Send Them Home With a Bullet in the Head

So You Say You Want a Revolution, Part Way too Many

There will be blood ... maybe not today, but soon.

Here's a status report from the ground:


I'm not sure how many drinks this is in our game ... but recall that "the blood of patriots" is the drink of choice for "the tree of liberty."

Still More on Death Panels

I've been trying to make the case that rationing and death panels exist already--a situation that will only be remedied by reform--and that reform is the only way to inject ethics into the system. Mike Madden at Salon makes the best case yet:

It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.

That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions."

Town Hall Drinking Game

For those of you attending the President's Town Hall today, keep it civil and fact-based. For those of you who will have to watch on TV, here's a drinking game to help ...

You should take a drink:

1. Whenever someone mentions ramming, cramming, shoving or otherwise inserting anything into their throats;
2. Whenever someone is visibly shaken about the loss of "their America"--drink twice if they're crying;
3. Whenever someone mentions Fascism or Naziism--twice for Hitler;
4. Whenever someone mentions Socialism or Communism--twice for Stalin;
5. Whenever someone is shown waving or displaying a bible;
6. For any reference to bureaucrats;
7. For any poster that is too long to read--twice for a quote from a Founder;
8. Whenever someone is shown wearing a bumper sticker--twice if it's on their head;
9. For any "ironic" misspelling (or misuse) of Obama's name--twice if Osama or Hussein is involved;
10. For any piece of proven misinformation--twice for rationing, euthanasia or death panels;
11. Anytime someone is unaware that Medicare is a government program;
12. Whenever someone accidentally drops their handgun;
    
13. Whenever a camera catches a health insurance company insignia the polo shirt of some "ordinary American"--twice if they actually identify themselves as such when on camera;
14. Whenever President Obama uses "stupid" as any kind of modifier;
15. If Joe Biden shows up unexpectedly--twice if he drinks;
    
16. If the President gets shot ... drink everything you've got, you're gonna need it.

Note: If you have more, add them to the comments and I'll fold them in.

Change the Channel

I know most of you probably don't watch much Fox News. Here's what's going on over there (via TPM):

More on Death Panels

Southern Beale shares my view that rationing and death panels are a feature of the status quo:

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.

So don’t talk to me about “death panels” you heartless, cruel, greedy sons of bitches, who are only too happy to keep the profits rolling in to the big insurance companies while you spout your mealy-mouthed bumper sticker slogans about the evils of socialism. You don't even know what socialism is. You don't know what government healthcare is. You have no fucking clue about anything except that you lost the last election and you're pissed off.

As I mentioned yesterday, the difference between reform and the current system is ethics.

Pelosi and Hoyer on Town Hall Teabaggers

They have an Op-Ed in USA Today. In case I have not yet made myself clear, this is the most important part of the message to me:

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

Health care is complex. It touches every American life. It drives our economy. People must be allowed to learn the facts.

More Right Wing Pseudo Intellectualism

W. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has decided to go all-in behind Sarah Palin's crazy talk. If you follow his posts regularly, you are already familiar with his knee-jerk pseudo-intellectualism. Suffice it to say, anyone with enough patience can get a PhD, LLD or MD (just look at Orly Taitz). Typically, he tries to provide cover for the wingnut faction of the right by pointing out possible generous interpretations of their crazy talk. In this case, he tries to make the case that Quitter Palin was actually talking about something real (even if inarticulately), when she pointed to "death panels".

To avoid questions of fairness, I'll print his caveat first:

Certainly, no Democrat is proposing a "death panel," or withholding care to the young or infirm. To say such a thing would be political suicide.

So far so good. But he also says:

These critics, however, didn't take the time to find out to what Palin was referring when she used the term "level of productivity in society" as being the basis for determining access to medical care. If the critics, who hold themselves in the highest of intellectual esteem, had bothered to do something other than react, they would have realized that the approach to health care to which Palin was referring was none other than that espoused by key Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekial Emanuel (brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

The article in which Dr. Emanuel puts forth his approach is "Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions," published on January 31, 2009. A full copy is embedded below. Read it, particularly the section beginning at page 6 of the embed (page 428 in the original) at which Dr. Emanuel sets forth the principles of "The Complete Lives System."

