Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is the darling of the Tea Party and one of their great hopes for the 2016 Presidential race. Cruz is also the son a foreign national (from Cuba) and an American mother - just like President Obama. However, Cruz has the distinction of the being born on foreign soil, in Canada - unlike President Obama, who was born in the state of Hawaii. And yes, it really is a state and yes, he really does have an official birth certificate.
Now Senator Cruz has released his birth certificate and it plainly states he was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1970.
And while Cruz has chosen to downplay this factoid up till now, the Dallas Morning News did some digging, forcing Cruz to grapple with his origins. And one thing has become abundantly clear - in order to run for national office and keep his Tea Party ties intact, Cruz will have to officially renounce his Canadian ties. The problem is, that can take from 6 months up to a year, and by then the GOP primary race will be lining up at the starting gate.
Certainly Cruz is eager to shrug off his similarities to Obama, and doesn't want his followers to see him as anything but Pure American. But Democrats who have had the idiocy of Birtherism shoved in their faces through two hard fought elections will be just as persistent in bringing up Cruz's status as "foreign born" from now until the GOP picks a candidate for President. Progressives will be more than happy to cast aspersions at the man who wants to repeal Obamacare, impeach the President, and shut down the government. What a gift for all of us to know that Ted Cruz is actually "less" American than Obama. Poetic justice, karma, call it what you will. What goes around comes around.
“Generally speaking, under the Citizenship Act of 1947, those born in Canada were automatically citizens at birth unless their parent was a foreign diplomat,” said ministry spokeswoman Julie Lafortune.
For the first time, Cruz released his birth certificate Friday in response to inquiries from The Dallas Morning News.
Dated a month after his birth on Dec. 22, 1970, it shows that Rafael Edward Cruz was born to Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, a “geophysical consultant” born in Matanzas, Cuba, and the former Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson, born in Wilmington, Del.
Her status made the baby a U.S. citizen at birth. For that, U.S. law required at least one parent who was a U.S. citizen who had lived for at least a decade in the United States.
. . . “They can feel as American as they want. But the question of citizenship is determined by the law of the territory in which you were physically born,” she said. “It’s not up to the Cruz family to decide whether they’re citizens.”
As a Cuban, Rafael Cruz probably could have requested citizenship for his son, experts said. Even if he’d wanted to, the Cuban Constitution bans dual citizenship. And the chance to register the child passed long ago.
“The U.S. and Cuba have very similar legal patterns and requirements,” said David Abraham, a professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Miami.
The situation reflects the overlapping jurisdictions, said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, who called birthright citizenship common in English-speaking countries.
“If Ted Cruz was born in Canada, he is Canadian. He is American. He is a dual citizen,” he said. . . . The relinquishment process is easy enough. It can take from a few weeks to a year. There’s a four-page form with a $100 fee. Applicants must appear before a special judge to prove they have citizenship elsewhere and aren’t engaged in fraud.
First-term Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas), who is already considered a 2016 contender, was born in Canada to a mother who was an American citizen and a father who was then a citizen of Cuba. It’s the exact same fact pattern: foreign birth, citizen mother, non-citizen father that birthers thought applied to Obama. The only difference is that this time it’s true.
The issue has already come up for Cruz earlier this week when ABC News asked Donald Trump, who has been perhaps the most prominent birther, whether the Texas senator was eligible. “If he was born in Canada, perhaps not,” said Trump. The real-estate millionaire and reality-show host went on to say, ”I don’t know the circumstances. I heard somebody told me he was born in Canada. That’s really his thing.”
. . . The irony is that the circumstances of Cruz’s birth almost perfectly mirror the scenario offered by birthers, even down to the fact that the Texas senator nominally entered the world a British subject by dint of being born in Canada in 1970. The result is a delightful paradox. Any liberals who try to cast doubt on Cruz’s citizenship will likely be using almost the exact arguments they scorned when falsely applied to President Obama. And, of course, any birthers who defend Cruz while still insisting Obama’s tenure in the Oval Office is illegitimate aren’t just being conspiracy theorists. They are being hypocrites as well.
There are some unforgettable sights of Election 2012, and I'm not even sure this list is complete or can do justice to what is here. But these are images burned into our minds and retinas forever.
