The New Republic

Toxic pig man bloviations, who cares?

- WandreyCer

August 4, 2010 at 8:49am

The internet is alive with the conspiratorial rants of the "fifthers," who claim Obama was really born a day later, and the CIA is covering it up.

- frippo

August 4, 2010 at 10:39am

Rush is a quasi-human being, so why should it surprise anyone he is a quasi-birther? He quasi-talks, quasi-makes sense, quasi-hears, though he is full of shit.

- icarusr

August 4, 2010 at 10:56am

I love the implicit jump from the Birther claim that Obama isn't eligible to be president because he cannot produce a birth certificate to the Limbaughian claim that because he cannot produce a birth certificate, Obama may not actually have been born. Makes a certain sense, though: Since the Birther mythology requires Obama to have used a time machine to plant newspaper stories and fake documents in the past - question: does Obama already have the time machine, or will he only have access to it at some point in the future? - it's possible that due to a spacetime paradox, Obama never was born but exists only within a closed loop of time travel. For example, let's say that in 2017, President Obama is proved to have been born in Kenya and faces impeachment. Call this Timestream A. So he uses the government's top-secret time machine to go back in time to gather all the necessary documentary evidence of his own existence. Then he goes back further still and kills his father before he was conceived. This is Timestream B, in which no Obama was ever born. Then Obama goes forward in time to a point near the start of his adult life, plants the documents proving his existence, most of them authentic but included among them is a fake birth certificate and those newspaper birth announcements. This becomes Timestream C, in which Obama was never born but does exist and lives only the adult portion of his life. And since he's already been elected president in Timestream A, Obama is preternaturally able to anticipate events and win the presidency. Rush's comments suggest that he believes that we are living in Timestream C, the one in which Obama was never born but does exist.

- rhubarbs

August 4, 2010 at 10:58am

Of course, for the Timestream C theory to hold, Obama would actually have to have been younger than I propose when he started his time-travel journey. So it's more likely that in Timestream A, Obama was born in Kenya sometime between 1969 and 1972, elected vice president in 2008, and faced impeachment very soon thereafter upon the revelation of his foreign birth. After killing his father to prevent his own birth (creating Timestream B), Obama only need to jump forward to 1988 to enter law school to establish himself as an adult (creating Timestream C). In that sequence of events, Obama could be as young as 58 today, which is just plausible given his health and appearance. Raises the important question: Who was elected president in 2008 in the original reality? Surely not Hillary, who would never have added a young, black state politician to her ticket. Who would have benefitted from picking a 36-year-old articulate black liberal as his running mate, but would have done so without vetting him enough to have established his place of birth? My god! It's obvious: In the original reality, John McCain switched parties during the Bush administration and won the presidency as a Democrat!

- rhubarbs

August 4, 2010 at 11:18am

rhubarbs, that has to be Comment of the Month, if not the year!

- Crock1701

August 4, 2010 at 11:35am

Rhubs: you've week watching Inception lately, I gather ... and I followed you, almost, until we got to McCain. Here is the thing. McCain has two quantum states that sometimes can co-exist but are in general mutually exclusive: charming and erect. In charming state, he attracts bromance partners such as Graham and Lieberman; when erect, he lunges after the closest female leg. It is not clear who is around him when he is in the quantum double state - but better not be around, for fear of creating a black hole. The point is, however, that in no state is he a magnate for, or attracted to, an articulate and savvy black liberal politician of indeterminate age. They are like matter and anti-matter; their meeting annihilates time itself. The counterfactual does not compute.

- icarusr

August 4, 2010 at 12:10pm

Inception: I insist on seeing every movie Christopher Nolan directs. My wife insists on not seeing any movie in which Leonardo DiCaprio stars. I thus will not be seeing Inception until it comes to cable and I can DVR it. I was actually thinking of Primer. I maintain that in Timestream A, McCain was just as susceptible to outside influence as he is in our own Timestream C. But rather than falling for the dictates of the horndog Bill Kristol, he did the bidding of John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, or Harry Reid, all of whom had huge man-crushes for Obama (and all of whom would be necessary allies for an aisle-crossing McCain). And heck, for all we know, in the original reality, young Barack was elected to Congress in either 2004 or 2006, so McCain might have had time to develop a firsthand bromance with Obama. Would certainly explain how Obama was able to get inside McCain's head and under his skin so effectively in our own altered reality. (Also how Obama was able to pull the necessary historical strings to keep McCain from switching parties, as he did in Timestream A.) Unfortunately, as the only known survivor of Timestream A, President Obama is the only person who could tell us who was elected president in the original 2008, and he's not talking. Maybe in his post-presidency memoir?

- rhubarbs

August 4, 2010 at 1:00pm

And here I thought Rhubarbs was describing a Doctor Who episode. Or some J.J. Abrahms production. Shows you how much I know. Hey, maybe the president is one of the reincarnations of the Doctor. That would explain a lot....

- tnmats

August 4, 2010 at 2:31pm

If Obama is a Time Lord, then that means the birthers are right. Are they now going to demand a physical exam to see if he has two hearts? Hey, it makes about as much sense as anything that come from Orly Taitz' mouth.

- zardoz67

August 4, 2010 at 5:44pm

Leonardo: Your wife and I would get along really well. In movie actor terms, to be precise. horndog Bill Kristol: I think the Kristol-ine Structure (which was destroyed as a result of a female-invented vibration, but which evidently came back to our time ...) can cause a switch in the quantum state of the McCain, but did not "influence" the old goat into falling for the Palin; McCain always had a weakness for the fecund rate. In the same vein, I would suggest, not even in his charming state would he fall for the Big O. And give you two irrefutable reasons for this. First, it is highly doubtful that in any Timestream, Obama would ooh and ahh McCain's Wisdom and be impressed by his Mavericky Manliness. Second, Obama is the anti-Lieberman and the never-Graham. For your alternative reality to work, McCain has to be a different person than he is, and if her were different, he'd be different and we would not be here. IMHO

- icarusr

August 4, 2010 at 5:48pm

Obama is totally a Time Lord. Notice too that Time Lords have Brit accents to a man, and that Obama's American is a shade too transatlantic at times.

- ironyroad

August 4, 2010 at 9:24pm