Playing Pranks On Wingnut Nation?
Nailed. Settled. Time to draw up the articles of impeachment. After all, we can't have a foreigner sitting in the Oval Office, can we? Not so fast.
Kenya became a republic in December 1964, about three years after Obama's birth. WorldNet Daily, which republished the photos, later updated its original post and explained that since Kenya's official independence was in 1963, "any number of labels could have been applied to government documents during that time period."
Unfortunately, nobody was immediately available at the Kenyan Embassy to offer a definitive answer. WorldNet Daily said that Taitz received the document from an anonymous source who wished to remain unidentified because he feared for his life.
When the Obama-Kenya rumor first began gaining attention last year, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, attested to having personally seen Obama's original birth certificate in that state's archives. Not that her declaration has done much to dissuade conspiracy buffs whose minds were already made up.\
MSBNC interviewed Taitz about her President Obama's birth certificate claims. Actually, "interviewed" is probably the wrong word. At a certain point in what degenerated into a shouting match, Taitz called anchor David Shuster a "Brownshirt" and the conversation went nowhere. Here's the clip below. (Public service warning: Earplugs might not be a bad idea.)
I later spoke with Joseph Farah, WorldNet Daily's editor and chief executive officer, who said that while he does not believe the Taitz document will turn out to be genuine, the White House's refusal to release the long form birth certificate continues to raise questions about President Obama's place of birth.
But if we're going to traffic in the realm of `what if's,' is it also possible that this was part of an elaborate ruse to mock the birthers? As the chronicler of Obama conspiracy theories puts it:
"There are various internal inconsistencies that have been pointed out that suggest that the Kenyan certificate is more a hoax than a forgery (e.g. the certificate number 47,044 – Obama was 47 years old when he became the 44th president of the US and that the name of the Registrar, E. F. Lavender, is also a brand of hand wash.) (One wonders if the signer ODUYA is a play on "Oh, do ya?," not unlike "Oh really? -O RLY?...")
However this turns out, President Obama will be celebrating his birthday on Tuesday. Happy 48th.