"A Little People, A Silly People..."

They Don't Even Like Obama's Birthday Cake:

A "tacky monstrosity". Would you want to eat that? I guess if you're our President Barack Obama. I suppose we should be thankful his picture isn't on it. But I mean, really. Love him or hate him, George Bush had a real cake for his birthday.

Proof positive that there is no matter, not even a damn birthday cake, that is too small or trivial to trigger an attack of Spasmodic Wingnut Outrage Syndrome.

And are you seriously bringing up Bush in the same sentence as birthday cake after the Katrina debacle, wherein John McCain and George Dubbya were famously photographed yukking it up over McCain's birthday cake while an American city drowned? You want to go there? Really?

The Party of Love, Again

Dem Congressman's Life Threatened Over Health Care Bill :

Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) will not be hosting any town hall events this August -- instead, he's making himself available to constituents for one-on-one meetings about health care reform -- and at least part of the reason is this: His offices have received threatening phone calls, including at least one direct threat against his life.

"We had no town hall events scheduled for the August recess anyway, but in light of everything that's happened -- we have received a threatening phone call in the D.C. office, there have been calls to the Raleigh office," said Miller communications director LuAnn Canipe, in an interview with TPM. The threatening call in question happened earlier this week.

"The call to the D.C. office was, 'Miller could lose his life over this,'" said Canipe. "Our staffer took it so seriously, he confirmed what the guy was saying. He said, 'Sir is that a threat?' and at that time our staffer was getting the phone number off caller ID and turning it over to the Capitol Police."

In another story a Democratic congressman had to be escorted to his car by police after protesters shouted him down at a "Town Hall" meeting.

Well, what do you expect when GOP lawmakers are going around spreading the lie that the Democrats want to kill the elderly? What do you expect when party leaders circulate memos detailing techniques on breaking up and disrupting town halls?

But don't ever forget, it's the liberals who are filled with hate.

When is the GOP leadership going to call on these Brownshirts to cut it out?

Until then, I'm traveling armed.

Fudd's First Law, Illustrated

Fudd's First Law (according to the Firesign Theater) :

"If you push something hard enough, it will fall over."

And Now For Something Completely Different

Best Book Cover Ever?

Sarah Weinman thinks so, and I'm inclined to agree....

Suckers.

I know it seems like I'm obsessing over this birther thing...but these idiots are, like PETA, a gift that just keeps on giving. The latest twist comes in an e-mail from wingnut reader Russell (who, as you may remember, calls the President "part joo [sic] and part nigger--a mongrel hybrid"). The e-mail begins:

I SUSPECT THAT THIS WILL BE THE MOST HEAVILY FORWARDED E-MAIL IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. I AM SURE THAT YOU WANTED TO KNOW. HERE WE HAVE INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET THAT WOULD NEVER BE DISTRIBUTED BY THE NEWSPAPERS. RUSS

This "bombshell" destined to become "the most heavily forwarded e-mail in the history of the world:" is a link to a story at the right wing online scandal sheet WorldNut...Sorry, WorldNet daily. This story claims that Barack Obama's "real" birth certificate has now been found in Kenya:

California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication.

Good luck with that there motion, Orly. As several people with working brain cells almost immediately noticed, the Kenyan certificate is not just a fake, but a clumsy one:

First, the hospital is Coast Provincial General Hospital (sometimes said to be Coast Province General Hospital), not Coast General Hospital.

Second, Kenya was a Dominion the date this certificate was allegedly issued and would not become a republic for 8 months.

Third, Mombasa belonged to Zanzibar when Obama was born, not Kenya.

Fourth, Obama's father's village would be nearer to Nairobi, not Mombasa.

Fifth, the number 47O44-- 47 is Obama's age when he became president, followed by the letter O (not a zero) followed by 44--he is the 44th president.

Sixth, EF Lavender is a laundry detergent.

Seventh, would a nation with a large number of Muslims actually say "Christian name" (as opposed to name) on the birth certificate?

Eighth, his father (born in 1936) would have been 24 or 25 when he was born and not 26.

Ninth, it was called the "Central Nyanza District," not Nyanza Province. The regions were changed to provinces in 1970.

I still predict, however, that a year from now I'll still be getting e-mails from these brain dead racist idiots about the "Kenyan birth certificate" that's being suppressed by the forces of evil. You know, the one from the "Republic of Kenya" dated from before Kenya was a Republic and signed by a laundry detergent.

There truly is one born every minute. Wonder if Orly and Co fall for the DEAR FRIEND e-mails from Nigeria, too?

UPDATE: More here, where a commenter also points out:

The price is shown as 7s. 6d. This is not valid Kenyan currency. The forger must have assumed that Kenya used British currency, but Kenya never used pennies, they used cents. It should say 7s. 50c. if it were authentic.

Sauce for The Goose

Judging from the comments and nutty e-mails I've gotten, the current wingnut whine on the birth certificate issue is, apparently, about the "long form" birth certificate, the one filled out in the hospital at birth. "Why doesn't he release it, what is he hiding, etc."

