It was in December 2008 when this post-presidential-election blog started with the intent of being a repository for the debunking of some fringe claims about Barack Obama left over from the election campaign.
Birther argument had taken over my personal blog1 and I wanted to move it elsewhere. The idea for a new blog with the name Obama Conspiracy Theories came to me while driving down the interstate highway and I was very happy to find that the domain, obamaconspiracy.org, was available (the .com was taken) and I snatched it up—that was December 11, 2008.
In the beginning I posted under the default WordPress user name, “admin,” but that seemed so “generic” that I cast about for some nom de Internet as a substitute and came up with “Dr. Conspiracy,” inspired by Dr. Science of the Ducks Breath Mystery Theater, who always gave the disclaimer: “I’m not a real doctor, but I have a Master’s Degree… in science!”
Because the 2008 election was already over, I didn’t think that the blog would be very active, definitely behind the curve. I felt that the birthers would pack up and go home once Obama was officially inaugurated as our 44th President. That didn’t work out. I also thought that the birthers would pack it up when Obama was re-elected in 2012. Fool me twice….
I also didn’t foresee that an online community with over 1,000 visitors a day would evolve, and that I would be blessed with some wonderful comedy moments and some profound insights from commenters. Clearly the comments are a major feature of the blog. It’s also been wonderful to meet some of the anti-birthers in person—a really quality group.
So, here’s to three more years of birthers being birthers, after which I will pack it up on January 20, 2017.2
1The commenter TRUTH participated at both my personal blog and here. Through some mechanism that I never figured out, we ended up being friends on Facebook. That didn’t last because I found his views on several topics irritating.
2After the official closing of the blog, I’ll come up with some way to keep the content available online. I just won’t be actively writing and debunking. I wonder if there is an “Internet trust” to provide perpetual care to a blog. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is archiving the site properly now. [Donate to the Internet Archive]
Happy Birthday, Doc!
Congrats and many thanks. I can say that, were it not for community at OCT, the amount of time I have frittered away a’anti-birthering would have been greatly diminished. That community was attracted and maintained by your dedication and content. A lovely feedback!
A well-deserved bunch of thanks for your ever useful service.
Thanks for the opportunity to be part of your adventure.
“What a long strange trip it’s been.”
– Jerry Garcia
Amen,
I guess I should have thanked the birthers for always being both utterly predictable while always surprising.
Two comments from 2008:
EL: Thank you! It’s good to see all the information gathered in one place. Not that that will stop conspiracy theorists, who are dead set on believing this garbage.
Dr. Conspiracy: EL, thanks for your comment. This site is not for the conspiracy theorists, but for the unfortunate folks who have been unsettled by their misinformation.
> So, here’s to three more years of birthers being birthers, after which
> I will pack it up on January 20, 2017.
You may, but I doubt the birthers will.
Not that it matters. The birthers were always irrelevant except in the court of public opinion, they’re irrelevant now, and by the time that date rolls around, they’ll be irrelevantly irrelevant.
I was noting an early anti-birther’s blog, Koyaan’s Web Log.
http://koyaan.wordpress.com/
Koyaan wrote his last article on December 17, 2008, the day before he started commenting here.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2008/12/not_born_in_hawaii/#comment-38
Happy anniversary Doc!
I guess after Obama leaves office, the birthers would attempt a new wave of suits, hoping that he’ll be vulnerable once no longer president. That’ll be all good fun to watch.
What relief would they ask the courts for?
Preparation H
Easy. Once Obama’s illegibility is established by the court, HIS WHOLE PRESIDENCY SHOULD BE RETROACTIVELY NULLIFIED!!!!!11!!1!
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my President? 😉
Google “de facto officer doctrine”.
Of course that wouldn’t prevent Congress from passing laws to undo as much as possible, but there is no automatism.
Doc, I looked into your personal blog for the first time. Nice.