I'm not qualified for the requisite discursive ass-kicking, so take it away Dr. Pollack:

Palin and Bachmann take pot shots at Ezekiel Emanuel, one of President Obama’s health policy advisors. Dr. Emanuel, a prominent medical ethicist and oncologist, makes a juicy target because he is Rahm’s brother, and because his paper trail provides incautiously blunt commentary regarding the pathologies of American health policy. It’s easy to lift one or two sentences from him, throw them onto the internet, and set the right-wing blogosphere aflame.

In fairness, Jacobson does post an entire document. That said, the bluntness of the Emanuels is well known--and this is substance of Jacobson's claim, not anything related to a health care policy actually being considered. Rationing already exists. It's just that right now it's the insurance industry that does it. What Dr Emanuel argues is that we apply some (gasp) ethics to the process.

I leave it to everyone's favorite math whiz, Nate Silver, to explain some of the problems with profit driven insurance to which I would only add: how much would you pay to save your own life, or the life of a loved-one?

But also, too (extra adverbs for you, Lady Sociopath, we know how you like that) Jacobson argues:

While Emanuel does not use the term "death panel," Palin put that term in quotation marks to signify the concept of medical decisions based on the perceived societal worth of an individual, not literally a "death panel."

No. Typically when double quotes are used to make reference to documents or speeches, they imply that those are the actual words lifted from the text. That is what most reasonable readers will infer--and only a bad writer would be unaware of this convention.

Boomer Narcissism on Display

I can't wait for this generation finally fade to black:

During the past week, I’ve had conversations with old friends – leftist, centrist, and conservative – with whom I experienced the political battles of the 1960’s. All of us have a similar take on what’s happening now, compared to then. Then, it was a challenge against authority primarily by the privileged young who didn’t want to serve in the war, which dissipated rapidly once the draft ended, while their ideologues took refuge in academia to rise to insulated tenure of attachment to their old slogans and some of their ilk to gerrymandered seniority in Congress. ... Now, it is the broader swath of working and middle class Americans, a far larger and more potent population, who are fed up and angry with being exploited and insulted by those who feel it their right and duty to impose their schemes to rearrange and endanger everyone else’s lives and weaken the America that sustains us. We all feel the potential for violence is high. Enough everyday Americans will defend themselves against thuggish attacks upon their right to speak out.

Yeah, but in both cases it was the boundless self-obsession of your useless narcissistic generation on display---preening and parading and telling the rest of us how great you are.

Shut up about the sixties already! We don't friggen' care about your glory days. From your Hippie bullshit to Reaganism ... you're the ones that fucked this country up , so back the fuck up already.

Update: I'd just like to add that the rest of us "adults" would like to have a real conversation, while you asshats continue to be mired in your petty little ideological feud.

Governor Sociopath Strikes Again

Once again, Benen expresses for me "the things I can't express for my own self"---this time about Quitter Palin's "death panels" [emphasis mine]:

As a substantive matter, this might be the stupidest thing ever written about health care policy. Just two weeks after she implored journalists to "quit making things up," Palin has manufactured the idea of a "death panel" out of thin air. As Time's Karen Tumulty noted, "Yes, such a system would indeed be downright evil. Which is why no one is proposing anything like it. Let's repeat: No one is proposing anything like it."

What's more, if we're going to take Palin's truly insane babblings seriously as a policy pronouncement, it's also worth noting that the former governor points to one relevant angle. As publius noted, "[T]here are people who weigh whether children like Trig are worthy of insurance. They're called insurance companies, and they have decided that these children are not in fact worthy of coverage. That's because Down Syndrome is a 'pre-existing condition.'"

But in the larger political context, a statement like this positions Palin as something of a disgrace. After insisting that her family be left out of political debate, here's Palin dragging her special-needs infant son into the discussion, in order to spread an obvious lie. What's more, for Palin to write such a statement for public review makes clear that she's either conspicuously unintelligent or she thinks her followers are idiots. Either she believes her own vile nonsense or she assumes her audience is foolish enough to believe patently ridiculous attacks.

Either way, Sarah Palin is a national embarrassment, and she's getting worse.

