I think we need to see that they are not. They have one issue. One question. They have suspicion about one thing, and that suspicion notably hasn't led them into other theories. There's one factual issue — the immensely important matter of the President's qualification — that hasn't been nailed down to their satisfaction.
It's perfectly rational to take as your working theory that evidence that isn't produced would run counter to the interest of the party who could produce it and does not. In legal cases, if a party fails to produce a document requested in discovery, the judge can deem that the fact is established to be what the party seeking discovery is trying to prove. (See Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 37(b)2)(A)(i)).
All I'm saying is that it's not paranoid to answer the question the way the majority did in that poll. I haven't followed the so-called "birthers" that much. Presumably, some of them branch out into other theories and cross over into conspiracy thinking and paranoia. But it's absurd to read the poll results as a sign that the GOP is full of folks like that. If you really wanted to gauge the nuttiness of Republicans, you could do a much more fine-grained poll about what Republicans believe and how strongly the birther issue correlates to other beliefs.
Watch out! It's a trick question. Here's Rush Limbaugh, unpacking the problem today. Read the whole thing, but here's a super-tight edit:
I would think that if Abercrombie is gonna [say he'll produce the birth certificate], he's not the Lone Ranger. He's gotta be calling the White House, "Okay, look, we have a potential problem here. I want to find this thing and I want to make it public." If that happened, somebody at the regime did not say, "No, don't do it," because Abercrombie is still alive. If they had said, "No, don't do it," and Abercrombie is still doing it....
I can't imagine Abercrombie being a free agent on this. Abercrombie gets inaugurated governor and out of the blue says, "Ah, you know what, I'm worried about this birther thing, they may have something there. I gotta find that birth certificate, and I'm gonna release it, I'm gonna prove it once and for all." Then he says, "I can't find it. Oh no, I'm in trouble. I'm really embarrassing myself here." And that's the hook and the bait, the unsuspecting and the beguiled are expected to chomp on that hook, line, and sinker and be reeled in.
So Rush thinks the birth certificate is there and the delay is about trying to get Obama's opponents to go on record spouting birtherisms that will make them look stupid and mean-spirited when the birth certificate is finally whipped out.
By the way, if it were actually true that Obama is not a natural-born citizen — as the Constitution requires as a qualification for the presidency — wouldn't it be the case that Obama is not a citizen at all?
ADDED: Here's what the Governer said today when asked about his plans "to release more information regarding President Barack Obama's birth certificate":
I got a letter from someone the other day who was genuinely concerned about it; it is not all just political agenda. They were talking on Olelo last night about this; it has a political implication for 2012 that we simply cannot have.... It was actually written I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down... What I can do, and all I have ever said, is that I am going to see to it as governor that I can verify to anyone who is honest about it that this is the case. If there is a political agenda then there is nothing I can do about that, nor can the president.
I just turned on C-SPAN and hit the 2d Amendment right on the nose. Do I have some kind of right-wing instinct?
Here, you can watch on the internet. Hurry! They're up to the 6th Amendment.
UPDATE: The 10th Amendment won a spatter of applause.
UPDATE 2: John Lewis read the 13th Amendment – abolishing slavery — and that got a big round of applause. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment — read by Democrat Mel Watt — also got some healthy applause.
UPDATE 5: You have one sentence to read: How can you mispronounce one of the words? Compulsatory, etc. etc.
UPDATE 6: Applause... either for the document as a whole, now completely read, or for the idea that they shouldn't give themselves a raise, which was the last thing read.
That video is from one of our longtime favorite commenters, rhhardin, who says:
Approaching Turkey in the Straw diagnosed and awaited, video from Monday bike commute.
The business model is doubtful, with the kids safely indoors in modern times.
That's from last night's "café" post — the one with the orange flower — where another favorite commenter, Lem, transports us into a long car ride with his wonderful father:
Anyway.. I had a good time driving my dad.. for about seven hours.. he drove the rest.
I caught a sign in PA that said "where is the birth certificate?"..
