Some stories, no matter how ridiculous and pointless they are, just won’t die. Arizona’s Secretary of State, Ken Bennett (R), wants to see President Obama’s birth certificate…again. And if he doesn’t see it, the incumbent president’s name will not be on the ballot in Arizona when the November election rolls around. (Obama lost the state in 2008 to Arizona Sen. McCain but it could be in play this election, which would be a great reason for a Republican Secretary of State to try to keep the Democrat off the ballot.)
When Obama released his birth certificate last year just days before ordering the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, the message should have been clear to all. Here is what doesn’t really matter and is a non-issue (the birther conspiracy) and here is what does matter (finding the most wanted man on the planet.) And yet it persists.
What is the goal of continuing to chase such an insignificant pipe dream? I mean really, is anyone who is pushing this going to look back in twenty years and think to themselves: “I know I completely ignored what the financial institutions and lack of regulation did to the country and never pushed my elected officials to punish the people responsible for the economic crash. But I sure am glad I took a bunch of time out of my life and pushed an irrelevant issue into the media even after being shown the conspiracy was never true. Life well done.”
The most humorous and truly sad part of the article on USA Today’s site are the quotes from the Arizona official first admitting, “I have been on the record since 2009 that I believe the president was born in Hawaii. I am not a birther.” Fantastic. You are distancing yourself from a lunatic theory and seem like a rational person.
But this was not to be. Same Arizona Secretary of State later in the article, “he believes ‘the president was born in Hawaii — at least I hope he was’ and stated he was ‘not playing to the birthers’.” I believe this is where we would insert one of those facepalm motivational posters. Actually sir, you are playing to birthers when you include the ‘at least I hope he was’ on your statement. You leave some shadow of doubt for reasons I can’t understand if you truly think Obama was born in Hawaii and I’m pretty sure that was intentional to play to your lunatic base. Nicely done.
In fact, even using the word ‘believe’ in your statement leaves something to be desired as well since it suggests a chance for doubt. If you really want to distant yourself from the conspiracy nuts, then say you are sure the president was born in Hawaii and you are not going feed the delusions of deranged people by wasting tax payers dollars on chasing lies.
Sparking The Left 