P.T. Barnum Laughs - The Birther Infomercial, Stealing From Suckers $30 At A Time

TPM Muckraker has found the next late-night sensation - a birther infomercial entitled "Where Was President Obama Born." It's already received the usual 1:00-in-the-morning airing on at least one local TV station in Texas. The United States Justice Foundation, a Birther front group led by the aptly named Gary Kreep, paid $100 to the CBS affiliate in Lubbock for the privilege of gracing their airwaves. That seems like money well spent for the Birthers for reaching a few thousand eyeballs or so and filling them with wingnut ideology. But that's not the true purpose.

For a $30 contribution, viewers also get a fax sent in their name to the 50 state attorneys general and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that President Obama produce his real birth certificate.

Getting 4 suckers to fork over $30 for nothing covers their whole expense, and looking at the production values, producing the episode didn't cost much more than $100 either. This is pure conservative hucksterism, where a few people make money off of whipping up fears for no real purpose.

And Bill Keller, the host of the birthermercial, is perfectly positioned to be that huckster - he's a fundamentalist preacher:

The program was produced by LivePrayer.com, a Web site affiliated with Bill Keller, a fundamentalist Christian minister who also hosts the infomercial.

Imprisoned in the late 1980s after an insider trading conviction, Keller later committed his life to God, attended Liberty University in Virginia, and founded Bill Keller Ministries, according to his bio. LivePrayer.com was "founded for the sole purpose of having a site on the internet where people can go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for prayer."

This has about as much of a chance at dislodging Barack Obama from office as the Sham-Wow, but both infomercials have the same goal - to get rich off of selling you garbage. Sadly, there are probably enough morons in America to make Gary Kreep and Bill Keller very wealthy men.

ORLY?

It's really not worth spending one minute on Orly Taitz, the Queen of all Birthers. But it's certainly the most amusing part of the right-wing freak show out there right now. After being told by a federal judge that she would face sanctions if she ever darkened his courtroom again with frivolous lawsuits, Taitz suggested that the judge be tried for treason. As a result:

Now, in response to Taitz's comments to TPM calling the judge corrupt and suggesting he should be tried for treason, a fellow member of the California bar has filed a formal complaint against Taitz.

"I respectfully request that you investigate Ms. Taitz's conduct and impose an appropriate sanction. She is an embarrassment to the profession," writes Subodh Chandra, who practices in Ohio and is also an inactive member of the California bar.

Read Chandra's full complaint right here. Chandra was a Democratic candidate for Attorney General of Ohio in 2006 and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention last year.

This really needs to end with her disbarred so she can go back to being a real estate agent and beautician, or whatever her eight other jobs were. Crazy person.

IOKIYAR

Van Jones was kicked out of the Administration, the story goes, because he was a Truther. The Congressman giving the GOP response to the President's health care speech tonight, Charles Boustany, is a Birther.

BOUSTANY: Well, it's certainly being looked at.

STARK: What do you personally believe, I mean -- do you think there's a question here?

BOUSTANY: I think there are questions, we'll have to see.

OK, queue the feeding frenzy, then. Obviously, we won't have a double standard on conspiracy theorists based on political ideology, right?

Um, never mind.

Truthers, Birthers, And Their Proper Side Of The Fence

I've seen Van Jones speak and had the opportunity to talk to him at the DNC last year. I'm going to rerun a bit of that discussion and have you tell me if these are the words of a Communist:

On green jobs, which is Jones' real focus area, he stressed that we need to move the environmental conversation from a cultural one to a political one. The green-collar economy "can be a place for people to earn money, not spend money. We need collective action for green citizenship, to create the jobs of the future in a Green New Deal. As long as carbon is free we're never going to move forward." He was pleased by the recent efforts by municipalities and states (green jobs bills have been passed in Massachusetts and Washington state, and the US Conference of Mayors is on board as well), but recognizes that the federal government must be involved as well. "This is about laws, not gizmos. Technology cannot be the savior. This has to be a bottom-up, inside-outside AND a top-down strategy. If the Feds are MIA, human life will be MIA in the future."

We talked about the offshore drilling debate, where Jones clearly stated that the Republicans won the day by lying to the American people. He had three major points:

• There is no such thing as American oil. There is oil drilled by multinationals that is sent overseas to China and India. American offshore driling will do nothing to solve any American oil problems.

• We banned drilling in offshore areas not to save birds and fish, but because of coastal families and coastal communities, because kids were walking into the water and coming out with oil on them, because property values were plunging. Democrats should not be willing to throw away America's beauty for a 2-cent solution in 10 years.

• We've seen the new phenomenon of the "dirty greens," who want to have an "all of the above strategy" on energy, with solar and wind, but also clean coal and drilling offshore and shale and all these dirty polluters. "All of the above" is not a strategy. It's not a wise choice, but a stupid swipe at a persistent problem.

