I already pointed out that you are attempting to defend the intelligence of the birthers, by assuming most of what they spew is based on information from reliable sources.
It is not.
I don’t think he is just referring to the birther “logic” but to your incomplete and baseless information that you are using to say that birthers are normal.
No, once again the moronic thing is to ignore that even the frame that you are using in the attempt to defend the intelligence of the birthers is a dumb one.
It is based on ignorance and on the denial that many republicans actually think that it is democrats who are keeping the birther fools in the news because it does make republicans look foolish by association.
Yes it is. Here’s the problem with your hypothetical: If Joe Sixpack hears the news and is really as oblivious as you speculate then he’s probably not going to pursue it. However if the reports alarm him enough, the logical course of action is to do a little research - not demand the president show his birth certificate again. The tiniest modicum of research will show him that it’s really just political smearing and not a legitimate issue. When finding out the truth if he still continues to ‘just ask questions’, he’s being disingenuous or just plain stupid.
You obviously haven’t read your own cite very carefully. The only time the word ‘investigation’ is used is in the following sentence:
It’s clear the word investigation is being used as a verb (and I’ll bet the investigating comprised of nothing more than a leisurely stroll to the basement records room to have a look at said certificate) and not a (proper noun) Official Investigation with investigators cross examining officials in smoke filled rooms full of case files. In your opinion what did you think this investigation actually entailed?
What the governor states clearly in the quote is:
The certificate exists
He will verify this
Because that’s all he is legally allowed to do. Understand? To do any more would be illegal.
No. You’ve been quite clear that you don’t have a point of view. You’re a neutral but reasonable observer who’s just asking questions.:rolleyes:
I’m not portraying you as anything other than a patronizing ignorant jackass, which you are so that pretty much makes it honest and accurate.
Once again you make it seem like being mildly up to date about current events is an “investigation.” As if it were some kind of ordeal to be basically knowledgeable. And once again, this has nothing to do with “thinking like me.” It’s a fucking fact. Right up there with gravity, evolution, and your basic inability to process information.
Look, this is getting tiresome. I’ve explained more than once that in my view "birthers’ are people cynically trying to exploit the issue for political purposes. I’ve also explained that there are valid and understandable reasons why other people not so motivated can have honest questions to varying degrees of importance to them personally about this issue. It isn’t a case of “birthers” vs. everybody else, and my explanations of how people not birthers can have those questions does not make me a birther.
You simply cannot allow yourselves to admit that people can legitimately have questions about this issue without their being a reviled “birther,” and so you come back to it over and over again when you find yourselves without a legitimate defense. You aren’t accomplishing anything but to preach to the choir, and I’m getting tired of having to repeat myself over and over again to refute these same stupid allegations that I’m either a birther or covering for them.
So claim what you like. Reasonable people will see the truth and your ilk will continue to believe what they like. C’est la vie.
Which part of the defence put forward is not legitimate? That sounds like an opinion of yours, that there is some defence of the existence of the certificate that is not legitimate?
How would we hear about these naives? If they are savvy enough to crow about it on the internet, they are savvy enough to search that same internet for the facts. Based on my last post, do you agree these people won’t stay ignorant for long?
I know. I’m running out of ways to insult your intelligence.
Of course you have.
Ah yes. Curse that single ABC news article that didn’t say what you think it said for causing mass confusion amongst the populace whose time is so very very precious that they cannot spare a mere moment to google something.
No. It’s fact vs. fiction.
That’s because they can’t.
A legitimate defense of not believing the president is a foreign national…you mean all the evidence to the contrary doesn’t count? Or did you mean a legitimate defense for being able to to a five minute internet search. Wasn’t aware I had to defend that.
Mocking you repeatedly doesn’t count as an accomplishment. I mean, it is so amazingly easy that a caveman could do it, but I’d like to think I’ve still accomplished something. I’ve put up with your bullshit for this long, so that counts, right?
Yeah. I’ll make that far fetched claim that the president was born in this country and that the information that proves it is so readily available that a child could find it easily without having to put aside their entire life to do so.
All that said Brave Sir Robin, go right ahead and bugger off.
Nonsense. They cannot have legitimate questions. Every example you have proffered of those who might wonder demonstrates that such people are willfully ignorant, blindly stupid, or both.
I’m uncertain as to what more you could reasonably expect from us as a legitimate defense.
I’ll note that your hero Trump is quoted as stating on Hannity’s show Friday evening, ““Look, he was born ‘Barry Soetero.’ Somewhere along the line, he changed his name,” said Trump – referring to the surname of Obama’s mother’s second husband, Lolo Soetoro, whom she married four years after Obama was born.”
I can kind of see where Starving Artist is coming from. I can understand why a reasonable person who is not heavily invested in politics might have a vague idea that there are questions surrounding Obama’s legitimacy.
This still does not make the actual questions legitimate, reasonable, rational, or worth paying any attention to.
Let’s say you don’t know much at all about the issue of Obama’s birth and don’t really care other than out of idle curiousity. Then you come across articles or reports such as the one I linked to from ABC News. Do you not think it’s reasonable or rational to look at or hear such a report and wonder why Abercrombie can’t seem to find the birth certificate that the background din of politics and news seems to be making a big deal over? Would you instantly and unerringly know that ABC was full of crap? No. You would tend to believe what they’ve written, and the questions that would arise therefrom would indeed be legitimate.
