Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

As I’m sure everyone knows already. It seems it was done during a raid on a house in Pakistan with the aid of the Pakistan government. And no US personnel were hurt during the raid, which is something of a bonus.

CNN has the story.

All told, it’s an interesting bit of news to wake up to.

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.”

This is a post aimed at the IrregularTimes.com blog writers; Jim Cook, JClifford, Peregrin Wood, ect.

You all know I am a long time poster and an even longer time reader. I have nothing but respect for the news you bring and the corrections of falsehoods you can give, but what I have noticed lately is a case of Tunnel Vision. The sum of the articles I’ve been seeing have been aimed at just a few subjects such as the war in Libya, No Labels, Americans Elect, and the Military Commissions Act. Now, I won’t debate the merits of these subjects, they’re important and need to be covered by someone. But they should not be covered at the expense of so many other important stories on both a national and a local level.

An example of a neglected story would be the rise of Emergency Financial Managers. The Daily Kos covered a story involving the arrests of teen mothers and children after they conducted a sit-in in protest of Michigan’s Emergency Financial Manager closing down their highly successful school. Emergency Financial Managers have broad, unilateral powers, including the ability to dismiss elected officials, sell off public assets (like schools) to private interests and dis-incorporate entire cities. And aside from The Daily Kos, the only other person I’ve seen covering this story is Rachel Maddow.

Another example of a neglected story, one I’m really amazed you guys didn’t jump all over, is the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee approving (right along party lines of 5 – 2) SRJ 1218, a bill that actually funds Churches with state money. With such a blatant display of contempt for the First Amendment, how could IrregularTimes not pick this up and at least give it a glance?

Or, how about the story of how America has fallen so low that it is now cheaper for Ikea to build their cheap Swedish crap here in the USA than it is to build it in Sweden? That isn’t so bad, but what is bad is how Ikea is abusing it’s employees by forcing them to work overtime, ordering them to go to meetings where they’re “discouraged” from unionizing as well as other abusive policies.

And let’s not forget Texas establishing “Traditional Values Centers” because they’ve gotta protect their precious, innocent Gawd-fearing Christian students from the evil baby killing LGBT students.

And if you want to turn your gaze back to Florida, you’ll see the Governor cutting funding for the mentally disabled.

Or, if you want to pay attention to the national stage, how about the Supreme Court shielding prosecutors who convict innocent people, even if it’s proven that the prosecutor knew in advance that he was innocent, and even if that prosecutor hid or destroyed evidence of that suspect’s innocence?

As I said before, I love this website and have nothing but respect for it. But please, focus on some of these other stories that get little attention but have big consequences.

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Michnik
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I like the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Really, I do. I can prove it – I’ve clicked “Like” on the Facebook page for the Fourth Amendment.

What, is that not enough?

Luckily, I’m doing more. I work with Irregular Times, for one thing, and for years we’ve been writing about laws like the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, begun under George W. Bush and have been continued under Barack Obama, that violate the guarantee the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and seizure. We also have designed the lawn sign of the 4th Amendment that you see here.

I happen to know that this yard sign has had at least a little impact on discussion of Fourth Amendment issues. For one thing, this photograph of our Fourth Amendment yard sign is being used as the profile photo of the Fourth Amendment Facebook page I like.

One particularly current thing we’re doing at Irregular Times to show that we like the 4th Amendment to the Constitution is that we’re initiating a protest against the Patriot Act in Washington D.C. this coming Saturday, March 12, at noon, in front of the U.S. Capitol. As you’ll see in the link in this paragraph, there’s a Facebook page for that too.

The question in my mind is whether all the people who have indicated that they “like” this protest will actually show up. We’ll see how much Facebook social networking is really worth.

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.

It’s quite clear that the blog entitled I Like Mike Huckabee 2012 is run by a Huckabee enthusiast Still, the blog makes a show of claiming to be an objective source of news.

“Get the Facts * Share the Truth,” reads the blog’s byline.

The fact is that, in a straw poll in New Hampshire this last weekend, Mike Huckabee got just 2.5 percent of the vote. That’s the truth – I’m not making it up.

What did the I Like Mike Huckabee blog have to say about this pathetic performance? Nothing. The pro-Huckabee blogger just pretended that the straw poll never happened.

Running from the facts. Scared of the truth. That’s the Mike Huckabee supporter for you.

I rarely watch TV news, but right now I’m traveling, and I needed something to do while I ironed my shirt, so I turned on CNN. There I saw an advertisement that promised: “Look out political fringe! You’ve met your match!”

Who is this match for the “political fringe”? Why, it’s Eliot Spitzer, and his new TV show on CNN.

So, what, I’m supposed to be impressed because a huge corporate media organization is willing to hire a former Governor of New York State to fight against political ideas that don’t match the insider, mainstream standard of acceptability?

Looks like a boring show to me… because it isn’t even close to a fair fight. There’s no “match” between corporate-funded nationally televised political celebrities and individuals pursuing alternative visions of the American future. They might as well televise a fight between an elephant and a grasshopper.

Corporate media kicking political outsiders in the teeth doesn’t count as news.

My first thought when I saw a teaser on Technorati for an article about a biography of Angelina Jolie, calling the biography the author’s “most compelling subject yet”, was that it wasn’t possible. How could Angelina Jolie be any experienced biographer’s most compelling subject?

Then I looked into the author’s past subjects:

- Madonna
- David Beckham
- Monica Lewinski
- Princess Diana
- Tom Cruise

Those are pretty lean pickings, and Angelina Jolie fits right in.

So, among these rather uncompeling celebrities, which is the most compelling? It’s going to a Dunkin Donuts and being asked to find the most delectable confection.

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.