Birther Defect

Today's piece for the Daily Banter takes a look at Mitt Romney's decision to go full birther -- and CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's decision to publicly blow him for it.

Here's the opening shot:

"A little inside baseball here: Cranking out four pieces a week for this site isn’t easy. Writing takes enough time as it is, but it’s coming up with a topic almost every weekday that really makes me crazy. Especially on Fridays — Fridays are the worst because I’m typically burned out by the end of the week. This is why I’m thanking the blogging gods for CNN’s Jim Acosta right now. He did me a very thoughtful solid by dropping a giant-ass topic right into my lap when I needed it most. And all he had to do was make an unbelievably fucking stupid comment about Mitt Romney’s unbelievably fucking stupid comment..."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Month

"No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."

-- Mitt Romney, speaking at a rally in Michigan today

And there you have it.

I can't say this in strong enough terms: Thank you, Mitt.

Quote of the Day

"He’s a sage, skillful and respected leader (who's doing) all he can to take our country back. At the end of the day, he’s one of the few people in the country who can command respect from people of all walks of life."

-- Sarasota, Florida GOP Chairman Joe Gruters on Donald Trump, whom the Sarasota GOP is giving its "Statesman of the Year" award

I'm not even sure where to begin -- whether to insult the statement, Gruters, Florida, the modern Republican party or Donald Trump first.

You know, now that I think about it, I got nothin'.

This one's offered without comment.

Re-Birtherism (Complete)

The Full Text of My Latest Piece for the Daily Banter

An ongoing meme on the podcast that Bob Cesca and I do involves a debate over how much good actually comes from constantly bitching online. It typically goes something like this: Bob plays the admittedly heroic role of the passionate crusader, a guy who fights injustice armed only with a keyboard and a microphone and who points out the insanity of modern politics with the goal of changing things for the better; I make a couple of shitty cracks, throw up my hands at the futility of it all, then go get drunk. All things considered it works out pretty well for us. He's like a righteous Felix Unger, cleaning things up as best he can, and I'm Oscar Madison, not giving a crap -- or at the very least Jack Klugman on the deck of the sailboat in the opening credits of Quincy, examining the chick in the bikini with a champagne glass in my hand.

I generally think Bob's doing God's work and I'm just being a slacker, but every once in a while I can say without fear of contradiction that, dammit, I'm right: Things are so thoroughly fucked-up that it's incomprehensible that any sort of raging against the dying of the light will make one bit of difference. Case in point: birtherism -- the conspiracy that simply will not die.

Chances are if you don't have a little card in your wallet that needs only one more punch to earn you a free night at Bellevue you thought the whole birther thing was put to rest years ago -- or at the very least, if you're particularly obstinate, last year when President Obama publicly smacked down reality TV asshole Donald Trump by producing his long-form birth certificate. Turns out you're wrong; like Jason Voorhees, who can't be stopped no matter how many times you stab, torch, shoot or blow him up, the thoroughly debunked belief that Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and therefore isn't constitutionally eligible to be president just keeps coming back for more.

Within just the past week or so, the secretary of state for Arizona -- a place that I'm convinced is some kind of experimental test bed used by aliens to measure human stupidity -- has threatened to keep Obama off the ballot in November pending an investigation into the authenticity of his birth certificate. Running concurrently with this mind-boggling idiocy is the ongoing investigation into Obama's true upbringing launched by real-life cartoon character Joe Arpaio, whose "threat unit" has now been dispatched to Hawaii to flash their badges as if they hold any fucking authority whatsoever and demand answers in what Arpaio and doddering buffoon Jerome Corsi are sure is the biggest conspiracy in U.S. history. And lest you think that only the ass-backward yokels of Arizona are perpetuating this long-since-decided nonsense, a copy of the platform being proposed by Republicans in Iowa shows that they'll officially demand that any candidate for President of the United States prove his or her natural born citizenship when they meet in mid-June. These aren't far-flung fringe lunatics we're talking about here; these are members of the ostensible GOP establishment -- and they're jumping feet-first into a pool clouded with the warm piss of conspiracist wack-jobs.

