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Boeing Performs Crash Test on 787 Dreamliner
August 29, 2007
Last Thursday, Aug. 23, Boeing performed a crash test on the new compositely constructed 787 Dreamliner in Mesa, AZ. In a closely monitored environment, Boeing dropped a cutaway section of the fuselage, without its top, onto a test platform.
Boeing conducted this test as the third of three physical drop tests for the 787 structure to validate the analytical tool that will be used to demonstrate compliance with the Special Condition published by the FAA (on the Federal Register) to cover the crashworthiness of Boeing's composite structure, according to Adam Morgan, spokesperson for 787 communications.
The test is to appease the Special Condition in the Federal Register issued by the FAA in regard to the 787 being constructed mainly out of composites. Since this is a new feature in airplane design, Boeing has to prove the plane's safety as compared to traditional planes, mainly constructed of aluminum.
"To account for the missing top structure (called the crown), additional braces, supports and ballast were added to simulate the mass of the airplane and match internal loads," Morgan said about the test. "The half barrel and the platform were instrumented so we could measure the results."
Morgan said he wasn't able to comment on how the composites held up compared to aluminum, nor was he able to comment on the results of the test or how they tested.
"We're still analyzing our results, but initial indications show the test was successful and achieved many of the goals intended," he says.
The integrity of the test set up was verified by the FAA.
Boeing is still on schedule to deliver the 787 Dreamliner to its first customer, All-Nippon Airways in May of 2008.
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IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-09-01:
<youpi> hum, f951 does myriads of 71->io_seek_request (32768 0) = 0 32768
<youpi> no wonder it's slow
<youpi> unfortunately that's also what it does on linux, the system call is
just less costly
<youpi> apparently gfortran calls io_seek for, like, every token of the
sourced file
<youpi> (fgetpos actually, but that's the same)
<youpi> and it is indeed about 10 times slower under Xen for some reason
IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-11-02:
<youpi> btw, we have a performance issue with xen
<youpi> an lseek() call costs a huge lot
<youpi> like 1ms
<youpi> while the same costs just a few dozens µs with kvm
<youpi> there's of course the cost of switching between ring3, ring0,
ring1, ring0, ring3, but still
<gianluca> oh, nice.
<youpi> lseek is supposed to perform only a back&forth
<youpi> and I don't observe disk activity, so it's not waiting for the disk
to complete whatever atime change & such :)
<youpi> it was mentioned that perhaps xen in hvm mode with pv drivers would
be faster
<youpi> thanks to the ring3/"1" switching being done by the processor
<youpi> (and assuming npt)
<gianluca> hm
<gianluca> i'll look into that, sounds fun.
<gianluca> :)
<tschwinge> Here is a testcase:
Also see the simple testcases test-lseek.c and test-mach.c.
IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-11-05:
<youpi> [test-mach.c is] mostly as a reference for the trap overhead
<youpi> 0.56µs (xen) vs 0.48µs(kvm) on test-mach
<youpi> 455µs(xen) vs 16µs(kvm) on test-lseek
<youpi> that might simply be an issue in the RPC mechanism, which behaves
badly with the xen memory management
<youpi> yes, about 0.5ms for an lseek, that's quite high :)

subset: commoncrawl


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ASSATEAGUE — Two men were charged with week in connection with the shooting death of one of Assateague's famed wild horses during a two-day firearm deer season on the barrier island last January.
Assateague Island National Seashore officials announced on Tuesday charges have been levied against two individuals, one for shooting the horse during the controlled hunt and the other for providing false information during the investigation. Justin B. Eason, 26, of Federalsburg, has been charged with illegal taking of wildlife, use of a weapon that endangers persons or property, destroying wildlife from its natural state and knowingly giving a false or fictitious report.
Another man, John A. Eason, 51, of Preston, has been charged with knowingly giving a false or fictitious report. Each of the violations carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. Last January, one of the wild horses inhabiting Assateague Island was found dead, the victim of a gunshot wound, during a planned, two-day deer hunt on the barrier island. The 28-year-old horse was found dead by a hunter on Jan. 15 and reported to park rangers the following day.
For several months, Assateague Island park rangers conducted a lengthy investigation including interviewing several hunters and witnesses and collecting forensic evidence. The two men charged in the shooting of the horse were identified from a list of 140 hunters participating in the controlled, two-day deer hunt.
Chief Ranger Ted Morlock this week praised the investigating park rangers and their partners, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the National Park Service's Special Agent Offices, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and its local field agent and forensics laboratory. Morlock also called the incident an isolated one.
"I want to thank the many hunters who continue to safely hunt at Assateague Island National Seashore," he said. "The success of our hunting program has always depended on the cooperation of hunters and our shared interest in the resource, good sportsmanship and ethical hunting practices."
The horse that was killed was a 28-year-old mare with the identification number N2BH. While some of the wild ponies on Assateague are known by regular names, each is assigned a letter-number combination linked to the specific herds that allow park officials to track their whereabouts and breeding habits, for example.
During her lifetime, N2BH foaled six times and had 11 second or third generation offspring. In recent years, N2BH had been treated annually with contraceptives as part of a broader effort to maintain the size of the wild horse population at a sustainable level.
The two-day January deer hunt on Assateague is part of the National Seashore's annual hunting program that includes several gun seasons during the fall and early winter. In addition to providing a unique and popular recreational opportunity, the hunting program is used to manage resident deer populations.
Two species of deer are found on Assateague including the native white-tailed deer and the non-native sika deer, introduced to the island during the 1920s. Without the control provided by hunting, the non-native sika deer population would quickly grow and harm the native island environment. Hunting was authorized on Assateague by the federal legislation that established the National Seashore in 1965.
While there has been some discussion about reducing the number of hunters allowed on the barrier island during the planned deer hunts, Morlock said the incident last January will not have bearing on that decision.
"This unfortunate incident does not reflect on the hundreds of responsible hunters who come to Assateague every year and will not adversely affect decisions pertaining to our hunting programs," he said.


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What do you know about the 'Star of Bethlehem' that was mentioned in the New Testament of the Holy Bible
Star of wonder, star of night! Star of royal beauty bright; westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy Perfect Light. --"We Three Kings of Orient Are"
The first recorded reference to the star of Bethlehem is found in the New Testament of the Bible, in the second chapter of Matthew. Here it is written that, "In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, 'Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star rising, and have come to pay him homage'...When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy."
Around this time of year, many people wonder about that star mentioned long ago. What was its cultural significance? What's the astronomy behind the star? Craig Chester, president of the Monterrey Institute for Research in Astronomy, says that the star is, "a mystery and a puzzle, involving, not only theology and astronomy, but also history and even astrology."
Some think it was a nova (whose brightness would last a few days). But that explanation does not allow for the two months the wise men probably needed to journey from Arabia or Mesopotamia. Other people think that the star that was referred to in the Bible was actually a comet. A comet could have moved across the sky during the journey of the wise men. However, their is no historical record of a comet appearing around the time when Jesus was born.
The most probable astronomical theory behind the star is that of a planetary conjunction. A conjunction is when two or more objects appear very close together in the sky. The closer the objects, the brighter the conjunction. Two such astronomical events happened around the time of Jesus' birth, the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces, and the conjunction of Jupiter with Regulus, the star of kingship (which has been taken to have special significance to the king of the Jews mentioned in Matthew).
Finally, some would say that the star was not any specific astronomical event, but simply a provision of the God of the Bible heralding the coming of Jesus.
Submitted by Gene (Florida, USA)
(December 18, 1997)


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Fold & Go Princess Castle 3+ YEARS Item # : 3708 This charming wooden castle, with convenient carrying handle, is perfect for your little princess. Its beautifully detailed exterior opens easily to reveal a royal palace furnished with four pieces of regal furniture and two horses. The prince and princess who live here are sure to live happily ever after! Dimensions: 13.44" x 10.38" x 7.19"
Fold & Go Princess Castle


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The future's looking pretty good from this partygoer's viewpoint.
Mid-December, 1999—By this time you've had your fill of annual, centennial, and millennial retrospectives, Auntie hopes. Enough trees have been sacrificed for millennium topics to have supplied oxygen, unfortunately, to the entire Federal government, and it won't end until long after we cross 12 a.m., January 1. So, the last thing Auntie feels like doing, while my Fabio mixes up a batch of his notorious FireWallBangers, is to pound out a few more words on the keyboard in a look back to a date in 1656 when some scientist, before his obligatory beheading, discovered that combining phlogiston and saltpeter in the presence of DOS LXIV resulted in the creation of limeade and Rush Limbaugh.
Auntie prefers to take stock of the present and look ahead. In our insular world of information technologies, the present is darned good. There's plenty of work for those who've kept up their skills and been willing to put in the effort to deliver quality work and solutions to employers and customers. The money's good if the work's good. While the past several months have been a bit slow due to Y2K lockdowns, we all know that if business makes it through Y2K in decent shape, there'll be a lot of catching up and plenty of business in 1Q00.
By the time you read this, Windows 2000 may have been officially released to manufacturing. At the time of this writing, Win2K is at the RC3 stage, and it hasn't blown up any box Auntie's seen it on. It's feature-complete and fairly impressive. Early adopters have deployed it in beta and RC. How will it perform on your WAN?
