OK, except in some really right-wing-nut-job states, it’s not cool to be a Republican birther. Establishment Republicans think (rightly so in my view) that birthers discredit any group they are associated with. Further Republicans say (with some accuracy) that liberals are ready to jump on anyone they can smear with the “birther” label. Republican leaders (such as the current presidential nominee apparent) are very sensitive to this issue, ready to dissociate themselves from birthers to and to reject the label (no matter how well the shoe fits many Republicans).
Now two conservative pundits have come up with a scheme to turn birther pariah status to their advantage. They’ve called Barack Obama every other nasty name in the book, why not call him a birther? They are not saying Barack Obama was born in Kenya, but that Obama pretended to be born in Kenya to get preferential treatment in college as a foreign student, ignoring the fact that Obama graduated from a US high school, was a US Citizen with a Connecticut social-security number and as such would never be considered a foreign student no matter where he was born. Wacky as it is, Rush Limbaugh and Mike Huckabee have signed on.
that comes from Trump’s signature birther meme, the 1991 promo bio. They will milk that bio forever.
How long until the April Fool Fulbright Hoax is cited?
3,2,1,
Go Ramb0
That makes both Limbaugh and Huckabee full metal birthers as that has long been a staple in the birther diet.
I don’t believe that technically one couldn’t still be considered a “foreign student” simply on the basis of graduating from a US high school. I would categorize that as someone who requires a student visa in order to stay in the US. I actually had a HS classmate who was in the US on a student visa and who went on to a US college with a renewal of the student visa. I follow a college basketball team with a kid who actually came from Mexico and overstayed a tourist visa in order to stay in the US to go to HS. He eventually had his status adjusted and then got a basketball scholarship which required he get his student visa extended.
Obama got a gov student loan, I also got one in the 60’s, my roomate, a Japanese exchange student applied but it was a no go (he was foriegner)
My basic operating assumption is that anything Limbaugh supports has to be wrong. Looks like it still operates here!
Foreign students do NOT get preferential treatment in any way, shape or form. They are admitted on the same basis as US students and are academically equal and often, frankly, given the excellent schools in many countries, superior. Nor are scholarships easier to get for foreign students. They don’t qualify for needs based scholarships, which are the majority. Any merit-based scholarships are highly competitiive. Most foreign students are supported by their families, which are often very affluent. Some get supportt from their home governmment, generally on conditiion they return home after graduating. Is anyone seriously claiming the Kenyan government supported the President through Columbia and Harvard? He certainly never worked in Kenya after graduation.
There would be no advantage conferred by your visa status. The Admissions Office would stack your high school grades up against all the other applicants from US high schools. And of course to get a student visa one would need to show a foreign passport. Simply pretending to be born overseas would not get one an F-1 visa.
I think it’s incumbent on Limbaugh and Huckabee to specify exactly what advantages falsely claiming birth outside the US would confer on a college applicant. The answer is-NONE
And I suppose those foreigners, real ones, had a valid BC issued to them stating they were born in the U.S., a U.S. drivers license, SS#, a valid U.S.Passport, etc, yet they were still able to be designated as a foreign student eligible to receive foreign aid.. I didn’t think so.
“They are not saying Barack Obama was born in Kenya, but that Obama pretended to be born in Kenya to get preferential treatment in college as a foreign student…”
I’ll say it again: I thought I was reading a blog. Turns out, I’m reading excerpts from a textbook on clinical insanity, or the long term effects of regularly using LSD.
Believe me, this is the kind of behavior I saw in college from classmates who did.
Since the Bennett verification and the few Republican Party leaders tepid denunciation of Birtherism, the Birthers on WND have become waaaaaaay more unhinged. Or as you’ve pointed out before, the crazy is becoming more and more concentrated as the number of Birthers dwindle.
There has to be a steady stream of foam coming from the majority of their mouths.
“There has to be a steady stream of foam coming from the majority of their mouths.”
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they have gone off the cliff
Zullo said. “My suspicion is that top officials in the Hawaii DOH and the Hawaii Attorney General’s office created a defective document that could be disclaimed rather that take the time to produce a thoroughly proofread and officially certified legally binding state document.”
OT:
Orly Taitz posted photos of herself modeling at a Republican women’s group. I can’t imagine that her donations would be worth the stink of having her participate in the group.