That sounds like pretty mainstream liberal conceptions on energy and the environment. Jones was an activist who went into the government because he saw the need for a federal strategy to deal with green jobs.

But because he was previously involved with Color of Change, who has engineered a successful boycott of Glenn Beck, the Foc News crew has wanted to collect Jones' scalp. So they point to comments and replay them over and over. Not really anything he did, but things he said (ooh, he called Republicans assholes! What delicate sensibilities these chaps have), things he's signed. Although, I have to agree, this was certainly a mistake.

President Obama’s “green jobs czar” Van Jones has been targeted again and again by conservatives for his controversial views and now they’ll have another item to use as fodder.

Mr. Jones signed a statement for 911Truth.org in 2004 demanding an investigation into what the Bush Administration may have done that “deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

Jones has thus far apologized for prior statements and said he didn't agree "now or ever" with the 911 Truth letter. But if he has to leave his job at the White House, that will be the reason. And he absolutely made a mistake

But it brings up something interesting. There are now around a dozen Republican members of Congress who have co-sponsored legislation, essentially asking the President to reveal his birth certificate. The Birther phenomenon is at least as crazy and irresponsible as the Truther phenomenon. Why would it be OK to have 12 members of Congress who are conspiracy theorists, and not one in the White House? Now, the members of Congress would tell you they're not conspiracy theorists. So would Van Jones.

The range of debate that's acceptable and unacceptable keeps changing, somebody send me a scorecard.

Gonna Take More Than One Man Speaking Up

I'm going to hand it to Jon Henke and The Next Right for calling out the extremists in his midst:

In the 1960's, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being "so far removed from common sense" and later said "We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner."

The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet. The Right has mostly ignored these embarrassing people and organizations, but some people and organizations inexplicably choose to support WND through advertising and email list rental or other collaboration [...]

No respectable organization should support the kind of fringe idiocy that WND peddles. Those who do are not respectable.

I think it's time to find out what conservative/libertarian organizations support WND through advertising, list rental or other commercial collaboration (email me if you know of any), and boycott any of those organizations that will not renounce any further support for WorldNetDaily.

That's commendable and worth doing if reasonable Republicans want to save their party. Sadly it's probably too late. We've all seen the polling on the birthers, and how it's penetrated the Republican base. We've seen how politicians react to that base, getting more and more insane and radical. And now, Jon Henke has seen that the RNC values that insanity over reason:

After I argued that credible organizations on the Right should not support the conspiracy peddling of WorldNetDaily, it was pointed out that the RNC appears to have rented access to the WND email list. So I emailed the RNC to inquire about it and encourage them to stop.

My question was: "Is the RNC really renting the World Net Daily email list?" This was the response from the RNC Press Secretary:

Nice to meet you. Pls note that we have already weighed in on the birther issue -- weeks ago. Thanks.

The Press Secretary then appended a NYT story in which this was their response:

“Chairman Steele believes this is an unnecessary distraction and that the president is a U.S. citizen,” said Gail Gitcho, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. “He wants to move on and continue talking about real and immediate issues that are facing our nation, like health care and the economy. Chairman Steele has other issues to take up with the president having to do with policy, not a birth certificate.”

So, the sum total of the RNC's response was (a) Obama is "a U.S. citizen", but (b) we want to ignore this Birther story, (c) we're not saying whether or not we're working with the Birthers, and (d) we're just going to completely ignore the actual question you asked.

Also, World Net Daily readers called Henke a commie and a homo.

The right has gone over the moon. Because of how Washington and the media are wired, the true radicalism of their agenda isn't fully expressed. As John Cole said, the entire party has been taken over by crazy people.

Is the media turning against the right-wing astroturf mob?

First, I wanted to thank my good friend dday for giving me a guest gig on his site during his marital-bliss-induced absence, and join all of you in giving him my best wishes for married life.

With all due felicitations out of the way--to business.

It seems, finally, that after much harassment of Congressional Democrats trying to engage voters in healthcare town halls (see: Lloyd Doggett of Texas, an anonymous freshman physically assaulted, death threats against Congressman Brad Miller of North Carolina, and any other similar incident that has been written about or caught on video lately), it seems that the intentional astroturf strategy of disruption, "rattling" and artificial numbers inflation just might be wearing thin with people and journalists who actually think that there's some value to the Democratic process of actually having constituents be able to ask questions of their Representatives.

Even in more conservative papers.

I submit as evidence yesterday's coverage in the Napa Valley Register (California wine country):

Monday night’s health care forum in Napa grew unruly and wild, with some critics of the current health care proposals seeking to derail the event, harming their cause and nearly destroying a meaningful forum on a critical topic for Napa and the nation.

