[nopardons]

Unless you are a retread ( WELCOME TO FR, BTW ), or have assiduously read FR from its inception, or close to that, then you really don't know what I'm talking about.

The kind of crazed posts, based on NOTHING at all but paranoid fears and delusions, are a completely new thing for this site. And at one time, tinfoil garbage was almost always deleted pretty quickly. Now, it's not only posted, but allowed to remain up.

People on FR used to do a lot of really great research on a whole host of things. RATHERGATE was just the latest and biggest, that the MSM picked up on.

Now, it appears that the crackpot junk is being quoted.

[chickenNdumplings]

I’m a retread and first joined in early 1998. I recently returned from overseas and forgot my password (getting older is no fun). Thank you for the warm welcome, even though it is a welcome back. I usually get “hello newbie” which is annoying.

You are right about the old days. I noticed a lot more was tolerated after 9/11 when the Duke Nukem crowd started going wild on here. Now, after my absence of a couple of years, I discover tinfoilers may outnumber the nuke Mecca gang! I don’t want to see all speculation shot down, but if this is allowed to go too far too often, the reputation of the site will suffer. And I do love FR!

And my eyes will get bleary from skipping over tinfoil posts while trying to keep up with a thread, too.

I’m still in the process of coming to terms with how bad it really is, so I defer to your assessment. Your posts have been solid and rational, your patience monumental. I’m impressed.

[ArmstedFragg]

We also used to, at least, have a progressive process where we agreed on facts and came to a consensus on what the facts were, even if we didn’t agree on how to interpret them. I think, in part, that’s because most of us knew what the state of the story was before we stared posting. On this particular issue, we’ve gone around in circles. One example is the ‘firearms sales to aliens’ issue which keeps coming up every couple of hours even though it was debunked before dawn on Tuesday. Maybe getting a separate “Ax” thread going would help.