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We learned last week that Rep. Cliff Stearns (R), at a town-hall meeting in his Florida district, questions the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate. Yesterday, he made matters much worse.
At the town-hall meeting, it seemed at least plausible to me that the far-right Republican was simply humoring a strange constituent. Stearns didn't bring up the "birther" garbage, but instead lent it credence in his public remarks, which was certainly irresponsible and offensive, but at least left open the possibility that Stearns doesn't seriously believe this nonsense.
Alas, the congressman meant what he said.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), a top member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on Tuesday said he's not yet convinced that President Obama's birth certificate is legitimate.
"I am, shall we say, looking at all the evidence," Stearns told reporters in the Capitol Tuesday.
I have no idea what "shall we say" means in that sentence, and "all the evidence" is already available.
Stearns added that Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio is engaged in some kind of inquiry, so the congressman said it's not "unreasonable" to wait to make "a final decision" on whether or not the president was born in the United States.
Remember, Cliff Stearns isn't just some random media personality or right-wing blogger, saying foolish things in public for attention. He's a 12-term congressman and the chairman of a House committee panel on oversight and investigations.
This is, in other words, a lawmaker who should have some idea what he's talking about.
As for the larger context, there are two broader points to keep in mind. First, there's simply no sane reason for this issue to be open to question. Second, when we talk about a deep strain of madness that's overcome much of the Republican Party in the Obama era, Stearns' birther talk might as well be Exhibit A.
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Gee, Steve, as someone from Florida I am surprised you are surprised. As California is the home of fruits and nuts we are the home of Wild Eyed Whack Jobs.
Which is yet another reason that we NEED to have all of the GOP representatives analyzed for mental stability, in order for them to hold office!
At the minimum, ALL elected officials in Florida should submit to random drug tests, especially after they say stupid @!$%# like this. Isn't it just so typical that Florida wants to drug test all state workers (and welfare recipients), but exempts public officials. Lately, the public officials are acting the craziest of all of them.
By an act of Legislation, California's judicial branch has admitted to be corrupt.
SECTION FROM SBX211
This bill would provide that no governmental entity, or officer or employee of a governmental entity, shall incur any liability or be subject to prosecution or disciplinary action because of benefits provided to a judge under the official action of a governmental entity prior to the effective date of this bill on the ground that those benefits were not authorized under law.
But when you say "there's simply no sane reason for this issue to be open to question" the logical (and excited) response then follows. "Why not?" Please give people sound bytes! Lawyers, you might want to correct/adapt these points:
1. Being born outside the US is not an automatic disqualifier to run for President. If it were, John McCain would not have qualified to run, either.
2. Lawyers, correct me if I'm wrong. Even if you believe that a Hawaiian birth certificate is not real, it seems like the bigger question should be whether in any reasonable way Obama can be a citizen. Since his mother was a citizen, doesn't that make him a citizen? Why are people belaboring the point beyond that basic fact?
True dat.
I'm an American citizen but my official "birth certificate" is Italian, as my parents were stationed overseas (AFSOUTH) when I came puking into this world. My American certificate merely says that I was born abroad to American citizens. End of discussion.
If the BC is a forgery, how do we know Stanley Ann was his Mom?? Obama needs to release the Dunham medical/hospital records for 1961, and the microfiche records of Hawaii birth's
its about time the democrats started stewing these morons in their own juice. this needs to be pointed out far and wide. if this kind of individual is considered a leader by the g.o.p., what does that say about them as a whole? is this the kind of leadership this country needs?
Exactly ! Where is the Democrat to stand up to him and say say Seriously? you are going to go there . Are you stupid , uniformed or both?
I miss Allan Grayson and Anthony Weiner
"First, there's simply no sane reason for this issue to be open to question."
Disagree! It is not insane for repuke politicians and hate talk radio hosts to continue the discussions whether they believe it or not! They know that it stirs up a portion of the base; they know that it infuriates democrats; and they know that they can always add a few more of the low information voters into believing the crap!
What is insane is that there are persons who actually believe (or pretend to believe) this crap who are actually intelligent and reasonably informed. It strains credulity beyond belief to believe that in the United States in the early 1950's that a number of white doctors and white hospital administrators and white newpaper editors combined to perpetuate a hoax on behalf of a half white & half black baby with a Kenyan father!!!
