Sunday, August 2, 2009

I turned Charles into a newt, or something.

Ever wonder what it takes to be purged by Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs? Well, wonder no more. I have demonstrated it.

You see, Charles doesn't like being lumped in with Rabid Reich Winger RethugliKKKans. So he's drawn some lines in the sand. He doesn't much like "Intelligent Design", nor "racists" (a term that includes as guilty by association anyone who ever attends any event at which anyone else he considers a "racist" attends, but we'll get to that one in more detail later), nor <dramatic music>"Nirthers".

He is so freaked out by the controversies over Barack Obama's birth, the possibility of his ever having citizenship of the UK, Kenya, and/or Indonesia, that he will not tolerate anything that faintly resembles advocacy of "Nirtherism". Well, the other day, Charles decided to take another shot at that particular punching bag:

Even among people who accept that Barack Obama is a US citizen, a sort of “spinoff” idea keeps coming up in our discussions of the Nirther craziness: that Barack Obama “won’t release” his original birth certificate (some people refer to it as a “long form” certificate) because there’s something on it he wants to hide.

The two most common explanations suggested by LGF commenters for this “hidden info” are that the birth certificate: 1) lists Obama’s religion as “Muslim,” or 2) lists his race as “black” or “white” (both possibilities have been argued).
...
Note that there is no space on the form for any kind of religion, and no space for either the religion or the race of the baby, although the race of both parents is listed.
...
Status: debunked.
Let's boil his argument down to its essentials:
  1. There is a meme floating about that Obama won't allow people to see his "long-form" birth certificate because "has something to hide"
  2. He might be trying to hide how his race or religion is listed. (Note that Charles' commenters helpfully supplied this nose and hat.)
  3. There is no place on a Hawaii "long-form" birth certificate to list a child's race or religion.
  4. ???
  5. Therefore there can't possibly be anything at all on his "long-form" birth certificate that he wants to hide, and anyone who thinks there might be is looney.
It seems to me that last step is a doozy. Let's try an equivalent argument:
  1. Alice thinks Bob has a book from the library.
  2. Carol wonders if it's is the eighth in the Harry Potter series, and Dave opined that it could be the ninth.
  3. J. K. Rowling has only written seven Harry Potter books.
  4. ???
  5. Therefore Bob doesn't have a book from the library, and Alice is cuckoo, at least according to Carol and Dave's friend.
Does that make any sense to you? Me either. But I've noticed LGF changing over the last few years. As Charles has excommunicated people for various heresies, the remaining lizards have become an echo chamber, unwilling to challenge such logical fallacies.

It's really a shame, because I remember the halcyon days when he stood up against the faked TxANG memo (aka "Rathergate". In fact, I find it ironic that the Left used similar logic to "debunk" the arguments we made. Yes, I contributed to those discussions:
I just heard a talk jock take ONE call on the forgery issue. He erected the straw man of 'proportional', found the reference that IBM was selling proportional typewriters in the '40s, and declared the issue closed.

The words 'Times New Roman' were never uttered.
The point I made then was eerily similar to what I make now: We in the Dextrosphere were saying that no typewriter in a TxANG office in 1973 would be able to do all of a list of things, and the Lefties thought they "debunked" our reasoning by pointing to a list of machines, each of which could do some of the things in the list, but none of which could done them all.

It's also the same kind of twisted logic as they use to oppose the Iraq War: The Bush administration outlined a list of reasons to go to war, one of which was that Saddam Hussein was trying to build WMDs. Because our troops never found huge stockpiles of WMDs armed and ready to fire at them, there was therefore no threat that there would be any WMDs, so not only does that reason fail, but all of the others with it. It doesn't make any sense when they say it, and it doesn't make any sense when "one of ours" says it either.

One of his pet lizards went so far as to make this bizarre statement:
The burden of proof is not on Obama- it is on the nirthers to provide reasonable evidence he was not born in the United States. What Obama is doing here is upholding the rule of law. He is innocent until proven guilty.
That final sentence is a particularly nasty bit of logical gymnastics. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. the private person is not accused of a crime. No one has threatened to imprison him, confiscate his property, deny him the right to go about public places as he pleases, nor even to detain him temporarily and question him in connection with the investigation of suspicious behavior at his home. He is the one who claims to hold power over our lives, including the power to do those very things to us (or to order others to do them) should he or his subordinates deem any of them necessary.

If he has that power, it is because he has been given it by the Electors in conformance with the Constitution of the United States of America. Some people have raised various overlapping questions about whether he has done so. He is not entitled to the presumption that those questions are without merit. The burden of proof belongs on the person who wishes to exercise the power to limit another's freedom, whether that be the prosecution in a criminal proceeding, or the candidate for any office that carries such power.

