It’s quite true that most of the right-wing blogs that I look at have the same reaction to the birther nonsense that I do. So I’m going to answer Greg Pollowitz’s question for him:
By watching the MSM over the past few days, you’d think every Republican in America thinks President Obama was born in Kenya. It’s typical that the MSM is taking such an interest in this conspiracy theory while it did very little to dispel the Truther conspiracy theory that Bush knew of 9/11 beforehand. A Rasmussen poll found 35 percent of Democrats actually believe in that nonsense. Why wasn’t that as big a story?
Did Democratic Congressmen ever bring any 9/11 Truthers type bills to the floor? Were there any 9/11 Truthers with regular CNN gigs?
The Rasmussen poll number is probably bogus anyway, but to be clear, the coverage of the birther stuff does not arise because of the percentage of Republicans who believe it (I have no idea what that number is), it arises because Dobbs, a variety of Fox wingers, and some Republican Congressmen are talking about it.
I do sympathize with those on the right who don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as these nuts. But they should focus their anger on the nuts themselves. And they should be asking CNN to fire Dobbs too.
Church Lady
Crazy Cynthia McKinney was a “truther” while serving in Congress, and was quite vocal about it, as I recall. However, I don’t know if she ever actually introduced any legislation on the subject.
Comrade Jake
Did Dobbs talk about this today on his show or CNN?
Midnight Marauder
“I’ll take Obviously False Dichotomies for $600, Alex.”
You nailed it. The difference between the two situations is that one party is granting legitimacy to the crazies, even attempting to push the kind of legislation that gives them nocturnal emissions when they dream every night of Obama being escorted by ICE out of the Oval Office as it’s broadcast live on Faux News.
The other party told their crazies to take their nonsense, STFU, GTFO, and let the adults take care of business.
When 9/11 Truthers started shouting their BS at Bill Maher from the audience a while back, he told them how stupid they were and then had them removed from his show.
Meanwhile, a United States congressman stands powerless and terror stricken at his podium while Birther Betty throws a tantrum about how the mean Libs took her country away.
Brick Oven Bill
This is a silly comparison.
Truthers argue that the Jews coordinated with the Feds to train Arabs to fly and convince themselves to commit suicide. Either the Jews or the Feds then blew up charges to take down buildings that were not successfully knocked down by the Arabs. All of these parties maintained complete operational security throughout the whole planning and execution phase, and absolutely nobody of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands of operators that would have been involved with this plot, spilled the beans.
Birthers are simply trying to figure out why the President refuses to present his birth certificate to anybody other than Fact Check, owned by Annenberg, the funder of Bill Ayres. What makes Fact Check so special?
What makes Fact Check so special?
Now this is a good question. The answer offered yesterday in the comments was that Fact Check was the only organization that requested to see the certificate, and the Obama Administration gladly allowed them access, as they would anybody. This explanation to me is worse than Cynthia McKinney stating that heat cannot weaken metal.
Cynthia McKinney knows precious little about metallurgy.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Tough shit on them. They’ve had years to back away from the crazy bullshit pouring out of their party and even this dog’s knob can’t just say: “This birther stuff is crazy and I disagree.” He has to whine about the liberal media.
Fuck them.
Xenos
BOB,
You want to talk ridiculous conspiracy theories?
Midnight Marauder
@Brick Oven Bill:
What makes Fact Check so special?
Now this is a good question. The answer offered yesterday in the comments was that Fact Check was the only organization that requested to see the certificate, and the Obama Administration gladly allowed them access, as they would anybody. This explanation to me is worse than Cynthia McKinney stating that heat cannot weaken metal.
Why? Because IT’S TRUE?
I always thought you had some kind of aversion to logic and sense. Nice to have that confirmed in writing.
r€nato
Whereas the Obama birth certificate conspiracy only requires the complicity of the Republican National Committee, the McCain/Palin 2008 campaign, the Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign, the director of the Hawaii Department of Health, FactCheck.org, the US Supreme Court, the governor of Hawaii, the State Department…
MikeJ
If there is anything remotely true about the 35% number, it’s the confusion between weak LIHOP and strong LIHOP that we either discussed or made me think about the other day. In fact, even DougJ sort of said weak LIHOP made a bit of sense.
To recap the difference, weak LIHOP would be Bush should have known bad things were about to happen, should have paid more attention to international terrorism, specifically AQ. Strong LIHOP would be Bush did know the details, time, places, and name, and still Let It Happen On Purpose.
Weak LIHOP is pretty much true beyond doubt. If you doubt it, ask Condie Rice the title of that PDB. Oh, right, they already did. Strong LIHOP is as baseless as MIHOP.
jenniebee
Birther paranoia is getting the coverage it is because it’s a proxy for discussing the rift in the Republican party, which is an important thing for anybody who follows politics to try to wrap their head around. Not to get carried away, but this is how realignments happen, and all that.
How much coverage is this getting, anyway? I saw it on Morning Joe one day with Joe putting it down hard, and of course Tweety can’t talk about anything else, but Tweety’s favorite color is “shiny,” so what else do you expect from him? I know Lou Dobbs is giving it credence, but I haven’t heard of it being discussed anywhere beyond that outside of the context of reporting on the original Castle town hall, and the reaction from that seemed to me to be horror that the hoi polloi were out-demagouging the professional pols.
mcc
Crazy Cynthia McKinney was a “truther” while serving in Congress
And was for this and similar reasons rather rapidly kicked out of office by her own party. Which comes back to DougJ’s point: the reason the birthers are getting identified with the Republicans in a way the 9/11 deniers weren’t identified with the Democrats is that the left took steps to exclude 9/11 deniers from the Democratic mainstream, whereas even fairly centrist Republicans seem often unwilling to do the same for the corrosion in their own party.
r€nato
Because for over 25 years the GOP has profited from pandering to crazy people. For most of that time they succeeded in taking their votes every other November while keeping them in the cellar the rest of the time, like how people used to treat the deformed and mentally deficient.
