Sheen Trumps Palin and More Junk Food News
Illustration: ssoosay via Flickr (CC)
Abby Martin writes on Media Roots:
“We are awash in electronic hallucinations. The worse it gets, the more we retreat into those hallucinations. Dying cultures always sever themselves from reality, because reality becomes so difficult to face, and we’re no exception to that.” — Chris Hedges, interview with Media Roots
Of Tiger Blood and Birthers
During the first four days of the corporate media’s fanatical coverage of actor Charlie Sheen’s drug-addled, tiger-blooded neurosis, four more US soldiers were killed in combat in Afghanistan. Yet, CNN only took notice after a Facebook campaign initiated by a fellow soldier went viral, which pitted the coverage of fallen soldiers against the celebrity addict. The campaign galvanized tens of thousands of people to write the following on their Facebook pages:
“Charlie Sheen is all over the news because he’s a celebrity drug addict, while Andrew Wilfahrt 31, Brian Tabada 21, Rudolph Hizon 22, Chauncy Mays…
Birthers Sue Mag For $120 Million
Just another stunt to sell books, one suspects. From Jeff Bercovici’s blog at Forbes:
Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi have some pretty interesting beliefs. They believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not there’s no proof Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.* They also believe Hearst Corp. and a writer it employs ought to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars for making fun of them for believing that first part.
Farah, the CEO of WorldNetDaily.com, and Corsi, author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President,” have filed suit against Hearst, Esquire magazine and writer Mark Warren over a satirical article that they say defamed them and damaged their business interests. They’re seeking compensatory damages of $100 million and punitive damages of $20 million, plus legal costs. [Update: As a commenter points out, that’s only for one of the five counts; the full amount sought…
Why Facts No Longer Matter In The Media Discourse
How should we understand this latest and most troubling insight into the reality of our media ecology?
In the aftermath of the resolution of the Great Birther bash-up, even as President Obama tried to lay the issue at rest by producing the document that showed, proved, verified, documented, and validated his birth in one of the great states of our disunion, it was said that its release would only fuel more debate, and convince no one.
In other words, in the end, this long debated fact didn’t matter.
Facts no longer seem to matter on other issues, too, as articulated in the now infamous memo issued by retiring Senator Jon Kyle whose office, when confronted with evidence that he misspoke on the matter of how much money Planned Parenthood spent on abortions—he claimed 90%, the truth was but 3%—issued an advisory that said, “The statement was not meant to be factual.”
Jon Stewart and…
Why Conspiracy Theories Die Hard
[Disclaimer: By posting this article I do not mean to advocate the mainstream view that conspiracies are impossible. Both evidence and logic suggest to me that not only do some exist, but most are small and banal, and thus common. Nonetheless, this article describes one reason we should not swallow any old conspiracy theory just because its purported villain is someone we don't identify with, but instead regularly question "the truth" as we believe we "know" it. Of course that includes those who don't believe in conspiracies.]
From CNN:
Recent polls have found that as much as 15% to 20% of the public, including about 30% to 45% of Republicans, falsely believe that President Barack Obama was not born in this country. Will Wednesday’s release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate put an end to the birther myth?The odds aren’t good. The problem is that people can be extremely resistant to unwelcome factual information. In…
Obama’s Birth Address Is Middle Of Highway
The White House thought it had us all fooled with today’s long-form Hawaiian birth certificate release, but that was until the latest revelation emerged. Enter 6085 Kalanianaole Highway, the supposed address of Obama’s childhood home, into Google Street View, and the red arrow points to ground in the middle of a freeway! Nice try, Barack Hussein, we’re too smart for you!
Update: this was intended to be humorous. But, apparently, it’s not too far off from actual “birther” arguments.
Via The Cheat Sheet tumblr:
Obama Releases Long-Form Birth Certificate
Do you think this will stop the “birthers” from doubting President Obama?
Has Trump Really Sent Investigators After Obama’s Birth Certificate?
Justin Elliott writes at Salon:
Donald Trump’s claim that he dispatched private investigators to Hawaii to look into President Obama’s birth has been repeatedly printed as fact in the media despite zero evidence that he has done any such thing.
Here, for example, is how CNN is playing Trump’s comments, which he made Thursday on the “Today” show:
The CNN lead goes like this:
Self-proclaimed birther Donald Trump is now so doubtful of President Obama’s birthplace that he’s sent a team of his own investigators to Hawaii in hopes of getting to the bottom of the issue.
