World Net Daily has done it! They've finally proven that President Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya:

The document lists Obama's parents as Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Obama, formerly Stanley Ann Dunham, the birth date as Aug. 4, 1961, and the hospital of birth as Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. Read on...

There's just one teensy little problem here -- The Republic of Kenya didn't exist until 1964 -- three years after Obama's birth. Right wing blog Little Green Footballs is calling this a hoax, but leave it to the nutbags at Free Republic to take the debunked myth to a whole new level. See, the whole thing ties into the divorce of President Obama's parents!

Judge Samuel P. King who granted the divorce – last I heard was retired and alive (for now) in his 90s in Hawaii -- MAY or MAY NOT have asked to see the Marriage Certificate. BUT, I bet Judge King asked to see Obama JR's Birth Certificate to confirm Ann's claims that Obama SR was in fact the father. That is “standard” policy to have a Birth Certificate in case the mother asks for child support from the father (or Welfare) later after the divorce. Judge King probably told Ann to produce a birth certificate before or at trial, which would have been sometime in mid- to late-February 1964 HAD Obama SR answered his notice that was sent to Cambridge.

When Judge King wrote the order on Jan. 23, he had his clerk notify Obama SR via what's referred to as a "knock and nail". That is, the postman leaves the notification on the door for (generally) 10 days and retrieves it after that time passes -- signed or unsigned. That order was sent on Jan. 23 via airmail from Hawaii and was probably posted on Obama SR's door Jan. 27-28. Read on...

Nevermind the fact that Barack Obama's birth announcement appeared in two Hawaiian newspapers in 1961. Hell, even Karl Rove says it's likely a forgery. You can be sure the Fox News gang will be running with this story, but will CNN's Lou Dobbs continue to go down the Birther path that's killing his ratings and embarrassing the entire network?

Wait, isn't President Obama the Antichrist? My brain hurts. If I could speak directly to every Birther face to face, this is what I would say.

Naughty, naughty, naughty. Using a faked memo to catapult your propaganda? Smells of desperation:

The memo, first reported by Politico and Big Government and pushed hard by Drudge, allegedly shows the Dem leadership telling rank and file Dems to stay hush-hush about a scheme for a “doc fix” later this year that, in essence, would make the bill’s deficit-reduction meaningless.

After Dems alleged to TPM that the memo is fake, Politico pulled down the story.

The memo, however, was pushed to some reporters by the office of GOP leader John Boehner. A source forwards an email sent at 12:58 PM by Boehner spokesman Michael Steel to The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward and other reporters, with the original memo attached.

“Folks — Please read the attached draft memo addressed to `Democratic Health and Communications Staff,’ Steel wrote. “It makes it clear that Democrats want to avoid discussing issues related to the CBO score of their latest government takeover legislation because their claims don’t pass the straight face test.”

Asked for comment, Steel would only say: “Will the Democrats do the `doc fix’? If they will, they are low-balling the cost of health care by hundreds of billions of dollars.”

The Republicans continued to insist that the memo was never proven to be faked, but Dave Weigel picks up the story here:

(T)wo hours after the story went up, TPM reported that Democrats were calling the memo a “hoax,” and Politico pulled the story. At a 3:30 press conference called “to highlight the concerns over the Democrats’ budget gimmick to temporarily exclude a $371 billion ‘Doc Fix’ from the health reform bill,” Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) quickly dismissed the memo.

“Look,” said Cantor, “the appropriate question there is, ask the reporter who wrote the article. I know nothing beyond what I read in Politico.” The “real hoax,” he said, was on “the American people.”

Ryan was even quicker on the dismissal. “Who cares who wrote the memo?” he asked.

Of course? Who cares if it was faked? A spokesperson for the House Leadership released the following statement:

Opponents of health reform can’t win on the merits of

their arguments so they must stoop to acts of desperation to deny

Americans an honest and truthful debate. The latest examples of this

came today with the maligning of Democratic Members on the House

Floor, and the circulation of an apparently fraudulent memo that was

falsely attributed to Democratic staffers. These two incidents are

exhibits Y and Z in a long line of evidence showing that opponents of

health reform will do anything and say anything to stand in the way.

Republican leaders have said they will do anything to stop this bill,

but no matter what they do, Democrats will continue working to deliver

affordable health care for America's middle class.

Fakery and desperation are no reasons to not try to fundraise off the fear-mongering, right, David Vitter?

