So I've been over on the James Randi Forum 9/11 conspiracy forum for about 3 years now. Someone mentioned that this was the best place to find out about Birthers. I've had run-ins with Birthers before and they seemed really dead dumb, but who knows...maybe I've just met the dumb Birthers. I started reading the transcripts from the Liberi v Taitz trail that are posted here. I've only got through about 20 pages so far, but I've never imagined anything so stupid.

Do I have this right? Phil Berg hired an investigator with a criminal record. Orly Taitz set up a website to expose this fact, but (until page 20) denies any knowledge of this. Berg is trying to sue her claiming this is cyber-stalking.

Is this the level that Birthers are operating at? This is dumber than Truthers. Really. At least they're dealing with facts that are hard to understand. This is just dumb. How far off am I?

Scott

Welcome to TFB. You have it right. They are that dumb. Most of the Birthers now believe a theory that you have to have two parents to be a natural born citizen even though they never heard of such a theory before 2009. They have convinced themselves that is what they have known all their lives.

They are in fact staggeringly, colossally, gigantically, enormously, thesaurus-bustingly stupid beyond the ability of mere language to describe. The level of munitions-grade stupidity that comes from birthers should only be viewed with protective eyewear.

This is the best advice I've seen in a long, long time!

Berg was not the only birther to hire someone to help with his birther cases who had a criminal record. Taitz did much the same, a couple of times over. And compounded it by surrounding herself with an additional layer of losers who are best described by Obi-Wan Kenobi:

One of the many despicable things about birthers is that they make other conspiracy theorists and nut-jobs look reasonable and sane by comparison.

Thanks for the comments. The thing is, this is so stupid, I can't even get a handle on where to start. When I started watching Truthers, I joined on-line groups, mostly through Facebook. this turned out to be a really good idea. But at least 9/11 conspiracies are technically difficult to understand. Birther arguments are just for retards.

Where do start if you're trying to gain a picture of what's happened?

Going to a birther gathering is like going into the bar in Star Wars, except all those strange pasty beings are on their scooters. They have their "Don't tread on me" sticker attached to the back of the Hoveround (Beaver/whatever).

To be fair, there are a limited number of "leader" birthers, and a huge number of "follower" birthers.

The leader birthers are the lawyers and lawyer-wanna-be's who did the research to come up with their legal arguments in support of their assertion that Obama is not a NBC. I know, I know - the arguments are less than worthless, but they sure sound scholarly and profound to the follower birthers. And really, that's all that's necessary.

The follower birthers crave any kind of support for their belief that Obama is not legally the President of the United States. Follower birthers study and examine the literature presented to them by the leader birthers and become experts at spouting it as TRUTH. They really have no clue that they are wrong. They may see what the other side tells them, but they are so convinced that Obama does not belong in office, and their leaders know the TRUTH, that they won't do any research of their own. Why should you do the research when your trusted leaders have already done that work? (And, truthfully, a lot of birthers and anti-birthers fall into that category.) But it's a special kind of ignorance which insists that experienced judges in dozens of jurisdictions are ALL less knowledgeable than the birther leadership. That is what I find most unbelievable.

I got hooked on the stupidity through NBC's blog (see bottom of page)...then that led to mainlining the Fogbow...truly a tale for the brave of heart.

What is really annoying is that I got lotsa relatives that send me all kinds of stupid in e-mails about how Obama is going to become the next Eyeyatoilet of the Caliphite of Bagdad. I couldn't believe the abject level of stupidity in one's own family....

I would suggest Oh, For Goodness Sake's Great Birther Moments for a recap of 2009-2011.

Can't miss these - Great Moments In Birthism (series)



Use the You Tube Search for "Great Moments in Birthism" for the complete set.

Just got one today, a FWD>FWD>FWD..... email.

This one supposedly originated with a .. gasp... LAWYER! It's the same old crap about why did the Obama's voluntarily surrender their law licenses. This guy, 65 years old and retired, says he still pony's up the $600 to renew his license, it's an honor thing. And there is no way BHO and MO would surrender theirs unless... something nefarious is lying out there.

Bleh...

Why did they surrender their licenses? Is it typical for someone in their positions to do that?

They didn't "surrender" their law licenses.

Michelle went on inactive when she was no longer working as a lawyer and Barack retired his when he won the Presidency.

Either one of them can reinstate their licenses if they so desire.

Licensed professionals do this all of the time. That way they don't have to pay the fees and keep up with continuing ED.

I was going to put my RN license on "inactive" status but the fee was the same as renewing it so I just let it expire. I have 8 years to renew it (after that I'd have to retake the exam). If I choose to renew, I'll have to take some CEUs and pay a small late fee.

Thanks for the quick answer!

Welcome from JREF.

