Today I have added Suzanne Hamner to my list of Birthers from A to Z. It was an oversight. Hamner is one of those birthers who can’t even call President Obama by his right name. Right Wing Watch has the story of Hamner’s conspiracy theory that Barack Obama is supporting Hillary Clinton, not to preserve his presidential legacy and not because she’s the best candidate running, but rather in a quid pro quo to pardon him for usurping the presidency once he leaves office. Hamner was writing for Bradlee Dean’s The Sons of Liberty Media web site. She wrote:
Hussein Soetoro (sic) is not the “forgive and forget” type. His backing of Hillary has only one purpose – to secure a pardon should he be subsequently charged with crimes against the united (sic) States once he leaves office.
This is one of those conspiracy theories with no evidence behind it, one that will persist until Obama leaves office and has been gone a while. Then they will just stop talking about it.
With this article, I am adding a new main category to the blog: Post presidency conspiracies.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
FIFY. My prediction, anyway.
At least it’s a little saner than “he will not leave office but… (declare himself emperor, nuke the country, …“).
If Obama really thought that he needed a pardon, the easy way to do it would be for him to resign at the end of the year and let Biden pardon him.
The Constitution doesn’t bar the President from pardoning himself, for that matter.
That seems logically impossible. The president would have to be impeached and removed from office before he could be pardoned from anything. Or he’d have to resign. In any case, he can’t pardon himself, because either a) he doesn’t have the Constitutional power (since he’s not President) or b) he can’t be pardoned because he can’t be charged.
I think a pardon can be against charges not yet filed, as was the case with Nixon. I don’t see why, legally, a President couldn’t give himself a blanket pardon against future charges for anything he did in office before he left office at the normal time. Morally and politically, that would be very problematic, I think, but legally it’s possible.
Yeah Ford’s pardon was a blanket pardon for just about anything even if it was discovered later.
“Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.”
Doc: The category of “Post presidency(Obama) conspiracies.” by itself does not illustrate the reach of Birthers in trying to moot the embarrassing implications of reality’s refusal to confirm ANY of their Obama-dooming predictions. Indeed, reality shows us that there is only enough time and space ‘around the next bend’ and ‘over the next hill’ for the Birther-postulated, infinite number of Birther triumphs over our first Black President.
For them, their complete failure disappears in the dreamed-of victories yet to come. They don’t seem to notice that their perpetually predicted new scenarios of eventual triumph over Obama, never quite escape the bounds of prospectivity. So they need more time – time is really all they have to hide behind. That means that more categories of Obama conspiracy will eventually be needed to drag out their ever-prospective ‘moment in the sun’.
How about: “Post next Big Bang Obama Conspiracy Theories” ?
The Constitution says just the opposite. The only time a president can’t use pardon power is in a case of impeachment.
Article 2, Section 2, clause 1: “…he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
The “Hussein Soetoro” business is another reminder of the idea of the “power of names.” In many ancient cultures, it was believed that to know the name of a god or spirit gave you power over that being, and so certain ancient gods would have a secret name, the knowledge of which granted special power. To know the secret name was in effect to be able to negate that god’s power. This idea resurfaces with powerful people more recently, where the claim is made that the person’s “real name” is actually something other than their public name. So you have with Hitler the idea that his name was really “Adolf Shicklgruber” (it wasn’t), with Obama the idea that his name is really “Barry Soetoro”, or if someone wants to emphasise the Muslim angle, “Hussein Soetoro”, and with Donald Trump the idea his name is really “Donald Drumf”. In each case the idea is the same, to ritually “disarm” the otherwise powerful individual with their true name.
And it’s superstitious nonsense.
When someone uses names for the President like Barry Soetoro they may as well wear a sign on their back that says “I am stupid. You don’t need to listen to me”.
I thought people were just calling him “Donald Drumpf” to make fun of him because Drumpf is a stupid sounding name.
Indeed only his father bore that name (Schicklgruber) until 1876.
An especially instructive example was that one guy from BR (forgot the handle) who kept adding names to Obama as the birther issue developed. I think he ended up with something like “Malik Barack Barry Hussein Obama Soetoro Shabazz Soebarkah”. Probably due to his belief that if he omitted just one potential name, Obama might come up victorious in the end. Well, Obama did, so the guy must still have forgotten at least one name.
German RWNJ’s used to claim former chancellor Helmut Kohl was actually named “Henoch Kohn”, ergo Jewish, ergo an agent of the International Jewish Conspiracy [tm].
compare it to how “sovereign citizens” spell their names in specific forms, with part of their name in all caps, with specific punctuation, and (sometimes) even in specific ink colors. They think this gives them some immunity from the law. It really is a form a magic spell in their minds.
That’s only part of the story. When John Oliver revealed that the Trump family name had been changed from the original Drumpf, he did make the point that “Drumpf is much less magical. It’s the sound produced when a morbidly obese pigeon flies into the window of a foreclosed Old Navy. … It’s the sound of a bottle of store-brand root beer falling off the shelf in a gas station minimart.”
There were accusations that Oliver was being as xenophobic as Trump, or, as S.I. Rosenbaum put it, that he was making fun of a foreign-sounding name to “imply that the target isn’t really an American.”
To which I say, hogwash!! (Did Rosenbaum seriously think John Oliver was accusing Donald Trump of not being American enough?). Anyone who watched that particular segment of Oliver’s program would understand that he was simply giving Trump a taste of his own medicine, as Trump had previously mocked Jon Stewart (a close friend of Oliver’s) for having changed his name from Leibowitz, and “should be proud of his heritage.”
A friend of mine gave me a “Make Donald Drumpf Again” hat, but I don’t wear it in public. I guess I just don’t enjoy being punched in the face by angry Neanderthals.
Or maybe it’s like The Nine Billion Names of God, and he thought getting a complete set of names would make Obama abruptly end. 😉
According to Isaac Asimov, The Nine Billion Names of God has the best last line of any short story, ever.
Loved that story! By Arthur C. Clarke, l believe. The final line, something like, “and one by one, the stars began to go out,” remains in my memory even after decades.
Ahem!! Spoiler Alert!! LOL 🙂