If you think the release of Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate is going to convince the crazies all you have to do is visit a typical Republican blog and read through the comment threads to disabuse you of that notion. Of particular interest is the argument laid out here:
e. scott says:
April 27, 2011 at 9:43 amWell, if Obama hasn’t proven anything else, (we already know that he’s stupid) he has proven that he IS NOT a “Natural Born Citizen!” Doesn’t he realize that this has been the sticking point for a loooooooong time? It’s not WHERE he was born, it was WHO he was born of…..
Let’s examine some history:
Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) is the only president born of two immigrants, both Irish. Presidents with one immigrant parent are Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), whose mother was born in England, James Buchanan (1857-1861) and Chester Arthur (1881-1885), both of whom had Irish fathers, and Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) and Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), whose mothers were born respectively in England and Canada.
As you can see, none of our presidents have ever had an African parent. So, clearly, Obama is not a “natural-born” citizen. I think Maggie is thinking along these same lines.
Maggie says:
April 27, 2011 at 10:03 amI think I figured out the timing on this “release” …
Not so much the Fed presser today he’s deflecting.
He’s upstaging those damn Brit royals for not inviting him and the First Wookie to the frakking wedding!
So, that’s what we’re dealing with. It won’t go away. But it must be denied power. We’re dealing with a party that courts these sentiments rather than tamping them down. And that can’t lead anywhere good.
It won’t go away but he made an excellent point in the press conference that the media, instead of focusing on the fact that Republicans have released their plan to destroy the middle class permanently (my words), they have focused instead on his birth certificate.
And his term for these wing nuts,”carnival barkers”, is exactly how I will address them from now on.
I was thinking Morlocks – pasty white mole people that only come out after dark to terrorize the rest of us. Now I think about it, the other people in the novel, the Eloi, bear a strange resemblance to many of the sheeple among us, with their apparent willingness to be kept as cattle for the Morlocks.
The audience for this was the press in the room with Obama and the majority of the people in the country.
Trump will keep trying until he loses steam.
This also splits the Republicans. They have to decide which road to take on this.
Obama handled this just right.
He ridiculed the wingers.
Chester Arthur faced similar accusations, in that he was born near the Canadian border and was accused of being born in Canada.
Yeah. I remember hearing that.
BTW- I used to live right behind Chester Arthur Public School. It was my polling place.
Donald Trump = carnival barker
perfect.
While I think it’s ridiculous, because if someone put a gun to my head, I couldn’t produce my long-form birth certificate. Have no idea what it look like, have no idea where to get it, because the hospital I was born at has since closed. The only birth certificate I have is one that has similar information to what the President has already released.
It’s an absolute crock of shyt, and it’s only because this President is BLACK.
BUT….politically, I think it’s brilliant of the President.
Because, guess what, folks?
The President knows what I know….
IT WON’T MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
There will be a poll taken next week, asking now, if the Republican Birthers are satisfied…
the answer to that poll will be NO.
A RESOUNDING NO.
Because it’s not about the Birth Certificate…it’s about him being a Black Man.
PERIOD.
And, once that poll is released that reveals that POTUS even releasing the Birth Certificate doesn’t make a DAMN BIT OF DIFFERENCE WITH THESE PEOPLE…
The albatross that is the Birthers will be hung around the GOP going into 2012 like an anvil.
PS-all I know is that I better be able to look up EVERY LAST GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE’S LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE.
He even said in the press conference that he knew people wouldn’t be satisfied:
This was partially to castigate the press for them being ninnies. Will it work? I doubt it – the press HATES being called out by Democrats. Democrats are weak, after all – that’s the narrative. So when a Democrat stands up to you and says you’re being foolish, that makes you EVEN WEAKER. Which means that you have to petulantly turn around and do exactly the opposite of what that weak old Democrat just said to prove that he’s not better than you.
But I can’t blame him for trying.
It’s not “about” race.
It’s just about politics.
“Race” is just a handy weapon.
If he was entirely European ascended but his father had been Swiss or Yugoslavian or English the same rigamarole would be going down now.
It’s simply Swiftboating, Whitewatering, and Monica Lewiskying. Nothing more and ..nothing less.
Why do they do it?
Because it works. Or at least, in the cases of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry it worked.
We have a vast, MacDonald’s-fed, Budweiser-sedated underclass here. They watch Fox News; they are as credulous as any country hick come to the big city, and they vote.
Or…
One vote at a time.
By any means necessary.
They’re going with what got them 8 years of George Butch & Co.
If it worked then, they think that it will work now. And they may very well be right.
One thing you have to give them…they do keep on trying.
They are equal opportunity opportunists, though.
They hate everybody who’s not with them.
Bet on it.
It’s a Barnum and Bailey world. paper moons and honky tonk parades masquerading as the real thing.
And as Mr. Barnum said,…”There’s a sucker born every minute.”
And as H. L. Mencken so correctly observed, “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
Nor lost an election, I am afraid.
Bet on that as well.
AG
Calling the first lady a wookiee? Wow.
That’s a common wingnut bit of racism. when you call them out on it they say its because she’s so tall.
Uh-huh.
I’ve been hearing that one since the presidential campaign. It’s been a long three years.
Wow. I never heard it before. Made me so angry I lost my breath for a minute.
I think I’m incredibly jealous of you. I wish I’d just heard it now instead of hearing it at various points over the past 3+ goddamn years.
A lot of blog comments about this topic are angry that Obama “capitulated” to Trump and the Birthers, and to some extent I agree. However, outside of the Trump Fringe (and I don’t mean his hair) there is that group of Republican wanna-runs who have not exactly denied the Birther claims nor have they fully embraced them. What this public statement does is makes them take a stand for what they actually believe. If they come down on the side of the Birthers, they look foolish. If they claim the birth certificate is not an issue, they show a little dignity.
or not.
Our dipshit media bears much of the blame for this birther nonsense. They made the editorial judgment that the claims of the wingnut birthers are worth repeating and treating as legitimate news.
Not so convinced this wasn’t a twofer. First, he used the opportunity provided by the crazy people (he represents everybody in America, after all) to address the Birther issue but more importantly reminded the newly spawned ‘listeners’ (who are upset at Ryan’s plan support) that they were right to listen to him and question the Republicans.
Wow.
Fantastic! although my crush on Julianne Moore that I’ve had for the past 10 years just went up in smoke…
I’m burning my DVD of Vanya on 42nd St. as soon as I get home. No one needs to work that bad — well, maybe Michael Caine does, but no one else.
Yep, that’s what we’re dealing with. Pure out simple dogwhistle and not-so-dogwhistle racism. The fallback position of “how did he get into Columbia and Harvard” is the tell.
But what President Obama was dealing with today was the corporate media’s mainstreaming of the controversy by fluffing Donald Trump to the exclusion of any other news.
It’s middle-school bully tactics. Now there will be a long list of other excuses (which “couldn’t be racist”) for arguing the same old point: “it is illegitimate for a black man to be in the White House.”
Just finished now on Hardball, Chris Matthews tearing these birhters (Judson Philips from Tea Party Nation and AZ State Senator Steve Smith) to shreds over their behavior and writings in this whole nontroversy. He gets them to admit that Obama’s as American as they are but then they still hedge, saying they can never be 100%. Maybe 10 or 20% doubts still even though they acknowledge that the documents are real. So he turned it on them and questioned their birth documents and insisted that they could have been forged, quoting their own words from earlier in the day back at them.
The segment just ended. Definitely worth watching the re-run later or the web clip when they put it out. It was in (roughly) the :40 to :50 minute section of the show.