Rick Perry is starting to make George W. Bush look like Stephen Hawking by comparison

Just when you thought Rick Perry couldn't seem any dumber, he comes up with this gem in PARADE, the throwaway rag chock full of ads for cheap slippers and "Amish-made" electric heater enclosers that comes with your Sunday newspaper:

Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
I have no reason to think otherwise.

That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

But you’ve seen his.
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.

And he said?
He doesn’t think it’s real.

And you said?I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

Now I know that PARADE is hardly the reading of people with significant amounts of gray matter in their crania, and I know that it's taken seriously by exactly the kind of people who buy reverse mortgages from Fred Thompson on late-night TV, but for Lynn Sherr, who used to be an actual journalist, to bring up the birther issue is even more beyond the pale than for Rick Perry to leave the door open. I mean seriously, is he afraid he might lose the Orly Taitz vote?

Oh wait....never mind.

Oh For God's Sake Let It Go Already

I don't know if it was Rick Perry telling a reporter that he has to ask Barack Obama if he "loves America" or what, but as we head into the 2012 election season, Birtherism is back.



David at C&L:

A conservative website claimed Thursday that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has promised to investigate President Barack Obama's eligibility to run for re-election.



According to WorldNetDaily, about 325 so-called birthers gathered Wednesday night to sign a petition alleging that Obama planned to use a fake birth certificate to run for office in 2012.



Jerome Corsi, author of, Where's the Birth Certificate? reportedly presented Arpaio with the petition during a one-hour meeting Thursday.



"Arpaio told the tea party leaders the complaint is within his jurisdiction, and he will be forced to investigate," WND wrote. "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."

Head, desk, etc.

Obama channels his inner Colbert

This is some funny shit. He should do this more often.

Except there are idiots out there who will take this as an admission that he was born in Kenya.

Anything interesting happen today?

If there is one good thing that can be said about today, it's that thanks to Donald Trump, we're one step closer to what the REAL teabagger objection is to Barack Obama, and it has nothing to do with birth certificates or college transcripts or, as Orly Taitz tried to present tonight before Lawrence O'Donnell went all Howard Beale on her, Social Security numbers:

(You SURE it was such a great idea to shitcan Olbermann, guys?)

Either Trump is the most loathsome kind of narcissistic self-promoter on the planet (worse than we already know), or he's a mad genius. Because once you stop talking about legal birth certificates and open the door that allows known racist Pat Buchanan to start frothing at the mouth again about affirmative action, you're one step closer to talking about what the REAL problem is that the Tea Party has with Barack Obama, and it has nothing to do with policy or ideology.

Someone is setting a trap for Republicans and for the Tea Party. The question is whether Barack Obama is actually playing eleven-dimensional chess for real this time, waiting until the birth certificate nonsense reached Peak Wingnut (® John Cole and became part of accepted Republican doctrine to bring out the long-form certificate; or if Donald Trump is doing the kind of street theatre worthy of the late Andy Kaufman, getting Obama to release the birth certificate, moving on to affirmative action, and getting the racist Teabaggers to shout "Fuck Yeah!"

And I have absolutely no idea what it is. Occam's razor indicates that this was Obama simply once again trying to be the only adult in the room and Donald Trump is the same kind of famewhore that he's always been. But do we know for sure?

Of greater interest to me is what I heard on Randi Rhodes' show today about what happened to Nicole Sandler yesterday when she attempted to ask a question of her Congressman, Allen West, the psychopath that Teabaggers in Fort Lauderdale elected to Congress last November:

Got that? For the "crime" of daring to question the lies spewing from the mouth of a sadistic war criminal who claims that liberal women are neutering men and who IS SUPPOSED TO BE A PUBLIC SERVANT, an American citizen, Nicole Sandler, was jailed for 17 hours, held in solitary for three, and maced.

From the above link, Sandler spoke with Brad Friedman about what happened:

I just got out of jail. Just had a Five Guys burger and fries, my first meal in the last 24 hours or so. First thing I did, I had CBS meet me as I was leaving. They'll be running a story later today. We're heading home now.

You'll love this. You know that old 'presumed innocent until proven guilty' thing? They don't do that down here in Broward County.

Now I understand what Bradley Manning was going through because I was put in solitary confinement. After bitching about it, I was maced. After being stuck in jail after about 3 hours, it was lunchtime. I said "can I please come out now, I'm really really sorry".

I had been in the women's area, there must have been 25 or 30 women in there. All but 4 of us were eventually called this morning to go before a magistrate.

Even though $25 bond was posted last night at 2am, and it's 8am I'm still not released. They said the bond takes about 6 to 8 hours process.