Now they’ve escaped the cellar and if they’re not running the joint, they’re at least in the kitchen and in the living room and the few remaining sane Republicans are too terrified of them to kick them out of the house.
Brick Oven Bill
“Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago.”
Here is a photo of Fact Check operative, Joe Miller, touching the birth certificate. Touching it with his fingers. See how is shines in the sun and how happy Joe is that he is holding the real certificate in his perhaps marijuana-stained hands.
What a pretty certificate. I WANT TO TOUCH IT TOO, JUST LIKE JOE. Please President Obama, please let me touch your birth certificate just like the Fact Check people were able to touch your birth certificate. Please. You let Joe Miller touch it.
MikeJ
HR 1503 Sponsor: Rep. Bill Posey [R-FL15]
Cosponsors [as of 2009-07-12]
Rep. Marsha Blackburn [R-TN7]
Rep. Dan Burton [R-IN5]
Rep. John Campbell [R-CA48]
Rep. John Carter [R-TX31]
Rep. John Culberson [R-TX7]
Rep. Robert Goodlatte [R-VA6]
Rep. Kenny Marchant [R-TX24]
Rep. Randy Neugebauer [R-TX19]
Rep. Ted Poe [R-TX2]
I could have sworn that John Carter represented Mars, not TX-31.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill:
I WANT TO TOUCH IT TOO
I think that comment revealed more about BoB than I really wanted to know.
geg6
jenniebee: Brian Williams spent at least a good five minutes of the twenty or so he gets for the NBC Nightly News on this very subject the other night. Though it concluded that of course Obama’s a citizen, the full range of complete insanity was covered first.
PeakVT
The other party told their crazies to take their nonsense, STFU, GTFO, and let the adults take care of business.
That’s not quite right. They told the crazies AND the DFHs to STFU, GTFO, and let the corporate whores take care of business. And by DFHs I mean everyone to the left of Gore.
calipygian
Why doesn’t Pollowitz ask his Corner-mate Crazy Ass Andy McCarthy, who is measuring the kerning on Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate as we speak.
kth
That Rasmussen “truther” question was badly worded. It conflates the true nut jobs who really think Bush could have stopped the 9/11 attacks but chose to let them occur, with those who think that Bush was warned by subordinates of an al-Qaeda attack in coming months, but failed to heed those warnings, or marshal sufficient resources to anticipate those attacks.
Most likely the latter subgroup vastly outnumbers the former among that 35%.
Amy
OK, I think it’s time to call CNN headquarters and to tell them that I will not be watching them anytime, like ever. If I want to see right wing loons, I can watch Fox. If I want decent tv analysis, it’s Rachel Maddow. Otherwise, I can read news from many sources on-line.
MikeJ
Actually they weren’t that crazy about Gore after the the 2000 election. Most elected dems didn’t want to hear from anybody left of Evan Bayh.
r€nato
Why don’t you go get your jollies in a normal, Republican way?
That is, in a men’s room with some stranger, wearing two wetsuits and a dildo shoved up your bum?
mcc
@MikeJ: ..hm. Observation: There are 20 Republican representatives from Texas; 5 of them are sponsors of that bill; 25% of the Texas Republican delegation are sponsoring a bill supporting questions about Obama’s birth certificate. Is that percentage high or low?
Napoleon
@geg6:
I am not so sure it is not such a bad thing that people like Williams give it so much time. It is so bat shit insane that I really think it helps marginalize the republicans and their supporters.
Tattoosydney
@Brick Oven Bill:
“What a pretty certificate. I WANT TO TOUCH IT TOO, JUST LIKE JOE. Please President Obama, please let me touch your birth certificate just like the Fact Check people were able to touch your birth certificate. Please. You let Joe Miller touch it.”
The most you are going to get is another quick grope from Al Franken, BoB.
r€nato
@Amy:
I wish I could threaten CNN to stop watching, but I quit watching during the sell job on the Iraq war.
jenniebee
Another C-street resident zipper case, this one caught on video.
b-psycho
Fixed.
Amy
@https://balloon-juice.com/?p=24526#comment-1309522
Hey, it wouldn’t hurt to call or e-mail CNN to tell TELL them you are done with them.
linda
even though they aren’t in the least bit comparable, let’s not forget moveon and how quickly the democrats were to denounce them — hell even beating republicans to the microphone…
that’s the difference.
iluvsummr
Muggles suck.
jenniebee
You know, I think I hate Harry and Louise’s sanctimonious BS even more now than I did sixteen years ago.
Amy
CNN headquarters 404-827-2600.
bjones
I love this stuff. The old guard of the GOP never imagined that heading so far into the political wilderness would lead them directly to the Fever Swamp of Crazy.
Cause that’s where you end up when you have trail hands like Bible Spice and racist Freepers leadin’ the way.
Betsy
@jenniebee:
Thank you for this.
Midnight Marauder
@PeakVT:
That’s not quite right. They told the crazies AND the DFHs to STFU, GTFO, and let the corporate whores take care of business. And by DFHs I mean everyone to the left of Gore.
I’d agree for the most part. But I think the bigger point of how both parties reacted respectively still stands.
What a pretty certificate. I WANT TO TOUCH IT TOO, JUST LIKE JOE. Please President Obama, please let me touch your birth certificate just like the Fact Check people were able to touch your birth certificate. Please. You let Joe Miller touch it.
I had no idea your critical thinking and comprehension skills were entirely dependent on your sense of touch. I can only imagine the desperate pawing of your monitor when all the commenters here assail you with facts and logic and whatnot.
Oh, if only you could reach THROUGH the screen, BOB, where beautiful knowledge, wisdom, and the truth await.
