Forget the birthers: Here come the DNAers

[Lemur]

From ScienceBlogs (I considered posting this in the semi-permanent Obama thread, but it's just too silly for that discussion). What do Orgahs think? Will this catch on with the fringe? I'm curious to see if the creationists can kindle to this, given that they do not believe in evolution, hence most of modern biology, including DNA. Or would that little bit of cognitive dissonance even slow them down? I'm loving the idea that Obama is secretly Malcolm X's love child. That's comedy gold right there.

And no, the birther/DNAer movement has nothing to do with race. Nope. Nothing at all.

Forget the Birthers; Here Come the DNAers

Someone sent me a link to this article on the website of something called the Western Center for Journalism. I was hardly surprised, after I read the article, to find out that this organization was founded by Joseph Farah. They're going beyond even birtherism and demanding Obama's DNA:

This includes the determination of his actual identity, which requires genetic analysis. I started my investigation and analysis by deeming nearly every assertion as open to question, including the claimed identity of Mr. Obama's parents. A certificate that a child was born to Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Hussein Obama in Honolulu on 4 August 1961 might be true; but, assuming it's true, it does not necessarily follow that Mr. Obama is that child. Whether he is or not requires genetic analysis.

Ooh, so who might he be? One of the commenters provides the possibilities:

Another possibility is that Frank Marshall Davis is the father, but, being a communist, that would have hindered Barry's chances in life. Likewise if his father was, in fact, Malcolm X (and his mother in actuality his maternal grandmother). Other posters on this subject have noted Barry's likeness to the latter rather than to father-of-convenience Obama Sr. (who, recall, never lived with Stanley Ann; plus there is no real record of their marriage).

[Seamus Fermanagh]

From ScienceBlogs (I considered posting this in the semi-permanent Obama thread, but it's just too silly for that discussion). What do Orgahs think? Will this catch on with the fringe? I'm curious to see if the creationists can kindle to this, given that they do not believe in evolution, hence most of modern biology, including DNA. Or would that little bit of cognitive dissonance even slow them down? I'm loving the idea that Obama is secretly Malcolm X's love child. That's comedy gold right there.

And no, the birther/DNAer movement has nothing to do with race. Nope. Nothing at all.

Forget the Birthers; Here Come the DNAers

Someone sent me a link to this article on the website of something called the Western Center for Journalism. I was hardly surprised, after I read the article, to find out that this organization was founded by Joseph Farah. They're going beyond even birtherism and demanding Obama's DNA:

This includes the determination of his actual identity, which requires genetic analysis. I started my investigation and analysis by deeming nearly every assertion as open to question, including the claimed identity of Mr. Obama's parents. A certificate that a child was born to Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Hussein Obama in Honolulu on 4 August 1961 might be true; but, assuming it's true, it does not necessarily follow that Mr. Obama is that child. Whether he is or not requires genetic analysis.

Ooh, so who might he be? One of the commenters provides the possibilities:

Another possibility is that Frank Marshall Davis is the father, but, being a communist, that would have hindered Barry's chances in life. Likewise if his father was, in fact, Malcolm X (and his mother in actuality his maternal grandmother). Other posters on this subject have noted Barry's likeness to the latter rather than to father-of-convenience Obama Sr. (who, recall, never lived with Stanley Ann; plus there is no real record of their marriage).

So remember kiddies, if you want your child to grow up to be President, be sure to have an independent watchdog group film every moment of their existence from conception onward.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Obama was created in a test tube using DNA from the Shroud of Turin when the Jesuits cut a deal with the Eastern block to put their own socialist puppet in Washington to be hailed as the second coming.

If you think about it, there's a good chance Jesus was kind of black, and Obama is also kind of black, plus we know nothing about his birth except that he was born in Kenya, which borders Ethiopia where they claim descent from Solomon and keep the ark of the covenant, so really it makes perfect sense.

[PanzerJaeger]

Seeing illusory racist motivations in seemingly every attack on the current president has become a bit of a nutty conspiracy movement in and of itself.

[Cute Wolf]

not to mention he could be swapped when he lived in Jakarta, there is sizeable community of african descendants in menteng.

[Hosakawa Tito]

He's the Manchurian Candidate, sired by Mao to destroy the US.

[Xiahou]

You'd think if they were going to make a genetically engineered super-communist to be president, they'd make one thats more competent than Obama.

