Distracted by...Obama's Birth Certificate

This non-issue of Obama's birth certificate is back in the news, and I for one am looking forward to it being laid to rest for once (well, really for the millionth time) and for all. The Supreme Court and many courts leading up to it have already ruled that there is no legitimacy to the claim that he was not really born in Hawaii, but once again we have to give the batshit crazy moron his day in court (Alan Keyes, I'm talking to you.)

We all know that Obama's birth certificate has been available online for years, it has been certified as authentic by officials in Hawaii (including the Republican governor) and has been examined by numerous journalists. Also, his birth was announced in the local papers which any one can access in the archives. So, the conspiracy would not just have to be running through the current Hawaiian government, it would have had to start nearly 50 years ago, before his birth. ("Let's plant a fake birth announcement in the local papers just in case this baby might want to run for president one day.') Yeah, that's real plausible.

The reason I am writing about this ridiculous situation is that many of the insane rantings I read are related to wanting to see Obama's "long form" birth certificate or insisting that the one that is posted online could not be real because it doesn't include enough information. There are also many people who claim that most adults carry around their "original" birth certificates, and by that I assume they mean the one that their parents got when they were born. That, of course, is just not true. I remember seeing my "original" birth certificate (which my mother kept in a box in the linen closet) and using it to get my driver's license. Over the years it was misplaced and I got a new one. My certified birth certificate, issued by Milwaukee County, includes a lot of information - the name of the hospital, time of birth, my father's age and occupation, etc.

Now, my husband's birth certificate, which we ordered from South Dakota in order to get a marriage license (he did not have a copy - maybe he wasn't born here!) is a practically blank piece of paper that lists his name, his parents' names, his date and county of birth and the sex of the baby. That's it. No hospital, no city, no time of birth, no occupations, no nothing. It has a raised seal and other official-looking stuff, but if I scanned it and posted it the same conspiracy theorists would no doubt reject it and claim he was born on the moon or something.

My point is that states and counties all have their own birth certificate format, and to say that Obama's doesn't "look" real is just stupid. Not to mention how stupid it is to think that a young woman, in 1961, would go from Hawaii to Kenya to give birth and then somehow sneak the baby home to pretend it was born in the United States. That is ludicrous.

So bring it, Alan Keyes. And when you lose (you should be very used to losing by now) kindly shut the fuck up.