President Obama Hands Out "Long Form" Birth Certificate

From Politico, via the Guardian's live blog:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/apr/27/barack-obama-birth-certificate-statement

Those goalposts must have some good wheels on them. They do move awfully fast.

 

Is he still black? Does he still have a funny-sounding name? Then the birthers aren't going to be satisfied. Let's not dance around the issue here.

It's not about openness, or transparency, or any of that bullshit. It's about one thing, and one thing only. Always has been, and will continue to be until Jan. 20, 2017.

 

Consensus on the wingnut Web sites: It's a fake.

Evidence: Something about proof that it is "superimposed" on something or another.

Evidence: His father would have been called a "Negro," not an "African," in 1961.

I'd love to see a poll about two weeks from now about the birthplace question. I bet the needle will barely move.

 

It's never about race!

 

As if we needed evidence of the strain of racism going through the birther movement.

So now we'll be subjected to the veiled (and not-so-veiled) racism that this Negro isn't in our place instead of "his place" because of affirmative action and all the breaks you get in this country for being black, because being black in this country has always been so fucking easy. Not all birthers are racists, I'm sure. But the fact that the crazee has jumped from "he's not from here!" to "he got breaks because he's black!" shows you how big a part race plays in it.

By the way, we've had a president in recent memory who had middling grades at a school beyond his reach, who got strings pulled on his behalf every step on his way up. I believe it was the guy Obama replaced.

 

Re: Obama's transcripts. IIRC, W's transcripts showed him to have been a significantly better academic performer at Yale than Kerry (who, as I recall, was in no big hurry to release his transcripts). Don't get me wrong, I put no stock in any of this stuff. I barely graduated from college -- one more D there at the end and I might have had to stick around another semester -- but that has little to do with who I am now that I'm in my prime presidential (riiiiight) years.

I think it is the case, however, that academic cred is more important to lefties than it is to righties. Read a legit bio on RFK, for example, and he barely got in (and through) UVA law school. Yet his posse routinely talks about how his adult, political self, was informed by heavy-duty intellectualism. Maybe that's true. Or maybe it's the case that a successful politician has a knack for getting his/her supporters to project their ideals onto him/her.

 

It was actually Tommy Tuberville who forced Obama's hand: http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/video-tuberville-picked-wrong-day-to-be-birther-29659

 

Time out. I didn't post that as any kind of criticism of Dick or of Obama.

I only meant to point out that even the guy who was praising him for being brilliant also chose to highlight the fact that he also African-American in describing why he was "bigger than a law student."

I didn't say it. David Goldberg did. Whether it's Joe Biden raving about how "clean" he is, many people are charmed by Obama, and for some of them his race plays a factor.

I'm not even sure there's anything wrong with that.

But, if you're trying to swat away "affirmative action" accusations, then a quote highlighting the effect his race had on people probably doesn't help as much as you might think.

As I said, while Dick highlighted the "brilliant" part of that statement, others would stake their claim on the fact that he also specifically mentioned his race as a factor. So, in other hands, the quote can play differently.

 

When I think Havard the first thing I think of is: Haven for the black sons of teen-age single mothers.

 

I'm not sure what any of that answered, YF.

I asked if you're saying a college transcript is more important than a criminal record in judging a presidential candidate.

 

There are libraries full of sociology research demonstrating that when people who believe falsehoods, especially conspiratorial ones, are confronted with documentary evidence proving their beliefs wrong, their reaction is to believe the falsehoods even more strongly.
Nothing will change. A large subset of the U.S. population is ignorant, paranoid and proud of both.

 

This sums things up well. It was pointless for Obama to do this, as those who believe the birther crap will continue to do so, evidence be damned.