Charles is up to his usual link redirection tricks.

They’re actually making arguments that a “Certification of Live Birth” is not a “Birth Certificate”.  Wow.  Just wow.

I’m not sure what the point of all this is—are they trying to show he wasn’t really born?

wow, what does it say that all of the linked sites are blocked by my employer?

Charles Johnson is such a bed wetting piece of shit.

“OH NOES! TEH ISLAMFASCISTS ARE UNDER MY BED!! DADDY BUSH PROTECT ME!!”

You know, I don’t remember an uproar about birth certificates when Leslie Lynch King Jr. (later known as Gerald R. Ford) was running for president.

These people just really really want another “Rathergate”. As long as they spend all their time trying to find non-existent dirt instead of distorting his policy positions, I think its a net benefit for our side. It might get to the point where it creates sympathy.

Suitably Flip is angry that this incomplete document doesn’t testify to the marital state of Obama’s parents under Allah.

That was some hilariously naked goalpost moving there.  “His birth certificate’s information was limited to that information which appears on a birth certificate.  Clearly, someone is still hiding something.”

They’re actually making arguments that a “Certification of Live Birth” is not a “Birth Certificate”.  Wow.  Just wow.

Crap, I’m missing some important documents then.

and that his middle name wasn’t originally Hussein, and may have been Muhammed (strike 3).

I read somewhere that Muhammed (or some variation thereof) is the most common boy’s name in the world; surely it must be in areas where there’s even a slight Arabic or Muslim influence.

Given that “Hussein” is the name of a recent enemy and “Muhammed” is the equivalent of “Bob”, how would it be more damaging for his name to be Muhammed?  What are they trying to prove?

I’m with Kyso on this - I’m pretty sure that MY “birth certificate” is actually a “Certificate of Live Birth”.

Also, they apparently now want to insinuate that Hawaii’s record keepers are a bunch of frauds who clearly made this new “Certification of Live Birth” for Obama and they will accept nothing less than the original document.

Wha’? Dey say dey no trust us Hawaiian brudders ta do a good job???? Dat kine insultin’, ya know?

I predict Barack will have the “people with a funny middle name” vote locked up in November.

Ms Kate,

The odds are just about zero that his McCain’s birth certificate is in Spanish. He was born at a U.S. Naval facility. The canal zone was as (U.S.) American as Tulsa.

I love how LGF went from, “That birth certificate’s a fake!” to “Kos said mean things about mercenaries!”  Because pointing out that Kos said mean things when Blackwater mercenaries were killed in Fallujah proves that Obama’s birth certificate is fake.  I’m not sure how, but they sure seem convinced of it.

Damnit, Jesse, now I can’t stop humming “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again…”

8 years of Catholic education, and that is what sticks.

...and of course, 100-years ago McCain’s Scots-Irish name would have been a great source of distrust.  Ironic, isn’t it…

100?  Hell, wasn’t that one of the major things that was thrown at JFK when he was running?

Still, even if it’s 50 years instead of 100, it’s interesting to see how the Rethugs’ strategy still hasn’t changed.

I’m lucky I’m not running for office. The original of mine (the one with the inky footprint on it) just said “Boy”.

I thought “kerning” was a typographical term. This is the second time I’ve seen the word used on this very topic.  Urban dictionary is no help. What does this mean?

What it means is that they’re trying to prove that this birth certificate was printed on a modern-day laser printer, instead of typed in the 1960s. In other words, they want to reprise their only success ever—spotting the fake bush TANG documents.

The fact that copies of birth certificates are routinely reprinted when you request a copy hasn’t yet occurred to them. Nor has the word “LASER” on the bottom of the page.

Ultimately they have no idea what they’re trying to prove.

Why, oh why are they wasting their time on this?  If the Repubs really want to get to the voters who might think this is an issue, they only really need to say three words: Obama is black.  ‘Cause really, that’s what is at the heart of this.  I’m glad they are wasting their time with such asshattery, though.  It keeps them from asking tough policy questions that might really sway voters who haven’t all ready secretly decided they can’t vote for a black man as President, even if they claim to be “undecided” until the bitter end.

What makes me less happy is the fact that people from Obama’s side of the fence are actually engaging in this crud.  Why does anyone really feel the need to dig up Obama’s birth certificate?  Why give legitimacy to these hateful screeds?

Neko-

Kerry refused to dignify the Swiftboaters with a response, and look what that got him.

Ms. Kate,

The Naval hospital at which McCain was born (Coco Solo) was in the Panama Canal Zone, which was an unincorporated U.S. territory from 1903 to 1979. Although it was surrounded by the Republic of Panama it was not legally a part of that republic and was not administered in anyway by the Panamanian government until the U.S. devolved sovereignty to the Republic of Panama in 1979 as your quote indicates.