The display was unwelcome — and unsuccessful if it was meant to move health care reform supporters toward considering the concerns of the critics. Several callers to the Register on Tuesday reported they were repulsed by the aggressive tactics of some members of the crowd.
To the degree the catcalls, chants and shouts were organized — and it appears from events around the country that they were — we strongly suggest that the organizers find more constructive ways to get their message out.

...

Monday’s event was out of character for Napa County political clashes, even hotly contested ones. In our view, most politically active people here have better sense than to debase the debate that way.

Unbridled anger is not a substitute for intelligent discussion. Catcalls are not replacements for hard questions and criticism.

For health care reform critics or anyone in political life to get their message across effectively, our message is that they should choose a more substantive and respectful approach.

Keep in mind: the Napa Valley Register endorsed McCain. (h/t to Mark Kleiman on that one). The objective of the birthbaggers here was to force Democratic Congressman Mike Thompson underground in the same way that Brad Miller has now been restricted to holding no public town hall events and restricting access to one-on-one constituent meetings--and they have succeeded, to some degree: Rep. Thompson is now going to only hold telephone town halls.

This isn't a policy issue. Everyone has the right to show up and make their opinions known. In fact, I dare say that everyone should have the obligation to stand up and make their opinions known. This isn't about that. This is, instead, a concrete effort to make Democratic members of Congress actively fear for their safety so they will be unable to publicly promote the agenda of reform. This goes far beyond disagreement on issues: this is an overt challenge to the fundamental structure of democracy, which is based on the right to have access to one's Representatives.

Ultimately, of course, the blame for this lies with the leadership of the Conservative movement: Fox News and the entire AM dial. They are speaking to an increasingly shrinking base, but managing to convince that base that the Democratic healthcare plan will result in forced euthanasia--just like they believe that Orly Taitz has the original genuine Kenyan birth certificate, or just like Glenn Beck believes that the Cars for Clunkers program is just a tool to let the feds take over your computer. (Didn't know about that one? It's for real.)

The problem is that an increasingly small minority that is convinced that must fear for its very existence will, as a method of fighting for what it believes is its own survival, become increasingly violent. And if anyone gets hurt in these protests--and God forbid that mean that any elected official gets injured or worse--the blame will lie with those who filled the proverbial passion bucket of the right-wing extremist base to overflowing.

The Violence Of The Right

I had another appearance on NPR's Tell Me More with Michel Martin this morning. Could have went better (sorry, GONE better). I didn't get out that my opponent on the program, Vin Weber, is a lobbyist for the health care industry, though I did mention that his group Empower America was bought out by Freedom Works, who is orchestrating a lot of the teabagging protests you're seeing at town halls around the country. I got him to admit that the "Kill Grandma" euthanasia conspiracy theory is a complete falsehood, which was good.

Before my segment, Rep. Lloyd Doggett appeared on the show, and talked about the hooligans who descended on his town hall in Austin, Texas last weekend. He said that their extended sloganeering and disruption "symbolizes what the conservative movement is all about," and while there are also efforts ongoing in favor of health care reform, the "commercial media handmaidens" refuse to give them an equal amount of attention. And that's certainly true to an extent. I got an email from Organizing for America yesterday that touted 1 million people participating in some of their health care actions and discussed 5 concrete actions taken by people that were noteworthy:

• The newspaper in Exeter, NH is reporting that local supporters are canvassing everywhere to build support for reform: door-to-door, at farmers' markets, and at state fairs. The article quotes volunteer Dave Munsey as saying that 2008 "was probably the most important election of my lifetime. This is just an extension of that."

• Supporters in Florida held simultaneous press conferences outside of nine local Senate offices with doctors, small-business owners, and others, all telling their personal health care stories about why reform is so important to them.

• After a huge event in Wisconsin, hundreds of the participants headed to a nearby town hall event hosted by Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner to share their stories and urge him to stand with voters in support of reform.

• A host in Minnesota organized a barbeque for supporters to hear from speakers and write letters to their members of Congress. 1200 people joined in!

• Volunteer community organizers have participated in trainings in more than 13 states -- and 17 more are scheduled for the upcoming weeks.

Needless to say, none of these five events appeared on Hardball because nobody was shouting while wearing a bumper sticker on their head. And even people on the left wonder "Where is OFA? Where is HCAN?" Now, I think those groups should ditch the outside events and just work these same town halls, but the fact of the matter is that Republicans have always been, and for the near future always will be, skillful in getting their crap spun through the right-wing puke funnel and inserted into the media. We are good at responding most of the time - and finding smoking guns showing this to be lobbyist-coordinated astroturfing will help - but cable news producers will cover the conflict every time. Ultimately, nothing will stop Chris Matthews from airing a bunch of knuckleheads bused into a town hall meeting yelling while holding pitchforks, or whatever, and going on at length about how "it's like Tehran" and how this shows the passion on the right. And that perception will drive reality.

