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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! September 16, 2009 Is birther the new gay?By Greyhawk Excuse me, ma'am... have you a birth certificate I may see?
 Mad Hatter arrives hastily in court to testify ...and just as hastily leaves The case was filed in the Columbus Division of U.S. District Court. We discovered fairly early on that Major Cook (the last guy to try this stunt) was a true blue birfer nutbag, and not just a garden variety trashbag trying to get out of a deployment eight years after the beginning of a war. But regardless, he got out of his deployment. (More accurately, his downrange commander decided he could find someone competent to fill the crucial position he didn't need a Cook-type for.) That bottom line has to be attractive to folks who don't want to suddenly discover their homosexuality, become Quakers or pregnant, get diagnosed with an identified mental disorder, a debilitating injury or illness, or otherwise make themselves non-deployable. (This is not intended as a slur to those who authentically experience something from that list.) What's the case here? Who cares. I hope this doesn't become a problem for the military, and I pity anyone who might have to spend time in Iraq with "Cpt" Rhodes. Being there is bad enough. I love the end of this story though:
"Cpt" Rhodes doesn't want to be discharged or relieved from her two-year obligation, we are informed. Well of course not, it's a paycheck.
 More: Doug Mataconis at Below the Beltway (who also was all over the Cook story) has the Dismissal Order - and OBAMA'S KENYAN BIRF CERTIFICATE submitted as evidence - copies of which are available on ebay!!!! (Must read - great laugh.) "Will this finally put a stop to the Nirther nuts and their crack-brained conspiracy theories?" Asks Charles Johnson, "Don't hold your breath." Good advice, because... She adds that Judge Land should be tried for treason.  Hatter engaging in rhetoric Footnote: Original Alice in Wonderland illustrations by John Tenniel, all but two retain their original captions. Posted by Greyhawk / September 16, 2009 6:30 PM | Permalink 12 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
I suppose you realize the judge's opinion was bogus?
It is common practice to have to prove you are what you say you are. I couldn't join the American Legion without presenting my 2 DD214s. I couldn't get VA disability without the same documents to prove I served when I said I served and was injured when I said I was injured.
Even though it was long ago, I believe I had to produce a photostatic copy of my birth certificate, not a certificate of live birth, for my first enlistment. My DD214 was sufficient for my second enlistment, but it was based on having produced proof of citizenship previously.
Congressman Joe Wilson was right, the President did lie and he seems to have a propensity for that action. Even though the President has said we have 57 states, I'm pretty sure it can be proven that we don't have that many, even if Texas decided to exercise their right to divide into 5 states.
Since there's a Constitutional mandate for a president to be a natural born citizen, what's extraordinary in an expectation of some sort of physical proof?
The birthers, the tea baggers, the screamers, and the deathers continued extreme minority presence will become tiresome to mainstream America, if it has not already done so. To all the birthers in La, La Land, it is on you to prove to all of us that your assertion is true, if there are people who were there and support your position then show us the video (everyone has a price), either put up or frankly shut-up. I heard Orly Taitz, is selling a tape (I think it’s called “Money, Lies and Video tape”). She is from Orange County, CA, now I know what the mean when they say “behind the Orange Curtain”, when they talk about Orange County, the captial of Conspiracy Theories. You know Obama has a passport, he travel abroad before he was a Senator, but I guess they were in on it. In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while trying to take away the rights of those they just hate) and that’s who they need to extract from their party if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”. I heard that she now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC).
I'm not sure who your characterizing as "tea baggers", but I consider the Tea Party movement a legitimate form of political expression. That there are varying motivations for individual involvement (from sincerity to insanity to agents provocateur) seems historically (and perhaps hysterically) typical of our democracy - perhaps any democracy.
That Tea Parties can be blurred by comparison to the Birthers speaks more to the utility of the Birther movement to the opposition. My interest in the Birthers extends to the potential attraction of their position to military folks who want to avoid deployment, but other more political aspects are hard to deny. In briefest terms: they are the best thing to happen to the Democrats this year. If I were a Democrat who couldn't afford to fund them, I'd at least go around to web logs and post comments pretending to be one of them and stating their case as clearly as possible. There used to be a troll here who never missed a chance to put a "Chimpy McHitlerburton" sort of comment on virtually every post - I could never be completely certain he wasn't working for Karl Rove.
I have to wonder if there's much membership overlap between the Birthers and the Truthers - they look very much the same to me.
It may come as a surprise, but the purported Certification of Live Birth has no resemblance to a Certificate of Live Birth issued by the State of Hawaii in the same time period. An example of a Certificate of Live Birth is used as an example on www.passportsusa.com [img]http://passportsusa.com/wp-content/gallery/passportusa/edith_front.jpg[/img]. This one is said to be an example of proof of citizenship that shouldn't have any problems being approved.
