Sid Blumenthal Pushed Birther Claims
A reminder that the Clintons surround themselves with character-assassinating trash:
Meanwhile, former McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief James Asher tweeted Friday that Blumenthal had “told me in person” that Obama was born in Kenya.
“During the 2008 Democratic primary, Sid Blumenthal visited the Washington Bureau of McClatchy Co.,” Asher said in an email Friday to McClatchy, noting that he was at the time the investigative editor and in charge of Africa coverage.
“During that meeting, Mr. Blumenthal and I met together in my office and he strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya. We assigned a reporter to go to Kenya, and that reporter determined that the allegation was false.
“At the time of Mr. Blumenthal’s conversation with me, there had been a few news articles published in various outlets reporting on rumors about Obama’s birthplace. While Mr. Blumenthal offered no concrete proof of Obama’s Kenyan birth, I felt that, as journalists, we had a responsibility to determine whether or not those rumors were true. They were not.”
Blumenthal, who worked in the White House with President Bill Clinton and later was employed by the Clinton Foundation, could not be reached Friday but said in an email to The Boston Globe, “This is false. Period.”
The birther issue was long the province of conservative talk show hosts and far right politicians who opposed Obama’s candidacy and then his presidency. Trump used it as his platform into politics five years ago, despite numerous reports that exposed it as false.
Sid Blumenthal is deplorable. Hillary should be forced to admit it.
Sid Blumenthal is deplorable. Hillary should be forced to admit it.
He is.
She should.
They won’t.
Ever beam a flashlight down to the floor and watch a cat chase it around obsessively in circles– then get irritated and bewildered when you switch it off?
Birtherism. Such a brilliant tease. Especially with the cablers and print press.
It’s fun watching media types like Chris Matthews baying endlessly at the moon, over it. So, so easy to distract and get frothy at the mouth.
Over nothing.
“Obsession…. from Calvin Klein.”
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 12:05 pmI agree, Patterico. And I think there are more people making this claim.
Do you remember the title of the Christopher Hitchens’ book about the Clintons?
Simon Jester (2708f4) — 9/17/2016 @ 12:05 pmWe have always been at war with Eastasia.
http://www.politico.com/story/2008/02/obama-slams-smear-photo-008667
Simon Jester (2708f4) — 9/17/2016 @ 12:09 pmstinkypig wants so bad for people to be talking about birtherism and not her penchant for randomly losing control of her faculties and then lying about it
happyfeet (28a91b) — 9/17/2016 @ 12:13 pmNow that it is quieter, does anyone have more links from other people who pushed birtherism in 2008 from the HRC camp? My guess is lots. Isn’t that the pattern?
Simon Jester (2708f4) — 9/17/2016 @ 12:29 pmdon lemon on clinton news network started yelling cut every bodies mike off when no one would defend sidney blumenthal’s vicious smear of obama born in kenya. even left van jones the liberal agreed with kory lewindowsky that blumenthal did this!
poordon (5b6297) — 9/17/2016 @ 12:59 pmWhat’s he ashamed of?
http://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=OIP.M7a6d86dcdc1a8dbdbcd6205aba1263dcH0&w=300&h=265&c=0&pid=1.9&rs=0&p=0&r=0
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/17/2016 @ 1:12 pmI’m sure you guys have all seen TopsecretK9’s find- our old friend Larry Johnson writes that Sid Blumenthal got him to write a lot of stuff about Obama, and floated the birther stuff past him.
MayBee (a7822d) — 9/17/2016 @ 2:34 pmI know the media is out there blaming Trump for the birther thing, but he didn’t start it. Obama was being pushed for his birth certificate in the 2008 primaries. So that wasn’t Trump. Trump and Hillary have been friends- why do so many think he wouldn’t have heard about it first from her?
MayBee (a7822d) — 9/17/2016 @ 2:36 pmActually, it seems Miriam Goderich was the original brirther. Whether her later explanation is true or not is, in my opinion, questionable.
However it’s all moot anyway, apparently it doesn’t matter where you were born to be eligible for president, as it’s now been established as long as his mother was an American citizen, that makes him a natural born citizen.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/booklet.asp
LBascom (c230be) — 9/17/2016 @ 3:08 pmHis birtherism replaces her health issues in the media scrum.
“Smithers, release the squirrels.”