I followed a link to the “Obama release your records” site. I usually don’t like to log onto these sites — I always have the feeling my computer will get infected with a virus or something. But I found a delightful comment, which more or less inverts the whole Arizona situation:
Arizona officials are showing favoritism to one candidate.They are going out of their way to provide ID for one candidate.
It is not their job to provide ID for a candidate who refuses to present any ID documents.
The candidate has chosen to forego appearing on ballots in Arizona.
In other words, according to this poster Bennett et al. are showing favoritism to Obama!
This is actually pretty significant. Limbaugh, despite his many flaws, has usually been dismissive of Birthers. The fact that he is now promoting Birther nonsense is a watershed moment.
Huckabee has long been a crackpot. This is the same man who gladly said, in his presidential campaign, that the U.S.Consitution should be amended to make it more consistent with his Bible. He’s flirted with Birtherism many times before. Frankly, I’m less surprised by him than I am by Limabugh.
So we have two addicts (Limbaugh to pain killers, Hucakbee to food) defaming the POTUS. Big deal.
Thes two idiots are trying to grasp onto the non-story of Elizabeth Warren declaring herself part Native American. Only reason this is being raised or that it might gain any traction.
If I want to know what addicts believe in the throes of their addictions, I’ll go attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. and give it about as much weight. (No dig intended at Huckabee there.)
Hmm, that edit feature does not seem to be working.
Corsi the clown says:
Other supporting facts that will emerge upon a Sheriff Arpaio team press conference
concern ‘further’ proof even officials at the US State Department don’t think that the individual known as Barack Obama Sr. is the President’s real father.
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The Arpaio press conference will apparently be releasing evidence showing Obama’s mother traveling to Kenya for the purposes of having the baby to perpetuate the cover-up that Obama Sr. is the father.
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What the information will reveal, as Corsi puts it, is this being the reason why skeptics have argued that it was probably the grandparents, who lived in Hawaii in 1961 and who likely mailed in the request for Obama’s Hawaiian birth ‘registration’, something that is always echoed in the local paper the next day, regardless of how the registration was requested, or by whom. The exact reason for this registration document being the only record that exists, in the USA, that speaks of the birth of this person, until the relatively recent release of extremely questionable birth certificate and selective service documents.
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Corsi has morphed into Ed Hale!
Huckabee has always been the dangerous one. His folksy “Uncle Mike” persona radiates sincerity and reasonableness — enough so that he used to be a favorite on The Daily Show.
But what he actually says is full blown fringe demagoguery. As RuhRoh mentioned, he’s comfortable saying the Constitution should be remade in the Bible’s image. He’s often tried to make Obama’s putative “otherness” an issue, including saying Obama was raised in Kenya, went to a madrassa, and “This is not a kid who grew up, you know, going to Boy Scout meetings and playing Little League baseball in a small town.”
Except Obama of course wasn’t raised in Kenya, never went to a madrassa, was in Scouting in Indonesia, grew up playing sports in Hawaii, and well, you’d think Huckabee would be a little more circumspect about making mention of kids in Boy Scouts… .
What’s the deal with conservatives and animal cruelty?
And their evidence that Obama applied to any school as a foreign student would be….?
Innuendo.
And, into the deep end.
One of my wingnut friends thinks this is the explanation for the publishing brochure. It wasn’t a mistake, he said. Obama lied.
I was arguing with him about how all the evidence points to Obama being born in Hawaii and he said “If you read the [Breitbart] article, you’d know that this is not about where he was born; it’s about him being a lair.”
Two things:
1). Why do I have to read the article? It’s a piece of crap and I don’t need to read it to know it’s a piece of crap.
2). Why does he does he pull this “I missed the point” crap?
The Breitbart article does say Obama was born in Hawaii and hints that he lied to his publisher. However, the publisher says Obama never claimed to be born in Kenya, and that should pretty much end the story.
I mean you have to either go with what the people involved say, or go with the voices in your head.
I actually did read the article. It seemed like it contradicted itself on that, kind of like it seems like some birthers are saying that he may be born in Hawaii but the birth certificate is still a forgery. Makes no sense to me at all.
It does work, but you have only 5 minutes from the time you wrote the comment to correct it. If you take longer than that the edit will not work. It seems that you can make multiple edits during that period.
It’s the computer version of “Beat The Clock”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTi_17q3q1U
Is that a trick question? Since when was evidence needed?
