(my conception of what may shortly be the new Arizona flag)

So, you’ve no doubt now heard about Arizona’s new Birther bill. If not, here is a concise review aptly describing what is but yet another stupidly-toxic batch cooked up in the meth lab of democracy that is our Arizona. “The Show us Your Penis State”, we might now call it. It has recently passed the Arizona House, and now heads to Governor “Headless” Jan’s office for her signature in what is yet another racist, nullifying tendency to do South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun proud.

Arizona entered the union on the fiftieth anniversary of its entry into the Confederate States of America, on February 14, 1912. Apparently, the Battle of Picacho Pass wasn’t the last battle of the Civil War to be fought in Arizona. They’re still doing their darned best short of introducing a resolution renaming the state ‘West Mississippi’. For more on the capitol meth mirth making, see cartoonist David Fitzsimmons’ special, “A Day at the Arizona Legislature”.

But now without further ado, it is my pleasure to reproduce an email a father of a friend wrote to his State Senator that was forwarded to me, addressing this “Birther” Bill. The opinions in the introduction above were my own. His opinions speak for themselves!

 

—————–

 

Dear Senator Barto:

This email is not about being a Republican or being a Democrat.  It is about having some integrity and specifically, your lack thereof.

As one of your constituents in Arizona’s 7th Legislative District I wanted to let you know that I am outraged as a taxpayer at the time, money and effort spent on the ridiculous AZ “Birther” bill sponsored by State Rep. Carl Seel.  As a genealogy buff with over 20 years at the craft, I was already aware that the so called “long form” that seems to be the subject of the conspiracy theorists only exists in bound form in Hawaii’s State’s Archives of the Dept. of Health.  Hawaii like many other states issues an abbreviated version to any person requesting a copy and this abbreviated version is called “Certification of Live Birth”.  Any idiot with an account on ANCESTRY.COM knows that.  So my first impression was that you and your colleagues that voted for the bill must simply be ignorant of the facts.  Being ignorant is not a crime but does call into question your fitness for legislative duties; i.e., if you don’t know or understand something you should take the time to research the subject.  But after I saw that the vote was strictly across party lines it gave me pause in that I had to conclude one of two options.  Either every member of the body that voted for the bill shares the same level as ignorance of the facts as you, or they are intentionally trying to mislead the citizens of Arizona.  I came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to conclude that all of you could be that ill informed.  When we eliminate that possibility the only thing that is left is an intentional ruse aimed at deceiving the citizens of Arizona.  Indeed there is a battle for the hearts and minds of the voters and you and your colleagues showed how low you will go to lie and mislead people.  You prey on the weak minded and uneducated.  Rep. Seel introduced a bill that had no basis in past violations and was clearly unneeded.  In doing so, you wasted our tax dollars, in fact, actually spent our money in an attempt to deceive us.  You should be ashamed of your behavior because it shows you as a dishonest person.  We elected you to do a job; we pay you to do a job.  It is not unreasonable that we should expect you to have a shred of integrity.

Perhaps you should ask the Hawaii State GOP chairman Jonah Kaauwai to produce his so called “long form” version of his birth certificate.  Moreover, Hawaii’s former GOP Governor Linda Lingle has repeatedly stated that the President was born in Hawaii and she has personally reviewed the original bound long form contained in the State’s Archives of the Dept. of Health.  Finally whether or not the President’s grandmother said something about him being born in Kenya is irrelevant.  Before her death in 1992 my grandmother said all kinds of strange things about me that were not true.  Talking about things I did growing up in the Delaware in the 1940s.  I was not born until 1959.  The last time I saw her alive she thought I was my father or my Uncle Pete.  That these so called “birthers” including you would attempt to leverage a statement like this simply shows your insensitivity to people who are dealing with aging parents and grandparents who are suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.  Your actions in that vein are nothing short of disgusting.  I am a Federal employee of the FAA and veteran (USAF) with over 30 years of Government service.  Your actions bring discredit to all of us in government service and I truly hope you are voted out of office at the next election because you are simply unfit to serve.  As for Rep. Seel’s comments that if the law is found to be preempted by Federal law– “we will fight it out in court” just shows how out of touch you all are.  Republican or Democrat–it does not matter.  We the citizens of Arizona are sick and tired of you and your colleagues Republican and Democrat alike, wasting our tax dollars on this type of partisan crap when our State has so many problems that need to be addressed and dealt with.  In summary, if you want to sit home on a Sunday morning in your underwear on your computer and research every goofy conspiracy theory out there that’s your business.  Perhaps you believe in ancient aliens—that they built the pyramids, maybe you think the US Government is behind 9/11, maybe you think Elvis is alive and well and living out his retirement in Boca.  But when you start spending our tax dollars on this crap you make the rest of us very angry.  Start doing the job we pay you to do.  I am sending this email to all my friends here in AZ, Republican and Democrat alike.  I hope it goes viral here in AZ and that you and your colleagues will be voted out of office next term because you have shown that you do not deserve to be there.