Trig may have Down Syndrome, but Sarah's the one that's obviously retarded. (Before you write me angry letters, know that I would only apply this label to those that earn it, not those that inherit it.)

Zandar does a much better job than I in keeping the commentary both cogent and "PC" [emphasis in original]:

But to see you denigrate those so less fortunate by using your own child as a political talking point to suggest such a brutally barbaric and horrific lie is about the most repugnant, sickening, infuriating thing I have ever seen, madam.

Know then, that there are people out there who have proven government-provided health care services work. They provide such care every day. You demean them and their service to the people through such a hideous act. You demean they people they work hard to help, some of who have Down's Syndrome, like your son. You demean yourself as well.

You owe my father and everyone he has helped in his over 35 years as a developmental psychologist a heartfelt and sincere apology, madam. And you should look inside your own heart and ask yourself what kind of world you would like Trig Palin to grow up in...hopefully one without such rancorous falsehoods.

He deserves more, and so does this country.

Woooolverines!

One of Sullivan's readers describes perfectly the America that has me worried:

So now, these people are facing their worst fears; actual change.

A political and demographic re-alignment is happening before their eyes, and they are reaching back into their old bag of tricks of intimidation, violence, and apocalyptic fearmongering. You are British, Andrew. You love this country, and we love you for it. But you didn't grow up around these folks, and you don't realize what a permanent and potent part of the American political landscape they are.

They have always been with us, the people who believed in manifest destiny, who delighted in the slaughter of this land's original inhabitants, who cheered a nation into a civil war to support an economic system of slavery that didn't even benefit them. They are the people who bashed the unions and cheered on the anti-sedition laws, who joined the Pinkertons and the No Nothing Party, who beat up Catholic immigrants and occasionally torched the black part of town. They rode through the Southern pine forests at night, they banned non-European immigration, they burned John Rockefeller Jr. in effigy for proposing the Grand Tetons National Park.

These are the folks who drove Teddy Roosevelt out of the Republican Party and called his cousin Franklin a communist, shut their town's borders to the Okies and played the protectionist card right up til Pearl Harbor, when they suddenly had a new foreign enemy to hate. They are with us, the John Birchers, the anti-flouride and black helicopter nuts, the squirrly commie-hating hysterics who always loved the loyalty oath, the forced confession, the auto-de-fe. Those who await with baited breath the race war, the nuclear holocaust, the cultural jihad, the second coming, they make up much more of America then you would care to think.

I'm always optimistic about America. We're a naturally rich and beautiful place. Every generation we renew ourselves with a watering of immigrants committed to the American dream, immigrants like you. But please, Andrew, do not for a second underestimate the price in blood and tears we've always paid here for progress.

Exactly ... but don't forget the sweat we've paid.

I'm with Benen

I don't know what we should do about all this town hall nonsense, but staying passive is not an option.

The answer, I suspect, is that to actually create some momentum for health care reform, there needs to be a concerted push launched by the American majority that's been waiting for reform for decades. It's not enough to simply let right-wing mobs destroy whatever remaining shreds of credibility the conservative movement had left. It's necessary for reform advocates to be vocal and public, letting the media and policymakers know there's a genuine hunger to pass, at long last, meaningful reform.

Now, this obviously doesn't mean having reform supporters act like far-right lunatics, shouting down Republican lawmakers, shutting down public events, and threatening physical violence. But Collins assumes rallying proponents is a "bad plan" because it means "confronting the crazies" and taking the focus off of mobs the American mainstream should find repulsive.

But that doesn't seem like the best way to win a policy debate. Many have tried sitting back, passively waiting for crazed activists to discredit themselves in the eyes of the political establishment. The more successful efforts have gotten in the proverbial game, rather than waiting on the sidelines. The silent tend to go unheard.

For those of you Keeping Score at Home

Sign the pledge.

America the Stupid

Bill Maher apparently shares my concern about the intellectual powers of the majority of Americans:

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket

....

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

Town Hall Teabaggers = Birthers

Krugman closes the loop:

There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.

Now, people who don’t know that Medicare is a government program probably aren’t reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.

That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.

It sure wouldn't.

Update: Sullivan agrees that this is not really about health care.