Callista sat directly in front of me during our CafeMom Coffee Break with Newt Gingrich a few weeks ago, and I kept sneaking peeks at her hair throughout the event. Under the lights, it practically glowed. She looked like some sort of fussy, retro angel.
I'm just dying to touch that hair!
~ Lindsay Ferrier on The Stir
I Almost Got Callista Gingrich's Hair
. . . The color alone took three hours to achieve. Three hours of bleach and gloss and glaze and goop and my head being knocked about left and right. The gloss (or maybe it was the glaze?) burned my scalp; when I mentioned this, Pejman looked right at me and said, “Beauty tingles.” Holly Allen on Salon
Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.
As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.
As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.
~ Time Swampland, quoting the original Boston Globe story
Among those who professed shock at the story was Fox News host Chris Wallace. "I have a yellow lab named Winston. I would no sooner put him in a kennel on the roof of my car than I would one of my children. Question: What were you thinking?" Wallace asked the former governor.
Replied Romney with a nervous laugh, "This is a completely airtight kennel, mounted on the top of our car. He climbed up there regularly, enjoyed himself, he was in a kennel at home a great deal of the time as well. We loved the dog, it was where he was comfortable and we had five kids inside the car and my guess is he liked it a lot better in his kennel than he would have liked it inside."
~ Reported by NPR
HOST on CNN: Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election? Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney Advisor: Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.
~ Think Progress
What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex -- what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
. . . So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.
~ Rush Limbaugh talking about Sandra Fluke
I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.
~ Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock, R-Indiana (lost)
The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.
~ Vanity Fair
Today we’re learning more about Mitt Romney’s bets against America. Vanity Fair’s raising important questions about Romney’s offshore accounts in foreign tax havens, including his mysterious corporation in Bermuda, his funds in the Cayman Islands, and the Swiss bank account he opened. The question is, why? Was he avoiding paying his fair share of U.S. taxes? Was he hedging against the dollar? Until he releases his tax returns from that period, Americans will never know. This raises serious questions. If he has nothing to hide, why doesn’t he just release his tax returns?
~ Obama Spokesman Ben LaBolt
BREAKING: In latest unscripted gaffe, Romney pledges to be a President for all "offshore tax havens" abcnews.go.com/Blotter/romney…
— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) August 29, 2012
BREAKING: Tagg Romney says I wanted to be First Horse less than any horse he's ever met. #NoFHOTUS
— Rafalca Romney (@RafalcaRomney) December 24, 2012
As a living, breathing, clippety-cloppeting, velvet-nosed and liquid-eyed avatar of Romney’s extreme wealth, she’s given her uncle Mitt the kind of handicap his advisers fear might make his path to the White House heavy going. That may be why the Republican presidential hopeful betrays scant interest in his wife’s four-legged protégé.
During Romney’s accident-prone sojourn in London in late July, he told NBC‘s Brian Williams that he didn’t even know when Rafalca would be appearing at the Games — “I have to tell you,” he said, “this is Ann’s sport.”
~ Time Magazine
Obama is going to need all the help he can get because Romney is surging, thanks in part to his new secret weapon. Long time viewers know that every year I declare a sport of the summer. Last year it was the elegant art of canoe dancing....Last week I declared that this year's sport of the summer will be Dressage, or "Horse Ballet."
. . . The Romneys are the proud owners of a German Oldenburg mare named Rafalca. There is no better way to dispel the myth that Romney is a detached patrician elite than competitive horse prancing. I mean, it's basically Nascar in a velvet top hat.
~ Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central
~~~~~~~~~~~~
8. The Romney Shambles
Americans: This Mitt person is some sort of American Borat, right? #romneyshambles
Romney could not have played more into the image of the callow American if he’d showed up at Buckingham Palace in Dockers. In his honor, the nation even resurrected a little-used epithet, “wazzock,” which refers to, as John Cassidy wrote, “a hapless idiot who blunders around saying or doing things he or she shouldn’t” (or, literally, a bull’s penis). This weekend, the BBC reported that, according to Harvey Weinstein, David Cameron, the Tory Prime Minister, has told people that Romney’s graceless performance has won him “the unique distinction of uniting all of England against him with his various remarks.”