We have a new OS with a stronger security subsystem and an integrated directory service, which developers can leverage for new applications. Exchange 2000 is just around the corner, a key selling point for Microsoft as it encourages migration to Win2K. Exchange 2000's improved development environment and use of the Active Directory may very well accomplish this, and how many of us would've believed that six months ago?
Still, Auntie has some sage advice: Don't try to migrate an enterprise to Win2K without serious planning (so, the advice is also obvious). This isn't a "pop in the CD and let 'er rip" upgrade. Your customers may groan at the time spent, but they'll be grateful in the long run. And even if they aren't, you'll have already been paid.
Look for the next year to be busy in bookstores and testing centers, as we mentally vacuum in study guides and Win2K books and physically engulf triple soy decaf hazelnut cappuccinos. If it hasn't sunk in yet, Win2K is a heck of a lot more complex than NT. Expect the new exams to be a challenge; Microsoft is going to make sure that we earn the MCSE-Win2K certification.
Maybe Auntie's a bit maudlin, but it wouldn't hurt any of us a bit to give thanks (to whomever or whatever you give thanks to) for our relatively good professional fortune. The next time you're grumbling about your job, step back and get some perspective. Despite the market being in flux, Y2K challenges looming, and new technologies keeping one step ahead of you, if you agree that these things make life and a career in IT better, write to me and tell me why. If you disagree, also let me know (but don't just write, "Auntie, you're nuts.").
One More for the Y2K
Okay, so Em is eating her words. I haven't written much this year about Y2K, except for the occasional survivalist joke. It's well-covered in other media, and I see no point in adding to the deluge. By now, you've done your checks. If not, Auntie has no sympathy for you whatsoever.
I'm no seer, and I have no idea what to expect come New Year's day. I hope that IT professionals around the world have been diligent enough that any Y2K issues that do crop up only result in inconvenience, and that no human being suffers physical harm because someone was sloppy or lazy or because some business or government didn't give a damn to check their systems fully. What a coda that would be for a millennium. In Woody Allen's movie, Sleeper, Miles Monroe is told that civilization was destroyed when a man named Albert Shanker (in 1973, he headed New York City's teacher's union) got hold of a nuclear warhead. Let's not give Woody any grist for his next film, okay?
Just in case, this gal and her Fabio have laid in extra supplies of snacks and ferret treats, and we'll be withdrawing a few extra dollars out of the bank—but that's about it. May all the survivalists be proven wrong, and may none of them be too disappointed that they didn't get a chance to use their bunkers.
As for you, best wishes for the holidays, and may your New Year's celebrations be joyous and otherwise uneventful.
About the Author
Em C. Pea, MCP, is a technology consultant, writer and now budding nanotechnologist who you can expect to turn up somewhere writing about technology once again.
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Despite the death and destruction his security forces are raining down on opposition-held neighborhoods in Syria, President Bashar Assad is unlikely to succeed in crushing a year-old rebellion. International revulsion at the crackdown and the breadth of an uprising that has seen Syrians take up arms in a fight to the death also make it increasingly unlikely that Assad will manage to re-establish the status quo ante through military force. But even if he can't win, Assad may have reason to believe, as he surveys the national and international battlefield he has created, that he can nonetheless fight to a messy draw. The difference between a draw and a defeat, for Assad, now amounts to this: Will he be at the table when a political solution to the conflict is negotiated?
The European Union on Monday announced new sanctions against Assad's regime in support of demands that he end his assault on opposition strongholds and accept an Arab League plan that requires him to surrender power. But the E.U. measures amounted largely to an incremental tightening of those previously imposed. The meeting in Tunis last Friday of the Friends of Syria ad hoc forum also confirmed that while Western and Arab powers concur on the need for Assad to step down — and before that, to halt his assaults on rebel-held areas and allow in humanitarian relief supplies — there is limited agreement on new strategies to pursue those goals. Western powers have no appetite for direct military involvement in Syria, not only because of post-Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya intervention fatigue, but also because the sectarian and regional political stakes in Syria's conflict threaten regionwide chaos. Support for direct military intervention appears to be lacking even if those doing the fighting are not Western troops: Qatar failed in its efforts to persuade the Friends of Syria to back intervention by an Arab force that would invade Syria to open humanitarian corridors to besieged cities.
(PHOTOS: Free Syrian Army Joins Anti-Assad Protests)
Qatar has since defaulted to the Saudi view that arming Syria's rebels is, as the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, put it, "an excellent idea." The vociferous advocacy of the Gulf states for funneling weapons to the insurgents reinforces widely held suspicions that they're probably already doing so. There may even be some nonlethal aid from Western countries, including communications equipment, medical supplies, night-vision goggles and other such equipment, reaching rebel forces. But the Saudis, who reportedly walked out of the Friends of Syria forum at one point, allegedly decrying its "inaction," could not persuade the forum to endorse even that idea.
The U.S. certainly remains skeptical of the proposal to send weapons to the opposition. "We don't really know who it is that would be armed," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a CBS interview last weekend, noting the amorphous nature of the opposition and the fact that some of its elements are inimical to U.S. foreign policy goals. The Syrian opposition had the backing of al-Qaeda and the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas, she said, raising the question of whom the U.S. would be supporting if it provided arms. "Despite the great pleas that we hear from those people who are being ruthlessly assaulted by Assad, you don't see uprisings across Syria the way you did in Libya," she continued. "You don't see militias forming in places where the Syrian military is not, trying to get to Homs … So if you're a military planner or if you're a Secretary of State and you're trying to figure out, Do you have the elements of an opposition that is actually viable? That, we don't see."
(PHOTOS: The Syrian Civil War: Photographs by Alessio Romenzi)
The U.S. and its allies may have hoped to crown the Syrian National Council (SNC) as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, as they did with the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council ahead of the intervention in Libya last year, but the fact that the Tunis gathering hailed the SNC as "a" rather than "the" representative of the Syrian people was telling. The extent of the SNC's authority on the ground remains questionable, and even its influence over the Free Syrian Army — the umbrella insurgent organization of defectors from the regime's army and civilian volunteers, whose own control over fighting units on the ground appears to be limited — is far from established. Some have argued that providing arms will help organize the rebellion and build up the political authority of the SNC leadership under whose auspices such arms would be provided. But Clinton's concerns may have been underscored by Sunday's news that some of the SNC's most senior leaders had broken away to form the Syrian Revolutionary Patriotic Group, challenging the effectiveness of the SNC and giving less equivocal backing to armed rebellion.
While the majority of U.N. member states have backed the Arab League plan, Assad still enjoys strong support from Russia and Iran, and countries such as China and Iraq insist that any solution in Syria be based on diplomatic reforms and dialogue with the regime, rather than its a priori replacement. Needless to say, the Assad regime concurs: even while it continued to rain artillery fire down on Homs and other opposition strongholds on Sunday, the regime also managed to stage a referendum on a package of constitutional reforms. Opposition leaders denounced the vote as a farce, given the war being waged, and there's no way it could be taken as a sign of national consensus behind Assad-led reforms. But even if the regime's claim of a 57% turnout was exaggerated, Western journalists in the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo saw thousands of young voters turning out to participate in the poll in spite of opposition calls for a boycott. That served up a timely reminder that Assad's regime retains a substantial support base, with a number of key constituencies — particularly his Alawite sect that dominates key military units, as well as Christians and other minorities that together make up as much as a third of the population — fearful of their prospects, should the rebellion triumph.
(MORE: Three Acclaimed Journalists Die Covering the Syrian Conflict)
By militarizing the political contest in Syria, Assad has effectively created a sectarian civil war that presents the Syrian population with stark choices that work in his favor. And the more intense and protracted the military conflict becomes, the greater the danger that the de facto leadership of the rebellion passes to more extreme and sectarian elements — which, of course, reinforces Assad's own hold on his core support.
All sides in Syria, then, appear to be hunkering down for a protracted civil war — a conflict of a type that, given the external backing on which the combatants rely, is unlikely to end in a rout by either side. And if it ends at the negotiation table, as the Balkan wars of the 1990s did, Assad will be hoping at least to secure his place as a key player at the table. Indeed, even the SNC in a statement last Friday appeared to walk back from its refusal to engage with the regime, saying that negotiation — if the regime first agrees to a cease-fire — "is still possible and is likely the best way to achieve the desired goal of regime change." Council members and Western diplomats also tell reporters that Russia's role remains crucial in achieving any settlement to end the violence, despite its dissent from the international consensus.
No surprise, then, that E.U. officials were careful following the adoption of the new sanctions on Monday to stress the importance of the role of Kofi Annan, the former U.N. Secretary-General who has been appointed as joint U.N.–Arab League envoy for Syria. His job, of course, will be to talk the Assad regime and its enemies into some sort of workable compromise that can end the violence.
MORE: Just When They Needed It Least: The Syrian Opposition Fractures Again


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APD candidates must be at least nineteen (19) years of age on or before May 15, 2021, to be admitted to the written test. Eligibility for appointment as a police officer begins when the candidate reaches age 20. Candidates who reach their 35th birthday on or before the date of the written examination are not qualified. EXCEPTION: Candidates may have a period of military duty or terminal leave up to six (6) years.
