A 26-year-old college student from Munich drove to a Hell’s Angels clubhouse, dropped his pants and mooned the gang, then threw a puppy at the bikers before escaping on a bulldozer, which he later abandoned on a highway.

Seriously, I never imagined I would ever type that sentence, even more so that it would describe a real-life event.

One can only guess that this was not a planned adventure. I mean, I don’t think even a crazy person would think, “Okay, now I have to make sure I pick up the puppy and choose a biker hangout close to a construction site with bulldozers.” This event would have to be the definitive example of “making it up as you go along.”

Michael Steele, Republican Party Village Idiot:

“Keep in mind again, federal candidates, [Afghanistan] was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. … It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed.”

Umm… if Obama is the one who chose to start the war in Afghanistan, then pray tell, what the bejeezus were we doing there for the previous seven years? And what would Steele have done differently, so that had Obama done it, Steele and the entire right wing would not eviscerate him for it?

The denial is staggering.

Seriously, I am beginning to think that Steele is there to make Boehner and the other Republicans look brilliant by comparison.

You’ve probably heard this already, especially Jon Stewart’s take on it. Still, this is the quality of news analysis on Fox:

CARLSON: You have this country, that is in the middle of a huge war, BUT… there’s money to be found there, so who is going to now suddenly want to take over Afghanistan? What about the Taliban? What about China?

DOOCY: Sure. Because China is not too far away, and it’s a great big country that needs a whole bunch of stuff.

A great big country. They need a whole bunch of stuff. My god–he’s channeling the Pakleds. “China is not far. China is big. China needs a bunch of stuff to make them go.”

Had one been walking through a graveyard populated by the late greats of journalism just at the moment Doocy said that, one would have heard the muffled, collective slap of foreheads directly through six feet of soil.

Then the other guy in the interview gets in almost as dumb a statement:

KILMEADE: They can be transformed into the mining center of the world. So there you go. All right, now they can pay for the war, perhaps.

Wow. You just have to stand in awe of the arrogance of that statement. “Everything they have is ours, we can just take it.” Then, when you recover from that, the sheer stupidity strikes you. Seriously, remember when Republicans were all like, “hey, the war in Iraq will pay for itself because the oil is there”? Same thing here: if anyone gets the goodies, it’ll be the business interests. Not one cent will go back to the U.S. taxpayer. But hey, whatever helps put our troops in the line of fire so profits can be made, right?

Can Fox News be any more dumb? (Note: yes, I am aware of the answer to that question. It’s just simply hard to believe sometimes.)

One of the things that is annoying about living overseas is that when you surf the web, many sites “helpfully” detect your location, and switch you over to a version of the web site native to the country you’re in. For me, that’s Japan. For example, if I go to “http://www.youtube.com,” it’s all in Japanese. I can set the language to English, but for some reason, it won’t allow me to use America as a location–I have to say I am in the UK to get close to the focus on English videos that I want. And that setting will time out, so every week or two I have to re-set the language. Skype is the same way–whenever I visit their site, it’s in Japanese, and I have to reset the language there as well.

While this is all an annoyance (as are most attempts by programmers to be aggressively “helpful”), at least it is correctable–you can always find a way to steer back to a version of the site in your language.

Unless you are at Gizmodo, that is. In the past, they implemented the “we’re going to help you by redirecting you to our Japanese site” protocol, but put little flags at the top of the page that would allow you to navigate back. That worked for a while. But for the past 3-4 days, the flags don’t work. I even directly type in “http://us.gizmodo.com,” and it still steers me to the Japanese site. Apparently, no one outside the U.S. (or in Japan, at least) is allowed to see what’s on their U.S. site.

The solution is simple: I’m removing them from my bookmarks.

Thanks for being so helpful, Gizmodo!

A short while ago, I commented on the recent mass-nuisance lawsuit issued by the producers of The Hurt Locker. The lawyers in that case are repeat offenders, carrying out the same tactics for a German film titled Far Cry. In that case, they are suing roughly 2000 “John Doe” IP Address holders, subpoenaing their ISPs to rat them out so they can be squeezed for cash.

