"Birther" Elections Clerk Changes Story on TV

Just when you thought the case of Tim Adams couldn't get any stranger, he goes on television to reiterate his story, yet goes back on what he said before, and bites the hands that have fed him. Is he lying, changing his story, or losing the plot?



I'm sure you'll recall the recent "revelations" of Honolulu's "senior elections clerk," Tim Adams, who claimed that, while working in the elections office in early 2008, he was told by unnamed others that Barack Obama does not have a Long Form Birth Certificate on file in Hawai'i. I came to the conclusion, based on research others have done, and Mr. Adams' seeming recanting of the story - followed by what seemed like a reiteration of it on WND - that Mr. Adams is possibly lying, and possibly trying to get attention.

Well, the story's gone around and around a few times, and now Mr. Adams has gone on TV to discuss that matter, as well as a few other things he'd like us to know. What I would like to know, after listening to this, is what sort of game he thinks he's playing at.



Not only is he blatantly contradicting what he said on the Political Cesspool, but most of what he claims is true is simply not true. And his attempts to cast aspersions onto others' characters - while possibly accurate - still doesn't explain what he was doing at the Council of Concerned Citizen's convention in the first place.

First off, he repeats the crux if his story: he was "told" that there was no long form birth certificate for Barack Obama. Told by whom? He doesn't say. How would they know, given that they don't have immediate, legal access to that kind of information, and wouldn't have needed it since he wasn't going to vote in Hawai'i in that election? He doesn't bring that up.

Then he claims that Obama does have a Certificate of Live Birth, but claims it's given to residents of Hawai'i whose children are born out of state. That is flat out false. The Certificate of Live Birth - as has been explained numerous times - is what you've given when you need a record that you were born in Hawai'i, and serves the same purpose as a Birth Certificate.

(There is a provision for COLBs to be given to people who were born out of state, or in foreign countries. However, they would clearly state that these people were born where they were born, and not in Hawai'i. Obama's COLB says he was born in Hawai'i, which should be case closed for any reasonable, rational-thinking individual.)

He also repeats the story about "some of his family members" claiming he was born overseas. This is a result of someone only listening to half of his step-grandmother's interview, and has been debunked many times.

However, at this point Mr. Adams crosses over to the other side of the road, and directly contradicts what he said earlier.

He claims that he believes that, because Obama has a COLB, he is obviously a natural born citizen of the united states. And if you take his (mistaken) word for it - that COLBs are given to the children of Hawai'i citizens who are born elsewhere - then yes, that makes a kind of sense, so long as the residents were citizens, themselves, or Obama was born in America. And he says that "they" did not like that conclusion... whoever "they" are.

But that is a 180 degree turnaround from what he said before.



The direct quote is: "In our professional opinion, Barack Obama was not born in the United States."

How do you go from that to this, which he wrote in an email to Right Side of Life?

I believe Pres. Obama was born a United States citizen, and is eligible to hold office

He also says that, given that Obama was vetted by the heads of the Democrat Party, he has to have been eligible, otherwise they wouldn't have let him through. A pity such common sense is so uncommon!

And then he throws in the kicker. Why the hub-bub? "Some people are basically racist." Given that he made his comments to the Political Cesspool while attending the national conference for the Council of Conservative Citizens - a white separatist organization that's against "race mixing" - one has to wonder why this is now a concern for him. Did he know what he was getting into by attending? Or is he throwing his real beliefs under the bus, now that things have gotten a little too hot for him to handle?

Even more damning, especially for World Net Daily and the people who've been trumpeting his comments as "proof" that they were right:

"People nowadays constantly refer to the government as an enemy of the people, or a problem for the people. But the role of the government is to serve the people. And so I think we're getting to the point where no one can talk to anyone else, that the rhetoric has become so divisive... so I kinda dove in and tried to start a conversation, and have paid for it dearly (laughter)"

So he tried to start a conversation to downplay the "rancor" he's complaining about, by giving the radical fringe of Obama's critics exactly what they wanted to hear? Yeah, right. Pull the other one there, Tim.

If you go back and listen to Adams' interview on the Political Cesspool, you will note he does not give both sides of the conversation. He tells them he doesn't believe that Obama has a Hawaiian birth certificate, and was not born in America at all. It's only later, when people start questioning his story, and he gets an email from the Right Side of Life, that this kinder, gentler Tim Adams appears.

So what's going on here? I think my previous assessment has to stand: Mr. Adams is obviously not telling the truth about something, but I think this is primary an attempt to gain attention. But now that he's got it, he's not handling it very well. So hopefully he will do the sensible thing and go back to being anonymous before he gets publicly called on his massive reversal.

Also: against my humble expectations, World Net Daily actually HAS written an article concerning this new development*. In it, they shamelessly reprint his comments, which stand almost contrary to their own narrative, and accuse those like them of having anti-government, and possibly racist motives. It would appear the cognitive dissonance of this bombshell has caused WND to suffer cerebral whiplash, thus rendering them temporarily incapable of realizing they've been called on the carpet. They also seem incapable of calling him on his massive reversal of story.

But give them time. They may someday realize they may have been played like a three-penny flute. And Tim Adams may change his story yet again.

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PARTIAL RETRACTION!!!!!!!!!!!!

It has been pointed out to me - quite rightly - that what I have said Mr. Adams said is not what he actually did say.

Tim Adams did not directly contradict what he said earlier. He just added a piece of information that he either neglected to tell the people on the political cesspool, or that did not turn up on the show: in his views, President Obama IS eligible to be President, based on what Mr. Adams thinks the COLB stands for (which is wrong), and his belief that the DNC would have dropped Obama if that wasn't so.

How could I have made that mistake? I don't know. Maybe all these chirping little birther eyeasses' story that if you're not born in America, you're not an NBC, got stuck somewhere it shouldn't and made me read things I didn't. But then it's also possible I jumped ahead of the fence, scenting blood, and trumpeted the kill before I realized I'd shot an old boot, instead.

Either way, I would be incredibly churlish and hypocritical if I insisted that others (Farah, Taitz, Berg, et al) correct their public errors without identifying and correcting my own. I apologize to my readers, and to Mr. Adams, for this mistake.

Having said that, Mr. Adams' story still smells extremely fishy - high noon in an unrefrigerated fish market fishy - and he is still flat out wrong about why one gets a COLB, and what it means. I'm also not 100% sure that his latest admission - that the President is eligible - is legitimate, or if it's just him pulling his fat out of the fire he lit. And there's still the issue of why he was at the CCC conference in the first place... and so on.

So yes, I screwed up on the details, and humbly retract the mistake. I believe there is still something to this story, but I will redouble my efforts to be careful in presenting further installments.



* As of now, my anti-virus program is no longer crying in alarm at the state of World Net Daily's website, so perhaps they've attended to the virus-laden sidebars. On the other hand, maybe I just got lucky. Please use caution while navigating their sorry turd of a website.