Rant on.

 

Once upon a time, I found billionaire extraordinaire Donald Trump amusing.  I had some respect for him because, well, he was a billionaire from being very savvy, particularly in the real estate biz.  I thought he was a pretty smart guy.

 

Not anymore.  This fool, who may or may not be running for president in 2012, has now revealed himself to be a birther.  That’s right, the controversy over President Obama’s place of birth is still going on, and now it has the support of billionaire dumbass Donald Trump.  Seriously, Donald?  The people in charge of knowing whether or not Obama’s birth certificate is real have declared it so.  The Republican governor of Hawaii during the 2008 campaign, somebody who very openly supported John McCain, somebody who would have liked to have found a problem with the birth certificate, did not.

 

Yes, I know, I have ranted about this before.  But it astounds me this shit is still going on.  Not just one but both of Hawaii’s newspapers mentioned Obama’s birth as part of their birth announcements.  The state’s vital records index, a document available for viewing to whoever requests it, has his birth listed.  So even without the birth certificate, his birth is proven.

 

Meanwhile, Trump ignores such evidence and cites an already disproved piece of “evidence.”  “Disproved” isn’t even the right word, really, as it’s more of a contextual thing.  Trump said something about a statement Obama’s step-grandmother made about being present during his birth “in Kenya.”  During the interview of his grandmother in which she purportedly makes this statement, she later states twice her grandson was born in America.  Bearing in mind this is done through a translator, so the initial statement may have been mistranslated.

 

Most disappointing to me is that Trump has aligned himself with the so-called Tea Party.  The tea partiers are extremists.  They are doing well enough now, but they are extremists, and extreme points of view are often short-lived in politics.  They spout a lot of nonsense, in my opinion, and even if I were a conservative sort I might hesitate to ally myself with them.

 

So please, Mr. Trump, check your facts.  If you don’t, or if you’re unwilling to accept what they say, I can only hope somebody tells you that, as a presidential possibility…you’re fired.

 

Rant off.