One ISP, Time Warner Cable, said “no.” Their claim is that they have limited resources for hunting down the identities linked to IP addresses given by outside sources, and most of that capacity is dedicated to law enforcement, to help hunt down people like child porn distributors or other seriously dangerous people. They claim that their spare capacity is only 28 subpoenas per month–and the bottom-feeding lawyers trying to extort money in the mass-nuisance lawsuit are demanding that Time Warner drop everything else and spend the next three months doing nothing but servicing their claim against 800 of their customers. Time Warner said they were not interested, thanks.

So the scummy lawyers did what scummy lawyers do: they filed a brief against Time Warner, claiming that they were aiding and abetting pirates, threatening to sue the ISP for contributory copyright infringement.

Look, I’m not endorsing piracy here, but these filmmakers are being asses. Extorting $1500 for downloading a movie? Up to $300,000 if it goes to court? Strong-arm tactics if anyone stands in your way? There’s money-grabbing, and then there’s asinine money-grabbing. If these people were more reasonable and proportionate in seeking redress from some couch potato in Springfield who never would have paid $20 for the movie anyway downloading their film and watching it in a way that is little different in the long run from watching it on TV while muting the commercials, then OK. But demanding an ISP abandon its law enforcement duties in serious cases so they can extort a grand and a half from people like that is going beyond normal schmuckery.

The WSJ has what is to me a rather insipid article on iPad finger smudges:

The smudging has turned some of the giddiness of iPad ownership to disappointment. Matthew Rudnick, a hotel supervisor in San Mateo, Calif., looked forward to getting an iPad so much that he reserved one ahead of time. Now, however, “every time you touch it, it just leaves greasy smudges all over,” says the 26 year old. “It’s very disappointing because I’m showing it off to co-workers, to my friends and family, and the first thing they see is grease.”

It’s a touch-screen device with a glossy screen. What do you expect? Magic? Fingers have finger grease. Deal with it. But then the article gets absurd and starts catering to hypochondria:

Others worry about the device becoming a bacterial breeding ground. Stephen Hood stood in line outside an Apple store the first weekend the iPad went on sale, but by the time the 35-year-old resident of Menlo Park, Calif., got to try the display device, so many people had touched it that the screen was smeared by fingerprints and smudges.

“I couldn’t read the screen because the way the light was hitting it, all I could see were finger smears,” says the software developer. Mr. Hood later tweeted, “demoed an iPad at the Apple store. Loved it but from the amount of finger grease covering it I expect I’ve just contracted H1N1.”

OK, dude, I get that you’re kidding, but seriously, do you realize that the only difference between an iPad screen and every single computer keyboard you have ever touched is that you can see the finger grease on one and not so much on the other? I hope this guy never figures out what’s on escalator handrails or men’s room door handles. But maybe the guy is just exaggerating–seriously, I have seen my iPad screen pretty badly smudged, but never to a point where the smudges are visible when the screen is lit. Mostly I notice smudges when I turn it off.

But then the WSJ flies off into idiocy with an “expert” assessment of the germ threat:

Chuck Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona who is studying bacteria on touchscreens, says it’s possible for people to contract a disease from sharing a device like an iPad. Personal touchscreen devices aren’t as bad as the self-checkout screens in grocery stores, but he knows of rare cases where people contracted a serious skin disease called Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, from sharing a cell phone with bacteria on it.

“The best friend your germ has ever had is your fingers,” says Mr. Gerba. MRSA makes skin red and swollen and can even cause fever and skin abscesses.

Oy. Do I even need to get into how stupid including that in this story is? If you can catch MRSA from an iPad, you can catch it from any door handle. The same finger grease is everywhere. If anything, the iPad is safer than keyboards or door handles because you will wipe off the iPad screen, whereas you will not wipe off keyboards or door handles you use.

But no, let’s all panic now. Or perhaps you can (a) avoid handing your iPad to other people (and don’t let them near your urine jar collection), and/or (b) stop being such a blazing drama queen. At least the article does mention the obvious:

Ms. Sobhany, the disc jockey, says she has become an expert at quickly wiping down one iPad while the other handles the music-playing. Her recommended technique is to breathe on the screen and wipe it with a microfiber cloth.

Bingo. Though breathing on it first is not necessary. A tiny, cheap piece of cloth in your pocket, three seconds of wiping off a few times a day. What a horrible fate. And maybe stop throwing your iPad into a mosh pit.

Remember how ACORN and other non-conservative voter registration organizations were guilty of “election fraud” because some rank-and-file employees decided to line their pockets by faking registrations? Remember how this made them criminal organizations which deserved to be shut down?