And so you have Michel Martin, after hearing Rep. Doggett talk about the corporate lobbyist-directed groups coming in and disrupting his town hall meetings, saying that they are "tapping into an ongoing anxiety" in the country. You have the New York Times, writing about these events, mentioning Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity without mentioning their founders (Congressman turned lobbyist Dick Armey, for example) and funders.

However, these may be organized attempts, but there's substantial opportunity for them to go way off the reservation. Doggett reports:

“If you look at the YouTube video, you can barely see in the edge of that a beautiful marble tombstone with my name on it,” Doggett) said. “People that worked so hard to get their signs in full-color did not come to dialogue. They came to be destructive.” Video of protesters confronting Mr. Specter and Ms. Sebelius in Philadelphia was also quickly posted to YouTube.

In this YouTube video of the Doggett riot you can see a sign with Nazi-style "SS" lettering on it.

It's ridiculous to suggest that this is some new-found passion on the right just bursting to the fore in reaction to a piece of legislation. These are the same people who crawled out from rocks and into Sarah Palin rallies last year, screaming that Obama was a terrorist and a Muslim. They are the Ron Paul supporters who chased Sean Hannity down the street when their candidate wasn't allowed in Fox News debates. They are the young conservatives who yelled "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go" back in 2005. They are that same set of anti-government, anti-social, anti-Obama types who have struck out with fury and not a little bit of menacing implied violence. They hung a Democratic congressman in effigy last week. They harass Republican representatives about the President's birth certificate. They are angry extremists, and it's fair to ask Republican leaders whether they support hanging Democrats, imagery of tombstones, birther fantasies, and the rest. This is not about policy. It's about incitement to violence.

The Demographic Futility Of The Birther Argument

It's true that Republicans have circled the wagons on the Birthers, and have begun to smack down on those questioning the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate and the whereabouts of his birth. But that doesn't really matter by now. It's "out there" and it's a powerful tool to designate the President as alien, the other, somehow unfit for the office of the Presidency, without the credentials to serve. That's the undercurrent to this, and I can quote The Poor Man Institute on this:

Lee Atwater on the crushing weight of political correctness and how it put a crimp in Republican Party messaging efforts:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

As always, necessity is the mother of invention. And hate springs eternal. And so on.

So in 2009, you say stuff like “where’s your birth certificate”? to the black guy with the funny name – no surprise that Andrew “Bell Curve” Sullivan and Lou “Dirty Meckscuns” Dobbs* are all over it. Pure coincidence, I’m sure. Though to be fair to Andy, he usually shows the same zeal if there’s misogyny* to partake in.

That's really it. And it is really done to reinforce this notion that the alien and the other are taking your money and using it for themselves. Conservatives think this is the way they can win the day, through tribal identification. And it works in the short-term. But the long-term demographic trends cut hard against their success in this matter. Right now we have an economic problem which will determine the course for Democrats in the near term. In the long-term, tribal appeals to racial solidarity will fall flat on their face.

...for those who want to believe that the fact we elected a biracial man to the Presidency means that racism has ended as a concern in the United States, I submit:

IT MAY BE the ultimate indignity.

Lawrence "Lonnie" Powell, 58, a semiskilled laborer at the city's Northwest Transfer Station, in Roxborough, said that since he began working at the trash-handling plant in 2003 he has had to seek the superintendent's permission to go to the bathroom — then descend five flights of stairs to use it.

Powell, who is black, said that white employees have been permitted to use a bathroom just 25 feet from his work station.

"On several occasions I've actually defecated on myself, trying to get down to the bathroom," said Powell, who operates a machine that packs trash into tractor-trailers to be taken to landfills.

Powell is one of five current and former employees, all in their 50s, who allege, in legal documents and interviews with the Daily News, that the station's white superintendent has discriminated against them because they are black.

This is in the same city where black children were asked to leave a white country club swimming pool a few weeks back.

You're Either With Us Or You're With The Birthers

Robert Gibbs actually got asked a question about the President's birth certificate in a press conference today.

For real.

Q: Is there anything you can say to make the birthers go away?

GIBBS: No. I mean, the God’s honest truth is no. I mean, Bill, let’s understand this. And I almost hate to indulge in such an august setting as the White House — and I mean this in seriousness — the White House briefing room, discussing the made-up, fictional nonsense of whether or not the President was born in this country.

A year and a half ago, I asked that the birth certificate be put on the Internet, because lord knows, if you’ve got a birth certificate and you put it on the Internet, what else could be the story? Here’s the deal, Bill. If I had some DNA, it wouldn’t assuage those who don’t believe he was born here. But I have news for them and for all of us. The President was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the 50th state of the greatest country on the face of the earth. He’s a citizen.

