America: Still crazy after all these years

Having several paranoid family members and friends, I can vouch that the "Paranoid Style in American Politics" is very much alive and mentally unwell.

Still 'paranoid' after all these years

By Todd Leopold

November 4, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/04/politics/paranoid-style-politics-hofstadter/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

You don't want to be this woman

To all my dear, terribly misguided Republican friends, I say this:  I hope you can do better than this woman:

This is what happens when you live in a talk radio/Fox echo chamber: you repeat words without knowing what they mean; you forget the "facts" but remember the conclusions, because we all agree on them anyway.

Humoring these people, pretending they're salt of the earth, or "average" or whatever, and engaging them in a "conversation" that the reporter knows is retarded, is just another form of condescension.  It's patronizing.  And it's bad journalism. Cheers to Chris Matthews for not doing it. He asked her straight-up questions, she answered... and then, feeling defensive, she condescendingly accused Matthews of "not doing your homework, buddy."  Instead of engaging her stupidity, he just walked away.  He'd shown what he wanted to show, and she did all the work.

It's better for the media to just tease out the average conservative's stupidity, and then broadcast it back to the masses, just like he did.

P.S. -- I may have missed some developments in the modern vernacular, but I don't think "study it out" is English.  

Ames: George Romney reveals Mitt's real beliefs on equal rights

Mitt Romney's dad's real political beliefs are important because, as the Birthers and Dinesh D'Souza have taught us, children always grow up to hold their parents' political beliefs.  So here's what George Romney believed:

In 1979 and 1980, at the height of the battle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, Mitt Romney’s father, former Gov. George Romney—the supposedly “liberal” “cool” Republican who was destroyed by Nixon’s dirty tricks—publicly denounced supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment as  “moral perverts,” labeling the movement a homosexual conspiracy to destroy the American family.

[...] In 1979-80, just before Ronald Reagan was elected president, ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was all but assured. But thanks to an intense and well-organized campaign waged by the Mormon Church leadership, the ERA was stopped in its tracks in Utah and a handful of other states where Mormon influence could make the difference.

Here's how the AP quoted George Romney in 1979:  “At an international women’s year meeting, lesbians and the homosexuals and moral perverts (cited) this amendment as a means of eliminating any basis of moral criticism.”

That's what Mitt's dad believed, ergo that's what Mitt really believes, no matter what he says to the contrary.  So now we know that Mitt Romney opposes equal rights for women.  And of course we already know that  Mitt hates gays.

Those are just facts, folks.  Just like we know for a fact that President Obama is an "anti-colonialist" who wants to transfer America's wealth to Africa.

We gotta know who we're voting for, folks... and that means knowing the parents, secret real fathers, and half-brothers of the people we're voting for!

Romney's "Liberal" Daddy Called Supporters of Equal Rights Amendment "Moral Perverts"... Still Think Mormonism Isn't An Issue?

By Mark Ames

October 6, 2012 | The Exiled

URL: http://exiledonline.com/romneys-liberal-daddy-called-supporters-of-equal-rights-amendment-moral-perverts-still-think-mormonism-isnt-an-issue/

Obama owes liberals an explanation -- and an apology

A little grayer, but any wiser after 4 years of giving in to the GOP?

Conservatives dislike Obama for their own silly reasons, most of which relate to his non-traditional background: his mixed race; his peripatetic, multi-cultural, international upbringing (encapsulated in Birtherism); his "inexplicable" entrance into and completion of Columbia University and Harvard Law School; his "angry black" former pastor; his community organizing in Chicago; his proximity to ACORN and Saul Alinsky, etc.  

Indeed, it's quite telling how, even after four years in office, conservatives still primarily fixate on, and object to, Obama's origins, i.e. everything leading up to his term as Senator from Illinois.  It just goes to show that they were never going to accept him, never going to admit him into their country club, no matter what he did.  

Prime example: when Obama rolled out a health care bill after months of consultation with private insurance companies and Big Pharma -- a bill that was originally conceived by the conservative Heritage Foundation, passed into law by Republican Mitt Romney in 2006, and endorsed by Republican Newt Gingrich in 2006 and again 2008 -- because it came from Obama, Republicans called it Socialism and Big Government tyranny.  (And today, the aforementioned three feel not the slightest bit of shame in criticizing it as such!)