Two words: glass houses.

How is it that no one doing PR against piracy can open their mouths without sounding like complete idiots? Agnete Haaland, the president of the International Actors’ Federation, has the solution to the piracy scourge:

“We should change the word piracy,” she told reporters at the unveiling of the report on Wednesday.

“To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp. We all want to be a bit like Johnny Depp. But we’re talking about a criminal act. We’re talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do,” she said.

And no, that’s not from The Onion. I did not make that up. Piracy, according to Agnete, is making it impossible for actors to “make a living.”

It’s not the greed of giant megacorps that make $2.64 billion from a movie like Avatar, or, as the same article points out, rakes in nearly $2 trillion every year. It can’t be that the huge parasitic media corporations are robbing the performers blind and making life tough for the rank and file. No, because $2 trillion can only go so far. No, it’s the pirates who are sucking up as much as 1.16% of that total (again according to that same article, and that’s probably an over-estimate) who are the real problem. If only the megacorps could recoup that 1.16%, then it would all go to the starving artists, who would reap the full rewards of their efforts and could finally make a decent living. Yeah. I believe that. That makes sense.

And what’s the biggest part of that problem? That they’re called “pirates.” Normally, these people would be leading responsible lives, paying $40 for that second visit to the multiplex instead of downloading the film online–but the urge to visit thepiratebay.org and download a torrent so they can feel just like Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean” is just too damn strong.

And it’s not just the swashbuckling image of clicking a web link, it’s that label, “piracy.” Oooooohhhh. That’s what sucks people into these lives of reprehensible crime–they can’t resist the cool name.

Says “Agnete Haaland.”

It’s inevitable: Apple releases what is to be a hit device, so smaller companies line up to sue Apple for “copying” or “stealing” from them, hoping the deep-pocketed company will settle and cough up the cash. In fact, it is so established an industry that some companies are designing their wares so they are set up to sue Apple. It only took a few days for Wu Xiaolong, the president of “Shenzhen Great Long Brother Industrial Co.” to announce that they were furious:

I was very angry and flabbergasted when I saw the news of the iPad presentation two days ago… It is certainly our design. They’ve stolen because we present our P88 to everyone six months ago at the IFA (International Electronics Fair in Berlin).

Now, if you’ve seen the iPad, you may be wondering: how can you copyright that design? I mean, it’s a rounded rectangle with a metal bezel and black border. You can’t get more simple than that. Zillions of devices have that basic look; it describes half the monitors on laptops today. Besides which, one of the major grouses people have been lobbing at the iPad is that it looks exactly like an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch–so if Apple’s design is just like the P88’s, then isn’t the P88’s a copy of Apple’s handhelds?

According to Wu: “[Our machine has] nothing to do with it, as they have completely different functions.” Ah, I see. And so the P88 and the iPad have identical functions? Well, not quite. The iPad has a 9.7“ capacitive multitouch screen, the P88 has a lower-resolution 10.2” resistive touch screen (no multitouch) and uses a stylus; the iPad runs the iPhone OS on flash memory in a closed ecosystem, the P88 has Windows on a HDD and is essentially a PC crammed into a tablet form; the iPad gets 10 hours of battery life, the P88 less than 2 hours; the P88 is thicker, heavier, and sits on an ugly metal bracket. But the real difference is in appearance:

What was even more funny was that when the P88 was released, it was called a “non-existent Apple Tablet Clone,” as it resembled most mock-ups and estimations of what the iPad was supposed to look like.

But it gets even better. Want to see another computer made by the Chinese company?

OMG! Apple stole the iMac from them too!!

Expect this lawsuit to fizzle. As Wired so aptly put it, “Anyone confusing the two products deserves the P88.”

All indications now seem to point to Republicans picking up at least 4 or 5 Senate seats and who knows how many House seats come the midterm elections.