Gibbs went on to kind of blame "the Internet" for fanning the flames of the discussion, but you can look at media figures like Lou Dobbs and multiple conservative bretheren, who have given the story oxygen, as well as the failure of Republican members of Congress to forcefully denounce such nonsense. They should not be spared from the blame on this.



I think you have to hand it to Neil Abercrombie for forking Republicans on this by forcing them to vote on the record.

Dem Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii is going to introduce a resolution on the House floor today that seems designed to put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam.

The measure Abercrombie will introduce commemorates the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. But here’s the rub, his spokesman tells me: It describes Hawaii as Barack Obama’s birthplace.

“In the language of the resolution, there is a statement that Hawaii is the birthplace of the 44th President of the United States,” Abercrombie spokesman Dave Helfert confirms.

That confronts House GOPers with a choice: They can vote for the measure, and endorse the idea that Obama was born in Hawaii, which could earn the wrath of birthers. Or they can vote against commemorating the 50th state’s joining of our blessed Union. Or GOPers can skip the vote, but that could look nutty.

That's pretty brilliant strategy, shockingly so for a Democrat. Obviously this is a distraction, but if as Gibbs said it isn't going away, you might as well make Republicans feel some pain for it.

...Well, that's one way around it - getting Michelle Bachmann to use a procedural rule to postpone the vote. That won't hold forever, though.

...Bachmann couldn't hold out, and the verdict is 378-0. Not one Republican raising all these "questions" was honest enough to vote against a resolution stating that the President was born in Hawaii.

Privileging the Opposition

Howard Kurtz finally opened his trap about the Birther movement yesterday on CNN, actually appearing to understand the issue.

On his Reliable Sources show today, CNN’s Howard Kurtz criticized Dobbs and others in the media who have given airtime to the “fringe of the fringe” that is the “birther” crowd. “These are ludicrous claims, there is no factual basis for them,” said Kurtz. “Why give the birthers any airtime?” He then specifically criticized Dobbs for not acting “responsible”:

KURTZ: Callie Crossley, Lou Dobbs on his radio show said, “I believe the president is a citizen of the United States.” But he keeps raising these questions, complaining about criticism from “limp-minded, lily-livered lefties.” Is it responsible for Dobbs and others to go on the air, talk about these claims, demand proof, when we have seen a copy of the birth certificate? When Hawaii officials say that Barack Obama was born there in 1961?

CROSSLEY: It absolutely is not responsible.

"Giving airtime" is precisely the point. The news media, whether legitimizing the Birthers or disputing them, have paid far more attention to them than they ever did the 9-11 Truthers or any other crazy and actually irrelevant conspiracy theorists:

Ask yourself this: What would have happened if, in July of 2002, Lou Dobbs would have conducted respectful interviews with various Truthers, in the course of which Dobbs called on the Bush administration to prove by documentary evidence that the U.S. government hadn’t actually carried out the 9/11 attacks?

The answer is obvious: Dobbs would have been fired before the next morning—which is another way of saying that it’s inconceivable that he or any other mainstream media figure would ever do such a thing. Similarly, it’s equally inconceivable that any Democratic member of Congress would go on a program like Hardball and repeatedly refuse to say whether he rejected the idea that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks.

The short answer is that conservative media figures and politicians are essentially afraid of and courteous to the craziest part of their right-wing base, while liberal politicians hold them in contempt. This is true even in those cases where the "conspiracy" has a fair bit of evidence, say, in the stolen election in Florida in 2000.

I don't doubt that the Birther issue is a headache for the GOP, but they respond to it seriously, giving it some breathing space, rather than self-loathing Democrats like Collin Peterson, who are so contemptuous of their own citizens that they'd rather cancel all access to their constituents.

Out-party politicians have long had to deal with conspiracy theorists on their side — the people who think that the Clintons killed Vince Foster or that the Bush administration helped orchestrate the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Twenty-five percent of my people believe the Pentagon and Rumsfeld were responsible for taking the twin towers down,” said Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat who represents a conservative Republican district in Minnesota. “That’s why I don’t do town meetings.”

Now I don't want to get into an argument about which crazy conspiracy theorists get more respect from official discourse. But this doesn't stop there. It seeps into the mainstream in other ways, on other issues. The best recent example concerns Chris Matthews' harping on abortion funding in the health care bill based on 100% conservative framing, plucked out of The Weekly Standard (by his own admission):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is illustrative of the approach to the topic some have taken. Matthews, who acknowledges his approach to this topic has been shaped by the conservative Weekly Standard, has made his opposition to coverage for abortion clear, claiming President Obama "says they're going to reduce the number of abortions, and that same week he pushes to subsidize abortion? You can't do that."