The Grand Panjandrum
The party of Eric “Nancy Pelosi is a Meanie” Cantor, John “Empty Fucking Chart” Boehner, Sarah “Iquitarod” Palin, and Rick “Secession” Perry want to be taken seriously? Seriously?
Hahahahahahahah … that NRO is really funny!
Lou Dobbs doesn’t watch CNN to see the debunking of the birthers … nor Kitty Pilgrim when she debunked it … sitting in for that fat twelve sandwich eating pantload. Then NRO wants to know why Republicans are painted with such a broad brush because of the birthers? Who the fuck does Andy McCarthy write for? The Great Orange Satan? The only thing missing from that load of shit is a dildo rolled in glitter.
MikeJ
Posey has introduced 3 other bills in his career.
HR 1027 Thrift Store Protection Act – 7 cosponsors, 1 dem, 2 TX r’s
H.R. 1962 American Space Access Act – 1 cosponsor, a D from Fla
HR 793 Child Tax Credit Preservation Act of 2009 – 31 cosponsors 2 D’s , 2 TX r’s
mcc
That’s not quite right. They told the crazies AND the DFHs to take their nonsense, STFU, GTFO, and let the corporate whores take care of business. And by DFHs I mean everyone to the left of Gore.
Yeah, but the DFH’s also separately told the from-our-perspective crazies to shove it. And that was the same group of DFH’s that later wound up incidentally sorta taking over the party. (It’s hard to remember, now, but Obama was actually considered the progressive alternative to the establishment democrats before he started succeeding at things… and it’s hard to tell from some of the complaining in the blogosphere, but by now we’re at a point where Netroots Nation is basically the mainstream the Democrats have to pander to, and the Blue Dogs are the increasingly-marginalized detractors from the agenda.) This is the Democratic Party, there are factions within factions.
r€nato
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I’m telling Jon Stewart that you owe him royalties for using that one.
The Grand Panjandrum
@jenniebee:
I hope they don’t make you sick. That could be problematic.
Aspasia
PeakVT: They told the crazies AND the DFHs to STFU, GTFO, and let the corporate whores take care of business. And by DFHs I mean everyone to the left of Gore.
Well, even the DFHs dissed truthers, who were banned from Daily Kos, for instance. I don’t know quite why the 9/11 truth movement has been equated with, say, belief in UFOs or the New World Order when there is considerable empirical evidence to support both degrees of LIHOP. And as we are all now learning, President Cheney was capable of doing almost anything to advance his agenda. But although I am a truther, I guess, even I can’t bring myself to believe that he, Cheney, actually arranged the attack. OTOH it is quite easy to accept that someone in the administration, having been warned by Tenet or Richard Clarke, saw the upside of such an attack for forwarding a neocon agenda.
Aspasia
arguingwithsignposts
@Brick Oven Bill:
Regarding FactCheck.org, it is not part of the same Annenberg thing that Bill Ayers was involved in. From their “About” page:
There’s also an Annenberg school at Southern California. People need to get their facts checked before they dump on factcheck.
Oh, and:
Also.
The Grand Panjandrum
@r€nato: Heh. I would gladly pay them. I’ve been laughing about that one all day.
Brick Oven Bill
Annenberg pays Ayres. Annenberg paid for Joe to touch the birth certificate. Annenberg must pay well, because no one else can seem to afford the fee to touch the birth certificate, which I will now define as ‘My Precious’.
Now I have to go for the evening. Have a good one.
maya
Fine. Obama’s birth certificate has now been exalted to the status of the stigmata for all the doubting bobs of the right. If they could but just see it and put their Cheetos stained fingers upon it they will believe. I’d bet they expect a miracle cure for their stupids too.
What I would like is a copy of HR1503 with all the original signatorees to hang over the toilet or sell on Ebay. How can I request that?
LanceThruster
Most “Truthers” (I am one of them), insisted that a full investigation was needed as the “official version” did not hold up.
That has a f*ck of a lot more validity than the birther claims. AFAIC, Maher and Bullsh*t (Penn & Teller) are providing cover for the official 9/11 version. Evidence in a mass murder was destroyed. That alone was a felony and obstruction of justice.
This is a FACT, not some bullsh*t speculation that can be mocked.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill:
which I will now define as ‘My Precious’
OK, now you’re starting to sound a lot like the guy from Red Dragon. You… you don’t want a copy of the birth certificate so that you can eat it, do you?
Are you… becoming?
David
The real truth behind the Mystery Behind the Birth Certificate® is solved in one second where as 9/11 will keep scholars busy for a couple of centuries.
The Birther Movement was stillborn.
JK
Lou Dobbs is just pushing the birther bullshit as payback for Obama saying the following about him:
At a fundraiser in Florida Thursday night, Barack Obama accused anti-immigrant crusaders Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh of “ginning things up” to such an extent that there was a rise in hate crimes against Hispanics last year.
“A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year,” Obama said. “If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen.”
h/t Obama: Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs Responsible For Rise In Hate Crimes Against Hispanics http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/23/obama-rush-limbaugh-lou-d_n_103315.html
kth
Just googled “site:nationalreview.com obama birth certificate”, and they are actually not too bad on the issue. Andy McCarthy is of course crazy. But the guy with the most hits, Jim Geraghty, while indulging a bunch of weaselly, second-order questions about the birth certificate, never questions Obama’s birthplace or his legitimacy as POTUS. And David Horowitz and Michelle Malkin (!) both positively smack down the birther tendency.
That doesn’t make Pollowitz right: there was never a liberal media figure as well-known as Rush Limbaugh who lent credence to the Truther claims, in the manner that Limbaugh called Obama an illegal alien. But at least National Review hasn’t been fanning the flames of this idiocy.
MikeJ
I don’t read BoB, unless he really does spend all his time talking about pie, but from what you say, I think he’s referencing an author I have been unfortunate enough to read, Tolkien.
