Little Green Footballs: Hawaii State Verifies Obama Birth Certificate

Little Green Footballs

Hawaii State Verifies Obama Birth Certificate

The State of Hawaii has released a statement verifying that they have Barack Obama’s official birth certificate on record.

HONOLULU — The state’s Department of Health director on Friday released a statement verifying the legitimacy of Sen. Barack Obama birth certificate.

The state has received multiple requests for a copy of Obama’s birth certificate. State law does not allow officials to release the birth certificate of a person to someone outside of the family. …

“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record,” DOH Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said.

“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures. No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawai‘i,” Fukino said.

Will this put a stop to the idiotic rumors? Of course not!

NYT Caucus: ‘Hussein’ Chant at Palin Rally

NYT Caucus

‘Hussein’ Chant at Palin Rally

 “John McCain! Not Hussein!”

So goes the latest popular chant on the campaign trail with Gov. Sarah Palin, demonstrated at a morning rally in central Florida.

Ms. Palin was midway through her stump speech when a group of supporters began shouting it in unison, drowned out a few seconds later as Ms. Palin talked over them.

A similar chant, “Vote McCain, not Hussein,” was heard at a campaign event for Ms. Palin in Williamsport, Pa., earlier this week.

Senator Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein, a fact that some of his opponents say proves that he is a Muslim. Mr. Obama is, in fact, a Christian.

After the rally in Florida ended, two of the people leading the chant explained why they did so.

“Because it rhymes,” said Shirley Mitten, 64, a volunteer at a pregnancy center and a resident of Brooksville, Fla.

She said she does not know if Mr. Obama is a Muslim. “He says he’s not, but we have no way of knowing,” Ms. Mitten said.

…

The middle name Hussein, he said, added to the suspicion. “I guess Obama was named after Saddam Hussein,” he said.

Think Progress: Chambliss: The rush of African-Americans to the polls has ‘got our side energized.’

Think Progress:

Chambliss: The rush of African-Americans to the polls has ‘got our side energized.’

On Wednesday, the chairman of the Hillsborough County, Florida Republican party forwarded an e-mail to several hundred party members that warned of “‘the threat’ of ‘carloads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes.’” While the McCain campaign condemned the email, the sentiment does not appear to be isolated. As Tapped notes, earlier this week, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) proclaimed that the the “rush” of African-Americans to the polls has “got our side energized“:

“There has always been a rush to the polls by African-Americans early,” he said at the square in Covington, a quick stop on a bus tour as the campaign entered its final week. He predicted the crowds of early voters would motivate Republicans to turn out. “It has also got our side energized, they see what is happening,” he said.

Similarly, Chambliss has been warning his “predominantly white base” in North Georgia, “The other folks are voting.”

Ta Nehisi Coates:”The other folks are voting”

Ta Nehisi Coates

“The other folks are voting” 

That’s Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss talking to his base. One guess as to who he considers to be his base:

The development is not lost on Mr. Chambliss. “There has always been a rush to the polls by African-Americans early,” he said at the square in Covington, a quick stop on a bus tour as the campaign entered its final week. He predicted the crowds of early voters would motivate Republicans to turn out. “It has also got our side energized, they see what is happening,” he said.

Damn right we’re voting. No one should be outraged by this. No one should repudiate dude. We should be invigorated. That is the past talking–screaming actually–as it chokes on its own bile. Show this to your 18-year nephews, your cousins and daughters. Tell them that this is power. For my part, I have to say that hearing a politician quaking at the site of black people with ballots, puts a smile on my face, wide as 125th.  Do the damn thing, Georgia. End it now.

Newsweek: Gateway Pundit: Figures. Obama’s Dear Auntie Onyango Is an Illegal Alien …Update: Obama Camp Silenced Auntie Onyango(?)

Newsweek: Gateway Pundit

Figures. Obama’s Dear Auntie Onyango Is an Illegal Alien …Update: Obama Camp Silenced Auntie Onyango(?)