Unlike conservatives, we liberal-progressives have real gripes with Obama.  Unlike them, we are entitled to feel baffled and betrayed at Obama's first four years, because we voted for him with hope for change, and then watched as he let himself get beat up, again and again, by the Republican Congress, while he gave up key concessions for nothing, including: 

• the public option in Obamacare; 
• a stimulus bill in excess of $1.2 billion that was not one-third tax cuts; 
• real mortgage modifications with principal reduction for millions of underwater homeowners; 
• letting Bush's irresponsible tax cuts expire; and
• real banking-financial reform to end Too Big To Fail and speculation with taxpayers' guarantee.

This is not to mention Obama's erstwhile support for fast U.S. troops withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps the most mobilizing issue among Obama's grassroots supporters.  (By the way, during Clint Eastwood's curious, rambling speech at the GOP convention when he called for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, the conservative crowd erupted in cheers.  Gee, what a difference four years and a Democratic commander-in-chief makes!)

This past weekend, Sam Stein and Ryan Grim posted a very good synopsis of the disappointments of Obama's first term from a progressive's point of view.  It shows how Obama foolishly tried to play an "inside game" with Congressional Republicans who stated publicly that their #1 priority was to defeat him in 2012, and who sabotaged a deal with Obama on the deficit because it would have helped him get re-elected.

His pointless concessions were even more tragic and stupid, considering Obama's record 13 million e-mail addresses and 3 million individual online donors in 2008. Obama had this huge mass of active grassroots support with which he could have bludgeoned obstinate Republicans into submission, but instead Obama forswore his base, laying down his greatest weapon only to be barraged by Republican fusillades.

Maybe he's just too nice a guy.  Certainly he's too weak.  Maybe he had bad advice. (OK, he definitely had bad advice: Summers, Geithner, Emanuel, Axelrod, et al.)  Or maybe he was vain and bought into the hype that he was a "transformational" leader whom Republicans would have no choice but to bargain with, thanks to his irresistible post-partisan reasonableness.  Whatever the reason, it was such a wasted opportunity.

Obama Owes Us An Explanation

By Peter S. Goodman

September 3, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-s-goodman/barack-obama-economy_b_1847149.html

Obama: Made in the USA

As American as the 4th of July, mom's apple pie and Chevrolet!  (And Chevrolet still exists thanks to him.)  Order your buttons now!

(I hope this gives Birthers conniption fits.)

Mooners and Birthers and Truthers, oh my!

See, the flag is blowing. See? Because on holographic alien moons, there is no wind! BUSTED!

I didn't know that some Moon Landing Truthers (or just Mooners, as I like to call them) don't simply believe Armstrong's moon landing was faked, they believe the entire Moon was faked.  It's an alien hologram, you see?  

Some even believe that Armstrong didn't die of natural causes, he was silenced by Them, because after all these decades he was finally ready to blow the lid off the whole thing.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you Birthers, 9/11 Truthers, and One World Government nuts know that you're in very good company.  I think the Internet was invented especially for you: your little islands of nuttiness are now an archipelago.  If Obama is re-elected, they'll form a small continent.

(RIP, Neil Armstrong.  We know you meant to come clean in the end about aliens conspiring with the Knights Templar to direct world history.)

'Neil Armstrong – LYING PIECE OF MASON SH*T: Good RIDDANCE': Moon Truthers Mourn a Legend

By Max Read

August 27, 2012 | Gawker

URL:  http://gawker.com/5938218/neil-armstrong-+-lying-piece-of-mason-sht-good-riddance-moon-truthers-mourn-a-legend

Poll: 'Iraq had WMD' correlates with Birtherism

"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" - Don Rumsfeld

Here is yet more evidence that Republicans are willfully divorced from reality.  Not surprisingly, there is a very strong overlap among Republicans who believe Saddam had WMD, and those who believe Obama was not born in the U.S.  

In both cases, no amount of proof can shake their pre-existing belief.

Such people are not competent to elect our leaders or run our country.  

Yes, Iraq Definitely Had WMD, Vast Majority Of Polled Republicans Insist

By Dan Froomkin

June 21, 2012 | Huffington Post

How misinformed are Republicans about world affairs? If presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia is "without question our number one geopolitical foe" is any indication, then the answer would appear to be very.

