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Orly Taitz: Tea Party v. Twittergate

By on February 5, 2013 in Orly Taitz, Social Media, Tea Party

Orly Taitz demonstrates in her article, “Tea Party United is planning a rally in front of the Federal building in Sacramento, protesting the fact that court is not issuing a default judgment against Obama in Grinols v Electoral college, as Obama was sued as an individual, as a candidate for office, he did not furnish an answer and is currently in default. Tea party patriots are planning similar rallies in front of the 5th circuit court of Appeals, where the court is just sitting on the emergency motion to expedite a default judgment against the Commissioner of the Sociala (sic) Security Michael Astrue for his default in Taitz v Democratic party, dealing with Obama’s use of forged IDs and a stolen CT SSN [redacted, Doc],” just how big WordPress titles can get!

The rally is scheduled for 11 AM on Thursday (which particular Thursday is not specified).

Dr. Conspiracy Twitter pageOrly also cites an Examiner article saying that 70% of Obama’s Twitter followers are fake. Well, I’m not an Obama Twitter follower, so maybe I’m not a fake. Examiner got it’s story from the New York Times, making it more interesting. Apparently the practice of buying Twitter followers is real, although there is some question as to whether the tool that checks for fake followers gives accurate results.

However, the Fake Follower Check does not really say 70% of Obama’s followers are fake; the site, statuspeople.com, actually showed 30% fake, 39% inactive and 31% good. So I asked the site about MY Twitter followers. I’ve never bought a Twitter follower, and I can’t see that anyone else would have either. It said 6% fake, 23% inactive and 71% good. (I have 349 followers for what that’s worth.)

Surprise! Tea Party event flops

By on September 10, 2012 in Birthers, Joe Arpaio, Tea Party, Terry Lakin

The Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots report that the birther celebrity event organized by the Surprise Tea Party, featuring Sheriff Joe Arpaio, singer Pat Boone and disgraced Army doctor birther Terry Lakin. has been canceled due to inadequate sales of the modestly-priced $10 tickets. Unlike the canceled Birther Summit, refunds are being issued.

Read more at the Phoenix New Times blog.

I think there’s something to be learned here, but I’m not exactly sure what it is. Birther public events flop. We have Carl Swensson’s march on the Atlanta capitol with maybe a dozen folks showing up. There was Berg’s big fling in DC that garnered a handful of curiosity seekers. The “King of the Birthers” Andy Martin maybe filled up a hotel room – two single beds. The Orly Taitz/Pastor Manning protest of Fox News in New York was a bust.

Birthers just don’t show up. I don’t know whether they are afraid that Obama will get them, or that there really aren’t more than a handful of committed (or maybe “not yet committed”) members of the birther movement. The number of people who watched the various birther court appearances were in the tens of thousands, but we don’t know if these were birthers or anti-birthers. Maybe birthers are too anti-social to congregate (this actually makes sense). Maybe most of the birthers are really institutionalized and can’t travel. Maybe the number of serious birthers is wildly overrated and birtherism is a web-only movement.

What is the birther movement?

By on January 22, 2012 in Birthers, Orly Taitz, Tea Party

I was driving this morning when that question came to mind: exactly what is the birther movement (BM)? I mean, what kind of movement is it?

This afternoon, I was reading an article by Dean Haskins over at The Birther Summit and noted where he said about the BM:

If I am to be “blamed” for telling the truth, then so be it. I suppose there will always be those who believe that Orly is the face of our movement, and I’m sure they now believe I am the movement’s ass.

I feel a little sorry for Haskins, who had the honesty and the integrity to point out that the Queen has no clothes when it comes to legal competence, and got dumped on by the BM for daring to criticize Taitz in public.

Continue Reading →

Arpaio defends birther posse

By on September 29, 2011 in Birthers, Jerome Corsi, Joe Arpaio, Tea Party, Videos

In an interview with Phoenix TV station KNXV, Sheriff Joe Arpaio defends his action in appointing a posse to investigate Tea Party allegations that Barack Obama committed election fraud by running for President as an non-eligible candidate.

"First of all, about 300 people signed petitions," Arpaio said of the investigation into Obama’s birth certificate. "I am the chief law enforcement officer, they asked me to look at that situation. I don’t dump everything in the wastebasket. So I have my ‘Cold Case Posse’ which I’ve had for five years. It’s free; it doesn’t cost a penny to the taxpayers. Made up of ex-cops and some lawyers, so let them look at it."

Surprise!

