I Can't Believe This Is Still Going On

What a waste of time and money.

The so-called birther movement was dealt another legal blow Thursday when a federal appeals court tossed out a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship and his eligibility to serve as commander in chief...

...The lawsuit was filed in 2009 by 40 plaintiffs, including conservative activists Alan Keyes and Wiley Drake, who ran for president and vice president respectively as members of the American Independent Party against Obama in 2008.

Alan Fucking Keyes. This is just disgraceful. What was that thing about frivolous lawsuits they constantly harp about?

This Is All You Need To Know About The Birthers

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Nothing will ever be good enough.

This Guy Wants To Be President

For the last couple of weeks I've been watching the mainstream media give more and more time to the preposterous idea that Donald Trump is a legitimate contender for the Republican nomination for President. I couldn't turn on a cable news channel or broadcast news channel for that matter without seeing Trump's face demanding he be taken seriously while spouting debunked birther conspiracy theories whenever he opened his mouth. I would look at him and my first thought wasn't, "This guy would make a great president" so much as "I wonder what his hair looks like when he gets out of the shower." I don't think "Trump would be an awesome president." I think "A Trump presidency would be a national embarrassment."

And now we get to see how thin-skinned The Donald actually is courtesy of New York Times columnist Gail Collins. Last week, Collins decided to turn in a column deriding Trump for his headline grabbing ways, out-crazying the wingnut contenders by stealing the keys and taking a joyride in the Birther bandwagon. He insists on making his case with three year old debunked theories on the Kenyan-born, possibly Muslim, birth certificateless, Manchurian candidate President.  He's made his main talking point that this fake controversy is "the greatest scam in history." It doesn't matter that all these theories have been proven false. He's got people investigating and "they cannot believe what they’re finding." No details, of course, they just can't believe it. Maybe they can't believe their good fortune in being paid handsomely by Trump to investigate something that has been thoroughly exhausted; something that the Clinton campaign machine and the McCain campaign Edsel couldn't find. Something that can easily be Googled. Or maybe Orly Taitz is giving him legal advice while cleaning his teeth.

But the Collins opinion was just too much for Trump to bear, so he wrote a letter to the editor. A letter, that while insulting Collins for her "storytelling ability," sounds like it was written by a marginal high school student trying to sound smarter than he is. He then goes on to restate the whole birther nonsense, sticking to his guns, refusing to believe anyone or anything that proves the opposite.

Collins of course had to respond with a rebuttal today including other crazy shit Trump has said these last few weeks, like it was Bill Ayers who actually wrote "Dreams From My Father" or that people who went to school with Obama never saw him. She goes on to once again disprove the ridiculous statements, but no matter. At this point, Trump is all in and nothing anyone says can make him think any different. ...Maybe that's how he bankrupted his casinos.

But here's the thing: if a New York Times opinion columnist gets him so easily riled that he feels the need to write a letter, how is he going to react to the constant ridicule from primary challengers and media personnel during the campaign? You can see how upset he gets when someone disagrees with him, how emotional he becomes when he feels he's being interrupted (see the Meredith Vieira interview). How is he going to survive a year long campaign with that short hair trigger when Howard Dean was drummed out of the Democratic race in '04 for displaying his excitement after the Iowa primary results?

But I suppose Trump doesn't have to worry about that, because there's no way he'll run. There's no way he'll want to be viewed under a microscope with such scrutiny. This whole thing is a ratings ploy for his reality show, nothing more. And the fact that Republicans rate Trump second in a favorability poll combined with the antics of the fractured House majority being run by Tea Party freshmen reveals the sad state of the Republican party.

Orly Taitz Endorses Angle

Well, I don't know about you, but if I were running for office, this is the one endorsement I would definitely seek out.

On Wednesday, without much public recognition, Orly Taitz threw her support behind Sharron Angle, posting a plea for readers to donate to the Nevada Republican Senate candidate on her website.

The obvious question must now be posed to Sharron Angle: Does she believe Barack Obama is legitimate? Or does she have doubts about Obama's origin of birth?

All Aboard the Crazy Train

Newt Gingrich, the man that some would say has a better than an outside chance of being the Republican presidential nominee for 2012 has punched his ticket to Loonyland.

In an interview with the National Review, Newt agreed with right wing freak Dinesh D’Souza's ridiculous Forbes article and therefore assessed that...

...[Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]...That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich tells us.

“I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating — none of which was true,” Gingrich continues. “In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest.”

We all thought Newt was a little loopy to begin with, but the quotes in this article reveal him to be either A) an opportunistic narcissist who will say anything to remain in the spotlight, even when that something can doom his chances to get the rational, sane voters in his corner, or B) he really has gone off the deep end and has out-Orly Taitzed Orly Taitz. To cast a shadow of doubt and ask "I'm not sure about the President, but we haven't seen his birth certificate" would be bad enough, but to go full-out crazy conspiracy theory and use phrases like "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior" and say that President Obama was a con man, that he is "authentically dishonest." What does that even mean?

Even Joe Scarborough doesn't know what Newt was thinking, if he was thinking at all.

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In my opinion, Newt Gingrich has lost all hope of even contending for 2012. Going full Birther may play to the fringe base, but independents won't fall for it. Despite the polls showing a loss of independent support for the Democratic Party these last months, if given the choice between Barack Obama and either Newt, Sarah Palin, or even a Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney, I still think the choice is still clear.

Oh, Sweet Justice!

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Orly Taitz Is Insane

Last night as I drove home from work, I had the extraordinary pleasure of listening to Alan Colmes interview Stefan Cook and Alan Keyes Birther movement lawyer, Orly Taitz. During the lead up to the interview, I anticipated hearing an intelligent discussion between Colmes and what I thought would be an attorney well versed in the ways of debate in order to make sense of the whole Birther movement.

Imagine my surprise when what I heard coming out of a break, was one of the most bizarre interviews I had ever heard with a "lawyer" who sounds like Arianna Huffington on crack.

Orly Taitz refuses to believe that President Obama was born in the United States, has called and continues to call him an "arrogant jerk," believes that the FactCheck.org debunking of the whole birth certificate drama is photoshopped by "a bunch of yahoos" and has absolutely no regard for civilized discourse during the entire interview.

I'm still trying to find the full audio, but you can listen to a 5 minute clip here. Prepare for a jaw dropping experience.

Birthers Get Thrown A Bone

A judge said he would listen to "the merits" of Alan Keyes' case challenging Obama's presidency. While a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said the move was merely procedural, birth conspiracy proponents are encouraged.

And a soldier refuses to be deployed to Afghanistan because he believes Obama presidency is illegitimate.

U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook has argued that he shouldn't have to go to Afghanistan because the man sending him there isn't really president.

In the 20-page document -- filed July 8 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia -- the California-based [Alan Keyes lawyer Orly] Taitz asks the court to consider granting his client's request based upon Cook's belief that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Cook further states he "would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President's command. ... simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties."

Ironic that the government is discharging willing and able gay soldiers and preventing them from fulfilling their duty and this "patriot" is using the birther conspiracy as an excuse not to send his cowardly ass to Afghanistan. Fine, dishonorably discharge the fucker.