cross-posted at BlueNC
This morning, the Charlotte Observer editorial board rolled out the five-inch guns on Franklin Graham, calling him out for his ridiculous statements on Sunday's This Week with Christiane Amanpour.
Evangelist Franklin Graham surely must have forgotten the sage advice from a verse in Proverbs, about a fool holding his tongue and "being counted wise."
Otherwise he wouldn't have spouted the nonsense he did Sunday to ABC's Christiane Amanpour, giving huckster real-estate mogul and television personality Donald Trump a thumbs-up as a presidential candidate and repeating the already many times disproven silliness that President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States.
After this haymaker, the Observer keeps punching, flat-out calling Graham's decision to join the "Where's the birth certificate?" crowd "ill-informed" and "irresponsible." It also points out the latent hypocrisy in his questioning of Obama's faith while supporting Trump, whose gambling interests probably won't play well with the fundie base.
In the same breath, the Observer concisely takes down the birther argument.
(Obama) posted a copy of his certification of birth from Hawaii on his website when he ran for president in 2008 when the issue first came up. That is the birth certificate supplied to everyone born in Hawaii. Not only that, Hawaiian officials allowed the nonpartisan news website FactCheck.org to see the actual physical birth certificate in Hawaii. The organization saw the raised seal and signature and concluded it was real.
Moreover, one exasperated Hawaii official after another has confirmed the document's authenticity. Reporters and others have found newspaper birth announcement for Obama published in Honolulu papers in 1961, the year of his birth. Doubts about Obama's place of birth are simply absurd.
Too bad the Observer didn't have enough space to detail the utter lunacy you'd have to believe in order to subscribe to birtherism.
It's about time the Observer took on this birther lunacy head on. For those who don't know, Charlotte is a blue island in a sea of red--while Mecklenburg County gave Obama his biggest margin in the entire state, McCain pretty much ran the table in the suburbs.
Update: Since this is on the rec list, I thought I'd also share Lawrence O'Donnell's takedown of Graham fils last night (h/t to nupstateny):
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