The nature of a conspiracy is that it's a self-reinforcing delusion: The less it appears to be real, the harder you look and don't find the answers you're sure are there, the more it proves that there's treachery afoot and that it involves the highest levels of power -- the only ones who could successfully engineer such an exhaustive cover-up. And you need look no further than talk radio clown Alex Jones -- whose latest YouTube video claims that his media contacts have warned him that the upcoming Ridley Scott film Prometheus will contain coded messages about the Illuminati -- to understand that there's profitability in ridiculous fear-mongering, whether it's making money, pandering to a specific audience or simply making yourself an icon among the very, very dumb. The result is always the same, though: A person who truly believes a conspiracy theory will not ever be convinced otherwise. It just won't happen.

Which brings me back to my original point: Why the fuck am I even writing this? I get the idea that it's important to point out to those not in the throes of a rage-and-resentment-fueled hallucination just how morally, ethically and mentally bankrupt the people are who've latched onto this horseshit and who refuse to let go; likewise, it makes sense a certain amount of sense to highlight whenever possible the fact that one political party in this country has aligned itself with this kind of farcical non-thinking. But at some point you just get tired of saying the same thing over and over again.

The first piece I ever wrote about birtherism was published in August of 2008. August of 2008. It's almost four years later -- and we're still talking about this crap. I have a semi-functional cerebral cortex, which means that I'm sick of it by now.

No, really, why the fuck am I still writing about this?

Re-Birtherism

My latest piece for the Daily Banter is now up and it deals with the conspiracy theory that simply will not go away -- no matter how many times it's been put down.

Here's the opening shot:

"An ongoing meme on the podcast that Bob Cesca and I do involves a debate over how much good actually comes from constantly bitching online. It typically goes something like this: Bob plays the admittedly heroic role of the passionate crusader, a guy who fights injustice armed only with a keyboard and a microphone and who points out the insanity of modern politics with the goal of changing things for the better; I make a couple of shitty cracks, throw up my hands at the futility of it all, then go get drunk. All things considered it works out pretty well for us. He’s like a righteous Felix Unger, cleaning things up as best he can, and I’m Oscar Madison, not giving a crap — or at the very least Jack Klugman on the deck of the sailboat in the opening credits of Quincy, examining the chick in the bikini with a champagne glass in my hand..."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn’t my intent."

-- Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, backing off a threat to keep President Obama off the ballot in that state pending the outcome of an investigation into the authenticity of the president's birth certificate

That's okay, Ken. Trust me, there's no way possible for you or anybody else to embarrass Arizona right now. Like Bill Maher says, there's nothing wrong with the state that a crippled nuclear reactor couldn't solve.

Incidentally, not that it needed to but Hawaii did in fact verify to the dumbshit, racist yokels of Arizona that Obama's birth certificate is on the up-and-up.

Thank God that's finally settled, right?

Oh, wait.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"To help the president of the United States, let's go to the microfiche. All you have to do if you're the president is go to the Department of Health, or whatever, and release the microfiche."

-- Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff and living cartoon character Joe Arpaio, who's now demanding that President Obama produce his birth certificate on a microfiche

You'll remember that a couple of months back Yosemite Joe announced that he had formed a "posse," presumably of old senile white guys just like him, to get to the bottom of the whole birth certificate cold case and bring that dadgum varmint Barack Obama to justice.

I swear, I'm pretty sure Arpaio was one of the first people I gunned down in Red Dead Redemption.

Still Born

Hey, kids -- guess what non-story isn't dead and buried yet?

Let's go to an interview with Rick Perry, published in Parade online today:

"But you've seen (Barack Obama's birth certificate).

'I don't know. Have I?'

You don't believe what's been released?

'I don't know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.'

And?

'That came up."

I swear, you want a clever Halloween costume? Dress as Obama's birth certificate. When people ask you what exactly you are -- tell them you're a zombie. It works on a bunch of different levels.

As I said last week, Rick Perry is a) ambitious, and b) dumb as a bag of cat litter, so dredging this up yet again as a bone to the lowest common denominator among the GOP base -- which is itself the lowest common denominator among American society these days -- is thoroughly predictable. But this should again leave no doubt as to who the lone adult in the room is when you put President Obama up against any of the first ones out of the Republican presidential candidate clown car right now.