Found a typo, which may be there for a long time already. Don’t worry: I once had clients with a big advertisement on their building. There was a typo in their name no one (before me) had ever noticed. You just see what you think is there ….
/quote
BogOrDie Topics
Audio Books
Bad Commerce
Books
Educational Reports
General
Health
Microsoft Surface
Movies
Obama Citizenship Denial
Personal
Politics
Product Reviews
Products
Radio
Religion
Satire
Technology
Vacation
/endquote
Magic M, has Congress already passed Poe’s Law ?
Obama is not illegible. You can see him just fine.
He was being facetious
Congratulations to Doc. C! This is my favorite anti-birther/Obot blog. I stop by every day and learn something new. What a help this site has been to those of us who have picked up the anti-bither sword to smite the birther forces of ignorance and bigotry.
I wouldn’t expect birthers to understand this. Still, the period of post-Obama birther suits is going to be fairly short, methinks.
Thanks for the typo catch. I’m still fixing articles from 2008 on this blog–just this week.
Congratulations Doc on a great 5 years of this super blog. You look at this blog and compare to any birther site and frankly any educated person w/o knowing one ounce about the issue will lean towards this site simply based on the extensive research, documentation, links, etc. Birther sites on the other hand are a nightmare of information.
Doc, thank you for creating this site…it has been truly joyous to read it several times a day, seeing the insanity and inanity of America’s craziest people, and the warmth, good humor, rationalism, intelligence, and patience with which this group addresses them.
It’s a marvelous little community that you have created.
When we use the term, “Birthers”, we are to some extent conventionally acknowledging that they might collectively be a somewhat homogeneous political force of like-minded activists, even though we know that they are also usually transparently unreasonable and irrational.
Actually, as their inability to get a hundred people to attend their Million Birther demonstrations, shows laughably, they are just a bunch of loosely affiliated lunatics sharing mainly just some degree of blind-to-blinding hatred of Obama.
They illogically agree on mutually exclusive reasons for denying Obama the remainder of his Presidency and/or nullifying it! As a comparison, would we assign a scattered bunch of lunatics who ranted for 5 years about how PRECISELY the specific gravity of water was VARIOUSLY no where near 1, a special collective name like “Gravitiers”, let them style the rest of us ” H2Obots”, repeatedly politely argue rationally with both sincere “Gravitiers” and trolling ones, and then wonder if some coming related issue-diminishing event, would logically cause them to lose interest?
Or would we just call them lunatics and never expect them to cease and desist their defining lunatic behaviors?
Face it; if eons from now, in the ultimate Encyclopedia of the Universe, a Birther gets to fill out the one sentence space allows for the description of intelligent life in our Milky Way Galaxy, the description will ignore all our Science, all of our Art, and all of the wonder of being a living self-aware sentient being, and instead focus on some negative thing that some nutter on your Birther list reprinted, that some other nutter on your Birther list had heard that some other nutter on your Birther list, was darn sure that everybody in Hawaii except the health department’s vital records division, “knew” about Obama.
So let’s not doubt that lunatics will continue to board the sunken ship years after it has exploded and sunk. They are after all, lunatics!
They would be even funnier to watch, because the government could ignore them entirely…judges would dismiss them, I assume, for lack of relevance, forget about standing.
There you go. 😉
Congrats Doc.
happy 5th anniversary!
for me this place has been a goldmine.
it’s given me an insight into a president that i’ve never had before, information about u.s. law and the constitution, history, and god knows what else.
i suppose i should thank the birfoons as well, because without them, i wouldn’t have learned so much.
i actually said thank you to one this week for helping build the hammer i’ve been hitting him over the head with 😀
cheers doc *thumbsup* (but not in a BR type way 😀 )
Doc
A belated congratulations on the five year anniversary. I don’t remember how I found OCT but it was pretty early. I remember the wood panel theme or whatever that was when you started. One thing that has remained constant is your integrity and the quality of the articles.