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 3:14 pmCommitting political suicide; the nevertrumper quest:
http://m.jpost.com/Opinion/Twilight-of-American-Jewry-467862#article=6022QkQ2RjA1NEIyMUI5NzY3QkVEM0EyNzY5M0M1MEY5NDg=
LBascom (c230be) — 9/17/2016 @ 3:29 pm@LBascom,
It is not where he was actually born that is interesting. I think what is more telling is what Obama put on his application to Occidental and Columbia University, betcha it says he was born in Kenya or maybe even Malaysia (ask yourself why not a single official record of his time in college has ever been produced)
champ (56cd04) — 9/17/2016 @ 4:16 pmI guess he wanted to make himself sound more exotic, barry dunham was not going to get him anywhere, the blurb also said he was the son of the kenyan finance minister,
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 4:21 pmso from the niger river to the donbass to the euphrates, does he notice a pattern,
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/bob-gates-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-228315
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 4:39 pmI’m at the Colorado Springs Trump rally with my now red-pilled girlfriend waiting for the next President to land.
I hope you’re all having a great night too!
Denver Guy (3175dd) — 9/17/2016 @ 4:53 pmthat may explain why sid vicious was seemingly persona non grata, despite a concurrence in political viewpoints, what is interesting is why they chose this particular angle of attack,
I think it’s like chosing wmd as the argument before the general assembly, harboring terrorism and sponsoring democracy wouldn’t cut in a 2/3 of the peoples republics, the wright/ayers/khalidi axis, would have marginal impact on primary viewers.
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 5:10 pm@16- Denver Guy– not wasting his Saturday night, babe in arm, at a live taping of Dallas!
Wave to JR.
.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 5:14 pmUp for debate: what are they serving at the Congressional Black Caucus Dinner?
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 5:16 pmjust one more question, sir,
http://observer.com/2016/09/emailgate-and-the-mystery-of-the-missing-gamma/
of course he was the conduit from drumheller and murray, who in turn mined certain sources in french and german intelligence,
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 5:44 pmWas watching CNN’s Don Lemon accuse Trump of lying when he says HRC stared this birther stuff (in fact, JR said her campaign did.) Then wondered, does CNN/US have any straight, WASP males anchoring any shows any more?
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 5:52 pmThe leader is about to disembark his plane.
Denver Guy (ab1dfc) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:00 pm@22. No live coverage of JR yet on the cablers– CNN & CSPAN are televising live the Black Caucus Dinner w/Maudie & Obama speaking.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:11 pmO.M.G.
Maudie is dressed like a frigging baked potato.
Must keep the moisture in for hydration.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:12 pmzaphod and red queen, what fresh inferno is this, meanwhile back at the ranch, we have some explosions in the big apple, 23rd and 6th,
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:13 pmthe second such event today,
http://pix11.com/2016/09/17/fdny-confirms-outdoor-explosion-in-chelsea/
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:16 pm23rd & 6th???????????? Jaysus. I know that area.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:17 pm@26- I know Seaside Park area, too. Odd pairing of sites.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:18 pmWell of course Hillary was behind the birther thing. And of course the muslim-garb slam and the islamic school slam. Blumenthall was her known hatchet man, so he did not act alone.
What’s amazing to me is that a truly racist incident has not yet come up. As even the lefty press reported in 2008, the Clinton camp doctored some pics to make Obama look blacker.
Arizona CJ (b4cd1f) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:21 pmhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/5/469677/-
I’ve been following sid, for 25 years, since I wrote a paper on the permanent campaign, I read his unhinged ‘govt by gunplay’ coedited with phil agee, featured every crazy conspiracy of the mid 70s, including the impending food riots,
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:32 pmI’m not making that last part up,
https://twitter.com/NYCityAlerts/status/777318796310810624
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:38 pmso would this suggest a pattern,
https://twitter.com/MeaghanByrne_/status/777315054228242433
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 6:55 pm@32– With Seaside Park?
The season was over last week at the shore– weekender trail off [although locals like to say it’s better in September] and there was a planned Marine marathon down there.
Seaside is basically pizza, skiball and boardwalks. Not exactly Israeli art.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/17/2016 @ 7:05 pma friend pointed to me to this name,
http://opengov.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Where-s-Linda-Starr-the-Inventor-of-the-Birfer-Story/7665-4049
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 7:36 pmThe Hillary Clinton campaign is trying to say, falsely, that Donald Trump started the birther movement. This is clearly not true. He only joined it in 2011. He may have revived it for a time.
They are saying that Trump’s claim that Hillary Clinton started it is a lie. Well, the campaign never officially did it, that is true. But there are such things as dirty tricks. (However if Trump wanted to say that, he should have said it, but maybe he wanted the case to look strngger than what it was, so he just claimed, without exp[lanation, that Hillary Clinton started it, like it was a known and indisputable fact.)