I was being a little snarky when I said it was as U.S. American as Tulsa. Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands would have been more accurate.

Oh, and on the “certificate of live birth” v. “certification of live birth” issue- both are official documents, and would constitute proof of where Obama was born, and what his true given name was, as if any of that matters.

What makes me less happy is the fact that people from Obama’s side of the fence are actually engaging in this crud.  Why does anyone really feel the need to dig up Obama’s birth certificate?  Why give legitimacy to these hateful screeds?

Because if you’re not careful, this shit turns into urban legends.  Ask the CEO of Procter & Gamble if he thinks his company should just stop refuting the rumors about them.

Kerry refused to dignify the Swiftboaters with a response, and look what that got him.

Apples and oranges.  Kerry (or at lest some of his supporters) was using his experience in Vietnam as a distinctive during the campaign.  Obama is not trying to use his middle name or his place of birth as reasons to prefer him over the other candidate. When I debated, we called things like this Birth Certificate flap a “time suck” argument. You put out crap you know won’t hold water just to make the other team spend precious time refuting it, instead of saying something relevant.  If you spend a lot of time refuting a time suck, you legitimize it, and keep it running through the round, all the time wasting your chance to actually say something.  I just hope the Dems don’t fall into this trap by going to-to-toe on all of this wankery, of which there is an unending supply.

The basic philosophy is that if the wrong thing is going to be believed by people whether you do anything or not, you might as well address it, so that when it comes to other people’s attention (the uninformed person you run into at the Fourth of July picnic, for instance), the evidence is there to at least attempt to counteract it.

Yeah, I get that, but the “uninformed person” at the picnic isn’t going to vote against Obama based on some crap about his name really being Muhammad on his birth certificate unless he happens to be some racist assmonkey, in which case I’d argue that his “ignorance” on the matter was willful.  Do you actually think there are a lot of otherwise rational, decent, Democratic-leaning voters out there who “really like” Obama and his message, but who would be “forced” to vote for McCain if they found out his middle name was Muhammad, or he was an American citizen born abroad?

“How’s this one:  John McCain’s birth certificate is so old it’s on clay tablets…in cuneiform…”

That SO needs to be Photoshopped up… or, hell, Play-Doh’d up.

Do you actually think there are a lot of otherwise rational, decent, Democratic-leaning voters out there who “really like” Obama and his message, but who would be “forced” to vote for McCain if they found out his middle name was Muhammad, or he was an American citizen born abroad?

I think there are disaffected Republicans out there who are thinking of jumping ship, and the right is using scare tactics to get them back into line.  They’ve been using these exact same scare tactics to enforce party discipline since Nixon, so they may work.

When Obama won his Senate seat in 2004, exit polls showed that 49 percent of Republican voters went for him over Keyes.  I can guarantee you that Republican strategists are shitting themselves right now over that 49 percent and over what their own polls are telling them.

Not to mention that refuting lies is always worthwhile.  Always.

think there are disaffected Republicans out there who are thinking of jumping ship, and the right is using scare tactics to get them back into line.  They’ve been using these exact same scare tactics to enforce party discipline since Nixon, so they may work.

Yeah, like all of those Mike huckabee voters.  Only none of them are going to jump out of “not quite conservative enough for my tastes” McCain’s boat into ” uppity black man with a message who speaks out against Iraq and for social justice issues” Obama’s boat.  If a Repub’s really unhappy with the State of the Union under Bush, and is afraid McCain is more of the same, she isn’t probably going to weigh that against Obama’s middle name and decide that Obama not telling America he is really Barack Muhammad instead of Barack Hussein is worth Four More Years of nuttery.  She might, however, decide she really DOES like what Obama has to say if he continues to articulate a strong, positive message of change, followed up by strong, real-world plans for enacting that change.  Which is why I hope the Obama camp sticks with that level of discourse, instead of chasing the white rabbit through the looking glass, where there is always another “stranger-than-fiction” urban legend waiting to be debunked.

The overt point of this stuff is racism.  The underlying subtext is repeated dishonesty.  Even if you don’t care what his middle name is, can you trust a guy who hides it?

No the point of this stuff is racism, period.  THe underlying message is “you cant trust a black guy <strike>who hides his funny name</strike>.”  Anyone who really thinks a person can run for POTUS and NOT be a citizen in good standing, or who thinks a serious candidate would lie about his middle name to no apparent benefit is either a mega moron, or a racist looking for justification for their racism.  Either way, I doubt seriously if they ever had any intention of voting for Obama in November.

