This page was started later than it
should have been. It should have been initiated the day that "Big
Sis" said, "the system worked..."
The Word According To
Ben Smith
AOL News
AOL News brought "Birthers" to the mainstream when they published a small
piece referencing Ben Smith's
Politico.com
report, "Culture of conspiracy: the Birthers" -- those who
question Obama's eligibility to serve as commander-in-chief because of his
citizenship status.
Smith describes these people as those who believe in "obscure,
discredited theories" and "operate and thrive on the
fringe," and he liberally
sprinkles his opinion-piece with pejoratives -- fringe; conspiracy theorists ; believers in UFOs and
witches; wacko views; crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative,
irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters; the worst enemy of the
conservative movement; crazy, demented, sick, troubled, and not suitable for
civilized company.
In "Culture of conspiracy: the Birthers," Smith builds his
case on three legs:
1. The challenges to Obama's eligibility have no grounding
in evidence.
2. Courts across the country have summarily rejected the
movement's theory -- that Obama can't be a citizen because his father wasn't --
as a misreading of U.S. law.
3. Hawaii officials, along with contemporary birth
announcements, affirm that Obama was in fact born in Honolulu in 1961.
Lets' take a look at Smith's arguments:
1. "The challenges to Obama's eligibility have no grounding in
evidence."
False. That's a pretty broad brush -- by not qualifying
"challenges," Smith clearly implies that all of the challenges to Obama's
eligibility have no grounding in evidence.
The clearest evidence for a challenge comes
from Obama himself, and it's the Hawaii Certification of Live Birth
(COLB) released by the Obama campaign.
Sandra Ramsey Lines began her training as a forensic document examiner in 1991.
She is a Certified Diplomat of Forensic Sciences, a member of the American
Society of Questioned Document Examiners, a member of the Southwestern
Association of Forensic Document Examiners, and a member of the Questioned
Document Subcommittee of the American Society of Testing and Materials.
In a sworn affidavit, Ms. Lines wrote, "After my review and based on my years of
experience, I can state with certainty that the COLB presented on the internet
by the various groups, which include the "Daily Kos," the Obama Campaign,
"Factcheck.org" and others cannot be relied upon as genuine."
And this is the document Obama's lawyers keep pointing at as their
evidence.
Oh, and then there's Obama's own campaign website, that
states:
"When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British
colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan
native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was
governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed
the status of Obama Sr.'s children.
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of
allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on
Aug. 4,1982.”
Hello????? Obama admits he was a subject of Great Britain and a Citizen of
Kenya for 21 years. Anyone ever heard the term, "divided loyalties?"
Further, the overwhelming number of cases
denied by the various courts were for "standing." Most of the
plaintiff's attorneys never got to present what they held as
evidence.
2. "Courts across the country have summarily rejected the
movement's theory -- that Obama can't be a citizen because his father wasn't --
as a misreading of U.S. law."
False. I guess Smith missed
these two US Supreme Court cases -- U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, and Perkins v. Elg, -- both
address "natural born citizen"
-- and Obama fails both tests.
In
U. S. v Wong Kim Ark, the
court thoroughly discussed "natural born citizen," and in doing so, Justice Gray
quoted directly from the holding in a prior Supreme Court case, Minor v. Happersett. The following passage is a quote from Minor as quoted by
Justice Gray in Wong Kim Ark:
"'At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the constitution
were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born
in a country, of parents [plural]
who were its citizens [plural], became
themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or
natural-born citizens, as distinguished
from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further, and include as
citizens children born within the jurisdiction, without reference to the
citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but
never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary
to solve these doubts. It is sufficient, for everything we have now to
consider, that all children, born of citizen
parents [plural] within the jurisdiction, are themselves citizens.' Minor v. Happersett (1874) 21 Wall. 162, 166-168."
Perkins v. Elg'simportance
is that it actually gives examples of what a "natural born citizen" of the U.S.
is; what a "citizen" of the U.S. is; and what a "native born citizen" of the
United States. In this case, the U. S. Supreme Court found that a "natural born
citizen" is a person who is born of two U.S. citizen parents [plural]
AND born in the mainland of U.S.