On a recent Hardball, Matthews questioned Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch about the topic, asking leading questions that encouraged them to state their opposition to insurance coverage of abortion. But Matthews didn't ask them -- and hasn't asked any other guest -- one simple question: Why shouldn't abortions be covered, given that the procedure is legal? Nor has he asked if there are any other legal procedures that shouldn't be covered.

Instead, Matthews has adopted the premise that taxpayer funds shouldn't be used to pay for abortions, no matter how indirectly, because some taxpayers believe abortion to be immoral. On Wednesday's Hardball, for example, Matthews asked Obama adviser David Axelrod: "[I]f the federal government spends money on abortions, that means people who believe abortion is evil would be forced to have their tax money go to pay for abortions. How do you justify that?"

That premise is only superficially compelling, and has no business underlying an impartial news report. After all, millions of Americans believe the death penalty and wars of choice are immoral. But the moral beliefs of pacifists and death penalty opponents are not granted the privilege the media grants opposition to legal abortion -- and so you rarely see a news report premised on the idea that taxpayer funding for war or capital punishment is inappropriate.

How the Birther issue has been handled in Washington is a teachable moment, one that shows how the Beltway remains wired for conservatives, no matter how crazy.

CNN Could End The Birther Story Today

CNN is desperately trying to get themselves off the hook for Lou Dobbs' warm embrace of the Birthers. The President of the network declared the controversy "dead" today.

The website TVNewser reported today that Klein sent an e-mail to staffers of “Lou Dobbs Tonight” just as the program went to air, informing them that CNN researchers had determined that Hawaiian officials discarded all paper documents in 2001. A long-form birth certificate with details about the doctor who delivered Obama no longer exists, they reported. The shorter Certificate of Live Birth noting Obama’s birth on Aug. 4, 1961, that has been made public is the official record.

“It seems to definitively answer the question,” Klein wrote, according to TVNewser. “Since the show's mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead -- because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.”

If Klein really thinks that Dobbs will just drop everything now, he's kookier than Dobbs himself. And he also shouldn't believe that this is no longer a problem. The Southern Poverty Law Center has called for Dobbs' removal. That would be an actual way to end all the speculation on CNN about this.

This is not the first time Mr. Dobbs has pushed racist conspiracy theories or defamatory falsehoods about immigrants. We wrote you in 2007 to bring to your attention his utterly false claim that 7,000 new cases of leprosy had appeared in the United States in a recent three-year period, due at least in part to immigrants. (The real number, according to official statistics, was about 400. Mr. Dobbs took his spurious information from the late right-wing extremist, Madeleine Cosman.) In addition, Mr. Dobbs has reported as fact the so-called Aztlan conspiracy, which claims that undocumented Mexican immigrants are part of a plot to "reconquer" the American Southwest. He has suggested there is something to a related conspiracy theory that claims the governments of Mexico, the United States and Canada are secretly planning to merge into the "North American Union." He has falsely claimed that "illegal aliens" fill one third of American prison and jail cells. And Mr. Dobbs has routinely disparaged, on CNN's air, those who have had the integrity to point out the falsity of these and similar claims.

Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda. It's time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.

That would surely add to CNN's credibility.

...wow, forget whatever good things I said about Jon Klein.

Shiny Object

At a time where all the policy focus is on reforming health care for the first time in a generation, white reporters everywhere are obsessed with the story of a black man arrested in his own home for daring to be angry about it, and how terrible it was for the President to speak on behalf of those in such a circumstance. Similarly, while health care and urgent domestic issues demand attention, the wingnuts want to talk about Obama's birth certificate and some grand conspiracy to plant certificates of live birth in Hawaii and articles in the local paper 47 years ago in the hopes that later on a biracial kid growing up on the islands in the 1960s would fulfill the obvious goal of becoming President. G. Gordon Liddy was absurd and doddering last night on Hardball. He lied about a deposition from Obama's grandmother that the President was born in Kenya, a result of mistranslation. But you know what he did? He ate up five and a half minutes on prime time cable TV. I know that Chris Matthews was basically beating up on Liddy and the Birther movement in general. But that old saying about how there's no such thing as bad publicity? It's especially true when time is finite.

Bill Scher sees a linkage between those willing to believe the Birther nonsense and those willing to believe in the myth of socialized medicine in the Obama health care plan.

The Birther movement has received renewed attention in recent days, after video of a Birther-dominated congressional town hall surfaced, and CNN's Lou Dobbs attempted to legitimize the conspiracy theory.

Less noticed is the propensity of Birthers to also believe the other conservative conspiracy theory: President Obama's health care plan is a socialist takeover of our medical system.

