Jack & Jill Politics

I just got off a session with INDIE talk on Sirius. The attacks are heating up and getting dumb and dumber. My point was that many of these attacks revolve around the theme that the Obamas are not American, that black people can never truly be American, despite us having paid the ultimate price and never gotten due respect in return.

The latest is the rumor of Obama’s birth certificate. Idiots claimed that his real name was something other than Barack Hussein Obama.

Kos posted a copy. Mahablog thinks that was a bad idea. I agree.

There’s also a certificate/certification flap at Suitably Flip (”Kos Tries To Pass Off Obama’s Birth Certification As Birth Certificate“). Children, if you have a copy of your birth certificate around — a notarized one as needed to get a passport or for other stuff — what does it say? Does it say “certificate” or “certification”?

I dug mine out of a file and lo, it says “certification.” Yet it’s still what is commonly known as a “birth certificate” and, as it is notarized, it’s a legal document that will fill the bill whenever anyone asks me for my “birth certificate.”

The “birth certificate” document that was issued to my parents when I was born has a lot more stuff on it. I have seen it, but I don’t know what happened to it or even if it still exists. But typically (I’ve retrieved birth certificates for my children, born in Ohio and New Jersey, over the years also), what you get if you ask a state for a “birth certificate” is the simplified, notarized “birth certification.”

However, the wingnuts will dance around with the certificate/certification thing for a while and try to make an issue out of it. Just watch ‘em.

The only way to respond is to turn the tables on them and slam them back. If they trap us into perpetually playing defense to their offense, we lose.

Here here! These attacks are not about the content of the attack. No one cares what Obama’s birth certificate says. No one cares if Michelle said “whitey” in a video (which she did not). This is just a massive noise-making machine designed to feed and amplify the fears among an ignorant and manipulative media class and among citizens already against Obama but always open to a new excuse.

Meanwhile, McCain doesn’t know what he stands for. He and Joe Lieberman are lying when they claim he’s not for privatizing Social Security.