I started collecting comics around 1975 when I was 12. Unlike the “cool” comic collectors I was a DC guy and one of the things I enjoyed was a lot was Batman. One story always stuck with me and that was in Batman 283.
The story “Omega Bomb Target: Gotham City” was a neat story about a blackmail attempt on Gotham city. A Hungarian nuclear scientist is kidnapped by a group who anchors a ship supposedly containing a nuclear device in Gotham harbor. They demand a ransom of 1 billion dollars. (As you can see they were way ahead of Dr. Evil).
Batman manages to rescue professor Nagy he is out of it but keeps muttering “Nembomba”. Batman then boards the ship and catches the baddies because “Nembomba” means “No Bomb”.
Batman explains to Commissioner Gordan that it was all a bluff saying:
What’s the next best thing to having the bomb? Convincing everyone else you have the bomb.”
Although Saddam might disagree that line stuck with me all these years and brings to mind the whole Birther issue.
I have already said that President Obama was born in the US, his overseas travel (passports requires birth certificates) and the birth announcement from the paper all in the days before his prominence are to me strong and the Clinton’s non action with the presidency at stake make it conclusive.
One question often asked is why doesn’t the president just release the original records? Hotair’s explanation:
The biggest reason? It wouldn’t work. The same people who believe that Obama forged a Certificate of Live Birth twice corroborated by the state that issued it will insist that Obama got someone to forge any new records produced by Hawaii as well. It’s the same reason that having Palin produce her gynecological records won’t satisfy Andrew Sullivan and why producing the phone records from United 93 families to prove that they haven’t been in contact with the supposedly still-alive-but-hiding passengers on the 9/11 flight won’t change Truther minds. The conspiracy theorists have far too much invested in their argument to retreat.
Good argument but WRONG! The president isn’t holding back because it is futile, he’s holding back because it is not.
It a bluff. They WANT this stuff to suck as many people into it as possible. Every day that people are talking about “Birth” stuff is a day they don’t have to talk about every dumb this president is doing. I said this back on July 28th and it’s even more true today. Today’s 1-2 punch on MSNBC is a great example of this. This is Longstreet waiting for the last Union reserves to go in before using his artillery to break them at 2nd Bull Run.
If the truthers are confined to cranks like Philip Berg who is just out to con people out of a buck, then the Obama administration gets no political capital out of it. If by suspicious behavior and omissions they can arouse interest in the general conservative movement then it can be a winner. This can only be done if people think there is something being hidden, or to paraphrase Batman above:
What’s the next best thing to having a hidden smoking gun? Making everyone THINK you have a hidden smoking gun.
The best part about it is they can wait till there is a big fish deep in the net before landing them and can play it any time in the next 3 years or beyond as needed.
The entire birther business is a trap and conservatives, would be smart to avoid it.
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