Here are the facts.  Please feel free to independently verify them:

The Hawaiian State health official who personally reviewed Barack Obama’s original birth certificate has affirmed again that the document is “real” and denounced “conspiracy theorists” in the so-called “birther” movement for continuing to spread bogus claims about the issue.  “It’s kind of ludicrous at this point,” Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, said in a rare telephone interview with NBC.  Fukino, sounding both exasperated and amused, spoke to a reporter in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s statements on the NBC Today show questioning whether Obama has a legitimate birth certificate.  Trump, who says he is considering a run for president, repeated his claims on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, saying that “nobody has any information” about the president’s birth and that “if he wasn’t born in this country, he shouldn’t be president of the United States.”  No matter what state officials release on the issue, the “birthers” are going to question it, said Fukino. “They’re going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated,” said Fukino. “The whole thing is silly.”

As the top Hawaiian official in charge of state health records in 2008, when the issue of Obama’s birth first arose, Fukino said she thought she had put the matter to rest. Contacted by NBC, Fukino expanded on previous public statements and made two key points when asked about Trump’s recent comments.  The first is that the original so-called “long form” birth certificate — described by Hawaiian officials as a “record of live birth” — absolutely exists, located in a bound volume in a file cabinet on the first floor of the state Department of Health. Fukimo said she has personally inspected it — twice. The first time was in late October 2008, during the closing days of the presidential campaign, when the communications director for the state’s then Republican governor, Linda Lingle (who appointed Fukino) asked if she could make a public statement in response to claims then circulating on the Internet that Obama was actually born in Kenya.

Before she would do so, Fukino said, she wanted to inspect the files — and did so, taking with her the state official in charge of vital records. She found the original birth record, properly numbered, half typed and half handwritten, and signed by the doctor who delivered Obama, located in the files. She then put out a public statement asserting to the document’s validity. She later put out another public statement in July 2009 — after reviewing the original birth record a second time.

“It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that,” Fukino said. Moreover, she added, her boss at the time, Republican Governor Lingle — who was backing John McCain for president — would presumably have to be in on any cover up since Fukino made her public comment at the governor’s office’s request. “Why would a Republican governor — who was stumping for the other guy — hold out on a big secret?” she asked.  Her second point — one she made repeatedly in the interview — is that the shorter, computer generated “certification of live birth” that was obtained by the Obama campaign in 2007 and has since been publicly released is the standard document that anybody requesting their birth certificate from the state of Hawaii would receive from the health department.