The same site uses President Obama's Certification of Live Birth as an example of a document that would probably experience some difficulties in being approved. The problems? [quote] * Birth certificate should show a doctor’s signature, a midwife’s signature, the parent’s signature or the signature of a witness who was present at your birth.
* The name of the hospital you were born at or taken to after your birth at home, in the car or where ever you happened to be born but later seen by a doctor at a hospital.
* A raised registrar’s embossed, impressed or multicolored seal. Some older birth certificates may not have all of these elements on certificates from the 1970’s or earlier.
* The paper itself should have a print pattern or emboss style that is sometimes raised again on some older certificates this may not be present.
* Birth certificate should have been issued within one year of your birth.[/quote]
I have at least two grandchildren that were born at home. The only verification is the midwife's statement and the parents statement. All of my grandchildren have Birth Certificates, regardless of the institution they were born in. However, it would have been easy enough to falsify the information to indicate a later or eariler birth date that what was fact.
Illegal aliens fully understand the benefits of American citizenship, so I have little doubt many children born in Mexico are issued American birth certificates regardless of where they were born.
Maybe I should also clarify my position. I am not a "birther". I feel pretty sure the security check, that I assume and hope was done, would have revealed any abnormalities.
My concern is the transparency, that was part of the presidential campaign run by President Obama, is lacking.
That transparency issue is much of the blame/cause for the situation Greyhawk is trying to bring to light. With true transparency, the Rhodes, and others of that ilk, have no grounds to stand on to make it another issue to avoid deployment.
"That transparency issue is much of the blame/cause for the situation Greyhawk is trying to bring to light. With true transparency, the Rhodes, and others of that ilk, have no grounds to stand on..."
No.
Nothing the President - son of an American mother, as am I - could possibly do would stop nutters from being nutters.
You see, Paul, as a guy who's lived all over the world with fellow military folks, I constantly worked, lived, deployed, and interacted in a thousand ways with men and women who'd married men and women of other nations and races. Many of them were products of such marriages themselves. My kids played and went to school with their kids, and shared the agonies of their parents deployments to places from which some didn't come back.
When we came back to the States from Germany I told my youngest daughter to always answer the question "where are you from?" with "well, I just moved here from Germany, but I was born in Korea." The population of her High School here had a bit too many military kids for that to really shock them, though.
Words can not adequately express my contempt for the birthers and everything they stand for.
To this point she has not been successful because she does not have any proof, documentation supporting her claims except her wild rants. You are backing the wrong horse on this one. Get someone with real credentials (Harvard, Yale Law School) not a Russian immigrant with dual US/ Israel citizenship (where are her allegiances?). Have you even thought of who is paying for all her travel, or are you telling me she independently wealthy? Sorry she has no juice because she does not have any proof, documentation supporting her claims except her wild rants. That might work for “Fake News” but not in a Court of the United States.
"You are backing the wrong horse on this one"
I'm not choosing horses, I'm pointing out horse shit.
"Have you even thought of who is paying for all her travel..."
Apart from the legions of the gullible who will gladly contribute what they can? The marks have always been the motivation for the huckster, and always will be.
Speaking of thought about -
Passport.com is registered to one James Coats, a former post office employee who's initial assessment of Obama's birth certificate first appeared on the fringe-racist ("immigration") website V Dare - from there it spread rather swiftly to Stormfront - the outright home of American White Supremacists/Aryans/Nazis on the web.
I suppose that qualifies as "viral" in a certain crowd, but "diseased" seems a more appropriate term.
(By the way - for those who haven't noticed there are two Pauls in this thread).
I agree, I should have read further before I used passportusa.com as a reference. As usual, I assumed a straightforward and truthful assessment, and as usual, I got burned.
That still doesn't negate what I said after that quote from a highly questionable source.
There are certainly benefits to having an American citizenship and many go to great lengths to acquire that status.
I've been to every country from Beruit, Lebanon to Gibraltar (except Albania), including Cyprus, Malta and on around to Holland and England, but I didn't see anything that would entice me to give up my citizenship in the greatest nation on Earth.
It is unfortunate that we no ,longer are the greatest country on this globe but a laughing stock of the world commmunity.We have a president who has no backbone and who believes that his flowery speeches impresses some of our adversaries.He gave in to russian demands about the defense shield in the chec repbublic and poland and we goT nothing in return.He made 5 times.He flowery speeches trying to engagae the Iranians.WHAT WAS THEIR REPLY ? up yous ! I urge all american to say enough is enough and vote him out of office and make certain that this incompetent president never again will lead this ocuntry
"we no ,longer are the greatest country on this globe"
Sorry to hear that.
Who has the title now?