Obama plays Rope a Dope with Repugs - Knockout Punch in 2012

I don't care if he was born on the moon and he's blue with pink stripes and yellow polka dots. I didn't vote for him, I'm not going to vote for him, but I'll be damned if I'm going to vote for Donald Trump or Sarah Palin.

thanks for sharing

Lady Anne wrote:

The thing to do, obviously, is compare it with other birth certificates of African-American babies born in Hawaii in 1961.

No, the thing for Obama to do was to find a spine and say right out, when this shit first started, that anyone demanding proof of his citizenship was only doing so because he is black and has a Muslim father. And let the Republicans BAWWWW about him "playing the race card" if they wanted, because they don't like him and never will. And some of them would be up at the White House burning crosses on the lawn if it weren't for the Secret Service. But of course that would mean giving up on "bipartisanship" and telling Republicans to go fuck themselves instead.

zootie wrote:

Cactus Wren wrote:

I sometimes wonder why the birthers are so fond of Joe Biden, that they want to see him assume the Presidency.

I really think they have some vague notion that if they can prove Obama is not and never was eligible to be POTUS, that will retroactively invalidate not only his Presidency but his candidacy: will make it that there was no Democratic nominee in 2008, which means John McCain ran unopposed and is now President.

(Hey, it makes no less sense than most of their other claims.)

Ah, but by the same birther body of argument McCain is also inelegible. Sooooo....that leaves Sara Palin!

OHHHHHH,...the HORROR!

Cyberwulf wrote:

But of course that would mean giving up on "bipartisanship" and telling Republicans to go fuck themselves instead.

So the 60 million people who voted for the other guy are what, exactly? Chopped liver?

I mean, don't misunderstand, I don't like this version of "bipartisanship". But I'm not a proponent of doing the same thing to the minority when you're in the majority as they did to you. That's very destructive, and just means when they get back into power they'll really make you suffer for your arrogance.

The whole system and everything involved in it is trash. DOWN WITH THE MAN


No but really. There's is something bizarrely, fundamentally wrong with American politics and I can't really put my finger on it.

Verandering wrote:

The whole system and everything involved in it is trash. DOWN WITH THE MAN


No but really. There's is something bizarrely, fundamentally wrong with American politics and I can't really put my finger on it.

Welcome to the club. One of my sister's friends has a Ph.D in political science and he still looks at the whole mess and goes WTF?!

I think what bothers me is the 'birthers' insistance that this has nothing to do with race. Bullshit. It has everything to do with race, and people in tin-foil hats being unable to deal with the fact that "OMG there's a BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE! AND HE'S PRESIDENT! AND HIS FATHER WAS FROM KENYA, SO THAT MUST MEAN HE'S A MUSLIM SOCIALIST! AND HE'S TRYING TO DESTROY ALL OUR WHITE VALUES."

I read in an article on Yahoo that said two polls, done a couple of months apart, revealed that over HALF the members of the Grand Obstructionist Party believe Obama isn't an American citizen. And THEN they turn around and say that nobody (including the President, apparently) should be engaging in this kind of dialogue because it's 'counter-productive.'

Do they have special schools where they teach you how to lie out of both sides of your mouth at once? Cause that sort of shit cannot be easy.

Face it, Orly Tate and her lunatic little friends are racists through and through. Donald Trump is a racist, and and is now making noises about how President Obama should be required to release his college transcripts because 'I've heard stories that he wasn't that great of a student in college, and how does someone who's not a good student get into Harvard Law School?" Translation being "Obviously, him getting into Harvard had to be part of a giant scam by someone (because there's always SOMEONE behind it all) to get a black man elected president." Because there's no way he could have done it himself, right? Never mind all the fellow students and teachers who remember him as being an excellent student who was very passionate about what he did. Obviously, they were all either bought off or brainwashed.

I voted for the man, and I don't recall anyone offering me any cash incentives or making me sign a blood oath before I voted. He won because he was voted in by the majority, plain and simple.

In a sane, rational world we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Verandering wrote:

No but really. There's is something bizarrely, fundamentally wrong with American politics and I can't really put my finger on it.

I'll give you a couple hints:

Find another functioning democracy in which private entities (people, groups, organizations, corporations) can make cash donations directly to particular candidates.

Find another functioning democracy in which the news media is, for all intents and purposes, entirely private-owned.

If you can't find "another" one, what makes you think the US is functional to begin with?

