Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

The conspiracy theorists who just aren’t able to accept the fact that Barack Obama was indeed born in Hawaii are latching themselves onto a new claim they say “proves” a hoax. Here’s their new claim:

Obama born in hospital that did not exist yet

This I just found and it seems to be a smoking gun. There are all kinds of reports about fraud coming out, but this is a blatant error that frauders would easily miss!

“I just checked the official web site for Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital and according to the information there, the name of the hospital at the time of his birth should have been Kauikeolani Children’s Hospital. According to the web site the name didn’t change to Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital until Kauikeolani “Children’s Hospital merged with Kapi‘olani Maternity Home in 1978. So how could his official long form birth certificate that was generated in 1961 have the name of the hospital that wasn’t created until 1978?”

Wow. Look at all those hyperlinks! With so many “sources,” it must be true!

Or not. The first thing you should do if you want to see if it’s true is to check those links. Two of them connect to wikipedia articles defining the words “website” and “birth certificate.” A third link connects to a wikinvest encyclopedia article describing what a “hospital” is and does. Only one link connects to any information about Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital — and that link is to the Wikipedia page for that hospital. As we all know, crowdsourced Wikipedia pages often contain incorrect information.

Let’s check for some independent sources on this. How about a search through the world’s largest book archive, Google Books?

Here’s a result from 1955, American journal of obstetrics and gynecology, Volume 69:

Here are a few excerpts from Social service in Hawaii, a book by Margaret Mary Louise Catton that was published in 1959, two years before Barack Obama was born:

Here’s a reference to Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in a Digest of court cases from 1934:

There’s even a court reference there if you want to look it up.

Clearly, Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital existed long before Barack Obama was born. No “hoax.”

Behold the mighty asterisk:

“FedEx Home Delivery serves 100 percent of residential addresses even on Saturdays (at no additional charge) and evenings, and is supported by a money-back guarantee.*”

* “Saturday is not a service day for all areas.”

Overheard this evening, really and truly…

He: Wait, quiet. Can you hear that? Is that a trombone?
She: No, dear, I think it’s a chain saw.

Say what you like about the ANSWER Coalition, but you’ve got to admit their activists are dogged in organizing and unafraid to confront members of either major American political party. In San Francisco on April 20, ANSWER is working with other organizations to mount a protest against the war policies of Barack Obama. When a conservative friend of yours works up a smirk and asks where all the anti-war protests are now that Obama is President, send ‘em to the ANSWER website.

KDFerz
SOkOOl using new tweetdek xtnsn #PoofMagicPlus to write more than 140 chars in one tweet. The sky is the limit. But wait, I have nothing left to say. Something will come…

CahDog
OMG So Drunk slfguitjepowdkdjsd e./ #exne

BigSpoonMedia
Just watched #perezhilton RT Kanye w/ MeatPuppets offstage ht.ly/b148fnjQ

JaBlast
@exne so reminded by #fabnast show of Jesus love for us all thank you Jesus

fixfm101z
networking with so many famous ppl right now wish U were here, ha ha ha.

Ca3rlpix
#exne is to 2011 as lollapalooza is to 1995 put down your fonz!!!

Michnik
Recovered after #exne jetlag, ready to return to hard work making @slamsnapper the best picture app planetwide http://slamsnapper.com/about.htm

Expect to hear some huffing and puffing this morning about the impending loss of Huffington Post’s integrity with its sale to AOL.com. I’m not buying it. For years now, the Huffington Post has been a corporation, with a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Revenue Officer and all the rest. Its job was to make money and now its job is still to make money. Only the name of the overlord has changed.

This is not to say that the Huffington Post won’t write any stories worth following. It may. It’s only to say that what the Huffington Post read needs to be considered with a grain of salt. Is the story properly cited? Can you check the claims made in the articles against outside sources? If so, great. If not, don’t be so sure.

That’s the same standard you should apply everywhere you read something, I think. Irregular Times is included.

Fred Karger wants the Republicans to remember Willie Horton and the smoking lobby. Karger wants Democrats to see a nice gay man. He thinks that will get him elected President.

Is he right? Can these disparate pieces fit together?

To start out the 112th Congress, Rep. Steve Scalise introduced H.R. 61, the Coach Act of 2011. If passed, the Coach Act would prohibit federal government employees from being reimbursed for anything more than the coach class value of their airplane travel when they travel on official business, except in the case of necessity, such as for high-security situations or travel for disabled employees.

H.R. 61 strikes me as a reasonable way to cut some government cost without cutting back government services and without putting anybody in a situation of more discomfort than the average American citizen who travels by air must bear. The 8 cosponsors of Rep. Scalise’s bill in the House of Representatives are:

Jason Chaffetz [UT-3]
Mike Coffman [CO-6]
Nan Hayworth [NY-19]
Duncan Hunter [CA-52]
Robert Latta [OH-5]
Tom McClintock [CA-4]
Stevan Pearce [NM-2]
Rob Wittman [VA-1]

But curiously, the following 10 members of Congress had signed on as initial cosponsors of the Coach Act in January 2011, but withdrew en masse a week and a half later:

Cynthia Lummis [WY-at large]
Jeff Duncan [SC-3]
Tom Graves [GA-9]
Brian Bilbray [CA-50]
Patrick McHenry [NC-10]
Tom Cole [OK-4]
John Kline [MN-2]
Bob Gibbs [OH-18]
Doug Lamborn [CO-5]
Trent Franks [AZ-2]

There has been no communication from these Republicans to explain why they withdrew their support from this bill.

Notably, there has been no communication from any Democrats in the House to explain why they haven’t supported the measure in the first place.

What if the Violent Femmes teamed up with the Squirrel Nut Zippers, went acoustic and picked up a banjo?

What if you could dance to it? And what if people did?

The Toughcats sound even better live than on CD.

In an internal e-mail I received this morning, the Tea Party Nation corporation has announced the practice of censoring, banning and ejecting its own members for the sins of “antagonism” against Tea Party Nation leadership, consorting “with liberal media outlets”, and sharing information with other Americans about the Tea Party Nation’s workings…

… because it’s all about freedom! The kind of freedom a corporation like TPN can exercise to stamp out heresy.

Well, that and charging $360 a plate for dinner. So very much of the people.