But the vicious anger from the far right, which is to say what is currently the right, seems totally out of proportion to these reforms. Where does that come from? It comes from the same place as the tea-party protests. It's partisan, of course - most Republicans, including Glenn Reynolds, ignored the deficit under Bush, blamed Obama for it within minutes of his election, and never refer to the impact of the recession on deficits. But it is also surely cultural - an expression of the rage some in white America feel at the new social make-up of their country. I just sat through a PJTV segment on Sarah Palin, in which the host blithely referred to the heartland as "real America."

If that is what you really believe - that people in cities or suburbs, that minorities, that gays, that blacks and Hispanics are not part of "real America" - then of course, you are angry. You believe a fake America has taken over. You cannot understand this. So you start believing that we have a fascist/communist dictatorship, that there was some fraud allowing a non-citizen to become president, that the government is about to "take over" all healthcare provision ... and on and on. And no one is left in the GOP to challenge this, to calm it down, to present practical alternatives to the obvious crushing problems the country and the private sector have in paying for increasingly costly healthcare.

To me, this is a triumph of ideology. And conservatism is now an abstract anti-government ideology, fueled by cultural, racial and sexual resentment. This is a recipe for more violence, and more marginalization.

And in his WaPo column today, Steven Pearlstein lays the confusion at the feet of GOP leaders, proving that they are not interested in actual political discourse.

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress -- I've made a few myself. But there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation.

...

The Republican lies about the economics of health reform are also heavily laced with hypocrisy.

While holding themselves out as paragons of fiscal rectitude, Republicans grandstand against just about every idea to reduce the amount of health care people consume or the prices paid to health-care providers -- the only two ways I can think of to credibly bring health spending under control.

...

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs.

Indeed.

Update 2: Of course, no debate would be complete without a healthy dose of right-leaning smart-ass douche-baggery ... littered with inside jokes, bad writing, intentional misrepresentation and stilted "irony".

As many of you have heard, the White House now requests that the public tattle on those of us spreading "fishy disinformation" regarding Washington's proposed takeover . . . oops, I mean "reform" . . . of your health care. This step, naturally, is for our own good.

As many of you may have noticed, my own standards for discourse have fallen when dealing with these asshats. Sorry ... but the gloves are off. I will, of course, continue to treat serious political discourse with the seriousness that it deserves. But you, Mr Harsanyi, are a fuktard. Shame on the Denver Post for publishing this crap.

Update 3: Josh Marshall over at TPM seems to agree with my own assessment (even if he does show more patience in his tone that I).

We had a number of emails last night discussing how much of what we're hearing from the right now should be considered incitement. There are numerous instances of anti-reform advocates explicitly comparing President Obama's health care plan to the Holocaust, for instance -- jumping from the hideous and outrageous claim that reform means euthanasia and going from there. We get desensitized to this stuff. But it's worth taking a moment to give that a long think -- comparing the president's reform plan to the Holocaust.

Most significant here is not the right-wing liars and demagogues making this stuff up but the fact that they've convinced a significant number of their followers that this stuff is true. That's a very dangerous situation.

We should also keep in mind that the birther-mania, as comical as it is on one level, is all part of the same fabric with the Hitler and Holocaust comparisons, an aggressive process of denigration and dehumanization, dressed up around claims about paperwork and places of birth, but all escalating and churning the belief of a minority of Americans that President Obama is not a legitimate president but rather a usurper.

Final Word on the Birthers

I'll continue to follow the violent tendencies of the fringe right, but I'll give Salon the final word on the Birthers. (Don't forget to tell Uncle Floyd that he has failed the Rorschach Test for modern racist douche-baggery.)

Tracking the Health Care Ground Game

When one of these fuktards kills or injures someone, you'll be the first to know.

A Dying Giant

If you want to know how much trouble American industry is in (and has been), have a look at this series of photo essays on Detroit.









You're looking at the former capital of the industrial world ... gone in a generation. Here's one thing you can do about it.

(Please visit the site and donate to the artist, if you think work like this is important. I've reprinted these photos here as "Fair Use" with the intention of giving the reader a sense of the work and promoting the artist and copyright holder: James D. Griffioen.)

