The Elephant in the Room

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It’s right over there. It’s big and smelly, and it takes up a lot of room. Peo­ple have been tip­toe­ing around it for months, pre­tend­ing it doesn’t exist, but it’s grown too big to ignore. So let’s just walk over and con­front it directly. Some­body has to.

Are birthers sim­ply racists by another name?

Lots of peo­ple think so, and a few aren’t even afraid to say so out loud. But are they right?

On Wednes­day morn­ing, April 27, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama requested Hawaii to release two cer­ti­fied copies of his long-​​form birth cer­tifi­cate. Will this end the con­tro­versy? Prob­a­bly not. The new doc­u­ment is already being dis­missed in right-​​wing cir­cles as a fraud and a forgery. Don­ald Trump said, moments after the certificate’s release, “We have to look at it. Experts have to exam­ine it. I hope it’s genuine.”

And so it goes.

To date, so-​​called “birther laws” have failed or been tabled in five state leg­is­la­tures, and are still actively being debated in half a dozen oth­ers. But Okla­homa may be the first state to actu­ally pass a law mak­ing it a require­ment for every state employee from dog­catcher on up to pro­duce a birth cer­tifi­cate as evi­dence of qual­i­fi­ca­tion for employ­ment. Oddly, nobody has never wor­ried about such a require­ment in the past, but now it seems to have acquired a real urgency. I think we all know who was the real tar­get of this bill. (Hint: it’s not the dog­catcher.) Assis­tant Demo­c­ra­tic floor leader in the House, Al McAf­frey, says the bill is an embar­rass­ment. “But this is Oklahoma—we embar­rass our­selves all the time,” he adds.

Indeed, many peo­ple find such bills ridicu­lous, a fact that is not lost on writ­ers like this one (and there are thou­sands of them around the Inter­net) who have trum­peted that the dan­ger to the Repub­lic from an “imposter” like Barack Obama is so grave that patri­otic state leg­is­la­tures must bravely face down the ridicule in order to pro­tect the Constitution:

The only way to com­bat the media ridicule, and to inject some steel into the back­bone of politi­cians is through a mas­sive out­pour­ing of pub­lic sup­port for “birther laws.” If our rep­re­sen­ta­tives know we are behind them, they will have the for­ti­tude to face down media ridicule because they have the con­fi­dence from know­ing they are rep­re­sent­ing the will of the people.

Ari­zona Gov­er­nor Jan Brewer thinks the state leg­is­la­ture went too far

That doesn’t sound like racism, does it? It all just sounds really noble and patri­otic. So why has this issue been giv­ing fits to Repub­li­can thinkers, lead­ers and strate­gists? Michael Bloomberg recently said that if Repub­li­cans didn’t let go of birtherism and con­cen­trate on “real issues” they would lose big in 2012…and they would deserve it. Jan Brewer, dar­ling of the anti-​​immigration right, shocked and enraged her loyal fol­low­ers by refus­ing to sign Arizona’s birther law when it reached her desk. Brewer called the bill “a bridge too far” and went on to cause audi­ble gasps in the audi­ence by stat­ing flatly that birtherism is “lead­ing Amer­ica down a path of destruc­tion.” That’s pretty strong lan­guage, even from a lady not known for minc­ing words. Karl Rove was so alarmed by the birther con­tro­versy that he called it a “White House strat­egy.” Rove actu­ally believed this was a clever trap being laid and baited by the Obama team to enmesh the GOP in a sticky net they will never be able to escape.

Rove was prob­a­bly wrong about this trap being laid by the White House…but he was cer­tainly right about the dam­age, which will now be wide­spread. The whole ugly thing has exploded in their faces, leav­ing them with­out their sig­na­ture cam­paign issue and moti­vat­ing force, look­ing at two squan­dered years when they could have been deal­ing with real issues. They look clown­ish, bul­ly­ing, mean-​​spirited and, yes, openly racist. Those smart Repub­li­can lead­ers come from var­i­ous wings of the party, but none of them ever saw birtherism as noble and patri­otic. They all saw it is a seri­ous threat to the future of their party, because they were able to rec­og­nize it for what it is…pure, ugly racism, the kind that believes a black man can­not pos­si­bly be a legit­i­mate pres­i­dent. Birtherism has always posed a unique dan­ger to the GOP because it was rec­og­nized for what it really is by the mil­lions of vot­ers who do not have racist lean­ings. And it has now divided the GOP as no other issue has ever done. Most Repub­li­can politi­cians have been forced to take a stand on the birther issue, and their equiv­o­cal and care­ful answers will now be fraught with peril going for­ward. Because birtherism is not just a mat­ter of ide­ol­ogy like taxes or spend­ing or enti­tle­ments. It’s also deeply emo­tional, and the emo­tion that it springs from is fear. All racism is based on fear…of the Other, of the unknown, of being over­taken and invaded and sub­sumed by the unfa­mil­iar and threatening.