Let me see if I understand the causal chain correctly:

1. Republicans spent the last eight years in power trashing the economy, starting quagmire wars, and generally mismanaging things so badly that most people agreed they sucked
2. Obama elected because people want change
3. Obama and Democrats get to work addressing major problems: economy, health care, etc.; early results were startlingly good as stimulus sharply reversed job losses, and large majority wanted some form of health care reform
4. Republicans throw biggest hissy fit in memory, rage with over-the-top histrionics, throwing about outrageously obvious lies like “Obama’s creating death panels to kill your grandparents”
5. Republicans throw 100% of their weight in obstructionist effort to grind business to a halt for the openly stated reason of wanting the president to fail so they can gain politically from it
6. People respond by thinking Obama is doing a bad job and reward Republicans with election victories and more power

Whatever low opinion I had of Joe Voter just dropped through the floor. I know that the Dems have been more than a bit weak-kneed and ineffective in doing what they’re doing, but at least they were intent on doing well for the country, and no matter how bad they may have been, they are far more preferable than what the Republicans have to offer. It’s as if the people have completely forgotten about what happened the past ten years, and like gullible saps, are willing to believe just about anything the right-wing propaganda machine feeds them. I mean, really, does anyone believe that giving Republicans more power will result in more action being taken? Exactly the opposite: get ready for Obstructionism on Steroids as the GOP sets its sights on taking the White House in 2012.

If Americans are so astonishingly stupid as a group, then I suppose we get what we deserve.

“Crashergate”?

Looks like the Nigerians are finally actually doing something:

It turns out Nigeria is taking measures to fight Internet scams—law enforcement there has shut down close to a thousand websites and made 18 arrests as part of a new initiative to save the nation’s reputation and crack down on Internet scammers. The program, called “Project Eagle Claw,” has only just begun, but Nigerian officials expect it to be fully operational in 2010.

Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) described the initiative as “a renewed bid to clap down” (*clap clap*?) on Internet fraudsters. So far, the agency claims to have shut down 800 scam sites in addition to making the arrests, with many more apparently to come.

EFCC Chairman Farida Waziri said Wednesday during a US address to the National Conference of Black Mayors that Nigeria was working with Microsoft to fully deploy Project Eagle Claw, and that it will soon be able to take down up to 5,000 fraudulent e-mails per month.

Hmm. I expect to get an email soon:

Subject: URGENT NOTICE FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION

DEAR KIND SIR:

It is understandable that you might be a little bit apprehensive because you do not know me but I am Farida Waziri, Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. I write you this proposal in good faith, believing that I can trust you with the information I am about to reveal to you. I seek your consent because as a result of many arrests of Nigerian entrepreneurs, I have a large sum of monies in the total of US$ 25 MILLION that I must transfer to a bank account overseas.

With the recent change of government in my country, I cannot directly transfer out this money without the help of a foreigner and that is why I am contacting you for an assistance. If you accept to work with me, I want you to state how you wish us to share the funds in percentage, so that both parties will be satisfied. If you give me positive signals, I will initiate this process towards a conclusion.

Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.

One would think that every individual on the planet has received enough of these emails that it would have stopped working quite some time ago. It’s been a tired gag for years already. Heck, one of my first posts back in 2002 was on these scams, and it wasn’t new even then. What kind of morons are actually sending money to these guys?

On the other hand, we have millions of people who believe hucksters who say that Jeebus rode on dinosaurs and send them sizable donations on a regular basis so they can build megachurches, Judgment Day theme parks, and TV ministries.

I guess they must be using those mailing lists.

This Daily Show segment was hilarious–and spot-on. An excellent showcase on how the TV “news” networks have completely given up on calling out any political lies at all, simply giving open mics to politicians and letting lay every stupid thing they say. They could fact-check, but no–that would mean politicians would be unwilling to appear on their shows. So instead, they only fact-check stuff like… well, watch it. If you haven’t seen this already, you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.

We’ll have to leave it there.

Poor widdle Fox News… dey got snubbed by big bad brezident Obama! Waaaahhhhh!!!!!!!

Obama went on a media campaign blitz around the Sunday-morning news show circuit today to push health care reform, visiting Face the Nation, Meet the Press (NBC), State of the Union (CNN), This Week (ABC), and Al Punto (Univision), in addition to 60 Minutes and David Letterman, and a few other appearances.

Fox News got left out. And now they’re going into full-force whining mode, with Chris Wallace appearing on O’Reilly’s show, complaining that the Obama administration is “the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”

Oh, please. First of all, Chris, you’re the one who’s being a crybaby; the definition of that term is someone who complains like a child because they feel they’ve been wronged. The administration’s not being a crybaby–they didn’t whine when you snubbed them by not airing the president’s speeches (never did that with Bush, did you?), and now they’re just deciding not to visit your show. The only one whining is you. And this is not the first time, either–you guys do this every single time it looks like Fox News might not get treated like the news organization they’re not. When Democrats say they’re not going to let the propaganda arm of their political opponents run their debates, you whine about how they’re “afraid” of you and how they’re destroying journalism.

