I would like to make a suggestion if I might. I wonder if there is a thread that perhaps gives some sort of chronolgy of this birther nonsense. Kind of like a short and sweet version that highlights the significant events in this ongoing saga so that someone can get up to speed on the issue quickly. Ideally, there would be links so you could delve further into a particular aspect of the issue. I thought this birther issue had been finally put to bed and now it is sticking it's ugly head up again. I see alot of information here but would love to see it put into some kind of context. If this is available already please direct me. Thank you so much.

Well, well, well, looky who the Alley Cat dragged in! Welcome, broseph.

You might start with our Home Page Project. Click the logo at the top of the page.

that would be nice. But I can't see it happening. Just because of the sheer volume of work that would be involved.

In addition, the Fogbow picked up after Politijab closed to discussion of birthers (and then closed completely after that). So links to early birfer stuff are gone.

Loren is writing a book on the whole birther episode. We have that to look forward to.

jack ryan has most of the filings of the birther cases in his scribd account. That serves as a history of the legal cases.

the blogs listed at the bottom of the page have chronicled birfism quite well. Especially (in no particular order) Pat Gund's Bad Fiction blog, Adelante's Oh For Goodness Sake, nbc's Native and Natural Born Citizenship Explored, and Dr. Conspiracy's Obama Conspiracy Theories. They blog often.

In addition, Loren's Barackryphal has some great entries where he traces back the rumours and players.

Ballentine has some wonderful takedowns of some of the wacky theories about de Vattel, Minor v Happersett and such. For some reason his blog isn't in that list.

Other blogs listed below are also well-written and fun. They just don't blog as often. Well worth a visit though.'

And, our front page is an incredible resource for debunking. But that's not what you asked about. But for debunking, it's my first place to look.

There's actually no real way to get up to speed fast, because there is a huge cast of lunatics and freaks.

The Birther Scorecard is a great starting point, not for establishing that birthers always lose, but for a list of names to Google.

What we're doing here is not determining whether birthism is valid, because all sane people already know it isn't, but laughing at the crazy people who believe this insane bullshit, and monitoring their antics for amusement and (in a few cases) actual criminal threats to the country.

I think I had made a suggestion (or at lease I remember thinking about making a suggestion ) that the lead post of any given birther topic be updated with relevant events and doc links as they unfold. For instance, the Georgia Election Challenge would have been a prefect test case to try this as it now is approaching 2,800 posts, making it very tedious to put together a timeline after the fact.

I get lost in that thread, so I can imagine the pain of a newbie trying to get up to speed.

I can give it a stab. What sort of thing are you looking for? The Home Page was originally going to have a couple of paragraphs hyperlinked to the in-depth pages. It's hard to see the crop circle down here in the amber waves of grain.

^^^^^^^^ This.

Only a very few people can edit the first post in a thread, to wit, the author of the post and the mods/admins.

If we try to make the individual authors of each thread do this, no one will ever start another thread. If you're volunteering the mods/admins, no thank you very much. That would be like work!

I wish I had a better solution.

I remember feeling the same way when I first was introduced to the Fogbow. It took a while to get up to speed because there is just so much material to cover. These threads are mostly for analysis speculation and mocking as birther activity is found and reported. The home page links to the scorecard, the gallery are good places to start. You can always post a question here and get a quick answer and a link to a source. Don't be shy about asking questions. We haz experts galore and they like to share their eggspertise.

I'm not suggesting forcing anyone to do anything, but there has to be some solution so that the events can be organized better than having to sift through threads with thousands of comments. What about a wiki wherein trusted users can add/update entries with relevant information?

Discuss.

It seems like Jan 23, 2009 is oldest entries in this forum but I knows we was going on long before then on PJ. Just can't find anything older in any simple search.

There is a wiki. http://wiki.birtherdebunkers.net/index. ... =Main_Page

But someone "has to do something" to add to it.

You know what would be way cool? (I don't know of any forum platform that does this, but I think there are blogging platforms that do something like it.)

If any post could be 'tagged' (by its author, or by a mod) as an 'index' post (or 'bookmark,' 'landmark,' 'TOC,' or similar idea). And then if the forum software would offer a sidebar 'index' when looking at any thread, that collated all such posts for that thread, presented them chronologically in a little clickable table with date, author, and an excerpt of the first few words of the post (like an email preview).

