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Friday, July 24, 2009

Birthers, conspiracy, and Reality.

Once upon a time in America, when there was an election and the guy you voted for lost, you accepted this loss and adopted the winner as your own. The person who won the election represented you, for better or worse. If you didn't like it you wrote letters and got yourselves organized for next time. Sadly in the United States this doesn't seem to happen anymore. Now when the guy you vote for loses you make shit up out of whole cloth and use said lies as excuses to vote against your own self interest.

What I'm referring to specifically is the ongoing Obama birth certificate "conspiracy." You would think most people would've given up on this shit already, but that assumes people who believe such things are like, rational and everything. You know, believing things like EVIDENCE and all.

This whole thing started last year as a way of slandering the Obama campaign under a thinly veiled label of racism. In today's PC climate it's a big no-no to use the N word when describing your political opponent. So since they couldn't make pictures of Obama eating watermelon and fried chicken they chose to focus then on his "foreign" sounding name. Anyone remember during the campaign when all the right wingers started purposely using his middle name whenever they could? It was right around the same time they tried to link him to Bill Ayers. Since they couldn't stir up hate because he was black (at least, not officially,) they went the "closet Muslim terrorist sympathizer" route instead.

Right around this time someone somewhere out in Republican land got the bright idea to dispute Obama's citizenship. You can't get your ass beat in an election if the guy running against you isn't qualified, right? Too bad that particular tactic was shot down rather quickly when Factcheck.org posted Obama's certificate of live birth, which is authentic (even though of course the "birthers" immediately turned around and called it fake, which it isn't.)

By the way a certificate of live birth is the document you get from the state when one requests a birth certificate. Your real birth certificate, i.e. the document with the seal on it and baby foot prints and all that jazz, goes on file in some statehouse somewhere when you're born. Why? Because it's a matter of public record. When you request copies of it the Certificate of live birth is what you get instead, which is a document that certifies that the Birth Certificate exists. You do not get one of these if your Birth Certificate does not exist. Keep in mind though the law about Birth certificates differs depending on what state you're in. For instance, my mother is in possession of her real Birth Certificate, while I myself only have a Certificate of Live Birth. Everyone understand that?

Well, let's ignore this particular piece of evidence for the time being (why not, the birthers certainly do.) We also have newspaper birth announcements from the time which announce President Obama's birth, in Hawaii. These can be found on Snopes.com here. Now how exactly can someone ignore these little bits of evidence? I can see someone claiming the Certificate of live birth is fake, but what about these? Did someone 48 years ago plant these in the local newspapers to one day set up Barrack Obama as the President?

Sounds crazy, right? No one could possibly believe this, right? Not if you listen to the New World Order crowd. These are the people that believe world politics are manipulated by the Illuminati to slowly bring us all into a one world fascist government, and have always maintained that the presidents of all nations are merely puppets, and the real government is run by a cabal of families with ancient bloodlines and controlling interests in financial and corporate power. This far right fringe conspiracy mythology has been gestating for several decades now, and seem to now involve everything from UFOs to Jesus Christ.

Obama conspiracies run from the mundane (for a conspiracy,) such as from Alex Jones, who merely thinks Obama is a "savior" type being set up by the elites in order to usher in the one world government (unless he's the Antichrist,) to the paranoid rediculous - take for instance David Icke, who believes Obama is a reptilian from another dimension (to be fair, David Icke thinks most famous people and world leaders are also lizards in disguise.) Then you have the totally flailing and batshit insane, say like Freeman of the Freeman Perspective who maintains Obama and his whole family are clones of the ancient Pharonic family of Akhenaten here to usher us back into an Egyptian monothestic religion (be careful though, becasue Freeman also predicted 9-11, at least he says he did.) I'm glad to see the lunatic fringe has gleefully worked the Obama birth conspiracy into their greater narrative, it makes for some great late night radio.

Putting the far right tin foil hat people aside (because some people will believe any kind of horseshit,) we're still left with a very hard core group of conservatives that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary still won't get it through their bony heads that a black man is president. Some of the arguments these people cite is thus:

1) The font on the Certificate of live birth was designed in 1982, far after Obama's birth - this fails to take into account that the document is a print out made with modern office equipment.

2) There's no embossed seal or signature on the Certificate of live birth. That's because it's on the other side, you morons.

3) Obama is not a natural born citizen because Hawaii law says his mother had to be 21 in order for this to be so. Snopes.com also does a good job of debunking this one

3) Some try to twist around the wording of the 14th amendment itself, to make it sound like it implies a person is a natural born citizen only if both his parents are also citizens. Too bad it doesn't say that. The relevant text is right there in section 1:

"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

BOOYA, you stupid fucks.

4) Another thing I keep hearing from these mouth breathing morons is a flub he made during the campaign where he mentioned he had visited 57 states. Here's the video:



The Birthers insist this means that Obama doesn't know how many states there are. Give me a fucking break. Is this the best you dumbasses can come up with?

5) Obama refuses to put his hand over his heart when taking the pledge of allegiance. And this relates to his citizenship how, exactly?

The sad fact is, there is no talking to the people who believe this bullshit. Know why? Because we've been talking to them for the last decade. These are the same people who impeached a Democratic president for lying about an infidelity but didn't lift a finger to a Republican president for lying about starting a fucking war. These people WANT there to be war in Afghanistan, they WANT us to stay in Iraq for the next 100 years. These people WANT us to have an American gulag where we can throw people without charging them and without trials. These are the people where you can put overwhelming evidence that their own leaders are manipulating them and they'll ignore it. Yet when a Democrat gets in and does something like spend some money fixing our crumbling bridges and trying to give people health care all of the sudden sales of guns and ammo go through the roof.

These people voted for McCain in the hope that he'd die halfway through so Mrs. Sarah-moose-shooting-non-rape-kit-providing-helicopter-wolf-hunting-abstinence-only-oh-look-my-teenage-daughter-is-pregnant-Palin would ascend to the throne and start WWIII with Iran so Jesus would finally come back and outlaw abortion or something. They WANT us all living in a police state and working at Burger King for $2 a week becasue the only fucking thing they seem to care about are fucking guns and baby killing.

What's even worse is now they're taking all the shit that got started in the Bush administration, like say a 700 billion dollar bail out, or the economy, or TORTURE for godsakes, and they turn right around and blame it on Obama. Give me a fucking break - it's only been six months. Have you dumbasses forgotten who ran the country for the last decade?

THERE IS NO TALKING TO THESE PEOPLE. They are incapable of comprehending anything that goes against their fantastical narrative. It's not that they don't care; it's that they're too fucking stupid to know any better. That's right, I'm calling all you conservative shit monkeys out there FUCKING STUPID. All we need do is look at how screwed up the country is to see why. Fuck talking to these people, I'm through talking, I'm through debating, I'm through trying to convince these people. Thing is the Democrats now have a 60 seat majority, so why are they even bothering to "debate" anything? The Republicans sure didn't waste anytime implementing their evil fucking agenda when they had the votes. I say pass the fucking health bill and spend the fucking money and end the fucking wars without their permission or input. You know why? Because FUCK THEM.

In a few years no doubt the Republicans will take back the white house again, then these people will all be back in the uncomfortable position of defending the government.