The birthers are getting even more insane. They’ve trotted out a faked Kenyan birth certificate for Obama, which was predictable and stupid; their media representative, Orly Taitz, had a public meltdown (and seriously, you know you’ve got credibility problems when your media face is a lunatic like Taitz); and now, best and looniest of all, they’re going ape over an exercise in dubious etymology, in which some kook claims the Bible gives the name of the anti-Christ, or Satan: Baraq Ubamah. No, it doesn’t actually say that, but if you pick one phrase that was written in Greek and use a Hebrew or Aramaic dictionary to translate individual words, you might be able to pretend that Jesus said that was Satan’s name.
I cannot believe anyone takes these wackaloons seriously.
Anyway, MarkChu-Carroll takes a flamethrower to the abuse of Hebrew, and determines that if we play the same sort of game with his name, he must be the anti-christ. Well, maybe—but I think that we can resolve which one must be the True Anti-Christ with one simple question: which one did PZ Myers vote for in the last election?