I posed a ques­tion many months ago, but nobody was ready at that point to con­front the ele­phant in the room. We have now reached the point where we can no longer ignore this issue, so I repeat my ques­tion for your con­sid­er­a­tion. Use your imag­i­na­tion to pic­ture this. Imag­ine that Barack Obama’s life story was iden­ti­cal in almost every way to the one we know. A father who was a col­lege stu­dent from Africa, a young mother with free-​​thinking polit­i­cal ideas, a dis­or­ga­nized and scat­tered child­hood span­ning a cou­ple of con­ti­nents and sev­eral households…but visu­al­ize that child­hood with one slight difference.

Instead of the child’s father being Barack Obama, a black man from a Kenyan vil­lage, he was red-​​headed Barry O’Bama, son of Irish potato farmers.

In that case, would there still have been a birther movement?

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  1. I won­der if the release of the birth cer­tifi­cate was delib­er­ately timed to make all the racist yahoos look sev­eral more lev­els of stu­pid after the week­end events?

    Or maybe it was just a shiny toy to keep the juve­niles dis­tracted and in the dark so they couldn’t mess any­thing up while the grownups were attend­ing to business.

  2. Just as an update… in the after­math of the long-​​form certificate’s release, I see no decrease in the num­ber of birthers at right-​​wing sites. There are a (very) few who say, “Okay, that’s enough for me…” but those peo­ple never were actual birthers. Because, I sub­mit, birtherism was never really about the “birth cer­tifi­cate,” it was always just about racial animus.

    At Free Repub­lic the birther move­ment has now mor­phed into three dis­tinct fac­tions. There is the totally insane “forgery fac­tion,” which is minutely exam­in­ing paper folds, type fonts and hand stamps. There is the “for­eign bas­tard son-​​of-​​a-​​bitch” group which ques­tions how Obama can pos­si­bly be a “nat­ural born” cit­i­zen when his father was a for­eigner and prob­a­bly not legally mar­ried to his mother, who was a com­mie slut. And there is this new group, led by Don­ald Trump, that has imme­di­ately piv­oted to, “What­ever, now we want to see the col­lege transcripts.”

    This last group is per­haps the most odi­ous of all.. okay, they’re all pretty odi­ous, but this bunch is more or less say­ing out loud that a black man couldn’t pos­si­bly be smart enough to grad­u­ate summa cum laude from Har­vard, so some­thing fishy is going on.…

  3. @filistro

    When the birth cer­tifi­cate was first released, the imme­di­ate reac­tion of a cer­tain very smart poli-​​sci pro­fes­sor was sus­pi­cion of the tim­ing. Lots of peo­ple were skep­ti­cally ask­ing “Why now?” or “Why’d it take so long?” The smart poli-​​sci pro­fes­sor pointed out that releas­ing it would likely just make the birthers become more fer­vent, so there must be some other moti­va­tion. “Watch for some big news to hit late on Fri­day or over the week­end. This is either cover or a dis­trac­tion of some sort to keep the nat­ter­ing class occupied.”

    When announce­ment of Osama’s death was made, both of the rea­sons you cited were read­ily appar­ent in ret­ro­spect. Two birds, one stone. Or maybe even three or four birds. First, the media is dis­tracted so any news about troop move­ments is buried below the fold on page 16 if men­tioned at all. Then, after the mis­sion is a suc­cess, the birthers (and their pub­lic mouth­pieces) look stu­pid, the Pres­i­dent gets a big win against ter­ror­ism, AND the birth cer­tifi­cate issue gets imme­di­ately smoth­ered by Osama news. As an addi­tional plus, this all comes just as the pub­lic is start­ing to hear neg­a­tives about the Repub­li­can bud­get plan…

    For those who doubt that the tim­ing might be inten­tional, con­sider that Obama’s speech about the birth cer­tifi­cate opened with a joke about how he couldn’t get the media to inter­rupt reg­u­lar broad­cast­ing for national secu­rity, but he could for the birth cer­tifi­cate. “We’ve got bet­ter stuff to do.” Indeed.