That’s according to Trump himself, who, in an interview with NBC, warned his investigators just might uncover “one of the greatest cons in the history of politics and beyond.”
This is stenographic journalism at its worst. The problem is that Trump has historically not been a credible source. He has a history of making disputed claims about his net worth as well…
Donald Trump Joins The Birthers
Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC)
In the wake of his announcement of a probable 2012 Presidential bid, the Donald joins the birthers, as reported by AP/Yahoo News:
Real estate tycoon Donald Trump said Thursday he isn’t convinced that President Barack Obama was born in the United States ,but says he hopes the president can prove that he was.
Officials in Hawaii have certified Obama’s citizenship, but “birthers” have demanded additional proof. And Trump, who is weighing whether to seek the Republican presidential nomination, says not all the questions have been answered.
In an interview broadcast Thursday, Trump told NBC News he plans to decide by June whether to run, and said that if he is the GOP nominee, “I’d like to beat him straight up,” not on the basis of the question of where Obama was born.
Trump insisted he didn’t introduce the citizenship issue, but he isn’t letting go of it either. Since he was…
Birther Disrupts Congressional Reading of The Constitution of the United States (Video)
David Weigel writes on Slate:
During the reading of Article II, Section I of the Constitution — the clause that requires the president of the United States to be a “natural born citizen,” an unidentified woman in the gallery screamed “Except Obama! Except Obama!” Politico’s Marin Cogan adds that the woman yelled, “Help us, Jesus!” She was removed immediately.
UPDATE: I’m told that the woman who made the disruption was Theresa Cao, a birther activist and supporter of court-martialed birther Lt. Col. Terry Lakin. On December 16, she told WorldNetDaily that she was “taking his message to the White House and Congress.” She maintains a blog here.
Is Barack Obama A Keynesian? (Video)
Andy Cobb of the Partisans asks attendees of the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear:
John Avlon: The Birthers Began on the Left
John Avlon writes on the Daily Beast:
The Birthers were back in force at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville.
The high-profile resurgence of the Birther claims on cable television provoked much self-satisfaction from liberals as the latest evidence of the influence of wingnuts on conservative politics.
But there’s an inconvenient truth liberals are going to have to confront: The Birthers began not on the right, but on the left.
Investigations for my new book, Wingnuts, revealed that the Birther conspiracy theory was first concocted by renegade members of the original Obama haters, Party Unity My Ass, known more commonly by their acronym, the PUMAs. They were a splinter group of hard-core Hillary Clinton supporters who did not want to give up the ghost after the bitter 50-state Bataan Death March to the 2008 Democratic nomination.
Read more of John Avlon’s article in the Daily Beast
Is the Secret Service Targeting the Birthers?
Stephanie Mencimer writes in Mother Jones:
Over the past year, Secret Service agents charged with protecting President Obama seem to have taken a keen interest in the Birther movement, the committed group of anti-Obama activists around the country who claim the president was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and is thus ineligible to serve.
The idea has been widely and repeatedly debunked (see FactCheck.org’s thorough takedown), but that hasn’t stopped Birthers from doggedly making their case in American courtrooms, to US attorneys, and even to a rural county grand jury, in the hopes that a judge will rule in their favor and Obama might eventually be removed from office. Those efforts have failed spectacularly, but they seem to have succeeded in placing the Birthers on the radar of the Secret Service.
At least a half-dozen prominent anti-Obama activists who’ve petitioned various federal agencies or courts to investigate the president’s citizenship or publicly questioned his eligibility to serve say they’ve been visited by Secret Service or Homeland Security agents….
The British Policeman Who Wants to Bring Down Barack Obama
Ed Pilkington writes in the Guardian:
Neil Sankey has spent his life investigating organised crimes. As a former British police officer with almost 20 years experience, he was seconded to elite units of Scotland Yard through most of the 1970s and now runs his own private detective agency in California.
Over the years he has been involved in some big investigations. As part of the Special Branch and Bomb Squad he monitored British leftwing groups and the IRA, and in America his clients have included several big car companies.
But never has he handled anything quite as monumental as the investigation that is absorbing his energies today.
Sankey is pursuing what he believes to be fraud on a gigantic scale — a conspiracy, no less, to infiltrate and destroy the free world by putting a foreign imposter into the White House.
More on the Guardian