So then they're coming in to clean the cells. So they stuck all 4 of us in this one cell where they store the mattresses. A 12 by 7 feet. So they put the 4 of us in this cell with the 50 mattresses being stored, no air circulation, for a few minutes while they cleaned. And then they forgot about us.

After a while I see the women sent to the magistrate returned. We're still stuck in there for at least an hour. I said to the guard, "You forgot about us." He said "Oh, well, that happens."

"That happens?!," I said, "I think you owe us an apology. "You want an apology?," he said. "You see that cell up there? #1? You can have all the air you want. There's your apology." And he put me in there for like three hours. Solitary.

After being in there for hours with nothing to do, your mind plays tricks on you. In fact, while in there, they called my name, and I'm screaming "I'm in here! I'm in here!" They didn't let me out. And another hour went by.

Lunch was then served, and I asked "can I come out?" The guard said "NO!" I said, "Well, do I get to eat?" He said yeah, he handed me some food and then the door opened again, and I sat on the top step outside the cell, and he said "GET BACK IN THEL CELL!" ... And before I knew it, they were spraying me with mace. Not just once, but sprayed and sprayed to where I'm like screaming.

I can't believe this happened. I said, "I'm in here because I tried to ask my Congressman a question at a town hall."

Here's the thing, Brad, it wasn't a town hall meeting. He gave a presentation, and then he gave a speech. If I had known that, I wouldn't have gone. But he billed it as a town hall meeting, where there are usually questions back and forth. It's amazing.

And these fuckers DARE to say that it's Barack Obama who's un-American?

Oh, and by the way? While the media were giving Trump more camera time, and O'Donnell made the foolish mistake of thinking a crazy woman was going to admit that she's crazy, the Supreme Court gave corporations another blowjob today.

But on the other hand, there's this.

Thanks to Derek at Cheek and Bluster for the last two links.

Oh Shut The Fuck Up

Would someone please find this woman something constructive to do:

Joining a distinguished group of state attorneys general in challenging the constitutionality of the health reform legislation, now comes Orly Taitz, who in a new federal court filing argues that the bill violates her "right" to practice dentistry.

Along with her lawyerly pursuits, Taitz operates a dental office in Rancho Santa Margarita, California.

The challenge comes in the form of an amended complaint in a Birther case in district court in Washington, Taitz v. Obama, that challenges the president's citizenship.

Along with raising the specter of death panels and charging that Obama, as an illegitimate president, does not have the right to sign the health bill into law, Taitz writes in the new section of the complaint, titled, "VIOLATION OF COMMERCE CLAUSE AND OF PLAINTIFF'S RIGHTS TO GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT AS A DOCTOR OF DENTAL SURGERY UPON DEFENDANT'S IMMINENT SIGHNING OF THE HEALTH BILL":

"Health bill, as being prepared and reconciled, will create an enormous machine of governmental burocracy which will intrude into Plaintiff's practice, will affect her doctor-patient relations, will undermine her Hippocratic oath, will force her to ration medical care and de-facto deny medical care to elderly, whom some committees of burocrats will deem to be too old to receive such care, meaning too old to live." (Typos in original.)

She adds:

"Such bill will subject her to threat of multiple Medical-Dental malpractice legal actions as standard of care will clearly go down.

Such bill will constitute unreasonable infringement upon her gainful employment in Dental Surgery as overburdening of interstate commerce in clear violation of commerce clause."

Read the relevant section in full here.

When Andrew Breitbart thinks you're a nutball, you must REALLY be a serious one.

Grab the popcorn, folks:

During WorldNetDaily Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah’s Friday night dinner speech, which spent around 10 of its forty minutes on questions about Barack Obama’s citizenship, Andrew Brietbart was among the conservatives in back of the room grumbling audibly about what he was hearing.

After he introduced the evening’s closing entertainment — a film titled “Generation Zero” — Breitbart walked outside to the convention hall. There, I heard Breitbart criticizing Farah, and briefly talked to him about it before I noticed that WorldNetDaily’s Chelsea Schilling was already talking to him, holding up a voice recorder. I backed up to allow her to continue her interview, which consisted of questions on why Breitbart didn’t think Obama’s citizenship was a legitimate issue.

“It’s self-indulgent, it’s narcissistic, it’s a losing issue,” Breitbart told Schilling. “It’s a losing situation. If you don’t have the frigging evidence — raising the question? You can do that to Republicans all day long. You have to disprove that you’re a racist! Forcing them to disprove something is a nightmare.”

“Wouldn’t you say,” asked Schilling, “in this case, that Farah is asking Obama to prove something rather than his disprove it?”

Breitbart rejected the premise. “When has a president ever been asked to prove his citizenship?”