A new poll supports that theory.

The poll, constructed by Dartmouth government professor Benjamin Valentino and conducted by YouGov from April 26 to May 2, found that fully 63 percent of Republican respondents still believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded in 2003. By contrast, 27 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats shared that view.

Jim Lobe, chief of the Inter Press Service's Washington bureau, reported the finding in his blog on Wednesday.

The Bush administration's insistence that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction and might give them to terrorists was a key selling point in its campaign to take the country to war. It turned out to be untrue.

Debate continues over whether former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and other top officials knew there were no WMD, but intentionally deceived the American people and Congress because they were intent on attacking Iraq for less palatable reasons -- or whether they managed to convince themselves that it was true using cherry-picked intelligence.

There is no reality-based argument that Iraq actually had WMD, after extensive searches found none, but this is hardly the first time many Americans have been certain of something that simply wasn't true.

A Washington Post poll in September 2003 found that nearly 70 percent of all Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- even though he was not.

Bush, Cheney and others consistently linked al Qaeda to Hussein in speeches they gave in the run-up to war, and the media rarely pushed back. But neither Bush nor Cheney continued to claim that there were actual WMDs in Iraq once the searches came up empty -- although they both continued to insist that Saddam had the "capability" to produce them.

Rather than a failure of the media, therefore, this latest poll result seems to indicate a refusal -- unique to the modern Republican Party -- to acknowledge facts.

According to this poll, an even larger proportion of Republican respondents who said Iraq had WMD -- 64 percent -- said they have either always believed (or have come to believe) that Barack Obama was born in another country, which he was not.

Overall, the poll found Republicans to be considerably more militaristic in their worldview than Democrats and independents.

In a finding that would indicate plenty of GOP support for yet another war in the Middle East, nearly two-thirds of Republicans said it's very likely that if Iran produces a nuclear weapon, it would use it against Israel.

Polls show depths of GOP's idiocy

This is what we normal, rational people are up against:

• More than half of Republicans aren't convinced Obama is rightfully a U.S. citizen;

• And majorities of Republicans in Alabama and Mississippi (where GOP primaries are coming soon) don't take Obama's word for it that he is a Christian.
  

In other words, most Republicans today wear their chauvinism and stupidity like badges of honor. And the smart ones are afraid to speak out for fear of being ostracized from the Clan of the Cave Bear.

What good are facts and sound arguments with such imbeciles? We'd have more luck convincing them by beating our chests and banging sticks on the ground.

Finally, proof Obama's a ChiCom!

Here's the smoking gun in my very hands, smuggled out of Red China! Obama's a Manchurian Candidate! Send this to Orly Taitz and Donald Trump asap!

Birthers, rejoice!...or birthers lament? Anyhoo, stay crazy!

A la Trump, you can now have your "team" "examine" Obama's long-form birth certificate for genuineness.

Congratulations, birthers, you got your crazy wish. But there's no rest for the kooky: tamp down your tinfoil hats, dingbats -- it's on to the next conspiracy theory!

White House Releases Obama's Long-Form Birth Certificate

April 27, 2011 | FoxNews.com

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/27/white-house-releases-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate/#ixzz1KlPJkUJV

Poll: Majority of GOP voters is certifiable

This survey reveals that a majority of Republicans are birthers who don't believe Obama was born in Hawaii. And most of them doubt his professed Christian faith; they think he's using it to conceal his true diabolical Muslim faith. Even the GOP Speaker of the House insisted "it's not my job" to inform his deranged Republicans that Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen, even though Speaker Boehner believes it himself.

These people see multiple (sometimes contradictory), hidden, sinister motives behind everything Obama says or does. His very birth is a source of controversy for them. (Messiah, anyone?) He cannot please these rabid reality deniers except by his total political surrender, and even then they would call him a "pushover" or "too weak!" I know it, you know it.

All this goes to show that Obama should give up on bipartisanship (read: appeasement) and go hard Left on the issues that enjoy popular support from Democrats and Independents, such as: ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; preserving Social Security; raising taxes on the top 3-5% of income earners; raising the payroll tax ceiling; investing in roads, bridges, and renewable energy infrastructure; regulating risky financial derivatives; re-instituting Glass-Steagal to separate deposit banks from casinos; and ending tax breaks for companies that export U.S. jobs, just to name a few.

