Patricia maybe? I'm fairly sure her FR handle is the rather prosaic TechnicalEditor. Haven't seen her much there lately though.

Kara,

I posted this at Doc C's a while ago

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A viable democratic state (yes Birfoons I know the US is a republic. it’s still one of the forms of democracy) needs to have dissent and opposing views.

Unfortunately the freedoms of a democracy mean that the mad and the bad still get to play and piss in the pool.

I break the Birfoons into roughly 4 buckets

[b]1. Fellow travellers, or “birther curious”

These are the folks who for whatever reasons feel that there must be SOMETHING at the bottom of all the loud and insane hoopla but don’t actually feel it is a critical issue. They are basically Republican and Independants but will vote their pocket books come the presidential election. The whole Birther thing makes them a little MORE suspicious of Obama but would recoil in horror from the Danae/BZ mob. May have read bits of Corsi’s books

2. The PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry)

These are the hard core birthers, the foot soldiers and ALL CAPS posters. The idea of Obama as an illegitimate candidate and Usurper falls straight in with their general hate for the Other, the Marxist//Commie/Socialist?DemonCrat.

Bigots by nature, racist by inclination at the very least and will latch onto any idea, no matter how insincere and inconsistent that support their world view. Never voted Democrat, proud of it, never will vote Democrat and calling someone a “Progressive” is (in their minds) a deadly insult.

These are the the ones that think Orly and Dean and Mario are patriotic heros’ but there is major schisms between the varying faiths only bound by hate for uppity black Demeocrat in OUR WHITE HOSUE !!Q!@!!!R$^&*

These are the “No Nonsense Nancy”, Lakinista’s, RcetrJim Red Steels of Internet fame

Main drivers are hate and fear

3. The Mad

Well, Orly, BZ, Dr K(H)ate epitomise this clade of the Birfer Bunch. They not only latch onto every single new (and old) meme or piece of BS that floats, frothy to the surface like ripe Santorum, they MAKE the memes, the wholly believe the memes and it infests and infects all parts of their real lives.

These people may not only be one of..narcissists, delusional, sociopathic, racist, self harming, isolationist and generally barking mad, they usuall are most if not all of them.

They have a well documented pattern of estrangement from family and friends, self destructive behaviour, OCD like activity in support of their views, packrat hoarding of irrelevant data minutae along with a magpies desire for the shiny-shiny. They are consumed by their hate and activities and there is a strong self absorbed ME ME ME need for attention and validation. Cannot accept criticism of any part, no matter how small, of their data set and mind state. Paranoid and delusional, convinced that they are a major player and self appointed guardian of what is RIGHT (politically as well as morally). Convinced rules are for ithers and any requirement that they have to adhere to these rational norms is a direct attack…Cult like behaviour (see Virtual Cult passim).

4. The Bad…The Carpet-Baggers

The cynical war mongers and opportunistic scavengers epitomised by the Birfer Bux Carpet- Baggers like Dean, Corsi, Farah, Arpaio, Trump et-al

Most of them see this as a way to expolit the gullible and stupid for gain, be it for The Precious PayPal, for attention to feed an overweening ego, for political purposes or some or all of the above.

They see the Birthers as sheep or a cash cow to be harvested and fleeced to feed their personal and political needs.

This is also tied into a plain and obvious hate and envy for someone who is demonstrably more important, sucessful and relevant than they can ever be and there is a substantial amount of bigotry and political hate bound into their own perceived self worth.

In some ways these are the most detestable of the 4 Klans, pure bottom feeding vermin with neither principles or morals and a taste for carrion.[/b]
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Of these we could AT BEST reach the "Birther Curious" and not by direct conversion. The act of slapping around the others 3 types on blogs, news articles, comments etc, showing the core bigotry and outright racism of Birthers can help to steer away or shame Category one.

A laudable task which needs buttressing by facts and effective rebuttal such as we can provide here.

YMMV

(edited for DoG awful spooling and stuff)

The old-timers from PJ will remember our convert Patricia.

I don't think Patricia was ever really a birther. She was too smart and too honest to be a birther, much as she despised President Obama. She got pissed at the birthers for refusing to answer her questions and baning her. For those who weren't here, this lady Patricia was a book editor and a conservative Republican, and she started out on Phil Berg's blog. By the time Phil (OK, really Linda Starr) opened a forum like this one, Patricia had pretty much decided that she wasn't a birther, but she was still pissed that the birthers would be so intellectually dishonest and she didn't like the way they mistreated her.

