Birthers

I gotta admit it, I just love these goofy bastards. They're not just wrong, they're deliriously wrong, and they KNOW they're wrong, but they can't admit it because they're so far-gone wrong that they've landed their spaceships on a Hobson's Choice planet of:

1. Admit being wrong, look like total jackass
2. Refuse to admit being wrong, look insane AND like total jackass.

The delightful Jon Stewart clip below says pretty much all there is to say about this nonsense, but I do want to touch upon one thing that was probably just too ridiculous to make the cut.

Argue with enough birthers, and you'll come across a few for whom the Certificate of Live Birth posted at and confirmed by Factcheck.org isn't enough. First they'll dismiss Factcheck.org as being biased. Okay, easy enough, just point out that Factcheck is actually non-partisan, non-profit, and a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and if Walter Annenberg was biased toward anyone...it sure as hell wasn't Democrats.

But okay, so you get past that, and then they'll dismiss the evidence as merely a "Certificate of Live Birth" and not an official "Birth Certificate." (All the while avoiding the secondary evidence, that the birth was announced in two major Honolulu newspapers. But anyway...) Then you ask them what the difference is, and they'll proudly demonstrate their proficiency with the Google by coughing up this paragraph:

"Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence," the document said. "The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama's original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him."

Now this thing is in practically every tube of the interwebs, but I'm damned if I can find the original source of it (I'd love to tell you that it's Alan Keyes, really I would, but honestly...no idea). Apparently, nobody wants to claim credit, and it's hard to blame them, since a) There is no such law as Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178, and b) There IS a Hawaii Revised Statute 338-17.8, but it pertains to those born out of state, not out of the country. Which is to say that this argument is completely fucking irrelevant, but admittedly great fun to shoot down.

Anyway, I'll let Mr. Stewart take it from here...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Born Identity
www.thedailyshow.com
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