messiah weighed as he descended from his mother’s blessed womb. If it was based on his Mom’s or Grandparent’s word then what corraborating evidence is there? Hopefully more than one old goat who conveniently remembers a conversation with the OB/GYN? Why is it so difficult for him to provide basic info like this? I had my original birth cert in my junk drawer for years and will happily display it the day I decide to run for President. How about a pic of baby Barry and Mom in the hospital? I’ve got a million to share with the world if only CNN would run mine. If it turns out Obama is covering something up here his credibility will be forever damaged. If it turns out there are no issues with his original cert, then the media will say conservatives suck. Except they say that anyway.
My question: can't anyone find any friends, classmates etc that have any answers to the question, where did Stanley Ann have her baby?
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