well said

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Mari, I hope you will not leave. I agree with you.

I always thought that it was a bad idea to go to other sites and rile people up. While there are huge gaps in birther logic and the leaders of that "movement" are quite despicable, I don't see how going out of our way to call them effing dumbasses reflects well on our own powers of persuasion.

And when one of us does it, the rest of us are found guilty by association.

It's bad enough that the members of this forum are hunted by lunatics, but it is well beyond acceptable that innocent third parties will be harassed based on false information fed to the birthers. If any of us has contributed to this situation, shame on us all.

That said, I will not sit idly when Orly Taitz or Anthony Martin or any other fool calls me out on a public website, accuses me of wrongdoing and threatens to sue me or worse. I will continue to tell them to "bring it". I will not be intimidated by their BS. There are ways to get this across without resorting to the internet equivalent of screaming matches.

Peace out.

Yeah Mari, its something I try and remember. For me its a reminder to pause and reminds me to be balanced.

Not much more I can say that the quote does not say itself.

Wha?????

I'm trying really hard to think of ONE birther who is a decent person...

As Dwight said from his meeting a few birthers at the Lakin CM, most seemed like just your average person. They had this one far-fetched belief, though.

I completely agree with my sister Mari. I've never been one of the pokey sticks people. I much enjoy the active debates. Even more so, I enjoy the amazing stuff people here know in all sorts of fields. I just spent a happy half hour learning about eccentric dead mathematicians. I've come to enjoy looking in old books in the Google stacks, even if they are a bit dusty. I enjoy trying to get my head inside the Founders and the Framers and obscure legal cases that totally explain where we are today. I love Bogus's and Tolland's articles. I wish we had more true conservatives. I'm REALLY happy meeting folks in person, and want to do more of that. (Hmmm... it seems to be all about me today...)

The national debate on civility in civil discourse really hit home. The Youtube of the Sarah Palin death wishes was unnerving. The GretaWire threads were disturbing. We ban people here for insulting members -- insults much milder than ones I've seen from our folks with the pointy sticks poking at other sites. I agree with Mari and Raicha. We're better than that.

I LOVES my Foggy, but sometimes you need to wash your keyboard out with soap.

Whether birthers are decent or not, I hope we can be. Fighting fire with fire just burns everyone.

The more time you spend observing or talking with them, you find they have a whole string of far-fetched beliefs (and I use the word "belief" in the unverified/fiable faith sense).

I didn't threaten anything more than to put harsh comments in my tweets. I admit, I could have worded it better.

I've never sicced anyone on any innocent party. I have no idea who is doing so, and I doubt that any of our member are. I said last night, we had to warn the person who was wrongly identified as me.

I've never told birthers to come and get us, in fact I've taken precautions recently to try to stop them.

I've just spent an entire weekend reading personal information about me posted by birthers, being called insane, deranged and dangerous, and being hunted by a crazy woman (and if the truth be known, by other birthers too). On PJ I've gotten PMs from Noz calling me a hypocritical piece of crap, a fascist moderator, and a shitty human being. It has taken a toll on me.

If acknowledging Meroni's existence is a huge mistake, I wonder why her thread had 246 pages of posts before it was moved to Fogbow. Very, very few of those posts are mine. I have largely ignored her, just not today.

I don't see that we have any fewer facts or less information than we had at PJ. Someone will have to explain that to me with examples. I feel I've learned a lot more information since Fogbow opened.



But having said that, I take the comments to heart. I've tried very hard to make sure that everyone knows they can approach me with criticisms and I will consider them. Fogbow can't be a democracy, but I have done my level best to be a benevolent dick tater. I ask that if you have complaints, you bring them to me - publicly or privately - before you consider leaving the board. I will deal with you honestly and fairly, even if I disagree.

If it helps ... and even if it doesn't help ... I'm going to stop using Twitter and stop posting on any site at all except Fogbow.

But I'm not going back to PJ and pretend that birthers don't exist or that their existence is meaningless. I still think they're evil, and I enjoy fighting the evil. I will still criticize birthers here. If birthers join and read those comments, so be it.

On the other hand, taking a knife to a gunfight will generally prove to be ineffective at best.

The 20 or so big name birthers seem to have gone into a dark place that's taken over their lives, but I believe the majority of people who are of the birther persuasion are fundamentally decent people. I also believe Conservatives, Libertarians, Moderates, Progressives, and Liberals are fundamentally decent people. (Hey, it's a Pollyanna thread after all.)

