Looks like the House feels he was born in Hawaii. now, can we
pleas get back to shortwave?

Drifter...



On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 05:18:50 -0400, Ubiquitous
wrote:

“The 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in
Hawaii”:
So resolved the House of Representatives yesterday, by a 378-0 vote.
The
broader purpose of the nonbinding resolution was to assert that the
House
“recognizes and celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the entry of
Hawaii into
the Union as the 50th State.” That’s typical: Such anodyne
resolutions almost
always pass by unanimous vote, or with a lone dissent from the
eccentric Rep.
Ron Paul, who was not present yesterday.

But a “controversy” has arisen over President Obama’s birthplace. We
use those
scare quotes advisedly, because there’s no real dispute over the
matter, just
some nuts with a conspiracy theory, a handful of Republican
lawmakers who have
been either foolish or fearful enough to lend some credibility to
the theory,
and Democrats who have spotted an excellent opportunity to make the
GOP look
foolish.

Liberal Blogger Greg Sargent, his glee unconcealed (“Okay, this is
getting
really good”) and entirely justified, explains that the resolution
“seems
designed to put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam”:

[It] confronts House GOPers with a choice: They can vote for
the measure, and endorse the idea that Obama was born in Hawaii,
which could earn the wrath of birthers. Or they can vote against
commemorating the 50th state’s joining of our blessed Union. Or
GOPers can skip the vote, but that could look nutty.

“Far be it from us to try to stir things up,” Helfert said
puckishly. “The president was born there, so what are you
gonna do? Not mention it?”

Heh.

Heh indeed--though we should point out that the ostensible
birth-symps who
voted for the bill deserve at least a smidgen of credit for risking
“the wrath
of birthers.”

Will the House resolution satisfy the birthers? Don’t hold your breath.
Conspiracy theories are by nature unfalsifiable, since all evidence
against
them is recast as evidence of the conspiracy’s breadth and
effectiveness.
Birthers may alight on the provision of the resolution noting that
“the first
Native Hawaiian member of Congress, Prince Jonah Kuhio
Kalaniana‘ole, . . . .
and the first Native Hawaiian to serve in the Senate, Daniel
Kahikina Akaka,”
were from Hawaii. Why, the birthers may demand, doesn’t it mention
the first
native Hawaiian president, Barack Obama, or the first native
Hawaiian senator
from Illinois, also Barack Obama? (For that matter, Bruce Springsteen
_says_
he was born in the USA, but _where’s the evidence?_)

Birthers may also point out that the Abercrombie resolution is
nonbinding. But
Congress ruled on this question in a binding way already, when it
approved
Obama’s election in January. If there had been a genuine question
about the
president-elect’s eligibility, that would have been the time to
raise it.

Lamentably, being targeted by conspiracy theories seems to have
become an
occupational hazard of being president--and, as Politico notes,
managing the
theorists a hazard of belonging to the opposite party:

Out-party politicians have long had to deal with conspiracy
theorists on their side — the people who think that the Clintons
killed Vince Foster or that the Bush administration helped
orchestrate the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Twenty-five percent of my people believe the Pentagon and
Rumsfeld were responsible for taking the twin towers down,”
said Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat who represents a
conservative Republican district in Minnesota. “That’s why
I don’t do town meetings.”

But the birther phenomenon may present a bigger challenge--a
potent blend of race and politics, fueled by conservative TV
and radio pundits, and played out in a day when all that stands
between a town hall meeting and Web omnipresence is a $100 flip
cam.

Politico isn’t the only media outlet to suggest that birtherism is
racially
motivated. In a New York Times piece, Phil Griffith, president of the
ultraliberal MSNBC network, justifies what the paper calls his
network’s
“recurring coverage” of the so-called controversy:

Mr. Griffin said the claims were legitimate to cover “in that
there’s a segment of our population that believes this and
keeps bringing it up.”

“It’s racist,” Mr. Griffin said. “Just call it for what it is.”

Is birtherism racist, or substantially so? Our impression is that it
is not.
We receive a fair amount of email from Obama-haters. Only a small
portion of
it has racial overtones, and we do not recall ever having received
an email
that was both racist and birtherist. There does seem to us to be a
connection
between birtherism and anti-Muslim bigotry--but while the latter is
a form of
invidious prejudice, it is not based on race.

Liliana Segura of AlterNet.org, in an 2,800-word article titled
“Racism Is the
Prime Cause for Debunked Obama Birth Certificate Conspiracy Theory,”
fails to
deliver a single shred of evidence that birtherism is racially
motivated. Her
article mostly consists of hackneyed assertions to the effect that the
Republican Party is “largely built on structural racism.”

It would not surprise us if there does turn out to be a racist
strain among
the birther fringe. After all, birthers are lunatics and racists are
lunatics.
It does not follow, however, that all lunatics are racists.



Does conservatism breed rampant ignorance and stupidty or does rampant
ignorance and stipidity breed conservatism?8??88