“The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.” – Saul Alinsky
by Andrew Walden FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, April 17, 2009
For years, the "9/11 Truth" movement -- which claimed George W. Bush knew about, or even perpetrated, the 9/11 attack -- enjoyed a friendly home in the far-Left's netroots. But as the netroots consolidated their grip on the Democratic Party, "troothers" were left behind. Now, many of the same personalities are behind a movement demanding to see Barack Obama's birth certificate, a coalition in which a surprising group of leftists rub elbows with LaRouchies, Klansmen, Holocaust deniers, and discredited conspiracy theorists of all stripes.
After years of quietly tolerating the troothers in their ranks, Democrats changed tack as the 2008 election season began. On October 19, 2007, Democrat Bill Maher chose to take demonstrative action -- famously launching himself at a gaggle of troothers heckling from the audience of his TV show shouting “out, out, out!” Four days later Bill Clinton challenged troother hecklers, saying, “An inside job? How dare you. How dare you. It was not an inside job.”
Their twin demonstrations worked as intended. Troothers walked away from the Democrats and went to the presidential campaign most friendly to them—that of Texas Republican Ron Paul. (An October 20, 2007, article posted on InfoWars even denounced Maher as “an apologist and advocate for the criminal cabal.”) With two short strokes the Democrats not only removed an albatross from their neck but hung it on the other party.
It didn’t take long for the word to get to the troother rank-and-file. As if ordered by Clinton and Maher, Pennsylvania Democrat Phil Berg, a former deputy attorney general, dismantled his website www.911forthetruth.com in October 2007. (It is now available only on the Wayback machine.) Berg is now a leading Obama ‘birther’ who has filed several bogus lawsuits challenging Obama’s eligibility even as he quietly pursues conspiracy-related 9/11 litigation.
A typical Berg trooth rant states:
“Bush and his cronies made 9/11 happen or let it happen. And, if they let it happen, then they made it happen. Either way, they are responsible; and more important, they have completely and unequivocally covered-it-up!…The 148 Iraqi deaths for which Saddam was tried pales in number to the 750,000 dead at the hands of George W. Bush as a result of this illegal invasion of that country which includes babies, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, elderly grandmothers and grandfathers, killed without remorse by George W. Bush and his war profiteering supporters.”
These are the words of the man birthers claim will deliver them from Obama. Based on the movement Phil Berg’s lawsuits started, a petition gathered 325,000 signatures and is now selling “where’s the birth certificate” bumper stickers. A poll claims that over 10,000 people out of 10,296 responding said Obama’s eligibility was of concern to them.
Commentary on Free Republic runs about 3-to-1 in favor of the birthers. Sean Hannity’s discussion board wisely reduces birther pollution by restricting them to one thread -- that thread has more than 11,000 posts. A speaker at CPAC drew a round of applause when he said, “Back during the 1980's, at least we knew that our president was born in the United States.”
Leftist sites are having a field day ferreting out anything that looks even remotely like a mainstream conservative endorsement of the birther scam. One poster on Democratic Underground writes: “People get sick of the Birthers, and I can understand why, but I LOVE these hapless morons…I LOVE a group of hapless morons who are turning the GOP into the party of tinfoilhat nutters who only have conspiracy theories about birth certificates? You gotta LOVE that!” Other DU comments: “It's like driving past an accident. I have a weird need to slow down and look.” Writes another: “I feel sorry for them. They truly don't have a clue how ridiculous they look.”
Berg’s lawsuit now has plenty of company as conspiracy entrepreneurs pile on. A ‘birther’ lawsuit was filed October 17, 2008, in Hawaii by Chicago’s self-promoting “internet powerhouse” Andy Martin. According to a lengthy and detailed article in the July 31, 2003, New Times of Broward-Palm Beach, FL, Martin has been a frequent candidate for public office in several states. Running for Congress from Florida in 1986, he described his campaign committee as "The Anthony R. Martin-Trigona Congressional Campaign to Exterminate Jew Power in America." The Smoking Gun has a copy of Martin’s original multi-page anti-Semitic campaign letter. A typical line from Martin’s letter: “Jews are schooled in blood sucking and money grubbing from birth.” The article also indicates Martin was behind Connecticut commercials claiming George W Bush used cocaine.