CBS News said it was people supporting Hillary Clinton who were pushing the story in 2008. The New York Times talked about an internal campaign memo that was leaked.
Neither mentioned Sid Blumenthal, who cannot be said to have been acting alone and without authorization or any knowledge and certainly no disapproval or else there is that proverbial bridge in Brooklyn….
Sid Blumenthal is apparently, by implication, now calling James Asher a liar.
Sammy Finkelman (1a8726) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:08 pmso where does that happen to be,
https://twitter.com/NYCityAlerts/status/777334318553235457
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:11 pmI don’t know anything – just that the #1 train (local Seventh Avenue at that latitude) is skipping 23 St but still stopping at 18 St.
135 West 27 St would be between 6th Avenue and 7th Avenue. Broadway there is just west of 5th Avenue. It seems like theer’sa dentists office there. The explosion was at 23rd and 6th (aka as Avenue of the Americas but nobody calls it that – the name change, made in 1945, never took)
http://heavy.com/news/2016/09/manhattan-explosion-bomb-23rd-street-7th-avenue-bomb-terrorism-injuries-dead-suspect/
As bombs go, this is pretty small, maybe the best the bomb maker could do,
Sammy Finkelman (1a8726) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:19 pmnarciso @32.
Sammy Finkelman (1a8726) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:20 pmwell she said it was near an israeli owned gallery, and furthermore the bottom floor windows of a nearby church were blown out by the blast
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:23 pmnarcso @34. So what was maybe the original birther person also was involved in Rathergate in 2004.
She also claimed Laura Bush murdered her 17 year old boyfriend back in the sixties (it was a car accident -SF) and that Michelle Obama was disbarred in Illinois in 1993 for insurance fraud. (I heard that story)
Google found this about Linda Sue belcher/Linda Starr
http://badfiction.typepad.com/badfiction/2009/02/the-best-of-linda-starr-belcher.html
A Yahoo question and answer yesterday:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20160916142321AAYVhuy
The Clinton campaign, at this point, doesn’t even want people to know it started in 2008, or at least that someone else other than Donald Trump started it. The media are not echoing the claim that he started it – just quoting Democrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Berg
Sounds like a cat’s paw of Donald Trump, right?
He has since been disbarred and now works as a driver for UberX in Philadelphia. Back in the day, he wanted U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas dsbarred because of Bush v Gore. (why did he let off Anthony Kennedy and David Souter? Different opinions?)
Sammy Finkelman (1a8726) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:36 pmthis is the kind of sane reasonable person, red queen hires, like bill burkett’s mary mapes source, who they had dennis quaid to play in the film, to seem reasonable,
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:39 pmso this seems to be a pattern,
https://twitter.com/WalidPhares/status/777350027719151616
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:45 pm41. narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 8:39 pm
At this point, it seems like Sid Blumenthal is denying he [eddled the story to the McClatchy newspapers.
Sammy Finkelman (1a8726) — 9/17/2016 @ 9:03 pmand sid was the one who painted monica lewinsky, as a stalker, until the blue dress popped up, forwarded all sorts of misdirection about benghazi, from his son max,
narciso (d1f714) — 9/17/2016 @ 9:05 pmnarciso @44 Yes, that’s true.
He sent some articles Max Blumenthal wrote, but also original analysis which he claimed later came from Tyler Drumheller.
He was forwarding all kinds of disinformation, not just about Libya, to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who proceeded to strip his name off from the e-mail and forward it to Jake Sullivan at the State Department, instructing him to further hide the source, except that it was someone she knew, and send it out across the U.S. government and ask from ambassadors and others to report back what they thought of it. Sometimes expressing doubts about and half-apologizing for the contents of the memo!
And what she did further, nobody knows. Probably told Sid Blumenthal, over the telephone, whether the information was found credible or not. Now there’s the real security leak.
Sammy Finkelman (1a8726) — 9/17/2016 @ 9:32 pm20. So does TFG as a last executive act pardon the dead witch walking?
DNF (755a85) — 9/18/2016 @ 7:48 am41. “Criminals use explosive devices too”.
Shaped charges to open safes and ATMs, certainly. Pressure cookers filled with shrapnel, not so much.
DNF (755a85) — 9/18/2016 @ 7:52 amThey are not too clear, or not being public, about what theuneploded device was, except t seems to be elaking it was a pressure cooker. A several years old al Qaeda idea.
Sammy Finkelman (1a8726) — 9/18/2016 @ 8:12 amMicahel Goodwin has a few more details of connections between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the birther accusation.
A Clinton staffer sent an e-mail saying Obama was born in Kenya. Hillary Clinton’s first 2008 campaign manager, Patti solis Doyle, said at the time that Hillary Clinton wanted her fired, and Solis Doyle apologized to the Obama campaign.