She got baned under, I kid you not, at least six different usernames before Phil's forum went down. She showed some good ol' American stick-to-it-ive-ness, I'll say that for her. But she just wasn't any kind of liberal, so even though we welcomed her and loved her on Politijab, she felt out of her element and eventually drifted off. I wish she'd come back for 5 minutes once or twice a year like allison does.

I think we talked Don Houston out of birtherism, too. He just still didn't like Obama and he thought we were a bunch of snotty intellectual elitists and so forth. He sorta stopped birfing and was just trolling before he left. Then his sister burned to death trying to save some children in a fire in the Vegas area, and he pretty much disappeared even before Politijab disappeared.


We are who we are. There are a LOT of places you can go to discuss polly ticks in general.

We're a niche, an odd group with an odd hobby, I know that. There are about 200 members here who log in regularly, out of about 6 billion Earthlings. But we're cohesive and we've become friends over the years. We've had three regional meetups in person, with a fourth in New Orleans coming right up. We're still fascinated by the birthers, although we discuss a lot of other topics.

I understand what you're saying, Kara. There's so much brainpower here, it would be nice to focus it on ending world hunger or re-electing the President. I used to call the campaign and beg them to give us some sort of assignment.

I think a lot of us ARE working locally to help re-elect the president. Maybe there's no real need for us to take on a project as a community called Fogbow. Maybe when a real need does come along, we'll recognize it as a community, we'll find a consensus, and we'll all stop following the birthers and dive in to the new issue. Or maybe the birthers will fizzle out after 2017, and we'll fade away too also. I'm pretty sure I can remember what I used to do with my time, before Phil and Orly ate my brain. I can do that again, I reckon, whatever it was.

For now, we're the boogle and we rule. I love how seamless and symbiotic the relationship is between Fogbow and all the great bloggeteers who are members. I love how we've managed to stay fresh enough that we're STILL getting new members who have made great contributions to the discussion. I love the sense of unity and purpose, and I'm sensing a sea change after our side got in a few licks here and there. A lot of the frustration is dissipating, now that we see some real victories on the horizon. I really think we are partly responsible for the new attitude on behalf of Obama's attorneys, seemingly nationwide, that there's to be No More Mister Nice Guy when it comes to birthers, as we see sanctions being sought in case after case. I don't think disbarment will stop Orly. I think a few $100,000 fines will make her go away.

Maybe someday the boogle will find another focus. I'd like to see the community live on past birtherism and maybe find some other issue, further on down the road. The only thing I know for sure is that things will change in ways I'm unable to predict. I'm living in a world far beyond the scope of my imagination.

But for now ... we are who we are. I LIKE who we are.

Yup.

Also, for what it's worth, we fogbots go out into the world and persuade in other places, too. I spent some serious time this weekend with some folks who basically had only seen headlines like "OMG Obama's Bio confirms he was born in Kenya!" and did some good debunking. Those folks hadn't seen: the agent's statement, didn't know about the debunking of the layers stuff, etc. I have been pickled in the debunking brine for the past few years and was able to knock all the low-information arguments away. (The main guy didn't even bring up the SSN or Vattel ) But I was ready if he did!

The internet is crawling with those headlines, and acquaintances are seeing them. This stuff we do will matter.

Not all of us are Obama supporters, though. Some are just fed up with idiots.

Why would anyone want to morph into 'the next Daily Kos?' I used to waste a lot of time there but got fed up with the narrow-minded little group that control the input and the tolerance for inaccuracies and long dull pieces produced by a small favored group of insiders. You can't get away with that here because the common denominator seems to be a high regard for facts, accuracy and ferreting out the best information available with wit at the top of the value pyramid.

There are hundreds of RWNJ sites that feed each other and poison the tubz. Look how fast the Breitbart 'born in Kenya' story went around the globe in minutes and took up page after page in the search engines with only one site listed debunking it. Even after the author of the bio came out with a statement that she had made an error, look how long it took for Breitbart , Drudge and other sites to post it. Some never did. What we need is more sites like TPM that do more than aggregate. It was great to see that e-mail exchange between Bennett and Jill Nagamine. Bennett, if not challenged, is in a position to do some real damage. He may have been shocked at the number of people who challenged him on his misleading statements.

Falsehoods unchallenged only fester and grow.. The banner says it all.