Svensker
@calipygian:
Why doesn’t Pollowitz ask his Corner-mate Crazy Ass Andy McCarthy, who is measuring the kerning on Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate as we speak.
This. Very much this.
Midnight Marauder
@LanceThruster:
AFAIC, Maher and Bullsh*t (Penn & Teller) are providing cover for the official 9/11 version. Evidence in a mass murder was destroyed. That alone was a felony and obstruction of justice.
I certainly don’t think they’re “covering for the official version.” I think they, rightly, reject the far-fetched nonsense of some of the more extreme Truther claims. But there’s a marked difference between “not believing the official explanation and wanting an investigation” vs. “OMGTHEY’REALLINONIT!”
Grand incompetence does not equal grand conspiracy.
Derek
Ron Paul was the biggest truther in Congress.
mcc
This is a FACT, not some bullsh*t speculation that can be mocked.
Oh, I think you’d be quite surprised what one can mock.
PeakVT
@mcc: You’re right the DFHs told the crazies to shove off. But so far we’ve only managed to light a fire under the Democratic Party and push it to the left somewhat, not really take it over. And at the same time we helped widen the party to the right which, as predicted, has had mixed results. We’ll see exactly how far the party has moved when the votes for health care reform happen.
Anyway, I was mostly just venting my spleen again about the 2001-2003 era, ’cause I just can’t get over my anger about it. Grrr.
MikeJ
If you can’t face saying the word “fuck” or “bullshit” without asterisks you couldn’t handle the truth. That’s why I, along with the Zionist conspiracy, backed by the UFOs and Steve Jackson Games, hid it from you.
freelancer
Ron Paul
wasis the biggest truther in Congress.He regularly appears on CT tinfoil hat wearing paranoid nut Alex Jones’s radio show where the subject is usually about the NWO and ending the Fed, but Alex being Alex, 9/11 does come up and Paul remains mum.
jenniebee
@MikeJ:
Yeah, I’m still stuck trying to figure out how to work out that “birth certificate = the one ring” thing. Is BoB saying that the birthers are Gollum, pursuing the elusive prize? Is he implying that Obama is trying to destroy the certificate lest it fall in the hands of Sauron? Or maybe the birthers are Sauron? Does that make the Council the DNC or DLC? I can totally see Howard Dean as Merry…
Which is all to say that BoB’s attempted analogy is dumb as a bag of hammers. BoB’s interest in the certificate has moved from any kind of totally-insane “that’s a Certificate of Live Birth, not a Birth Certificate” semantic denial of the obvious into the realm of the fetish.
Scott
(goes to hunt down his INWO cards so he can keep track of the conspiracies)
gwangung
Also paid Bush and McCain.
Can’t touch McCain’s birth certificate either.
hidflect
@#4: Brick Oven Bill
How dare you drag the anti-Semite inference slur across 9/11 truth movement? You don’t speak for anyone and you don’t know sh1t about the truth.
Scott
Also, when is SJG going to come out with a new version of INWO — the new rebirth of the Conspiracy Fools-Golden Age should mean they can come up with a bunch of new cards… “The One True Birth Certificate” and “Spicy Mustard” would be gimmes…
geg6
Sorry all you BJ Truthers, but that’s just crazy stuff. Were the Bushies massively incompetent and greedy? Yes, no doubt. But I don’t for a minute believe they ginned up those attacks. Nor do I disagree with Bill Maher on this. I am a lover of rational thinking. I don’t find any Truther theories the least bit rational. And, yes, I’ve read and watched all the same shit you have and no one loathed Bush/Cheney more than I did. It’s even more nutty than religion. Which I’ve always found the nuttiest thing ever. Until the Truthers and Birthers came along. Now it’s all kinds of crazies, all around me. ;-)
Ellid
I can’t give my source because s/he/it is still in government service, but I know for a fact that every FBI agent at the Manhattan office was required to report to work at 4:30 am on 9/11. The feds probably were responding to intelligence chatter and didn’t know the exact location, but they sure knew that *something* was in the wind that beautiful autumn day.
geg6
Matt Taibbi is on Real Time tonight, by the way, gang.
Scott
Conspiracies only work on a small scale, and only if you can keep the participants quiet. On a large scale, there are too many people involved to keep some of them from spilling the beans.
Warren Terra
This is mostly off topic – though it does perhaps help to explain the fear of illegal power grabs by Bush et al that created fertile ground for the Truthers and sent some people quite round the bend to join them – but the latest revelations about Cheney, Addington, and Yoo fighting to ignore Posse Commitatus and the fourth amendment are really quite shocking. The only reason given in the Times article is that they didn’t want to give the people being arrested on American soil any rights or due process (which is of course an old story), but even beyond that the proposal to use the Army to collar a few schmoes in New Jersey is pretty incredible. Gawd knows we’ve got plenty of well-equipped and cops and FBI agents, and unlike the army they’re trained to enforce the law.
The article also lists a few people who fought the idea (then-NSA Condoleeza Rice, FBI honcho Mueller, then-DOJ guy Chertoff), though it asserts (based on no visible evidence) that this was a turf battle rather than a principled position – in which case it’s a bit odd that I didn’t see Rumsfeld mentioned, because I don’t see Condi’s parochial interest, except perhaps in limiting the power of Rumsfeld and (less directly) Cheney.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
One could interpret the Constitution in such a way that “natural born” citizenship is not a requirement for the Presidency.
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
In fact, if I were an English teacher, I would say that this excludes everybody except except those alive in 1789.
Todd Dugdale
BOB wrote:
“Birthers are simply trying to figure out why the President refuses to present his birth certificate to anybody other than Fact Check”
At least two people not connected with Factcheck.org have seen the birth certificate. They would be Dr. Chiyome Fukino and Alvin Onaka:
*******
“Fukino said she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama’s original birth certificate.
