Obama reveals long form birth certificate

Coby

You must have read my post at the HTTTACS Open Thread!

That article in wattsupmybutt was freaky wasn't it? Do these guys really believe the shit they write, or is it all woo? They better be careful, the climate change cabal is arranging 'secret meetings' and publishing all the details on the web.

There is indeed an interesting lesson to be drawn from this episode, and it has nothing to do with the circumstances of the president's birth. The real story is the extraordinary feebleness and timidity of the North American press. How astonishing that it took a rich self-publicist such as Trump to persuade Obama to produce the long form birth certificate after years of staunch refusal.

A British politician who displayed similar evasiveness and dithering would have been torn to shreds by the newspapers. Yet North American journalists seem to think it is their job to help prevent the evidence from being shown. Even now, they react with fastidious distaste. 'How dare these vulgarians demand a birth certificate from the sainted Barack,' they seem to be saying.

Anyone from the UK who attends an official function in the United States or Canada is amazed by the clubbiness that exists between journalists and those they should be holding to account. The recent fuss over Canada's Sun News Network illustrated the point. Commentators were lining up to demand that this upstart be strangled at birth, and to insist pompously that they and they alone were the arbiters of what is fit to publish or broadcast.

Self-censorship has become the defining characteristic of US journalism, aided and abetted by universities that preach journalistic ethics. Driven by a toxic mix of political correctness and a woeful failure to understand the role of the press in a democracy, these institutions are quite unable to see that they are actually advocating restrictions on free speech. With one or two exceptions, the Canadian press is even worse: it has become an unreadable farrago of pious self righteousness, whose overriding aim is to offend no one.

I suppose I should make it plain that I have the greatest fondness and admiration for both the United States and Canada. And goodness knows we have many faults in the UK. But when it comes to journalism, I am bound to say that I believe we do it better.

For years Canadians have been sleep walking into a state of affairs where free speech is threatened. Now the same thing is happening in America, the land of the First Amendment. It is all rather depressing.

God, Snowman.

What a Fox News drone you are.

Statements like this, along with your admission that you have no interest in facts and that your agenda is set by a half-wit meteorologist with no secondary education, just illustrate your intellectual depravity.

The epic fool Donald Trump said he had the goods on Obama and pushed this issue to make good with the illiterate, ignorant right (i.e., your kind of people, Snowman.) Now that the egg is on his face, he and his supporters are trying to spin an embarrassment as a triumph.

Obama ignored this stupidity for as long as he could because *nothing* satisfies conspiracy freaks. Nothing. There are already people now claiming to be "experts" who are "refuting" the document even though the *Republican* governor of Hawaii had long ago attested to Obama's citizenship.

The failure of journalism was in not more thoroughly exposing the *stupidity of the claim*.

What a comment on the caliber of your comprehension that you regard ignorant demands for satisfaction of an ignorant, ideological claim a journalistic obligation.

Perhaps I haven't made myself clear, Skip. I hold no brief for Donald Trump nor Obama's flakier critics. I have no interest in Fox News, which I have rarely seen. I rather like the the president, and if I had been an American would probably have voted for him. But all that is beside the point.

My assertion is that the press should have been demanding that the White House either put up or shut up. A previous generation of US journalists - consider Watergate - would have done just that. The extraordinary deference to Obama, and the lack of combative instincts in the media, is a sorry business. Mainstream American newspapers are almost all insolvent. Most will be gone within ten years. I think it is rather tragic, but they have only themselves to blame. As the product of US journalism schools, they are increasingly unable to distinguish between news and PR puffery. And, of course, they are iredeemably dull - the one cardinal sin of journalism.

The fact that you cannot see that, Skip, just shows how deeply ingrained the problem has become. You genuinely think the press is doing a good job by being such a pushover. Emasculated and unchallenging newspapers strike you as quite normal.

Yeah, those 2 Hawaiian newspapers could have helped avoid this mess if they had added 'We watched as Obama was born' to their birth announcements.....Then again, they were probably far-left liberals who wanted to impose a world wide socialist (or communist, or fascist, or 'buzzword of the day') government on everybody.

As you seem determined to miss the point, jerryg, I won't bother replying, particularly as it's only half-time in the encounter between Manchester United and Arsenal and the game is soon to resume - a vital battle as the season nears its end. (By the way, Skip, this is a reference to the sport you call soccer.)

Watergate . . . birther bullshit . . . making the President "put up or shut up"?

We're talking about high crimes being committed by the nation's supposed first law enforcement officer compared to the question of whether to respond to conspiracy theory bullshit. These aren't even the same universe let alone journalistic responsibility. Its a junk point, Snowman.

I hope you're a Man U fan.

Snowman is right.

Skip is right, but topic is irrelevant here.

My assertion is that the press should have been demanding that the White House either put up or shut up.

Obama 'put up' before he was even elected, you daft sod.

Actually Skip I'm a fan of neither Man U nor Arsenal, although that was one of your better quips, if I may say so. But I am a Chelsea fan, and Man U's defeat was very much to our advantage.

snowman

".....And goodness knows we have many faults in the UK. But when it comes to journalism, I am bound to say that I believe we do it better...."

Yeah - I always get my news from those paragons of the media, the Telegraph and the Sun.

Fox news reporting UBL dead.
Probably not true.

But I am a Chelsea fan, and Man U's defeat was very much to our advantage.

Ok then fine. I hope Torres contracts the clap in a Soho fancy house.

There's nothing but bile for you here, Snowman. I'll see to it.

I just read that our SEALS finally got to bin Laden. I wonder if he iced himself at the end rather than risk live capture. I suppose we'll know in a few days. It probably doesn't mean much of anything at this point except the symbolism of it; I doubt Osama really had much to do with practical Al Qada operations anymore. In any event, fuck'm.

But it makes you wonder: Why would the non-US citizen/closet Muslim/secret America-hating Barak Obama have authorized a hit that George Bush didn't have the balls to ok?

Also brace yourselves in Europe and any other place abroad that radical faux-Muslim freaks think they can find an American and exact their vengeance. This won't cool off for a while.

Seals, you mean the rubber ones on the drone missile?

Apparently this is the second time OBL has died, he also died in 2001 from kidney failure the only other person to pull off a trick like this was Jesus of Nazareth.

But you are right we should brace ourselves as OBL was much more valuable to the American government alive than dead as we have no reason now to stay in Afghanistan God only knows what the American government is planning but what ever it is it can only end in tears. Good luck Skip.

It was Clinton who didn't do it to UBL

Skip,
I shouldn't have posted that last one.
I wouldn't second guess anyone in that position.

Americans have every right to take pride in the courage and resourcefulness of their special forces. But Skip, following our conversation yesterday, I bring you information about Osama Bin Laden that I suspect few of your countrymen know.

Bin Laden is (or was) an Arsenal fan. It is perfectly true. When he lived in obscurity in London in the early 1990s, he was a regular at Highbury, Arsenal's old stadium. He bought an Arsenal shirt for one of his sons.

For supporting Arsenal, as well as for his lesser crimes, he deserved everything he got.