Half Of GOP Primary Voters Wrongly Say Obama Non-U.S. Born: Poll

By Frank James
February 15, 2011 | NPR

URL: http://www.npr.org/133782676

Birthers Comprise Majority Of Likely 2012 GOP Primary Voters (POLL)

By Elyse Siegel
February 15, 2011 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/15/birther-poll_n_823666.html

FOX focus group agrees: Obama is Muslim

This just goes to show that the Red State heartland of America is irrationally opposed to Obama and wants to believe the worst about him, no matter what he does.

Obama should take note. These people will always hate, fear, and distrust him. He can never win them over. He should veer hard Left to re-energize his base, and enough of the independents will follow along.

UPDATE (02.14.2011): One reader said I was insulting Islam to say that believing Obama was a Muslim was "to believe the worst about him." Poor phrasing on my part. Just to clarify, I meant that believing somebody would conceal his true religion with another one for political purposes is to believe the worst about somebody.

Fox News focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim
By Tyler Kingkade
February 8, 2011 | Washington Independent

URL: http://washingtonindependent.com/105432/fox-news-focus-group-in-iowa-president-obama-is-muslim

Hitchens: Beck's paranoia worse than Birchers'

Tea'd Off

Forfeiting a both-houses Republican victory, rational conservatives ignored or excused the most hateful kind of populist claptrap (e.g., the fetid weirdness of Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project). The poison they've helped disseminate will still be in the American bloodstream when the country needs it least.

By Christopher Hitchens
January 2011 issue | Vanity Fair

It is often in the excuses and in the apologies that one finds the real offense. Looking back on the domestic political "surge" which the populist right has been celebrating since last month, I found myself most dispirited by the manner in which the more sophisticated conservatives attempted to conjure the nasty bits away.

Here, for example, was Ross Douthat, the voice of moderate conservatism on the New York Times op-ed page. He was replying to a number of critics who had pointed out that Glenn Beck, in his rallies and broadcasts, had been channeling the forgotten voice of the John Birch Society, megaphone of Strangelovian paranoia from the 1950s and 1960s. His soothing message:

"These parallels are real. But there's a crucial difference. The Birchers only had a crackpot message; they never had a mainstream one. The Tea Party marries fringe concerns (repeal the 17th Amendment!) to a timely, responsible-seeming message about spending and deficits."

The more one looks at this, the more wrong it becomes (as does that giveaway phrase "responsible-seeming"). The John Birch Society possessed such a mainstream message—the existence of a Communist world system with tentacles in the United States—that it had a potent influence over whole sections of the Republican Party. It managed this even after its leader and founder, Robert Welch, had denounced President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a "dedicated, conscious agent" of that same Communist apparatus. Right up to the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and despite the efforts of such conservatives as William F. Buckley Jr. to dislodge them, the Birchers were a feature of conservative politics well beyond the crackpot fringe.

Now, here is the difference. Glenn Beck has not even been encouraging his audiences to reread Robert Welch. No, he has been inciting them to read the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a man more insane and nasty than Welch and a figure so extreme that ultimately even the Birch-supporting leadership of the Mormon Church had to distance itself from him. It's from Skousen's demented screed The Five Thousand Year Leap (to a new edition of which Beck wrote a foreword, and which he shoved to the position of No. 1 on Amazon) that he takes all his fantasies about a divinely written Constitution, a conspiratorial secret government, and a future apocalypse. To give you a further idea of the man: Skousen's posthumously published book on the "end times" and the coming day of rapture was charmingly called The Cleansing of America. A book of his with a less repulsive title, The Making of America, turned out to justify slavery and to refer to slave children as "pickaninnies." And, writing at a time when the Mormon Church was under attack for denying full membership to black people, Skousen defended it from what he described as this "Communist" assault.

So, Beck's "9/12 Project" is canalizing old racist and clerical toxic-waste material that a healthy society had mostly flushed out of its system more than a generation ago, and injecting it right back in again. Things that had hidden under stones are being dug up and re-released. And why? So as to teach us anew about the dangers of "spending and deficits"? It's enough to make a cat laugh. No, a whole new audience has been created, including many impressionable young people, for ideas that are viciously anti-democratic and ahistorical. The full effect of this will be felt farther down the road, where we will need it even less.