The document was distributed to the Obama campaign in 2007 after Obama, at the request of a campaign official, personally signed a Hawaii birth certificate request form downloaded on the Internet, according to a former campaign official who asked for anonymity. (Obama was “testy” when asked to sign the form but did so anyway to put the issue to rest, the former campaign official said. The White House has dismissed all questions about the president’s birth as “fictional nonsense.”  The certification that the campaign received back — which shows that the President was born in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961 — was based on the content of the original document in state files, Fukino said. “What he got, everybody got,” said Fukino. “He put out exactly what everybody gets when they ask for a birth certificate.”  Hawaiian officials say that the certification is, in fact, only one piece of abundant evidence of Obama’s birth in Hawaii. Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii attorney general’s office, noted that a public index of vital records, available for inspection in a bound volume at the Health Department’s Office of Health Status Monitoring, lists a male child named “Obama II, Barack Hussein” as having been born in the state.  In addition, as Factcheck.org and other media organizations have repeatedly pointed out, both of Honolulu’s newspapers, the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961, and the Honolulu Star Bulletin, on Aug. 14, 1961, both ran birth announcements listing Obama’s birth on Aug. 4 of that year.  Even Fukino accepts that her comments are not likely to end the matter for the die-hard birthers. Trump and other skeptics have questioned why the original birth certificate has not been released.  But Wisch, the spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said state law does not in fact permit the release of “vital records,” including an original “record of live birth” — even to the individual whose birth it records.  “It’s a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody,” he said. Nor do state laws have any provision that authorizes such records to be photocopied, Wisch said. If Obama wanted to personally visit the state health department, he would be permitted to inspect his birth record, Wisch said.  But if he or anybody else wanted a copy of their birth records, they would be told to fill out the appropriate state form and receive back the same computer generated “certification of live birth” form that everybody else gets — which is exactly what Obama did four years ago.

Eugene Riley
Cave Creek, AZ

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chazmania
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For the last twenty years of my life i have become frighteningly aware of something disturbing going on around me. I have watched the human species deteriorate to some distorted form of social and cultural INSANITY.. Logic has become something abandoned by most people, critical thinking chucked out and replaced by fantasy reasoning, Adoptions of religious kookiness as an explanation for life’s existence. And the fundamental flaws in the new mentalities are born from the the neoconservative distortions of reality.. An adoption of the “gaming” strategy’s, the undermining an opponent by any means necessary including dishonesty..Achieving things on your own merit has been replaced by hurting others to gain on their backs.
I see all this as the reason we are devolving and destroying and creating a world of suffering. I see that the new political game is to use your tax dollars to further defraud you manipulate you and abuse you and it goes unchallenged by the majority of the population because they have become just as sick..they have caught the mental disease that was carefully planted into the Psyche of the American people, the vulnerable uneducated dumb asses that cover this country like a fungus.
And you can trace back the origins to the corporatist’s and the right winged psychopaths in high positions of government and politics and in addition the democratic enablers of this illness that have for the most part themselves adopted the same distorted psychology in order to play out there own self serving interests and the rest of us be damned..
I view Obama as part of a system that is deeply disturbed and the people in it unaware how truly despicable they are because they have been living in a one sided culture of the self server. politics as usual.. the whole Cult of Money disease has eaten their souls out..
If you want to challenge their right to rule us do so on an actual real reason instead of chasing windmills or certificates that don’t exist..
And if we as a people keep allowing these sick bastards and sociopaths to govern us at the behest of the Amerocorp government then you deserve exactly what your getting and will get…the collapse of this empire will not be pretty and where your born wont make a damned bit of difference.

Chernynkaya
Member

This has probably already been posted–I apologize if so, I’ve had a busy day.It’s not a birther thing, but another AX atrocity, and Khirad loves flags:

Gov. Brewer Signs Law Giving Tea Party Flag Same Status As American Flag
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/19/jan-brewer-tea-party-flag/

[imgcomment image[/img]

choicelady
Member

Just heard that Guv Jan vetoed the bill.

But as I listened to the news about the certificate of circumcision being an “acceptable” document, it gave rise to the specter of the “anchor penis.” Give birth in Taiwan, fly your baby boy to the US to be circumcised, and bingo – your male child’s foreskin gives you citizen status without the bother of having to have him born here. Or live here. Or anything but leave a bit of himself here.

The world’s gone mad, you know.

BlueStateMan
Guest

Let’s face it, folks…

The “charges” put forth by the “birthers” have been categorically answered ad nauseam to the satisfaction of all reasonable people… and however many times that the UNREASONABLE try to deny it, the prime motivation behind this concocted “controversy” is this…..

