Hillarysworld

First, the birthers are anything but a fringe group. They have found a sizeable audience for their fantasy. A poll last week showed that more than half of Republicans either believe Obama was not born in the US (28%) or are not sure (30%). Mainstream anchors on CNN and Fox routinely give them credibility. So far, 11 Republican congressmen have signed a "birther bill" that would demand a birth certificate from all future presidents. They may have no more credibility than the 9/11 truthers or those who denied the moon landings, but they certainly have more reach.

Second, however marginal they appear now, they were effectively running the country between 2000 and 2008. It was their birther logic (an oxymoron if ever there was one) that provided the mindset, legwork and frontline troops for the Bush era. Iraq was invaded because it could not prove that it did not have something it truly did not have. "We would say, 'Iraq should present any anthrax'," explained UN weapons inspector Hans Blix shortly after the invasion. "While the US and UK were inclined to say, 'Iraq should present the anthrax.'" Guantánamo Bay is still full of people who were incarcerated because they were not able to prove they were not guilty and whose guilt was to some extent inferred by their incarceration.

The birthers' claims might be crazy. But so was Whitewater, which ended with Clinton's impeachment, and the Swift Boat saga helped torpedo John Kerry's presidential campaign.

A senior Bush aide once ridiculed a New York Times reporter over his adherence to "the reality-based community", which he described as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality". "That's not the way the world really works any more. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other, new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

This is what they do. Even a brief study would show it is no laughing matter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/02/obama-birthers-us-presidency