~ Lauren Collins on The New Yorker
Who is this klutz, this clodhopper, this lawn sprinkler of national insult? Well, he`s Mitt Romney. Remember him, the guy who promised to restore and upgrade the special relationship with Great Britain and has instead barfed on the Buckingham Palace lawn?
~ Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball
— Path2Enlightenment (@Path2Enlighten) July 27, 2012
Is there anything about Romney's Rolling Ruckus that would inspire confidence in his ability to lead US foreign policy?apne.ws/Qrc0J0
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) July 30, 2012
We've given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and about how we live our life. . .
~ Ann Romney to Robin Roberts on ABC News
. . . The other thing they have to understand is that Mitt is honest, his integrity is just golden. We pay our taxes, we are absolutely . . . beyond paying our taxes we also give 10% of our income to charity, so we have no issues that way.
The only reason we don't disclose anymore is, you know, we just become a bigger target.
~ NBC Interview with Natalie Morales
This is hard and, you know, it's an important thing that we're doing right now and it's an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt's qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.
~ Ann on Radio Iowa
Ann Romney has a hard life-she manages 4 homes, multiple maids, nannies + sometimes a broken car elevator. #Youpeople should leave her alone
— DC Debbie (@DCdebbie) July 19, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~
10. Birtherism
My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in a paper format as claimed by the White House.
~ Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona via LA Times
He said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia… Now they’re saying it was a mistake. Just like his Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya, and she pointed down the road to the hospital, and after people started screaming at her she said, ‘Oh, I mean Hawaii.’ Give me a break.”
~ Donald Trump on Daily Beast
Speaking about his Michigan roots, he said, "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised." The joke was received with hearty applause by the audience. . . .
~ Mitt Romney Speaking in Michigan, via Huff Post
FACT: By FULLY embracing Donald Trump, Romney is legitimizing his insane birther conspiracy theories thkpr.gs/JqrubZ
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) May 24, 2012
HH: Are you still running?
PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.
~ Paul Ryan Radio Interview with Hugh Hewitt as he lies about his Marathon Time
Runner's World checked 11 years of results for Grandma's Marathon, from 1988 through 1998, and found a finisher in the 1990 race by the name of Paul D. Ryan, 20, of Minneapolis.
Ryan's middle name is Davis, and he was 20 in 1990. The finishing time listed was 4 hours, 1 minute and 25 seconds.
~ Research by Runner's World Magazine proving that Ryan was Lying
On Paul Ryan's Republican National Convention Speech: "Three Words: Dazzling, Deceiving, Distracting"
. . . to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
~ Sally Kohn on Fox News
~~~~~~~~~~~~
12. Clint Eastwood Talks to an Empty Chair
If Clint Eastwood insisted on talking to an inanimate object he could've just chatted with Mitt Romney. #RNC2012
— daddyfiles (@DaddyFiles) August 31, 2012
I don't . . . I don't . . . I don't know . . . Clint Eastwood is 82 years old. And I don't know if that's what was going on there . . . That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life, and it will be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen if I live to be one hundred.”
~ Rachel Maddow on MSNBC
I could never wrap my head around why the world and the President that Republicans describe bears so little resemblance to the world and the President that I experience. And now I know why.
There is a President Obama that only Republicans can see.
~ Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
Here was Romney raw and unplugged—sort of unscripted. With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don't contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative.
~ Journalist David Corn, who leaked the 47% video with the help of the Anonymous filmmaker and James Carter IV, grandson of President Jimmy Carter
All of us make mistakes. . . . What people want to know, though, is you're not writing off a big chunk of the country because the way our democracy works.
This is a big country. And people disagree a lot, but one thing I’ve never tried to do – and I think none of us can do in public office – is suggest that because someone doesn’t agree with me that they’re victims or they’re unpatriotic.
~ President Obama on CBS, The David Letterman Show
Today Mitt Romney Lost the Election
You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser, released today by David Corn at Mother Jones, has killed Mitt Romney's campaign for president.
~ Josh Barro on Bloomberg
What things would I cut from spending? Well, first of all, I will eliminate all programs by this test, if they don't pass it: Is the program so critical it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I'll get rid of it. Obamacare's on my list. ... I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one.
