Osborne Ink || News that's fairly liberal, but never unbalanced.

WINGNUTS ARE SMART! With SPELLING!

Dinosaur Adventure Land, the creationist theme park in Florida where you can take your family to be indoctrinated into a Flintstones-based belief system, is being seized by the IRS after its founder-owners were convicted of tax fraud. Apparently, they thought belief could protect them from, you know, laws:

Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, is serving 10 years in federal prison for failing to pay the Internal Revenue Service more than $470,000 in employee taxes.

He was found guilty in November 2006 on 58 counts, including failure to pay employee taxes and making threats against investigators.

The conviction culminated 17 years of Hovind sparring with the IRS. Saying he was employed by God and his ministers were not subject to payroll taxes, he claimed no income or property.

No word yet on whether the IRS will go after these media darlings, who also claim their home and business as church properties:

World Net Daily, a website that seems wholly devoted to spreading wacky Obama smears, was trumpeting “proof” of their birther claims yesterday:

WASHINGTON – California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama’s eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication.

Just a few problems: the purported birth certificate is dated 1964, when the president was three years old. The document states it was made in Mombasa, which wasn’t even part of Kenya at the time. And it’s just one of a slew of forgeries popping up. Even the wacknuts at Free Republic call it a fake.

But that won’t matter. The next Obama conspiracy theory will be that he released these fakes to make Orly Taitz look stupid (as if she needed help).

Wingnuts are smart! With documents!

H/t Jesus’ General

ADDING: Orly Taitz was invited on MSNBC today, and proved once again that wingnuts are their own worst enemies:

I realize it’s a little like banging my head on the wall, but Teh Stupid™ demands refutation. Via Crooks & Liars, we learn that another meme stands ready to replace birtherism among the fringe: Obama is the Antichrist!

Sigh.

The pronunciation of a word has nothing to do with the translation of its meaning. You may recall that in 1996, the press in Iran had a minor problem covering the American presidential race because in Farsi, “Dole” transliterates to a common street term for the penis. “Dole” has no such meaning in English. The video thus begins with a fallacy and doesn’t make any progress afterwards.

“Obama” is a word from the Luo family of languages resident in the Nile and Sahara regions of Africa. It has no relation whatsoever to Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic. Here’s the WikiAnswers page on the surname’s origins:

Obama was the given name of the senator’s great-grandfather. Like most African cultures, the Luo of Kenya did not have hereditary surnames until the British (or other European colonizers) required them. Most of them chose the names of their fathers as their surnames. Obama was chosen as his surname by the senator’s grandfather.

Most Luo names were given at birth by mothers or grandmothers and referred to circumstances connected with the birth, or to things going on in the life of the mother near the time of birth. Obama is based on the Luo verb that means “to be slightly bent” or “to be twisted”. Though no one knows for sure why his great-grandfather was given the name, experts on Luo language and culture think the most likely possibilities are that the baby either had a leg or arm that looked a little bent just after he was born, or that he was born in the breech position. (Emphasis mine)

Turning now to Obama’s first name, we should note that its origins are similar to madrassa. Both are common Arabic words adopted by cultures wherever Islam has spread. Arabic and Hebrew actually share a common linguistic ancestor, as you can tell from so many similar words that share meaning: shabbat/sabaah, shalom/salaam, elohim/allah. (Yes, Allah derives from the Old Testament word for God.)

Nevertheless, Arabic meanings for “Barack” are very different from the ones offered in the video: in various measures, the verb root can mean “to make a camel kneel,” “to invoke a blessing,” or “to be blessed.” Nouns derived from the root can mean “puddle,” “blessing,” good wishes,” or “fortunate.” My Hans-Wehr Arabic-English dictionary doesn’t offer any links to Satan or high places. At least, not any higher than a camel’s back.

Which brings us, finally, to Obama’s middle name (which, contrary to popular opinion, does not translate to Nicholae Carpathia). Notably absent from the video, “Hussein” is among the most common names in Arabic, directly translating as “handsome” or “beautiful.” The verb root can be used in many different contexts, including “to treat with kindness” and “to act rightly.” Noun variations include husn (“excellence”), hasan (“excellent”), hasana (“charity”) and other positives, but nothing antichrist-y. We’ll just have to chalk this one up as another wingnut fail.

Because wingnuts are smart! With words!