This explains why she was not used as a prop on the campaign trail. It also explains why she refused to talk to reporters until after November 4th. Obama’s dear Auntie Onyango is an illegal alien. Zeituni Onyango lives in a disabled-access flat in a South Boston slum. She has lived in public housing for 5 years . ( Times Online ) The AP did not mention anything about the legal status of long lost Uncle Omar who was evicted from his Boston home in 2000 for not paying rent. Where can you find a good Ohio investigator when you need one? Aunt Zeituni is now also living in Boston, and recently made a $260 campaign contribution to her nephew’s presidential bid.

Newsweek: The Moderate Voice: Is Obama American enough to succeed?

Newsweek: The Moderate Voice

Is Obama American enough to succeed?

Is Barack Obama enough of an American? Can a person be well-educated, dark-skinned and a real American at the same time?
Obama’s election hinges on whether a majority thinks the latter is possible or is so self-evident that the question is silly. The McCain-Palin ticket’s central strategy still is to stoke doubt and keep the first question alive.

It cannot be denied that this election would get much less attention were it a contest between a young white liberal-centrist and an old white right-wing warrior. The emotional outpouring is there because Obama is non-white in a white nation.

Europeans and other non-Americans are so riveted by this electoral drama because for almost everyone America is a white and multidenominational Christian nation. In those eyes being black, Hispanic, Asian or Muslim denotes belonging to an immigrant minority tolerated by white Americans but not of them.

For those eyes, it is exciting and surprising to see white people elect an apparently black person to be their Commander-in-Chief and ruler.

Yet, Obama is not really black or an African American despite his skin color. African Americans are just slightly newer than the early white settlers while Obama is the son of a foreign father who did not become American. His claim to being American comes from his white mother and grandparents.

 

For most eyes, America is white nation because immigrants of other races got there later. Europeans find it hard to see American blacks as being as genuinely American as whites. In Europe, all “colored” people are forever immigrants. France’s Nicholas Sarkozy born of immigrant Hungarians could never have become President were he black or Arab regardless of how many generations of ancestors were French born.

Wall Street Journal:TV Ad Stirs Controversy in Minnesota House Race

Wall Street Journal

TV Ad Stirs Controversy in Minnesota House Race

Democratic party officials are alleging that a Republican television ad intentionally darkens the skin tone of Indian-American Democratic candidate Ashwin Madia in a closely contested Minnesota congressional race.

The ad was produced by the National Republican Congressional Committee in support of Republican candidate Erik Paulsen, who is running against Madia for an open seat in the state’s third district.

In an election year when racial issues have reverberated nationally, critics of the ad say it crosses the line between hardball campaigning and something with a more insidious intent.

While the Madia campaign is carefully avoiding making charges that race is involved, Minnesota Democratic officials and a veteran’s group charge that the ad darkens Madia’s pigmentation in three photos.

“It might be possible to dismiss these actions as a customary, yet unfortunate aspect of negative advertising,” said Eric S. Fought, associate communications director of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. But he said that he believed viewers would “know what Paulsen and his allies intended with darkening the images of Madia.” The Paulson campaign didn’t return calls.

Press secretary Ken Spain of the NRCC, which makes ads and buys time for a number of Republican congressional candidates, said the photos were not darkened at all, much less intentionally. ”These assertions are profoundly ridiculous and false,” he said

The NRCC ad plays off of one of Madia’s own ads, in which the Democratic candidate, a lawyer and former Marine who served in Iraq, runs through his community in a “Marines” sweatshirt. In the NRCC’s version, a narrator suggests Madia is “running to raise taxes.” Viewers see what Democratic party officials say appears to be darkened footage of the candidate jogging as well as the photos in question.

Newsweek: The Moderate Voice: Socialism is the New Black (Guest Voice)

Newsweek

The Moderate Voice: Socialism is the New Black (Guest Voice)

 

Lately, the word is picking up steam as a way for certain camps to remind the voters of Obama’s heritage as an African American and try to connect the two ideas. A clever new ploy to say the color of skin matters and can lead to dangerous paths. Some are working awfully hard to say, socialism has become the new black.

It’s like a grownup version of the old Ovaltine decoder ring that helped loyal viewers discover the hidden message. Be afraid of Obama because he’s not just like us, wink, wink.