We both happen to see it and when I finally did a half hearted ha ha (because I didn't get it right away) my father asked me what do you think?
..he eventually told me about what he calls the "American Concupiscence of Obama".
and of course he told me ther is a price to pay for that kind of thing.
He told me that "codicia" (lust) is not only a material, nor only a sexual mater the way people like to pretend.
He said that [like] any object of desire that is able to overcome fears, it is a (for lack of a better explanation) godlike.
According to my father.. the seemingly "impossibility" of Obama becoming president played right into his theme of "hope and change".. So that when it did happened (he became president) people assigned to it a divine like experience/intervention.. and now with the spill he is (unlike Bush) "uniquely qualified" to stop it.. or everything they believed is in jeopardy.
I wish I could put it to you all in the poetic way my father does.
When he spoke.. it was as if I already knew it.. It felt good.
For people to blame themselves for the spill is a stretch.. it is the only thing keeping Obamas hopes alive.
If people blame Obama.. in their minds (says my father) they might as well blame themselves.. specially if they voted for him (i said) ... and my father said after a pause that seemed jarring dislocated.. my father voted for Obama.
I didn't react to that.. (thank God) It would have been disrespectful to him.. the fact that he told me it was not so as to give me an opportunity to call it into question. I think it it was more to brace waht he had been telling me about.. "The American Concupiscence of Obama" had been real enough to carry him away like a Hoover Dam Relief.
I wish Lem could capture that poetry on video. I picture Lem's father as a YouTube wise man.
Some commenters told me that the flower photograph looks like a painting. I've been a painter in my time, and the truth is: It doesn't look like a painting at all. I said:
The reason this flower looks like a painting is because it lacks something that — ironically — I would put in if I were doing a painting of it. There are no black/gray shadowy areas demarcating the depths of the folds. It's just more orange. It's not what the brain thinks will be there, but it's what the camera sees.
You could look at that photograph and paint without thinking so much and thereby produce a painting that looks like a photograph. Artists have done that, creating the illusion that some photographs look like paintings. But it is, most assuredly, the other way around.
Time passes slowly up here in the daylight We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right Like the [orange] rose of [late spring] that blooms in the day Time passes slowly and fades away...
The event took place at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, and featured former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) as its keynote speaker. Tancredo, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said that Americans are "going to have to pray that we can hold on to this country."
He added, referring to President Obama: "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?"
Pastor Stan Craig, of the Choice Hills Baptist Church, was particularly angry about the state of Washington, saying he "was trained to defend the liberties of this nation." He declared that he was prepared to "suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do."...
Dan Gonzales, who Chairs the Constitution Party in Florida, asserted that "this is the end of America right here," and if the Tea Partiers "don't get to work we're going to be fighting in the streets."...
Another speaker, ["apparently William Gheen, President of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC"] claimed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is gay, noted:
I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey, but as our U.S. Senator I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure you being gay isn't it.
That's all quite awful. It plays into the hands of those who would like to squelch the Tea Party movement.
Wearing a foreign country's flag is more troubling than the geographical location of one's (American) mother at the time she gave birth. Presumably, Palin's pin, showing the 2 flags together, is meant to symbolize the alliance between America and Israel, but it seems to put the 2 countries at the same level. I think she should wear the American flag alone.
Am I questioning Sarah Palin's patriotism? Sure! I want questions about patriotism asked of anyone who runs for President or who, like her, might run. I support the constitutional principle that we need to safeguard against the calamity of a President with a secret allegiance to a foreign power.
We should have delved into Barack Obama's background and questioned him far more back in 2008. And I don't mean the possibility of a technical disqualification from the presidency. Where his mother was at the time of his birth has very little to do with anything that really matters. I'm more concerned with his mother's lack of connection to America and what she may have conveyed to him as he was growing up than her global positioning on the day he was born. Why did she marry 2 non-Americans?