I remember encountering this same mentality a few years ago, when it was more laughable than dangerous. I didn't like Bill Clinton: thought he had sold access to the Lincoln Bedroom and lied under oath about sexual harassment and possibly even bombed Sudan on a "wag the dog" basis. But when I sometimes agreed to go on the radio stations of the paranoid right, it was only to be told that this was all irrelevant. Didn't I understand that Clinton and his wife had murdered Vince Foster and were, even as I spoke, preparing to take advantage of the Y2K millennium crisis—remember that?—in order to seize power for life and become the Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu of our day? These people were not interested in the president's actual transgressions. They were looking to populate their fantasy world with new and more lurid characters.

There is an old Republican saying that "a government strong enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have." This statement contains an essential truth that liberals have no right to overlook. But it is negated, not amplified, if it comes festooned with racism and superstition. In the recent past, government-sponsored policies of social engineering have led to surprising success in reducing the welfare rolls and the crime figures.

This came partly from the adoption by many Democrats of policies that had once been called Republican. But not a word about that from Beck and his followers, because it isn't exciting and doesn't present any opportunity for rabble-rousing. Far sexier to say that health care—actually another product of bipartisanship—is a step toward Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ten percent unemployment, on the other hand, is rather a disgrace to a midterm Democratic administration. But does anybody believe that unemployment would have gone down if the hated bailout had not occurred and GM had been permitted to go bankrupt? Why not avoid the question altogether and mutter about a secret plan to proclaim a socialist (or Nazi, or Jew-controlled: take your pick) dictatorship?

Again, there is a real debate about the pace and rhythm of global warming, and about the degree to which it has been caused (or can be slowed) by human activity. But at the first Tea Party rally I attended, at the Washington Monument earlier this year, the crowd—bristling with placards about the Second Amendment's being the correction—was treated to an arm-waving speech by a caricature English peer named Lord Monckton, who led them in the edifying call-and-response: "All together. Global warming is?" "Bullshit." "Obama cannot hear you. Global warming is?" "bullshit." "That's bettah." I don't remember ever seeing grown-ups behave less seriously, at least in an election season.

Most epochs are defined by one or another anxiety. More important, though, is the form which that anxiety takes. Millions of Americans are currently worried about two things that are, in their minds, emotionally related. The first of these is the prospect that white people will no longer be the majority in this country, and the second is that the United States will be just one among many world powers. This is by no means purely a "racial" matter. (In my experience, black Americans are quite concerned that "Hispanic" immigration will relegate them, too.) Having an honest and open discussion about all this is not just a high priority. It's more like a matter of social and political survival. But the Beck-Skousen faction want to make such a debate impossible. They need and want to sublimate the anxiety into hysteria and paranoia. The president is a Kenyan. The president is a secret Muslim. The president (why not?—after all, every little bit helps) is the unacknowledged love child of Malcolm X. And this is their response to the election of an extremely moderate half-African American candidate, who speaks better English than most and who has a model family. Revolted by this development, huge numbers of white people choose to demonstrate their independence and superiority by putting themselves eagerly at the disposal of a tear-stained semi-literate shock jock, and by repeating his list of lies and defamations. But, of course, there's nothing racial in their attitude …

As I started by saying, the people who really curl my lip are the ones who willingly accept such supporters for the sake of a Republican victory, and then try to write them off as not all that important, or not all that extreme, or not all that insane in wanting to repeal several amendments to a Constitution that they also think is unalterable because it's divine! It may be true that the Tea Party's role in November's vote was less than some people feared, and it's certainly true that several of the movement's elected representatives will very soon learn the arts of compromise and the pork barrel. But then what happens at the next downturn? A large, volatile constituency has been created that believes darkly in betrayal and conspiracy. A mass "literature" has been disseminated, to push the mad ideas of exploded crackpots and bigots. It would be no surprise if those who now adore Beck and his acolytes were to call them sellouts and traitors a few years from now. But, alas, they would not be the only victims of the poisonous propaganda that's been uncorked. Some of the gun brandishing next time might be for real. There was no need for this offense to come, but woe all the same to those by whom it came, and woe above all to those who whitewashed and rationalized it.

SCOTUS scores one for sanity

Monday was a bad day for nutjobs, when the Dubya-stacked conservative Supreme Court refused to hear another one of their crazy birther lawsuits.