Troothers, Holocaust deniers, Klansmen, and other white supremacists piled into the 2008 Ron Paul campaign along with thousands of leftist anti-American war activists in an effort to disrupt the Republican Party. Today sites such as www.TheDailyPaul.com are laden with “birther” nonsense as are Alex Jones’ www.RonPaulWarRoom.com and www.InfoWars.com, and Paul’s misnamed www.CampaignForLiberty.com.
Jones’ InfoWars may have been quick to acknowledge the October, 2007 troother shift from Democrat to Ron Paul, but for uber-troother Alex Jones, the birther metamorphosis was more gradual that Phil Berg’s instantaneous action. Jones, the profiteer behind the “Loose Change” series, worked throughout 2007 and 2008 on behalf of Ron Paul. Jones’ built-in audience of drug-addled losers was easy prey for Paul’s anti-Semitism, and his “fiat money” blither—although Paul carefully avoided any clear and unequivocal acknowledgement of his own trootherism.
Echoing the central theme of the Ron Paul campaign, birthers today claim to be “upholding the constitution.” This choice of rhetoric is aimed at conservatives and is based on another Saul Alinsky rule:
“Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. ‘You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.’”
There are other fascinating characters involved as well. Somebody calling himself “Dr Ron Polarik, PhD” claims to be the author of a “final report” exposing “Obama’s bogus birth certificate”. He has posted most of his materials on conservative chat board Free Republic where he identifies himself as “The first (and only) authority on the Hawaiian (sic) Certification of Live Birth.” In a great cosmic irony, “Polarik” explains in his video that his “name” is a pseudonym. His face and voice are digitally masked. Does “Polarik” have a valid Certification of Live Birth? Enquiring minds want to know.
In his one and only response to a Free Republic posting of this writer’s article “Barack Obama: Born in Hawaii” (which gathered 530 replies and 9,569+ views) “Polarik” writes:
“Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961 at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu.”
Yeah. You can't prove it. Nobody can. Nobody has ever seen a single medical record for Obama, and nobody (except the forgers) has ever seen any official paper document bearing Obama's birth record. Hawaii has never verified where he was born.
To state anything to the contrary would be a bald-faced lie.
Apparently the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health--appointed by Republican Governor Linda Lingle is “nobody” to “Polarik.” On Friday, October 31, 2008, the Hawaii State Department of Health issued a statement in response to reports claiming that Hawaii Republican Governor Linda Lingle had “sealed” Obama’s birth certificate. Honolulu TV station KITV explains:
"There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record," DOH Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said.
Fukino said she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.
"Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures," Fukino said.
Fukino said that no state official, including Gov. Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama's certificate be handled differently from any other.
Unlike the anonymous “Polarik”, the names and academic degrees of “nobody” Drs. Fukino and Onaka are all verifiable.
As this writer has explained over and over again for several months:
For Obama to have been born in Kenya, Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. would have had to fly from Honolulu to Mombasa, give birth in a substandard third world hospital, fly back and then somehow arrange for a fraudulent birth certificate to be entered by the State of Hawai'i on August 8, 1961, (at the time governed by Republican William Quinn). They would have also somehow planted the phony birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser (at the time edited by Republican Thurston Twigg-Smith) and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Hawai'i’s current Republican Governor Linda Lingle would also have to be complicit in the cover-up as would all of the leftist 1960s University of Hawaii friends of Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr—among them U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie.
Abercrombie (D-Honolulu) knew both Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr at, before, during, and after their short-lived union. They were all part of the same circle of Marxist, University of Hawaii students. Would a Democrat Congressman not have spoken up in 2005 or 2006 to warn his own party away from disaster if he knew that Obama was not constitutionally eligible?
Another report states, “While his supporters cite an online version of a ‘Certification of Live Birth’ from Hawaii, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.”
The problem here is that Hawaii does not provide a Certification of Live Birth stating that children born outside of Hawaii were actually born inside Hawaii. Any seventh grader can look up the U.S. Constitution Amendment 14, section 1 and see that it reads:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Obama’s birth certificate clearly states he was born in Honolulu. If Hawaii were providing Certification of Live U.S. Birth to persons born outside the U.S. the State would be illegally providing U.S. citizenship to non-citizens. How did all these self-appointed defenders of the Constitution miss something so very obvious?