^^^^^^ This!

As a group gets larger, its sense of community fades and it tends to fracture into smaller communities. That's what's happened (in fact, some years ago) to dKos (my dKos UID is 2007, and I've been there since 2003, so I've seen it happen), and you now have sub-groups and cliques, sometimes at war with each other.

But it happens everywhere as communities grow, the interests of their members diverge, and they grow too large for members to maintain personal relationships to each other. It happened to Politijab -- fracturing between those who wanted to continue to follow the birther/falsehood-debunk path, and those who wanted it to be a site for discussing other politics. Actually, what happened was that a few, mostly Justin, fractured off and the rest of us continued doing what we wanted to.

You're welcome to fracture off, if you would like, but top-down meta changes to communities largely just destroy the community. I enjoy the community of the wonderful people and fine minds here, myself. And the birther-debunking.

I agree there are thousands of general political forums or general forums that include sections on politics but this forum was specifically set up to follow and combat the birthers and their lies. It is the reason most of us are here.

There is the ability to post on topics of general interest or to cover specific political or criminal issues on this forum but for most of us the birthers are our hobby, interest or crusade.

Converting birthers? Nah. Those people have rocks in their heads. Providing truthful, reliable information to sane people and the media who look for it is the Fogbow's mission and what those who go about anti-birfing, in one way or another, are doing. It's worth a whole lot to the re-election effort, I say.

FB's mission isn't to convert true-believer birthers. That's not going to happen, for reasons previous posters have cited.

We provide facts that debunk the lies. Those facts are used by people in the media and elsewhere to hold birthers accountable to the wider public who (unlike us) isn't obsessed with this subject.

I can remember when we bemoaned the fact that media types didn't use us or other anti-birther sites and consequently got the facts wrong themselves, or missed key points. That's changed. More often now, anti-birther blogs and sites are used, and occasionally even cited to, as part of their research.

The research and efforts of anti-birthers has changed the meme. When Joe Apoo-poo puts out his Pissy Posse report, the reaction by anyone but die-hards is "meh". When Buddy-boy Bennett demands proof of Obama's "papers", he's held up to ridicule around the country...and his ties to Romney are commented on.

The operational understanding we've gained by our focus on birther activities is also bearing fruit for both government and private attorneys and the courts who are having to deal with the real world implications of their paper terrorism. Over time, they've come to realize the serious threat these frivolous lawsuits pose and the need to stop them dead in their tracks.* Legal eagles from across the anti-birther world have provided expert advice and support in doing just that.

The reality is that birthers and their sympathizers aren't going away. This fight will continue through and well beyond the election. FB and our sister sites offer ammunition to those who live in a reality-based world and understand the danger of the pernicious racism that underlays the birther movement.

Birthing isn't our only interest, as a group or individually. At the moment it is our chief focus because it needs to be.

*

Damn right or I would never, drink, get, drunk, fall, down and (eventually) get, up again

(never mind the whole.... women and evil companions part....... )

(Gratuitous commas courtesy of MOO's House of Hopeless Malware)

As I recall, a top-down meta change was attempted not that long ago. You can view the result at Politijab.com

Given the reactions I've seen to the AZ SoS at Fark and MeFi, nobody is ever really converted. But they are universally lambasted outside of their circle of stupidity by the left and the right.

And we all know it's not about where he was born, anyway, but that he was born the wrong color.

You know, we could convert a buncha birferz. But we'd have to make up a dogma that was more despicable than birferizm and all that makes it.

It wouldn't be able to have anything to do with reason or rationality. It would need to be full of hate and irrationality and supernationalism and American exceptionalism and fundy religious crazy. But what would be the upside of that?

I see what you did there PD.

How about a nice ism instead.

Well, we could add a Paypal button and make money from to help guide & illuminate the suckers, idiots, true believers, our new followers friends.

Some time ago I posted that birthers had too much invested in birtherism to ever acknowledge they were wrong. LM K said I was right so that should have ended the matter.

As other's have pointed out, this topic is far, far from being over.

Birferism is racism at it's core, and I think that's a topic that going to outlive all of us.



Perhaps. But if nothing else, birferism gives us a starting point to veer off into other "more important" topics (like cooking . Just don't let it go too far without starting a new thread, lest certain greenies whip out their threadjack rulers and whack you across the knuckles).



If I wanted to play on a forum like DailyKos, I'd be over there. Personally, I like it here better.