~ Mitt Romney to PBS Moderator Jim Leher during First Presidential Debate
Mitt Romney definitely looked poised and confident. Especially when he looked America in the eyes & threatened to kill Big Bird.
— Benari (@BenariLee) October 4, 2012
And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?"
And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.
~ Mitt Romney During Presidential Debate, via ABC News
The President talked about women as breadwinners for Americans families; Mitt Romney talked about them as resumes in a binder. #TeamBarack
And as the word "binder" left his lips, all comedians burst into tears of tender gratitude. #binder#debate
— Mike Doughty (@Mike_Doughty_) October 17, 2012
Mr. Biden, clearly delighted to come to President Obama’s rescue, relished his role, addressing his opponent as “my friend” but dismissing his arguments as “malarkey.” He laughed at Mr. Ryan’s remarks so often and so heartily that at times he seemed like a guest at a comedy club roast, not a vice president debating the fate of the nation with his opponent.
~ New York Times
It reminded me ... of watching a musk ox run across the tundra with somebody underfoot. And in this case, when it came to style, it was Paul Ryan underfoot....
~ Previoiusly Debated VP Candidate Sarah Palin
You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
~ Barack Obama During 3rd Debate
When your sense of winning a debate depends on proving that horses and bayonets are still relevant, you've probably lost.
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) October 23, 2012
If President Obama wins re-election on Tuesday, the historical memory of the race might turn on the role played by Hurricane Sandy.
Already, some analysts are describing the storm as an “October surprise” that allowed Mr. Obama to regain his footing after stumbling badly in the first presidential debate and struggling to get back on course. Some Republicans seem prepared to blame a potential defeat for Mitt Romney on the storm, and the embrace of Mr. Obama by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other public officials.
~ Nate Silver on the importance of Hurricane Sandy
The election isn't gonna be moved. It's gonna happen Tuesday. Of course, the opposite theory is, “What the hell is Christie doing? He's giving Obama a chance to look presidential, clean up a state, look competent, look like he cares and so forth. What's a Republican doing propping up Obama?"
~ Rush Limbaugh
Other states getting federal storm relief without kissing Obama's rear.Does Christie not know RINO's are an endangered species?
Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the “Mr. New Castrati” voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program. In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound. Nate Silver, like most liberal and leftist celebrities and favorites, might be of average intelligence but is surely not the genius he's made out to be. His political analyses are average at best and his projections, at least this year, are extremely biased in favor of the Democrats.
~ Dean Chambers, founder of Unskewed Polls, on Examiner ~ this paragraph has now been edited out of the article
Nate Silver: Patron Saint of Confirmation Bias
. . . When the left wakes up on Wednesday, surveying the electoral wreckage around them, they may regret allowing themselves to be lulled into such a false sense of security.
~ Michael Flynn on Breitbart
This is a bad day for Republican pollsters, and it’s something that they should be held accountable for. You have to tell your clients the truth, and you have to be accurate. And to miss so many states and to be this far off, your Fox News viewers ought to be outraged, because day in and day out they were told that Mitt Romney was going to win, and the fact is Ohio was never up, Wisconsin was never up, Pennsylvania was never up…the published polls were correct. Nate Silver was correct. But the Republican establishment polls were wrong.
~ Republican Pollster Frank Luntz
That happened (the re-election of Barack Obama). That really happened.
We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade.
There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.
We're not going to repeal health reform.
Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance.
We are not going to do that.
We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.
We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on.
We are not going to redefine rape.
We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.
We are not going to double Guantanamo.
We are not eliminating the department of energy or the department of education or housing at the federal level.
We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.
We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from their parents.
We are not vetoing the Dream Act.
We are not self-deporting.
We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.
We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.
We are not going to have, as a President, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help, and there was no apology not ever.
We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton.
We are not bringing Dick Cheney back.
We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War.
We are not going to do it.
We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country, and we said no last night, loudly.
Ohio really did go to President Obama last night.
And he really did win.
And he really was born in Hawaii.
And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again.
And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month.
And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.
And the polls were not screwed to oversample Democrats.
And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math.
And climate change is real.
And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.
And evolution is a thing.
And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us.
And nobody is taking away anyone's guns.