If you follow the 9/11 Truthers on JREF, you can indeed separate the "dumb ones" from the more sophisticated ones. While, at some level, 9/11 truthers don't adapt their arguments to basic refutations, they are sort of like creationists in that, until just a couple of years ago they had hit "peak truth" and tapered off.

Birthers share some similarities with creationists and truthers, but there is a lot less to play with factually. "Where was this person born" is simply not as complex a situation as "what is the origin of life and species thereof" or the complexity of four hijacked airplanes (if one accepts airplanes as a premise), their flight paths, who was aboard, and so on.

So where the "smart ones" gravitate is toward contorted legal theories which, ultimately, are also pretty stupid. 9/11 truthers grapple with physics, chemistry, and other sciences which most people don't understand well, and can pull of a fair amount of handwaving and voodoo references to "It defies Newton's laws for a building to fall through itself instead of falling over", etc. The "smarter" birthers do similar things with legal principles and procedure. Many of them are already steeped in crank legal theories in the first place, and again it is a body of knowledge of which most people have only a very rudimentary understanding.

There is an important difference between law and physics, though, in that one is a system by which approximations to an underlying objective reality has been reached through experimental observation. That is, the enterprise of physics is based on the assumption that physical reality operates in some way that we should be able to figure out using human brains. As an aside, that is merely an assumption. There's no reason why physical reality at some fundamental level of "truth" should be comprehensible to life forms which evolved an unnecessarily enlarged ganglion of neurons in its skull on this particular planet. But, in any event, law is what we make of it.

Specifically, when we say that the "two parent theory of natural born citizenship is wrong", we do so on the basis of a system of legal reasoning which we expect to be applied in a predictable inductive process. The fact of the matter is, however, that the US Supreme Court by a vote of five to four can render anyy proposition to be "true" or "untrue" in law. Everyone talks about the result of Bush v. Gore, for example, because the result was more or less the POINT of Bush v. Gore. The "reasoning" of that decision is a thing of wonder, and as a work of legal scholarship it is just plain awful.

So there is no reason why the Supreme Court could not, by a vote of five to four, adopt an insane birther legal theory. But at that point, we would have a larger problem, because the Constitution is also quite specific on procedures by which a president may be installed or removed from office. That also wraps into something of a loop because we also depend on the Supreme Court to tell us what the Constitution says. That's where you arrive at arguments along the lines of "Obama is not really the president".

So, while in one sense the "reality" of law is more malleable than reality as approached through physics, what you tend to find as between truthers and birthers is that there are indeed "smarter truthers", but the "smarter birthers" aren't really any smarter, but they are certainly more decoupled from reality.

Sure. GG's Snopes article is more thorough.

Another reason I let my license expire doesn't apply to the Obamas, but the CA franchise tax board made me file a tax return (which means I had to do the Federal one first) because I was still listed as "active" by the CA BORN - even though I had no taxable income. They just figured a licensed RN must be working...

I have tried to find the information that shows their status. The links no longer go to their status. All that shows up is that they are not currently able to practice law. There is a page that defines the terms of 'inactive' and 'retired' but not 'surrendered.'

In most states, the licensed professions that require mandatory continuing education have an extra license category of inactive. If the licensed professional does not wish to keep up with continuing education requirements, they request that their license become inactive and pay the necessary fee. When they want to reactivate their license they pay the necessary fees and submit documentation that they have completed the CEs.

In my state, land surveyors, engineers and architects are regulated by one board. A few years ago the architects got legislation passed to have a CE requirement for license renewal. Engineers and land surveyors don't have that requirement. Only the architects have an inactive license category. If the President and/or First Lady wish to reactivate their law license in Illinois, they will need to pay some fees and document the necessary number of CLEs (Continuing Legal Education). Neither surrendered their license because of pending disciplinary action. That is a complete fabrication of the birther loons.

I posted something regarding the specifics on January 31, 2012 in the Georgia Election Challenge thread that details what each must do to reactive their license.

viewtopic.php?f=88&t=6845&p=338297&hilit=license#p338297

Try here: https://www.iardc.org/lawyersearch.asp

Punch in the search name, and when it gives results then click on the name.

I see for Michelle: Illinois Registration Status: Voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law

And the President: Illinois Registration Status: Voluntarily retired and not authorized to practice law

Thanks, GG. Oddly, when I enter the location info, I don't get results. It works when only the names are entered.

At least for CA RN, the only difference is a small (I think $20-$30 fine). I let mine expire when I moved to Oregon thinking the move was permanent. After 4 years we moved back. Fee+ fine+ CEUs and I even got my old license number back. Same with my CA DL. Sure was convenient not to have to learn new license numbers.

CA however, would not let my son get his CA DL with the last name he'd been using for more than a decade and the name on his OR DL. He had to get his CA DL with the name on his birth certificate. Sure got him down to court to make the change legal. Birfers would have a fit over his 3-page birth certificate. It worked just fine for a passport.