To address your original topic, where TFB has been helpful to me is discussing birferism with relatives who really don't like Obama, and are quick to grab anything negative they hear about him and start to believe it. TFB has given me way more ammunition to shoot down any bifer related argument than any proto-birfer will ever have to promote one. I've also learned more about the real-world working of law and courts than I could have just about anywhere else. I don't think we're ever going to "convert" any hard-core birfer, but that's not the point. To paraphrase an earlier post, they've already got the disease and there's nothing we can do for them. Our job is one of prevention, not cure.

I'll just repeat what I said on RC radio a few weeks back. The GOP needs smearing to win. They know it as much as we do. And right now, birferism is all they have got. They can't rag on Jeremiah Wright as that makes Rmoneys Mormonism a legitimate target. Plus the man was a Marine, and served his country, so that could dovetail into talking about Romney's chickenhawkism. Can't risk that.

Bill Ayers? Even republicans in Chicago wee defending the guy. And it was played out in the last election anyway.

Saul Alynsky? Possible, but there's no real evidence Obama ever really was into him. Besides, most people don't know who he is, and someday someone is going to point out that the people using his Rules for Radicals are all on the right wing. It was Brietbart's bible.

He was never vetted? Who cares, he's been in office 3 and a half years. He has a record now.

Birtherism is the only smear they have that has lasted. Its the only one with legs. Its the only one that has people talking. Its the smear that has lasted through 4 years of argument and keeps boiling up, because deep down it feeds on the inherent racism in American society. It even works on Blacks to a certain extent as it reminds them he is a half breed. it reminds Americans that he is somehow other. Exotic. Strange. Doesn't have the true American attitude. Uses foreign sounding big words.

Not what he seems.

That's why the GOP will and are pushing birtherism. They have no other choice. Brietbart's BS about "the fact that he actually did go to Columbia like he said proves he was lying!!!" won't play outside the deluded. That will keep the crazies committed but it wont drag votes away from Obama.

There is simply no other smear that the GOP can drag out that can hurt Obama at this point. Its the only one that has built up its own following and Mythology. If Larry Sinclair wasn't such a sack of shit they would probably have been pushing him. "Oh noes he did drugs in college!!!" "Yeah, he admitted it 15 years ago..."

Birtherism is all they have.

And thanks to the Fogbow, the reporters have an easily accessible source ready to go and proving that its all bullshit. They even know the questions to ask. Imagine if John Kerry had the Fogbow when the swiftboaters blew up and the reporters had a ready to play source for the right questions to pour cold water on Corsi's shit?

Phear the Phogbow.

Thank you for all the replies, it is clear now that most FogBowers would like this forum to stay the same. In that case may i suggest a compromise? What if while FogBow still focused on debunking lies about Obama's place of birth and eligibility it also has a special section on the home page which debunks lies about Obama's record as president?

For example a section which debunks Obama responsibility in rising gas prices, or how he wasn't really in command when Navy SEALs gave OBL what he deserves. This proposed section (Or sections) could be named according to the purveyors of the lies, for example "Breitbart Lies debunked" or "Limbaugh Lies Debunked." That way the core reason for FogBow existence is still not changed while at the same time it's debunking scope is expanded, so FogBow not just debunks lies from "Carnival Barkers" but also from the more reputable right wing smear merchants.

Do you agree with this suggestion?

Sounds reasonable enough. I do a bit of debunking of those anyway.

Sure, start writing.

But as most of the Home Page is my work and Foogy's, compiled from the boogle's research, I kind of like saying that our debunking is not hyper-partisan. Not all of us are liberal Democrats -- particularly not some of the most prolific debunkers, i.e. Loren and me.

Thanks but how do you get it on the home page?

BTW just because not everyone here are Obama supporters or liberals doesn't mean that they don't support debunking against the likes of Limbaugh. We may not like the same things, but we should equally hate slanders and smears.

I vote no on a partisan home page project.

We are not the Obama campaign. The campaign is capable of doing its own debunking of campaign smears directed at the President. Just as the Romney campaign is capable of handling its own campaign and the smears directed at its candidate. I note that it is not suggested that we debunk misinformation distributed regarding Mr. Romney and I object to devoting this forum to the re-election of Mr. Obama. As pointed out, many of us didn't vote for Obama and don't plan to vote for him this year. Lots of us aren't even US citizens.

I vote no.