When Is a Grand Jury Not a Grand Jury?
In the demon haunted world of Canadian Sentinel and others of his lunatic ilk, reality is nothing more than an intermittent inconvenience, a porous barrier between them and their certain knowledge that Obama is a Muslim communist who forged his birth certificate, Nazis are Left Wingers, the Miss America Pageant is run by a secret cabal of “homosexualists and radical feminazis”, all Muslims want to destroy us, and Sarah Palin combines the intellectual acuity of Marie Curie with the wit of Noel Coward and the political savvy of Henry Kissinger.
I confess to a certain sick, culpable fascination with this lunacy. Who doesn’t love a funhouse mirror, or the Creepy Crawlies exhibit at the zoo? But every once in a while I walk away flabbergasted, wondering – are they REALLY stupid enough to believe this shit, or is this all just a massive hoax? Did someone put the ghost of Andy Kauffman in charge of the Blogging Tories?
Today my friend Scenty unveiled his latest.
There is an organization in the United States called “AmericanGrandJury.org.” It’s one of your regular lunatic Anti-Obama sites, with a twist. It gathers malcontents into little, self-proclaimed “Grand Juries”, who offer their own “preferments” and “indictments” against the President, using careful, judicial langage like this:
“”The American Grand SUPER Jury is in session – Shepard Smith has officially joined the left-wing Obots! We had a huge turnout for the SUPER JURY. The jury is in session right now with over 130 members actively participating. WOW! You wanted the BIG time Obama — well, you got your wish from the Patriots at American Grand Jury. 172 Grand Jury members worked night and day for 10 days in session to hand down the presentments against our arrogant Usurper. It’s defintely a world’s record and Obama now owns it — the biggest Grand Jury vote in history charging “the ONE” with Fraud and Treason. Many Obots out there think we are crazy. The Patriots will say, “so who cares what the followers of deception think?” The people that truly believe and “can read” the United States Constitution know without a doubt the prez is as illegal as a 3 dollar bill. Those that blindly follow BO are only hoping he never gets caught as the road to deception will truly judge all those in the end.”
Okay. So some lawyer has scooped the words “grandjury” for his website, and is trying to deceive the demented into believing this is a – well, “grand jury”. Sorta like me registering the domain “therealvatican.info”, and issuing Papal Bulls.
Who would be stupid enough to fall for something so utterly, tragically, hilariously transparent?
Well, who do you think? The headline: “Obama Eligibility Issue Now In Court, Also Under Indictment by Grand Jury!”
Fuck. Is there absolutely NO bottom to the stupid?? And more to the point: are the right wing bloggers who disseminate this crap MORE stupid than dishonest, more dishonest than stupid, or utterly – both?
I can’t wait until Fox picks this up.
Isn’t it the truth. Here and there I see.
I’ve been following the conversation on the CS site. Wow! Just, wow!
OMG. I just. can’t. believe. people could be that dumb. It burrrrrns! Aiiiieeeee!
Don’t know where you get it from, Balby but I don’t have that sort of patience.
You think maybe it was Scenty or one of his commenters that sent Kos this email today?
I’m guessing John Baird.
are they REALLY stupid enough to believe this shit, or is this all just a massive hoax?
Neither. It’s not a hoax, but it takes a certain level of analytical and intellectual acuity to believe in such madness (although not necessarily writing skills). There has always been plenty of it on the far left, but with the left it tends more to be couched in theoretical gobbledegook, and thus the hard rhetorical edges are subsumed in soporific abstracts. Remember Orwell’s dictum about the British left’s wartime belief that the U.S. entered to war to forestall socialism in Britain: “Only an intellectual could believe something so absurd.”
You are wasting your time, balb, and all that commentary just makes you look wimpy. If you were a real man, you would re-convene the Inquisition and summon Scenty before it.
I’ve just convened a Grand Jury to investigate why I’m stuck in moderation.
What’s astonishing is that one of the principals of the whole farce is now tacitly acknowledging in the thread that he KNOWS these Toy Grand Juries have no actual authority (but of course, in a Truly Free America they would, etc.)
This way lieth madness. I’m outta there.
