For Donald Trump and the Birthers: Time to STFU

The debate over whether or not Barack Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen has been stoked and prodded along for three years or so now and, finally today, the Obama administration has released a copy of the president's long-form birth certificate from Hawaii.

Will this put all the hardcore, fringe rumors to rest? Absolutely not! This will become just another part of the conspiracy. But that small number of believers is so small that we're now at a point where the media and political figures who have been beating this drum are going to have to stop for fear of isolating themselves from the more normal types out here.

Of course, Donald Trump is taking full responsibility for bringing this moment about. At a press conference in New Hampshire today, you know, New Hampshire where they have a major primary every four years in the run for president, Trump crowed like he had just fought Goliath and slingshotted him with a boulder.

I guess you could spin it that way.

The way I see it, the Obama administration showed today what a bunch of morons these birthers have been all along. In order to buy into the whole birther scenario you had to be willing to believe that Obama was trying to mislead every voter in this country in order to attain the level he's reached and that it had to be part of a grand conspiracy, from his birth, to make him eligible for the position.

Just sayin'. That's kinda crazy talk.

One thing that really irks me about the whole thing we've endured these past three years is that the media has played along to a great extent. I haven't really cared to get into all the details about Hawaii birth certificates and all that conspiracy stuff because it's just silly on its face. I don't like the things Obama is doing in the White House but I'm not a lunatic, racist, douchebag either.

Apparently, when a baby is born in Hawaii, that state releases what they call a "short-form" birth certificate. This is what Obama's people have been showing the craven right wingers all this time and just throwing gas on the fire because it doesn't look legit.

In order to get Hawaii's "long-form" birth certificate which offers more information like the name of a hospital, you have to go through a bunch of red tape. It's just not something everybody born in Hawaii is going to have.

I didn't fully understand this until today. Maybe I've heard this before on the news and didn't really pay attention because it didn't matter to me but the point should have been driven home daily by the media. That didn't happen. The U.S. media has such a reputation for not fully reporting the news these days and giving news slanted left or right politically that their under-reporting of the full story just gave it more credence.

So, anyway, the long-form certificate is out there now but the debate will continue on the fringes. The sad thing is that, to be a birther, you have to want to believe that there's a conspiracy. That says much about those people and the politicians who've been feeding off of them.

Now, the new Trump-driven conspiracy story is that Obama was actually not a very good student in college and maybe shouldn't have gotten into an Ivy League school. Apparently there's a whole little cottage industry out there of people trying to create dirt about Obama. I guess it's not surprising when you're like me and you remember the Clinton years vividly. The far right just loves this kind of thing. There were actually rumors during the '90s that Hillary Clinton was a witch and had covens in the Oval Office. So the Obama conspiracies are pretty minor by comparison.

So the debate about whether Obama deserved an Ivy League education, or the other one that's still out there, that he's Muslim rather than Christian, will continue apace. Just a reminder that some very undeserving people have received Ivy League educations in the past (George W. Bush).

Rev. Franklin Graham has begun to stump for Trump in the past week I guess since Trump's such a vision of modern Christian indulgence? But Graham has also kinda, sorta, alluded to the fact that Obama might be a Muslim. Well, not directly, but he's said that it's not possible to truly know what's in a man's heart. So he's been coy to the point where he's saying that, yes, Obama may well be a Muslim.

Anyway, all of that is a topic for another blog about Christianity on the far right, again.

One final note is that I sincerely hope somebody in the media will grow a pair when interviewing Donald Trump. So far, that pompous, windbag, piece of crap has been allowed to spout what he will with little challenge. The worst debate tactic is to out-talk your opponent and that's what Trump does. He wins the argument with loudness and abundance of words.

Maybe he's exactly what America needs as I've said though. It's certainly time for America to look in the mirror and ask itself if the way it picks its leaders is valid. Trump is nothing but a loud joke. He's everything that's bad about this country and he'd be the perfect president to highlight our misguided media, political system, economic system, etc. By 2014, President Trump would bring about a lot of much needed soul searching in the American populace.

And here's what should be the last nail in the birther coffin but it's not likely. Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate. Tah Dah!!!!!!!!