My favorite part of that excerpt, by the way, is when the interviewer asks, "And?" You can almost hear her biting her tongue to keep from saying, "And? And?! And what, you shit-kicking moron? What wisdom did perennial con man and pathological fabulist Donald Fucking Trump impart on you? How was dinner? Were you so smitten by him that Texas stars danced over your head and you blew him in a car on the ride home? Bet you two really solved the world's problems during that little uptown summit." Well, at least that's what I like to imagine she was thinking.

Posse Magnet

National punchline Joe Arpaio, the impossibly ridiculous sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, has rounded himself up a posse.

That dad-gum varmint Barack Obama doesn't stand a chance.

From Salon:

"Arpaio has a volunteer 'posse program,' which allows regular citizens to pretend to be heroic characters in old westerns, instead of just sad old white people terrified of a changing nation and some intangible decline of privilege... I can't imagine anyone finding anything wrong with the prospect of a white western sheriff forming a volunteer 'posse' to go after a black man. That certainly doesn't have any incredibly ugly historical echoes."

So yeah. Arpaio and his merry band of equally senile old white guys are officially on the case and plan to get to the bottom of that whole Obama birth certificate thing. Once that's finished, look out, Bandit -- your days of bootleggin' for Big and Little Enos Burdette are over.

I honestly wonder sometimes if the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has its own laugh track.

Scorning Joe

Normally a story that features this many senile old guys wouldn't even be worth mentioning, but given that one of them is the notoriously sadistic Joe Arpaio -- who just happens to be the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, where Mexican immigrants almost literally go to die -- it warrants some minor attention. Apparently, Arpaio, who's already accused of misspending almost a hundred-million dollars in public funds, feels like the only way he can defend himself from the charges against him is to spend more taxpayer money "investigating" -- wait for it -- the validity of President Obama's birth certificate.

Why? Because the Tea Party demanded it.

Needless to say, the minute it heard about this important news story, the brain trust at WorldNetDaily immediately dispatched its own hallucinatorily crazy old coot to get to the bottom of it.

"At the request of tea party leaders in Arizona, famed Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has promised to investigate the validity of Barack Obama’s purported long-form birth certificate in a determination of the president’s eligibility for the county’s 2012 election ballot.

Tea party leaders in Surprise, Ariz., met with Arpaio and WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi Thursday morning to express concern that a fake birth certificate would be used to document the president’s eligibility to run in Maricopa County, where Arpaio is the chief law enforcement officer.

Arpaio told the tea party leaders the complaint is within his jurisdiction, and he will be forced to investigate. He said he expects political pressure, but he pointed out that as the chief law enforcement officer of Maricopa County, he’s taken an oath to respond to citizens who approach him about enforcing the law."

So there you have it: Not only does Arpaio indiscriminately torture brown people, just for the hell of it, and very likely misuse taxpayer dollars while he's doing it -- if you try to hold his feet to the fire on it, as the Obama administration has, he'll just spend more taxpayer cash vindictively hunting you down as the most wanted on his personal enemies list.

Guys like this are generally so far along in their dementia that most of their families have already called the crew from Hoarders out for help in dealing with them. Arpaio, meanwhile, has access to an armored tank and a police force. Something is very, very wrong with Arizona.

Quote of the Day, Jr.

"My stated goal is to have B. Obama held responsible for his forged birth certificate and not be in the Oval Office for the next election... If we continue under such cowardly, lying, wimpy leadership, the enemies of America will be successful. By the way, your sharia, koran, muslim, islam loving gig is up. Burying that creep bin Laden with religious honors is traitorous to Americans...Maybe you are on the wrong side, huh?"

-- From the Twitter and blog posts of a conservative Christian Air Force airman named Daryn Moran, who's staging a sick-out from work (you and I know it as going AWOL) until President Obama is arrested for being illegally elected

The irony of this guy's name -- it's just too wonderfully delicious.

(Update: And here's the hilarious last-minute twist.)

Quote of the Day

"The representation of the Defendants damaged the reputation of the Plaintiffs among the buying and consuming public... Defendants' misleading and false statements were outrageous and held Plaintiffs up for extreme ridicule in the community where they reside and where their works are viewed and read."

-- From a $285 million lawsuit filed by hack author Jerome Corsi and WorldNetDaily.com CEO Joseph Farah against Esquire magazine for a satirical piece it published earlier this year mocking birthers

Right. Relentlessly and insanely pursuing an accusation that has no basis whatsoever in reality doesn't damage your reputation or leave you held up for "extreme ridicule," but jokingly pointing out that you're insane for relentlessly pursuing an accusation that has no basis in reality does.

