The Other McCain

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WATERLOO FOR BIRTHERS: Obama Releases Long-Form Birth Certificate

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 42 Comments

UPDATE 12:10 p.m.: VIDEO: Obama Sermonizes About This Silly Distraction From His Incompetence

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PREVIOUSLY (9:15 a.m. ET): The White House this morning released Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate, which is now available online as a PDF.

UPDATE: CNN reports:

The White House released President Obama’s original birth certificate Wednesday.
The surprise release follows recent and sustained remarks by businessman Donald Trump, among others, that raised doubts as to whether the president was born in the United States.
White House spokesman Jay Carney is expected to speak more about the birth certificate Wednesday morning.

Wow. Guess their internal polls showed that Trump was really hurting their guy.

UPDATE II: Funny guys on Twitter:

UPDATE III: Associated Press:

White House spokesman Jay Carney says Obama felt the debate over his birthplace had become a “sideshow” that was bad for the country and political debate. . . .
“The president feels this was bad for the country, that it’s not healthy for our political debate,” Carney said.

Translation: “It wasn’t healthy for his re-election prospects.”

UPDATE IV: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

Note that the long form doesn’t have any mention of religion at all, which was one theory as to why Obama was supposedly “hiding” it, nor does it list anyone else as Obama’s father, another speculative bit of nonsense peddled by the birthers. The place of birth box is checked as within city or town limits, signed as thus by the attendant to the birth.
This conspiracy theory should have died three years ago. Now, maybe we can focus on all the ways Obama is failing as President.

Having dismissed the whole controversy as silly from the outset, and having mostly ignored it ever since, I was amazed at how much traction it got when Trump started pounding it in interview after interview.

UPDATE V: Professor William Jacobson had remarked on how much damage Trump was doing.

UPDATE VI: The Lonely Conservative:

I just have to wonder why they didn’t do this two years ago?

The White House press release is here and there is, as might be expected, a massive Memeorandum thread.

Next, I’m waiting for Andrew Sullivan to say, “See there? Now where’s Trig’s birth certificate? What’s Sarah Palin hiding?” In fact, Sully may have already said that, but I haven’t bothered to look yet.

UPDATE VII: Steve Eggleston:

In case you were wondering what it takes to get a copy of the original Certificate of Live Birth out of Hawaii, the White House provided the correspondence between Obama, his private lawyer, and Hawaii Director of Health Loretta J. Fuddy.

UPDATE VIII: You saw this coming, right?

“I’m taking great credit and you have to ask the president, ‘why didn’t he do this a long time ago? Why didn’t he do it a long time ago?’ When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn’t he do it? It’s shocking. It’s shocking,” Donald Trump said at a press conference this morning on President Obama’s birth certificate.

Donald Trump: Not Just a Kook, an Effective Kook.

UPDATE IX: David Frum refers to Birtherism as “the racialist aspect of the anti-Obama movement,” which is rather a large leap. I always compared it to the various strange conspiracy theories about Mena Airport and/or Vince Foster that flourished during Bill Clinton’s first term.

In politics, some people are always more interested in throwing out spooky charges of criminality or fraud than in arguing over policy. You saw this during the Bush administration, with the stuff about Halliburton and Iraq, the claims of rigged voting machines in Ohio, the “Plamegate” controversy and all those wild fantasies about Karl Rove getting indicted.

UPDATE X: Linked by Pirate’s Cove and the Lonely Conservative — thanks! Our favorite Twitter celebrity weighs in:

That settles the question, doesn’t it? If it’s good enough for Alyssa Milano, there can be no further doubt!

UPDATE XI: Linked by Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints.


Category: Barack Obama

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