The herd would learn to only tag such posts as actual events, announcements, filings, rulings, 'OMG she's suing so-and-so', explanations of applicable statute, and of course the inevitable post that is itself a summary, recap or background. If the index tag was abused, mods could remove them.

Total pipedream, I know, but I really think it's a great idea

We can haz a Birther Timeline like the Scorecard and the Calendar. I'm starting now, people can add big milestones to this thread. Just put any new adds in a non-black color.

February 10, 2007 Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) announces he is a candidate for the 2008 Presidential election.
February 25, 2008 Factcheck.org publishes report on John McCain's eligibility
May 2008 Rumors build on the internet that Senator Obama was born in Kenya. See Secret Origin of the Birthers
June 9, 2008 National Review Online journalist Jim Geraghty writes "Obama Could Debunk Some Rumors By Releasing His Birth Certificate." Rumor one: Obama was born in Kenya. Rumor Two: Obama’s middle name.
June 12, 2008 Obama campaign releases digital scan of Barack Hussein Obama II's Certificate of Live Birth on the campaign's new "Fight the Smears" web site.
June 16, 2008 FactCheck.org publishes report on Obama's Certificate of Live Birth (COLB) including pictures taken at the candidates Chicago office.

OK, give me milestones. I'll make it pretty.

Is that a Foghorn controlled site? The wiki appears busted and if it's not a Foghorn site, I really wouldn't invest my time contributing to content.

No, Politijab opened on that day, three days after the inauguration. Look at the member list. Brian created PJ the day before.

Remember, Justin allowed me to copy ALL the birther-related posts from PJ into Fogbow.

Yes, the wiki is my baby, and I seem to have messed it up. I'm working on it. I have plenty of copies of the database, but the wiki isn't connecting. Gimme until tomorrow and I'll have it back.



But in all honesty, I did a ton of work on the wiki, including I made like three YouTubes to show people how to edit it and I added all sorts of cool features so you could embed YouTubes and graphics and such. But nobody else wanted to work on it, so I quit.

Doc C. bought the software a long time ago. He asked for volunteers. Some started.

ETA: I think that's the site where Dr. C. bought the software and started a wiki. I know one existed. I am assuming that's the same site.

It is an issue on any busy forum that some really important posts get quickly buried in long topics. For example, the other day I was looking for the video that LaFrance had just released from the hearing in Hawaii on the 6th and it took a while to find it. I use the bookmark feature on the forum but it bookmarks the entire topic. I wish you could add bookmarks to certain posts. The "search within topic" feature is pretty useful if you can guess the right search phrase.

I actually tried neon's suggestion a while back on a topic I started. I kept editing the original post with new links. I can't remember which one it was. Like all good things it takes effort and someone committed to do it who probably already has other things to do.

No, ma'am.

Today we really ARE getting up to speed, huh?

The software is FREE, as in no money. Yes, this was a project started by Doc C. In those days, it was called ObamaFringe, remember? And instead of a photo of the president, the logo was a pig with lipstick, remember? Is it coming back to you now?

Doc C gave the wiki to the poor ol' rooster, free of charge, as in still no money. He even gave me the domain name.

I moved it to a new domain (birtherdebunkers.net) and made other, umm ... improvements. Yeah, that's what they were, improvements.

It's my baby now, with Doc's blessing.

Give me milestones, people. I'm doing the heavy lifting here.

I'm out of time. Can't give milestones.

The wiki doesn't have a timeline. Maybe it should.

It does have a primer on the issues. Poutine (he's on hiatus) did a ton of work on it.

Birtherism in a nutshell

okay, rooster. sorry i got it wrong.

Milestones or a Timeline is a great idea. How does one give you a milestone and where will it go so people can find them when they are compiled or while they are being compliled?

I'm doing the timeline. All you need to do is post here something like this:



Hidden if you want to. The idea is that I get too granular (as evidenced by the Home Pages). What makes the most sense for someone getting up to speed isn't how many motions Orly filed in her lawsuits, but what the major ones were, when they were launched, when they were decided, and what was the outcome. It will probably look like this:



I appreciate all help!