[snip]

“Andrew is my friend,” said Farah. “He has the right to disagree, and he has the right to say anything to a socialist newspaper that he wants. And if he wants to criticize his friend to you, and he’s dumb enough to do that…”

Breitbart raised his eyebrows. “I’m dumb to do what?”

“Criticize your friend to this socialist newspaper.”

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart, pointing to Schilling. “I was talking to you. And I was saying that I disagreed on the birther stuff.”

“OK, well, did you know that Dave Weigel from The Washington Independent was”–

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart. “She was asking me if I thought it was wise to bring it up, and I said, no. We have a lot of strong arguments to be making, and that is a primary argument. That is an argument for the primaries that did not take hold. The arguments that these people right here are making are substantive arguments. The elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were all won not on birther, but on substance. And to apply to this group of people the concept that they’re all obsessed with the birth certificate, when it’s not a winning issue–”

“It is a winning issue!”

“It’s not a winning issue.”

“It is! It becomes even more of a winning issue when the press abrogates its responsibility–”

“You don’t recognize it as a fundamentally controversial issue that forces a unified group of people to have to break into different parts? It is a schism of the highest order.”

“Nothing exposes the president’s–”

“Then prove it!”

“The press isn’t asking the question–”

“Prove it!”

“Prove what?”

“Prove your case.”

More "I know you are, but what am I?" here.

In case Scott Brown's moderate rhetoric over the past few days gave you any hope....

Fugeddaboudit:

Yesterday, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House announced that he had been endorsed by Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) just a day after Brown was named the winner of the Massachusetts special election.

But this morning, Dan Kennedy pointed out that the candidate, Massachusetts attorney Bill Hudak, appears to be a birther who believes President Obama was born in Kenya and who had once put signs in his yard comparing Obama to Osama bin Laden.

Now, Brown's spokesman says he never OK'd the press release announcing the endorsement -- but doesn't specifically deny the endorsement itself.

"Neither Scott Brown or anyone connected with his campaign approved that press release before its release or the quote that was attributed to Scott," the spokesman, Felix Browne, told The Hill.

Hudak, who campaigned for Brown, shot back.

"Scott Brown gave his endorsement to Bill Hudak and it's unfortunate that the people Scott Brown surrounds himself with are backing down from a commitment that their boss already made," said Tyler Harber, a spokesman for Hudak.

In the week before the 2008 presidential election, Hudak made his hometown paper after he put a six-by-four-foot sign in his front yard showing Barack Obama as Osama bin Laden and surrounded by words like "socialist," "Marxist" and "lazy."

He took the sign and others down in order, he said, to save the Boxford, Mass., police department from the numerous complaints they received about the signs.

After taking down the signs -- he said he wanted to "wake people up" -- he told the Tri-Town Transcript that he believes Obama was born in Kenya and that he has ties to Islam through an extremist cousin.

And Barack Obama still thinks that if he JUST MAKES NICE ENOUGH, and gives Republicans EVERYTHING THEY WANT, he can still turn thse people around. Doesn't he realize that the only thing that will satisfy today's Republicans is his head on a pike?

Are the "birthers" simply trying to turn their apocalyptic vision for America into reality?

Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action makes a compelling case that the whole "birther" nonsense is an attempt to fulfill the Christofascist Zombie Brigade's need for someone they can brand as the Antichrist in order to create their sick apocalyptic vision:

Although there are secularized versions of New World Order conspiracy narrative, the conspiracy theory genre is at base a religious one. These YouTube NWO videos tend to associate Barack Obama with the forces of absolute evil, suggesting Obama is either an antichrist or "false prophet" figure or, probably more commonly, that Obama is a key player in a conspiracy to create a world totalitarian system which, in religious versions of the NWO conspiracy narrative, will be led by a murderous antichrist figure soon to dominate the world political stage.

NWO conspiracy theories typically are interwoven with Christian apocalyptic End-Time narratives predicting the immanent arrival, on the world stage, of a satanic world ruler who will come to power promising peace but instead implement a savage and bloody reign of tyranny.

Then, either a) Christians will be "raptured" up to heaven after which Jesus Christ will return to Earth to overthrow the evil regime or, in an increasingly common version of the narrative, b) Christians themselves will take up arms, overthrow the evil world regime, cleanse the world of all evil including ideological foes, and implement a thousand-year utopian Biblical theocracy. The latter doctrine is promoted by Sarah Palin's key Alaska church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

More here...

This is why we dismiss the former governor of Alaska at our peril. She does a good job of hiding her militia/Jeebofascist leanings, but when you put together her looneytunes church, her love of guns, and her affiliation with the Alaska Independent Party, and throw in a soupçon of Republican Male Lust, and mix it with Americans' economic fatigue, anything can happen.

And there are at least seventeen of these adherents to the "birther" narrative in Congress even as we speak.