And taxes have not gone up.
And the deficit is dropping, actually.
And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
And the moon landing was real.
And FEMA is not building concentration camps.
And U.N. election observers are not taking over Texas.
And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism.
. . . And the if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems.
Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in realtime, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center.
The Obama shenanigans have nothing to do with voter suppression, thank goodness! He was just seen having some fun with ordinary citizens this weekend.
This guy in Florida apparently got permission from the Secret Service before he gave President Obama a bear hug inside a family pizza restaurant on Sunday.
The hug has gone viral on Facebook and Twitter.
Can you imagine Mitt Romney getting a hug from anyone? Not so much.
. . . he stopped at Gator Dockside, a sports bar in Orlando.
At one table, he met Andre Wupperman, who turns 7 next week, and was informed that he was born in Hawaii.
“You were born in Hawaii?” the president asked. “You have a birth certificate?” The table burst out laughing.
Absolute Epic Takedown of pathetic Reince Priebus by Chris Matthews this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Of course, Mika and Joe were stunned and flabbergasted that anyone dare question the RNC or their minions, and Tom Brokaw came up with a lame false equivalency ~ "Both sides do it" he vowed like an old man yelling at the sky. but Chris got the last laugh as the Morning Joe audience applauded all his best lines! Keep going with this, Chris!!!
Just a taste of what it was like - more quotes further down the page:
"That cheap shot about 'I don't have a problem with my birth certificate' was
awful. It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card. This stuff
about getting rid of the work requirement for welfare is dishonest.... and you
are playing that little ethnic card there. You can play your games and giggle
about it, but the fact is your side is playing that card." . . . It's
funny that the first joke he (Romney) ever told a joke in his life was about
Obama's Birth Certificate. ~ MSNBC host Chris Matthews speaking to RNC
President Reince Priebus on Morning Joe
Later when Priebus alleged that Obama was looking at European
policies for guidance, Matthews lost it again.
"Where do you get this
from?" Matthews shouted. "This is insane." He charged that Priebus was "playing
that card again."
"Let's just work on tone," Brzezinski said. "Chris, let
him answer the question," Scarborough said.
"I'm not going to get into a
shouting match with Chris so you guys can move on," Priebus said. "Because
you're losing, that's why," Matthews said. "Garbage, garbage," Priebus
muttered.
“I think Obama’s policies have created a sense that, for whatever
reason, he’s looking guidance as far as health care is concerned, as far as our
spending is concerned, as far as these stimulus packages are concerned, that
he’s looking to Europe for guidance,” said Priebus on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” at
the start of what would become a heated back and forth.
“What? Where do
you get this from? That’s insane,” responded Matthews. “You mean the fact that
every president we’ve had has tried to offset the economic cycle with stimulus
going the other direction is somehow European?”
“We’ve got to get the
debt under control,” said Priebus.
“What does that have to do with Europe
and this foreignization of the government. You’re doing it now. Saying that he’s
influenced by foreign influences?” said Matthews.
PRIEBUS: But I think Obama’s policies have created a sense that for
whatever reason, he’s looking to guidance [from Europe] as far as health care is
concerned, as far as our spending is concerned …
MATTHEWS: What? Where do
you get this from? This is insane! You mean the Keynesian fiscal policy — you
mean the fact that every president we’ve had has tried to offset the economic
cycle with stimulus going the other direction is somehow European? … What’s this
got to do with Europe and this foreignization of the guy? You’re doing it now!
Saying he’s influenced by foreign influences? You’re playing that card again.
What’s this European thing of yours? What are you up to with this constant that
he’s not really domestic?
PRIEBUS: You don’t think the take-over of
our health care system called Obamacare is a problem for most
Americans?
MATTHEWS: Let me tell you some history, sir. Teddy Roosevelt,
Franklin Roosevelt pushed for that, Truman pushed for that, were they all under
the influence of Europe? Where do you get this from?
PRIEBUS: I’m not
going to get into a shouting match with Chris, so you guys can just move
on.
There's really no way to make the conspiracy about President Obama's birth certificate completely go away, so we might as well laugh at it -- and make sure as many people as possible are in on the joke. Get your Obama birth certificate Made in the USA button today.
