Today's Dumbo Hall Of -Fame- Shame: Mae Beavers, Phil Jensen, Gerald Allen, And — Last, But Not Least — Leo Berman!

The GOP logo says it all:

and this blogger has referred to the GOP a$$holes as Dumbos for the past several years (since 10/21/04).



With apologies to elephants who are not stupid creatures, the Dumbos among us put the stupid in stupidity! Also, apologies are due to the fictional elephant created by the Walt Disney Studios: "Dumbo." The GOP-Dumbos and their Teabagger fellow-travelers are S-T-U-P-I-D! A recent report in Mother Jones demonstrates that stupidity is endlessly deep among these loons. If this is (fair & balanced) nitwitedness, so be it.

PS; Also remember that you read this Dumbo wisdom here: "YouTubes [sic] are infallible."

[x MoJo]
Birther Bill Author: What's A Long-Form Birth Certificate?
By Tim Murphy

Tag Cloud of the following article

although anti-sharia asked beavers berman bill birth birther candidates certificate citizenship clearly committee date explained file form infallible introduced legislation long-form looked lot mb means month obama opening phil political print proposed provided rc recently rep reporter republican require respond scuttled sen similar slip-up state surprised tennessee things tim youtube

created at TagCrowd.com

Dumbo Hall O'Shame

Last month, Tennessee State Senator Mae Beavers (R-District 17) introduced SB 1091, a bill that would require presidential candidates to present a long-form birth certificate in order to qualify for the ballot in the Volunteer State. Beavers, a Republican, is in good company: Nearly a dozen states have now introduced similar legislation—part of national campaign mounted by the birthers, those conservatives who believe that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. To date they haven't had much luck; a bill proposed in Arizona looked the most promising but was scuttled in committee; on Wednesday, New Hampshire GOPers knocked down a similar proposal.

It's a far-fetched goal, and it turns out that Beavers, who recently discussed her bill on "Reality Check," a radio show devoted to debunking birther legislation, still has some research to do. From the transcript:

RC: What are the specific requirements in the bill?

Beavers: That they have to have the long form birth certificate.

RC: What is the long form birth certificate?

Beavers: Now, you're asking me to get into a lot of things that I haven't really looked into yet.

The host then asked the obvious follow-up: why put a term into the bill, if you don't know what it means? Beavers responded, "Well, we are following some of the bills that have been filed in lots of other states, and you know how it is, you file your bill and, you know, you prepare before you go to committee."

File first, understand later?

Beavers went on to state more clearly, "I'm not entirely sure what long form means." She seemed genuinely surprised by the news that not all states even print long-form birth certificates anymore. "I only know about Tennessee," she explained. As for her motives for introducing the bill, Beavers didn't declare herself as an outright birther, but she noted, "I think people have raised questions about [Obama's birth] enough to make everybody wonder." Although the state of Hawaii has produced a certificate of live birth for Obama that has been been widely distributed, Beavers said proof of Obama's citizenship must have gotten buried in her inbox: "I get emails all the time with things in them, you know; I can't honestly tell you that I read all of them, because I get so many."

Beavers' long-form slip-up fits a trend of Republican state lawmakers amping up extreme right-wing legislation with dubious supporting evidence. As we reported last month, South Dakota State Representative Phil Jensen (R-District 33) floated a measure banning Islamic law that would have also undone child custody protections, and another bill that could have provided an opening for the killing of abortion providers. Alabama State Senator Gerald Allen (R-District 21) borrowed his own anti-Sharia bill from Wikipedia, and when asked by a reporter what Sharia actually is, said, "I don't have my file in front of me." Texas State Representative Leo Berman (R-District 6), who introduced both an anti-Sharia bill and a birther bill, recently explained that he got most of his political information on YouTube because "YouTubes [sic] are infallible."

Beavers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Ω

[Tim Murphy is am Editorial Fellow and a fact-checker in MoJo's San Francisco office. Last summer he logged 22,000 miles while blogging about his cross-country road trip for Mother Jones. His writing has been featured in Slate and the Washington Monthly.]

Copyright © 2011 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress

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Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves by Neil Sapper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at sapper.blogspot.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.



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