Soviet-born Mission Viejo, California, birther dentist Orly Taitz features prominently in a two-page spread in the March 23, 2009 edition of the supermarket tabloid Globe. Readers interested in celebrity gossip are an ideal audience for conspiracists. Sadly the Globe reports she has convinced an Army Lieutenant from Tennessee to throw away his military career on birther nonsense and claims to be on the verge of recruiting others.
Taitz’ California lawsuit plaintiff is Ron Paul’s Libertarian Party 2008 California write-in Vice-Presidential candidate, Gail Lightfoot. She also represents Alan Keyes’ in a ‘birther’ lawsuit. (Keyes also may have been connected to a failed August, 2008 lawsuit challenging the eligibility of Republican nominee John McCain who was born in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone.) Across the country Obama birther lawsuits have been unceremoniously tossed out of court by un-amused judges. Complains Taitz: “the courts stated that ordinary citizens have no standing to challenge Obama….”
Embarrassingly for those birthers who claim to be “upholding the U.S. Constitution”-- Article II, Section 1 explains that “ordinary citizens” do not elect the President of the United States. The states do. The voters of each state determine who will represent their state as electors in the Electoral College.
It is up to the Secretary of State or equivalent election officials of each state to ascertain whether a candidate for president of the Untied States is eligible to appear on that State’s election ballot. This is a process which was carried out in late 2007 as election officials prepared for the presidential primary season. All of the states—whether controlled by Democrat or Republican administrations—determined that Obama was indeed eligible to appear on their ballot.
Beyond that, the election is up to the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate. At every level Obama has been accepted as constitutionally eligible.
Is it possible that the election officials of all 50 states and the District of Columbia were asleep at the switch? They were not -- as another story from the 2008 election proves.
Roger Calero, Presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party, openly states he was born in Nicaragua. He admittedly does not meet the Constitutional requirement that a U.S. president be a “natural born citizen.” As a result, the SWP was required to substitute the name of James Harris—a constitutionally eligible candidate—who appeared as the SWP candidate for President on the ballot in seven states (CA, CO, FL, GA, IA, LA, WA). The legally unqualified Calero was allowed on the ballot in his own name in six other states (CT, DE, MN, NJ, NY, VT). In 37 other states plus DC the SWP either did not seek ballot status or was denied a ballot position for other reasons.
This does not speak highly of officials in the six states. But in a little more than half of the states approached by the SWP, election officials required a show of constitutional eligibility to obtain ballot status. Unlike Calero, Obama passed their test in each case. Contrary to birther lies, Obama’s Certification of Live Birth from the State of Hawaii, which shows that he was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961 at 7:24PM, is the same document that anyone born in Hawaii shows when applying for a drivers’ license, social security card, passport, or security clearance. It was also accepted as valid by the election officials of the 50 states.
Alex Jones, having brought his lucrative audience along via the Paul campaign, has now released his latest dvd money maker “The Obama Deception” featuring ex-Lyndon LaRouche associate Webster Tarpley and Jim Tucker, editor of Holocaust-denier Willis Carto’s American Free Press who babble endlessly about the “Bilderberg Group.”
In spite of the birther blather on his websites, Jones’ video does not mention the birth certificate even once. This indicates that Jones is using the birth certificate controversy as an entry-level introduction to the conspiracist cult—much as UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster are used by other sites. Ron Paul himself has never openly endorsed the birthers’ claims. But Jones’ video features Ron Paul’s call to “audit the Federal Reserve Bank” as a step towards “nationalizing the Fed.” This would end the Fed’s independence from political interference and place it under control of Obama and/or the Democrat-controlled Congress.
Jones’ “Deception” combines Bilderberg lunacy and other conspiracy-oriented nonsense with genuine issues which Obama wishes to have dismissed as ‘smears.’ This ‘guilt by association’ sandwiching technique mirrors the mishmash of real and imaginary issues all labeled as smears on Obama’s “Fight the Smears” site. Similarly, it explains Democratic glee at the spread of birtherism.
The objective of Obama’s supporters and the conspiracy theorists is to associate policy and appointment-related criticism of Obama with fringe conspiracy talk. The Birther scam has become a major asset of the Obama White House, because it discredits his critics and relieves him of the burden of answering his critics.