Here's Mitt Romney today doing his best dog whistle. Now that Romney has gone crazy-ass Birther, will the Republicans still rant about how "discourteous" Obama is to them?
Speaking about his Michigan roots, he said, "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."
The joke was received with hearty applause by the audience. . . .
. . . The Obama campaign quickly responded, with spokesman Ben LaBolt saying that Romney was embracing the most extreme elements in the conservative movement.
"Throughout this campaign, Governor Romney has embraced the most strident voices in his party instead of standing up to them," he said. "It's one thing to give the stage in Tampa to Donald Trump, Sheriff Arpaio, and Kris Kobach. But Governor Romney's decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America."
Romney adviser Kevin Madden played down the joke, saying Romney was "only referencing that Michigan, where he is campaigning today, is the state where he himself was born and raised."
Rush Limbaugh was so happy he took a break from blaming Obama for Hurricane Isaac:
LIMBAUGH: Mitt Romney and Ryan, drawing a huge crowd in Michigan. And get this.
ROMNEY [audio clip]: I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.
ABC News is reporting that Marco Rubio is probably out of the Veepstakes and isn't being vetted as a possible running mate for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
He has not been asked to complete any questionnaires or been asked to turn over any financial documents typically required of potential vice presidential candidates.
Although it is possible that Rubio may yet be asked to go through the vetting process, it has been nearly two months since Romney named his long-time aide Beth Myers to run his vice presidential search. The fact that Rubio has not been asked to turn over any documents by now is a strong indication that he is not on Romney’s short list of potential running mates.
Officially the Romney campaign has no comment. And Rubio has refused to make any comment when it comes to vice presidential questions.
This comes as no surprise to me, because as I blogged in detail back in May, The Donald Trump (who was travelling around with Romney on Honeymoon-in-Vegas week) said Rubio was too young and too ambivalent, and that same week ex-Att. General Roberto Gonzales told CNN that Rubio wasn't experienced or "wise" enough to run for Vice President.
But the real kiss of death was probably last Friday when Rubio was the first Republican to praise President Obama's decision to extend safe status to 800,000 illegal "Dreamers" who have been trapped in legal Limbo. This is too far left of Very Important Tea Party Birthers such as Joe Arpaio and Trump himself. Add to that this quote from Rubio's new book, American Son, in which Rubio writes:
Many people who come here illegally are doing exactly what we would do if we lived in a country where we couldn’t feed our families....If my kids went to sleep hungry every night and my country didn’t give me an opportunity to feed them, there isn’t a law, no matter how restrictive, that would prevent me from coming here.
How dare he write such a *gasp* compassionate and understanding sentence! That does not compute for the Romneybot equation of Big Fence Plus Self-Deporting Grandma equals Republican Immigration Policy. That doesn't add up with Sheriff Joe Arpaio arresting a 6-year-old illegal girl after Obama's new rule went into place. And it especially doesn't add up with Donald Trump's Obama Birther Conspiracy Theory.
This is actually an opportunity for Rubio. Being an "outsider" to the Romney campaign puts him in line with other mainstream conservatives from Jeb Bush to Arnold Schwarzenegger to George Will to. Sanity is a good thing, and Rubio will probably thank his stars someday that he narrowly escaped.
According to RealClearPolitics Average of Polls, Obama leads Romney by 45.6 percent to Romney's 43.6%. How is Mitt going to get to that 50.1% up here? He's already got the fiscal conservatives and the social conservatives mixed in - that's not enough!
Now Trump gets him the Birthers, but now he's got to reach out to the 9-11 Truthers, the Alien Abductees, the Doomsday Preppers, the Sasquatch Hunters, the Sasquatches, or "Sasqueetch."
Sh** - that's only 50%!
How does he get that tiny sliver? That's going to be tough. Who represents such a miniscule portion of Americans? Wait! I've got it - all Mitt needs are the blacks who like Donald Trump. (Shows Video of Trump saying "The winner is Arsenio Hall" on The Apprentice.)
Today Mitt Romney became the Heir Apparent to the Republican Throne by delegate count. He is in Las Vegas with Donald Trump on a fund-raising mission. So what does The Donald do to help his man? He goes on CNN, gets in a fight with Wolf Blitzer, and goes completely crazy-ass over the Birther Issue.
