President Barack Obama makes phone calls to 10 American service members stationed around the world, from his vacation rental home in Kailua, Hawaii, Dec. 24, 2011. WHCA Presidential Communications Officer CPT Mallory Fritz and Military Aide Lt. Col. Sam Price coordinate the calls in the background. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
He has a personality problem, a likeability problem, and a passion problem—to say nothing of his “consistency problem,” his “1 percent-status problem” and his “Mormon problem.”
He may have a “rugged jawline,” perfectly coiffed hair that has “gone gray in just the right places,” and boatloads of money—which allowed him to make generous contributions to virtually every politician at every level of government in New Hampshire prior to his primary victory there—but Romney comes up short pretty much everywhere else.
Which is troubling, particularly when the only thing a Republican presidential candidate has to do to get elected in this country is smile, kiss a few babies and regurgitate the time-tested talking points of the GOP’s master narrative.
ORLY?
Perhaps the most toxic legacy of the 2008 Presidential campaign was the emergence of the Birthers.
As Barack Obama’s campaign took off, a die-hard band of desperate reality-deniers, led by their cuckoo queen Dentist/Lawyer Orly Taitz, combined increasingly ridiculous conspiracy theories about the circumstances and location of Obama’s birth with a peculiar hard-core interpretation of the intent behind the Constitutional phrase “natural born citizens” into a (to them) compelling case that Obama was ineligible to be POTUS.
At first, they posited, Barack Hussein Obama was not actually born in the state of Hawaii, but was instead born in Kenya, then whisked into the US and records falsified to make him an American. Because Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. intentionally left the US while she was enormous with child so that she could give birth to her son in a third-world country instead of an American hospital, but anticipated that their bi-racial son born in pre-Loving v. Virginia America would someday be a shoo-in for the Presidency or something.
As people continued to point and laugh at their complex crackpot theories, some Birthers began to advance a second argument, which they found even more compelling.
Even if they conceded that Obama was born on US soil, he didn’t meet the criterion of “natural born citizen” because his birth father was not himself a US citizen, but a Kenyan. By stretching the Constitution just so and holding it over a candle to reveal hidden inscriptions in invisible ink, they determined that a “natural born citizen” could not be born to a parent who held citizenship in any other country, because that made the child a dual national, not a real American.
My story on Jules Manson, the California man who called for the assassination of President Obama and his children on a Facebook post, has already developed into two distinct lines of inquiry. One pertains to the individual who appears to have posted the threat, the other to bizarre developments I unearthed when I looked closer at the article which provoked his outburst.
To reduce any confusion, I am separating these stories into two separate developing blog posts. One will concentrate on Mr. Manson, this one will consolidate everything I’ve discovered about unelected.org. When I have further updates for either post, I will post them at the top for your convenience. Stay tuned. – Allan
UPDATE 1
James Kirchick has responded via Twitter to confirm that he is not associated with the unelected.org website.
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The website unelected.org has been using the names of recognized writers affiliated with major publications without their knowledge or consent, and has fraudulently published articles under the byline of Mother Jones contributor Josh Harkinson. This egregious conduct was exposed when I looked closer at the unelected.org website and brought it to Mr. Harkinson’s attention. He contacted me to confirm that he did not write the material in question, nor has he written on the topic of the NDAA; and that he was not affiliated with the website in question. Further, he would pursue action to force unelected.org to correct their site. I am pleased to assist him with spreading the word that he was not responsible for the blog post in question, and updated my original story accordingly.
Since that time, unelected.org has edited their site to remove Mr. Harkinson’s name, likeness and bio, as well as that of James Kirchick, who contributes to The New Republic and the Wall Street Journal. As of this writing, I have not been able to confirm directly with Mr. Kirchick that his name was being used fraudulently, but the actions of the site operators certainly suggest as much.
Meanwhile, and potentially even more disturbing, is that unelected.org continues to feature a post purporting to offer the phone numbers and home addresses of members of Congress in retaliation for their votes for the NDAA.
Screenshots, before and after below. Continue reading
This story has already developed into two distinct lines of inquiry. One pertains to the individual who appears to have posted the threat, the other to bizarre developments I unearthed when I looked closer at the article which provoked his outburst.
To reduce any confusion, I am separating these stories into two separate developing blog posts. This one will concentrate on Mr. Manson, the other will consolidate everything I’ve discovered about unelected.org. When I have further updates for either post, I will post them at the top for your convenience. Stay tuned. – Allan
Manson then resumes being a putz by posting random annoying stuff about race, movies, marijuana and FREEDUMB, including this “announcement” as a candidate for the California Senate.
Har-dee-har. Your fifteen minutes are up.
For a time, the Examiner.com story was down, causing some to wonder about its legitimacy. We’ve written in the past about the trustworthiness of content on that site, which publishes the contributions of “citizen journalists” who are compensated by the click for their work. Since then, it has been reinstated to the site and can be reached via this link, and I have taken a screenshot for future reference. Continue reading
