14% of Americans Believe Obama Born Abroad

Surprisingly, not all of the people who believe Obama was born abroad are true birthers in the sense that they are bigoted. There are actually some people who are just ignorant and believe he was born abroad. There are people who can't even name his birthplace of Hawaii:

Asked an open-ended question about where President Obama was born, 14 percent of Americans say he was born abroad - giving an incorrect answer that shows how widespread the misunderstanding of his birthplace is nearly a year and a half into his presidency.

Fully 68 percent of those surveyed in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll say, unprompted, that he was born in the United States, including 48 percent who accurately cite Hawaii. Another 9 percent say it's their "best guess" that he was born in this country, bringing the total saying he is U.S.-born to 77 percent. More at WaPo

Don't be fooled by tea partiers who say they're all about fiscal conservatism. You have to dig a little deeper to find out if there is racial animosity. When a tea party leader appeared recently on Letterman's show, she was soft-spoken and reasonable, at first. Then she revealed herself as a soft-spoken birther. Yesterday I watched Tea Party Express director Amy Kremer on The View. She denounced racists and after being prodded, she said that the tea party doesn't want racists among its ranks. She might be a legitimate tea partier concerned about fiscal matters. There are other factions of the tea party -- tea party nation and the tea party patriots.

But Kremer complained about being called a tea bagger when that is the name they gave themselves when the tea party started. They literally (as Joe Biden would say) wore tea bags. We all called them tea baggers--until the left enlightened everyone on what it actually meant. I remember that shift in consciousness--some cringe-worthy video passed around on Twitter.

I started off calling them tea baggers and shifted to tea partiers in January after it became apparent that tea bagger was becoming a derogatory term, sort of how "Obamacare" became derogatory.

Apparently, Jonathan Alter reported in his new book that Obama referred to them as tea baggers. But what's NOT widely reported is that the interview of Obama referring to them as tea baggers is from November of 2009, when even they referred to themselves as tea baggers.

Republicans Stoking White Racial Resentment

This video hits the nail on the head.
If Obama's name was David O'Donnell, republicans would be behaving differently. Joe Wilson wouldn't have felt free to shout out "you lie!" He felt free to do it, to let his emotions over take him because a black man as president doesn't make sense to him. Joe Wilson, who has this sort of vacant look about him, something in his eyes, may not consciously realize he's a racist. Same with Beck, Limbaugh. They find all of these justifications for what they say and do.
But this is what the tea baggers, the birthers, the tenthers, the deathers....are all about. They're afraid. They're afraid because they perceive Obama as different.
For folks who live in diverse communities, there are all kinds of people and we dabble in other cultures. We are familiar with people who aren't white.

Geography and the way people are brought up also has a lot to do with whether people are ignorant or not. Let's face it, to be racist is to be ignorant. I don't care what kind of degrees you have.
For "white culture" folks, mostly older people, diversity is new and scary. Obama represents something new and scary, especially since many younger people supported him.
Republicans are exploiting this. But more than that, I think they've been emboldened by the fringe. Every week it seems they take another step into Fringeville.

Election Losers Lashing Out Arrive by Bus Loads in DC

Tea Party slugs arrive in buses yelling "You work for us." No, Obama works for America, Tea Partiers, and even though you are the crankiest, most obnoxious, irrational, rudest and most violent, you are only a small, teeny tiny, itty bitty sliver of America.

I'll let this video speak for itself.

Next up, we have John Cornyn of Secession-Me Texas who says Obama isn't listening to republicans. Shut up. We have the blue dogs for rational conservative input. At the end, where Cornyn says "May God continue to bless the United States of America," it sounds like one of those ongoing digs at Obama, meant to discredit and delegitimize Obama and the office of the presidency. As if God needs to continue to bless America because Obama is president. That is how these people think:

Rush Limbaugh says Obama needs to resign. Ha! Shut your pie hole Rush. I'd love a few minutes with this guy so that I could figure out what his thing was. Does he really believe all the crap that falls out of his mouth or is much of it theater?