“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures,” Fukino said.
*******
And “birthers” are not simply bewildered by the refusal to produce a birth certificate. They are absolutely certain that Obama was not born in Hawaii. In fact, they are now saying that Obama is not even an American citizen.
Why would the Registrar of Vital Statistics have the birth certificate for a foreign birth? They wouldn’t.
Even if the birth certificate were produced, there is a long list of other issues from the “birthers” that would keep this issue alive: the “grandmother” who confused Obama Jr. with his father, the lack of living witnesses to the birth, the Indonesian school enrolment form listing Obama as an Indonesian citizen (though stating he was born in Hawaii), etc.
The difference between the ‘truthers” and the “birthers” is that the “birthers” are tacitly accepted as reasonable people with a legitimate grievance by the Republican Party, where the “truthers” were ignored or ridiculed by the Democratic Party.
bjones
@Scott:
But you forget that Obama, being alien, has mind control powers.
And he’s a Moslem. Also.
timb
@MikeJ: Mike is dead on. i argued about that poll on a couple of right wing websites. There were 10% who believed the truthers and 25% of Dems who said Bush should have known something. The disingenuous right wing turned that 35% are truthers, because they are vile.
r€nato
I have a copy of “Illuminati”, autographed by Steve Jackson, quietly gathering dust in my games closet because I don’t know anyone who wants to play it.
Anyone wanna come by tonight for a nice, long game of Illuminati?
freelancer
Case. In. Point.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/25detain.html?_r=1&hp
Cheney advocated US Army in Buffalo to “test Constitution” in 2002.
This Bush vs. Cheney fight is getting even more awesome
Comrade Darkness
Truther conspiracy theory that Bush knew of 9/11 beforehand. A Rasmussen poll found 35 percent of Democrats actually believe in that nonsense. Why wasn’t that as big a story?
….
Did Democratic Congressmen ever bring any 9/11 Truthers type bills to the floor?
I don’t know. The 9/11 commission
forcing Condi to admit they had warning
probably counts. No? Determined to attack… with planes It DOES mention planes.
What a bunch of maroons the Bush admin was. Merlin.
r€nato
@Scott:
or to put it more succinctly:
Three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
bjones
@Todd Dugdale:
I wonder, given the “evidence” about the Indonesian angle you just listed, how many of these birther grievances are based on details that other grievances explicit refute? Its not only insane big picture-wise, it also lacks even a hint of internal validity.
You practically need a concordance to categorize the crazy.
MikeJ
You in Seattle? Bring it to DL.
les
Much as I enjoy the site and its (damn, I’ve had too much alcohol to figure out if I need an apostrophe there) commenters, BoB is getting to be creationist level stupid. I can’t find it, can someone direct me to a greasemonkey or equivalent way to get rid of his f’n idiocy?
r€nato
@MikeJ:
nope, sorry, in Phoenix. What’s DL?
angulimala
I think Conor Friedersdorf has a bead on the reason these guys are pimping this stuff.
It’s business.
Betsy
@r€nato:
Hee!! If you’re in BOS or PVD, I’m down.
Edit: Well, I see you aren’t. C’est la vie…
freelancer
@les,
Tonight I have become convinced that BOB is a spoof.
its is possessive, whereas “it’s” is an abbreviation of it is.
You got it right the first time.
MikeJ
@r€nato: Drinking Liberally. Maybe I’ll take my Illuminati cards. I’ve only got the old timey one though, none of this Y2K or later nonsense,
Brick Oven Bill
It still doesn’t rally the fact that Obama has been asked to show his birth certificate and has refused at every turn. The ‘birthers’ as you like to derisively like to call them, are absolutely not nutters. They are concerned citizens who love their country and want what’s best. Do I believe Obama was born in Kenya? I have no idea. But he is certainly running this country like he was from an African nation. Rampant debt, hyperinflation, overspending. Things certainly weren’t like this during the Bush years. Bush cut our taxes. Bush made us all wealthy. Now that Obama is in office, we’re all poor. Coincidence? I think not. We have a banana republic with a commie pinko running it and a handful of jews helping him. The same ones that ruined the economy during the Clinton years. Remember those? I do. I say one more term of Obamamania and let’s get Palin or Romney in before it’s too late. Anybody here with me?
someguy
Y’know, after a while, it’s kind of pointless to talk about Republicans and conservatives and their ilk or to argue with them. We’re sitting here dissecting an enormous pile of shit with maggots crawling out of it talking about how some maggots aren’t as shitty as others, and ooh, look at this one, it’s worse than the others and look at the enormous pile of poo it’s got in its mouth…
At some point you need to remind yourself that they’re all maggots, their entire politics is an enormous pile of shit, and we’re getting ourselves worked into a furor over it for no good reason. It’s a waste of time to talk about the varieties of Republican filth or how repulsive individual Republicans are. No benefit stems from carefully distinguishing one from the other or trying to rebut their insane arguments.
nycmoderate
I haven’t been watching the coverage, so maybe this isn’t accurate, but there is another explanation. To the media, the Truther stuff was just silly. Of course their good buddy Bush didn’t know anything about 9/11. But you never know, that Kenya thing could really be true, and they have an obligation to let people make their own decision.
Viva Brisvegas
Isn’t it true that this birfer nonsense is only a problem if it gains traction in the wider community and undermines Obama’s authority as President.
So how likely is that? Obviously it’s already revealed truth among the sad and pathetic, but will it really strike a cord outside the Republican Party?
Is the American public that gullible, or is it possible to insult their collective intelligence?
r€nato
@MikeJ:
I just saw a thread at Steve Jackson Games’ forum, apparently they are readying a Deluxe version of the game…
les
@freelancer:
Re: apostrophes, even a blind pig etc. I appreciate the confirmation. BoB may be spoof; but my ability to appreciate such as that is, I fear, worn to a nubbin, whatever tehfuck that may be. I just want him/it out of my life, while retaining BJ.
les
@someguy:
Nicely spoke.