And as a breath of fresh air in the stagnant cesspool of lies and deceptions propagated by the GOP, comes Rep. Anthony Wiener.

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Just a helpful hint for you Republicans: I'd make sure that Anthony Weiner isn't in the room before reading a hoax memo as if it were real.

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Yesterday on Fox News' News Watch program, they teased the above segment by asking the audience: "Why are the liberal media so dismissive to global warming skeptics?"

During the segment itself, host Jon Scott replayed "liberals" like Chris Matthews poking fun at various conservatives who, during the week, attempted to claim that this week's East Coast blizzards were proof that global warming is a hoax. Of course, as it so happens, that was one of the chief talking points all week long for Fox anchors.

Then Scott posed the question to Kirsten Powers:

Scott: Why is it, Kirsten, that you can't be a skeptic about global warming and do it publicly?

Powers responded with some blather about how journalists weren't skeptical enough themselves, and James "Willie Horton's Daddy" Pinkerton predictably chimed in with right-wing talking points about how global warming theory is like a religion. It took Ellis Henican to bring some sanity to the conversation, pointing out that one week of weather does not affect the science of climate, which by definition is something that occurs over many years.

We could answer Scott even more succinctly: No serious skeptic of global warming would try to argue that these storms disprove global-warming theories (as a matter of fact, they tend to confirm the existing models, as we noted previously).

The only people who would try to claim that are clowns -- partisan hacks looking to score cheap political points by promoting and playing a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of climate change.

Oh shoot! We totally forgot! Hilarity via the wonderful Guys from Area 51.

Open thread below...

(photo courtesy of AP)

Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe is the Grand Poobah of right wing nutjobs in the Senate, and is probably the leading Global Warming denier on Capitol Hill. On Friday, he proved yet again why he is nothing short of an embarrassment to the United States. Using taxpayer money he flew to Copenhagen with no schedule, no plans or arrangements made, and did little more than put on a right wing sideshow for anyone who would listen. He found the European press a little less accommodating than the media lap dogs here in the good old USA:

COPENHAGEN — Sen. Jim Inhofe flew across the Atlantic and — on little sleep — braved the snow, the cold and the dark to deliver his skeptical message at the international climate conference.

What he found when he got here: a few aides and a single reporter.

“I think he’s going to be a little disappointed,” one of his aides remarked.

When he was finally able to find a few reporters to listen to him, he went full on lunatic fringe:

“We in the United States owe it to the 191 countries to be well-informed and know what the intentions of the United States are. The United States is not going to pass a cap and trade,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”

A reporter asked: “If there’s a hoax, then who’s putting on this hoax, and what’s the motive?”

“It started in the United Nations,” Inhofe said, “and the ones in the United States who really grab ahold of this is the Hollywood elite.”

One reporter asked Inhofe if he was referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another reporter — this one from Der Spiegel — told the senator: “You’re ridiculous.” Read on...

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The right wingers are pulling out all the rhetorical stops in trying to pretend that global warming is all just a hoax cooked up by Marxist ideologues. Take, for instance, Bill Bennett last night on Sean Hannity's show:

Bennett: It's amazing, you know -- the power of ideology to blind people to reality. You've got this Russian report that you cited -- you know, this thing is falling apart. You had the stuff out of East Anglia University -- I mean, this is reminiscent of the old alchemy, and phrenology stuff.

I mean, this, this -- there's so much junk, so much corruption in the fact that we would fork over a hundred billion dollars. Plus I think the biggest event at Copenhagen was the standing, thunderous standing ovation to Hugo Chavez when he condemned capitalism. That tells you really what that meeting is all about, it seems to me.

Hannity: That's what I want to get to. If we look at the ClimateGate scandal, coupled with what you just pointed out, we've pointed out, about this Russian climate center, what they had to say, there's another agenda. Why would a scientist -- and I have really not gotten a satisfactory answer from anybody -- why would scientists risk their careers and their reputations to lie and manipulate data if there wasn't some agenda? And if they are, and there is an agenda, what is it?

Bennett: Yeah, well, take a look at Soviet psychiatry under Stalin, take a look at various kinds of medical, quote, science under Hitler, and you'll again see the power of ideology to bend men to their, to the ways of the dictator.

You know, I remember reading that biography of Einstein. There's a list of all the scientists who were driven out of Germany by Hitler because of his crazy policies. It's the world's roster of greatest scientists. That's what's happening here. You're getting some of the best people in the world questioning what is going on in this supposedly accepted wisdom, and the thing's falling apart.