Besides, it is logically fallacious to insist that someone produce evidence they have been legally forbidden to obtain. So, I responded, initially to the above comment, but also to the larger issue:
That makes no sense at all. His records are sealed, requiring him to release them. Since he controls access to the information that would prove his place of birth, it is impossible for anyone else to prove anything without his cooperation.

The new-style CertificatION Of Live Birth does not carry any signature, nor does specify which hospital, the name of the attending physician, or a great deal of information that the original "long-form" CertificATE Of Live Birth shows.

Nor does this view of someone else's long-form CoLB debunk the idea that there is something on it that Obama doesn't want us to see. It merely debunks the idea that the religion of the child is the particular thing in question.

The fact remains that Obama himself has refused to allow anyone to see his original birth certificate, his school records from Indonesia, Princeton, or Harvard, and the passport information that would show whether he used his US passport to travel to Pock-EE-stohn, or perhaps instead used an Indonesian passport.

Because if he travelled as an adult on a passport issued by some other country, he may legally have renounced his citizenship, and regained it later when he decided to enter into a political career. As a re-naturalized citizen, there is a reasonable argument that he therefore isn't a natural-born citizen. These are interesting legal questions, which have never been answered, because no court has allowed the questions to be decided. Instead, the courts that have had suits come before them have all insisted that the plaintiffs lacked standing to do so, as if a mere citizen has no right to challenge the qualifications of a candidate for office.

By wrapping up all of the questions being asked into the single package called "Birtherism" or "Nirtherism", it becomes possible to take the statement by a HI official that the records do in fact indicate that Obama was born there as a refutation of all of the other questions.

But that's not the worst rejection I've heard of the Nirthers. The most disgusting of all goes this way: "He won the election, and you can't just invalidate the election on a 'technicality'; there would be riots if that happened."

In January, Obama took (and later retook, to make sure the words were in the right order) an oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution. The qualifications for his office clearly stated therein are not a "technicality"; they are the legal basis for the oaths taken by every other USGOV employee to follow his executive orders, including the military. If you have never taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, maybe you just don't understand how important it is to those who have.

And that's who filed the most recent suit; uniformed servicemen, who need to know that the orders they are following are lawful, no matter how popular the person giving them, may be.
I attracted a few non-sequitur responses, and 10 down-dings on my comment, which put me on Charles' radar screen for my auto-da-fé from the Lizard Kingdom:
I'm not going to tolerate idiots who promote Nirtherism at LGF.

"The Monster" is blocked.
Now, Charles is entirely within his rights to ban me from his site. And I am entirely within mine to respond. But even though I would be within my rights to ban him here in retaliation, I won't. I'll let him come over here and explain why my comment was so noxious that he simply couldn't tolerate my participation on his site any further. But if he does, I ask that he also explain why debunking one particular idea of what President Obama is trying to hide on his long-form birth certificate somehow invalidates the notion that he's hiding something else.

And by the way.... Is National Review Online's Andrew C. McCarthy a "Nirther" now?
The point has little to do with whether Obama was born in Hawaii. I’m quite confident that he was. The issue is: What is the true personal history of the man who has been sold to us based on nothing but his personal history? On that issue, Obama has demonstrated himself to be an unreliable source and, sadly, we can’t trust the media to get to the bottom of it. What’s wrong with saying, to a president who promised unprecedented “transparency”: Give us all the raw data and we’ll figure it out for ourselves?


UPDATE: Someone who still has posting privileges over there quoted McCarthy in another thread, (discussing a purported Kenyan birth certificate that is likely to be a fake) prompting Charles in Charge to call him a Nirther. Since he was responding to McCarthy's words, I think that means Charles has officially classified McCarthy as a Nirther too, despite the fact that McCarthy says he's "quite confident" that Obama was born in Hawaii. This stretching of "Nirther" to include anyone who asks why Obama refuses to disclose information proves my point that Charles has conveniently packaged together a diverse collection of questions and contentions under a single umbrella, and tars them all with the broadest brush imaginable. Argumentum ad stramentam.

[Click on the title above, or date stamp below, to see the full article.]

14 comments:

  1. I got banned there, and I didn't even post anything remotely controversial. It was back during his war with JihadWatch. I read posts at both sites to make sense of it all. My guess is that I accessed some of Charles content from a link at JW - and he banned me for merely visiting that site.

    If he's that petty, I want nothing to do with him anymore.

    And I'm not one of the people who demand the long form. All three of my kids have COLBs, and they are legally considered birth certificates. Obama's COLB is good enough for me. As for his college records, he needs to show them, because after all this time it seems he's hiding SOMETHING.

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  2. It means you have two birth certficate..
    which one is real man ?????????