I'm concerned with all the things about him that suggest a lack of devotion to America. His father was not American. His stepfather was not American. He spent formative years living in Indonesia. In adulthood, he chose to attend a church that featured sermons that harshly criticized America. Some of the people he associated with were rabidly anti-American. Campaigning for President, he gave a big speech — and was hailed — in Berlin. He seemed to want a transnational image. He made statements apologizing for America and rejecting America's unique leadership in the world. He didn't wear a flag pin. There was an issue about whether he failed to salute the flag. Why didn't those things trouble us more?
But we voted. We made our big leap of faith. I voted for him too. He's running for reelection in 2012, one must assume. We should continue to look at these things and to add to the list. There's that bowing to foreign leaders, for example. We can look at what he's done and how well he's demonstrated his dedication to the United States. That's a continual process. But this birther business? This idea that he might be formally, technically disqualified? If it ever made any sense to go in that direction, it is now just plain too late. Look at the substance of how well he is serving American interests. He is earning or losing our trust every day, and it is absolutely right to talk about that.
And it is absolutely right to talk about the patriotism of anyone who would run for President.
I mean, I think it's a female reporter that I'm about to tweak, but here's the text at the WaPo blog called 44 Politics and Policy in Obama's Washington:
Sarah Palin watch: She looks trim, fit -- and brimming with energy and plans By Ann Gerhart
It had been a while since we had seen Sarah Palin live and in person. And then she popped onto stage Saturday night at the National Tea Party convention in Nashville, and we made these observations:
1) She's lost a lot of weight, perhaps 15 pounds. She looked trim and firm, like she's hoisting the barbells or maybe chopping wood. Her chair at the head table was empty; if she had the shrimp and filet mignon served to attendees, she ate in her hotel room.
2) She wore a fitted black suit, black hose and high black platform heels. She had on three opera-length strands of pearls, two white and one multi-colored. In her lapel, a small pin with two flags -- for Israel and the United States.
3) She was animated and full of energy, so much so that she kept knocking her microphone with her hand as she made her points. Hope the Texans are ready for her when she campaigns Sunday for Gov. Rick Perry. She certainly looks like a woman who has some plans.
By Denny McAuliffe | February 7, 2010; 12:08 AM ET
So who wrote it? Ann Gerhart or Denny McAuliffe? I'm trying to decide what I think about this discussion of how Sarah Palin looks. Would a male politician get such a detailed description? I doubt it. On the other hand, a male politician wouldn't be likely to be wearing anything as detailed as "three opera-length strands of pearls, two white and one multi-colored." But a woman's necklace is no more significant than a man's tie, is it? I guess "black hose and high black platform heels" is pretty interesting. It interested me enough to screen-grab a close-up from the cool pic Glenn Reynolds took:
And I do think we'd talk about a male candidate wearing 2 flag pins. I do not like to see an American politician wearing the flag of a foreign country. I'm going to write a separate post about that.
But what about this talk of Sarah Palin's body? It's called "trim, fit" in the headline and "trim and firm" in the text of the post. There's a difference between "fit" and "firm," no? Interestingly, both words can describe both a body and a person's character. SP may be "fit" for office and "firm" in her opinions. Would we talk about a male politician that way? Would we cattily drop the info that his weight had previously been up 15 pounds? Speculates about the fitness routine — "hoisting the barbells or maybe chopping wood" — Ann/Denny seems able to peek under SP's clothes. Yes, it was a "fitted black suit," but how do they know how muscular her body is? And why do they want to share that opinion with us?
"I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers," she replied.
"Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?" Humphries persisted.
"I think it's a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting records -- all of that is fair game," Palin said. "The McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area."
McCain's campaign counsel has said the campaign did look into the birth certificate question and, like every other serious examination, dismissed it.
Palin suggested that the questions were fair play because of "the weird conspiracy theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn't my real son -- 'You need to produce his birth certificate, you need to prove that he's your kid,' which we have done."
But I thought she thought the question of Trig's parentage was not fair. Do 2 unfairs make a fair in her thinking? Is she saying that since people got all "weird" and "freaky" on her, she wants equal treatment for Obama in the "weird" and "freaky" department?