Mark S.
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I think the problem is that people hadn’t mastered comma technology in the 18th century. It would be much clearer if they had written:
Also, is the 2nd Amendment even a sentence? It drives me crazy every time I read it.
LanceThruster
@Midnight Marauder:
Did you see the Bullsh*t – 9/11/Conspiracy Theorists episode? I think they combined Bigfoot with 15 minute 9/11 segment and the “truther” they covered insisted aliens did it if I remeber correctly. That is classic misdirection (which as magicians they’ve demonstrated before). What is it they don’t want to find out?
They run essentially interference for the official narrative when they equate serious reservations with “no planes/all photoshopped” theorists. Maher is guilty of this as well and his constant gushing over Benjamin Netanyahu (sp?) reveals some of his agenda as well.
We have a civil engineering and architecture department at our campus and what they wrote in their academic/trade journal is essentially that “we guess the structures weren’t as strong as we thought they were” without an urgent call to action to review and revise building codes.
WTC 7 collapse theories (the official ones) changed as needed though not even dealt with in the initial report.
I’m not saying I can identify who was in on it, but in the mold of “follow the money,” what needs to be asked is “who benefits?” It seems that the thugs in the criminal Bush administration and the hardliners in Israel did quite well (as did those who felt civil liberties were quaint).
Dave C
We either need to stop having posts on this topic, or somebody needs to explain to me how to create a kill file for BOB’s comments.
les
@Dave C:
fucking ditto
nhoj
OT but when is the DL in Seattle? I am in Bellingham but am going to be in Seattle for most of August…
MikeJ
@Dave C: Use firefox. Install greasemonkey. Google cleek pie filter. Install the script into greasemonkey. You’ll need to edit the text file to add BoB’s name.
It sure sounds harder and geekier when you explain it to someone else.
Midnight Marauder
@LanceThruster:
I vaguely remember the episode, but based on what you write (and my recollection), it did seem to be presented in a loaded fashion (but what can you really expect from those guys)?
I think there are still a lot of questions left to be explored and answered, but I don’t buy into any kind of elaborate, nefarious plot.
Todd Dugdale
bjones wrote:
“how many of these birther grievances are based on details that other grievances explicit refute? ”
For example, how can a Kenyan-born British subject also be an Indonesian citizen?
How is a total lack of living witnesses to the putative Kenyan birth “understandable”, but the lack of living witnesses to the Hawaiian birth is “suspicious”?
How is a document (certified “short-form” certificate) that is good enough to get any person a passport or other ID “unpersuasive”, but another document (“long-form” hospital certificate) that wouldn’t even be accepted as adequate to get a library card is somehow indisputable proof?
iluvsummr
@Todd Dugdale: Why are you trying to find a semblance of rationality here? Like the woman said at Castle’s forum, this about wanting her country back (to pre-13th amendment 1864, preferably).
amk
Can we have an ignore poster option so that racist trolls like BoB are not allowed to hijack the thread by rile inducing posts ?
Texas Dem
gnomedad
I am simply gob-smacked by people who start with the premise that crashing fully-fueled airliners into buildings is insufficient explanation for them falling down. It makes the notion that Obama was born on Mars look prosaic.
Ked
I’ve never actually played Illuminati – I have a couple hundred INWO cards, and played that a few times before it dried up, but even that was incredibly fun.
Not sure I’ve even *seen* a real deck of Illuminati cards. Which is strangely appropriate.
Comrade Trotsky
amk
@Comrade Trotsky: You don’t try ro reason with rabid elements like bob. Either you ban them (which is the site owner’s pejorative) or you ignore them.
Anticorium
@Scott:
There won’t be a new version of INWO. SJ Games screwed the pooch by sitting on the first expansion long enough to cool all the collector demand for it, and then by taking way too long to produce the SubGenius box set.
The game may not have been sustainable in the long run, and it probably would not still be producing new sets today, but if Assassins had been put in the pipeline the moment it was a releasable product, instead of many months later, things would have been a lot better.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill:
Rampant debt, hyperinflation, overspending. Things certainly weren’t like this during the Bush years. Bush cut our taxes. Bush made us all wealthy.
Bush doubled the debt with a tax cut for the wealthiest 10% and an elective war, and he hid a huge portion of that debt from the American people using accounting tricks that kept the cost of the war off the books. During the Bush administration, except for the ultra-rich, Americans’ earning power was in constant decline; we did not all get wealthy, we mostly got poorer. We compensated and kept the economy running with easy credit – and you can see where that got us. Clinton, say what else you will about him, turned the deficit – and every administration since 1980 except for Clinton’s has been run on deficit spending – into a surplus, paying down the debt run up by the previous two Republican administrations.
If you’re serious about wanting fiscal responsibility, stop giving borrow-and-blow Republicans the keys to the kingdom.
BTW, did anyone else see, speaking of deficits, the US trade deficit just hit a 9 year low. We’re finally moving in the right direction again to bring wealth into this country instead of shipping it all out.
LanceThruster
@Midnight Marauder:
Thanks for the additional input. I think some of the actions directed were “nefarious” and by definition would be considered a “plot”, if only from cover-up of culpability. The official rationale was to deal with the immediate threat and not “finger point.” Wouldn’t finger pointing be a way of minimizing chances of a similar reoccurance?
Who f*cked up? What’d they do wrong? What should have been done? Who dropped the ball? Etc. Instead, Medals of Freedom were issued.
They spent more $$$ investigating Clinton’s BJ and the Challenger explosion (in the case of Challenger, for the purposes prevention of future catastrophes – a lesson not learned quite well enough with Columbia(?).
