If I joined birther engagers, I'd never get anything else done.

There are no casual birfers left. There isn't a soul left who is just not quite sure. When the President released his long form, those casual birfers quit.

There are only lunatic birfers left.

And they lie.

But I want to sell them Birfer Merchandise. Because it's not fair that Corsi, Orly, and the others get all the Birfer Bucks.

And one of the admins was stuck at my house. A house without a computer.

He must really love you to put up with that kind of lousy guest treatment!

My problem wasn't with how fast it was publicly labeled a birfer. I might have personally preferred to let it pretend for a little longer, but that's just my way of setting up a kill. A group toy gets played with by everyone. What bothered me was how quickly the name calling and other nastiness started. First, it's always possible that the person is actually not a birfer and is asking honest questions. Pretty damn unlikely, but a little restraint might might make a friend out of a potential advisory.

Second, and more importantly, I think we hurt ourselves when we do this. We expect this kind of treatment of us on the birfer boards. They don't want to listen to stuff that shoots them down, so they immediately launch into "Obot" trash talk against us. Lots of nastiness and zero substance. We might be used to it from them, but that doesn't mean we should return it in kind. When we engage birfers the same way they engage us, we sorta let them define us, and I don't think that's a good idea. We've already defined ourselves as professional, sharp, and unimpeachable. Treating birfer toys the way birfers treat us, at least before they've earned it by bringing up dead babies, doesn't seem like a good way to play.

/preachy mode

Did that ever happen?

Why would I believe that now, after the President has released his 'long form' to put 'casual birthers' at ease, there would be a straggler or two who might find their way to the Fogbow?

Why would I believe that a guy asking questions about DNC Certifications is just asking honest questions?

I suppose this discussion is never going to end.

The man has a signature line about a dead infant, but you're gonna beat up on Fogbowers cuz they were too mean.

I simply disagree. This person sought out this site. If truly interested in all things birther he could have read and read. But he didn't.

After three or four innocuous posts, this person proceeded in the manner most birther trolls do, with a seemingly innocent question linked to a typical birther website, a website I note that would have generated many other questions first for someone wishing to learn about the controversies which are the specialties of this site. And the person found an old thread to match up to his innocuous question. That demonstrated his search skills were quite competent. (And, of course, all he had to do to have his question answered, was to read the posts immediately above his.)

If you couldn't see that he was a birther troll from that action, well I've got a bridge for you in Brooklyn.

I did confront him, but it wasn't in a disrespectful way. I would call it firm. And his responses made it immediately clear that he was here simply to link to discredited sites to make sure the manure was spread again..

Further affiant grumpy person sayeth not.

I don't think anyone did act that way with the most recent new birfer toy until he posted a link to a birther site and asked us to read it.

I make excellent brownies. And have the golf channel on my tv.

I beg your pardon, but did you actually read all of it, and see the whole timeline, before you started preaching? Or are you too busy to read it too?

And we DON'T return their "Obot trash talk" in kind. They have a nice playpen where we send them when they've started hardcore birfing, and they can birf there to their hearts' content, and you're welcome to go there and waste your time engaging them. All we did was announce that we had a birfer after he blatantly revealed himself. Sorry, but we don't need to wait for the dead babies or the AcornLady crap to know them and send them to their room.

Are you there engaging them? Or are you just preaching the holier-than-thou talk to us without walking the walk there? I don't waste my time in the birfer pen, so I don't know if you're actually there or not. But since you're telling us what we should put up with in the main forums, and since you seem to think that we're somehow letting them define us, I do hope you're over there correcting the situation.

What else could a man want.

Beer (or a passable Pinot Grigio).....

I'm with you, Mimi. Shoot, if they're willing to throw their money away, I'm willing to help them.

Thanks, Foggy.

I would always rather err on the side of caution. I think that's tattooed between my shoulderblades, mebbe, but I can't see back there and the mirror is backwards.

I remind myself that WE are the good guys, that if there are two people in a room and one of them is behaving horribly it BETTER NOT BE ME.

Don't call me a preacher.

When you say "you read their ...PMs", do you mean their PMs to YOU? Or do you, as admin, have access to everyone's PMs?

No, no one has access to PMs except those to whom they are addressed.

Foggy mentioned earlier that RIO had sent him a PM.

Slightly off-topic - I notice that "retired intelligence officer" has been banned over at FR.

http://www.freerepublic.com/~retiredintelligenceo/

Are you sure he ever posted over there? It says the same thing for nonexistent accounts too. Their software sucks

Yes - he posted quite a bit last year e.g.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2628311/posts

Yeah, I can only read PMs sent to me, but Sgt. Pretend Black Dude sent me one on Sunday night, protesting against him being put in the Birthers group, because he was just a black man who didn't know anything about the birthers and was here to learn and was just asking questions, and labeling him as a birther wasn't fair or even ethical.

'Course, by the next day he knew everything there is to know about being a lying, unAmerican, unpatriotic birther, and somehow his skin color changed, as if by magic. He went from not knowing if Orly was a man or a woman to knowing all about the Nordyke twins and Virginia Sunahara and every other thing. My own wife has been putting up with me and my anti-birther crap for three years, but she has no idea in the world about the Nordyke twins or Virginia Sunahara.

Other birthers have sent me PMs and emails, but this was the first one who protested on the grounds that he wasn't really a birther, and his PM is hysterically funny, now that I know more about the guy.

So, umm ... yeah. I read PMs if they send them to me. I read their posts. I'm trying to err on the side of caution, and not rush to judgment. But like I said, I don't ban birthers now unless they cross a huge line, like "vattel" (Dean Haskins) writing on Corsi's Facebook page that he saw me approve of an alleged Muslin conquest of the good ol' U.S.A. He made up an outright fake quote from me, and wrote that he got the quote from being a member here. Screw him. He's gonna be on Terry Lakin Radio. TLAF called him a "nationally syndicated columnist". But since the only place that publishes his bullshit is CanadaFreePress, TLAF was careful not to mention which nation he's a "nationally syndicated columnist" in ...

I like that!! And you embody it!!

I try, but am not always very successful.

I've been meaning to ask, WTF is up with "Canada Free Press"? Why should any American give a flying fig what a writer says about US Presidential eligibility on a site purportedly operating out of another country?

Next, we will be urged to agree with the "experts" on US homeland security at Al Jazeera.

Haskins at CFP has as much credibility as Orly Taitz spouting off on Pravda. But in the birfer bizarro-world, calling for the overthrow of a duly elected US President in the foreign and/or Communist-controlled press is "patriotism".

Jackasses.

I've wondered about that for a while. Why do we care what CFP thinks, and why do so many RWNJs pay attention to it. I had some posts about the editor back when I had a blog on TPM, and she's basically as big a liar as Corsi.

Just a fun fact: CFP used to handle the web duties for Michael Savage. But they apparently had a huge falling out at one time -- so big that the CFP saw fit to write a scathing article about him -- and he switched. Now WND is handling his web site. I think (but I'm not positive) that Savage and CFP have since kissed and made up, because I believe I remember seeing some positive Savage writeups.

Thanks to both of you. I figured, but just wanted clarification; I'm a member of several forums using this software and the thought that other people could read my PMs, was... unsettling.