So You Say You Want a Revolution, Part 3

So I finally read the final link in that birther "rebuttal" from a few days ago. I've already commented on how patently stupid these people are--and this observation was indeed borne-out upon a close read of the document. It's just a bunch of the same old question-begging discourse: "Obama must be a ferner 'cause he ain't proved he ain't". Not persuasive to anyone with an intact capacity for critical thought. But this passage still jumped out at me:

There are TWO reasons why the “birther” movement is EXPLODING instead of going away, despite daily attacks and name calling from the lamestream press.

• The Constitution, including Article II -Section I either stands or it doesn’t.
• The people are watching the utter hourly destruction of their nation in Washington DC and they need a peaceful way to end that destruction legally, before things become violent.

The flaw in the left’s plan to change the Unites States into a secular socialist One World Order is they have foolishly underestimated the desire for freedom and liberty in the hearts and minds of most Americans.

I've written about this sentiment and it's dangers ad nauseum. Remember these guys?

They're the same racist asshats. Read a book!

On Health Care Insurance Reform

Since the Republicans and their intellectual power-house of a base have decided to be more irrational and disruptive than code pink, here's a cool-headed reminder of where we're trying to go with health care reform:

On the Kenyan Birth Certificate

As I mentioned yesterday, the Birther wingnuts have produced a document that they are calling Barack Obama's "real Kenyan Birth Certificate".


It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that the document is the summer project of some disgruntled xenophobe. If you really need to work through the many problems with this forgery, you can find detailed commentary on Below the Beltway and Obama True and False. Here's the short version:

From December 12, 1963 until December 12, 1964, the official title of Kenya was the Dominion of Kenya. It wasn’t until a year later, on December 12, 1964 that the Republic of Kenya came into existence. And yet, the document above, issued on February 17, 1964 purports to have been issued on behalf of the Office of Principal Registrar, Coast Province, Republic of Kenya.

Lest I be accused of "promoting hatred" once more, I'll leave the naked ridicule to a conservative site:

LGF reader Shiplord Kirel has granted us exclusive permission to reveal his world-shattering scoop! He’s discovered the honest-to-goodness, no BS, real, true, and genuine nirth certifikit for Barack Obama ... and the conspiracy goes much deeper than even the most whacked out Nirther ever realized...

Update: This blog will serve to discuss the various myths and facts surrounding the concept of Natural Born versus Native Born citizen as well as how this applies to President Barack Obama, in light of the various lawsuits filed in courts around the United States.

Methinks the Lady Doth Protest Too Much

Eric Cantor would have us believe that the "Liberal Media" (or whatever code word they're using these days to placate the Black Helicopter Crowd) are behind the "Birther" story:

“Mr. Cantor [...] finds it ironic that those most eager to talk about the President’s citizenship are in fact some of his biggest cheerleaders–whether it’s Chris Matthews or others on MSNBC, the Huffington Post, or camera toting liberal bloggers chasing people through the streets of Washington.”

Of course one need only look at the recent Kos/Research2000 poll to figure out that this is complete bull. A search of my posts on "Right Wing Extremism", "30 Years in the Wilderness" and (perhaps most cogently) "Inciting to Riot" would provide additional texture on this story.

Interestingly, there is a component to the Kos poll that has not been widely reported:

QUESTION: Do you believe that America and Africa were once part of the same continent?

YES/NO/NOT SURE
ALL 42/26/32
DEM 51/16/33
REP 24/47/29
SOUTH 32/37/31
WHITE 35/30/35
BLACK 63/13/24
LATINO 55/19/26

For space, I've truncated the numbers to the interesting ones. Notice that, the problem really is REPUBLICANS ... not Whites or Southerners, per se (although their performance is still embarrassing). Also interesting is that only three demographics got this right: Blacks, Latinos and Democrats.

But forget all that. For proof that this is not a concoction of the Socialist Liberal Media Conspiracy, one merely need look at the latest nonsense on the birther hotspot Free Republic, where they've posted a "copy" of "Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate." (Isn't that what got Dan Rather fired?) Read the comments ... These people are friggen nuts! (Good thing they aren't obsessed with guns or anything like that.)