Effective July 24, 2013, a valid NYS Driver's License is required at the time of appointment and for the duration of employment.
By the date of appointment, candidates must be a high school graduate or hold an equivalency diploma issued by an educational department of any state in the US or hold a comparable diploma issued by any commonwealth, territory or possession of the US or by the Canal Zone or hold a report from the United States Armed Forces certifying successful completion of the tests of general educational development, high school level.
Show All Answers
The Albany Police Department is a full-service, 24-hour police department with three 8 hour shifts. Employees, both sworn and non-sworn work 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. or 12:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. Employees on special assignments may have flexible or different hours depending on their role at the department.
Police Officers working in the patrol division have a rotating schedule. Patrol Officers work five shifts and then have two days off for a two week period. The next week, they work four shifts and then have two days off allowing your days off to change on a consistent basis. Other employees of the department may have a set or different schedule depending on their position or needs of the department.
The New York State Civil Service Exam for Police Officers is typically administered every two years. The next exam is scheduled for May 15, 2021. Apply to take the exam.
Email a recruitment officer for more information.
Candidates must be at least 19 years old on or before the test date to be admitted to the written test. Pursuant to New York State Civil Service Law Section 58.1 (a), applicants for examination may be no "more than thirty-five years and zero days of age as of the date when the applicant takes the written examination, provided, however, that time spent on military duty or terminal leave, not exceeding a total of six years, shall be subtracted from the age of any applicant who has passed his thirty-fifth birthday as provided in subdivision 10-a of section 243 of the military law." A full list of requirement can be seen on the exam announcement.
As a police recruit, your salary will be $52,227 and will go to $60,538 upon graduating the police academy. You'll receive increases for five years until you reach the Police Officer Grade IV which is $75,672. Albany police officers are also compensated in overtime pay for various aspects of their job. There is also promotional opportunity throughout your career to advance in rank which comes with an increase in salary.
Residency in the City of Albany is not required; however, preference in appointment may be given to candidates who have been legal residents of the City of Albany for at least 30 days immediately preceding the date of the written exam. As recently as our current academy class we have hired residents of the county and surrounding areas.


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Omens in America: Washington, DC Has Been Put on Notice
Cosmic Convergence, Contributor
Waking Times
9/11 ~ 2011 Earthquake & Hurricane Duo ~ 2012 Derecho over DC
For anyone who fails to see that a Higher Power is speaking to the USA, perhaps now is the time to take a close look at some "OMENs in America" which have occurred since the beginning of the New Millennium. Just because biblical prophets in the style of an Isaiah or Elijah are no longer around to interpret the omens, does not mean that signs and wonders are not happening all about us. As a matter of fact, omens and prophetic signs are occurring in such numbers and with such frequency that it is difficult to keep up with them.
In order to pierce through the pervasive cynicism and hard-wired skepticism which has enveloped the modern mind, we only have to point to the most prophetic event of this 3rd Millennium. Clearly, 9/11 has proven to be an event with the most wide-ranging repercussions since WWII; it's also the most consequential the planet has seen since then.
See how this single day's acts of state-sponsored terrorism (false flag operation perpetrated by the World Shadow Government) changed the world in ways so profound and fundamental. As it continues to trigger major moves on the global geo-political chessboard, as well as alter the very fabric of American society. Clearly, the "land of the free, home of the brave" has morphed into an Orwellian landscape with dystopian features coming into sharper relief by the day.
So much of what we see today, and especially what we don't see, was cooked up as a prelude to, during and after 9/11. Truly, it has become the defining event of the 21st century. Whenever an event has such deep political, economic and social impact on an entire nation, especially one that will see to it that the whole world will be significantly affected, we call that an OMEN. How could it not be given the catastrophic nature and far-reaching ramifications of this attack on America?
For those who need further evidence as to the enormity and gravity of exactly what has taken shape throughout the land in the wake of 9/11, consider the following analogy to J.R.R. Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS. This trilogy stands as the preeminent prophetic work of the post World War II era. It possesses references to the most earth-shattering events and world-catalyzing phenomena, which we see in the major developments of the 'civilized' world over the past century.
9/11: An OMEN for the New Millennium
LORD OF THE RINGS tells the real story
If you're unable to perceive the connections between 9/11 and some of the essential elements of LORD OF THE RINGS, then consider Tolkien's "The Two Towers" in an entirely different light. Just like the Ring of Power, the symbolism has many layers of meaning that are pregnant with both personal and global significance for every inhabitant of Planet Earth. So weighty are the portents in this trilogy, that we ignore them at great peril. The Universe has spoken loudly to humanity through the 9/11 event; avoiding individual or collective responsibility has now placed the entire civilization in jeopardy.
Freak Virginia Earthquake and Hurricane Irene of 2011
On Tuesday, August 23 of 2011 "the 2011 Virginia earthquake occurred on at 1:51 pm EDT (17:51 UTC) in the Piedmont region of the US state of Virginia. The epicenter, in Louisa County, was 38 mi (61 km) northwest of Richmond and 5 mi (8 km) south-southwest of the town of Mineral. It was an intraplate earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 and a maximum perceived intensity of VII (very strong) on the Mercalli intensity scale. Several aftershocks, ranging up to 4.5 Mw in magnitude, occurred after the main tremor." This earthquake "is the largest to have occurred in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains since a quake centered in Giles County in western Virginia occurred in 1897″.[1]
So powerful was this earthquake that two very significant national structures were severely damaged. Although we read and see very little about the destruction to these national landmarks in the mainstream media, the Washington Monument remains closed to this very day and the Washington National Cathedral will be undergoing reconstructive surgery for years to come.
"A National Park Service spokesperson reported that surveys revealed cracks near the top of the Washington Monument, the world's tallest stone structure, which was closed indefinitely. The quake damaged three of the four pinnacles (corner spires) on the central tower of the Washington National Cathedral, cracked some of its flying buttresses, and caused additional damage." (Per Wikipedia – 2011 Virginia earthquake)
Just a few days after the Virginia earthquake, Hurricane Irene blew through the very same geographic area as the first named hurricane of the season. This storm hit the Washington DC area so hard that it revealed just how serious the cracks in the Washington Monument really were. Here's an update straight from the US National Park Service.
Washington Monument closed indefinitely
What's the point of this OMEN? When an earthquake and hurricane tag team jolts the nation's capital in the same week, which inflicts unprecedented damage to the most symbolic national structures, perhaps there is a message, yes? Incidentally, the driving rains from Irene were so strong that they made sure that every crack and crevice caused by the recent earthquake would should up in a quite dramatic way. Kind of like Mother Earth saying that she could have destroyed the whole stone edifice with one momentary quake, but instead left those in charge with an unfixable 'monolith' which can no longer function (read transmit) as it was designed.
Being the world's tallest stone monument, this obelisk was quite deliberately positioned in a specific direction and at a specific distance from the White House and the Capitol building. It is first and foremost a power structure of the first order and was designed to draw down and focus certain types of energies which have supported the dominant role that the USA has played in the world. Who would disagree that this nation has assumed a very unique position of worldwide ascendancy, across many spheres of life, given its relatively short history.
Every freemason knows that when the architecture has shifted or the foundation is cracked, the end is near. Especially when that architecture happens to be located in the capital city of the most powerful country on earth. The pre-eminent monuments and structures of every nation hold great meaning and power for their citizens. When they are damaged or destroyed, invariably the body politic suffers a wound which must be looked at and seriously contemplated. Just as the US missile attack on the Pentagon and the controlled demolition of the WTC Twin Towers have forced many of us to do for the past 11 years, especially those who reside in the greater Washington, DC and New York City areas.
There are many other connections and coincidences surrounding this 2011 tandem event brought to us by Mother Nature herself that are well beyond the scope of this essay. However, in light of the destruction at the Pentagon just 10 years earlier, it is now clear that 'someone' is trying to give an urgent message to DC, don't you think?
The Super-Derecho of 2012
Here's the recent headline of the Derecho which has caused many to still be out of power.
Rare 'Derecho' Storm Ravaged Washington Area
Can you believe a 700 mile long storm front that moved like a mini-hurricane or maxi-tornado all the way from Chicago to Washington DC? Aren't these two cities now connected at the hip, especially with a sitting president hailing from the state of Illinois. Chicago is probably the most controlled city in America after NYC and DC. It's history of graft and corruption are legendary as is its many think tanks like the University of Chicago which either influence or outright control policy (especially economic/financial) all the way to the top of American Government and beyond.
Intense Storms Called a "Derecho" Slam 700 Miles of the US
When a storm is so powerful that it causes 3 million to lose power, especially when the locus of power outages is concentrated throughout the Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland area, something's up. The very symbolism of losing power in an area like The Beltway is as poignant as it is profound. When the very heart of the nation's political, military and judicial power center goes into cardiac arrest, especially through Independence Day week, someone is attempting to deliver some kind of message, don't you think?
Particularly significant is the timing of this event four days after a pair of decisions were issued by both the Supreme Court on the Affordable Care Act and the Congress concerning a momentous contempt citation against the US Attorney General. Both are pretty HUGE happenings when they occur in the midst of a tumultuous presidential election cycle.
