Steve King Ponders The 'Telegram From Kenya' Scenario, For The Birthers

You know, we make fun of Rep. Steve King for the way he opposes restricting dogfighting on the grounds that boxing exists, and isn't that the same thing? (No.) But you've got to hand it to King -- the man is an innovator. Scott Keyes (who I guess is on the Steve King beat these days, not that I'm complaining) has now caught King indulging in a little bit of Birther Calvinball. He's pretty sure that Obama's papers are legit, but you never know, because. The whole point to Birtherism, though, is that you don't need to conclusively make this case to sell it. It's just that the buyers are all blithering loons.

You know, we make fun of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) for the way he opposes restricting dogfighting on the grounds that boxing exists, and isn't that the same thing? (No.) But you've got to hand it to King -- the man is an innovator.

Scott Keyes (who I guess is on the Steve King beat these days, not that I'm complaining) catches King indulging in a little bit of Birther Calvinball. He's pretty sure that Obama's papers are legit, but you never know, because reasons:

We went down into the Library of Congress and we found a microfiche there of two newspapers in Hawaii each of which had published the birth of Barack Obama. It would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii and get that into our public libraries and that microfiche they keep of all the newspapers published. That doesn't mean there aren't some other explanations on how they might've announced that by telegram from Kenya. The list goes on.

Sure, the list goes on! In this case, we have the "telegrammed birth announcement from Kenya" scenario, in which two Hawaii papers don't notice that they are receiving a telegram from Kenya. Meanwhile, the whole Birther story, distilled to its essence, implies that Barack Obama was spirited into citizenship thanks to a tight-lipped, Ocean's Eleven-style gang of conspirators that included several generations of state officials. In the scenario King offers, I guess none of them could think of a way to alert Hawaiian newspapers to Obama's birth besides sending a telegram from Africa.

"I wish we could come up with a way around this, guys," said the head of the secret Birther gang, "Somehow we were unable to account for the whole 'born in Kenya' thing when we set off on this amazing plan to falsely obtain citizenship for someone born in Kenya."

"Well, we could just have someone send the Hawaiian newspapers notice from Hawaii," said no one, apparently.

King is nevertheless resigned to the situation: "But drilling into that now, even if we could get a definitive answer and even if it turned out that Barack Obama was conclusively not born in America, I don't think we could get that case sold between now and November."

The whole point to Birtherism, though, is that you don't need to conclusively make this case to sell it. It's just that the buyers are all blithering loons.

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