I leave the closing argument to Bill Maher:

And once these stories get out there, they're hard to stamp out because our media do such a lousy job of speaking truth to stupid. Vietnam, Iraq and the Spanish-American War were all sold on lies that were unchallenged or even abetted by the media. Clinton got impeached and Kerry got destroyed in large part because the media didn't have the guts to say, "This is nonsense."

Lou Dobbs has been saying recently that people are asking a lot of questions about the birth certificate. Yes, the same people who want to know where the sun goes at night.

...

That's why it's so important that we the few, the proud, the reality-based attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester and spread. This isn't a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It's sentient beings versus the lizard people, and it is to them I offer this deal: I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma.

Update: I received the following rebuttal by email (which I've republished in full, but ommitted the name and address provided, since I have neither sought nor obtained consent).

I will, of course, work through these arguments in detail when I get a chance. Suffice it to say: 1) a complete review of my "Inciting to Riot" and "Right Wing Extremism" threads will reveal the real advocates of hatred and fear; 2) despite all the serious looking Capitalization in this Rebuttal, it does not actually make use of any substantive Logical, Legal or Philosphical theory; 3) this version of the story gets a number of facts of the case wrong, most notably that Obama's "original birth certificate" is with all of the other "original birth certificates" of that era ... fully digitized in the hospital's archive; and 4) there is no room for appeal to logical fallacies when the issue at stake is a matter of objective fact (such as the fact that Pangaea existed!)

The burden of proof does not rest upon those who doubt the claimant. The burden of proof rests solely upon the claimant. Mr. Obama has said, "I am qualified to be president." Forty million American citizens have said, "Prove it." Mr. Obama and his supporters have said in reply, "Prove that I'm not!"

Mr. Obama, et al, have offered a simple and obvious Burden of Proof Fallacy in support of their claims and then followed it up with Appeals to Ridicule, to Popularity, to Authority and to False Dilemma/False Choice. ("Believe me or else you're a nutjob!") In view of the lack of presentation of an original document, there can only be one rational conclusion: An original document does not exist, or if it does actually exists, it contains information that disproves the assertions made by Mr. Obama, the claimant.

At the moment, there is more proof for the existence of UFO's, remote viewing and psychic phenomena than there is for an original document of Obama's birth certificate. 'I saw it! It really, really exists!" or "John Doe has a picture of a certifed copy stating that it exists, so it must be true!" is not an original document.

In view of the objective evidence, it is a very sane and rational question to ask.

Where is the - original - birth certificate?

Please note: You are now openly promoting intolerance (hatred) against approximately 40 million American adults of every race and religion who simply disagree with you.

=====
refer:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/?page_id=2697
Clearing the Smoke on Obama’s Eligibility: An Intelligence Investigator’s June 10 Report
=====
Natural Born Citizen defined same way seven times:
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200804/041008c.html
Senators Introduce Resolution To Make Clear Senate's Position On Candidate's status. WASHINGTON (Thursday, April 10, 2008)
=====
refer also:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/13295
Why the Founding Fathers Were “Birthers” - by JB Williams.
31 July, 2009
=====

Why is it that convservatives are so fond of using 2 dollar words to express 2 cent thoughts? (I know where I'd rather invest the money.)

Update 2: For those of you keeping score at home:

We asked for and received a copy from the Obama campaign. It is too large to display full size on this page, but you may click on this link to see a copy of the document just as we received it.

It indicates Obama was born at 7:24 p.m. Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. That should be no surprise, as it merely documents what Obama and his biographers have always said. But the document should put to rest groundless speculation raised on some conservative Web sites that Obama might not have been born in the U.S. and therefore might not qualify under the Constitution as a "natural-born citizen" to be president.

Update 3: Following up on the second link provided in the above rebuttal, we find the following nugget from Bush DHS Secretary Chertoff (reflecting my own intuitions) about the meaning of "natural-born citizen":

Chairman Leahy: We will come back to that. I would mention one other thing, if I might, Senator Specter. Let me just ask this: I believe--and we have had some question in this Committee to have a special law passed declaring that Senator McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal, that he meets the constitutional requirement to be President. I fully believe he does. I have never had any question in my mind that he meets our constitutional requirement. You are a former Federal judge. You are the head of the agency that executes Federal immigration law. Do you have any doubt in your mind--I mean, I have none in mine. Do you have any doubt in your mind that he is constitutionally eligible to become President?