  5. Seri­ously, it’s the nature (prob­a­bly the curse) of the writer to be end­lessly absorbed with what-​​ifs, alter­nate sce­nar­ios, plot twists and dif­fer­ent story endings.

    I often won­der (in addi­tion to the hypo­thet­i­cal I posed above) .. what if Barack Obama really had been born in a small hos­pi­tal in Kansas to a mixed-​​race pair of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, and sev­eral locals had been present at his birth and attested to it. What would the racists then have focused on in their attempt to make his pres­i­dency illegitimate?

    I’m sure they would have found some­thing… all that fear and hatred seeks an out­let. It’s just inter­est­ing to muse over what it might have been.

  6. I won­der if it’s not [directly] racism, but xeno­pho­bia. It’s not that Obama’s black, nec­es­sar­ily, but that he’s lived in other coun­tries, has a weird name, and pro­nounces it Pahk­istahn. He’s just so… foreign.

    I know the two are related, but I think the same ques­tions would come up if he, say, had a Ger­man father and a dis­tinctly Ger­man name.

    As far as mov­ing on to his col­lege tran­scripts, my feel­ing is it’s more of an “any­thing to dis­credit the enemy” maneu­ver. Like when we asked for W’s “mil­i­tary” records.

  7. @turboenvy… I think the same ques­tions would come up if he, say, had a Ger­man father and a dis­tinctly Ger­man name.

    Like, say… Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger? :-P

    Actu­ally, I think you’re right, and it’s a bit more com­plex than I often present it. Maybe it’s a lot more com­plex, and I appre­ci­ate that you make me pon­der it with some depth and nuance.

    I think they do fear his Oth­er­ness instinc­tively because of xeno­pho­bia. And they also have a real fear and resent­ment of his polit­i­cal clout, just as they did with Clin­ton. It’s easy to detest a guy who beats you all the time.

    But I think they feel his black­ness gives them license to attack with­out reser­va­tion or decency… because these are peo­ple who think that no mat­ter how igno­rant, stu­pid, grace­less and vicious the attacker might be, he’s still a few notches above a black man.

  8. Auu­unold was Aus­trian ~ ok, a dis­tinc­tion w/​out a difference …

    Bill Maher sug­gested teabaggers/​birthers etc. are racists w/​out even know­ing they are racists ~ Can they be that stu­pid? ~ Rhetor­i­cal question.

  9. I’m with Shiloh on this one, I think a good per­cent­age of birthers don’t even know they are racist, they sim­ply don’t trust his oth­er­ness or his fancy edu­ca­tion cre­den­tials and hate the fact that he is what achiev­ing the Amer­i­can Dream is all about. How could he have pos­si­bly become pres­i­dent with his sup­posed upbring­ing, “it just makes no sense”.

  10. I agree that some birthers don’t even know they’re racists–they don’t use the n-​​word, maybe they work with some OK black peo­ple, etc. But deep down, aside from the usual group who can find a con­spir­acy any­where, is race. And I think you nailed it, fil­istro: “they feel his black­ness gives them license to attack with­out reser­va­tion or decency.”

    The vehe­mence and relent­less­ness of the attacks, espe­cially mov­ing on to the col­lege tran­scripts, are hard to attribute to any­thing else. Race may not be the only thing, but it is a big one.

    Of course, I couldn’t believe the level of hate for Bill Clin­ton, look­ing any­where, every­where, to find some­thing to bring him down. So maybe I’m a bit naïve.

  11. Prej­u­dice = lack of knowledge/​education, fear of the unknown ie teabaggers/​birthers.

    Again, Peter denied know­ing Christ not once, not twice, but thrice because of lack of knowl­edge, fear of the unknown … if you believe the Bible! ;)

  12. some birthers don’t even know they’re racists

    Few peo­ple acknowl­edge their racist ten­den­cies. And, in many ways, it’s like being overweight…it’s easy to say that you’re not really over­weight, because you’re not as big as that per­son over there. So you’re not really racist, because you’re not like that guy (KKK Grand Dragon, per­haps) over there

    Racism, like all prej­u­dice, man­i­fests itself in many forms, and to many degrees.

  13. “Racism, like all prej­u­dice, man­i­fests itself in many forms, and to many degrees.”

