Dear GOP, regarding Birthers

[Tristam]

As an unrelated note, since when are companies able to censor news media? I had heard that General Electric is prohibiting MSNBC or more specifically, Olbermann from critiscizing Fox News or O'Reilly. Similarly i heard that O'Reilly was told to back off attacking GE. Isn't this a major breach of media independence? Isn't it a major problem when news can't report facts because their parent companies think it might make them lose money? It sounds so crazy.

Neither Olbermann nor O'Reilly are actual journalists though, so I wouldn't look to them for much credibility anyway. They don't report the news, they primarily give their opinion on things already reported. They're just echo chambers for people who already agree with a certain polarized viewpoint.

I forget, but there was some statistic that showed that more people thought O'Reilly was an actual reporter than someone like Bob Woodward.

edit: lol @ Chuck Norris blaming everything on Obama, even though the birth certificate is freely viewable to anyone with a working knowledge of google, or the means to travel to the location of said birth certificate.

[Olo401]

Welp, I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong.. Obama isn't even a human.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Does Chuck Norris have any idea what the first amendment is?

[Zosi]

Does Chuck Norris have any idea what the first amendment is?

Of course he does, he wrote it along with the rest of the Constitution and Bill of Rights after single-handedly defeating the British. He can also change it any time he wants, but he didn't write that in since his superior authority is obvious to any real American.

[Eratosthenes]

After the birthers are convinced Obama was actually born in Hawaii, they'll claim he used time travel on multiple occasions to skip about 15 years and is actually too young to be president.

[Kuya]

I need to recheck my facts on the GE, Olbermann and O' Reilly issue, but i had heard that GE and Fox News made the deal months ago, which is why Olbermann had not attacked O'Reilly since june 1.

Also, this Obama guy is really popular:

A new book on the history of the Secret Service reports the rate of threats against the President has increased 400 percent since President Obama took office in January as the nation’s first African American president. According to author Ronald Kessler, Obama is the target of more than thirty potential death threats a day. Most of the threats have been kept under wraps, because the Secret Service fears that revealing details of them would only increase the number of copycat attempts.

[Rhinox]

On my iPhone right now so can't link it but if you go to olbermans site and for Mondays worst person he discusess it at length.

[Davricle]

I don't believe any Tom Dick or Harry has the right to demand the president do anything. Determining eligibility is the job of the various commissions that oversee the presidential election. In this election, they determined then-Senator Obama to qualify as a natural born citizen, and hence eligible.

End.
Of.
Story.

Just curious, what side of the fence were you on when liberals were calling for the individual test scores, grades, and entrance exams from Bush's Yale years? Or how bout when his military history and service record was questioned?

[Olo401]

What entrance exams for Yale? Dubya was accepted as a legacy..

Also, now YOU TOO can have a Kenyan brith certificate.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Just curious, what side of the fence were you on when liberals were calling for the individual test scores, grades, and entrance exams from Bush's Yale years? Or how bout when his military history and service record was questioned?

Questioning someone's readily available and obviously real birth certificate that has been paraded around by the accused and questioning someone's draft-dodging and and below par college grades which were being covered up by the accused party are polar opposites.

Your point holds about as much water sidewalk.

[archibaldcrane]

Just curious, what side of the fence were you on when liberals were calling for the individual test scores, grades, and entrance exams from Bush's Yale years? Or how bout when his military history and service record was questioned?

I wasn't aware that after being provided Bush's grades and draft-dodging details, "liberals" kept asking for them over and over after they had already seen all the pertinent evidence.

[Davricle]

Oh archi, I love you.

[archibaldcrane]

It ain't trolling if ya believe it.

And ya believe it.

[Beckwin]

Can we make being a birther a bannable offense?

[Kuya]

On my iPhone right now so can't link it but if you go to olbermans site and for Mondays worst person he discusess it at length.

