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Archive | July, 2009

Obama birth poll shows striking regional divide

By on July 31, 2009 in Birth Location, Birthers, Polls

“Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America
or not?”

A poll conducted for the Daily KOS (and this is a real poll,  not one of those unscientific citizen grand jury polls) asked the simple question: “Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?” The results were incredible:

Daily KOS Birther Poll Results

Daily KOS Birther Poll Results

Graphic source: The Washington Monthly.

In most of the country, denialists are in the fringe, but in the South, the view is almost mainstream. Continue Reading →

Ron Polarik identified?

By on July 29, 2009 in Philip Berg, Ron Polarik

The Barackyphal Blog claims to have identified the figure behind Ron Polarik as Dr. Ronald Polland.  What is remarkable, if this identification is true, is that the man behind the Ron Polarik mask really does have a PhD in Instructional Systems, albeit no credentials in computer imaging (which anyone who had the stomach to wade through his “analysis” knows).

I was all over Florida State graduates in Instructional Systems half a year ago, but somehow I didn’t find the fellow. I could kick myself!

Now if we could just prove that this fellow is a descendant of the Bulgarian financier Petko Strashnika, the identification would be cemented.

Here is the latest rant from Polarik in a post titled “We were warned…” over at the Free Republic site.

Update:

It appears that lawyer Phil Berg has confirmed the identification.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17882344/ZLiberiltrtoJudgeRobrenoreInjunction073009-73009

Further evidence Polarik is Polland!

With this additional information, I believe the Polarik/Polland association is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

I have said many times in private that whoever outed Ron Polarik would be doing a tremendous service to the United States. Huge thanks to Loren at the Barackryphal blog for this.

Update:

Aha! The Bulgarian is Polland’s wife. So we come full circle.

I think Loren should be voted man of the year.!

Orly TV

By on July 29, 2009 in Orly Taitz
Orly Taitz

Orly Taitz

Orly Taitz, lawyer, dentist and taekwando master, appeared on The Colbert Report this evening on the Comedy Channel.

It was a a rather long segment on the birther movement, topped off with the Taitz interview. When asked by Colbert, “what would satisfy you” she replied nothing, unless Barack Obama’s father came out of the grave and was made a citizen post mortem [you couldn’t make this stuff up].

Violence threatened against the “usurper”.

By on July 28, 2009 in Lounge, Threats

I was literally shocked when I read this threat yesterday:

… a question which has already diffused throughout America anxiety and alarm; a question on the decision of which depends not only the peace of the nation, but the existence of the Union….

But if, disregarding the popular will and also violating the Constitution, Congress …peace and union are driven from the land…. The usurpation … will be instantly and firmly repelled. The government will be at an end.”…

Threats were openly made that [the] President ,…would be assassinated.

Those were comments from a Republican newspaper, circa 1800, regarding the presidential election. Republicans were whipped into a rage, declaring that if Aaron Burr were elected president by the House, they would march to Washington, suspend the Constitution and replace it with one of their own liking. Republicans were very much states rights extremists in those days. I do not know which was more viscerally hated by the opposite party, George Washington or George W. Bush.

Jefferson was elected after scores of ballots instead of Burr and civil war was averted. But the anger, the willingness to destroy the constitution to satisfy the taste of blood in the mouths of the denialists, the slander, the lies, the propaganda–they are not much different today than from when our country was founded.

Anger

By on July 28, 2009 in Lounge
Dr. Conspiracy

Dr. Conspiracy

When I read Dr. Fukino’s statement in the Hawaii Advertiser, I could almost feel how angry it would make the denialists. I also read a touch of anger in Fukino’s statement–she must  be certainly way past fed up with the whole business.

All of the speculation about foreign registrations under Hawaiian law 337-17.8 and the theories about secret meaning in Fukino’s official statements last October were trashed. The director of the State Department of Health said plainly that Obama was born in Hawaii. For those who have been struggling to gain mind share over the Internet, this must be devastating. Most people still befuddled by birther misinformation will fold up their tents and go home, leaving no one but the hard core Obama haters.

Add to that a week full of media coverage, almost universally negative, with even conservative outlets like Fox News calling the whole business crazy. Even the bastion of conservative intellectual thought, the National Review said: “… this theory is based on unreality, as two minutes’ examining the claims of its proponents reveals.”

Then there was the gratuitous end to Fukino’s statement that Obama is a “natural born citizen”. I can hear them yelling, “HOW DARE SHE! Who is SHE to say who is a natural born citizen?” (The white supremacists may have added a few other choice words in place of “she”.) But who are folks like Orly Taitz and Mario Apuzzo to say that he is not? She is only saying what judges and US attorney generals have said for years. But how arrogant that must have sounded to those whose own unbounded arrogance causes them to ignore mountains of legal opinion and claim that they alone know how to interpret the US Constitution.

No, it has not been a good week to be an Obama eligibility denialist. They must be pretty angry and I understand why.

The “long form” exists!

By on July 28, 2009 in Birth Certificate
Janice Okubo

Janice Okubo

“We don’t destroy vital records”

According to Hawaii Department of Health spokesperson Janice Okubo, original birth documents were not destroyed when the Department went paperless:

“We don’t destroy vital records,” Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said. “That’s our whole job, to maintain and retain vital records.

…In 2001, Hawai’i’s paper documents were reproduced in electronic format but “any paper data prior to that still exists,” Health Department spokeswoman Okubo said.

Honolulu Advertiser 7/28/2009

This is no surprise to Obama Conspiracy Theories, although definitive evidence was lacking until today. Good business practices dictate that the originals would have been retained. Birth certificate negative images, similar to those 1961 certificates (issued in 1966) attached to the article, had led Obama Conspiracy Theories to the opinion that the records had been microfilmed at some point, and that the original paper documents were not in regular business use. An earlier report attributed to Jon Klein of CNN that the paper documents had been destroyed is in error.

Referring to the current Certification of Live Birth form, Okubo said:

“Our Certificate of Live Birth is the standard form, which was modeled after national standards that are acceptable by federal agencies and organizations,” Okubo said. “With that form, you can get your passport or your soccer registration or your driver’s license.”