After Republicans worked so hard to let the birther nonsense die down — Karl Rove even tried to blame it on the Democrats, speculating they kept the rumors alive so Republicans would look stupid — Donald Trump stirs up the birther pot again. And that brings out all the wingnuts, including Sarah Palin, who agrees with Trump and says “more power to him“. And not to be left out, Arizona passes another idiotic law, requiring all presidential candidates to show proof of citizenship before they are allowed on state ballots.
UPDATE: Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona takes a potentially bold step against her party’s wingnuts by vetoing the “birther bill”. It remains to be seen if the Arizona legislature will override her veto.
14 Comments
It’s obvious that IK is a tool of the extreme right wing, using this story to suggest discrediting the concerns of birthers while actually promoting their blessed agenda.
#NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
Busted.
Congress has to decide who can run don’t they? So any state who denies a candidate a place on their ballot would have their electoral votes voided, wouldn’t they? Hope every red state passes this law if this is true. I’m just asking.
I particularly like the circumcision certificate. Now a woman candidate applies for a place on the ballot in Arizona and presents her circumcision certificate. Uh, how would that go over for a bit of irony? And what is to stop someone being born in another country, then being circumcised here?
Hey Ebdoug, I heard that IK and Trump are in favor of bringing female circumcision to the US like they have in places like Africa, to be in compliance with the law.
(NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement)
Let’s just go right to comments to get us laughing.
Although I agree the whole birther thing is getting old and it really doesnt matter at this point…I wouldnt call Arizona’s law idiotic. I would assume it was a federal law in the first place. I gotta show my birth certificate for all kinds of things, such as getting a drivers license, or hell even taking the road test…they should have to show it to be allowed on a presidential ballot
Not the point, No U. It is a federal election and a federal requirement. It is up to the federal government to decide if he is qualified. Absolutely idiotic. Even ignoring the fact that law allows you to prove your citizenship using a circumcision certificate.
States do not have the authority to specify additional qualifications for candidates to federal office. If they did, then there would be nothing to stop them from requiring a blood test, make the candidate pay a “ballot fee” of a million dollars, require the parents of the candidate to have been natural born citizens, or anything else they wanted.
A baptismal certificate would qualify as proof of citizenship, but not an abridged birth certificate bearing an official state seal? Because no child could ever be baptized in a different country than where they were born, right? Not to mention, how does one verify the authenticity? If I remember right, my baptism “certificate” is printed on the inside of a seashell. Do you think that would get me on the ballot in Arizona?
What got me the most out of the original (before the election) birther talk was that it was completely outside the realm of common sense considering the stake from the D’s in the candidate.
Fact: the parties are interested in advancing the candidate which has the greatest chance of winning.
Fact: the parties have a substantial investment of time and money in every candidate, but especially in presidential candidates.
Fact: if a candidate were to fail a simple qualification for presidency, they would be immediately ousted from the running.
Lets assume for the moment that for some ridiculous reason Obama’s qualifications for president were not vetted leading up to the original birther claim.
Given those 3 facts, you must accept that they would have immediately verified his qualifications. It is outside of the realm of reality to think that they would have said, “ok, we have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here, but lets just go with him and see what happens.”
One of two things would have happened. They would have immediately verified him and found that he wasn’t qualified, in which case they would have tossed him for a candidate that was (Clinton), or found that he was qualified and kept him in the running.
To think anything else puts you in looney-toon land. I personally think it has much less to do with race than him simply being a D.
1032 – you’re being much to kind. I think it is all about his being black and having a middle eastern (muslim) sounding name.
Hey, I think that’s the first time I’ve been accused of being too kind! 🙂
My opinion is it’s a small facet of a larger issue. In other words, I think you are right that the reasons that this specific scheme makes sense to them are what you say for most of them. But I don’t particularly think that this specific case matters.
If a WASP democrat was elected, they would still be screaming voter fraud, voter intimidation, impeachment, terrorist sympathizer, etc. They would still be demanding that he be removed from office. In fact, if you visit a lot of the right-wing haven websites, you’ll see them demanding that Obama be punted from his position. Sometimes it is the birther thread. Sometimes it isn’t.
They will continue demanding that Democrats be removed from office, because that’s what they do. Harry Reid isn’t black and doesn’t have a Muslim sounding name. Ask the average way right winger if Harry Reid should be removed from office or not.
I think it is the continuation down the fundamentalist religious path. For most of these people, things are extremely black and white. We are good, all the others are different and evil yet somehow all connected (hence Gingrich’s comment about the dangerous atheist Muslim takeover of America). This has been going on for a long time in the ultra-religious parts of America and the slow bleed is now starting to hemorrhage into the political realm where almost all of those same people are also registered Republicans. Now, full disclosure, I’ve been debating religious fundamentalists for ~10 years, so it is entirely possible that my experience is jading my perspective.
Obama is different because he is black and he has a funny sounding name, which makes the easy target. But at a fundamental level he is different because he is a democrat. And they are doing evil things to America.
I think you are spot on that they vilify ALL Democrats and secular progressives but I think they have a special (more intense maybe) hatred for Obama.
Funny how when we had the last Presidential Election in 2008, Congress decided the Candidate from Arizona was qualified to be considered born in the United States which happens to consist of fifty states. Panama is not one of them. And what do the birthers have to say about that?
The morning after the election a female colleague burst into to our work lounge loudly proclaiming that she “hoped we were happy now that we had just elected a baby-killing, foreigner”. I didn’t, but I wanted to tell her that Obama was born in the USA and that McCain wasn’t and that I was quite sure that Obama had never killed any babies and just as sure that McCain had….of course, they were Vietnamese so that probably didn’t count in her mind.