Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Guest post by Patrick McKinnion

There seems to be a concept some PUMAs are running with – that there’s something……funny about Sen. Obama’s birth certificate.

Like the vast majority of PUMA attacks on Sen. Obama, the recipe for this is one part wishful thinking, one part wingnuttery, one part lies and smears, a dash of racism, baked for weeks in an echo chamber, and devoured by the JSND crowd unthinkingly.

There seem to be a couple main sources for this constant myth. The biggest are the formerly sane “NoQuarter”, and the blog of PUMA “TexasDarlin”. “TexasDarlin” is the one who cross-posts the latest round of myths to “NoQuarter” as the old ones get busted. However, the Conservative blog “Atlas Shrugs” is another source, as well as the right-wing “Israel Insider” and one of the supposed “experts” that “TexasDarlin” uses is on Townhall.com

On the debunking side, you have “Koyaan” of Koyann’s Weblog, Dr. Neal Krawetz of “HackerFactor”, (and a widely recognized computer forensics and security expert). PUMA Joseph Cannon of “Cannonfire” has become a vocal critic of the people promoting this myth, (and feels they’re damaging PUMA’s cause). “AJ Strata” of the right-wing blog “Strata-Sphere” is where I got the term “Cult of the COLB” to start with.

So in a nutshell, you have a mix of some PUMA sites and some right-wing sites promoting the myth, and a mix of anti-PUMA, pro-PUMA, left-wing, and right-wing sites debunking it.

Now to anything with more than two brain cells to rub together, it’s obvious that the whole thing is a fishing trip designed to find ANYTHING they can use to claim that Sen. Obama is not a “Natural-born US Citizen” and therefore cannot be president. It beggars belief that someone could get a passport, run for state office, run for FEDERAL office, get the security clearances senators require, be vetted to run for President, etc., unless there was solid, hardcore evidence they met the qualifications.

But to the tinfoil hat brigade, there’s some sort of cover up that stretches across three or four countries, three continents, more than one state, and anyplace else they can drag in. Next thing I expect is a claim that the Illuminati or the Gnomes of Zurich are behind it.

The birth certificate lie has been pretty much nuked by urban legend site Snopes, which has a running list of debunked Obama smears. So let’s look at a condensed history of this myth, shall we?

June

The National Review’s Campaign Spot commented that “Obama Could Debunk Some Rumors By Releasing His Birth Certificate”. In response, the Obama campaign released a redacted version of the birth certificate, or Hawaiian “Certificate of Live Birth” (COLB), as seen here and here. This was followed by The St. Petersburg Times who contacted the Hawaii Department of Health, who replied: “It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate”. This was made by Janice Okubo, Director of Communications of the State of Hawaii Department of Health.

Enter the tinfoil hat brigade.

First, a blogger who claimed to be a computer forensics expert, “Polarik”, on the Right-Wing site “Townhall.com” claimed that his “expert analysis” of the certificate indicated it was a fake. PUMA “TexasDarlin” then posted this on her blog and NoQuarter, and the game was on. This was followed by “TexasDarlin”who hinted that that since Stanley Ann Dunham (Sen. Obama’s mother), made a trip with a newborn Barack Obama back to visit family and friends in Washington state, that “Is it possible that Dunham actually delivered Barry someplace close to Mercer Island — either in the US or Canada” The right-wing “Israel Insider” website follows this with Polarik’s claim. Now Israel Insider has an ongoing track record of Obama smears so this is not unusual. At this point you started noticing a lot of crossover between some PUMAs and right-wing sites and sources to back up their claims.

The St. Petersburg Times prints another story about the COLB, which ended with

“There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact’s conclusion that the candidate’s name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn’t authentic. And that’s true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust.”

June ends with “TexasDarlin” claiming that Janice Okubo is dodging her questions and that the Daily Kos is “tampering” with the COLB..

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