As far as demonstrations of the properties of physics go, I’d love to see some of the structural failures duplicated. Lets see “Mythbusters” try to drop a scaled down steel reinforced structure in a similar fashion, or fly a jumbo jet through a Pentagon wall mock-up to create a similar hole and damage pattern (remember when a remote control jumbo jet was flown into stakes connected with cables to test an anti-misting jet fuel additive? It failed for other reasons, but the science was sound).
Hell, I’d love to see a jumbo jet flown into the ground in PA to see if they can match the crash site debris field of the “Let’s roll!” plane.
Lots of aircraft boneyards with these craft just sitting there and America loves them some reality TV.
I’m pretty f*ckin’ convinced the Moon landings happened (even met Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell) but if this thing (9/11) took place they way they said, it shouldn’t be that hard to demonstrate some properties of physics for us easily bamboozled.
Their “you kooks need to shut up” is not very convincing at all and the amount of otherwise rational media outlets that parrot that sentiment doesn’t put them in a very good light either.
If that puts me in with the tin-foil hat crowd, so be it. It’s better than the deaf, dumb, and blind, lying sack of sh*t, unable to speak truth to power MSM, who in reality are an arm of the powerful in their role of “the Mighty Wurlitzer.”
I’m just sick of “9/11 truther” (with no differentiation of viewpoints) being on par with flat earthers and the like.
Yutsano
Also, is the 2nd Amendment even a sentence? It drives me crazy every time I read it.
It’s the ultimate in dangling participle technologies. It might also have something to do with the fact that the Second Amendment is a chop job. The original proposed version is quite a bit lengthier and means something completely different from the NRA.
EDIT: blockquote fail. Ugh.
freelancer
the best Doc about 9/11 that has many questions about the government’s actions and doubts many statements of the Commision Report, yet seriously avoids anything resembling the Truther movement, is called “9/11 Press for Truth”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0867134/
As far as the best smackdown of the most prominent truther claims, google ScrewLooseChange, be warned though. It’s more than 3 hours long.
@les
Yeah, I know what you mean, I actually kind of miss Atuaranaut or whatever the little shits name was.
I have a feeling I’m going to regret saying that.
Zuzu's Petals
@Brick Oven Bill:
I really must say I admire your deep cover … but every once in awhile ya just gotta peep out a little to see if anyone’s noticing, eh?
jim
9/11 versus Obama’s COLB? That’s a joke, right?
The COLB has been investigated properly by independant professionals who all came to the same conclusion.
9/11? Yeah, not so much … the 9/11 Commission’s own members publicly owned up to it being a big steaming pile of epic fail before it was even over. Pretty weird how everyone just ignored that & went along with their vague unsubstantiated version of events, no matter how many anomalies (like the massive explosion in a sub-basement at about the same moment the first jet hit, or that huge pool of ridiculously hot molten slag under Ground Zero that kept burning for weeks on end) it utterly failed to account for.
As for all the “controlled demolitions LOL” stuff, I’m prone to put some credence in the testimony of a certian fringe-group: the firefighters & police (who are trained to observe just such events) who were actually there – they heard numerous explosions, as did anyone paying attention to the live broadcasts … seems like nobody much gives a shit about them at all anymore, now that they’re not useful as heroic props in the McWar On Terror – I bet THEY wouldn’t mind seeing a real independant investigation into the disaster that killed a lot of their friends & ruined their lives. Looks to me like they’re going to wind up SOL.
Johnny Pez
@LanceThruster:
“LanceThruster”?
I call spoof.
mcc
@PeakVT: Yeah, quite true. I think basically what we’ve managed to do is take over those parts of the party that aren’t actually involved on setting policy :P Still, it’s an improvement.
Enlightened Layperson
That’s not quite right. They told the crazies AND the DFHs to STFU, GTFO, and let the corporate whores take care of business. And by DFHs I mean everyone to the left of Gore.
Allow me to join others in saying, the DFH’s also rejected the truthers. The left blogsphere was divided into two categories, ones who banned truthers outright, and ones who tolerated an occasional truther interloper, knowing they would be laughed off the thread. Bill Maher kicked truthers off his show. The Nation published some fine articles debunking their theories. Noam Chomsky, for God’s sake, denounced the whole thing as nonsense. We kept the truthers firmly marginalized.
I don’t generally follow the right blogosphere. Can somebody who does give me a breakdown on their approaches to the birthers. Which ones fit into the following categories:
(1) Ones who ban birthers outright;
(2) Ones who tolerate an occasional birther interloper, knowing they will be laughed off the thread;
(3) Ones who allow birthers to run riot in the comments threads, but do not make birther posts;
(4) Ones who make the artful straddle — they don’t actually say Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, but they insist there are questions that need to be cleared up and;
(5) Full-on batshit crazies who endorse birther conspiracies to the full.
Outside the blogosphere, I don’t know of any mainstream conservatives in category (5). But category (4)’s now include Andy McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs and several Republican members of Congress. And probably rising.
Can anyone give the rundown on righty bloggers?
bago
Two things. First I am in Seattle, but right now I’m out here. http://img253.yfrog.com/i/ejh.jpg/
Secondly, for the fucktards who think steel doesn’t soften under heat, how the fuck do you think blacksmiths work?
cs
I’m not a truther at all, but sometimes in my more paranoid moments, I can easily imagine the “lets let those crazy guys fly the planes and see what happens” scenario being true.
Bush isn’t capable of coming up with this scheme on his own, but all that needed to be done was Cheney telling Bush that this was probably a false alarm and don’t tell the FBI or other agencies to spend much time on this case. Cheney wouldn’t have known the exact outcome of the future events, but, in this situation, he could take the political risk of the possibility of the administration being exposed as criminally negligent, in order to gain the potential rewards of the country being put on a wartime footing with all the political and military benefits that would accrue.