This is the stuff that I like. Watching these fools twist logic and themselves into pretzels trying to demonize Obama for anything.
Still, my favorite is Obama asking for mustard on his cheeseburger.
Someone pays the bills. Are they claiming that the US government so desired Kenyan students that it paid the tuition for students? Where is that documentation? Do they define preferential treatment? These people could hold their own in a North Korean propoganda ministry. Make it up, yell it and sell it. What next?
The book that was being publicized was Obama’s autobiographical work, in which he wrote that he was born in Hawaii. (He even references driving past the hospital where he was born at some point).
So let me get this straight. He pretends to have been born in Africa in order to get college and/or law school scholarships. Then, while still a student, he tells the New York Times, among others, that he was born and raised in Hawaii. A couple of years after that, he PUBLISHES A BOOK discussing his birth and childhood in Hawaii.
That was one stupid guy.
/ snark
Worse than that: He pretends to have bee born in Africa in order to get nonexistent scholarships, while at the same time disqualifying himself from receiving US-government subsidized student aid.
Exactly!
Oh, and did I mention that the NYT article – specifying that he was born in Hawaii – appeared over a year BEFORE the publicist’s pamphlet was written?
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/06/us/first-black-elected-to-head-harvard-s-law-review.html
There is a reprint of a March 19, 1990 LA Times Article:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2008/09/barack-obama-ha.html
Says he was born in Hawaii.
I’ve published a book and have had to correct a publicist on one or two details. But the detail that Obama’s publicist messed up on is contradicted in both his books. Sounds like a mistake to me.
Years ago a magazine show did a piece on Robin Quivers’ autobiography “A Life.” The narrator mentioned in Quivers’ service in the US Army. But she was never in the Army. She was a US Air Force nurse.
Mistakes happen, and Huckabee should be ashamed to bear false witness and still call himself a Christian.
Rush is doing fine at the Devil’s bidding.
Birthers live in a world where logic and reason have no place – they simply take tidbits of information with little regard for the source and weave them into their ever-changing narrative, while totally disregarding the weight of information against them.
Here’s an example — the original source of the “foreign scholarship” meme.
While living in Indonesia as a child, Obama was enrolled in a local school under his step-father’s last name, Soetoro. Through Google books, birthers found a record of an Indonesian high school student whose first name was Soetoro, who was enrolled as a foreign exchange student in a California high school in 1963.
This comes from the “Journal of the California Assembly”, which can be viewed in snippet fashion at http://books.google.com/books?id=jag3AAAAIAAJ&q=soetoro#search_anchor
Apparently, a group of foreign exchange students attending Sacramento-area high school went on a tour of the legislature. At page 6488 of the legislative journal, their names are noted as being “American Field Service Scholarship students” — In addition to Soetoro Moestabjab at El Camino High School, the entry mentions students from Austria, France, Ecuador, Denmark, etc. “American Field Service” — AFS — is an organization which arranges foreign exchanges for high school students. An AFS “Scholarship” simply means the students received funds from the organization to subsidize the costs of their travel to the US.
Birthers took 3 pieces of information: a person named Soetoro, presence in northern California, and the word “scholarship” — as an indication that Obama, who attended college in southern California — was enrolled as a foreign student, receiving a scholarship.
Never mind that the entry comes from 1963, when Obama would have been 2 years old, prior to the time that Obama’s mother met or married his stepfather.
Never mind that the student’s last name was Moestabjab, and not Soetoro.
Never mind that it was a high school and not a college student.
Never mind that Obama attended Occidental College, and not El Camino High.
Never mind that the literary magazine from Occidental shows clearly that Obama attended school under the name “Obama” (where he also wrote poetry) — as do published yearbook pages from his Hawaii high school.
To the birther mind, the juxtaposition of the name Soetoro & the word “scholarship” is enough.
It’s yet another pandering to wingers meme. The bias that the bloated, lie-barrel gubbamint cheats good, honest, real, hard-workin’ white males [Real Americans] by giving preferential status / terms to all those who are not “Real Americans” … the ‘lazy’ poor, ‘dirty’ foreigners, the melanin-blessed, and women of any kind.
Strangely, I have not sensed a suspicion that Atheists are given preferential treatment over Christians. Plenty of assumption that Christians are persecuted … I guess the Atheist Bonus is simply not being persecuted.