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Weak Arguments That Obama's Long-Form Birth Certificate Is Fake
Jeff Winston | 4/28/2011 | Jeff Winston
Posted on Thursday, April 28, 2011 1:23:48 AM by Jeff Winston
Okay, I've finally gone over the edge and decided to compile a list of weak and disproven arguments that have been presented claiming that the certificate presented today by Obama is fake. This is largely for the purpose of saving everybody's time from going over the same points again and again.
First let me say that yesterday, I was personally thinking of writing a newspaper article on why "birthers'" concerns were legitimate. There is one person and one person only who is responsible for the "birther" furor, and that is Barack Obama himself. HE and no one else has dragged the nation through this.
Obama could have released his long form birth certificate as long as 3 years ago. Assuming that it's legitimate, his failure to do so is inexcusable - especially in regard to the consequences on the nation and in particular to Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin. There is simply no other reasonable course of action for honest, thinking people than to be suspicious of a President who deliberately refuses to release his long-form birth certificate for 3 long years.
Secondly, let me say that I know some here will strenuously disagree. But are you disagreeing because of the facts, or because you desperately WANT to believe we have proof the new certificate is a fake? You can attack me, but if you can't convincingly refute the points made, then you've lost your case, because most Americans aren't going to ignore the facts.
Further note that nothing I say here guarantees the authenticity of the certificate presented. It's certainly plausible that the certificate presented could have been faked! But plausibility does not equal evidence. And so far, I have yet to see a convincing argument to invalidate the certificate released today.
Let me also note that I am not attempting to address the question of whether Obama, even if born in the USA to a Kenyan father and an 18-year-old American mother, is a Natural Born Citizen. That is a separate issue, and I am leaving that to others.
WHAT USEFUL THINGS CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WITH OBAMA ELIGIBILITY DISCUSSIONS?
When discussing Obama's birth certificate and eligibility, it's good to ask: Why are we discussing this? What do we hope to achieve?
Even if the man were shown to be ineligible at this late date, removing him from office would take time, and it would require close to a 100% certainty of ineligibility.
So what's the purpose? To keep him from getting reelected? That would be great, but would again only work practically if there were really demonstrably good reason to believe he was born elsewhere.
And there may BE good reason. I don't know. We may see more when Corsi's book is released next month. But at this point, we don't have Corsi's book.
The point here is that we must not miss the forest for the trees. Unless someone can come up with some really convincing proof that Obama's certificate is a fake (yes, this is an invitation to go ahead and do so!) then energies may be better spent opposing him on things we KNOW are well worth opposing: namely, his disastrous policies and plans for our country.
WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO DEMONSTRATE BIRTH CERTIFICATE FRAUD?
As far as I can see at this point, in order to attack Obama's long-form certificate, one must demonstrate one of the following:
1. That the certificate the White House released is NOT what was received from Hawaii.
or,
2. That the certificates the State of Hawaii supplied are themselves forged.
or,
3. That the letter posted from Loretta J Fuddy is a forgery,
or,
4. That the birth certificate released is not possible or is completely inconsistent with known and verified facts.
Unless you can do one (or more) of the four, and do so in an iron-clad manner, you really don’t have anything (as far as I can tell) that demonstrates the new certificate is a forgery.
An example of the last one: If it turns out that a street named was not built until 1965, then Houston, we have a problem.
In a moment, we will look at all the objections I have seen raised to date.
FIRST, THE ADDITIONAL IMAGE
First note that we have a JPG image without the "security" background as well as the green-backed one most commonly shown. I do not know where the following image originated - maybe someone can tell me?
http://twitpic.com/4q47pm/fullTHE OBJECTIONS
1. "None of what you say matters. I'm still going to declare his birth certificate a fake."
When you abandon truth, you no longer have the truth on your side.
I've seen at least one person today post false statements in thread after thread, even after the statement was shown, irrefutably, to be false.
You can disagree, but I really do not believe that helps our side.
Once you're identified as a liar, there's no reason for anybody to believe anything else you have to say.
2. "This is nothing new. It's the same COLB that was released earlier!"
This is simply not true. The birth certificate released today contains the following additional information:
- name of hospital
- mother's address
- that it was a single birth
- age of father and mother
- birthplaces of father and mother
- occupation of father and mother
- signature of parent or other informant
- attending physician's signature and qualification
- registrar acceptance dates
- registrar signature
- etc.
