Thursday, April 21, 2011

USA TODAY DRINKS THE OBAMA KOOL-AID...THIS REALLY IS A PATHETIC ARGUMENT...

Our view: 'Birther' Trump revives dumbest political fight

Some segment of the population is always ready to believe just about anything.
Six percent of Americans believe the government faked the historic 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, according to a 1999 Gallup poll. There's the lingering theory that the 9/11 attack was an inside job by the Bush administration to provide a pretext for going to war in Iraq. According to various polls, 4% of Americans believe in the existence of vampires and 34% in the existence of ghosts. The Loch Ness monster has its believers, and yes, there are still people who believe that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a plot by the CIA, big business and/or assorted other villains. It must be true, right? Oliver Stone made a movie about it.

Which brings us to real estate mogul Donald Trump, who has single-handedly reinvigorated the crackpot theory that President Obama might not have been born in the U.S. Trump has been peddling this nonsense on TV in recent weeks to get attention for his presidential ambitions, catapulting himself to the top of the GOP heap in some polls. Trump even added his own twist: He has “people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding.” Of course, he hasn’t said what those findings are. A master illusionist knows that a little mystery helps suck in his audience.

In a perfect world, Trump’s antics wouldn’t draw a shred of attention, but because he’s attracting cameras anyway, let’s revisit the well-worn facts that “birthers” are so determined to ignore.
Here goes:
In June 2008, candidate Obama put pictures of his certification of live birth from the Hawaiian government on a website, Fightthesmears.com, to debunk the early birther suspicions. After conservative bloggers blasted it as a fake, Factcheck.org, a non-partisan news organization, examined it and found it had an embossed seal, a stamp on the back attesting to its authenticity and met State Department requirements to obtain a passport. It's what any citizen would get if he sought his birth certificate from Hawaii.

Not enough proof? OK. In October 2008, Hawaii's director of health stated in writing that he and the Registrar of Vital Statistics had looked at and verified that the state “has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record.” The officials worked for Hawaii's Republican governor, who also pronounced that Obama was born there.

Need more? Two Honolulu newspapers ran announcements of Obama's birth on Aug. 4, 1961, just days after he was born. They were placed by the state health department.
So as others have pointed out, in order to doubt that Hawaii was Obama's birthplace, you'd have to believe that in 1961, state officials and Honolulu's two newspapers conspired to fake a baby’s birth, knowing that someday he might run for president.
The best that can be said of Trump's ravings, which he is now trying to blame on the news media, is that they've prompted some serious Republicans to speak out, including two prospective presidential candidates, former governors Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Better late than never. As GOP strategist Karl Rove told Fox News last Friday, Trump’s claims put him “off there in the nutty right.”
Indeed. Pandering to conspiracy theorists is a mighty strange way to convince people that you have the chops to be president.

TRUMP'S VIEW: Obama, come clean


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