Really? A minor dustup among a handful of e-mails is just like Hitler's persecution of the Jews within the German scientific community? Climate scientists are acting like Nazi medical experimenters? Climate science is just like phrenology? Global warming is about bending us to the will exactly which dictator?

Christ on a crutch, get a grip, people. Or at least some tiny bit of perspective.

Hannity has been out leading the parade in trying to make global warming out to be a hoax. And he's obviously pulling out all the stops.

Bennett is right about one thing, though: This situation does indeed powerfully illustrate "the power of ideology to blind people to reality." Just not the way he thinks it does.

Or as the Pat Bagley cartoon put it:

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I won't be posting too much this week, but this clip was so outrageous I had to try and write something. Joe Lieberman was on Andrea Mitchell and he announced like the pompous ass he is that Joe Lieberman categorically is opposed to the public option for health care.

And his major reason is because the votes aren't there. First of all, that's a crock. President Obama only needs 51 votes, so please, let's get rid of that talking point. It's only cowards like Holy Joe and the rest of the mealymouthed Dmes who are trying to sell us all down the river.

But the biggest hoax being foisted on Americans is the claim that a public option would destroy the health-care industry and we can't have that. If the health-care industry or HIC (Health Industrial Complex), as we call it, is so frakkin' wonderful, then what are they afraid of, and why is it a nightmare?

Also, Holy Joe like the Mad Twitterer (Grassley) say that there already is competition in the HIC because there are like three hundred and fifty companies already. Doesn't that tell these bozos that something is wrong if there are so many health-insurance providers and health care in America is this screwed up? If freaks like Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, and Joe Lieberman -- just to name a few -- were being honest, they would stop with the word games and do what's right for the American people.

Lieberman: Yea, I'm a against it because I think, two reasons. One is I'm fearful that at a time that we're spending too much here in Washington and going much too deeply in debt that a public option on health care no matter how you structure it will end up costing the taxpayers money. We don't need it.

There's more than three hundred and fifty companies, maybe more than that selling health insurance, there's going to be a lot of competition for health insurance once universal health insurance comes and the third and probably the most important, the votes are not there for a public health plan, government run option and this can stand in the way of a historic achievement for President Obama, Congress and the American people which is really to establish a universal access to quality, affordable health care plan in America so I think as this goes on, there gotta be compromises on this if we want to do what I think the people want us to do.

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First Rep. Virginia Foxx called Matthew Shepard's murder a 'hoax'. Then, she turned around and issued a non-apology apology:

I am especially sorry if his grieving family was offended by my statement. I was referring to a 2004 ABC News 20/20 report on Mr. Shepard's death. ABC's 20/20 report questioned the motivation of those responsible for his death. Referencing this media account may have been a mistake, but it was a mistake based on what I believed were reliable accounts.

But it wasn't a reliable account -- a fact that is obviously not well enough known, but still isn't any kind of excuse for uttering that kind of smear. And that's the problem. She spread a lie, a harmful, ugly lie, about Matt Shepard on the floor of the Congress, and she has never made plain to the public that it was a lie.

So you can't really blame Judy Shepard, Matthew's mother, for declining to accept: "She's apologizing for semantics."

Yesterday she tried again, and failed just as miserably to actually own up to the problem:

“In the heat of trying to handle the rule on the floor, anybody can use a bad choice of words. Saying that the event was a hoax was a poor choice of words,” Foxx said. “I’ve apologized for that. I never meant in any way to harm the family or offend the family or anybody else for that matter.”

“The term ‘hoax’ was a poor choice of words used in the discussion of the hate-crimes bill,” Foxx said in a statement. “Mr. Shepard’s death was nothing less than a tragedy, and those responsible for his death certainly deserved the punishment they received.”

As David Badash at the New Civil Rights Movement acutely observes:

Foxx’s newest “apology” demonstrates her lack of understanding of the basic issue confronting her: She lied about why Matthew Shepard was killed, and maligned the memory of a 21 year-old college student who, to the world, has become the face of a hate crime victim.

... One non-apology is bad, two demonstrates not only a lack of remorse or decency, but a total lack of understanding of the important and sensitive issues that confront our country.

You see, that ABC News report, by Elizabeth Vargas, was debunked at the time as a journalistic atrocity:

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