    Yes, and the sub­tleties of how racism is expressed varies from one region to another. A per­son who has not been affected directly by it is igno­rant of it until some­one with expe­ri­ence teaches him what those sub­tleties are.

    I have no prob­lem extrap­o­lat­ing from that, this: If you can hon­estly say, “I’m not a racist,” then you prob­a­bly don’t have enough expe­ri­ence with racism to make a blan­ket state­ment like that. Maybe you have a pure heart and don’t intend any racial prej­u­dices, but that’s a long way from claim­ing that your the results of your good intent are entirely successful.

    So, yes, I prob­a­bly am an igno­rant racist in ways I don’t even know about. How could I not be? I don’t get final say on any other person’s opin­ion of me, I only get final say as to whether and when I care what oth­ers think.

  14. That’s an adorable ele­phant, by the way. Can we keep him, Ma? Can we, pleeeeeeeeeease?

  15. @WA7th.… Can we keep him, Ma? Can we, pleeeeeeeeeease?

    That depends whether you are pre­pared to tend his lit­ter box. (Have you for­got­ten what hap­pened when we let you keep the donkey?)

  16. In addi­tion to his being Black and “other”, Obama is very intel­li­gent and often elo­quent. I lived in Cal­i­for­nia whe the UC stu­dents and fac­ulty went on steike to protest the Kent State mur­ders. Then Gov­er­nor Ronald Reagan’s response was “If there’s going to be a blood­bath, let it begin here.” While lit­eral blood stayed where it belonged, he pro­ceded to do all he cojld to dec­i­mate what had been one of the best col­lege sys­tems in the country.

    I think that the gen­eral populace’s dis­trust of, and lack of respect for the edu­cated and intel­li­gent began there.

    My PhD hus­band once had a heated dif­fer­ence of opin­ion with a man who works as a sales­man. Sales­man “I don’t know what you do exactly, but I know it has some­thing to do with brains. You’re try­ing to play tricks on my mind, aren’t you?”

  18. @Rose “I don’t know what you do exactly, but I know it has some­thing to do with brains. You’re try­ing to play tricks on my mind, aren’t you?”

    LOL… those smart peo­ple just can’t be trusted!

    That reminds me of an old fam­ily story about my broth­ers. One of them was, aston­ish­ingly, able when he was just 4 or so, to add quite long columns of fig­ures in his head. The other, 3 years older, was jeal­ous of all the atten­tion this gar­nered. My father said “Fine, you can try to do it, too. I’ll say some num­bers, and both of you add them up.”

    He called out a series of dig­its… “9, 6, 4, 7, 3, 2, 8.”

    The older one soon tossed up his hands in defeat while the lit­tle guy stood there, frown­ing and strug­gling, get­ting red in the face, and finally said “39!”

    Gen­eral amaze­ment and excla­ma­tion all round. Hugs from Mommy.

    “That’s not fair!” shouted my older brother. “He’s THINKING!!!”

  19. In 1st grade, they would get all (3) home rooms together and have a math drill ~ Sis­ter Nadeen would rat­tle off rel­a­tively quickly: 3+5–2+7–4+6–3 yada yada yada. It was very lonely :-P usu­ally being the only one to raise their hand.

    When I was going to data sys­tems tech school at Mare Island, CA there was an instruc­tor who could do hexa­dec­i­mal (base 16) addition/​subtraction in his head!

    carry on

  21. As much as my heart wants to say “racism”, and I cer­tainly believe it to be true in a num­ber of peo­ple, gen­er­ally my head believes it to be much more ideology.

    The Right would have elected Colin Pow­ell to office, had he decided to run a few years back. Maybe not as Pres­i­dent, but cer­tainly elec­table as VP. Yes, I also think a cer­tain minor­ity STILL would not have voted for a per­son of color.

    Look too at the side issues that were a con­stant drum­beat against Clin­ton, issues that had NOTHING to do with the job of Pres­i­dent. White­wa­ter, Jones, Fos­ter mur­der theory.

    The facts of those mat­ters reduces the role I believe racism plays in the Obama saga.

  22. Max.. it’s a mat­ter of form and fury. I agree the fury of oppo­si­tion is based on ide­ol­ogy. But the form of expres­sion that fury takes is pure racism.

    No mat­ter how furi­ously they opposed Clin­ton, nobody ever sug­gested he wasn’t a “real American.”