Even worse for nutjobs was CNN's Anderson Cooper taking chief birther and Texas state representative Leo Berman out to the woodshed on live TV.

I stand in awe of the total lack of shame of birthers like Berman who claim they "don't know anything about Obama," and at the same time claim to "know" about his real, secret radical agenda, hatred of the U.S., love of socialism, etc. If we don't know anything about him, then he really could be the Messiah -- or a Martian, or the Tooth Fairy. Who knows? Because we don't know anything about Obama. He's a total mystery.

Justices turn aside another challenge over Obama's citizenship
By Bill Mears
November 30, 2010 CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/29/scotus.birther.appeal/index.html

Ex-Scotland Yard cop turned Birther leader

It's ironic that two of the leading kooks in the Birther movement are naturalized U.S. citizens, one from Israel by way of Moldova, and another from Britain, both of whom settled in California. (Is it something in the water there?) Bizarre.

The former British police officer who wants to bring down Barack Obama

Conspiracist prominent in movement claiming president is an imposter

By Ed Pilkington
November 23, 2009 | The Guardian

Neil Sankey has spent his life investigating organised crimes. As a former British police officer with almost 20 years experience, he was seconded to elite units of Scotland Yard through most of the 1970s and now runs his own private detective agency [http://www.privateinvestigation.com/] in California.

Over the years he has been involved in some big investigations. As part of the Special Branch and Bomb Squad he monitored British leftwing groups and the IRA, and in America his clients have included several big car companies.

But never has he handled anything quite as monumental as the investigation that is absorbing his energies today.

Sankey is pursuing what he believes to be fraud on a gigantic scale ? a conspiracy, no less, to infiltrate and destroy the free world by putting a foreign imposter into the White House.

Sankey is a member of the fringe alliance known widely as the Birthers (he dislikes the expression, considering it pejorative). Together with other activists, he seeks to prove that Barack Obama is not a true American and is therefore ineligible to be president.

Over the past year Sankey has been at the centre of some of the most aggressive efforts by the Birthers to unseat the president. At the end of last year he tried to block Obama's inauguration by contacting all 538 electoral college representatives who formally elect the president. More recently, he has carried out his own probe into Obama's personal identification history which has revealed, he believes, a suspicious multiplicity of social security numbers.

Sankey says his fascination began with the realisation "that this man wasn't what he said he was. He wasn't an ordinary Democrat ? he was far more extreme than that." So about a year ago he began reading blogs and websites that claimed to expose Obama's foreign roots, his spurious Hawaiian birth certificate and the $2m White House cover-up that has prevented the public finding out about the plot.

His travels put him in touch with Orly Taitz [http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/], one of the most energetic and flamboyant of the Birther leaders. Of Moldovan extraction, she emigrated via Israel to California where she works as a dentist and lawyer. She has filed numerous legal suits around the country on behalf of serving US military personnel attempting to prevent their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on the grounds that they should not be taking orders from an illegally serving commander-in-chief.

Sankey's journey from having worked in some of the most elite police units in Britain to taking part in a movement dedicated to the pursuit of a paranoid conspiracy theory may seem bizarre. But he insists it has been a natural progression. He joined the Hampshire force in 1961, and was seconded as a detective sergeant to Scotland Yard where he developed a specialism tracking leftwing political groups and the IRA.

"We created an operation into what we called revolutionary criminality ? monitoring leftwing bookshops and extremist literature, following the leftist fringe and the Marxist links of the IRA."

In 1980 he moved to California, set up his agency, and became a naturalised American in 1985.

Sankey contends that his police experience in England now informs his fight against Obama. "It's quite obvious to me - America is heading towards a socialised state just as has happened in Europe. Socialised medicine, everyone on the dole, and when everything collapses you tip the scales into Marxism."

He also believes his training in Scotland Yard is now reaping benefits for the Birthers. The same techniques he used to analyse the IRA's associations he is now applying to Obama. Most recently, he carried out an exhaustive search of databases that he claims threw up 140 different identification numbers and addresses for "Barack Obama". He admits the findings prove nothing ? there is nothing to link the entries to the president ? but he believes it raises further doubts that need investigating.