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  3. Maryk - according to more than one source, the Certification of Live Birth is not considered a legal document in HI. I have some experience with a similar document in KY. Back in the late '70s, KY provided a plastic card which was supposed to be the equivalent of a Birth Certificate, but one more easily carried. NO ONE accepted this as a substitute when I tried to do anything that required a Birth Certificate, including the DMV. From what I hear, the document that HI has provided is the same way.

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  4. I work as a passport acceptance agent (occasionally). I've never dealt with a HI COLB, but in general we reject any document that says something similar to "a certificate of birth is on file with" some government office as proof of citizenship. We want to see the real birth certificate, not something that says there is one.

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  5. Welcome to the club! Add your name to the list of the Banned here. And stop in to the new "Lounge" - you may find old friends waiting to welcome you... Or, You can find the link at Kirly's LGF2, StopTheACLU among others.

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  6. Well, Doug, that's one of the things that has troubled me about this whole thing. Obama posts the COLB at his website, and it's picked up by Annenburg FactCheck as if it is the actual original birth certificate. And TV talking heads parrot the line that a HI COLB is good enough to get a passport, which by your testimony isn't true.

    Obama could make the birth certificate issue go away by releasing HI vital statistics authorities to show certified copies of his original BC to major media people, and we could have high-quality pix of them on the Web. He could also authorize State to release his passport records for the period including his Pakistan trip, so everyone would know he went there on his US passport. He could authorize Indonesia and Kenya to release everything they have on him, his father, step-father, etc.

    But he won't even let people see his Columbia or Harvard transcripts.

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  7. Got myself banned from there too - what a relief.

    I kept noticing more and more how this guy promotes the nonsense of evolutionary "findings" (pushed onto the scene by NYT peusoscience); The ridicule of Creationism; The ridicule of people wanting Obama to come clean by showing his birth certificate

    Out of sheer habit, I may have stayed on for a few more days. He spared me the annoyance.

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  8. Obama will NEVER allow the release of his official birth certificate (ie, that document which would be acceptable to obtain a passport). why? because he and his minions (RAM-it-through emmanuel) are using the issue to say that ALL Republicans and Conservatives are extremists. As long as their willing accomplices in the MSM continue to push that extremist angle, they'll retain it and bring it up whenever it's quiet.

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  9. Since the liberal victory in November, Johnson has swerved hard left. Gone are the condemnations of the DailyKos lunatics. Instead, there is a constant assault on Free Republic.

    They say the Supreme Court reads election results. Apparently, so do those bloggers who prefer being front runners to having integrity.

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  10. Well I still lurk with privileges or at LGF without comment. On can count on who will be banned first. I see it as it is Charles' house, one does not go in and make a mess and expect the host not to have issues. It would get you banned in the real world and as well as a blog.

    On the subject. nirthers = Troofers = nuts

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  11. Tjexcite(Trevor)
    It is indeed Charles' house, but that doesn't mean that he is infallible. If I say something here that is wrong, and you call me on it, I won't ban you just because you disagreed with me. His "debunking" was embarrassing. His unwillingness to engage in rational debate says everything.

    I don't think I "made a mess" by pointing out that his argument was a straw man.

    And your "equation" is ridiculous. Troofers maintain that an elaborate conspiracy was concocted to implicate 19 foreign nationals in the deaths of three thousand people in the US, but the actual destruction was carried out by agents of the US Government. Nirthers have questions about the circumstances of Barack Obama's birth that have never been adequately answered, but that can easily be answered by the release of primary documentation.

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  12. Kirly has it right - undoubtedly the Obama team has (correctly) gauged that the Birthers can be easily portrayed as racists, lunatics and/or conspiracy freaks. Even better for TO is that several conservatives/Republicans have made public comments disparaging the Birthers; thus, then can hope to use this issue to discredit a larger swathe of Republicans in the public's eye, or perhaps even manage a severe split within the party's ranks itself.

    Indeed, attempting to resolve this issue in any manner holds no upside for Obama or the Democrats - therefore, if I were one of those concerned about this, I would realize that this needs to become an issue embraced by a far larger number of people, making far more noise, before anything will be done about it.

    Adios.

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  13. Shoot, it took me 30 minutes to go from being registered at LGF to banned. The place is a fever swamp anyway. Chaaarles is just a dilettente anyway. The place is nothing but an echo chamber.

    IOW, who cares?

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  14. LGF just got boring for me. The Vlaams Belang and Creationist obsessions were just dull. I'm pretty sure I can still comment there, but I haven't visited in a couple of months. I sorta decided Charles wasn't worht reading when he kept insisting Nazis were "right wingers". I pointed out to him that Nazis were national socialists instead of the more common internationalist variety, but still they were socialists. His response was "no, Nazis were right-wingers". Brilliant stuff there.

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