Being new to Twitter, I recently decided to spend a few days following some of the right wing tweets, primarily those with the hash tags #gop and #tcot (top conservatives on twitter). As an unapologetic liberal, I thought it might be easier to stomach right wing commentary if it came in snippets of 140 characters or less.

A recent tweet to Sarah Palin, presumably from a legal expert: “Applaud and love your family. But if we joined, we could challenge Obama eligibility and incarcerate him. Then you r VP“*

In conservative fantasyland, the line of Presidential succession apparently runs from President to his losing political rival, skipping over the Vice President, Speaker of the House, etc. And if you lie about your place of birth, it means you immediately go to jail (where you are no doubt waterboarded).

The conspiracy to enable Barack Obama to become President is incredibly vast and far reaching. It must have begun the day Obama was born, in 1961, and involved doctors at the hospital as well as Hawaiian newspapers, the state government, Obama’s aunt and a major international airline and their staff.

“Why can’t Obama satisfy/answer people on his eligibility?? That would solve all curiousity. Is there something to hide?“* Short of holding Obama’s placenta, I don’t think anything will satisfy the most rabid conspiracy theorists…

“BOMBSHELL: Obama’s Eligibility to Serve as President in Question & Before the Supreme Court“* Link provided to Fox News blog created by navymom, which says “Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya and there is no record of him ever applying for US citizenship“. Of course, that could be due to his already being a US citizen, but then, that would be too easy an explanation.

Obama’s parents were apparently so sure that their child would one day win the presidency that they secreted their infant son from Kenya (where birthers claim Obama was really born) to the United States and working with the hospital staff, newspaper editors, etc, falsified his birth certificate and birth announcement. The airlines also would have had to suppress any record that Obama and his parents flew from Kenya to the US that year.

It doesn’t matter that a number of different organizations and websites (Fact Check, Politico, Snopes) have disproven all of the birthers’ and their lawyers‘ assertions. The birther rumor mill has become a self-perpetuating cottage industry, and any crackpot (and I’m being kind), white supremacist or Lou Dobbs willing to offer “evidence” in exchange for publicity is welcomed. Witness:

On Twitter, questions about Obama’s place of birth are the crazy glue holding together a number of false assertions, bad assumptions and anxious rumors which, together, form a wingnut alternative reality.

It is Tinkerbell’s pixie dust, giving conservatives hope that Obama will eventually be impeached and his policies repudiated, if they only believe hard enough.

Next: Spinning Themselves Dizzy