The Born Identity: Jon Stewart eviscerates wingnut “birther” movement

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

This wingnut conspiracy theory just keeps hanging around despite having been debunked quite some time ago. It achieved notoriety with Jerome Corsi (of "Swiftboat Liars" fame) in his book "The Obama Nation," a smear campaign against Barack Obama during 2008. Corsi was a regular guest on FAUX News, where Sean Hannity continues to promote this baseless claim. Even a Hillary Clinton supporter weighed in on the smear campaign. Democrat sues Sen. Obama over 'fraudulent candidacy' (World Net Daily, August 23, 2008):

However, FactChecker.org says it obtained Obama's actual certification of live birth and that the document was indeed real. The site discredited some of the claims of Internet bloggers, such as that the certificate as viewed in a scanned copy released by Obama's campaign lacked a raised seal. FactChecker.org also established that many of the alleged flaws in the document noted by bloggers were caused by the scanning of the document.

A separate WND investigation into Obama's certification of live birth utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren't originally there.

When wingnut conspiracy central "World Nut Daily" dismisses you as crazy, you are seriously batshit crazy to believe any of this crap. FactChecker.org has posted high-resolution photographs of the original birth certificate and supporting documents (you can click on the photos to get full size versions). FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.

On July 17, 2009, Kitty Pilgrim. substituting for CNN's king of conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant hysteria, Lou Dobbs (Why Kitty? You deserve so much better than this bloviating gas bag), thoroughly debunked claims that President Obama does not have a valid birth certificate. Pilgrim said that CNN "found no basis" for such claims and cited "overwhelming evidence that proves that his birth certificate is real, and that he was born in Honolulu." CNN's Pilgrim refutes Dobbs on Dobbs over birth certificate (video).

All of this crazyiness was just too much for Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, who in this segment eviscerates the wingnut "birther" movement.

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And let's cut the crap. This attempt to delegitimize Obama's presidency is racially motivated, pure and simple. This is the same tired old racist crap in a "new and improved" package.

Of course, to a true conspiracy theorist, facts do not matter – just invent another conspiracy to keep the conspiracy alive.

UPDATE: CNN President Jon Klein has told Lou Dobbs — by way of e-mail to his staff — to drop the Obama birther story, calling the story dead after learning the truth from state of Hawaii officials:

—– Original Message —–
From: Klein, Jon (CNN)
Sent: Thu Jul 23 19:00:44 2009
Subject: Important re birth certificate

I asked the political researchers to dig into the question "why couldn't Obama produce the ORIGINAL birth certificate?"

This is what they forwarded. It seems to definitively answer the question. Since the show's mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead – because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.

Thx

*****************

*In 2001 – the state of Hawaii Health Department went paperless. *Paper documents were discarded *The official record of Obama's birth is now an official ELECTRONIC record. Janice Okubo, spokeswoman for the Health Department told the Honolulu Star Bulletin, "At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said.

UPDATE II: Never mind. CNN has officially lost any shred of journalistic credibility.