Evidence, speculation, wild-ass guesses, etc. go here.

we know Kreep's foundation is funding some of it.

I have no doubt there is more. Floyd Brown & Joey Farah don't work for free.

Koch Bros, Sheldon Adelson, Foster Freiss, Rupert Murdoch or one of the SuperPacs. That's a WAG.

Yosi Taitz and a few very frightened, very credulous, geriatric racists.

Do we have any new evidence that Yosef is supporting Orly's adventures, or is that just an inference from the fact that his money is being drawn down or that he has not stopped them through an intervention or an invocation of patriarchal authority? I have been equally ready to believe since CEL III that they are separated.

Only Fluffy can tell us.

The Taitz family income and wealth is not exclusively Yosi's. It belongs to her just as much as him. Orly does not need permission from her husband to spend her family's money, even if it comes primarily from the fruits of his labor.

That is precisely why I used the term "patriarchal authority." No matter what the law says, some religions hold that it is ordained in the Bible.

I read the poll question as whether Birthers receive funding from some outside source. Some secret source. In which case my answer is definitely "No."

Conspiracy movements are perfectly capable of being self-funded, and don't need backroom financiers to support their nonsense. 9/11 Truthers weren't funded by Democratic Party operatives hoping to impugn the Bush Presidency. Moon hoaxers weren't funded by the USSR hoping to undermine the US's victory in the space race. JFK assassination conspiracy theorists weren't backed by, I dunno, the Kennedy family.

And Birthers aren't funded by the Koch Brothers any more than we anti-birthers are funded by George Soros. In fact, we regularly point and laugh at the conspiratorial absurdity that we're paid by Soros; is it not obvious how ridiculous it is to turn around and propose that THEY are the ones with sinister billionaires writing them secret checks?

Nutjobs throughout history have wasted considerable time, effort, and money on their flights of fancy. They've sacrificed jobs, family, and respect in pursuing their agendas.

Orly's perfectly capable of funding her own activities. I expect Kerchner is too. If its numbers can be trusted, WND has raised donations in the six figures, which is more than enough to cover its costs (especially since it's reneged on some of its expenses, like the hospital reward, and the TV commercials for Corsi's book). It's certainly not like there's anything the Birthers have done that is so far out of their financial range that it can't be explained given their available resources.

And in American politics, people just regularly do stuff to promote their own ideologies. Inferring a secret financier simply because there is an ostensible benefit or detriment to one party is a common conspiratorialist fallacy itself: "Cui Bono"/"Who Benefits"? The null hypothesis in any of these situations is always that there's NOT a secret financial backer. And so unless there's any positive evidence to support one, the null hypothesis stands.

The Swift Boating of John Kerry?

Depends which part of it you mean.

If you mean the activities of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, then that's just stating the obvious. That was a 527 political group, designed to take in money and spend it on advocacy.

That's a world of difference from suggesting that someone plucked Jerome Corsi out of obscurity and paid him to write "Unfit for Command."

Jerome Corsi should wish to be plucked out of obscurity!

Additionally, apart from the question of *who* helped organize the Swift Boat campaign, it's also plain that they were organized, even if they were just a group of anti-Kerry vets who organized themselves. They had an clear message, a common goal, and produced some effective propaganda.

Birthers, on the other hand...well, here's what Legal Lohengrin said the other day: "This looks well orchestrated to you? I'd hate to see what you consider a chaotic mess perpetrated by a bunch of squabbling idiots."

Birthers can't agree on crap. They constantly change their facts and arguments. They constantly backstab each other and accuse each other of being secret infiltrators. Their claims are littered with not just unfounded speculation, but truly absurd and offensive nonsense (like Larry Sinclair and Tom Fife). Outside of WND (which operates with a direct profit motive), they can't raise enough money to do anything greater than pay for the P&E's hosting fees. Every attempt at organized protest has utterly failed. Next week's Birther Summit was cancelled for lack of interest.

And while the Swift Boat guys might've been spreading bad info, they weren't conspiracy nuts, and Birthers most definitely are. Suggesting that there's a secret conspiracy to fund conspiracy theorists...without actual evidence for that, it's just silly.

Donations are funding, no? So you agree they're not self-funded. Someone is funding them. Six figures is a lot of money. I don't believe it's all small donations from flying monkeys. Someone like Joe Arapaio doesn't get involved in this foolishness for truth, justice and the American way. Someone made it worth his while and it wasn't just for Mom and Pop donations to his re-election campaign.

Edit:

Well funded is not the same as well orchestrated. Birthers obviously aren't well orchestrated. But if they're collecting hundreds of thousands in donations, you must agree they're well funded.


Who suggested it was secret or a conspiracy? The money's coming from somewhere.

That's thinking like an attorney. Try thinking like the proverbial town busybody who does not need the truth or the law. In those terms, the campaign is doing what was sought, but not enough people are believing the smears -- yet.

The California Bar Assn?

As extinct as the Dodo.

Yet? It's been over THREE YEARS. That's a lifetime in political terms, especially for a candidate-specific attack like Birtherism.

And what, exactly, was it that "was sought"? The propagation of smears? To what end?

Imagine for a moment that you're a Republican millionaire who hates Obama. And let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you 1) want to spend money to smear Obama, and 2) think Birtherism is a good way to execute those smears.

Even taking all that as true, is there any way that money could have been spent WORSE than on Birtherism in the last three years? What about the actual execution of Birtherism since 2008 would suggest that such undercover financing took place?