With this Derecho we saw an unparalleled windstorm blow all the way from the Windy City of Chicago to the city of Windbags known as DC. If that's not an OMEN ….
Where else do we want to go with this one? Everyone lost their power for a day or two or more and many will be out for some time. That a freak weather event like a derecho occurred right in the middle of the longest and most intense heat wave throughout the very same region is all the more telling. No power just when you need it the most for air conditioning, refrigeration, medical and health reasons, etc. And there's nothing you can do about it, until the repairs are made, or you decide to accept life off the grid for a stretch of an unknown period of time.
Casual Observation: When powerful people, who live, work and play in one of the major planetary power centers of the world, have their power plays suddenly short circuited, change is in the offing. BIG TIME!
Talk about Cosmic Convergence! Who could have written a script for this trilogy of manmade, earth and weather events which have captivated the national psyche like few before. All them taking place within a such a short span of time graphically illustrates the quickening which is being experienced by so many during these interesting times.
OMENs Always Present Unique And Great Opportunities
Of course, as always the $64,000 question remains: How will we respond to these and many of the other upcoming events which are poised to take this world of our by storm. We have often made this inquiry in the interest of pricking the consciousness of those who are ready for some hard answers. All of those answers can be found within. Now is the time to go inside and ascertain the true meaning for each person … for each family … for each community, which will find themselves in similar situations to those delineated above.
OMENs are truly there to protect us, help us and guide us on our journey through life. There is nothing foreboding about them when they alert us to what we ought to do to avert the most unsettling outcomes. Regardless of how we are affected in the moment, it is our abiding faith (and positive attitude) which will see us through the thick and the thin.
What we don't want to do is laugh them (OMENs) off. No, we do not want to ever dismiss them as so much poppycock. There is a very good reason to take these OMENs seriously, and with a genuinely detached and dispassionate perspective. Otherwise we risk the ultimate downfall, which every man who has ever walked the earth has suffered, when they instead chose to ignore the advice: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked."
Our commentary here is only meant to instill a newfound respect for what has fallen away for the modern man. Since the "prophets of old" have been replaced by the "profits of now", the society has put itself in a extremely disadvantaged position. So much idle and distracting chatter has replaced traditional words of wisdom, that we all find ourselves in a bit of a fix. The planetary predicament has now become so formidable and difficult to resolve that it can only be remedied in one way, particularly for those who have already entered their own "end of the world" scenario.
Forbearance is not a very common word in the American lexicon. If you're not familiar with it, now's a good time to become acquainted with FORBEARANCE.
[1] A four foot crack divides a center mason stone just below the capstone of the Washington Monument. "It's not nice to fool [with] Mother Nature!"
This article originally appeared at Cosmic Convergence.
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It's okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
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Yes, even Oprah Winfrey cheats on her diet.
But, during a call for Weight Watchers members Wednesday, Winfrey said the temptation to stray from the plan has lessened over time. During a recent dinner in Atlanta, for example, her friends order fried catfish, fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. "But I just had a little bite!" she recalled. "It was a decision that I was going to not use this food as a way to reward myself."
Winfrey, who's lost upwards of 26 lbs. since becoming a Weight Watchers spokesperson last summer, does allow for a few indulgences. "About 4 o'clock I always feel like I want something to crunch. I really like salty and savory things, and so for me it's a Snyder's pretzel—that hard crunchy pretzel. It's 3 points, but oh my gosh!" she exclaimed. "I take my time with it. I love it."
For the first time in her life, Winfrey said she has found balance in her diet. "The other night I'm out, and I have a couple of spoonfuls of something I normally wouldn't if I was really on point that day, but it's a couple of spoonfuls and not the whole bowl," she said. "And it's OK because tomorrow is another day, so then I would just pull back on what I was eating the next day, and balance the night before. You don't have to feel like, 'Oh, I shouldn't have eaten that biscuit!'"
"Yesterday, I knew I was going to be having General Tso's chicken for dinner," she added, "so I did an extra 30 minutes of exercise and then I walked the dogs around a couple of more times."
After trying a number of diets in the '80s, '90s and '00s, Winfrey finally feels in control of her health. "I am really pleased with the way I am creating a sense of balance and accountability for myself with this program. It's not something I feel like I'm on or I'm off. I just feel like, 'Wow it took me this long to make the shift,' but I really am happy that I've actually made it," she said, adding, "I don't feel like I'm on a diet that I'm ever going to go off of again. I feel like I'll be counting points for the rest of my life."
Thanks to the Beyond the Scale program, she said, "I genuinely feel that it's been easier this time than the other 3,000 times I've gone on a diet because I don't even feel like it is a diet. I just feel like, 'OK, my life has changed.' It's totally clicked. I had to get to be 62 to figure it out! It just is like moving into another way of being."


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19 Nights | Trans-Panama Canal
You will visit the following 10 places:
Chiapas, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas, is one of the 31 states that, with the Federal District, make up the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It is divided into 122 municipalities and its capital city is Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Located in Southwestern Mexico, Chiapas has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the south. With a humid, tropical climate, Chiapas is home to the ancient Mayan ruins of Palenque, Yaxchilán, Bonampak, and Chinkultic. It is also home to one of the largest indigenous populations in the country with twelve federally recognized ethnicities. Much of the state's history is centered on the subjugation of these peoples with occasional rebellions. The last of these rebellions was the 1994 Zapatista uprising, which succeeded in obtaining new rights for indigenous people.
Vancouver is a coastal city located in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada; 52% of its residents have a first language other than English. Classed as a Beta global city, the city is well known for its majestic natural beauty, as it is nestled between the Coast Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It is frequently ranked as one of the "best cities to live in" and is certainly a beautiful destination to visit.
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.5 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland. The only consolidated city-county in California, it encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles (121 km2) on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, giving it a density of about 17,179 people per square mile (6,632 people per km2). It is the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated large city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 13th most populous city in the United States, with a population of 805,235 as of the 2010 Census. The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area has a population of 4,335,391.
Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta is a Mexican beach resort city situated on the Pacific Ocean's Bahía de Banderas. The 2010 census reported Puerto Vallarta's population as 255,725 making it the fifth largest city in the state of Jalisco, and the second largest urban agglomeration in the state after the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area. The City of Puerto Vallarta is the government seat of the Municipality of Puerto Vallarta which comprises the city as well as population centers outside of the city extending from Boca de Tomatlán to the Nayarit border (the Ameca River). Around the Bay, marvellous beaches, lush jungles and sparkling waterfalls offer many opportunities for the adventurous while five star resorts, world-class shopping and gourmet restaurants satisfy even the most sophisticated traveller. Stretching from the south end of Old Town to central downtown, a newly extended and refurbished boardwalk along the ocean, called the Malecon, passes by any number of shops, restaurants, and hotels, and often plays host to mimes, break-dancers, clowns and artists.
Panama officially the Republic of Panama, is known as the "Crossroads of the Americas" due to its privileged position between North and South America. It has the second largest economy in Central America and is also the fastest growing economy and largest per capita consumer in Central America. The ease of travel and wide array of experiences make Panama one of the most attractive emerging tourism destinations in the world. In just one week, visitors can enjoy two different oceans, experience the mountains and rainforest, learn about native cultures and take advantage of vibrant urban life. It's significant capital, Panama City, is a modern, sophisticated metropolis that resembles Miami and has established commerce, arts, fashion and dining.
Fort Lauderdale
Fort Lauderdale is a city in the U.S. state of Florida, 28 miles (45 km) north of Miami. The city is a popular tourist destination, with an average year-round temperature of 75.5 °F (24.2 °C), and 3,000 hours of sunshine per year. Greater Fort Lauderdale which takes in all of Broward County hosted 12 million visitors in 2012, including 2.8 million international visitors. The district has 561 hotels and motels comprising nearly 35,000 rooms. Greater Fort Lauderdale has over 4,000 restaurants, 63 golf courses, 12 shopping malls, 16 museums, 132 nightclubs, 278 parkland campsites, and 100 marinas housing 45,000 resident yachts. Fort Lauderdale is named after a series of forts built by the United States during the Second Seminole War. The forts took their name from Major William Lauderdale (1782–1838), younger brother of Lieutenant Colonel James Lauderdale. William Lauderdale was the commander of the detachment of soldiers who built the first fort.
Cartagena is Colombia's most famous tourist destination on the Caribbean coast. The city is renowned for its colonial and colourful architecture. With a tropical climate, the city is also a popular beach destination. The city was founded on June 1, 1533, and named after Cartagena, Spain, itself after the original Carthage in Tunisia. However, settlement in this region around Cartagena Bay by various indigenous people dates back to 4000 BC. During the colonial period Cartagena served a key role in administration and expansion of the Spanish empire. It was a center of political and economic activity due to the presence of royalty and wealthy viceroys. In 1984 Cartagena's colonial walled city and fortress were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Municipio de Corinto
Corinto is a town of 16,624 (2005 population) on the northwest Pacific coast of Nicaragua in the province of Chinandega. The municipality was founded in 1863. It was a railroad terminus and is Nicaragua's largest and only Pacific port for the import and export of goods. It has its own Container terminal and is able to manage a wide variety of cargo: liquid, bulk, containers, cars, etc.