[gaelic cowboy]

You know none of this Anti-Obama stuff would have happened if he had just put an apostrophe after the O

O'Bama

see

[jabarto]

Seeing illusory racist motivations in seemingly every attack on the current president has become a bit of a nutty conspiracy movement in and of itself.

Oh, hey, look at this. It's PanzerJaeger denying the existence of things that contradict his political philosophy. Everyone raise your hands if you've seen him do this before.

o/

[Ironside]

Interesting that for the DNAers to even hold water, they must sidestep the whole American dream idea, since they're suggesting that ancestry should play a large part of the choise of president.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Ya mean like affirmative action?

[Strike For The South]

He's black. Clearly cheating was involved somewhere

[Beskar]

Oh, hey, look at this. It's PanzerJaeger denying the existence of things that contradict his political philosophy. Everyone raise your hands if you've seen him do this before.

o/

I don't remember all these movements when it was a White president, but since a guy with a little more darker skin gets involved.... "ZOMG HE ISN'T A REAL AMERICAN!"

Since the government would have obviously done the necessary checks in the first place, it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ above 30 that he is an American.

[gaelic cowboy]

The whole you cant be President unless your born there thing is silly anyway if your a citizen you should be allowed to stand for election even if your name is Dr Evil

[jabarto]

I don't remember all these movements when it was a White president, but since a guy with a little more darker skin gets involved.... "ZOMG HE ISN'T A REAL AMERICAN!"

Since the government would have obviously done the necessary checks in the first place, it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ above 30 that he is an American.

There were a lot of things that didn't happen during the Bush administration. Remember how, when he was in office, the right always said that we should just respect and support the president even if we don't agree with him? And the moment Obama stepped in, they suddenly began clawing through hell and high water to make him fail at everything he tried?

More on topic, it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that race has a large part in not only this, but the entire right-wing ideology. Just take a look at terms like "welfare queen" and pay attention to the demographic to which it's most often applied.

[Lemur]

In the interest of fairness, a majority of Republicans are not birthers, and the majority of birthers are not DNAers. So there's a lot of loony on the right, but it's not representative of the entire Republican party, and let's not pretend for a moment that there aren't moonbats on the left as well. That said, anyone who doesn't see the racial undertones of bitherism/DNAism has a highly selective take on reality.

[Ronin]

Seeing illusory racist motivations in seemingly every attack on the current president has become a bit of a nutty conspiracy movement in and of itself.

yes......highly illusory in this case... :P

[Beskar]

In the interest of fairness, a majority of Republicans are not birthers

Linking to an article which says 41% of them do, doesn't really defend Republicans, other than pretty prove the point that a large proportion of Republicans, are infact, Moonbats.

[PanzerJaeger]

I don't remember all these movements when it was a White president

There were all kinds of crazy movements during the Bush Administration. Remember the 9/11 Truthers? Claiming the president colluded with foreign terrorists to attack his own country in order to start a war for personal profit is a hell of a lot worse than claiming the president (who does have a rather unusual background) was not born in America.

More on topic, it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that race has a large part in not only this, but the entire right-wing ideology. Just take a look at terms like "welfare queen" and pay attention to the demographic to which it's most often applied.

To people on welfare?

That said, anyone who doesn't see the racial undertones of bitherism/DNAism has a highly selective take on reality.

If a Left leaning white president was elected with the same background, I'd wager we would see similar groups pop up. Many Americans put a lot of stock in lineage (which is ironic), and this is a natural reaction to a politician with an obscure background. These people's political ideology dictates that he is not to be liked, and his background is a convenient excuse - just like 9/11 was a convenient excuse for many lefties to entertain fantasies of sabotage.

[jabarto]

To people on welfare?

The higher rates of welfare receipt among blacks and Hispanics are largely the result of the erosion of marriage among those groups. In 1998, 69.1 percent of black children were born outside of wedlock. Among Hispanics the number was 41.6 percent, while among non-Hispanic whites the number was 21.9 percent.

Whoa, slow down there, Speed Racer. Are you seriously blaming poverty on premarital sex?

[PanzerJaeger]

Whoa, slow down there, Speed Racer. Are you seriously blaming poverty on premarital sex?

That is an interesting reading of that sentence, Chim-Chim. I interpreted it as implying that two parent households are more economically viable at low income levels than one parent households.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

There were all kinds of crazy movements during the Bush Administration. Remember the 9/11 Truthers? Claiming the president colluded with foreign terrorists to attack his own country in order to start a war for personal profit is a hell of a lot worse than claiming the president (who does have a rather unusual background) was not born in America.

yes...