Oops.  Messed up the blockquotes.  That’s supposed to be Mnemosyne’s

I think there are disaffected Republicans out there who are thinking of jumping ship, and the right is using scare tactics to get them back into line.  They’ve been using these exact same scare tactics to enforce party discipline since Nixon, so they may work.

At the top of my last post.  That’s what I get for all my fancy-dancy strikethroughs and such- I screw up the basics.

Yeah, like all of those Mike huckabee voters.  Only none of them are going to jump out of “not quite conservative enough for my tastes” McCain’s boat into “ uppity black man with a message who speaks out against Iraq and for social justice issues” Obama’s boat.

Huckabee was, in many ways, an economic progressive.  One of the reasons he lost (other than being nutty) is that he actually wanted to do stuff like raise taxes to pay for social programs.  So, yes, there are some Huckabee voters who can be peeled off for economic reasons.

I hate to say it, but you’re trying to fight 2004 all over again even though things have changed.  Hurricane Katrina.  The war in Iraq.  The collapse of the housing market.  Soaring gas prices.  The discipline of the Republican party is breaking down and we can be there to take advantage of it ... unless, of course, we decide we’re above it all and don’t need to make the one or two gestures towards those voters that might swing them to our side, or at least to refrain from voting for McCain.

Like it or not, Kerry was tagged as weak because he didn’t stand up to the rumor mill and it lost him votes from people who might otherwise have been willing to take a chance.  Why are you arguing that we should do the exact same thing that lost us the election last time?

“Chamorro appears on all official documents in Guam (although so does English.)”

But it did not in 1936 and would not for another ~50 years.

Like it or not, Kerry was tagged as weak because he didn’t stand up to the rumor mill and it lost him votes from people who might otherwise have been willing to take a chance.  Why are you arguing that we should do the exact same thing that lost us the election last time?

Not refuting every silly baited hook the Repubs threw out didn’t loose Kerry the election.  Kerry lost the election because he didn’t provide a strong, well-articulated core message.  Sure, the world was going to hell in a handbasket, but Kerry never really made people feel like he knew the way out. He looked weak because he stood for nothing, because he was really a choice between the lesser of two evils (look to his pick for VP- Lieberman, for goodness sake!) He was so afraid of being branded a “liberal”, he was branded as nothing.  Do you really think the Repubs would have just stoped the “swiftboating” and played dead if Kerry spent a lot of time debunking?  Or would they have just moved on to the next spurious story?

Obama’s got something going on that Kerry never did- his own distinct message.  He isn’t trying to out Repub the Repubs- he has a message and a style of his own, one that if you look at McCain’s site, the Repubs are desperately trying to copy.  Maybe that message won’t fly with older, more conservative voters.  Maybe the US is still too racially divided to elect a person of color for president. Those are legitimate things to worry about.  However, I don’t see Repub race baiting as a legitimate concern, worthy of lots of special attention.  People who are going to be swayed by that are going to vote against him anyway.  Really.  They are just looking for a way out.  Even Huckabee’s so-called economic progressive contingent, <em>if they are also ruled by racist fears<em> are going to vote against Obama, regardless of what he says, because racism will trump any legitimate concern.  The hearts and minds that are really up for grabs are the logical people out there who have put the race issue aside, and are really mulling over what the best course for this country is.  They may not be regular voters, or swings, they may be Repubs who are tired of Bush’s sad track record.  Either way, they need to hear who Obama IS a lot more than who he ISN’T.

Sorry- cooking dinner, talking to kid, not paying attention to post.  Kerry’s running mate was not Lieberman, sorry.  I screwed up the blockquote again, too.

Kerry lost the election because he didn’t provide a strong, well-articulated core message.  Sure, the world was going to hell in a handbasket, but Kerry never really made people feel like he knew the way out.

Yes, because he let the Republicans set the terms of the debate by not responding to their attacks.  It wasn’t just the Swiftboaters—it was the constant stream of crap that Bob Shrum decided they should be “above” and it tanked them.

We’ve tried to play the “above it all” game for years, and we’ve gotten our asses handed to us.  It’s time for a new game, and Obama knows it.

I needed a copy of my birth certificate a while back, and that’s all I got too. I had hoped for an exact copy of my original birth certificate—no luck. They offered something slightly different for genealogical purposes, but I didn’t ask about it, and I had already spent the money.

I also would like to see John McCain’s birth certificate, if only to debunk the persistent rumor he was born John Saddam McCain, a citizen of Panama.

Hospitals do not issue birth certificates.  I have worked with birth and death certificates, and they are issued by a governmental registry authority.  Depending on the status of the naval station, the local government policy, and Navy policy in 1936, it could have been the Government of Panama issuing that certificate.

