DOWNLOADS: (1153)

PLAYS: (4136)

Embed

We hadn't heard all that much from the man who claimed that he met a demon once and helped perform an exorcism, but Governor Bobby Jindal is back in the news. He hasn't done nearly enough work to try and restore his popularity with the conservative movement after his disastrous SOTU rebuttal response, which embarrassed him and the GOP. He was once considered an up-and-coming GOP star who could run for president in 2012, but those hopes died fast. He received a lot of airtime during the BP oil spill crisis, and I heard many Republicans sounding like they feel a bit better about him after that. Well, this won't win him any more gold stars with the GOP, except for maybe a spot on the next Celebrity Apprentice.

NOLA

- Gov. Bobby Jindal would sign a bill requiring presidential candidates to provide a copy of their birth certificate to qualify for the Louisiana ballot if it reaches his desk, a spokesman said Monday.

"It's not part of our package, but if the Legislature passes it we'll sign it," press secretary Kyle Plotkin said.

House Bill 561 was filed last week by two Republican lawmakers. President Barack Obama's citizenship has been challenged by some groups, derisively called "birthers," despite numerous independent investigations finding that documents and contemporary news reports show that Obama was born in Hawaii.

The bill by state Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, and Sen. A.G. Crowe, R-Slidell, would require federal candidates who want to appear on Louisiana ballots to file an affidavit attesting to their citizenship, which would have to be accompanied by an "original or certified copy" of their birth certificate.

The requirement also would apply to candidates for U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives.

A similar bill was recently passed by the Arizona legislature.

Seabaugh, an attorney, said his bill was motivated by the numerous lawsuits that have been filed over Obama's citizenship. "Not one of them has ever been decided on the merits," Seabaugh said. "As an attorney, that's offensive to me."

You've really sunk pretty low if Jan Brewer looks like the adult in the Birther situation.

DOWNLOADS: (1071)

PLAYS: (1185)

Embed

Oy. Sarah Palin legitimizes the Birthers:

Transcript via Alex Koppelman at Salon:

HUMPHRIES: Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?

PALIN: Um, I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think enough members of the electorate still want answers.

HUMPHRIES: Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?

PALIN: I think it's a fair question, just like I think past associations, past voting records, all of that is fair game. You know, I gotta tell you, too, I think our campaign, the McCain-Palin campaign, didn't do a good enough job in that area. We didn't call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don't think that was fair to voters, to not have done our jobs as candidates and as a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we're seeing made manifest in the administration.

HUMPHRIES: I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama's past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?

PALIN: Hey, you know, that's a great point. That weird conspiracy theory freaky thing that people talk about, that Trig isn't my real son, a lot of people say, "Well, you need to produce his birth certificate, you need to prove that he's your kid," which we have done, but yeah, so maybe we should reverse that and use the same type of thinking on the other one.

Steve Benen is spot on:

That last point about the bizarre notion that Palin's son is not her son was especially odd. The former half-term governor seems to think questions about Trig's birth certificate are a "weird conspiracy theory freaky thing" -- she does have a way with words -- but instead of arguing that all of the nonsense be taken off the table for everyone, Palin wants to see "the same type of thinking" applied to the president.

Palin tried to walk this back on her Facebook page:

Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask... which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.

No, you just suggest that the people who are asking and suggesting this have good reasons to do so. In other words, you just legitimized a bunch of far-right fringe cases.

As Brian Levin put it at HuffPo:

While many are pondering what exactly Sarah Palin’s approving radio comments on the birther issue and her subsequent “clarification” mean to her possible 2012 run, there is a more fundamental question: what does this bode for our democracy? The answer is this is yet another indicator that extreme is the new mainstream.

[Larger version of image here.]

Red state GOP Congressmen returning home for the August recess will find two epidemics sweeping their districts, crises they seem intent on ignoring. The first is the plague that is the "birther movement," the apparently contagious delusion primarily afflicting Southern Republicans that President Obama was not born in the United States. The second is dismal health care. As it turns out, health care performance is worst in precisely those reddest of states which voted for George W. Bush and John McCain.

While even Karl Rove ridiculed the latest bogus Kenyan birth certificate as "likely a forgery," his red state acolytes remain unconvinced. In a jaw-dropping DailyKos/Research 2000 poll released last week, a stunning 58% of Republicans did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States. And to be sure, this is a uniquely Southern pathology, a region home to 69% of all birthers and not coincidentally the only part of the country to increase its Republican presidential vote in 2008.

But this disturbing denial of the indisputable truth of Obama's U.S. citizenship is far from the only sign of trouble in red state America. There, the health care systems are in critical condition.

A 2007 Commonwealth Fund report, "Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance," examined states' performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list in the chart above were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004. (8 voted for McCain in 2008.)

The extremes in health care performance are startling.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1291)

PLAYS: (5705)

Embed

I have to say this Birther movement is starting to get on my last nerve. Seriously, what more has to be done to get through their thick, dense skulls that Obama was born in the U.S.? And now, to add "credibility", they trot out G. (apparently for Geezer) Gordon Liddy--a convicted criminal, mind you--to express all the same ridiculous doubts ("That's not a birth certificate--it's a certificate of live birth!") and to assert that the "preponderance" of evidence (which is limited to his grandmother saying he was born in Kenya and the screaming mimis of some very unhinged people) suggests that he is, in fact, an illegal alien, and all the other evidence (the certificate of live birth, the birth announcement in the Honolulu papers, etc., the verification by state officials, the fact that courts have already thrown this ridiculous charge out, the fact that he was certified as a legitimate candidate for POTUS, etc.) entirely dismissable.

Chris Matthews ever-so-gently (perhaps in deference to the feeble appearance of Liddy?) smacks down the insane hate and logic spiraling out of control.

Media Matters looks at the nutwing conspiracists who should be relegated to the outer fringes of the national dialogue being instead mainstreamed by the likes of Lou Dobbs.

(photo courtesy of Democralypse New)

The ridiculous, fringe Birther conspiracy theory was dealt a big blow Monday, when the House unanimously passed a bill declaring Hawaii the birthplace of President Obama:

It would make some political sense for congressional Democrats to start pressing their Republican colleagues on the Birthers. If Republicans don't reject the conspiracy theories about President Obama's birthplace outright, their opponents can use it to paint them as extremists; if they do reject them, they might have a problem with their base.

Greg Sargent reported Monday that one House Democrat, Hawaii's Neil Abercrombie, was doing just that. Abercrombie, Sargent wrote, "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 resolution] 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." Read on...

The bill passed unanimously -- even the nutty Michelle Bachmann voted for it. So, how long will CNN continue to parrot Fox News and right wing clowns like Limbaugh and Beck in perpetuating this right wing myth? I guess as long as it gets ratings...