Does David Stern and the NBA Think We Are Idiots?

I don't have a dog in this fight.  I'm a Spurs fan.  If anything I should be pulling against OKC.  But, game 3 was tough to watch.  I'm into lists now I guess (see my post regarding the movie Prometheus for another recent list).  Here's what I took away from game 3 that makes me wonder if the NBA thinks their fans are stupid:

1. How does Kevin Durant have 5 fouls at the end of the game and 4 fouls in the 3rd quarter - he's not exactly known for his aggressive D is he?

2. Hardin and Collison end the game with 4 fouls each.

3. LaBron James had 1 foul in the game.

4. Joey Crawford was a referee.

5. The Heat shot 11 more free throws than OKC.

6. OKC shot 43% from the field, not too good right?

7. But the Heat shot a miserable 39% from the field.

8. Oh but the Heat shot 89% from the free throw line, 31-35.

9. That's right, 31 points from the charity stripe for the Heat, that should sound familiar to Dallas Mavericks fans from '06.

10. Only the Heat's big 3 were in double digits, and Bosh barely with 10 points but, guess what, they still won, I wonder how? See numbers 8 & 9 for the answer.

All that said, OKC only shot 22% from behind the three-point line and lost 91-85.  The Heat are up 2-1 in the series meaning OKC really needs to win the next game (no, it's not a "must-win" game, a "must-win" game only occurs when, if a team loses, their season is over, talk to the Boston Red Sox from 2004).  Essentially, if OKC gets even close to a fair shake from the refs and if they can shoot a half decent percentage from the field/three point land I still think OKC wins the series in 6.

- Birther Leader is a Loon

Here is an excerpt from an Esquire article by John H. Richardson detailing the other things that Orly Taitz, attorney, real estate agent, dentist and the defacto leader of the birthers believes to be true:

Goldman Sachs runs the treasury.

Obama is a puppet.

There's a cemetery somewhere in Arizona where they just dug 30,000 fresh graves, which wait now for the revolution.

Baxter International — a major Obama contributor — developed a vaccine for bird flu that actually kills people.

Google Congressman Alcee Hastings and House Bill 684 and you'll see that they're planning at least six civilian labor camps.

Google an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about train cars with shackles.

The communist dictator Hugo Chavez way back in 2004 purchased the Sequoia software that runs our voting machines and the mainstream media won't report any of it — not even Fox because Saudi Arabia bought a percentage of Fox in 2007.

If she believes all the above then, of course she believes Obama was born in Kenya. She can probably also tell you how we never went to the moon, where Elvis is currently living and how the Royal Family killed Princess Di. You tell me if you think she has a grip on reality.

- Coulter on Dobbs & "Birthers"

More on Coulter & Geraldo's thoughts on Dobbs' "birthers" coverage.

- Newsworthiness in "Lou Dobbs Land"

Here's more on Dobbs.

- The Gift That Keeps on Giving

or alternate title, what more do "birthers" want, the above was issued by the State of Hawaii, and says that this document is evidence of birth in any court proceeding. Oh wait , I forgot, they can explain this away too, this document was obviously forged and planted by an Obama operative or operatives; or this conspiracy involves dozens of people dating back to the President's birth or; someone traveled back in time and altered the birth records to show he was born in the USA; or Hawaii wasn't really a state when he was born there because their admission into the Union was unconstitutional or; [insert any explanation other than the most simple].

First, I' m addressing this only because of the attention it's received from mainstream media. Moreover, for all those that say "the media" has a left bias I guess you don't include Fox News
 and CNN as "the media".

I don't have much of an opinion regarding the "birthers" quest to kill their own personal windmills other than it reminds me, as it reminds others, of other fairly recent conspiracy theories. Let's not forget about the 9/11 conspiracy theory that in some way the Bush administration ordered the attacks on the towers or the conspiracy theory that the Clintons somehow orchestrated the death of Vince Foster. Case in point, one of the original leaders of the "birthers" is attorney Philip J. Berg who filed lawsuits on behalf of 9/11 conspiracy folks.

For whatever reason it seems that usually the party out of power has to deal with a fringe movement that advances a theory that flies in the face of the evidence presented to date. And those in the fringe movement focus on that theory with a tunnel vision that stops them from reasonably evaluating any evidence that rebuts their beliefs. They cannot accept that sometimes the simple, straight forward explanation is in fact the true one.

Lastly, like many other recent red herrings for the GOP dating back to the campaign(Obama is Muslim, he's anti-American, he pals around with terrorists, Obama doesn't wear a flag pin, Obama is a socialist/communist) here's the GOP's problem: The GOP's numbers are dwindling so they have to try to appease this group because, let's face it, they don't have many "groups" left in their party right now.

So, here's another conspiracy theory for you from yours truly: The Dems are letting this "birther" conspiracy theory fester because they know the GOP has to deal with these wingnuts and the Dems don't. Why address a non-issue that's hurting your opposition's base and not yours?

Sidenote: Wanna go down the rabbit hole further? What if McCain had been elected, would there have been anti-McCain birthers(note, McCain was born in 1936 in what at the time of his birth was the U.S. controlled Panama Canal Zone on a military base)? I'd have to say, "you betcha!"

Side-sidenote: The National Review, one of the most, if not the most, conservative periodicals going today has even written that the "birthers" are wrong.