For the most part, I agree with Ms Kate.  My (two) birth certificates are in German and I was born on an American airbase in Germany in the 70s.  The first one is a “void” birth certificate ‘cause they spelled my name wrong aka Stefan (which I think is the German spelling of it).  So they issued a second one and somehow my parents kept the first void one as a souvenir.

Plus, it lets my older relatives call me “Stefan” when they wish to tease me

I still maintain that people who are going to buy this kind of crap aren’t going to vote for Obama anyway.  Sorry.  People ARE largely illogical, and those who are going to shoot from the hip on this kind of thing are not likely to shoot FOR the scary black man.  I’m not saying Obama should roll over and play dead, I’m just saying spending a lot of time chasing these things down seems counterproductive.  I would like to see a lot of people out there in the blogosphere getting excited about the message, putting that up all over the place, as opposed to hunting for old birth certificates just to prove what anyone who is paying attention all ready knows- Obama is legit.

One thing Chicago/Cook County does right is birth certificates.  I’ve had to get copies of my kids’ bcs multiple times (yeah, I suck and they’re going to be identity fraud victims, but sometimes you still need to register for camp or school and if you can’t find the old one, you gets the new)

It’s 10 bucks.  They laser print that puppy in 10 seconds.  never had to wait.  My ride never even makes it all the way around the block before I’m back at the corner waiting.

So, yeah, laser printed copies.  That’s a killer.

And wouldn’t it be BETTER if his name were Muhammad instead of Hussein?  I mean, they already think he’s Muslim, so Muhammad is a duh.  It’s Hussein that’s icky.

Why wouldn’t he claim it was Barry Harry O’Bama?  that would work better in Chicago anyway.  Irish names always get the votes here.

It’s 10 bucks.  They laser print that puppy in 10 seconds.  never had to wait.  My ride never even makes it all the way around the block before I’m back at the corner waiting.

Well, that’s good to hear, because G. has decided that he needs to get a new copy of his birth certificate while we’re in Chicago this summer and I was kinda dreading having to wait in line half the day to get it.

I have my birth certificate from Lake County, and it looks pretty damn similar to Obama’s.

Why wouldn’t he claim it was Barry Harry O’Bama?

That’s the really baffling part about all of this.

If I was going to lie and fabricate aspects of my past for my own ends, I would, like, actually make an effort to lie and fabricate something that would actually benefit me.  I’d change my middle name from Hussein to Harold, or Muhammad to Maurice.  I’d pretend to have been born in Teh Heartland, not an exotic state most Americans have never visited and which only achieved statehood a couple years before I was born.  If I wanted some sort of fancy ethnic cred I didn’t deserve, I’d go with something that had a Chaka Zulu or Kunta Kinte ring to it.

I’d change my middle name from Hussein to Harold

I keep waiting for the people who seem to have a pathological need to point out the Hussein as if it makes Obama a terrorist to just flip out one day—presumably after giving up their weird belief that he changed his middle name from Muhammed to Hussein and perhaps will change it to Mussolini Hitler McPol Pot Pants after he wins—and accuse his great-grandparents of naming their son Hussein after a dictator who wouldn’t even come into power in another country entirely for another eighty years because they were so insultingly un-American as to not be fucking psychic.

Even if you don’t care what his middle name is, can you trust a guy who hides it?

There was a guy, once, born Hiram Ulysses, but who pretended that hs name was Ulysses S.  That liberal democrat Lincoln put him in charge of the army, and he ruined everything—confiscated people’s property right across the south.  We don’t want to make that mistake again—you czn’t trust thsoe people.

One of the reasons [Huckabee] lost (other than being nutty) is that he actually wanted to do stuff like raise taxes to pay for social programs.

That would be the Huckabee who advocated a flat national sales tax to replace the income tax, and who reassured Grover Norquist and signed the Club for Growth’s pledge, correct?

I know you’re not really talking up Huckabee (the “other than being nutty” was a tip-off).  I just wanted to keep these things out there, because the 2008 “Huck ain’t so bad for a Republican” song in some progessive circles is distressingly similar to the 2000 “McCain is such a moderate maverick” tune that could yet turn out to bite progressives in the ass this election cycle.  Even with a happy outcome this time, I don’t want people in 2012 convinced that a corrupt fundamentalist who paid lip service to economic inequity while endorsing regressive budget-bankrupting policies at the federal level is “secretly one of us.”  Hey, I’ve heard Huckabee is moderate on Roe v. Wade.  (The preceding sentence is a lie.)

That liberal democrat Lincoln put him in charge of the army, and he ruined everything—confiscated people’s property right across the south.  We don’t want to make that mistake again—you czn’t trust thsoe people.

Yeah, you’ve pretty accurately described the thinking of the modern GOP’s base.