Puerto Caldera
Puerto Quetzal
Puerto Quetzal is Guatemala's largest Pacific Ocean port. It is important for both cargo traffic and as a stop-off point for cruise liners. It is located in Escuintla department, alongside the city of Puerto San José, which it superseded as a port in importance to the country's maritime traffic during the 20th century. There is also several bars, hammocks to relax in, a restaurant, and performances from Marimba bands.


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Sunday, December 22, 2013
After Birthers
Now here I am, looking back on five YEARS of blogging about Birthers, and realizing that it's time to move on.
I gave a podcast interview last year, just before the 2012 election, where I talked about what the future of Birtherism might be during a second Obama term. I predicted that it wouldn't die, and indeed it hasn't. But Birtherism has proven to be far more impotent in this past year than I'd anticipated. WorldNetDaily gave up regular Birther coverage even before the election. Orly Taitz is the last litigant still fighting and failing in the courtroom. The Cold Case Posse continues to occasionally hype itself on a couple of fringe podcasts, but even it hasn't done anything original in ages. As I've never been engrossed in simply rehashing old arguments, the lack of new material leaves little to investigate and address, and I have no interest in feeding the egos of the few remaining Birthers who keep trying to attract a spotlight. It's no accident that this blog has been so quiet for the past year. Patrick McKinnon brought his Birther blogging to a close back in August for similar reasons.
In short, Birtherism, in its current state, is boring. And in many ways, that's a good thing. A stagnant conspiracy theory is not a growing conspiracy theory, after all.
This doesn't mean I'm giving up on Birtherism specifically, or on skepticism generally. I still plan to write a book about the Birthers, though the nature of the project has evolved considerably (and, I believe, for the better). If I have a story worth writing online, I might just ask to guest-publish it over at Doctor Conspiracy's site; he's always gotten more hits than me anyways. This blog itself won't be going anywhere either; I just won't be updating it anymore.
And thus, this now seems like the time to pull back the curtain and talk about some of the things I've done online in the last five years that weren't part of this blog, and which I didn't talk about at the time.
First, way back in January 2009, I wrote about WND's bogus Obama investigation petition, and how susceptible it was to fake signatures. In April 2010, WND bragged about the petition crossing the half-million signature mark.
Who was that 500,000th signee? It was me. Indeed, to prove how utterly worthless this petition was, I signed it 216 times in a 20 minute period, leading up to the big symbolic number. All 216 entries had the exact same obviously-fake email address (firstname.lastname@example.com), the exact same obviously-fake surname (500K), and the first names were simply integers starting with "1" and counting upwards from there.
You have to register an account to post a comment at WND.com, but not to sign a petition. This shows why; they simply don't care about the veracity of the signatures on their petitions. In bragging about hitting the half-million mark, they'd have instantly spotted the hundreds of obviously-fake names I've submitted. It was unmistakeable, but they didn't care. All they care about is the fake number they can tout.
Second, there was another limited-purpose blog that I set up in 2010: Ulsterman's Untruths. For a brief moment, Ulsterman was the sort of pundit who could only ever exist on the internet; an anonymous muckraker claiming to get inside information from other anonymous informants. And I demonstrated that before he started his "Insider" schtick, he had a habit of just fabricating fictional stories. It's hard to say how many people ever actually took Ulsterman seriously, but even though he continues to publish at his own website, he's just internet background noise at this point. This little project of mine had the notoriety of being cited by Media Matters.
Third, back before it was behind a paywall, I wrote and submitted four articles that were published by the Birther website The Post & Email. Three of these were joke articles, designed to test the level of scrutiny that the website's editor would put on submissions from unknown contributors. How ridiculous could I get in making anti-Obama claims before the site would balk?
The answer: I never reached that point, because it published all three insane articles I offered up. The first claimed that college-age Obama had been hand-picked for the Presidency through connections with Bohemian Grove; it didn't matter to the website that I manufactured this connection out of thin air, or that Occidental College is nowhere near Occidental, California, where Bohemian Grove is located. Naturally, it didn't matter either that 'Bohemian Grove' has roughly the same cache among conspiracy theory proponents as 'Trilateral Commission' or 'The Illuminati.'
The second article claimed that Malcolm X was both Obama's biological father AND his illegitimate great-uncle. I fabricated a story about Obama's great-grandfather Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham being a serial philanderer, and that he'd fathered both Stanley Armour Dunham and Malcolm X (who in turn impregnated Ann). But even this tale of interracial and intergenerational incest didn't make the site bat an eye.
The third article was, at first blush, a general editorial about Obama. It talked about his false face and the monster beneath, about his DNA and his true nature. And in the midst of this, every single hyperlink in the article pointed to some external webpage that claimed Barack Obama is secretly an alien reptilian. Hence the references to his "forked tongue" and his "fake shell." Even some of the commenters started to balk at this one, but the Post & Email stood firm by its decision to publish an article claiming Obama is a shapeshifting alien. Amazingly, while the Post & Email appears to have since removed the first two articles (whether intentionally or accidentally), the reptilian article is still there today, almost three years later.
The fourth article wasn't a joke; it was a control. I wrote an article essentially taking the Birther point-of-view, and alleging that Birther Andy Martin wasn't eligible to run for President (as his father was a non-naturalized immigrant). While I didn't believe in the conclusion, this was the only article I submitted to the Post & Email where all the information cited was both true and credible. And yet this was the only one where the editor demanded that substantive changes be made to the article, because she wasn't comfortable with the allegations being made.
I was behind one other brief hoax in Birtherism in 2010, that of office supply store worker Chanise Foxx. A Birther at FreeRepublic had created the name and story in a post, and I borrowed it and treated it as true in a comment at CitizenWells. When the FreeRepublic server coincidentally went down the next morning, CitizenWells fell for it hard, and the Birthersphere briefly went into a tizzy. It didn't last long, but the chaos was fun to watch while it lasted. (As an added bonus, my comment at CW linked to the personal website of the FreeRepublic poster who penned the story, and who was a highly prolific Birther in his own right. The fallout naturally hurt his online reputation, and he vanished from FR a few months later.)
I also recently started another blog that isn't intended for regular posts, but will instead be updated only as necessary: Jerome Corsi: America's Worst Journalist. Other sites regularly document WND's journalistic failings, but as an author who can still occasionally fib his way onto the bestseller charts, I wanted there to be a Google-friendly, one-stop destination for the worst of Corsi's offenses. It's not to merely report his latest bit of rumormongering or smear attack, but rather to document when he dives into Stephen Glass/Jayson Blair levels of dishonesty that would get a reporter fired from any reputable news outfit.
Even though I never would have predicted that I would have spent nearly as much time and trouble as I did on the Birthers, I'm nonetheless proud of a lot of the work I did on this blog. I exposed the original Birther document expert, Ron Polarik, as a fraud, and while the Birthers long ago left him behind, it's been sad to see him fall further into fringe absurdities. I destroyed any hint of credibility of the DVD Dreams From My Real Father, which was the one Birther-friendly project outside of WND to have a measurable budget; my work even got cited (indirectly) by the President's own campaign site. I caught Birther icons RaceBannon and Larry Martin in lies they were telling about their own personal experiences. And I documented the play-by-play origins of the Birther rumor that started it all.
But there are other projects to move on to. Let me thus close out with a piece of advice: take the lessons you've learned about critical thinking in watching Birtherism, and try not only to impart them to others, but to also apply them to other parts of your life. You may not believe something as overtly silly and publicly debunked as Birtherism, but you may well hold some incorrect beliefs simply out of inertia, because you've never stopped to truly think critically about them. Remember that skepticism isn't a belief system; it's a process.
To that end, I suggest that if you've been interested in the Birther saga, then you should see what else the skeptical movement has for you. Podcasts like Skeptoid, The Reality Check and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe provide weekly discussions on skeptical topics, websites like Science-Based Medicine and Doubtful News, and What's the Harm document new developments in skeptical news, and organizations like JREF and The Skeptics Society offer the opportunity to talk with fellow skeptics. Or if you'd rather sit down with a good book, try the works of Michael Shermer, Martin Gardner, Joe Nickell, or, of course, Carl Sagan. It was Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World that so heavily influenced my development as a skeptic, after all, and I cannot recommend it strongly enough.
So thanks for the support for the past five years, and here's to bigger and better things in the next five.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Five-Year Birtherversary
One of the things that has long fascinated me about Birtherism is how outsized its reach is as a casual conspiracy theory, in comparison to the rather small size of its active proponents. The 9/11 'Truth' Movement, for instance, has long managed to attract enough diehard believers to fill seats at seminars and conferences; by contrast, the Birther movement has never successfully pulled off even a decent-sized rally.
In reflecting on this history, I realized that the Birther movement's leadership has remained so small and concentrated that it's actually possible to draw a through-line across the past five years, connecting the people who have, at different times, been the primary torchbearers of Birtherism.
The original central figure of Birtherism, the first person to do anything more than write some angry posts online, was attorney Phil Berg. He filed the first Birther lawsuit in August 2008, as well as several subsequent suits, and he created the website ObamaCrimes.com, which quickly became the central forum for Birthers online.