If President Obama was EXACTLY THE SAME MAN…

If President Obama had EXACTLY THE SAME CREDENTIALS…

If President Obama had EXACTLY THE SAME DOCUMENTATION..

BUT..

If President Obama was WHITE instead of black..

There would NEVER HAVE BEEN A “BIRTHER” MOVEMENT TO BEGIN WITH.

There are many GENUINE PROBLEMS facing the United States that need SERIOUS ATTENTION, and to spend even a NANOSECOND acquiescing to the vapid demands put forth by a CADRE of CRACKPOTS is affording them CREDENCE THAT THEY DON’T DESERVE.

A simple rule of thumb in this instance is to “IGNORE THE IGNORANT”. .. they might not go away, but they should NEVER BE ALLOWED TO CONTROL THE AGENDA.

Buddy McCue
Member

Pardon me, but I could not disagree more with that idea of ignoring the ignorant.

Ignorance is like an infection. It is always a mistake to try to pretend that it isn’t there, to allow it to fester. Over time, it gets worse and worse, until it becomes untreatable.

KillgoreTrout
Member

But what is there to do about the WILLFULLY ignorant. They are the problem. Those who just refuse to see.

Abbyrose86
Member

About 8 months ago, I had to get an enhanced ID…for those who live on the northern border, this is a state issued driver’s license that can be used for crossing back and forth to Canada. I also wanted to get a Nexus card…this is another form of enhanced ID that speeds up crossing the Northern Border…it’s cool, as Nexus holders do receive faster processing at the border.

As a customs broker it is in my best interests to have these documents as I go back and forth over the border ALL the time…and it’s easier to have these documents in my possession regularly, rather than a passport.

I had been putting off getting the documents, for two reasons…#1…I’m a cheapskate and HATE paying for anything unless I absolutely have to and BOTH documents have fees attached. My old driver’s license and broker’s license were always sufficient until NEW rules went into effect and MY old license was still good. I didn’t want the NEW one until my old one expired. #2…For the last 43 years I was able to cross that border WITHOUT any special document…and I liked it that way…the new rules kind of pissed me off and I didn’t want to HAVE to do it.

So anyway…when I was about to go the DMV, I discovered that I couldn’t find my old copy of my Birth certificate…Apparently the last time I used it, I didn’t refile it back in my files properly. SO I had to go and get a new copy of my birth certificate from City hall. GUESS what??…this copy looks JUST like the one the president provided. It ran me $10 for the CERTIFIED copy. Now seeing as I live in NY and am a few years YOUNGER than the president….the fact that the document was the same, seemed NORMAL to me. But of course…I’m a rational human being and realize that the year IS 2011 and most documents are computer generated today!

While I was there, I also obtained certified copies of BOTH my children’s birth certificates as well, just so we had them on file, in case THEY needed them. My son was born in 1989 and my daughter 1991…and guess what? THEIRS looked just like mine! Will wonders never cease! WELL of course they looked the same…they were computer generated! The miracles of modern technology!!!

These birthers are racists idiots…PERIOD. There is no excuse for such inanity in today’s day and age…I wish they all would just crawl back under their rocks.

Yeesh…the time and energy and YES…MONEY being wasted on this whole ‘controversy’ is sinful.

ADONAI
Member

I dunno. I’m still not convinced. Never did trust those socialists in Hawaii.

Never mind the fact that his mother is a U.S. citizen and that automatically qualifies him under several provisions of the 14th amendment and Hawaii state law, or that you only have to be born in America to be a citizen, not live here for a certain number of years after birth, or that the U.S. government has graciously vindicated him on 4 separate occasions, ’cause none of that matters.

His dad, who he had 5 minutes of contact with his entire life, is Kenyan. There’s gotta be something shady behind that.

jkkFL
Guest

Looked up the pic with his father. It wasn’t shady, it was just taken indoors.