Face up to it, you schmucks: you chose to be the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, you take every chance you get to smear and attack and lie and fearmonger, you call the president a fascist and a Nazi and worse, you organize political events where the president’s life is threatened and crazies sport signs with racial epithets, you refuse to carry the president’s speeches and addresses while all the other networks run them… and guess what? Sometimes the president won’t appear on your talk shows so you can snub him in person. Surprise!

When Bush was president and you did nothing but carry water for him, you guys got the lion’s share of exclusives. That’s the deal you made. Live with it and stop acting like infants.

The right-wing pundits are all over a couple of black schoolkids beating up a white schoolkid on a bus, making a big deal over race and how black leaders are not falling over themselves to own the incident and apologize. This despite the fact that it has now been established that the beating had no racial component whatsoever. Limbaugh is spouting that it’s Obama’s fault. I’ll buy that when Bush owns up to every act of violence committed against black people by white people during his eight years in office.

When I was in high school, I was packing up in the locker room after a P.E. class. I heard two kids arguing at the other end of the room. I circumspectly ignored the dispute, and don’t recall much else until I heard someone behind me shout, “And don’t you laugh, either!” Before I could even turn around to look, my head was slammed against my locker door so hard that I actually lost consciousness for a moment–only one of two times that’s ever happened to me, and the worst concussion I have ever sustained. That the assailant was black and I am white had nothing to do with it. Sometimes a beating is just a beating.

On a side note, that incident really burns me to this day. Not that the kid took out his anger at not being able to beat up on another kid so he took it out on an unwary bystander. No, it was the high school vice principal, who heard about the incident (I didn’t even report it myself, I forget why not), and called us both into his office. The idiot actually used the old “I don’t care who started it line” and forced me to shake hands with the assailant to show there were no hard feelings. Isn’t that sweet? In an completely one-sided and unprovoked beating, one person indiscriminately uses enough violent force on another to potentially cause serious injury or even death, and the adult in charge doesn’t want to bother with the details. Instead he lets the assailant off with a handshake from his victim. I was too young and timid in those days (not to mention shocked and overwhelmed by the unfairness) to say anything, but I wish I could go back in time and confront the unspeakable moron. My darker half would have me take the guy’s head, slam it into a wall, and then tell him to shake my hand in reconciliation because, after all, we were not interested in who started what, right?

On another tangential side note (getting way off the original topic now, stream-of-consciousness time here), speaking of losing consciousness, my second worst concussion I referenced above was at a miniature golf course, also in my high school days. The 19th hole was a narrow ramp at an upwards angle into the end of a pipe, a hard putt shot which, if you made it, got you a free game. After finishing up, I and some others gathered around the back end of the setup to watch others make the difficult shot. One genius, completely without warning, thought he’d drive the ball into the hole, taking a huge swing worthy of a 100-yard shot. The ball cleared the entire setup and hit me square in the forehead at high speed. I swear I can even today still feel the dent the ball made in my skull. By the time I came to a few moments later, the culprit had run off. Kids.

In an attempt to bring this back to the main topic, in the miniature golf incident, both the assailant and I were white.

I never got Ronald Reagan’s apology for that one.

Here we go again. The Birthers are all atwitter about a brand-new version of Obama’s Kenyan Birth Certificate. From World Net Daily, a.k.a. Birther Central Command:

WASHINGTON – California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama’s eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication.

Yes, because Orly Taitz is certainly the definitive source for unbiased material on this matter. Recall that she was the lawyer for the guy who volunteered for duty in Afghanistan and then sued the government not to force him to go because Obama could not legally give him orders to do so. After the fraudulent setup had been sprung, Taitz claimed victory when the military agreed to withdraw his assignment with “no explanation”–but the military had made clear they did so on the grounds that he had volunteered. That’s the first I had heard of Taitz, but it seemed clear that this person was a huckster on a loonie-fringe mission in the Birther community.