In September 2008, Berg came to be in contact with a street preacher named Ron McRae, who in October 2008 recorded a phone conversation between himself and Obama's Kenyan grandmother, Sarah Obama. A deliberately edited clip from that conversation was then used to promote the claim that Sarah had vouched for a Kenyan birth; when the full audio was eventually released, it was immediately evident why it had been edited down.
Nonetheless, the interview claim had one massive legacy: it attracted the attention of WorldNetDaily and Jerome Corsi. Since June 2008, WND had largely ignored the fledgling Birther claims. It reported that they existed, but did not appear to place much credence in them. WND ran only a handful of articles about Obama's birthplace between June and September of 2008, including an infamous article in August 2008 where WND reported that its own experts had vouched for the authenticity of Obama's short-form birth certificate. And when Jerome Corsi visited Kenya in early October 2008, the contemporaneous coverage of his trip was concerned only with Obama's relationship with Raila Odinga; none of the articles published or interviews given during his trip made any reference to a controversy over Obama's birthplace, or that Corsi was interested in investigating such claims.
But then Phil Berg made his announcement about the Sarah Obama interview in mid-October, and WND's interest was piqued. Whereas WND had run only six Birther-related articles in the previous four months (and the only two after August 8 dealt with Berg's lawsuit), it suddenly ran another six such articles in just the next three weeks before the election. Then, between November 4 (Election Day) and November 30, WND chief Joseph Farah wrote his first pro-Birther editorial column, WND started an online Birther petition, and the WND Forums got a new discussion board dedicated exclusively to Obama's eligibility. Although WND had all but ignored Birther claims prior to mid-October, by the end of November they were active and vocal proponents of Birtherism.
As Phil Berg's prominence as a Birther leader began to dwindle (with his role as central Birther litigator usurped by Orly Taitz), WND took his place as Birtherism's most prominent cheerleader. Between October 20, 2008 and December 30, 2008, WND ended up running some 55 Birther-themed articles, and they more or less maintained that frequency for the next couple of years. In May 2009, WND started soliciting donations to fund its "Where's the Birth Certificate?" billboard campaign. Later in the year, WND released two Birther-themed DVDs: the Farah-hosted "A Question of Eligibility", and the Molotov Mitchell-created "For the Record: I'm Not Crazy." 2010 saw the publication of Aaron Klein's book "The Manchurian President". Throughout the next few years, WND also sold Birther-themed t-shirts, bumper stickers, and yard signs through its online store, and started multiple campaigns that encouraged its readers to donate money to fund pro-Birther efforts.
WND's cultural penetration reached its apex in the first few months of 2011. WND contributor Jack Cashill's book "Deconstructing Obama" was published in February 2011, promoting Cashill's Bill-Ayers-as-Obama-ghostwriter claim that he had developed in his columns at WND. Donald Trump became Birtherism's most prominent spokesman, repeating various rumors about Obama's birth and youth. Comments of his suggested that he had been influenced by WND coverage, and WND itself would subsequently report about communications between Trump and WND reporter Jerome Corsi. And finally, Corsi's own book, "Where's the Birth Certificate?", was set for release in May 2011.
Then came the morning of April 27, 2011, and the surprise press conference where Birthers were given exactly what they had demanded for three years: Obama's long-form birth certificate. And in response, they promptly pivoted and claimed it was fake. Within a week, Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi were both on record as saying the long-form was fraudulent. This attitude led to Corsi's follow-up "Where's the REAL Birth Certificate?" and, more importantly, a particular speaking engagement in Arizona.
The Surprise Tea Party in Maricopa County, Arizona invited Corsi to speak in August 2011, in order to present his argument that Obama's long-form was an elaborate fake. At this meeting, a petition was circulated asking Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio to investigate Obama's birth certificate, and the next day the petition was delivered by Corsi and the tea party leaders to the Sheriff. About two weeks later, Arpaio announced that he was assigning his Cold Case Posse to conduct such an investigation, and that the Posse would be headed by one Mike Zullo.
What followed was several months when the Posse worked closely with Corsi in researching Birther claims, and in March 2012 they held a press conference where Zullo announced that (perhaps unsurprisingly) they had come to believe in the Birther claims that Corsi had been promoting for months and years prior. In fact, the day after the press conference, an e-book co-authored by Zullo and Corsi, titled "A Question of Credibility" was released online with a pricetag of $9.99. (Large portions of the e-book were subsequently found to be cut-and-pasted from old Corsi articles at WND.) The Posse's Birther beliefs were repeated in subsequent interviews and press conferences, with Mike Zullo remaining the only public voice of the Cold Case Posse, apart from Corsi.
This partnership continued throughout 2011 and well into 2012, but in the final weeks before the 2012 election, Corsi and WND seemed to lose interest in Birtherism. In October 2012 Corsi resorted to promoting several wild claims about Obama, ranging from allegations about his parentage to his wedding ring to claims that he'd had a nose job, all of which originated with the director of an anti-Obama DVD. But Corsi and Farah stopped writing about Obama's birth and his Constitutional eligibility, and after the election they acknowledged in interviews that they considered the issue a non-starter, even as they insisted that they believed in its merits.
While Corsi and Farah burned out, Mike Zullo kept the faith and pressed on. Insisting that he continues to devote considerable man-hours to the Posse investigation, Zullo now gives regular interviews where he promises new developments and discoveries, and claims that he has the ears of various powerful individuals. Without question, Mike Zullo is currently the central proponent and advancer of the Birther cause.
And for Mike Zullo's dedication to Birtherism, we owe Jerome Corsi and Joseph Farah. And for Corsi's and Farah's dedication, we owed Phil Berg (and to an extent, Ron McRae). Without this handful of men, the history of Birtherism would likely have been far more fringe and obscure, a conspiracy theory relegated to websites like Infowars and frivolous litigants like Orly Taitz.
I also can't help but wonder how the last five years of my life would be different without that chain of influence. Maybe I would've found more productive uses for my time than following and responding to this bit of political periphery; or maybe I would've wasted time in some other fashion. I have to imagine, though, that without Birtherism I wouldn't have written a book, and as a major highlight of my last five years, that works for me.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Skepticality: Spot the Bull Interview
Although the interview is not at all Birther-centric, it does involve a lot of discussion of pseudolaw, including flag fringers, tax deniers, and the "Lost" Thirteenth Amendment. And if there's not enough Birther material in the interview, the book's chapter on pseudolaw addresses Birthers and their illegitimate theories of citizenship.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wayne Allyn Root's Columbia Conspiracism, Part 2
In the years since, Root has been tagged with the 'Birther' label, which he rejects. Root says " that none of the questions I have asked about the President ever involved his birth or birth certificate. Never. Not once." This is actually untrue, but Obama's birth has admittedly never been the focus of Root's commentary.
However, what has been the focus of Root's attempts to stoke a Columbia controversy has changed over the past five years. Even Reason.com noted this, noting that his 2012 comments echoed his 2008 comments, "Minus the Birther Twist".
That twist, and the evolution of Root's Obama conspiracism, is evident when you look back at what he was actually saying in late 2008. In that September 2008 interview with Reason.com, Root first speculated as to why the young Obama didn't make an impression on his fellow students, and Root's theories were rather mundane:
Wayne Root: That's my point. Where was Obama? He wasn't an outgoing young man, no one ever heard of him.Then, when Root opined on precisely what he thought Obama's college records would prove, his suspicions were similarly ordinary:
Tim Cavanaugh: Maybe he was a late bloomer.
Root: Maybe. Or maybe he was involved in some sort of black radical politics.
Matt Welch: Ooooooooooh.
Root: Maybe he was too busy smoking pot in his dorm room to ever show up for class. I don't know what he was doing!...
Welch: That's peculiar! Do you have any theories?
Root: Don't have any theories. I don't know. Don't know why. Kept to himself.... The only thing I could even imagine is that he talks in his biographies about being, you know, his identity crisis, his "am I black or am I white?" He chose black. And he hung out with a couple of black kids and never went near anybody and his wife? That's the only thing I can think of. All my buddies are white, what can I tell you! They don't know him, nobody's ever seen him, I don't know what to tell you.
Root: And I'd be willing to bet every dime I have in the world, a million dollars I'll put, I'll put a million dollars cash on the fact—
Welch: This is on the record—
Root: —that my GPA was better than Barack's—
Welch: Oooooh.
Root: ...and he got in based on the color of his skin.
So to summarize Root's position in 2008: 1) He claimed other Columbia students don't remember Obama, 2) He admitted he had no theories as to why others didn't remember him but suggested it was maybe because Obama was a slacker or because he hung out with black students, 3) He thought he earned a better GPA than Obama, and 4) He thought Obama was admitted to Columbia and/or Harvard because of affirmative action.
Now while this is certainly a distinct change from Root's previous "Obama/Root Columbia '83!!!" attitude, note what he WASN'T saying. He was not saying that Obama's Columbia years are suspicious in any way, or that he didn't actually graduate, or that he was a foreign student, or that he used a different name, or that there's some larger coverup. He was just suggesting that Obama was a poor student, and that he might've benefited from race-based admission policies. Are these meritorious accusations? Maybe, maybe not. But they're uncomplicated and free of any real conspiratorial or 'Birther' overtones.