I do love the implication, though, that the birthers actually have any credibility to damage.

"I Don't Feel I Have To Wipe Everybody Out, Just My Enemies"

So let's recap the last few days for President Obama:

He released his long-form birth certificate, smacking down the birthers.

He casually mocked Donald Trump to his face at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, effectively smacking him down.

And now, he gives the order that kills the most wanted man in the world and the most hated man in America, Osama bin Laden, smacking down the rest of his political adversaries -- including the suddenly desperate talking bobble-heads at Fox News.

You know what this was for Obama?



(The above clip is set to a music bed, which is a real shame, but you get the point.)

The Last Word

The Onion's Baratunde Thurston turns his obvious and understandable outrage down to a simmer -- as best he can -- and sums up the events of today in a way I couldn't even dream of rivaling.

Just watch and listen.

Assistant To the Assistant Quote of the Day

"I want to see their college records."

-- David Corn of Mother Jones magazine on the birthers

There, Now Shut the Fuck Up

"I know that there is going to be a segment of people for which no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I am speaking for the vast majority of the American people as well as for the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve. We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other... if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers."

-- President Barack Obama

Assistant Quote of the Day

“You know how Donald always says, ‘People are laughing at us, thinking we don’t have it’? Here’s one of the reasons they’re laughing at us, Donald. When you show such insane disrespect to the president of your country, other countries think we’re idiots.”

-- Whoopi Goldberg on The View this morning

She went on to say, about the racial component of Trump's attacks on Obama:

“I’m getting tired to trying not to find things slightly racist. It is very difficult, on a daily basis, to see this stuff and not say, you know, this is what it is. I have been raised to think, ‘Well, maybe that’s not what they mean. Let me figure it out.’ But, being black, when you say, ‘Y’know, this is racist,’ 9,000 people say, ‘Oh, you’re just playing the race card.’ Well, you know, I’m playing the damn card now.”

Start the clock. Trump calls Whoopi, fat, stupid, a failure, mentally unbalanced, unfunny, a foreign national, all-of-the-above in three... two... one...

I guess the only thing he can't do is insult her hair.

By the way, for those playing along at home, here's Trump's latest plea for attention and proof that he's running out of ways to top himself:

Mediaite: Donald Trump Praises Confederacy, Tells Obama "Get Off the Basketball Court"/4.27.11

(Adding: One more thing: For the birthers as a whole, it absolutely is about racism and xenophobia, but make no mistake, for Trump, it's nothing more than what it always is -- shameless opportunism.)

The Born Insecurity: Update

Good for Salon -- they're shooting the "Trig Truther" conspiracy theory full of giant holes.

Now can you imagine a conservative website, television network or radio show releasing an extended piece thoroughly debunking the Obama birther myth?

Salon: Trig Trutherism: The Definitive Debunker/4.22.11

Quote of the Day

"His mother was American, you fuckwad."

-- Jon Stewart to ongoing national punchline Donald Trump on the subject of Barack Obama's legitimacy as a U.S. citizen

Conflict Disinterest

I wish I had time to elaborate more on this but considering that I've devoted a good amount of copy both here and at the Huffington Post to beating the living crap out of NBC Universal for the shamelessly cross-promotional profit machine it's become, what you're about to see should come as no surprise at all.

This morning, the Today show's Meredith Vieira softballed NBC reality show star and perennial national punchline Donald Trump on both his bullshit flirtation with a run for the White House and his sudden rise to the position of King of the Birthers. She did this while trumpeting -- wait for it -- an NBC News/WSJ poll that supposedly puts Trump among the top GOP contenders for president should he choose to run once his fucking television show wraps this season.

You really have to see this circus-like nonsense to believe it -- not just because it's such an awesome display of personal and professional hubris on the part of both Trump and NBC as well as an almost unfathomable Möbius loop of meta-media self-promotion, but because it really does feel like it marks the nadir for a once-great and respected television network. Really, all that's missing is for Top Chef winner Richard Blais to be cooking for Trump on a GE stove while some guy from Comcast installs cable in the background.