Correct. Republicans have to give the rubes something.
Enough is enough. The birther nonsense being ginned up by idiotic and desperate Republicans needs to be stopped. The GOP and conservatives ought to be ashamed of themselves for continuing to engage in this racist attack on the president. There is no indication that anything will ever be able to stop it, because Republicans appear incredulous that they are to be expected to understand the facts and accept reality. This fantasy will never go away so long as Republicans want to score points with their party's deluded base. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
The repukes do NOT want the fantasy to go away. And, as they can no longer call a n!gger a n!gger, substitute dog-whistles will continue to be used!
This won't be stopped until January 20, 2017.
Activist - yes, they ought to be ashamed, but unfortunately shame isn't in their playbook.
And then Obama will probably become best buddies with G.H.W. Bush like Billy Bob Clinton did.
Screw the Birth Certificate nonsense! I want to see his DNA. And I want to see it NOW!
In color pictures. On You Tube. Or someplace. . .
The issue here is Obama won't give the Republicans any real meat to drag him through the mud of an impeachment trial, as they are simply slavering to do. So people like Stearns, with no motivation other than hate, continues to cling to the crumbs of their own already-debunked manifestations of his supposed crimes in hopes that new "evidence" will come to light and the Republican's idea of fun can begin. Sadly, Stearn and others like him elevate their standing not by demonstrating their own credentials, but by destroying the credentials of the competition that threatens them. Stearns is just another little man, threatened by the bigger man in the White House.
I don't understand why these people don't understand citizenship law. If they have the internet they can look it up. News outlets like CNN and Fox seem to be unable to to figure out what a natural born citizen is... and now this Representative. He should automatically be fired for not understanding this...
You imply that what Fox Noise is doing is because of stupidity. It is not. It is intentional and with malice. As to Corporately Nice News (CNN), they are trying to steal Fox's viewers by trying to be Fox-Lite! Working as well for them as dumbocrap leaders continuing to push DINO candidates to run against repukes.
Oh, they understand it (at least some of them). They also understand that they can use the issue to stir up low- and no-information voters, scaring them into thinking that Obama is some sort of radical extremist bent on destroying the country. Unfortunately, there are too many people stupid enough to believe this crap.
Someone needs to tell the GOP: It's going on four years now. If you haven't yet found the evidence that he's not an American citizen, there is none to be found. And if there is evidence to be found, you can expect the bloke who has said evidence to charge an arm, a leg, and your
first-born sonyour entire male lineage for it...Cong. Stearns, Sheriff Arpaio, Trump, and all the other “birthers” are nothing but racists. Our politicians and most of the media shy away from calling them out. Heaven forbid they should be accused of playing the "race card". The fact that this lie is allowed to live on and on is SHAMEFUL.
Exactly. If Obama had the exact same heritage but had his mother's skin color, nobody would even be concerned about this. I have a relative who is anti-Obama, and when I ask her what it is she doesn't like about him, she won't give me any reasonable answer. Of course, she lives in the South, so there's my answer.
Stearns is the same guy who launched the faux Planned Parenthood investigation that gave Komen their alleged caused to defun PP at first. We are dealing with a consistent hard core righty here. Liberals, please understand, the republican party has been highjacked by radical elements. Will the real republicans please stand up?
I wonder, if the new voter ID laws were enforced with the same demands for incontrovertible evidence, no challenged voter would ever be able to prove they were a citizen.
I wonder how they would feel if we Democrats mounted a campaign to question the citizenship of every registered Repub. And not accept a birth certificate or passport as sufficient evidence until they were verified by the CIA or FBI labs as genuine.
Or at least the eventual Repub candidate. And in his case NO evidence will be good enough.
Heck, why not question if he is even human? And accuse every lab that tests his DNA or something of being in on the conspiracy. snark
Stearns and his ilk know it's OK to LIE to the voters but it is NOT OK for the Dems to call him a liar. THEN the House would 'chastize' the Dem for telling the TRUTH. It's all about 'playing nice' in Congress so the Republicans in both houses of Congress know they can LIE with immunity. What a system!