And Root maintained this attitude through the latter months of 2008. Days after the Reason interview was published, Root was entirely focused on grades, and still wasn't disputing Obama's actual tenure at Columbia:
That is why I've made this public challenge to my classmate Barack Obama- to prove that his grades were better than mine, and to thereby prove that he deserved to gain admission to Harvard Law School. I think Barack owes us all the opportunity to see his Columbia college transcripts.In comments to WorldNetDaily in October 2008, he again reiterated that his issues were grades and affirmative action:
Barack and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum; we've lived lives inside different colored skin; had different experiences; faced different challenges, yet graduated from the same college (Columbia University Class of '83) on the same day, with the same major exactly 25 years ago. We now make history together- as the first college classmates to run on opposing Presidential tickets.
"Yet, Barack was accepted to Harvard Law School. Was it because of his grades, test scores and college record? Or, was it because of the color of his skin?" asked Root.Even into early 2009, Root still wasn't conspiratorial about Obama's time at Columbia:
Here is a tale of two classmates. President Barack Obama and I both attended Columbia University, Class of 1983. We both majored in Political Science and Pre Law.In May 2010, Root agreed (at first) to speak at Rev. James Manning's bizarre 'CIA Columbia Obama Sedition and Treason Trial,' where it was alleged that Obama was actually a CIA operative during his claimed years at Columbia University. But on the eve of the event, Root backed out, and published a public explanation explaining why.
I explained that I do NOT believe there is any cover-up by Columbia University administration...I told Pastor Manning however that none of this is factual proof that Obama did not attend Columbia. Nor do I believe my university would ever participate in a cover-up. I have simply been asked by many in the media for several years now if I knew my famous classmate and I've always answered honestly. I've always stated publicly that my assumption is that he went to Columbia, but probably rarely (or never) attended classes. Perhaps he was too busy pursuing a radical political agenda. Perhaps he was too busy hanging out with his radical friends plotting the destruction of capitalism or the overthrow of America. I assume he spent most of his time at Columbia off campus and took what is often called at Ivy League colleges a "Gentleman's C" for simply showing up for final exams.In the midst of these denials, note what Root is nonetheless still admitting his familiarity with. The Manning mock trial itself, obviously. But also the name "Barry Sotero," which he felt was important enough to randomly bring up. He plainly believes the false meme that Obama had "sealed" his college records. And of course there's the 400 classmates report, which likely led to his initial change in attitude in 2008.
But just because Root was distancing himself from Manning's conspiracy theories doesn't mean that Root was adverse to Obama-related conspiracy theories. He was trending in that direction at least as early as September 2009:
Actually I believe that my college classmate (Columbia University, Class of '83) is brilliant. Nothing he does is out of ignorance or naiveté. Therefore this must all be part of a well thought-out plan to destroy the U.S. economy. Why? I can only surmise that Obama's plan from day one has been to wreck capitalism; destroy Wall Street and the banks (the very heart of capitalism); expand the size and scope of government dramatically; get the American people so fearful as to demand bigger government to "save" them and get involved in every aspect of their lives; and thereby introduce Socialism without debate.It was finally in 2012, in the months before Obama was up for reelection, that Root decided to commit to the same sorts of conspiracy theories he'd rebuffed two years earlier. In August 2012, in a post titled "The Obama Scandal Is At Columbia", Root kicked off his discussion of Obama's Columbia years with this declaration:
My bet is that Obama will never unseal his records- never...EVER. Because they contain information that could destroy his chances for re-election.Remember how in 2008, Root was just suggesting that Obama's college records might show he had a mediocre GPA or might have benefited from affirmative action? Forget that. Now Obama's college records are so explosive that they "could destroy his chances for re-election"!!
Root continues:
If anyone should have questions about Obama's record at Columbia University, it's me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of '83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I'd heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then- Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at Columbia has ever met him, saw him, or heard of him."(according to Obama)". That's certainly new. Even after the 2008 election, Root never disputed the specifics of Obama's Columbia degree. And in his public statement during the Manning 'trial' in 2010, Root said "All I can testify to is that I was a member of the Class of '83- just like Obama. And that I was Pre Law and a political science major- just like Obama." He was adamant that he did "NOT believe there is any cover-up by Columbia University administration." But by 2012, even those foundational facts had been replaced with doubt as to whether Obama had graduated from Columbia at all. Also notable here: "(or as he was known then - Barry Soetoro)". He's asserting, in print, that Obama used the name "Barry Soetoro" at Columbia. Even though he says immediately thereafter that he never heard of him. And even though the one and only instance of the name "Barry Soetoro" has always been when Obama was 6 years old.
The first question I'd ask is, if you had great grades, why would you seal your records? So let's assume Obama got poor grades. Why not release the records? He's President of the free world, for gosh sakes. He's commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. Who'd care about some poor grades from three decades ago, right?So then what's the problem? Doesn't that make the media suspicious? Something doesn't add up.It's rather funny to see Root ask who'd care about some poor grades from three decades ago. Because Root began this entire downward spiral in 2008 by caring about somebody else's grades from three decades ago.
Secondly, if he had poor grades at Occidental, how did he get admitted to an Ivy League university in the first place? And if his grades at Columbia were awful, how'd he ever get into Harvard Law School? So again those grades must have been great, right? So why spend millions to keep them sealed?Here we see Root repeating one of the boilerplate Birther memes that he apparently fell for: that Obama spent millions of dollars to keep his records secret. This, like his use of "Barry Soetoro" above, indicates the sort of information Root chose to absorb and believe since 2008.
Third, how did a poor kid pay for all these fancy schools? If he had student loans or scholarships, don't American students need good grades to maintain student loans?Actually, no, they don't. Students need to maintain satisfactory academic progress to keep receiving student loans. That usually means something like a C-average. Root originally just suggested that Obama's grades at Columbia weren't stellar; is he now suggesting that Obama actually failed classes? In any case, Root then advances his theory on Obama's time at Columbia, and it's a lot more sweeping than his 2008 theory of 'He was a slacker':
I can only think of one answer that would explain this mystery.
So here's my gut. I believe Obama got a leg up by being admitted to both Occidental and Columbia as a foreign exchange student. He was raised as a young boy in Indonesia. Did his mother ever change him back to a U.S. citizen? I'm betting not. He was abandoned by his mother and sent back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. No one was paying much attention to young Obama, so his citizenship was never changed back. But suddenly as he nears college-age Obama learns that foreign students have a much easier path being admitted to U.S. universities. And even more amazingly, they get loads of aid and scholarships to attend college for free- something unavailable to U.S. citizens.
So a plan is hatched. Obama uses his Indonesian passport and citizenship to get into college. Suddenly even Ivy League Columbia University is a possibility- for a foreign student from Indonesia. And it's all paid for by the taxpayers.
That would explain how a poor student who rarely attended class and got mediocre grades, and with no money, was able to get accepted and pay for Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law. The door magically opened for a foreign student with an exotic background.
The sad reality is there is some U.S. student- a Valedictorian of his or her school- who never got to go to Columbia or Harvard Law because Barry Soetoro took their place.
That would also explain the great mystery of how in the summer of 1981 Barry Soetoro was able to travel to Pakistan when no U.S. citizen was allowed to travel there. Did he use his Indonesian passport?
Of course a foreign student isn't qualified to serve as President of the United States. So that secret had to be sealed and covered up for the rest of all time. In 2007 everything happened so fast no one could even ask questions…ask Hillary! That explains why a sitting President of the United States would spend millions of dollars in legal fees to keep his past sealed.
If you lost track there, Root's allegations now include 1) Obama became an Indonesian citizen, 2) Obama never regained U.S. citizenship, 3) Obama had an Indonesian passport, 4) Obama claimed to be a foreign exchange student to get into college, 5) Obama's college education was paid for by taxpayer-funded foreign aid, 6) The Pakistan travel ban myth, 7) Obama has spent millions of dollars to keep his records sealed, and...wait for it...8) Obama may not be eligible to be President at all!
That's quite a list. Root himself itemizes what he now thinks Obama's college records would show:
If you could unseal Obama's Columbia University records I believe you'd find that:To refresh your recollection, 2008 Wayne Allyn Root was willing to bet that Obama's college records would show that he had a lower GPA than Root. And that maybe, as a black student, he was aided by affirmative action. Whereas 2012 Wayne Allyn Root was willing to bet that Obama's college records would show that he was a foreign exchange student with Indonesian citizenship named Barry Soetoro who paid for college with foreign aid money. And that he had a subpar GPA and rarely went to class (but nonetheless was indoctrinated into Marxism).
A) He rarely ever attended class.
B) His grades were not those typical of what we understand it takes to get into Harvard Law School.
C) He attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student.
D) He never paid for either undergraduate college or Harvard Law School because of foreign aid and scholarships given to a poor foreigner like this kid Barry Soetoro from Indonesia
And this change in opinion was effected despite the fact that no additional evidence appeared in the interim four years to support the new claims. There was an April Fool's joke about Obama being a foreign exchange student, and plenty of additional information supporting that Obama was a perfectly ordinary college student. Yet Root's beliefs only got wilder and wilder.