ADONAI
Member
choicelady
Member

Yo Birthers, weird AZ legislators, and The Donald:

Nobody, and I do mean NO ONE, has their original birth certificate. Oh, sure – I have a hospital certificate with teeny footprints on it (and no, I never checked to make sure they’re mine – why would I put ink on my feet just for that?) But a hospital certificate is sort of a “keepsake”, not a document of record.

If you HAD your original birth certificate, and your house burned down, you lost your wallet with that in it, or your purse was stolen, then – YOU COULD NEVER PROVE YOU WERE BORN HERE. The original is on file where you were born. Period. It’s the factual document against which all other documents including Social Security, passports, marriage licenses ALL have to be measured, and YOU get a certified copy when you need it. The certified copies are available over and over and over at anywhere from $5 to $20 a pop, but always available so your citizenship origins are never “lost”.

Now some states such as Nebraska, issue that certified copy in a fancy form with a lot of photocopied detail. And some such as Hawaii and New York, do a very perfunctory copy: name, date of birth, city, county. Bam. That’s it. You don’t LIKE it, talk to your county records people. Be prepared to pay LOTS more taxes to do a change over though. (Yup. Thought that would get your attention…)

So birthers – YOU can’t produce YOUR “original” birth certificates either. And damned lucky you are that all you have is a copy or we’d be comin’ after YOU to make sure you were a citizen. This is why the bureaus of vital records are so, well, vital. They hold our information in trust and safety. Largely to keep them out of YOUR hands so you don’t leave your one and only verification of citizen-by- birth mouldering on the bar in a pool of beer suds while you’re trying, drunkenly, to prove YOU are a citizen but Obama is not.

You want to change the law and have your original, then you’d better have a damned good safe place for it at home. I’d think twice about demanding you have your original certificate because your engagement in this stupid debate shows you ain’t wrapped too tight to begin with, and Gawd KNOWS what you’d do with your certificate if you had it.

Abbyrose86
Member

ChoiceLady it’s no use…no amount of facts will dissuade this bunch of nutcases. God himself could come down and TELL them all personally, and they would deny it.

choicelady
Member

God himself would be ignored for ALL the things God would have to say to them. For “Christian” people, these wingnuts sure have ego problems. I do realize they would not listen. I just like saying what a loopy and fun thing it would be to have THEM lose their one and only original, irreplaceable certificate.

Kinda makes my day.

whatsthatsound
Member

Neil Young wrote some songs about racism. With this one, you can pretty much just substitute “Arizona” for “Alabama”

Dbos
Member
Dbos

Plain and simple I live in phoenix and these bastards are pure racist scumbags

Kalima
Admin

Thanks for posting this Khirad. There is nothing more satisfying than to read about people taking a stance against some of the nonsense coming out of your State along with many others. Showing the absolute falsehoods, and mind-boggling ignorance of your elected lawmakers, and in my opinion lawbreakers, is a good way to start. I hope it reaches many people and makes them review the absurdity of this claim by the birthers by humiliating them once and for all in the eyes of the public. Thanks you for sharing this spot on opinion by people who have the guts and integrity to say, enough is enough.

The saying “ignorance is bliss” doesn’t apply to this breed of people, in their case, ignorance is just blind ignorance and stupidity.

jkkFL
Guest

Or perhaps it’s just a convenient controversy?

bito
Member

Jan having second thoughts? What will “Governor Pierce”/ALEC/ have to say about this?

Birth-proof bill may go too far, Brewer suggests

Gov. Jan Brewer hinted Friday she might veto legislation designed to give the Arizona secretary of state the final say of who gets to run for president here.[…]
Backers, led by Rep. Carl Seel, R-Phoenix, say they are just trying to protect the integrity of the electoral process. But Brewer, who was secretary of state for six years before becoming governor, said the wishes of the state legislators who support the measure may be irrelevant.

“I think my big concern probably, just shooting a little bit from the hip, is the fact that I don’t know if we regulate federal elections,” she said.

Seel conceded his bill is doing something no other state has tried, and that past court rulings raise questions about its legitimacy.