The problem with boxing conspiracy theorists is that it's boxing one of those goddamn weeble-wobble things. Doesn't matter how hard you hit, they get back up with an unchanged, retarded look painted on their faces.

Basically, people are going to go around and around on this until the end of time anyway. This wasn't a knockout punch; people are already scrambling to find ways to "prove" this was a fake.

What it IS doing, though, is making a spectacle of Republican stupidity. If they don't drop it -and conspiracy theorists rarely admit to being wrong- it will definitely ensure Obama's reelection in 2012. It's not so much rope-a-dope plus a knockout punch as dodging and letting them punch the shit out of brick wall.

TheHermit wrote:

Verandering wrote:

No but really. There's is something bizarrely, fundamentally wrong with American politics and I can't really put my finger on it.

I'll give you a couple hints:

Find another functioning democracy in which private entities (people, groups, organizations, corporations) can make cash donations directly to particular candidates.

Find another functioning democracy in which the news media is, for all intents and purposes, entirely private-owned.

If you can't find "another" one, what makes you think the US is functional to begin with?

Obligatory THE US IS NOT A DEMOCRACY LOLOLOL

Penguin is right. Obama isn't trying to strike the Republicans, he's trying to make them hit themselves. They're making a spectacle of themselves, and while morons like FAUXNews report their theories, they are driving the middle of the country right to the Democrats. A good chunk of our country does not honestly care who is in charge, as long as they are left alone. People, in general, want affordable taxes, public systems that function, healthy children, and clean homes. They're not really Democrats or Republicans in their daily life, just people.

So here's a good strategy; never respond to the racist fuckwits who keep spreading lies about you. Let them work themselves into a good fervor as they try to make everyone see a pink elephant in the room. A non-existent pink elephant. Let them make themselves look crazier and crazier, let them be more vulgar than ever before, all while acting like you're taking the moral high ground and not responding. In fact, talk about bipartisanship! And then show them proof, so that they, in their crazy, can talk about White House lies while practically foaming at the mouth.

Because the majority of the public doesn't care, sure. And some of them believe at least a little of this BS. But they're not going to vote for the people making fuckwits of themselves.

I just hate that with everything going on, this is what the Republicans want to talk about, as a majority. At least half of them have to know this is BS, and yet they keep bringing it up. Gas prices are looking to surpass their previous high, we're still putting no money into alternative energy sources, and instead, we're letting the natural gas company take over. They don't have to follow environmental procedures thanks to a loophole that Cheney wrote in for them. Do you know how dangerous fracking actually is? Contamination of groundwater is common, and when I say contaminated, I mean "highly dangerous amounts of carcinogens in your drinking water". Fucking Perdue is destroying the Chesapeake, a source of many people's livelihood here. D.C.'s urban sprawl is out of control, destroying the area, while a good chunk of the city lies empty. Poor Alabama and the rest are in dire straits and need their government to help them (You know, their job), and all of this goes on every day. But all they want to talk about is this nothingness.

WTF is wrong with these people?

Penguin wrote:

Obligatory THE US IS NOT A DEMOCRACY LOLOLOL

Correct, the US is an oligarchical plutocracy.

Penguin wrote:

Obligatory THE US IS NOT A DEMOCRACY LOLOLOL

To be fair, he said the U.S. is not a functioning democracy. Which is looking more and more like a legitimate claim every day.

TheHermit wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Obligatory THE US IS NOT A DEMOCRACY LOLOLOL

Correct, the US is an oligarchical plutocracy.

Hermy's usual rectal-cranial inversion aside, it's not a democracy. It's a republic.

Adagio wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Obligatory THE US IS NOT A DEMOCRACY LOLOLOL

To be fair, he said the U.S. is not a functioning democracy. Which is looking more and more like a legitimate claim every day.

Sad but true.

Well it sucks :c

Rabid Badger wrote:

I think what bothers me is the 'birthers' insistance that this has nothing to do with race. Bullshit. It has everything to do with race, and people in tin-foil hats being unable to deal with the fact that "OMG there's a BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE! AND HE'S PRESIDENT! AND HIS FATHER WAS FROM KENYA, SO THAT MUST MEAN HE'S A MUSLIM SOCIALIST! AND HE'S TRYING TO DESTROY ALL OUR WHITE VALUES."