If only he'd followed his own advice that he wrote when he backed out of James Manning's mock trial:
I found myself uncomfortable being involved or associated in any way with the wild charges, claims and conspiracy theories that have been publicly aired by this mock trial. I believe these wild charges and claims actually damage any future legitimate opportunity to question President Obama's background.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Wayne Allyn Root's Columbia Conspiracism, Part 1
Root announced his candidacy for President on May 4, 2007. That day, Root released a press release that BEGAN with this sentence:
Barack Obama and Wayne Allyn Root used to have one thing in common, both graduated from the same college class, Class of '83 Columbia University; after Root's announcement they share a second commonality, they are both running for the 2008 Presidential election.Notice that in May 2007, Obama and Root's Columbia connection was a bragging point for Root. It wasn't until September 2008, over a year and a half later, in an interview with Reason.com, that Root first began publicly disputing Obama's Columbia credentials:
Matt Welch: So tell us what we should know about Barack Obama that we don't?That's almost exactly sixteen months between beginning his run for President and his first attempt to cast aspersions upon Obama's history. Still, this sort of delay might be excusable; for instance, if Root was never presented with an opportune time to share any preexisting doubts about Obama's time at Columbia.
Wayne Allyn Root: I think the most dangerous thing you should know about Barack Obama is that I don't know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever!
Root: Class of '83 political science, pre-law Columbia University. You don't get more exact than that. Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, 20th reunion, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! Who was he, and five years ago, nobody even knew who he was.
Welch: That's peculiar! Do you have any theories?
Root: Don't have any theories. I don't know. Don't know why. Kept to himself.... The only thing I could even imagine is that he talks in his biographies about being, you know, his identity crisis, his "am I black or am I white?" He chose black. And he hung out with a couple of black kids and never went near anybody and his wife? That's the only thing I can think of. All my buddies are white, what can I tell you! They don't know him, nobody's ever seen him, I don't know what to tell you.
Except Root not only had many such opportunities, but, as illustrated by that initial press release, he unabashedly made his shared alma mater with Obama an overarching theme of Wayne Root's own Presidential campaign. Root didn't question Obama's Columbia credentials; he emphasized them at every possible opportunity, for over a year and a half.
Root's campaign website, Root4America.com, featured a blog that Root made regular posts to. Like this post on May 15, 2007:
Barack Obama (my Columbia College Class of '83 classmate) certainly doesn't think like you.On September 17, 2007, Root published a post that compared and contrasted his and Obama's Columbia experiences at length:
OBAMA vs. ROOT- Two Very Different Career Paths from Columbia University Class of 1983: The Case for a Small Businessman as PresidentObama was mentioned again in passing on September 24, 2007:
Barack Obama and I both graduated from the same class at the same college- Columbia University, Class of '83. We both chose the same major-Political Science. Today we are both running for President of the United States. The only difference is that Barack is the darling of the liberal news media- who give him a "free pass" on whether he's qualified to run the greatest country and economy in world history. Since we come from such similar educational backgrounds, yet we each chose such divergent paths since graduation, I thought a study of what each has accomplished in the "real world" might shed some light on who is best qualified to occupy the White House and run the greatest economy in world history...
I'm sure my old college classmate Barack is a nice guy. I'm certain he's a smart guy. I know he went to a great college!
[O]ver 25 years later as I read my Columbia College Today alumni magazine and see updates on the career success of my classmates, I see the names of future Supreme Court justices, close advisors to Presidents (George Stephanapoulus was a classmate), liberal United States Senators (Barack Obama of Illinois), the best and brightest legal minds in the country (any wonder lawyers seem to be at the root of most problems in our society?), and many of the most influential journalists and media executives in America.And again on October 9, 2007:
Then there's my old Columbia College classmate Barack Obama.And again on January 14, 2008:
Hillary has never risked her own money on a business, never created a job, never run any business of any kind. Ditto for my Columbia College '83 classmate Barack Obama.Root similarly referenced his common Columbia background in an interview with Wikinews on February 6, 2008:
Mr. Root: Barack Obama (my college classmate Columbia University Class of '83) talks nonstop about change. So do Hillary and McCain. None of them are agents of change.In a blog post on February 29, 2008, Root didn't simply off-handedly refer to Obama as a "classmate"; he dwelled on that commonality, and stressed its details:
You see I am not just Barack's match as a salesman and communicator of a political message. I am Barack Obama's college classmate. Yes, we are graduates of the same college (Columbia University), same class (Class of '83), same major (Political Science). We graduated on the same day 25 years ago. Never before in the history of American politics have two college classmates run against each other for President. Talent aside, sometimes you just need a bit of luck. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined running for President in the same election as my college classmate.Then, in an interview with Glenn Beck on March 7, 2008, Root was actually asked if he remembered Obama from their Columbia days. And Root's answer didn't raise the spectre of fraud or misconduct; Root simply admitted he didn't know Obama, and didn't think that was odd:
GLENN: Hang on just a second. You were actual — did you have any classes with Barack Obama?Root again emphasized his and Obama's shared Columbia roots in this May 2008 press release from Root's campaign:
ROOT: Well, I'm sure I did. I just never knew him. We were both political science majors at the same college, Columbia University, graduated in the class of '83. So I guarantee you we were sitting in the same classes together but I did not know him. It's probably a graduating class of 600 or 700. So it's very possible to be in the same class and not know a person. I didn't know everyone in the whole class.
Wayne went onto graduate prestigious Columbia University Class of 1983 in political science (classmate of Barrack Obama). Wayne and Barrack Obama will be the first classmates to ever run against each other for President.The Columbia connection was again invoked in a blog post of Root's on May 16, 2008:
Wayne Allyn Root is a New York-born son of a butcher; small businessman; home-school father of 4 young children; Ivy League-educated college classmate of Barack Obama;And on May 23, 2008:
A Root victory in the Libertarian nominating convention would set the stage for a history-making election. Root, like Senator Barack Obama, was a 1983 graduate of Columbia University, which according to Root, creates the first presidential contest in history featuring two college classmates from the same graduating class squaring off against each other.And again on August 11, 2008, just three weeks before the Reason interview where he first questioned Obama's grades at Columbia:
That loan, by the way, helped pay my way through Columbia University Class of 1983, the same graduating class as Barack Obama...It is telling to contrast my choices with those of my college classmate Barack Obama - who graduated on the same day 25 years ago.Even after that interview, and after the election, the bio that Root attached to multiple blog posts in 2009 still included this sentence:
Wayne also happens to be Barack Obama's college classmate (Columbia University Class of '83).So what, if anything, happened between August 11, 2008, when Wayne Root seemingly had no qualms with Obama's Columbia education, and August 28, 2008**, when he was willing to offer a million dollars to make Obama release his college records? Well, on August 18, 2008, Fox News aired "Presidential Character & Conduct 2008: Barack Obama". This was the program that infamously said that 400 Columbia graduates were contacted, and none of them knew Obama. Curiously, just weeks after that was broadcast, Wayne Allyn Root suddenly stopped bragging about his Columbia connection with Obama, and instead started questioning Obama's time there.
And that's just what led up to Root's change of heart. In Part 2, we'll look at how Root has descended further into conspiracism and crankery since September 2008.
*Secret shame: I (reluctantly) voted for Root in 2008. I liked Bob Barr, but not Root. So much so that even as a VP candidate on a zero-chance third-party ticket, I was strongly tempted to not vote Libertarian. It was only the fact that he had absolutely no chance of occupying the VP's office that I was able to conscientiously vote for a ticket with him on it.
**The Reason article was published September 5, but the intro explains that the interview was conducted on or about August 28.
(This post and its follow-up were originally posted in July 2013. Since the blog has been effectively retired due to a lack of novelty in the Birther arena, I've since backdated these two posts in order to keep the Birtherversary and Skepticality posts at the top of the page. The Birtherversary post, in particular, I felt was a better feature item than a random treatment on Mr. Root.)
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Joel Gilbert's Evolving Disclaimer
But what I discovered in reviewing Dreams From My Real Father on Netflix Streaming is that he's actually changed the movie itself.
Approximately one minute into the film appears a "Director's Note." It's basically a disclaimer, and it reads not unlike the disclaimers in Kevin Trudeau's fake-medical-advice books. Here's what it says on the DVD:
"This film's contents are based on actual events, interviews, and archives, as well as re-creations of probable events, using reasoned logic, speculation, and approximated conversations in an attempt provide a cohesive understanding of Obama's history."Is this the true story Barack Obama should have told, revealing his true political foundations and his agenda for fundamentally transforming America?"
Talking Points Media quoted this disclaimer back in May 2012. So did Gilbert fan Jack Cashill. Here's a screenshot from the film itself:
But that's not what you see if you watch the movie on Netflix, where it was made available for streaming just a few weeks ago. Rather, the Netflix version of the film carries this "Director's Note":
Notice the difference? Look what follows the words "reasoned logic" in the first sentence.
Apparently, the original DVD version of Dreams From My Real Father was based on "speculation," but the Netflix version isn't.
Interview on KRUU
It's the first radio interview I've given in a long time (I have a few more scheduled), but I had fun and I thank the host for having me on to talk.
You can listen to the show at http://www.kruufm.com/node/14407.