Birthers. Still? Really?

I saw a couple of recent polls showing that around 20% of Americans still believe that Obama was not born in the U.S.  I do hope that number has dropped in the last few weeks, but I have my doubts.  I have to wonder if the average birther knows how this bullshit started, and who really got the ball rolling?  Do these people even know that they are disciples of  Mr. Conspiracy himself, Philip Berg (and FoxNews, of course.)  This is a man who wants us to believe that the CIA detonated strategically placed explosives in federal buildings around Manhattan on September 11. (Because, of course, the CIA knew all bout the terrorist plot, and wanted to take advantage of it.  No, really!  It's true!  It's so true!)  Berg subscribes to the theory that if it doesn't violate the laws of physics, it's a realistic scenario.  You say you have evidence disproving a conspiracy?  Talk to the hand, the face is not listening.  If the chances are one in a million, he expects you to believe it happened.   I'll bet he buys a LOT of lottery tickets, and so do the folks who believe him.

This is the evidence provided by Berg and his ilk, the "truth" of what happened; it's the basis of the entire birther movement:

1.  Step-Grandmother Sarah Obama admitted in a taped telephone interview that Obama was born in Kenya, and she was present.  The Birther leaders presented as evidence, the first 5 minutes of that interview.

* The rest of the interview shows quite clearly that there was mistranslation, misinterpretaion, and therefore misunderstanding of the questions, and possibly the answers.  Later in the interview, Sarah states clearly that Obama was born in Hawaii.  It has also been documented that several months later, she received a letter announcing his birth.  I suspect the average birther doesn't know about the last part of the interview, and only got the edited YouTube version.  The Birther leaders (experts in conspiracy, you know) want the rest of us to believe that that part was just a fast talking-conspirator backpedaling to cover her slip up.  After all, amidst everything else, she did say, through her interpreter, "She was present when he was born."  Hey.  Just try to disprove it.  It could have happened, therefore it happened.  And the birth announcement?  Cover-up.  Absolutely.

2. Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, took a days-old infant on a trans-Atlantic flight to Hawaii, registered his birth, and planted fake birth announcements in two newspapers.  You will note that the birth announcements *gasp* do not list the place of birth!!!!!  See?  See?  This really could have happened!

{There's a further obfuscation going on here as well.  Many birthers are ignorant enough to believe that Obama's citizenship was at issue.  They honestly believe that if he was born in Kenya, he's not an American citizen.  And that, of course, would all the motivation Ann needed  to fake the documentation.  All kinds of opportunities are forbidden to non-citizens.  (You see, they know that pregnant Mexican girls sneak across the border to give birth all the time, so that their babies are eligible for U.S.citizenship.)  These people don't know that his parents's nationality is what established his citizenship, not his place of birth.  And no, he does not have dual citizenship.  He did as a child, due to British/Kenyan law, but Kenya doesn't allow dual citizenship for adults.  Obama lost any claim he might have had to Kenyan citizenship in his early twenties, but he has been an American citizen since the day he was born.}

3.  He lived in Indonesia for a while, and supposedly became a citizen.  Barely worthy of mention, and totally untrue.  But again, some people believe it.

So basically, even the "intelligent" ("intelligent" not being synonymous with "rational" and "well-informed") birthers continue to propose this theory:

An 18 year old American white girl, married to and pregnant by a black man in 1960, spent the last days of her pregnancy carefully plotting a conspiracy that would ensure her child's eligibility to become President of the United States.  Not merely to ensure that he was a U.S. citizen, but to ensure that he could qualify for the only opportunity on the planet that required him to be a natural born citizen.  *Was this chick psychic?  In 1960,  people in the U.S.were still being lynched over interracial marriage.  If little Barry were raised in any state whiter than Hawaii, that little halfbreed could have "disappeared" on his way home from school if he walked through the wrong neighborhood!*

I would add that in 1960, prenatal medicine hadn't quite reached today's level of sophistication.  Premature births were much more common, even among healthy white women.  Ann wanted her baby to eligible for the presidency, yet she was in Kenya late in her pregnancy.  She was apparently  smart enough to commit all kinds of fraud to indicate that her child was "natural born," but she wasn't smart enough to get on a damn plane sooner, to guarantee that her child was "natural born."

So there you have it.  Ann Dunham, no doubt with the help of her family, was a brilliant, possibly even psychic, criminal mastermind.  Suspend all logic, context, history, and common sense, and you too can actually believe this fairy tale, based on physically possible (but never produced) evidence.  Of course, all evidence was destroyed by the conspirators.

20%  of Americans still eat this shit up.  And get this!  Back in February, Karl Rove said this on FoxNews: 




Said Rove: "Within our party, we've got to be very careful about allowing these people who are the birthers and the 9/11-deniers to get too high a profile and say too much without setting the record straight."

When asked what percentage of Republican voters were birthers -- a recent poll found 51% -- Rove added: "I don't know, but whatever it is, it ought to be less, because we need the leaders of our party to say 'Look, stop falling into the trap of the White House and focus on the real issues."

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"The trap of the White House?"  The White House is behind the birther movement?  The White House is using the birther movement to distract us from the "real issues???"  When the hell did the White House get that much influence over FoxNews?

2 of ever 10 people you know, genuinely think this is all perfectly logical.  And what's worse, those same people think that only a raving-commie-liberal "Obamabot" would ever disagree with them!  20%  Really?

Conspiracy theories are a lot like religion.