The long-standing high-traffic conservative website World Net Daily regularly leads its front page with the latest Birther news, but that is directly followed by the latest "socialized medicine" news. (Well actually, sandwiched between the two sets of conspiracies are the all important "Special Offers!" -- such as "Turn $200 investment into $1 million. Sound impossible?")

Beneath its Birther fever swamp, World Net Daily offers the "Breaking News" that Congress plans mandatory "counseling" for seniors that will "attempt to convince seniors to die," (the latest smear job from the discredited Betsy McCaughey) and the "Exclusive" that congressional members have exempted themselves from the public plan option (it's so "exclusive" to WND because the opposite is true.)

And at that infamous town hall for (non-Birther) Rep. Michael Castle, the loud Birther crowd also gave cheers and applause to an audience member who ranted: "if we let the government bring in socialized medicine, it will destroy this thing faster than the twin towers came down.”

I just think it's about distraction. The Birther movement exists to rally a certain group of people and get the media chasing after them. It's a sideshow, and it makes for good TV. In the 1990s it was the murder of Vince Foster and a whole other lot of insane conspiracy theories. It made the more plausible but just as wrong conspiracy theories easier for the media to swallow. It's Overton Window stuff to the extreme. But in the short term, it just kicks the debate away from the focus sought by the White House and the majority of the country. The same with the Gates comments.

The media fail to see their role in all of this. They are not bystanders. They make editorial decisions to follow one story over another. They can devote resources wherever they choose. They could convene panels of health care policy experts and go over the issue that affects everyone's life in a visceral way. Or they could focus on the sideshow. They choose the latter, and that choice is not "driven by events," or whatever they would say to cover themselves.

...Howard Fineman, of all people, saying the same thing on Countdown. Of course, then he'll go on another MSNBC show and participate in the scrum.

A Lou Point In American History

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I wish Dave Neiwert wasn't on vacation from Crooks and Liars this week, because I'm sure he'd have a lot to say about the mainstreaming of the ginned-up Birther controversy, particularly by one of his favorite whipping boys, Lou Dobbs. In the interim we'll have to settle for Eric Boehlert:

If James von Brunn weren't in a locked security ward at Southeast General Hospital in Washington, D.C., and awaiting trial for the murder of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the 88-year-old racist and neo-Nazi might have taken comfort from listening to Lou Dobbs' syndicated radio show or watching Dobbs on CNN in recent days. Von Brunn would have likely felt some sense of affirmation from Dobbs, as the host began belatedly championing the cause of so-called "birthers," the angry band of right-wing conspiracy theorists who claim President Obama has not released a valid birth certificate and, in some cases, flat-out assert that he was not born in America and therefore is ineligible to be president of the United States. (Here's a good birther primer; here's the official right-wing defense of birthers.)

Had von Brunn been listening, Dobbs would likely have "spoken" to him. Just a few months before opening fire at the museum, von Brunn, apparently a proud birther himself, had done his best to spread the word online about Obama's illegitimate rule: "What is going on??? WHERE ARE THE GOOD PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY - ARE YOU OUT THERE???" [...]

Dobbs has certainly taken some heat for his recent birther turn. (He's "effectively destroying his career with this stuff," birther expert David Weigel wrote at The Washington Independent.) But there's more to this story than Dobbs. And the phenomenon in play isn't just about a birth certificate. And it's also not isolated or accidental.

Because, yes, viewed in a vacuum, the movement seems like the nutty fringe. But viewed in a larger historical context, birthers share obvious ties to traditional right-wing assaults on previous Democrats, and birthers have all the marks of a GOP Noise Machine creation. The movement is about a larger, more sinister attempt to paint Obama as illegitimate, foreign, and suspect (i.e. not like you and me). To portray him as "a gratuitous interloper," as radio host G. Gordon Liddy put it. As someone who isn't who he says he is. As -- let's face it -- the Manchurian Candidate, with all the evil connotations that come with it. ("WHO SENT YOU???" von Brunn demanded to know of Obama.)

And it's about the disturbing role media figures like Dobbs play when they act as the bridge -- as the transmitter -- between the radical and the mainstream. When they legitimize the craziness, if only in the eyes of the crazies themselves. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted this week, "The home run for conspiracists of any stripe is when their ideas can leave the lunatic fringe and enter the mainstream."

There's really only one degree of separation between Dobbs mainstreaming the Birther movement and pictures of Obama as an African witch doctor. The media, in large part, has condemned this nonsense - Chris Matthews shaming that old fool Gordon Liddy today was painful to watch - but those who give it succor it sustain an extremist fringe who want to alienate the President as "the other," as illegitimate, as illegal. It plays to the beliefs of anti-government types and militia members and a dangerous element in American society.

As for Dobbs, who James Rainey picks apart here, CNN has a choice to make. Its own hosts have debunked this myth over and over. The network purports to call itself "the most trusted name in news." They can prove it.