  23. No mat­ter how furi­ously they opposed Clin­ton, nobody ever sug­gested he wasn’t a “real American.”

    On the other hand, no mat­ter how furi­ously they oppose Obama, nobody ever sug­gested he was a mur­derer. They throw what­ever rocks they have handy. That race is a handy rock within reach doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily make it any­thing more than an argu­ment of convenience.

  24. MW and fili,

    “no mat­ter how furi­ously they oppose Obama, nobody ever sug­gested he was a murderer”

    Yeah, and I’ll bet that if it was ANYBODY but Osama or related al Qaida tar­gets, a sim­i­lar mis­sion with a sim­i­lar result would even end up with THAT claim! But even the usual duplic­ity of the Right doesn’t go THAT far.

    I note that the UN Human Rights peo­ple are mak­ing noise of “inves­ti­gat­ing” the “kill” OOB for the mis­sion from a legal stand­point. Too bad the Right hates the UN so much, or they’d find they had another rock to throw.

    BTW, I found out recently about that “End​o​fAmer​i​ca1​.com” site. Must have been what Mule was watch­ing a few weeks ago when he was going off on the apoc­a­lypse of Amer­ica rant.

  25. @Michael.. That race is a handy rock within reach doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily make it any­thing more than an argu­ment of convenience.

    I think part of my view of this is formed by the time I spend at far right wing sites, where the hatred of Obama is openly racist. His black­ness is often referred to not as side issue bit as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for vicious attacks.

    And the attacks on Michelle Obama are so viciously racist, they’re almost breath­tak­ing. There’s con­stant talk about her big African butt, her gorilla hairi­ness, her ugly black face, how humil­i­at­ing it is for Amer­ica to have this big black moose pranc­ing around the White House as if she owns it… it’s really awful.

  26. fil­istro,

    I think part of my view of this is formed by the time I spend at far right wing sites, where the hatred of Obama is openly racist. His black­ness is often referred to not as side issue bit as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for vicious attacks.

    But you’re infer­ring a causal rela­tion­ship of “black­ness leads to hatred of Obama,” and I’m sug­gest­ing that it might be the reverse: “hatred of Obama leads to his race being used as an excuse for that hatred.” It’s eas­ier to hate when you don’t need to deal with com­pli­ca­tions of pol­icy nuance. Espe­cially if you can’t artic­u­late what those poli­cies are in the first place.

  27. @Michael.. “hatred of Obama leads to his race being used as an excuse for that hatred.”

    I don’t argue with that. My point is (and always has been) specif­i­cally about birtherism.

    They can hate the pres­i­dent for his poli­cies and his elec­toral clout, just as they did with Clin­ton. They can look around for an issue to attack him on, just as they did with Clin­ton . But when the issue they decide to seize on is one related to his black­ness, his oth­er­ness and his African father, they have shown their innate racism.

  28. fil­istro,

    My point is (and always has been) specif­i­cally about birtherism.

    I’m pretty cer­tain that, had Obama been instead a white guy born in Panama, we’d be hear­ing about how Panama doesn’t count as US soil, and there­fore he’s not a natural-​​born cit­i­zen. Birtherism is a handy rock.

  29. @Michael… had Obama been instead a white guy born in Panama,

    But that’s not the proper anal­ogy. The bet­ter anal­ogy is this:

    If he had been a white guy born in Hawaii, would a whole move­ment have devel­oped, even­tu­ally gain­ing enough strength to con­vince a large num­ber of Amer­i­cans that he wasn’t born in Hawaii at all, he was prob­a­bly born in Ire­land and is lying about it?

  30. To put it another way, I firmly believe that Obama is a “vic­tim” of prej­u­dice, but the prej­u­dice is about the D after his name, not the race. Had he been elected with an R after his name, any crit­i­cism from the left would have been char­ac­ter­ized as racism, even though lib­er­als would have been crit­i­ciz­ing his poli­cies, not mak­ing blackface/​monkey/​tribal com­ments. To under­stand what I’m talk­ing about, look at how things played out in 2008 and 2009 with Sarah Palin.

    The dif­fer­ence is that we see more of the juve­nile forms of taunt­ing from the right than from the left…sort of the kind that you typ­i­cally expect to see at a sport­ing event. That’s not to say that we don’t see more intel­lec­tual forms from the right as well, but what­ever intel­lec­tual forms are out there get drowned out in the metadis­cus­sions by the “go team” stuff.

  31. @Michael… To put it another way, I firmly believe that Obama is a “vic­tim” of prej­u­dice, but the prej­u­dice is about the D after his name, not the race.