The folks on any side that let conspiracy theories take over their lives and better judgement are another story.

mari

I would certainly not want to see you leave. You are a long time valued member and the forum would suffer a great loss.

I agree in principle with a lot what you said. However, let's remember this has been an emotional time for the last week or two. Foggy is under attack by Orly and her goon squad. I have posted things that I later regretted, also. The other night I got on ASK's chat room and called Sarah Palin a chickenshit and said some nasty things about birthers. It was stupid and helped along by wine. We are all human. We are better than them despite this. We are not motivated by race as I feel most of the birthers are. I think we still are after the truth no matter whether it is what we want it to be or not. We watch as these morons lie about a very decent President, great husband, and father and want to scream. I see crap like Anthony Martin posted about Brian, Justin, Foggy and realist and I want say nasty things to him. That is human nature. The internet can bring out the worst in people because of anonymity. That isn't new. We can't kid ourselves and think we are ever going to change all the birthers minds. But some will eventually listen as long as we tell the truth. I would bet that many birthers still come to PJ/TFB or Jack Ryan's SCRIBD page to find information on the cases before they check any place else.

Being civil does not mean creating a false equivalency, however. Many birthers are repeating things they should know are lies. I don't think calling them a liar is wrong in that case even if they have deluded themselves into believing that anything bad about Obama is true.

I'm somewhat in the middle here.

Poking birthers where they live hasn't been something I do, but I think it's a little rose-colored to look back at PJ and not remember it being done from there. It was all the time. And people had fun doing it, just like here.

On the other hand, I feel as Mari does that we need to do more straight debunking of birfer lies and maintain the discussion so that people who come for information can actually find information. Though I think we've been better at not thread-jacking here than we were at PJ, we seem to be doing less in a serious way of presenting information straightforwardly. One thing I miss is we seem to be having less in-depth legal analysis than we had at PJ. I'm sure it is tiring for the legal lights, but it really helps, when there is time to spell it all out.

On the third hand, I don't think we should take sh!t from anybody.

We can be reasonably well-mannered about it when it tracks to PJ/FB, or if it's our individual style anyway, but people have lives outside here and I don't feel comfortable telling them how to behave off-duty, so to speak.

I think you have some good points, and I agree if we want to be a serious debunking site, we should reconsider the "birther punching" we all seem to like to do. I agree things have gone too far when we're at the point where innocent people are being attacked by the flying monkey squads because they're really looking for us. But I say this gently and with all due respect, I hope you really do mean "we", because you do some denigrating and egging on too. Are you willing to give that up? PJ wasn't always all about the facts, there was birther pwning and egging them on at their own sites from the very beginning. It's not something new. I agree we can beat birthers with facts and logic and the law. But we're all human and we get sucked into the heat of the moment sometimes. Heck people on this forum are not always very respectful of each other. Members have told me my posts are a waste of their time.

Anyway, I'm interested in discussing some new boundary conditions for the forum if people think it would help turn down the heat before someone gets hurt.

Foggy, I think the issue is that the President can't take potshots at his enemies, he has to staff that out. It's not Presidential to poke sticks into the lion cage. He has to represent a higher level of discourse. That doesn't mean he can't rant and rail, it just means he should use a different screen name and not leave trails that link him to the Oval Office.

You are a GREAT dick tator. You allow a fabulous community to hang out in your rec room. Chill, go teach the fogspring how to work some tools and build something. Step back and get some perspective. Reload the fridge and fix the popcorn machine, it's been getting overheated from working too much.

Like the spew they put forth about us? Honestly, what goes around comes around, I always say. Treating them with courtesy while they are screaming at the top of their lungs about how we kill babies, want to destroy THEIR country, are commies who don't bathe is what gave them the idea to do away with us completely in the first place (see "permanent Republican Majority" or "Dominionism"). They see our cheek-turning as weak. No matter what we do, we will be in the wrong and the more we just back up and let the crazy go by, the more they use it against us.

I don't see what is going on as anything but fighting back against the slurs and misinformation. It's the only thing they know. Kindness and courtesy in the face of cruelty is a saint's way. I am not a saint. It works one on one, as we've seen with Noz, who was polite 80% of the time except when he couldn't help himself and let his true feelings be known - liberals are scum sucking bottom feeders. But trying to apply it to the entirety of birfistan is inviting a feeding frenzy in return.