"It is generally agreed that these constitutional provisions mean anyone born on
American soil to parents [plural] who are U.S.
citizens is a "natural born citizen" eligible to someday become president or
vice-president..."
Two American parents and on American soil -- simple as
that.
3. "Hawaii officials, along with contemporary birth
announcements, affirm that Obama was in fact born in Honolulu in 1961."
False. Hawaiian officials affirmed no such thing.
Here is the
statement of Linda Lingle, Hawaii's governor and Chiyome Leinaala Fukino,
M.D., Director of the Hawaii Department of Health
Director Fukino never affirmed "that Obama was in fact born in Honolulu in
1961." What she affirmed was, " I have personally seen and verified that
the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth
certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."
Fukino only says she saw that the document -- she never,
ever said what was on it. This statement is false, Smith. Take it
back.
Smith rambles on, writing, "the suits share a vague,
underlying notion that Obama must be some sort of foreigner, probably Kenyan,
Indonesian or British, though none have any evidence or a coherent narrative to
support the claim."
Well, hell! "None have any evidence" -- hey, Smith
click this link
-- there's your evidence.
Chester Arthur was ineligible to
serve as POTUS.
True. Chester Arthur was ineligible to serve. Chester A. Arthur perpetrated a
fraud as to his eligibility to be Vice President by spreading various lies about
his parents’ heritage. Arthur’s father, William Arthur, became a United States
citizen in August 1843, but Arthur was born in 1829 -- 14 years before.
Therefore, Arthur was a British Citizen by descent, and a dual citizen at birth,
if not his whole life.
We’ve also uncovered many lies told by Arthur to the press which kept this fact
from public view when he ran for Vice President in 1880. Garfield won the
election, became President in 1881, and was assassinated by a fanatical Chester
Arthur supporter that same year.
The Dark Art Of "BenSmithing" Helped Cover
Up Obama's "New Party" Membership
John Nolte
says in 2008, National Review's Stanley Kurtz got BenSmithed. He
didn't just get BenSmithed, though, he got BenSmithed by the
BenSmithiest BenSmither in the history of BenSmithing -- Ben Smith
himself.
Oh, I remember it well. We were thisclose to election
day, the wind was squarely at Barack Obama's back, the media was
refusing to vet the history and background of anyone in Obama's past
(besides, most every investigative reporter in the free world was in a
place called Wasilla), and then along came the news that while in
Chicago, as a grown man in his 30s, Barack Obama had joined something
called The New Party -- a radical, socialist organization whose
political endorsement he had sought.
The story threatened to
become a late-October surprise, the kind of story that would not only
once again prove Obama's disturbingly radical not-so-distant past, but
also tie together just who this man really was (and is). It would also
damage Obama's credibility, and prove that he had been covering up his
radical associations, and worse, lying about it.
The corrupt
media, naturally, was hoping to run out the clock and was therefore
willfully ignoring the story. Online, however, things were heating up.
Right-of-center blogs were pushing the story as much as they could and
like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, it threatened to spill
over into the mainstream media and damage--gasp--a Democrat.
Well, this is why The Media Devil invented Ben Smith and his dark art of
BenSmithing.
Jumping into the line of fire to protect his
Precious One, Smith wrote this:
Popping up in my inbox lately, and on some
conservative blogs, is the allegation that Barack Obama was once a
member of the Communist/Socialist/secretive/evil New Party, which is
based (reasonably) on a New Party publication describing him in
passing as a member.
When this first emerged, I called up
the founder of the New Party, a University of Wisconsin professor
named Joel Rogers, who objected both to the characterization of the
party and Obama's relationship to it.
On the first point,
the New Party was a attempt to build a model of political fusion. It
dissolved after losing a Supreme Court ruling aimed at making fusion
-- a system under which more than one party can run the same
candidate, which exists in some states -- universal.
And blah, blah, blah.
This is classic BenSmithing
-- in which he takes on a controversial subject that might damage Obama,
pretends to play investigative journalist, assumes the role of the
writer of a "definitive" piece that finally answers all the questions,
and then sends the story to sleep with the fishes.