If this is what happened, it is in many ways the perfect crime. All that would ever come out would be that the administration ignored the warnings. There wouldn’t be much of a chance of anyone being exposed as anything worse than incompetent.
I don’t see how this scenario would be the least bit unreasonable or impossible, especially after what we know about the past eight years.
Bill (not BOB)
Pollowitz’s equivocating and buck-passing and blame-shifting seems so typical of Republicans these days. Its always the fault of the liberal media or the Democrats or somebody besides them. Is conservative now a synonym for irresponsible?
RWNs had their own crackpot 9/11 theory. A Gallup poll in Oct. 2004 showed that 62% of Repubs believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in planning/ implementing the attacks. And, perhaps not coincidentally, polls done around the time GWB left office showed that 60+% of Republicans believed Bush had done a good or excellent job as president. Now that’s REALLY crazy.
john F. Loehr
Steel loses its strength much faster when heated than say, wood. Anybody saying steel won’t weaken and collapse under heat has zero credibility. As soon as I saw the WTC burning I said when it got hot enough, the steel in upper floors would weaken and the building would collapse.
Bill Arnold
Rick Moran (rightwingnuthouse.com) (“ITS PAST TIME TO INOCULATE CONSERVATISM AGAINST THE BIRTHERS”) recently banned birthers, or at least pro-birther talk his comment section, outright. He’s been on something of a “purge the conservative movement of the stupid” tear lately.
Todd Dugdale
iluvsummr wrote:
“Why are you trying to find a semblance of rationality here?”
The point is that this will not end even if Obama would make a national tour exhibiting his birth certificate, and displaying copies in every post office.
It’s not about the birth certificate. It’s about people’s willingness (and eagerness) to suspend critical thinking skills when pre-conceived beliefs are threatened.
The Right’s propaganda has utterly convinced the wingnuts that they are the majority – the vast majority, in fact. When you begin with that premise, there is no way that you can convince someone that Obama is legitimate.
So it’s not “trying to find a semblance of rationality”, but rather showing that rationality is not a factor in this issue. The Republican Party now is closer to a quasi-religion than it is to a political organisation. What binds adherents of a religion together is faith, not rational thought.
Comrade Darkness
@john F. Loehr,
I may be really late to this party, but anyone can try this at home.
Take a paperclip. Take a close look at it. It’s steel, all shiny and new. Unfold it along the halfway point, then bend it back and forth a few times, quickly. It will break. Take a close look at the broken part. It is no longer shiny, it is grey and the broken end will look a bit like salt crystals. It’s called martensite and it’s brittle as hell. You, with a mere four little fingers, can transform shiny nice, high tension steel into junk.
LD50
Remind me, is the main thing keeping BOB from being expelled here the idea that he might be a spoof?
Comrade Darkness
Remind me, is the main thing keeping BOB from being expelled here the idea that he might be a spoof?
I’m pretty sure, BoB’s username used to always link to calvinists 4 conservatism. if he’s not a spoof, he’s insane and the result is the same.
I vote spoof. Sometimes he’s firing on all spoof thrusters and others he just seems tired and he’s a drag on the atmosphere. Frankly, he keeps some threads alive by himself.
matoko_chan
Ta-nehisi got it right.
The difference is the GOP is being schiavo’d by the birfers.
As the GOP shrinks it moves farther to the right and the fringe crazypants republicans begin to overlap the middle.
So essentially, congresscritters have to either pander to the birfers with the birfer bill or be called, RINOs, traiters, notconservative, squishes, ect.
Who can forget seeing the dismal line of sad congressppl being forced to declare solidarity with insanity by for the stupid and useless Terri’s Law even though they knew the lady-was-a-carrot?
And GW flying in from texas at midnite to sign the bill?
The crazees get more power over the moderates every day.
As the party shrinks we will continue to see more moderate conservatives held hostage to the whackjob fringe, which is becoming the center.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
Shorter Brick Oven Bill:
“I WANT TO TOUCH IT TOO.”
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
109: BTW, did anyone else see, speaking of deficits, the US trade deficit just hit a 9 year low. We’re finally moving in the right direction again to bring wealth into this country instead of shipping it all out.
Would that it were true, ma’am. We’re just not spending money on useless items, many of which are made overseas.
LanceThruster
@Johnny Pez:
Nope. I’m the real McCoy.
The official 9/11 Commission Report is the spoof.
LanceThruster
@john F. Loehr:
That may be but many steel frame structures have burned for *days* and not collapsed (or even noticeably distorted from the softening of the steel). Also, the nature of the area being heated was largely localized and therefore a perfectly symmetrical collapse (at near freefall speeds no less) seems unlikely. Also consider the heat syncopation properties of the massive amount steel framework that every bit of framework in the burn zone was connected to. It’s why you can cook a hot dog on a wire coat hanger and not burn your hand because there’s enough mass for the heat to dissipate before the end your hand is holding gets as hot as the end in the fire.
And why weren’t more of the massive uprights intact? Wouldn’t the collapsing floor levels drop down around the upright columns like records on a record changer phonograph? Look at the some of the photos of the construction and you can see that the center support column section was quite substantial and yet apparently crumbled into conveniently manageable segments during the collapse. You’d think that there’d be a column or two that remained upright when all the horizontal elements dropped around them.
If you think the physics supports what was described in the official explanation, then you wouldn’t object to further investigation (at least as much as could be done after the fact considering so much crime scene evidence was DESTROYED!! – what was the purpose of that? Engineers who thought they would be examining the debris said afterwards that they were given not much more than a walking tour of the site without any opportunity to make a thorough and detailed inspection).
Instead, all that the public gets is a heaping helping of, “Move along, nothing to see here.” The truth doesn’t need gatekeepers and yet the gatekeepers are out in force re: 9/11.