This begs the question: why the hell should Obama release something that NO OTHER PRESIDENT OR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HAS EVER, IN THE HISTORY OF THE US, HAD TO RELEASE? And, as I've pointed out, something that neither I nor my children has ever had to track down and produce. Obama should have to cough his up because some nutcase on the Internet, with no evidence whatsoever, has said "I don't think he's a citizen?"

Okay, fine. As a nutcase on the Internet, I question Sarah Palin's citizenship. She was, after all, born within a stone's throw, apparently, of a foreign country. I heard a rumor somewhere that she was born on a fishing boat outside the 3-mile limit. I have no real basis to believe it's true, but this whole thing can be cleared up if she'd just produce the certificate, and an Affidavit from the doctors, and some delivery room photos, also.

Therefore, I demand that Sarah Palin release her full birth certificate from Alaska, and Trig's too, while we're at it, since there've been Internet rumors about him.

If you're going to let nutty rumors and partisan smears be the triggering event for when someone has to release personal records, then so be it. Be ready for the consequences.

C'mon, Sarah. Let's see 'em. What are you hiding?

Beware the Birther Baggie Lady (With reader mail!)

Latest Newspaper Column:

Poor Mike Castle. The guy never knew what hit him.

Castle, a Delaware Republican congressman, was speaking at what he probably thought was going to be a nice, sedate town meeting, when a woman in the audience stood up.

She held up an American flag and a baggie, and in the type of angry, indignant voice usually reserved for people protesting sex offenders trying to move in -- well, anywhere -- she began: "I have a birth certificate here, from the United States of America, saying I'm an American citizen. With a seal on it."

She went on to describe said birth certificate in some detail, then asked : "I want to know, why are you people ignoring his birth certificate?" Her voice rose as she declaimed: "He is not an American citizen! He is a citizen of Kenya. ... I want my country back!"

Rep. Castle then made a serious mistake: He tried reason. "If you're referring to the president there," he said mildly, "he is a citizen of the United States."

The crowd erupted in boos and catcalls, and the Baggie Lady stood up again and brilliantly riposted by demanding that the whole crowd recite the Pledge of Allegiance with her. Because, after all, who needs to back up serious accusations with facts or logical arguments when you have the Pledge of Allegiance? I'm definitely trying that next time I'm in court.

Rep. Castle had been ambushed by what has become known as a "birther," a new and particularly reality-resistant type of conspiracy theorist. Birthers insist that President Barack Obama is not, as the Constitution requires, a native-born American citizen. The proof, they claim, is that he's never produced a birth certificate from his native state of Hawaii. The only problem with this theory is that he has.

The Obama Campaign posted the certificate online. When that wasn't good enough, they showed it to reporters from the nonpartisan website Factcheck.org, who in their words, "touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate" and concluded, "It meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false."

In addition, the Republican governor of Hawaii, the state's registrar of vital statistics and their director of public health have confirmed -- repeatedly -- that Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.

But the hallmark of a true conspiracy theory is that every fact produced to refute it is cited as further proof of just how fiendish the conspiracy is and how far its tentacles extend. Witnesses? Part of the plot. Documents? Forgeries. Sanity? Overrated.

A recent highlight of birther-mania occurred on a Chris Matthews' "Hardball," where convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy stumbled and stammered as he attempted to explain why a document entitled "Certificate of Live Birth" is not a birth certificate.

In many ways, the birthers are like another group of crackpots, known as the "9/11 truthers," who advance various "proofs" that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America were actually planned and executed by the Bush administration. That they were the result, not of aerial attack, but controlled demolition. Or U.S. missiles. Or something.

The difference is that truthers don't get the sympathetic national forum granted the birthers by talk show hosts like de facto Republican Party Chairman Rush Limbaugh or CNN hothead Lou Dobbs. And very few political figures, on either side of the aisle, would respond to the question "Do you think Bush or Cheney was actually behind 9/11?" with the sort of cagey answers some Republican pols have used when asked "Do you think Barack Obama was born in the U.S.?"

"I think there are questions, we'll have to see," said Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.).

"Oh, I'd like to see the documents," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the vice-chair of the House Republican Conference. Imagine the uproar if Nancy Pelosi had responded to the question "Did Bush order the attacks on 9/11?" with "I'd like to see the proof he didn't."

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) was more upfront, telling an interviewer, "I don't believe [Obama] ever produced a birth certificate." But then Blunt, along with 377 other House members, Republican and Democrat, voted for a resolution honoring the 50th anniversary of the entry of Hawaii into the union, a resolution which begins, 'WHEREAS, the president of the United States was born in Hawaii ..."

Maybe he didn't want to say it on camera because he was afraid of the Baggie Lady.

Addendum: you know, for reasons of space, I didn't even go into the racist underpinnings of the whole birther movement. But the very first e-mail I got when the column ran on the newspaper's website pretty well sums it up:

Obama is part joo, part nigger.  A mongrel hybrid.  Yahweh god almighty
disfavors hybrids as in Noah's flood and in many other instances.  If you want
to know more I will be happy to tell you.  At least you will never be able to
say that NO ONE ever told you.
--
russ --

RACE SURVIVAL DEMANDS RACISM

'Nuff said.