For all the network's efforts to characterize itself as the real, unbiased cable news outlet, it continues to give Lou Dobbs a high-profile platform for obvious, unsupported madness. It makes Dobbs look like a loon, but more important, it's a painful embarrassment to CNN.

A network spokesperson distanced CNN from Dobbs' crazed radio show, and told Rainey, "On CNN, Lou is an independent reporter who covers stories that people are talking about, and often showcases issues that aren't being covered by the mainstream media."

For a network that keeps giving very large paychecks to a television personality who is misleading its audience with transparent craziness, this explanation needs some work.

Lunatics

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Chris Matthews highlighted this nutcase birther at a town hall with Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), questioning Obama's citizenship and forcing a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. It's unfiltered crazy in action. In the 1990s, the media took these fringe scandals regarding Bill Clinton and gave them a platform and some credibility, seeping them into the mainstream. You can draw a through-line from the out-there lies of the extreme right like the alleged murder of Vince Foster and the Clinton impeachment. Some in the media, like Lou Dobbs, continue to do that today, legitimizing the birther movement. And several far-right Congressmen have co-sponsored a bill to require Presidential candidates to provide proof of US citizenship. Today on Hardball, Rep. John Campbell, who thinks Atlas Shrugged is non-fiction, tried to dodge the issue by claiming that this is merely a technical bill to ensure Presidents meet the requirements of office in some official capacity, but Matthews was having none of it. He called it a "crazy proposal" and tried to peg down Campbell on whether or not he believed Obama was an American citizen. It took him all of 10 minutes to finally say he believed Obama was.

MATTHEWS: Congressman, nice try. But what you're doing, it's a nice try, and I'm laughing with you only to this extent, because I know it's a nice try. What you're doing is appeasing the nutcases. As you've just pointed out, this won't prove or disprove whether Barack Obama's a citizen. By the way, let me show you his birth certificate. That's the way to deal with this. Mail this birth certificate to the whacko wing of your party, so they see it and say, "I agree with this, it's over." [...] you're verifying the paranoia out there. You're saying to the people, "That's right, it's a reasonable question whether he's a citizen or not."

Campbell squirmed and shuffled, first saying that Obama was an American citizen "as far as I know," (Matthews responded: "As far as you know? I'm showing you his birth certificate!") and then eventually saying "I believe he is."

Now, I don't remember Matthews being so insistent about "appeasing the nutcases" back in the 1990s, when he had Paula Jones on his shows, and Dan Burton, and the Arkansas State troopers, and every other two-bit huckster peddling juicy gossip about "Slick Willie." But clearly the atmosphere has changed, at least for Tweety. The birther movement has become a bridge too far.

It just shows you how diverged the conversations have become in this country. Democrats are debating how to tackle health care and whether a public option works best and how best to get costs under control, and the right has become fixated on the idea that Barack Obama's family faked his birth certificate 47 years ago, knowing he would run for President eventually and need a cover story.

Unified Field Theory of Crazy

I think that this ad does it. What a harmonic convergence!



They missed a chance to lump ACORN, Rev. Wright and Communist Cuba in there with Sotomayor and Bill Ayers, but this is really a fine start. Maybe they should start a groundswell for the Obama to nominate the birther who refused combat duty to Afghanistan because the President isn't a natural-born citizen for Secretary of Defense. That would complete the circle.

Better Wingnuts, Please

I understand the concept of the loyal opposition, and when my party was in that position I urged them to oppose a bit more. But I don't think it's in any way hypocritical to ask that, if Republicans must oppose, they can come up with better ideas than calling for a spending freeze at a time when only government is spending. I mean, Herbert Hoover wouldn't have gone this far.

And of course, this is at the level of the Minority Leader of the US House. The spiritual leader of the party is busy taunting that Ted Kennedy is about to die. And when you get into the individual wingnuts, you have the completely insane Birther faction.

A federal judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit questioning President Barack Obama's citizenship, lambasting the case as a waste of the court's time and suggesting the plaintiff's attorney may have to compensate the president's lawyer.

In an argument popular on the Internet and taken seriously practically nowhere else, Obama's critics argue he is ineligible to be president because he is not a "natural-born citizen" as the Constitution requires.

In response last summer, Obama's campaign posted his Hawaiian birth certificate on its Web site. But the lawsuit argues it is a fake and that Obama was actually born in his father's homeland of Kenya, even though Hawaiian officials have said the document is authentic.

"This case, if it were allowed to proceed, would deserve mention in one of those books that seek to prove that the law is foolish or that America has too many lawyers with not enough to do," U.S. District Judge James Robertson said in his written opinion.

I mean it. We need better wingnuts. The times are too challenging. Somebody take over the Republican Party. I beg of you.