    I’m not entirely in dis­agree­ment… only to this extent. If you’re really mad at (or threat­ened by) some­body, you look around for a club to hit him with… an your weapon of choice says some­thing about your mindset.

    If the weapon you choose to pick up and employ is race… then you’re prob­a­bly a racist.

  32. fil­istro,

    But that’s not the proper analogy.

    It is inso­far as I believe that, had Obama been the R and McCain the D, and had McCain been elected, we would have been hear­ing about his hav­ing been born in Panama. And about how he was a bad mil­i­tary guy because he got caught. And how we all would have been bet­ter off if they had just killed him in the camp in Nam. And how he’s a crook for his involve­ment in the S&L scan­dal. And how senile he is. And how he can’t move his arms like a nor­mal person.

    If he had been a white guy born in Hawaii, would a whole move­ment have devel­oped, even­tu­ally gain­ing enough strength to con­vince a large num­ber of Amer­i­cans that he wasn’t born in Hawaii at all, he was prob­a­bly born in Ire­land and is lying about it?

    Yes, if his dad was born in Ire­land. And there would have been rumors that his dad was in the IRA, and so he’s prob­a­bly a ter­ror­ist, too. But that doesn’t stick as effectively…not so much because of black­ness, but because there aren’t a lot of Mus­lims in Ire­land. Since the 1990s, and espe­cially since 2001, Islam has been scary. So any­thing Mus­lim is a really easy tar­get to go after. The unfor­tu­nate coin­ci­dence of Barack Hus­sein and Sad­dam Hus­sein didn’t help.

    Let’s face it, Kennedy would have had trou­ble if his mid­dle name was Kruschev. Nixon would have had trou­ble had his mid­dle name been Fidel. How would Tru­man have been viewed if his mid­dle name was Hitler? The con­nec­tions to the scary-​​meme-​​of-​​the-​​day do matter.

  33. @Michael Yes, if his dad was born in Ireland.

    Oh, c’mon Michael. I don’t have the data at my fin­ger­tips, but I’m sure we’ve had other pres­i­dents whose fathers were not born in Amer­ica. But this is the first time we’ve ever had a birther move­ment… and there’s a rea­son for that.

  34. What? You can’t do hexa­decil­mal in your head?

    My high­point was around 6th grade, when I peaked, then it was all down­hill ~ blame it on the nuns. But, but, but I still know all of the state cap­i­tals and most of the world cap­i­tals, although a few have changed in the last (45) years ie when Peking became Bei­jing I was out of the loop.

    And snow at the equa­tor ?!? who were those nuns try­ing to kid …

    >

    One of the Reps conun­drums ~ it’s very hard to say some­thing neg­a­tive about Hawaii! :-P

    Aloha!

  35. LBJ beget Nixon
    Nixon/​Ford beget Carter
    Carter beget Rea­gan
    Bush41 beget Clin­ton
    cheney/​bush beget Barack Hus­sein Obama

    soooo, it’s very hard to not be a lit­tle fond :-P of Dick and George ~ thanx guys as “we” couldn’t have done it w/​out you …

    Again, in a coun­try which usu­ally elects lead­ers w/​waspy name ie Wil­son, Hard­ing, Coolidge, Hoover, Roo­sevelt, Tru­man, John­son, Nixon, Rea­gan, Bush, Clin­ton my boys cheney/​bush got us over the Barack Hus­sein Obama hump lol and as a nation “we” will be for­ever grateful!

    btw, never mis­un­der­es­ti­mate a Barack Hus­sein Obama who con­tin­ues to drive con­ser­v­a­tives totally bat shit crazy! God love him and them. :D

    Indeed, love it when a plan comes together!

  36. fil­istro,

    I don’t have the data at my fin­ger­tips, but I’m sure we’ve had other pres­i­dents whose fathers were not born in America.

    We cer­tainly have.

    But this is the first time we’ve ever had a birther movement

    Au con­traire. The first time we had such a move­ment was in 1881. For more infor­ma­tion, see this.

  38. Funny, and more than a bit ironic, that the most recent attempt to cir­cum­vent the eli­gi­bil­ity require­ment was by a REPUBLICAN with the “Equal Oppor­tu­nity to Gov­ern Amend­ment” by Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch(R) in 2003, to allow eli­gi­bil­ity for Gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia Arnold Schwarzenegger!

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