Taitz says Sankey's UK police expertise has been invaluable. "He has had superb training. I have the greatest respect for Scotland Yard."

The Birther movement is not a unique phenomenon within US politics. Bill Clinton was accused by conspiracy theorists of having murdered his friend and White House legal adviser Vince Foster; George Bush had to contend with the Truthers who believe he was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

But the Birthers are unlike previous movements in that they are focused on who Obama is rather than what he does.

"There is no other president who has had his citizenship questioned in this way," says Patricia Turner, an expert in folklore at the University of California, Davis. Turner says that the popular Birther theories that Obama has used fake Hawaiian documents to disguise the fact he was born in Kenya or Indonesia are retellings of an old story. "This is just a proxy for old-fashioned racism. They are driven by hostility towards anything they see as foreign or exotic."

Although the Birthers are on the fringe of American politics, they are part of a wider surge of rightwing anger towards Obama's perceived socialist policies that is sweeping the country.

As such they can command considerable support. An internet petition [http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81550] demanding an official inquiry into Obama's origins has been signed by almost 500,000; critics say the number is inflated by multiple clicks.

Like any virulent conspiracy theory, that of Obama's birth has proved immune to the intervention of fact. When Obama's birth certificate in Hawaii was digitally scanned for all to see, it was denounced as a forgery. The birth notices printed by two Hawaii newspapers announcing his birth in August 1961 were similarly dismissed.

Dozens of legal actions have been brought before the courts by Taitz and other Birther leaders, and so far every one has been thrown out. Last month a federal judge dismissed Taitz's lawsuit seeking to challenge the chain of military command up to Obama as commander-in-chief. In a devastating ruling, the judge accused Taitz of trying to "emasculate the military" in a way that would "leave this country defenceless".

None of these setbacks have dissuaded Sankey. He says accusations of racism are smears that he has come to expect. "The objection is not Obama's colour but his politics. I like him as a person, I just wish he was genuine."

[Yeah, Sankey likes Obama, he just believes Obama's a crypto-Marxist bent on destroying America. What's not to like? Jeeez. - J]

Birthers want Obama under oath

This quote from the wacky USJF about "the biggest political cover up in American history" pretty much says it all:

"If we defeat the dismissal motion, then we're immediately filing pleadings ("discovery") seeking Mr. Obama's birth certificate, his college records, and so much more. AND, we'll be seeking to depose Mr. Obama ASAP!"

This is not about Obama's birth certificate, and even if he shows it to you "birth bozos" you will not stop there, as this e-mail clearly indicates. You'll move on to "his college records, and so much more." Your agenda is to get him disgraced/embarrassed or else so distracted by this nonsense that he can't govern. It's an exact repeat of the 1990s, when your side spent $40 million of taxpayers' money to investigate an ancient land deal, but ended up investigating an office tryst. Despicable!

You know what though, keep it up, because you're further ruining the GOP in the eyes of normal Americans. You're doing my party a favor. Keep pushing, keep digging -- "the truth is out there!" as Fox Mulder of the X-files liked to say.

P.S. - I'm posting this on my blog, anonymously.

P.P.S. - If you donate even one dollar to this outfit then you're a sucker. Especially an organization headed by a guy named "Kreep." How appropriate!

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:52 AM, <> wrote:

We know less about this guy than any President in the history of the country. I'm one of those birth bozos who're trying to get to the bottom of his legality. The USJF can do it if anyone can and I'm, frankly, pissed that the man is using my tax money and the U.S. Department of justice to hide this information. The DOJ should be the responsible department to investigate Obama's eligibility......

FactCheck.org debunks Obama 'birther' conspiracy

I hesitate to even send this, because I don't want to debate the authenticity of Obama's Hawaii birth certificate, I really don't. But chances are, if you are a Republican, that you either entertain the possibility of this "Manchurian Candidate"-type conspiracy, (which must have started years or even decades ago) or else you know several Republicans who do.

Just let this analysis end all the "birther" conspriacy theories:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

Anyway, even without this, just keep in mind how deep this conspiracy would have to go: Obama would have to have at least one entire Hawaii state bureaucratic agency in his pocket for years on end covering up for him. Without a single whistleblower. Not a single Republican who could "expose" the "truth" of the conspiracy. Including the Republican governor of Hawaii.

Take off your tin foil hat and scratch your head over that.