By on August 19, 2011 in 2012 Presidential Election, Birther Politics, Birthers, Jerome Corsi, Joe Arpaio, Tea Party

One of my favorite belly laugh movie scenes is where the amateur Kung Fu guys jump out of the janitor’s closet in the movie UHF, shouting something that sounds not totally unlike the title to this story.

In this case it’s the otherwise obscure town of Surprise, Arizona (near Phoenix) where the local Tea Party group hosted WorldNetDaily birther in chief, Dr. Jerome R. Corsi.  Yes, Virginia, there are birthers in the Tea Party.

I don’t have a lot to go on, since the source of this story is WorldNetDaily, who is unreliable enough in the best of circumstances, but super-biased when covering one of its own, but apparently the Tea Partiers (242 of them at least) signed a petition that they presented to controversial Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, asking him to open a criminal investigation. As usual, WND is shy about repeating what Arpaio actually said and resorts to paraphrases devoid of context to make the reader believe Arpaio bought into their complaint.

What is their complaint about Obama’s long-form birth certificate? Three major things were listed: the “Smiley face” in Onaka’s signature, the “TXE” smudge in the registrar’s stamp and the fact that the PDF has layers — and that’s about it.

The actual words from the Sheriff’s office are more non-committal than WND would portray it in the rest of their article:

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Justin Griffin confirmed to WND that Arpaio is “waiting to receive all the documentation and all the investigative material from Dr. Jerry Corsi, and then he will look into the matter and compare it to the Arizona revised statutes.”

Maybe they have anti-smudge laws in Arizona. Who knows?

Read more:

Update:

In a statement to radio station KTAR, Sheriff Arpaio contradicted the spin of the WorldNetDaily story:

“What I have agreed to do, contrary to some published media reports, is simply look at the evidence these people have assembled and examine whether it is within my jurisdiction to investigate the document’s authenticity,” Arpaio said in a written statement Friday.

This is exactly the kind of thing I meant when I wrote about WorldNetDaily being unreliable.

“What am I supposed to do?”

By on August 11, 2010 in Birth Certificate, Tea Party

That’s a comment from GOP Senate nominee Ken Buck, caught on tape in an unguarded moment at a Tea Party event in Crowley, CO June 11.

[laughing] What am I supposed to do?

The question followed his oft quoted remark: “”will you tell those dumba—s at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera?”

It shows the extent that this conservative politician is playing both sides of the birth certificate issue and how Republicans are intimidated by the extreme right.

Constitutional fundamentalism

By on July 14, 2010 in Lounge, Tea Party

I was listening to a piece on NPR this afternoon, Tea Party: It’s Not Just Taxes, It’s The Constitution, talking about the enthusiasm that Tea Party members have for the US Constitution and I was struck by their comment that many Tea Party members carry a copy of the Constitution around with them.

Karen Cole says she carries a copy in her purse. “The Democrats are eviscerating our Constitution,” she says. Her friend Betty Anne Olsen agrees. “This current administration is trashing our Constitution; they couldn’t care less about the values. They’re breaking the laws.”

It reminded me of my college days when some Christian students (they called them “Jesus freaks” back then) carried leather-bound copies of the Bible around with them. Now there’s nothing wrong with carrying a Bible or the Constitution; I have a copy  of both on my iPhone, but there other parallels that are troublesome and I list some of them here:

  1. Attributing to the Constitution absolute moral authority and attributing infallibility to the Framers. They idealize the past.
  2. An attempt to reclaim the past by going back to the Constitution, devoid of the historical baggage of interpretation.
  3. Using the Constitution as a bastion against any kind of change.
  4. Reading the Constitution literally, devoid of historical/political/legal context, denying the possibility of any difference in interpretation.
  5. Reading individual words and short phrases out of the larger context of the document.
  6. The Constitution is used as a rallying point against perceived enemies.
  7. They justify their prejudices by the Constitution even if they don’t really know what the Constitution actually says (or doesn’t say) on the subject.  (The birther claim that the Constitution clearly states that the President must have 2 citizen parents, is a great example.)
  8. They deny that the Constitution is a “living document” that has the possibility of adapting to changing conditions through novel application by the courts.
  9. They believe that the Constitution excludes viewpoints held by others, even to the point of calling those with other views “traitors” (“heretics” is the analogous religious term).
  10. They use the Constitution as a talisman, carrying conspicuously copies, either booklet or facsimile.

NPR said:

Tea Party members are often vague about exactly how their constitutional rights are being denied. But they all believe the federal government has expanded far beyond what the Constitution intended.

In that regard, I think Christian fundamentalists have a much better handle on exactly what they believe is wrong.

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