The birther phenomenon is intended to damage the validity of the Obama Administration, but it will instead diminish the credibility of those chest-thumping, fist-pounding right wing politicians and pundits who continue to give credence to the deluded fantasy that the POTUS was not born in Hawaii.
We should not be surprised to learn that the medical community has defined birtherism as yet another form of OCD.
Hey, don't give people like me, with OCD, a bad name! LOL!
Obama has yet to prove he was born in Hawaii, or anywhere else.
The Fogbow debunks all the birther craziness. This link is to the debunking of the Arpaio report:
http://www.thefogbow.com/arpaio-report/
There are some questions though. About the book of the investigation by Zullo & Corsi. Is it legal?
http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=7215&p=355414&hilit=corporation#p355414
Timeline of the Arpaio thing:
http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=7215&p=353399&hilit=zullo#p353399
Fogbow member (and attorney) Loren Collins has been following the birther movement since the beginning.
Maybe we should change the laws then and state that you don't have to be a citizen of the U.S. to be President. I'm just saying this President that we've been blessed with has gotten us out of the ditch, let's keep moving forward with him. If the end result is success then why question the means as to how we arrived at our destiny. Unless to be a witness to other nations on how we accomplished this. Remember this Trayvon could have been the man that discovered the vaccine for aids.
Contaminated.
I recently had a conversation about the chemotherapy drugs that are used to fight cancer. It turns out that this cocktail of drugs needs to be mixed just prior to infusion int the cancer patient. These drugs are designed to be poison to cancer and slightly less so to the person enduring the treatment.
Now a days they have a special lab at the hospital to avoid exposure to the people preparing the mixture. Originally the oncology nurses did the work but repeated exposures to the fumes was hazardous.
Now consider the poisonous propaganda that is delivered to the faithful by the GOP politicians. The repeated exposure to these talking points is designed to overcome reason. Who is exposed to this toxic brew more than the politicians themselves?
Those politicians live in the echo chamber filled with their own poison every day.
(My apologies to any nurse who reads this and feels slighted by the comparisons, you are truly angels of mercy and I am deeply grateful for the care you provided my loved one.)
"Consider a Congressman. Then consider an idiot. Ah, but I repeat myself."
-- Mark Twain, 1873
Some things, like the idiocy of southern congressmen, can always be depended on.
The first thing we should do is demand that anyone questioning the President's Birth Certificate, produce his/her own Birth Certificate so that it can be compared to the President's Birth Certificate.
All original birth certificates are on file in state offices of vital statistics. No one has an original BC.
When I applied for my Social Security, I had to get a "true and correct reproduction of the original record as recorded in" the Vital Statistics Unit in Austin, Texas. The photostats that I had been able to use to get a passport in the 1970s and to get employment at a defense contractor in the 1980s was no longer sufficient because modern photocopying technology has made it too easy to forge a BC so that crooks can steal one's identity. This true and correct reproduction is on a fancy form with colored ink and raised print on the border so that it cannot be reproduced on a copy machine.
Senator Stearns needs to produce such a document to prove that he is a citizen and therefore eligible to represent the State of Florida before he can question what the President produced last year to put this controversy to bed.
Stearns is Completely Nuts. I will be voting Democratic in the district http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/03/20/introducing-j-r-gaillot-the-man-who-must-beat-rep-cliff-stearns-r-fl/
I was at the town hall where he lost it over the birth certificate, and he attacked women that day. His staff and the law had people turn off all cameras including cell phones. Donate here https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/jrfl3
I have family who were saved by planned parenthood and their cancer were caught early. We have real problems in the district
This is not a major issue to defeat obama and no-one will talk about this after elec. Repablican should raise other critical issue rather birther.
http://www.replacementbirthcertificate.org/
As for the larger context, there are two broader points to keep in mind. First, there's simply no sane reason for people to believe that birth file uploaded to the Whitehouse website. Second, if Obama claimed to be born on Mars to a mother from Pluto, Progressive's would believe and not need any sort of proof.
Please supply your BC. Also eyewitness to your birth (other than your mother).