Like chiggers, anti-Obama web sites proliferate. There are so many of them, I have come to see them as individually insignificant and not worth the trouble of reading. Web movements are easy to Astroturf.
Nonetheless, I have a blog to write and so I feature yet another hotbed of delusion: The Obama Ballot Challenge web site. If we’re lucky, this web site will save some time trying to keep up with the scattered cranks raising ballot challenges to Barack Obama. As for Obama, he is the only candidate who has proved with all certainty that he is eligible, having been certified so by the Congress in 2009, the body empowered by the Constitution to make that determination.
The birthers at Obama Ballot Challenge seem to think that Orly Taitz’s social-security number confusion is proof of fraud rather than proof of incompetence on the part of the birthers. That’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from birthers (incompetence like running an out of date version of WordPress on their site).
This comment below from the Challenge site struck me as revealing as to birther thinking. While our laws have set up a framework of representative government, they think that elections are not the solution to fixing what they perceive as the problem. What they do not understand is that in reality, the lunatics believe that they are entitled to run the asylum. Let us hope that never happens.
We do this because we are a nation of laws, and the political ruling class has failed to uphold the law regarding Obama’s usurpation.
Update:
I don’t usually care who is behind things, so I didn’t research the domain registrant of this site. However, when looking it up for another reason, I noticed that the registrant is Pamela Barnett, one Orly Taitz’s military birther plaintiffs. We covered Barnett v Obama here at Obama Conspiracy Theories at some length and she showed up [photo] at the Pastor Manning trial of Obama in Harlem.
That site peddles misinformation.
But it keeps them busy and distracted from productive ventures, like walking precincts for a viable contestant against the man they hate so much.
Actually, I found it to be one of the most organized and professional looking Birther sites I have ever come across. I suspect there is some serious money and coordination behind the scenes that is putting this together. It definitely does not come acros as a amateur hobbyist’s operation.
Good, they are putting all of their info in one easy place. Now it will be easier to monitor & keep track of their windmill tilting adventures.
So how would you characterize this Obama Conspiracy Theories? It’s an amateur hobbyist’s operation.
I agree with you that it’s a nice-looking web site, but WordPress does a lot of the work. Once you pick a theme, the graphic design is pretty much done and then all one has to do is assemble the parts. Birther Challenge uses the Video theme from Templatic. While Templatic sells their premium WordPress themes, Video is a free one. The several examples of “Image not available” on their home page is very “unprofessional.”
I’m not an expert, but I don’t see money here.
Please note update to the article. The domain registrant for the site is Pamela Barnett.
The “Obama Ballot Challenge” website is totally useless as a source for meaningful info. If it is necessary to confirm or get the real info from another site what good is it? I refer, primarily, to the page with primary/caucus “info”. Most of it is totally wrong. It looks like Pam started with the 2008 dates and adjusted for the Tuesday change. Un*******believable!
I consider this to be a well organized and well-run amateur website, which is exactly what it is. That is a complement, not a knock.
My point of theirs appearing “professional” (i.e. suspecting money behind it) goes beyond just its slick appearance, but the amount of information and updates contained therein…particularly being put up under such a short time frame). There appears to be a considerable amount of content and articles and it appears to be quite up-to-date… more than I suspected for a site that appears to be only a matter of weeks-old. (I concede that appearances can be deceiving… but I did click through quite a lot of states & articles contained therein…and was suprised by how much they had out there already).
So, my assumption was more based on the amount of dedicated effort it at least “appears” to require to maintain. You of all people know and appreciate the effort it takes to setup and maintain a blog and how much time it takes to put in updates, maintain links and up-to-date currency.
I could easily be wrong, and it could just be an impressive looking effort from one skilled person who had a lot of handy info already available and put in a lot of dedicated hours to quickly get all that info together and out there in such an organized matter…
As this issue heats up, keeping on top of all the ballot-denial “efforts” across an increasing amount of states will require quite a dedicated effort to maintain and keep “current”. We’ll just have to see if they “keep up” or if this really was just a slick initial “put together” and cut/paste article dump by one or a few hobbyists … or what appears to be a more coordinated and committed operation.
If nothing else, it may make it easier for attorneys who went to real schools and didn’t have someone in a blonde wig take the bar exam for them (Not that I’m suggesting anything about anyone) keep track of when the birthers try to invade their own state. Over at Fogbow, several NC attorneys have written letters to the appropriate people in their state after Orly fired off her nastygram in support of the apparent child molester/anti-semite, giving them a heads up as to what they were facing. If the birthers follow Chris Strunk into NY, I certainly plan to come to the defense of my state’s legal sanity.