Also what I think could be the memo the New York Times referred to was written by Mark Penn.
I don’t think the link to Clinton is political genius on the part of Donald Trump or very good luck. It’s just that he’s known this in a vague sort of way for some time, and it does pan out. ALthough there’s still deniability.
Sammy Finkelman (dec35d) — 9/18/2016 @ 12:23 pmRich Galen thinks the original birther claim cannot be attributed to Hillary Clinton.
http://www.mullings.com/09-19-16.htm
Of course Sidney Blumenthal is not quite as independent from Hillary Clinton as Rich Galen was to Newt Gingrich, and it could very well have been a “dirty trick” but there’s no proof at this point. It could be argued also that Sidney Blumenthal was off on his own, just maybe not stopped.
There were some other fringe Democrats who started it, like Linda Sue Belcher/Linda Starr and Philip Jay Berg and it is hard to see how any of these people would have been so ardently anti-Obama in this fashion on their own and they were for Hillary Clinton. But it is at most a question mark.
Sammy Finkelman (643dcd) — 9/19/2016 @ 10:46 am@Sammy:Rich Galen thinks the original birther claim cannot be attributed to Hillary Clinton.
In the sense that she specifically was not the first one to say it, perhaps.
But the media had no problem blaming George W. Bush personally for any rumors that any of his SC supporters may have spread about McCain’s adopted child.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 9/19/2016 @ 11:06 amThis article has it starting after Hillary Clionton had lost teh Democratic nomination in 2008:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/02/08/the-secret-history-of-the-birthers.html
Sammy Finkelman (643dcd) — 9/19/2016 @ 11:07 am@Sammy:This article has it starting after Hillary Clionton had lost teh Democratic nomination in 2008:
Easily refuted by contemporaneous news sources.
Later, in the spring 2008, as Clinton’s chances of winning the Democratic primary grew thin, some of her hardcore supporters circulated rumors that Obama may not be a U.S. citizen, picking up on some of Martin’s innuendo and extending it further.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 9/19/2016 @ 11:51 am“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” read one of those emails posted, at the time, by Snopes.com, a site that attempts to debunk internet rumors.
53. Yes John Avlon person writing in February 2010 in the Daily Beast did not know when the beginning of this was.
I wanted to point out he had something significantly wrong there in his version. He was probably fed that information to keep him away from the true origin, or from people who circulated it. he has it all being done by fringe characters after Hillary had lost the nomination
R. Emmett Tyrrell, editor of the American Spectator, mentions an anonymous high ranking Democrat who told him in 2008 or possibly still in 2007:
http://spectator.org/hillary-donald-and-the-birthers-demise
Since he mentions Sidney Blumenthal separately furtehr down, that high ranking Democrat was probably not Sidney Blumenthal, and since he keeps him anonymous he may think that person possibly was not being dishonest with him.
The lietrary agent, who t thtt ime was not in charge of teh agency, may have said in 2008 that it was aclerical error but more recently she has said something like she was guessing.
There was another alleged source. An interview somewhere with Barack Obama’s step-grandmother (?) in Kenya in which she said, or was misunderstood as saying, that she was there when Barack Obama was born.
Possible reason for this: Barack Obama’s father came back to Kenya with a different white American wife * about 3 years later, and she gave birth to two sons in Kenya. (One died in an accident in the 1980s, and the other moved to China. Somewhere along the line somebody maybe got confused.
Then there were the legal arguments – that if he was born in Kenya he would not be a citizen because his mother was only 18 and therefore had not spent more than ten years after age 14 in the United States (obviously the law could never have been this way – that was maybe for deciding many years later) and the argument that even if he was born in the United States he was not a “natural born” citizen because his father was a British subject. But Blackstone itself indicated that the definiton of natural born changed when the law changed.
—————
Sammy Finkelman (643dcd) — 9/21/2016 @ 2:32 pm* It was after they broke up that Barack Obama’s father took a trip to Hawaii when Barack was 11 (in about 1972 when his mother’s second narriage had broken up) to try to reconcile with his ex-wife and persuade her to move to Kenya with him) And teh thing is, all this time he had an original Kenyan wife so the marriage of Barack Obama Sr to Stanley Ann Dunham was invalid if it had bene investigated. Barack Obama Sr claimed to harvard he’d divorced his first wife by tribal law. He didn’t tell them about his first American wife, and he didn’t bother divorcing. I think Stanley Anne Dunham had to do it herself, around 1964. Bill Clinton’s father was also a bigamist.