Secretary Chertoff: My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen.

Chairman Leahy: That is mine, too. Thank you.

So then, why all the drama? Even if he was born in Kenya (and any objective analysis indicates that he was NOT), he's eligible to be President. Just like John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Update 4: So I tried to dissect the first link in the rebuttal. Unless you want to suffer through over 20 pages of thick pseudo-intellectual speculative drivel, I wouldn't recommend it. For the interested reader, here are the "highlights":

Sections 57-8, 9, 18, 19, 20 & 40 of the Territorial Public Health Statistics Act explain why Barack Obama has refused to release the original vault birth certificate. If the original certificate were the standard BC1 type of birth certificate, he would have allowed its release and brought the controversy to a quick end. But if the original certificate is of the other kinds, then Obama would have a very good reason not to release the vault birth certificate. For if he did, then the tape recording of Obama’s Kenyan grandmother asserting that she was present at his birth in Kenya becomes far more important. As does the Kenyan ambassador’s assertion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, as well as the sealing of all government and hospital records relevant to Obama by the Kenyan government. And the fact that though there are many witnesses to Ann Dunham’s presence on Oahu from Sept 1960 to Feb 1961, there are no witnesses to her being on Oahu from March 1961 to August 1962 when she returned from Seattle and the University of Washington. No Hawaiian physicians, nurses, or midwives have come forward with any recollection of Barack Obama’s birth.

The fact that Obama refuses to release the vault birth certificate that would instantly clear up this matter almost certainly indicates that the vault birth certificate is probably a BC2 or possibly a BC3.

In short, the argument is that Obama must have been born somewhere other than Hawaii, because if he had been born there, his "original birth certificate" would have indicated this, and therefore not be a political liability for him to release. It's basically an analogue to the "why worry if you're not breaking the law?" argument we often see from the anti-ACLU types when promoting increased police powers.

So we come at last to logical fallacies. Let's start with the the "political liability" reasoning above. Here we have at least 1) argumentum ad ignorantiam: Obama has not proven his argument about being born in the United States to my satisfaction, so he must not have been; and 2) petitio principii: if we assume that Obama was not born in the United States, then his behavior proves that he was not born in the United States. I'm sure there's more, but the point is that appealing to classes of fallacies is more often a rhetorical device than a substantive one (as I hinted at in the first update above).

But wait, there's more! To be thorough, we should address the question of the Burden of Proof. Notice the particular language used in the original text of the rebuttal above:

The burden of proof does not rest upon those who doubt the claimant. The burden of proof rests solely upon the claimant. Mr. Obama has said, "I am qualified to be president." Forty million American citizens have said, "Prove it." Mr. Obama and his supporters have said in reply, "Prove that I'm not!"

Hmmm. In this case the claimant appears to be the coalition claiming that he is NOT a natural-born citizen. Obama has provided documentation sufficient to answer the question at hand. The standards for "Burden of Proof" vary from venue to venue, but all documentation points to the fact that President Barack Hussein Obama was born either: 1) within the territorial United States; or 2) to an American citizen. So Barack Obama has fully satisfied his burden of proof. Repeated rulings in actual courts of law have made equivalent claims.

Further, even the most generous reading of the brain-melting document linked above grants that at least scenario (2) is the case. Here the actual argument is that some people believe that this public-domain information is false. In that case, the burden of proof would fall on those claimants. Again, all legal precedent on this matter sides with me on the burden of proof issue.

Oh and one last note ... I'm not promoting intolerance against "40 million American adults of every race and religion who simply disagree" with me, I'm promoting intolerance for the 100M+ American adults (58%: 26% no + 32% not sure) who are so ignorant of accepted scientific work that they deny or overlook the existence of Pangaea.


Suffice it to say, I'm no knee-jerk liberal and you'll see me shed no tears about being "insensitive." Tolerance is not a suicide pact.

That's all. Additional comments (including those pertaining to the the third link in the rebuttal) will be on a fresh post.