First, instead of spending that money on getting 'respectable' support like from Limbaugh or Hannity or Beck, you instead decided to spend that money to enlist the services of a gaggle of pre-existing conspiracy theorists and nutjobs. You financed dozens of failed lawsuits. You've uncovered exactly nothing to support the conspiracy's charges. You got no serious media coverage, or even self-funded propaganda. You might have helped get some billboards erected on rural highways, or a banner get flown over a closed stadium. Oh, and you did all this in non-Presidential-election years.

And what has your money gotten you in three years? It's won over some Republicans who were never going to vote for Obama anyway, but it's had no effect on Obama's support amongst Democrats or independents. You haven't forced Obama to waste any measurable time or effort on Birther attacks (though you've convinced a bunch of conservatives to waste THEIR time), and the Obama Administration itself has taken to treating Birtherism like a punchline. The term "Birther" has become the go-to term for idiotic political conspiracy theorist, easily outstripping "Truther."

By any measurable standard, your millionaire funding money has not only been wasted, but you spent it in some of the most nonsensical ways possible. What about *that* is more compelling than 'Birthers are wasting their own time and money'?

I don't see this as the usual conspiracy theory such as the anti-Masons or the Truthers. There are extremely wealthy people who are obsessed with the notion of making sure the Obama does not get a second term. They do not care where he was born or what his faith is or who his father was. They are putting their wealth out there for the same reasons they always have......to protect it and make more. They are funding RW radio hosts, pundits, authors, and propagandists of every stripe. They will use every means possible to influence public opinion and smear with anything they can smear with. They are not part of a CT. They are employing free-lancers like Haskins to use whatever they have to offer as long as it smears the president and attracts attention. I don't think Haskins believes any of this stuff. It's a way to make a buck.

As for O'rly, there is still too much we do not know about her and her background. I don't think her practice is paying for her 'pro bono' barratry and champery.

Cui bono? That's easy. Any want who does not want to see Obama re-elected. They are putting their money towards that goal. While the court cases have been predictably unsuccessful, they have had great success in getting people to repeat the smears....if the polls are to be believed.

The birthers are funded by the same guy that shaves the barber.

Money spent to spread and highlight the birther rumors was very well spent. The belief that Obama was not born in the US is still very persistent among Republicans. In a March 2012 poll, inIllinois, the state the President calls home, 36% of GOP voters don't believe the President was born in the United States. In March 2012 in other states, the numbers are just as high. In Tennessee, 45%. In Georgia 38%. In Ohio, 37%. Those numbers are astonishing, and ought to be embarrassing for the Republican Party. The issue has re-appeared in the major media news over and over for 3 years. Comedians make jokes about it weekly. All someone has to do is say "birth certificate" and people laugh. The belief he wasn't really born in Hawaii persists among Republicans despite all the information available and presented that shows it's simply not true. Supporting birthism was money well-spent if you wanted to keep a low grade irritation nagging at the President and draining off some dough out of his warchest. I'd like to see Arpaio's Q1 campaign finance disclosure.

There's no doubt that arpaio has upped the birfer quotient.

I don't assume that the people funding Birtherism, whether FM or millionaires, are Republicans. For some of them, the evidence is pretty strong that they think the Republican Party is too far to the left; others think it is corrupt.

I doubt that anyone with any sense who got involved in Birtherism ever thought that they would win in a law suit. With just a tiny bit of competent legal advice, they would have learned that, if they did not already know it. Losing in a law suit was immaterial; the point was always to smear the President in every way possible. Why? To disable him at every opportunity and to prevent his re-election.

Perhaps 20% of the American people are wrong about any given thing, as JFK is reported to have said. Anything over 20% would be a success, and the numbers of Republicans and other Americans who have at least "had doubts raised" by the smears is well above 20%, even with competent pollsters. This has been a remarkably successful campaign for what is relatively little money.

Their failure was to get a credible candidate nominated for the Republican Party. I've suspected that people like the Koch brothers were hopeful that Perry would not fail because of his own stupidity. I cannot imagine that they favor Romney, and Santorum may be uncontrollable by anyone. "They" don't have anyone or anything to be for; they now have only people and actions to be against.

I know that this is a conspiracy theory: I have no clear idea who the conspirators are or even exactly what their immediate motives are. However, I think that we have been seeing conspiracy on a grand scale, from the formation of the Tea Party as if it were a popular uprising, to the elections in Ohio and Wisconsin and the actions taken against government and unions by both governors, to the continuation of this sorry campaign to smear the President, to the incessant lying by commission and omission of Fox News. Their ultimate goals? Elimination of the middle class, the crippling of unions, degrading the capacity of government at all levels, protecting their monied interests at all costs, bringing to a close the era of progress for the middle class and the poor that began in the 1950s. Are they fascists? Looks like it to me.

Cui bono? Obama.

This kind of insane garbage is absolutely repellent to the swing voters necessary to get elected, the same people who abandoned McCain in droves after he chose a babbling cretin as his running mate.

I defy you to find an Adelson or Koch brother who is a) wealthy as Croesus and b) stupid as a birther.

There is some big money in it. The Washington newspaper ads aren't cheap.

They know it won't effect the Republican voters, but a small percentage of Democratic PUMAs and low information independents will be enough to ensure a few borderline red states stay red and every little bit of helps with the swing states.

I think the big money might be going to WND, Corsi, and Arpaio with small amounts sent in to insure the ORYR and ballot challenge sites stay active just to keep the ballot challenges out there so that the issue stays alive.

Texas' other set of Perry's, who initially funded SBVfT, come to mind.