The corrupt
media, of course, loves this. Smith allows them to point to his work and
rationalize to themselves that there's "nothing to see here" -- so let's
move along and elect a man no one knows anything about.
Kurtz
knew he had been BenSmithed and immediately responded with this piece,
but to no avail. When you were BenSmithed in 2008, you stayed BenSmithed.
Truth has nothing to do with BenSmithing. Ben Smith knows this
and so does the media that found him so useful. BenSmithing is a
political tactic that disguises itself as journalism in order to protect
Democrats, most specifically our failed president. The way it works is
really quite simple:
1. Something happens or is discovered that
might hurt Obama.
2. That something is discovered in the
alternative media and uncovered.
3. Ben Smith (or the equally
dishonest PolitiFact and Media Matters) pretend to investigate it, write
something up disguised as "definitive," and then hand the complicit
media an excuse to ignore it.
Though he's probably in the top
ten-percent, Smith isn't the most dishonest journalist out there, he's
just the smartest. I've been watching this guy and trying to sound the
alarm about him for going on four years now. He's a Journalistic
Super-Villain -- a genius who has done more to protect Barack Obama and
assure the American people never learn the truth than any other
individual reporter.
Here are some specific and notable
examples:
In February of 2008, Smith wrote the "definitive
"nothing-to-see-here" piece covering Obama's relationship with domestic
terrorist Bill Ayers. The headline itself was a lie: "Obama once visited
'60s radicals," and Smith even buried his own lead:
As Bloomberg News reported recently, Obama and
Ayers have crossed paths repeatedly in the last decade. In 1997,
Obama cited Ayers’ critique of the juvenile justice system in a
Chicago Tribune article on what prominent Chicagoans were reading.
He and Ayers served together on the board of the Woods Fund of
Chicago for three years starting in 1999. In 2001, Ayers also gave
$200 to Obama’s state Senate reelection campaign.
Many
details of the 1995 meeting are shrouded by time and by Obama’s and
Ayers’ refusals to discuss it.
Real journalists would follow that up, but until New
Media came of age a couple of years later, there were no real
journalists available.
There are more 2008 election-year
examples, including, of course, the New Party cover up. But let's
fast-forward to July of 2010. Ben Smith was no longer protecting a
"historic" candidate, he was now protecting Power, with a "nothing to
see here" piece about a scandal that threatened to swamp Obama's
burgeoning presidency.
Eric Holder's Justice Department had just
dropped a slam-dunk case involving the New Black Panther Party, whose
members had been notoriously caught on video menacing voters during the
2008 election. There was even a whistleblower, J. Christian Adams, who
had testified before Congress that the Justice Department was practicing
racial bias.
To the rescue came Smith with this non-story. One
conservative dismisses the charges, Smith blows it up into a major
feature piece, and now the corrupt media has what they need to move
along and pretend there is no story.
Which is exactly what the
media did.
Earlier this year, Smith made the mistake of trying
to BenSmith us. The day after Andrew Breitbart's funeral, we all woke up
to discover that Smith (who had by then moved to BuzzFeed) had thought
he scooped Breitbart News by releasing a 1991 video from Obama's days at
Harvard. In order to control the explosion of this video, Smith spun it
into a positive for Obama. Thankfully, because it's not 2008 anymore,
this time his BenSmithing blew up in Ben Smith's face.
You can
read the full story of that sorry episode here.
If you read the
examples linked above, what you'll discover is that Smith is only
disguising himself as a reporter, but what he's really doing is killing
stories and narratives potentially damaging to Barack Obama. If you read
the stories, you'll see that he is either the most incurious reporter
ever created or the most easily duped into believing anything.
Believe me, Smith is nobody's dupe. Because he's a left-wing operative
disguised as a reporter, he simply writes on these subjects without ever
doing what real reporters do: asking follow-up questions, raising
questions, or demanding proof.
But acting like a real reporter
would give the story life, extend the narrative, and therefore hurt His
Precious One -- something BenSmithing is designed to ensure never
happens.
By the way, Ben Smith owes Stanley Kurtz an apology,
but I suspect Smith has known that all along.
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