The leaders of the birfer movement are not good people. Orly, Berg? No one will ever convince me they aren't more evil than good. Individuals in the comments of birfer blogs may or may not be in real life, but I haven't seen any humanity coming from them, no matter how sweetly we try to persuade. I'm serious about that. I'm not a flame thrower when I go to birfer blogs, but I always get slimed there no matter what I say. What goes around comes around. I'm not very tall. I can't be the bigger person in most situations.

This all comes back around to the civility debate. The left and the right both do it. Except what casual observers don't realize and we do is that the argument is really about whether The Left has any right to exist at all.

Bullies usually back down when stood up to, unless they don't. We'll see.

Plutodog was Plutodog (or some close approximation) before PJ/FB and will likely be Plutodog afterwards. Plutodog is a member of PJ/FB, but is not PJ/FB.

Foggy is Foggy who owns FB but while legally responsible (I understand, IANAL) for anything he allows to remain here that is illegal/libelous, but it doesn't seem to me he is FB in the sense of being responsible for any other legal/non-libelous thing others post here. If he doesn't allow a certain legal range of individual responses, he can't really run a thriving forum.

If Foggy says something here or elsewhere, it says "by Foggy" or some such. We are individuals with some shared interests, discussing issues and the people involved with those issues.

And yes, people can do both, post facts/opinion on facts and also post snark, insults (gratuitous and otherwise) on the same site which can lead to a tastier over-all piece of meat (I said meat, Sharon!). Lean meat may be healthiest but marbled meat has better flavor, IMO.

I love what mari writes and most everyone else. And I recognize that different people will write more or less on various issues and agree or disagree to varying degrees on various issues/personalities. It would seem to me that the people we need to worry about the reactions from regarding what's written here or elsewhere by FB people are able to distinguish things like this. The others aren't likely to and are often more likely to want to read things wrong. Why should they control FB content?

I guess I still don't get it. I want to be able to read Foggy here and elsewhere. He's not my minister or the head of my company. I don't feel threatened or shamed of anything he's said (while admitting that like anybody else, he may go too far or choose less than the best words at times). I think having him quit posting elsewhere as a result of the latest burps and blorps out of birfistan is unfortunate.

JMO/2cents

You've never heard of a fire break or a back fire???

I remember a time before Limbaugh, Clear Channel, Fox News, etc., when if somebody said the kind of stuff many of these wingnutters/teabaggers/birferz/tenthers/birchers, etc. said, they'd be laughed out of town. They would NOT be raking in big bucks on various MSM. Their crazy ideas would NOT have spread like they have. We might NOT have gotten involved in Iraq and we might NOT have RWNJ crazies running amok in public and government like they now.

Then Rush came along and various others followed. Talk radio that I grew up with that had hosts with varying perspectives went pretty much byebye and RWNJ radio became the dominant force out there. It grew and influenced without us fighting back with more than just the facts (just the facts were already there and ignored). I think the fire burning all is a generally true thing but not a truism in the sense I see it being used here. The people we're dealing with aren't going to be facted (non-word) out of anything and the media is not going to cover the boring truth tellers.

We can go too far. But we can also not go far enough. I'd rather err on the side of too far. I think recent history (last 30 years) shows the result of not far enough and I don't want to see that continue or resume. RWNJ now see FB as a threat. They should. We are performing a service which threatens RWNJobbery.

I hope we're able to think this through and not under- or over-react to current events. Think about how certain parties are or would be enjoying seeing this whole conversation. They're not applauding anyone's decency or more high-minded intentions. They want to see the whole thing go down. Why should we help them by fighting amongst ourselves?

Just to be clear, i don't see this as us fighting among ourselves. I see this as a clearing the air. I am not angry at anyone but RWNJ's And I love Mari like a sister, too, and she is totally entitled to her own, 180 degree from mine,opinion.

Agreed with second sentence entirely. Also third. And apologize if how I said anything was not stated clearly and in any way detracted from what I was saying. I would change "fighting" with "arguing" if that helps any.

How about discussing?

I know I have nothing to say of importance about this issue, but what I do want to say, is that I hope none of you leave, for I think that you are all nice people.

I am new here, but when I came to clear up something about me, none of you had to acept me, but you did with open arms and kindness, even though we sometimes agree or disagree.

The thing I found here was that we mostly agree to disagree and even doing that we are still kind, considerate, caring and friendly towards each other and that in my opinion is a great thing.

Now that I have said that and really butted in on something that I probably shouldn't have, I will shut up.