And for that matter, ABC’s reporting itself is legitimate, even if the claims that gave rise to it are specious. Things do not automatically become illegitimate or irrational just because they might cause harm to your guy. Self-serving questions get raised all the time in politics. If they didn’t, and one side only was always unquestionably correct, we would be living under a dictatorship. So it’s necessary for the press, when claims or questions arise, to investigate them. If the investigation itself raises questions, then those questions are legitimate even if the claims or self-serving questions that gave rise to them were specious.
So we’re really talking about two kinds of questions. We’ve got self-serving questions which are specious and deliberately intended to create problems, and secondary questions which arise from the debate created by the original questions, and those questions are both legitimate and reasonable. It is this secondary round of questions and the people to whom they occur that I’ve been defending. It is ridiculous to expect people (not that you are, Bosstone) to intuitively know the correct answer in regard to this issue, and even more ridiculous to contend that they are stupid or evil if they don’t.
So to recap: there are two different sets of questions involved. There are specious questions that have been raised for political ends, there are legitimate questions which have followed in the wake of the debate caused by the original questions. It is the people with questions of the second type who I am defending.
Nope. Nope. Nope. The article that you like sooo much (the one singular article) doesn’t even say what you think it says. If you read that article and take away from it that there are any questions regarding the presidents birth, then I’m honestly surprised you’re able to read at all.
My guy? This has nothing to do with politics. Maybe if you’re a desperate partisan hack. This is still a matter of actual facts versus complete and utter horse shit. Not right/left. Not liberals/conservatives. Fact vs. shit.
I don’t expect people to intuitively know the correct answer. I expect them to take a moment to google search. Said that a few times and you still haven’t managed to raise your last remaining brain cell to grasp that fact. It’s truly stunning that you’ve gone from people having to set aside their lives all the way to people having to intuitively know the answer. Are you so completely and fundamentaly screwed up that you can’t understand how easy it is to find the answer? Do you really think that it’s something you either are expected to just know or to set aside a large chunk of time to find out?
I think you’re so fucking enamored with yourself as being the voice of rationality that you cannot even percieve how completely wrong you are. This isn’t politics. This isn’t some sort of information that only the priviliged elite have and that the average Joe can’t hope to find. The information is actually right fucking out there for anyone to find. Easily.
There are still no legitimate questions. The answers are there for anyone who looks to find easily. If you choose not to look, that’s on you.
So to rerererererererererererecap, you’re still an idiot. You’re still wrong. These are things, like the presidents birth place, that there are no reasonable doubts about.
This is like Bricker spending two weeks and a hundred posts “just trying to get everyone to admit that they were wrong about a point he was trying to make a month ago.”
Maybe we should have a limit on the number of times you can post to each thread. That way, once you’ve said “No no no! Can’t anyone else see what I’m saying?” twenty times, you have to move on to a different subject.
Why is it on me to move on? Why is it me whose number of posts should to be limited? In case you haven’t noticed, most of my posts are a response to things other posters have said to me, or accusations they’ve made about me, and if anybody is repeating the same thing over and over it is them. I merely post my opinion on the matter, and other posters insult me and try to misconstrue what I’ve said. So I say it again in such a way as to explain what I’m saying and why, and other posters insult me and try to misconstrue what I’ve said. And so on and so on, apparently ad infinitum.
Nor am I pleading with people to please understand what I’m saying - as you so amusingly suggest; I’m continuing to contest false assertions about what I’ve said, or I’m trying to clarify a misleading usage of terms. (Or, as in the case of a poster such as Bosstone, to clarify what seems to be an honest misunderstanding.)
So you’ve got me explaining in a calm and reasoned way my view on the so-called birther issue, and then you’ve got people insulting me, calling me names, and trying to mislead people as to what I’ve said in response. So why is it again that my posts should be curtailed? It can’t really be because I’m saying the same thing over and over, because my oponents are doing the same thing…and in a more egregious way. All I can conclude is that you agree with them and you simply want me to shut up so they can appear to win.
You’re trying to argue that a half-formed opinion backed up by nothing more than what one heard as a quick soundbite on the news is perfectly legitimate.
What’s worse is that when it comes to voting, it is. So there’s absolutely no shame in pushing the lie as hard and as often as possible.
I hate to break it to you, but the majority of the voting public votes based on half-formed opinions of the issues…if even that. Whatever the subject - AGW, the economy, social programs, foreign affairs, whatever - the vast majority of people who vote have only the most scant and superficial understanding of the issues they’re basing their votes upon. Provided, of course, that they’re not just voting based on how attractive someone is or because they like watching them on television (The View, Joy Behar) or listening to them on the radio (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck).
I’d wager not one out of twenty people on the street is as well informed as the average liberal or conservative Doper, and even we don’t know anywhere near as much about the issues as we like to think we do. I hate to break this to you as well, but here on the Dope we’re little more than a large group of Monday-morning and next-Monday-morning quarterbacks who think we know more about how to run a football team than the coach does. There are a plethora of things that go on behind the scenes when it comes to and drives the issues that no one knows about but the people involved with them. And they are too complex and multi-faceted for anyone to absorb even if the players involved tried to educate them. This is why we elect leaders. It’s their job to get up to speed on this stuff, and they are the ones we have to rely on to learn about them and do what’s best. And this is why the Jackies and the Jim Bobs pay scant attention to what people are saying about things like Obama’s birth certificate. They don’t know the real facts, and they don’t know who to believe when someone claims to have them. And so they leave it up to their leaders in congress and to judges in the courts to sort it all out. And you know what? The biggest difference between them and us is that they know they don’t know everything.
I’m still trying to make sense of Republicans using the blood of Democrats’ babies to make bread. I’ve been a bit busy, however, just leading my working class life to pay attention to all this political stuff. All I know is that there are questions.