You have to watch it and listen to Trump to believe it. He says Obama was born in Kenya and nothing will change his mind, not even the state of Hawaii issuing a valid birth certificate. Is this helping Mitt Romney?
The other day George Will called Trump a "bloviating ignoramus," and leave it to Trump to prove him right again just two days later. Trump responded that Will was "the dumbest political commentator of all time," but I would say no - that would be Trump as well, and this piece of videotape proves it.
Politics makes strange bedfellows, indeed. For Romney to be legitimate (poor choice of words, I know) he needs to get the big bloviated bedbug out of his campaign.
It's really quite funny when Republicans try to shift so far to the right extreme that they fall off a limb. That recently happened to Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado). He said he didn't believe President Obama was really born in the United States, and now he is eating crow for breakfast. You have to laugh - it's beyond overdue for this to happen. The press should have called out every one of these birthers long ago, and I guess they tried. But now we've got Republicans themselves waking up like a drunk with a hangover saying "I said what? Oh, I didn't mean it . . . let's just move along . . ."
“If I had to do it over again I think I would have said, ‘Let’s move from this birther question, the president was born in the United States, period,’” Coffman said in an interview with local station K-HOW. “‘Let’s just move on and let’s focus on the issues that are going to win this election. And secondly, let’s not ascribe this to those who oppose us that they’re any less Americans than we are.’”
A week earlier, Coffman had said at a fundraiser: “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” He quickly issued a press release walking it back, but shunned follow-up questions on the incident. On Tuesday, he repeated the same statement, “I misspoke and I apologize,” five times to a television crew that approached him after an event, offering no further explanation.
Coffman told K-HOW on Thursday that he regretted suggesting the president was anything other than American, and repeatedly emphasized that suggesting as much was also bad optics. The host asked Coffman whether he was “speaking from the heart” when he made his initial incendiary remarks and simply recanted “for political reasons.”
It was only a few days ago that Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett had to take to the airwaves to apologize for embarrassing his state after he harrassed the State by threatening to drop Obama from the November ballot - can you imagine? A sitting President not allowed on a state ballot just because some jerks (or racists) feel he is illegitimate? Luckily someone had a little talk with this nutcase.
"If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn't my intent," Bennett said Tuesday during an interview with radio station KTAR, adding that he was just trying to "help as many Arizonians as I can" by looking into their concerns over the document.
Bennett also walked back his threat to keep Obama off Arizona's ballot this fall.
"He’ll be on the ballot as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has," Bennett said.
However, when pressed by the radio hosts on whether he was pandering to birther conspiracy theorists who believe the president was born outside the United States, Bennett pushed back.
"What is so sacred or untouchable about this question that you can't even ask the question?" he said, after insisting that he himself does not subscribe to the fraudulent birth certificate theories.
In the radio interview he says he wasn't trying to draw attention, and was just doing his "quiet little job." Yeah - how about doing it with some common sense? Do these people just not understand that Obama's mother was an American? And that Hawaii is a state of the union? Hello?
The birther movement is all about making President Obama seem alien, foreign, exotic, and just plain "un-American." They say "African" and "Kenyan" with comtempt, possibly forgetting that there are plenty of white Africans and Kenyans, and even some with American parents. Are they making outrageous statements just to get votes from Tea Partiers, or so some of them really believe this nonsense?
Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is the Energizer Bunny of Birthers. No amount of verification from Hawaii will ever be enough for him to believe that President Obama was born there. He recently dispatched a "cold case" officer to go to Hawaii seeking more evidence, using taxpayer money to continue his own version of Captain Ahab and the Great Whale:
Arpaio Not Giving Up on Birther Investigation
Sheriff Joe Arpaio said it will take more than a letter verifying the President's birth certificate for him to call off his criminal investigation.
“I'm trying to determine if any fraud occurred and who’s responsible,” said the Sheriff.
The Sheriff's cold case posse has been investigating the President's birth certificate since August and is currently following up on leads in Hawaii.
The Sheriff said the verification that the secretary of state received from the Hawaii registrar does nothing to change that.
That's right - logic and reason are not going to stop Sheriff Joe! He keeps on going and going and going . . .