Se when Taitz reveals a “Kenyan birth certificate” and demands that courts confirm its authenticity, I am not exactly compelled to believe it. Strange how Birthers will not believe (a) an official birth certificate from Hawaii many times confirmed by state and federal governments as official, (b) two separate birth announcements in local newspapers from the time, and (c) multiple sworn statements from Hawaiian officials that Obama was indeed born there–but they will breathlessly expect to be real a piece of paper forwarded by someone already noted as forwarding false information on the matter, even after other forgeries have floated around even as recently as last week:

WND was able to obtain other birth certificates from Kenya for purposes of comparison, and the form of the documents appear to be identical.

Last week, a counterfeit document purporting to be Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate made the rounds of the Internet, but was quickly determined to be fraudulent. The new document released by Taitz bears none of the obvious traits of a hoax.

Yes, because they checked so thoroughly, and the ink was dry. It’s so convincing!

Of course, it would help to know where the document came from, how Taitz got it in her hands. The answer: it was anonymous! That’s even more convincing! And you’ll love the reason why it’s anonymous:

Taitz told WND that the document came from an anonymous source who doesn’t want his name known because “he’s afraid for his life.”

Well, that’s believable! Because we all know that Obama, just like Clinton before him, is a vicious, ruthless killer who sends assassination squads to rub out anyone and everyone who dares expose their myriad lies and scandals!!

Or, maybe, the person is anonymous because making their name known would allow people to ask them where they got the document, and the fraud would fall apart even more quickly.

And it is falling apart quickly indeed. The announcement of the document is still just a day old, and already there are several powerful reasons to believe it is a forgery:

1. The document was purportedly made three years after Obama’s birth, with no reason given for the delay;
2. The hospital which the document claims as his birthplace has checked their record for that time period and has found no record of Obama’s birth;
3. The document purports to have been issued on February 17, 1964 by the Office of Principal Registrar, Coast Province, Republic of Kenya–but Kenya was not known as the “Republic of Kenya” until December 12, 1964, before which it was the “Dominion of Kenya.”

So, we have a document which was supposedly created three years after Obama’s birth in a country that would not exist for another ten months for a birth at a hospital which does not have any record of the event. Yes, World Net Daily is right, it is convincing!

Convincing evidence that the birthers are still as fake as ever.

One thing that kind of stands out is Taitz’s demands for court action, with which we may see the actual purpose behind the forgery:

Taitz’s motion, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, requests the purported evidence of Obama’s birth – both the alleged birth certificate and foreign records not yet obtained – be preserved from destruction, asks for permission to legally request documents from Kenya and seeks a subpoena for deposition from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“I filed the motion with the court asking for expedited discovery, which would allow me to start subpoenas and depositions even before Obama and the government responds,” Taitz told WND. “I am asking the judge to give me the power to subpoena the documents from the Kenyan embassy and to require a deposition from Hillary Clinton so they will be forced to authenticate [the birth certificate].

”I’m forcing the issue, where Obama will have to respond,“ she said.

In short, Taitz is hoping to become the new Ken Starr, using a ginned-up false crime so she can start accessing the power of the court system. Little wonder that she wants Obama and Clinton to respond before authentication of the document is complete. You can see that she is hoping for another perjury trap, expecting that she can get some official on record saying something that she can claim is untrue and, well, you know the drill.

”Before, they said, ‘You don’t have anything backing your claims,’“ Taitz explained. ”Now I have something. In fact, I have posted on the Internet more than Obama has. My birth certificate actually has signatures.“

Oooh. Signatures. Well, I’m sold.

Late update:

You can see Taitz’s wingnuttery direct in the video below: note how she is asked a simple question, and half a sentence into her answer, takes a 90-degree turn into a rant about unrelated stuff and never actually answers the question–just keeps on (a) whining about how she isn’t being allowed to speak, and (2) just uses the time to use the TV interview as a platform to spew the Birther crap:

Note, by the way, that Taitz doesn’t even provide an actual document–just a color copy/photo of the document, meaning we can’t inspect the seal, check the quality of the type, etc.

And, to top it all off, several more signs of forgery have been noted:

The hospital in the document is identified as Coast General Hospital, but the real location is Coast Provincial General Hospital (or Coast Province General Hospital);

Mombasa belonged to Zanzibar when Obama was born, not Kenya.

The area was called the ”Central Nyanza District,“ not Nyanza Province. The regions were changed to provinces in 1970.