In September 2009, a National Obama Approval Poll, by Public Policy Polling, found that 27% of respondents who identified themselves as Liberals, and 10% as Conservatives, responded "yes" to the question, "Do you think President Bush intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place because he wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?

Basically with this kind of thing, I believe that no one on the org is that dumb. I have doubts about whether people really believe it or just say so for fun as well.

In a recently released study, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., found nearly 11% of people who have reported being polled said they have lied to pollsters about their views on politics and public affairs.

and



And I don't doubt that people have a strong tendency to lie even on a computer. I've done that myself

Now, the conspiracy theory stuff is a different theme. But I suspect people want the poll to "look bad" for people they oppose.

Many polls offer anonymity, but now there is evidence that also distorts results. Stanford University professor Jon Krosnick and researchers from the University of Colorado studied people who were offered M&M's and then asked to fill out surveys. Some respondents were asked to include their names, others remained anonymous. When survey-takers were asked how many candies they had eaten, almost everyone said they had eaten fewer than they actually did. But the anonymous people said they had taken the least M&M's. "This is the drawback," Dr. Krosnick says. "They're not held accountable for being accurate."

This kind of stuff is complicated, not an expert on polls but I can say that at least. I don't think there is sufficient evidence to make highly counter intuitive claims about vast numbers of people believing in conspiracy theories.

sidetrack aside...I just plain don't see the point of trying to get political capital out of "the other guys believe in such and such conspiracy theory". News of the weird is more like it.

@jabarto: it's a foregone conclusion that race is a large part of the entire right wing ideology?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I should add, it's not clear what drives the poll results. I think my suggestions above were lacking though. Best I can guess, people read something that they want to believe, and then go on with their lives and never check it because they only check things that they don't want to believe. I wonder if they've done a poll that assesses belief and whether people have looked up the evidence against. At least that's how I remember the innumerable bush-iq hoaxes that were thrown around playing out. A simple google debunked them, but they are made so that people who want to believe get just enough that they don't bother googling. But I don't think it's clear how many people are "true" believers.

This still leaves us with the depressing conclusion that people are lazy and don't care about the truth.

Still I don't think any orgahs believe this stuff, and thus the only effect is to play on our guilt by association bias "the other party believes this stupid stuff, therefore...".

edit:

And, wow, to complete the digression, something caught my eye as I was googling conspiracy theory psychology, it was about how movie plots lend support for that kind of thinking. I'm wondering how much I create minor-conspiracy like explanations. I was reading an article by an anti-pharmaceutical company guy and his arguments turned out to be conspiracy theory stuff but it was fairly convincing as I read it (the counter point was excellent however, and a little critical thinking was revealing). I think it's a very hard impulse to quash (the need to have an explanation that covers everything neatly).

[a completely inoffensive name]

Lol American politics is so crazy it's funny. Oh ****, I live in America.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Lol American politics is so crazy it's funny.

America is the worst country, save for all the others.

In Italy, hard-right president Berlusconi has ordered an Italian Tea Party. Inspired by the US example, the PDL - the rightwing party - has hired American firms to start its own astroturf...erm, grasroots Tea Party movement. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...y-2107151.html

(Meanwhile in France, Sarkozy has hired the know-how of Columbian and Congolose firms to start his own astroturf banana republic.)

[Louis VI the Fat]

This thread got me thinking.

Is a non-American baby who was adopted very shortly after chilbirth into a US family eligable to run for president?

If a non-American mother is six months pregnant at the moment she is granted US citizenship, is her unborn child eligable to run for president? (That is, at what point does the unborn become a person? At conception? At childbirth? If the former, or if fundamentally opposed to abortion, does that mean this child despite being born a US citizen must be excluded from becoming president?)

[Beskar]

This thread got me thinking.

Is a non-American baby who was adopted very shortly after chilbirth into a US family eligable to run for president?

If a non-American mother is six months pregnant at the moment she is granted US citizenship, is her unborn child eligable to run for president? (That is, at what point does the unborn become a person? At conception? At childbirth? If the former, or if fundamentally opposed to abortion, does that mean this child despite being born a US citizen must be excluded from becoming president?)

The child has to be born on US soil. Mc Cain almost failed because his mother was at an Army Outpost, but since Army Outposts are classified as being on 'American Soil', he was allowed to run for Presidency.

So lets say you are a pregnant American going on holiday, you better make sure you are pointing towards Washington DC when it comes out.