Instead, whip out the word socialist to divert, confuse and inspire fear in the voters. Ah, at last, an insult that might work even if it has no basis in fact.

Let me translate this one for voters. The manipulation is to get us to look at Obama and see someone who may not act in the best interests of anyone who doesn’t look just like him. Maybe if the fear creeps in just enough we won’t look at his proposals in detail and realize that there are tangible tax breaks for small to mid-size business owners. Tax breaks that are plausible even in our present circumstances.

Maybe we won’t catch that part where he was pointing out that ‘spreading the wealth’ referred to the large corporations who actually pay less in taxes. The same ones who are mopping up billions in taxpayer bailouts to save their hides without pondering whether or not that would slide them into the socialist category. No moral issues there.

The best news, though, that is coming out of all of the socialist baiting is that it appears most of us have grown weary of being treated as if we have no common sense. Polls are reflecting the strength of the new diverse culture where every voice is given the opportunity to speak.

 

Iowa Independent: King doesn’t trust Obama because of his upbringing

Iowa Independent

King doesn’t trust Obama because of his upbringing

Saying he is “uneasy” about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s background, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, speaking in Spencer said a baby being groomed for national leadership should grow up like George W. Bush, not Obama.

At the Spencer event in August, of which a video is available from Think Progress, King talked about how the Bush family is a better model than Obama’s. (The video was just posted on YouTube Oct. 26.)

“I look at this and I ask myself, if I had a baby and my charge was to raise that baby to be the president of the United States, I could see handing that baby over to, let me say, George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara, because there is multiple generations of American service there,” King said. “They must know how to do something. Look at how their kids have succeeded.”

King said there is much to learn from the Bush family.

“This is the way that we should raise future generations of children,” King said.

King said he has read some of Obama’s writings and is “uneasy” about his background. He then made a creepy reference to “briefings” King said he received about Obama.

“I have received briefings on the life of Obama,” King said.

The Nation: Web Puts Dog-Whistle Politics on a Leash

The Nation

Web Puts Dog-Whistle Politics on a Leash

Everyone can hear it now. This Internet-driven, hyperactive presidential race is forcing accountability on two of the oldest tricks in politics: dog whistles and secret smears.

 

With a “dog whistle,” politicians use code words to signal unpopular stances to one target audience, while avoiding a backlash because the reference is lost on others. Many people miss President Bush’s layered language for evangelicals, from hinting that legal abortion is like slavery to his odd prediction that history will see Iraq as just “a comma.” (It only makes sense if you know the proverb, “Never put a period where God has put a comma.”) Code words don’t fool everyone, but from “states’ rights” to “welfare queens,” GOP campaigns have tapped racial resentment without facing widespread opprobrium. Secret smears run on a similar axis, enabling politicians to undermine an opponent without taking responsibility for the attack. But the times are changing.

 

From his race to his name, Barack Obama seemed like the perfect target for such coded attacks. Indeed, some Republicans were eager to run the old playbook on him. “Count me down as somebody who underestimates Barack Hussein Obama, please,”said GOP strategist Ed Rogers, speaking on MSNBC’sHardball in the headier days of 2006. Yet Rogers, like the McCain campaign, underestimated not only Obama but a new media model that swiftly blasts would-be Swiftboaters.

…

The infamous Swiftboat attacks against John Kerry, for example, were barely a blip in the 2004 presidential debates. Sure, everyone knew about them, but no voters ever saw President Bush defend them. Run the tape back to 2000, and Bush was never forced to fully answer for one of his most vile political attacks, the racist smear against John McCain’s family in the South Carolina primary. Today, it is hard to imagine a candidate in either party sliding through a presidential primary without a huge backlash for deploying that kind of attack.

This cycle, in fact, even faint dog whistles are called out in real time. When McCain launched a late-October attack on Obama, alleging that he would morph the IRS into a “welfare agency,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow bore down on the line. “Welfare? Where’d that come from?” she asked on her MSNBC show, slamming McCain for invoking a “great racially divisive codeword from the ’80s and ’90s [with] no bearing whatsoever on Barack Obama’s tax policies.”