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_58595613-794e-5b9c-827c-431b58e68a75.html

bito
Member

Did you catch Larry O’Donnell on the Last Word and his take?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Pepe Lepew
Member

Here’s what’s so funny about this so-called “long form” of theirs.

If they are talking about the same kind of “long form” birth certificate I have … it isn’t even a legal document. It’s something they give your parents at the hospital when you are born with your baby footprints on it … and the doctor’s name who delivered you. It’s a SOUVENIR!

Not a legal document. I actually have a microfiche of my long form that I got from the county courthouse and I had to show it a few times when crossing the border from Canada. Those rules are completely different now. That microfiche worked 10 years ago, but not today.

When I first applied for my passport, I sent in my long form and they quickly mailed it back to me, telling me it was not a “legal document.” The “legal document” is the CERTIFICATION OF LIVE BIRTH, i.e, the SHORT FORM, which is kept in Sacramento. It’s the thing with the actual raised seal on it. That’s the actual LEGAL DOCUMENT, NOT what the birthers call the “Long form.”

I paid a few bucks and got that from Sacramento, then mailed that off to the Passport Office … then and ONLY THEN would they issue me a passport. Excuse my lack of political correctness, but that’s what I find so retarded about this whole thing with the birthers. Have none of them ever gotten a passport? The short form is the actual legal document.

That short form was also what Canada wanted when I became a Canadian citizen. I didn’t even bother with the microfiche of the long form. I knew it wasn’t going to be good enough.

escribacat
Member

Pepe, I remember when I went to get my first passport years ago. I had the “long form” with the baby footprints. The passport guy looked at it, then looked at me and laughed. He said, “Those footprints are cute but this isn’t what we need!”

Greta42
Member
Greta42

A great letter – What detail and research into Pres. Obama’s birth certificate. The birthers will not accept any of it, sadly – Their racist views will not change unless they want to change. As long as there are repub politicians still making headlines with their false charges, nothing will change.

bito
Member

besides this whole bill being ridiculously sad and it being paid for by the taxpayers of AZ, all the way to the Supreme Court, the “show your penis” part is beyond ridiculous.

Part of the controversial Arizona birther bill passed on Wednesday makes a certificate of circumcision (given to parent of a Jewish child after the religiously significant procedure is performed) acceptable proof of American citizenship for presidential candidates. While candidates won’t be asked to “whip it out” in the State House, a documented circumcision will join a verified Christian baptism, postpartum hospital records and long-form birth certificiates as proof that candidates are indeed Americans.

http://www.care2.com/causes/politics/blog/az-birther-law-says-lack-of-foreskin-acceptable-proof-of-citizenship/

The author of the letter said he hopes this goes viral, let’s help him. Email, FB Twitter… spread this around.

choicelady
Member

WEll for reasons beyond stupid, MY baptismal certificate knocks 12 years off my age. Not that I MIND, of course, but I was not baptized at birth (my folks did not care), but when I decided on my own to join the Methodist church at age 12 I first had to be baptized. The woman who wrote up the baptismal certificate assumed INFANT baptism, and I am now “legally” able to be 12 years younger. Only fly in that ointment – what if I want Social Security and Medicare? In that case it pays to be my REAL age. So those documents suck as standards of evidence about citizenship – and a whole lotta other things they don’t “certify” accurately.

On the other hand, it’s sort of fun knowing I can be younger if I want to and “prove” it!

jkkFL
Guest

C’lady, isn’t an infant baptism certificate issued to a minor? If you were 18- or legal age you would be issued a certificate of baptism. (I think- been a long time since I was a young Methodist, and my classes have escaped me!)

choicelady
Member

I was 12. My birth date is ON the certificate as 12 years AFTER my real one. Since Methodists don’t believe in “born again” by baptism, the UMC office secretary just made an assumption. A very WRONG one, but it made me born way later than I really was.

KillgoreTrout
Member

The Nazi’s also did short arm inspections.

Abbyrose86
Member

I’m curious about something…what is the ‘test’ for females???

Women, don’t HAVE circumcisions or haven’t THEY thought about that little inconvenient fact?