I got a laugh over at Birther Report. They have this article titled: “Must Hear: CSU Criminology Professor Dissects Obama’s Manufactured Background.” It’s about an associate professor of criminology at California State University Fresno named Jason Kissner who went on the Peter Boyles talk radio program to spin some theories about Obama’s early life. Kissner also wrote a somewhat similar article for The American Thinker last May. Here’s a bit from the Boyles show to give you the flavor of what he was saying:
She’s [Loretta Fuddy] associated with this Subud1 cult which was rooted in Indonesia and subsequently spread to places like Hawaii in the 1960’s, and interestingly enough, it’s also tied to Chicago…. … Three locations that have been connected to Obama’s life, clearly, in a very pronounced way. Then you find that Ann Soetoro also has connections with this cult….
The commenters at Birther Report are skeptical, saying things like:
… absolutely no evidence
What’s his proof?
What is funny is that these skeptical remarks aren’t directed to his really far out conspiracy theories, but rather at his opening comment:
I do think he [Obama] was born in Hawaii.
🙄
1The Subud spiritual movement is said to have about 10,000 members worldwide.
One cannot fail to notice the striking similarity between the symbol for the “seven circles” of Subud, and the Obama campaign logo.
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Those Subud guys get around….
Circles, Circles, Everywhere Circles Incorporated
… but the Subud’s mark most reminds me of the superlaser’s firing chamber. 😀
Doc, you wrote: “One cannot fail to notice the striking similarity between the symbol for the “seven circles” of Subud, and the Obama campaign logo.”
Your exquisite sarcasm is not wasted on those of your readers who are sane. But unfortunately, both of those symbols probably make the typical Birtjher ‘see red’.
At Free Republic someone mentioned that one of the people on the same plane as Director Fuddy had a tattoo on his arm that looked like a spider’s web but that it could also be the symbol for Subud.
Don’t be silly … birfers are all colorblind 😉
I think you’ve written about Kissner before. Perhaps he’s a candidate for the birther list.
without zullo’s updates to keep them hopped, birfers have passed scraping the bong and are now down on their knees just sucking fumes from the carpet.
A lot of comments about BHO’s mother there are not funny at all. I am quite happy that over here insults like that are punishable crimes.
I’ll never play darts the same way again.
I actually wondered why I saw that before birthers were all over it. 😉
The human brain is the best pattern matching engine known to man (and our beloved Alien Overlords), but that means it also generates many false positives, known as pareidolia.
The whole Subud angle is another such pattern that seems to connect dots (and has the additional bonus of having an Illuminati-esque angle to it), so obviously birthers are attracted to it like moths to the fire.
I just find it funny how quickly the peeps at Birther Report are throwing Malcolm X (“looks just like Obama, so he must be his father”) under the bus in favour of the Subud founder (“looks just like Obama, so he must be his father”). Someone here called it the “père du jour” phenomenon.
Thanks for reminding me:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/05/grading-the-american-thinker/
Poor Martha Trowbridge. She’s been trying to sell the Malcolm-X-is-Obama’s-father trope for years, and had recently gotten some traction and attention at Birther Report. She must be devastated by how quickly she’s been abandoned.
Yeah, this Subud founder guy. Seriously?!
Its like when one of their insane, far fetched theories dies, they cook up something even more far fetched and insane, to take it’s place! Of course for that one to work, they have to prove that he Obama’s mother were in the same geographic location, let alone slept together.
But then again, they didn’t let things like the laws of time and space keep them from claiming that she posed nude for Frank Marshal Davis.
The latest permutation is that Loretta Fuddy was Obama’s mother–even though she would have only been 13 at the time of his birth.
I think this particular theory shift may be significant with regard to how birthers perceive the issue.
Previous paternal claims seem to have been motivated by a swiftboat-ish intent to smear Obama (“son of a communist activist”, “son of a black radical”, both resolving to “you cannot re-elect the guy with this father”).
This new claim seems motivated by the desire to solve a puzzle (and, as crazy as it is, is slightly more logical than just trying to find someone among “bad guys” whose looks seem to match).
I think that Fuddy’s death has energized many birthers because like nothing before it fuels their belief that “there is something to it after all”. So now they’re trying to connect all the Fuddy dots (including ludicrous claims like “Fuddy is Obama’s mother”), and the Subud angle seems to cover many bases (they can paint it as “Muslim”, as “secret society”, claim relations to Hawaii and Kenya and Chicago and Fuddy and who-knows-what-else).
Surely Orally can get an order to exhume the bodies for DNA analysis, and then file a criminal complaint. In her capacity as a civil rights leader, of course.
one would think that there comes a point where even some of the most die heard birthers have to go, “Okay, at this point we’re not even fooling ourselves anymore!” To me, that point would be this new Fuddy theory.
Orly has basically co-opted the story.
It’s not impossible (may happen more often in other parts of the world than in the US, but it does happen), so that’s more than enough for conspiracy believers.
Given that some right-wingers claimed the relationship of Obama sr. to SAD was basically “statutory rape” in the beginning, what would stop them from claiming the “real father” was actually a child rapist?
I seriously think that they’re being played by an “obot” seeing how ridiculous of a story they can pitch and see what will be believed. I suspect in a few weeks when this dies down there will be another even far more ridiculous story to come out maybe artificial insemination or something along the line of claiming Obama was born of two fathers and no mothers through the movie Junior.