But they aren’t lying, balb, at least not in the ordinary meaning of the word. In fact, one thing that puzzles me about the blogosphere is the accusations of lying that get thrown around willy-nilly. To the extent that these fruitcakes-in-pyjamas are worth a moment’s worry (and I remain skeptical–I got a big kick out of the quote in one of your comments: “The American Grand SUPER Jury is in session – Shepard Smith has officially joined the left-wing Obots! We had a huge turnout for the SUPER JURY. The jury is in session right now with over 130 members actively participating. WOW!”). 130!! Boy, Obama can’t be sleeping well these days. Anyway, they seem to be seeing themselves as some kind of proto-constitutional lynch mob. Think of a real lynch mob. If you asked them whether they knew what they were doing was illegal, they would jump through endless cerebral and rhetorical hoops to deny it, completely sincerely.
It is a form of magic thinking, I guess: the (formerly) New-Age belief that you just have to WANT it to be true, and it will be. It does open up a whole bunch of new possibilities for problem solving, though. If you can create your own Grand Jury and pretend it’s real, surely we could establish our own Grand Council of the Afghani Taliban, and surrender to NATO. Heck, why couldn’t we incorporate the “NASA Lunar Colony”, and start growing moon vegetables and lobbing rocks at the commies from space?
And if stoopiditee as terminal, Scenty would have died before he was born,…
Obama was not born in the united states or he would be more than WILLING to submit his original, vault certificate to appropriate officials, for validation. But of course he is NOT and that is why he has spent a million dollars, hiding his records in the United States as well as Kenya. Why would he need to hide his records in kenya, if he is not a citizen in kenya? Because he was born there. Most of you democrats may be blind, but we conservatives are NOT!!! I hope you love paying 3k per year more in bogus carbon taxes, and even more in health care. You are going to love being even MORE POOR!!!
Marlio, you dumb schmuck, we are Canadians here, we already suffer the huge and terrible effects of “socialism”, we seem to be fairing better than you guys right now, but you thank good old George for that mess.
Comments under moderation? Holy-crap, is Scenty acting that poorly, or did I trip something?
The whole Obama-as-secret-Kenyan is a very useful thing. It gives the stupider Republicans something to fulminate about, and keeps them out of the serious discussions.
The mastermind behind the movement is Philip J. Berg. Mr. Berg is a famous, wacko conspiracy theorist who previously sued President George W. Bush for his secret complicity in the 9/11 attacks, and has sought to have Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas disbarred.
He was successfully sued for malpractice by former clients, and formally sanctioned by the Court, who commented that Mr. Berg’s counterclaim “was inadequately pled, not grounded in fact, time-barred, and utterly irrelevant to the pending malpractice action against him.” The Court also found that “even the most limited investigation would have revealed that [Berg] had no standing to raise such a claim”, and that Berg’s claim was motivated by a “desire to harass” and “delay litigation.” The court fined Berg $10,000 and ordered him to attend six hours of ethics training.
The funny thing about the birth certificate fiasco is that it is widely agreed that the underlying consitutional provision is an anachronism that dates from the Revolution and is completely at odds with the spirit of a country that prides itself on being a nation of immigrants.
Apologies if I’ve made this point before, but a Canadian can only shake his/her head in bemusement at the American attraction to conspiracy theories. There sure was plenty of it from the left during the Bush/Cheney years and now the right has joined the game with gusto. It’s true that hardcore believers can generally be described as fringes, but there is a general wariness/intrigue about it all that is thoroughly mainstream–almost as if they were all fighting a will to believe. Try to imagine a spy-thriller about a junior Canadian agent who discovers a plot involving senior Canadian Government officals and renegade Canadian industrialists to overthrow the Government and replace the B.N.A. Act. He races to avoid multiple assassination attempts, thwarts the perps and gets the hot babe to boot. You’ll find that theme in half the airport books in the States.
balb, I’ve just heard that one of Harper’s Senate appointments doesn’t really own $400 in land as the B.N.A. Act stipulates. Think we should convene a Grand Jury?
Having read your commnets and research on Philip J. Berg, I am rather perplexed as to why scenty doesn’t have a huge picture of him on his blog page. Perhaps with the caption “In Phil We Trust!”
Say what you will about Scenty, I’ll bet he wouldn’t keep me in moderation.
Sorry, Peter, I don’t know what’s up with that. Zorph got held up too.
Balb: “Is there absolutely NO bottom to the stupid??”
Apparently not.
Balbu, admit it, you just ain’t into free speech, you just want to opress me
WordPress can get quiry about its anti-spam and moderation holds.