While they ruled out any chance of the “birther” lawsuits holding up in court, lawyers for the McCain campaign did check into the rumors about Obama’s birth and the assertions made by Berg and others. “To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations,” said Potter. “We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance.”
I feel fairly confident had Obama’s citizenship and eligibility for President been at all questionable, the McCain campaign would have used anything they could have found. I suspect Hillary would have as well. Good on them for saying they looked into it, not that it will stop the “birthers” from continuing to go on and on forever. Birthers are insane, and I find them worrisome. Sure, they are a small minority, but they are loud, aggressive, and not in their right mind, much like a cornered raccoon with rabies.
The article in the The Washington Independent does a good job of rounding up all the birthers various beliefs and explaining how out there these people are without ever actually calling them insane. But they are insane. Totally disconnected from reality … and on a mission.
Normally, the substrata of dumb, therefore poor, therefore resentful Anglo-Saxonized males in this country are co-opted by beer and sports; these aren’t normal times. A half-black man in the White House and high unemployment provide the nuts all the confused rationale they need to act on their cockamamie conspiracy fantasies. These are the same people who think the IRS is persecuting them, that think their dumbness can be cured by Focus Factor, that they can patent some idiot ‘idea for industry,’ and that are the targets for every other AM radio scam. Their behavior stems from a sense of white privilege and the everyday shame of not achieving the material wealth they think should come with that privilege. In other cultures shame-driven behavior is usually tied to some notion of honor; here it’s all money-based. The immigrant kills his wife and kids because he doesn’t like them ‘acting American;’ an American kills them because he can not act American, that is, earn enough to support them.