Obama’s father’s village would be nearer to Nairobi, not Mombasa.

The serial number on the document is 47O44; 47 is Obama’s age when elected, ”O“ (not ”0“) is for Obama, and 44 is the number president Obama is, after Bush 43.

”EF Lavender“ is a laundry detergent; officials rarely if ever put initials in official documents;

The document lists a ”Christian name,“ unlikely for an official document in a region that is mostly Muslim.

His father’s age is wrong; he would have been 24 or 25 when Obama was born, not 26.

World Net Daily is still not pronouncing it a fake, nor has Taitz withdrawn her court motions.

First the Birthers engage in ludicrous Conspiracy-theory opining with the entire “Obama’s not a citizen” twaddle. Then other right-wingers begin to make sense by calling these people loons–but then take a sharp right-turn into the Next Level of Conspiracy-theory thinking: that the Birthers are a left-wing plot orchestrated by the White House to make conservatives look bad.

Are right-wingers simply congenitally pre-disposed to making up absurd conspiracy theories, even when they’re trying to debunk absurd conspiracy theories?

Sorry guys, your side is filled with even more rabid nutballs than ours. Live with it.

Here’s a question: let’s say that tomorrow, Obama says, “OK, just to clear the air and get past this ridiculousness, I am fully authorizing the State of Hawaii to take special measures and to make public the long form of my birth certificate, despite high officials in Hawaii solemnly swearing that the document exists and is in order.” Then Hawaii releases the document and it’s in order.

Then what? Would the Birthers all say, “Ah, well then, good,” and all go home?

Ha ha. Of course not. They would do what they have done every time a new, conclusive piece of evidence has been added to the pile: demand more. And if every definitive piece of evidence imaginable has been released, they would simply switch to “they’re all forgeries” mode. Let’s not fool ourselves here, these are not rational people trying to find the truth–these are among the craziest of the loons on the right wing desperate to not have Obama as president.

Nor should Obama cave, for three very good reasons. First, he has probably already provided more proof than any other president has ever provided regarding his birth; second, if you cave in to nincompoops like the Birthers, then you set the precedent for having to concede to similar whims of every group of dumbasses like them (and there are lots); and third, the Birthers are doing a fantastic job of making conservatives (and Lou Dobbs) look like complete imbeciles.

Right now, if I were someone who had any real suspicions about Barack Obama’s birth, I would shut up and not say a word, for fear of being classed along with that crowd of bozos.

Bill O’Reilly is a complete idiot. Literally. But then, you already knew that.

The right wing is going gaga over a new schmuck who’s trying to attack Obama, making an ass of himself–just their type of hero.

Major Stefan Frederick Cook, a reservist slated to go to Afghanistan, filed a restraining order as a conscientious objector to keep him from going to Afghanistan, on the grounds that Obama is not actually president. He claimed that he “would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command” because Obama is not a citizen and therefore not eligible to lead. The military withdrew his assignment to Afghanistan, and Cook’s lawyer, Orly Taitz, gleefully claimed victory, stating that there was “no explanation” given for the revoking of the soldier’s orders. The right wing is now squealing joyfully that this is proof that Obama is not a citizen, since the military caved in.

Now, as it turns out, the soldier lost his job; the military, they claim, demanded that he be fired from his job–proof that if you dare question Obama’s authority, he’ll use his powers to crush you!

Of course, the truth is far more interesting. First, Cook volunteered for service in Afghanistan. He was not “compelled” to do anything. Stupid, when you think about it: how can you object to being deployed when you volunteered?

As for the military revoking his orders without explanation? A lie; the military gave a full explanation, that being the fact that Cook volunteered and so he was could quit any time he wanted.

It now appears that he may have volunteered for the express purpose of later bringing a lawsuit to challenge Obama’s authority. His lawyer is a big name in the conspiracy-theorist “Birther” moonbat brigade, and this was probably a fraud from the start, designed so the guy–a poster on Free Republic–could use the military system and the courts as a means for grandstanding his paranoid delusions.

As for him being fired, that’s because he works for a military contractor, he chose to sue the military, and now is not allowed on military property. Unless, of course, the firing was actually because his employers decided that he was an ass who would give their firm a bad name. Unless they are in on his “Birther” gig, it is likely that they want nothing to do with the guy.

In the end, the entire story is nothing but a wingnut fraud–and should be treated as such.