I'll have to check it out when i get the chance. But from my less than rigorous searching i did find this. We could say it's just a coincidence, but it's a rather large coincidence.

UPDATE III: University of Illinois Professor Robert McCheseny made the following findings -- using a Factiva search -- that were sent to me via email:

Olbermann had criticized O'Reilly 40 times on air from February-May 2009, and had made O'Reilly one of his "worst persons in the world" 23 times. In June and July O'Reilly received only one negative mention, in early June, and never made the worst person list.
Moreover, Olbermann criticized Rupert Murdoch 25 times on his program between February and May 2009, and only once in June and July.
Conversely, O'Reilly went from making 27 negative mentions of General Electric in February-May 2009, to just two in June and none in July.

I suppose if one is really desirous to cling to the notion that Olbermann wasn't muzzled by GE as part of its deal with News Corp., one can find a way to do that, but doing so would take extreme amounts of mental effort.

[Zosi]

Just curious, what side of the fence were you on when liberals were calling for the individual test scores, grades, and entrance exams from Bush's Yale years? Or how bout when his military history and service record was questioned?

Barack Obama's birth certificate is a question of eligibility, and one that has already been resolved by the body with the authority to do so. In other words, it's not really the individual voter's responsibility to determine eligibility. If he didn't have a legally-acceptable birth certificate, he wouldn't have been a valid candidate, which is why we have election commissions to look at the evidence and make an official decision. In the eyes of the law, it's a black-and-white thing, either he's a legal candidate or not, and the ruling was that he is. If there's any kind of legal action to change that, it'll still be a yes or no thing, just with a different answer.

On the other hand, college records, whether they're George W. Bush's or Obama's or any other candidate's, aren't part of the legal requirement for being a candidate. They're something that voters determine the value of individually and subjectively - there's no law saying that a Presidential candidate must have completed college, or gotten a certain GPA, or anything like that. Same for military service records. None of it matters legally, it's simply material for voters to consider and judge. It's definitely something that even individual voters can reasonably request, because as a voter, YOU are the one who is supposed to decide whether the candidate is qualified or not.

In short, it's the difference between determining whether the candidate is eligible or qualified. To phrase it a little bit differently, it's the difference between "can" and "should".

[Demosthenes11]

you make it sound like the test scores requests were anything more than an attempt to make him look like an idiot 40 years ago. There wasn't a legitimate call for them, it was a bunch of morons going "hurrr show test scores so we can see that you are qualified based on your math scores 40 years ago hurrrr"

[zoobernut]

Well regardless if the test scores are a valid or good way to base your decision there is a big difference between requesting test scores and the birther movement and Zosi's point still stands.

[Correction]

you make it sound like the test scores requests were anything more than an attempt to make him look like an idiot 40 years ago. There wasn't a legitimate call for them, it was a bunch of morons going "hurrr show test scores so we can see that you are qualified based on your math scores 40 years ago hurrrr"

Truth be told the political move made was to make him look like a child of privilege who earned nothing. The grades at Yale got ignored because his father was GB Senior and his grandfather was a Senator. He got the job running an oil company via the same connections. He served in the "F" Air National Guard to avoid being sent to Vietnam, etc. etc. The grades yes would make him look dumb, but Dubya's "I'm a common guy just like you!" campaign was the real target.

[Zosi]

you make it sound like the test scores requests were anything more than an attempt to make him look like an idiot 40 years ago. There wasn't a legitimate call for them, it was a bunch of morons going "hurrr show test scores so we can see that you are qualified based on your math scores 40 years ago hurrrr"

Which falls squarely into "individual and subjective decisions". People are free to use whatever metrics they want when deciding qualifications, and they can ask for any information they'd like from the candidate. The candidate certainly isn't required to oblige. That's the difference between qualification and eligibility, which you seem to have completely missed - you can judge qualification based on whatever the hell you want, there is no "legitimacy" question, no authority that says "Yeah, you can decide on this, but not that".