My standard response is on the order of, "On one side, we have the first African-American President in US history: more bluntly, we've got a brown-skinned man with a funny foreign-sounding name in the White House. On the other, we've got an overwhelmingly lily-white contingent murmuring worriedly, 'But he's not really one of us, after all, is he?' How is this about anything OTHER than race?"

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

TheHermit wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Obligatory THE US IS NOT A DEMOCRACY LOLOLOL

Correct, the US is an oligarchical plutocracy.

Hermy's usual rectal-cranial inversion aside, it's not a democracy. It's a republic.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Congrats on sounding exactly like my octogenarian grandmother, though.

Honestly, I see no reason to believe that if Obama's father had been a white Muslim Kenyan (they exist), that this "birther" nonsense wouldn't have happened. He could've been any color human beings can come in, and it wouldn't have mattered. It's the fact that he's a Democrat who's actually doing shit that the GOP hates. And "Oh, wait, his father wasn't American? OPEN SEASON!"

If he had been half-Chinese? "He's a godless foreign commie who wants to sell us to China!"
If he had been half-German? "He's a godless foreign Nazi who wants us to join the EU!"
If he had been half-Indian? "He's a Hindu foreign commie who wants to establish the caste system!"
If he had been half-Mexican? "He's a Catholic foreign commie who wants to turn us into Mexico!"

And I bet if his father had been a Native American born on a reservation, the claims would have been "He's a witchdoctor commie who wants to ship all white people back to Europe!"

Yes, it comes off as being very racism-driven on the surface because he happens to not be white, but really... the driving factor was hatred his political affiliation, and the GOP would have used any petty attack to make him look like he's not "one of us". There's still people who think he's a Muslim as though being anything other than Christian makes someone less American. There's still people who call him an elitist to make him seem like he thinks he's "above the rest of us" and therefore not a Real American.

The Alien from Uranus wrote:

Yes, it comes off as being very racism-driven on the surface because he happens to not be white, but really...

So it only seems to be racist because it's a bunch of white dudes making racist comments?

"Obama hates white people"?
"Get off his basketball court"?

It doesn't seem racist. It is racist.

Quote :

the driving factor was hatred his political affiliation, and the GOP would have used any petty attack to make him look like he's not "one of us".

So they encourage blatant racism? This is not an excuse. And the leaders of this party should know better.

Finding excuses to explain the existence of racism does not remove the responsibility of supporting and giving voice to the racist stance.

Yeah, the fact that they most likely would've been racist in other, different ways doesn't mean the way they're actually behaving is any less racist.

And what I actually came in here to say: Pres. Obama's speech from the White House Correspondents' Dinner is pretty funny. And he presented his official birth video to clear up any lingering doubts.

Adagio wrote:

And he presented his official birth video to clear up any lingering doubts.

Obama is making several very flawed assumptions about birthers:

1. He assumes birthers really believe he was not born in the US.
2. He assumes the people passing on this rumor are doing so in good faith; they are misinforming others because they themselves have been misinformed.
3. He assumes birthers are willing, or even care about, the facts of the matter.
4. Because birthers are horrified by the allegations, he assumes they would be overjoyed to know they are not true.

These may be true if birthers were merely stupid, but none of these assumptions are true. Not one. That says a lot about birthers, none of them flattering in the least.

I am paraphrasing the above from a set of articles I have read on those who knowingly tell stupid, unbelievable lies. I cannot recommend the following articles enough. The illustrative example is different, but it's talking about a very similar subset of the population and sheds a lot of light on this topic.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Spotts1701 wrote:

Cyberwulf wrote:

But of course that would mean giving up on "bipartisanship" and telling Republicans to go fuck themselves instead.

So the 60 million people who voted for the other guy are what, exactly? Chopped liver?

I mean, don't misunderstand, I don't like this version of "bipartisanship". But I'm not a proponent of doing the same thing to the minority when you're in the majority as they did to you. That's very destructive, and just means when they get back into power they'll really make you suffer for your arrogance.

The Democratic Party runs on a platform of being the party for blacks and women and LGBTQI and disabled people and everyone, in short, who isn't a white, straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied man. They can't compromise with a party who deliberately cultivates bigotry in the name of enforcing the status quo without throwing everyone who isn't a white man under the bus. When the Republicans get back into power they won't give a fuck about how nice the Dems were to them and their supporters. So maybe instead of pandering to them, the Dems should actually do stuff to help the people who put them in power. Taking a few minutes to make a statement on the number of anti-abortion measures being brought at State level would be nice, for instance.