3. This isn't a birth certificate! A Certificate of Live Birth isn't a birth certificate!
That's the official name for a birth certificate.
4. According to
http://www.kapiolani.org/women-and-children/about-us/default.aspx, that wasn't the name of the hospital in 1961! Therefore, the certificate is a forgery.
That would be damning evidence if true. However, they've left out a little bit of history, referring only to the original name and not reflecting name changes until now. The hospital name is the exact same as that recorded on the birth certificate of the Nordyke twins:
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=105347We also have a Freeper who testifies to having had children born there in the 1960s and who confirms that yes, that WAS the name of the hospital back then.
5. It has layers! That means it's a fraud!
This is IMO the most difficult of the objections raised to date. When I first saw that particular news, I thought, "Wow!"
However, according to Freeper GunRunner, Adobe Acrobat (when used with certain settings) runs Optical Character Recognition and separates a scanned image into layers. As GunRunner explains:
"When you scan something into a PDF, Acrobat scans the text into different layers and makes the text searchable."
"You can deactivate it when you scan something into a PDF, but whoever scanned it obviously forgot to turn it off, and now because of this we will be treated to many more years of wild conspiracy theories, all because some government employee made a rookie mistake. "
A good clue about the nature of these layers is found in all of the little stray letters left behind. Virtually every kind of visual element that you or I would consider a cohesive whole is split up.
"None" is split into "Non" and "e." The "D" splits off of "Dunham." The bottom signature is split up, too. Both date stamps at bottom are split into different layers, though in different places. The "R" is split out of "BARACK." In the tiny print you can catch split-out bits of words. "add" "Co"
All of this speaks to a machine driven process, not something that a human being has designed from elements cut and pasted together.
Or, to put it another way: It would take a LOT of time for a human being to split an image up in this way and then reassemble it into the image we see. And there would be no reason to do it that way. Why spend 50 hours cutting a document into all kinds of crazy little pieces?
Especially if you were trying to create a forgery? Just doesn’t make any sense that way.
Freeper reegs also CONFIRMED that this happens, by first printing the PDF as supplied by the White House, then re-scanning it into a new PDF.
He found that the scanning process DID separate the PDF into layers. Interestingly, it appears to have separated out the middle "R" in BARACK out just as in the original layered PDF:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2711500/posts?page=46#336. But perhaps the layers with little bits were touch-ups that somebody forgot to merge.
Good thought, however touch-ups done in graphic programs are usually done to an existing element. In other words, if these were touch-ups, the text would most likely also exist in the main text layer. A close watching of the following video shows this is NOT the case:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgVIei87oFoThere’s another important issue here which has not been addressed. The text is curved at the appropriate place at left. This makes no sense whatsoever for a document “constructed” by somebody typing in text. Who would first type in text, put it in a book, photograph it, then mix that curved graphic image with other (typed in) letters? Ignoring the enormous needless effort you would spend doing things, you couldn’t possibly get a good result that way.
It just makes no sense. No, the right explanation is the simple one: the layers were created by a software program trying to make sense of, and do OCR on, a scanned image.
7. But there's white around the letters! That means it's a fraud!
Freeper Dick Holmes reposts a Youtube comment clarifying why there's white around the letters:
"Notice how when you hide a layer, it's white behind it? If it was truly forged, you wouldn't see any of the background missing. It's white because it doesn't know what's& behind the text BECAUSE THE TEXT WAS THERE WHEN IT WAS SCANNED."
GunRunner confirms this: "Look at the green background layer. It's not a static green pattern but has white lines carved out where the text should be. It's not like a Photoshop layer."
Therefore this is a natural artifact of the software separating the scanned image into layers.
8. It doesn't have a seal, therefore it's a fake.
It has been suggested in at least one place that some seals don't scan. And at least one Freeper has claimed to see a seal on the certificate. Personally, I don't see it, even after having manipulated the image in a graphics program. However, I also see very little likelihood that the lack of a seal is relevant in this very special case. This is not a birth certificate that went through the normal channels. This was a request from the President of the United States.
The purpose of a seal is to attest to authenticity. Instead of a seal affixed by a low-level employee, we have instead a full, personal letter from no less an authority than the Director of the Department of Health for the State of Hawaii:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-correspondence.pdfIf the lack of a seal is relevant, to me, it would be to indicate that the certificate shown is not that which was received from the Hawaii Department of Health. However, in absence of any statement from Hawaii to the contrary, I think we have to assume that what was published was what was sent.
9. The director may have very well stated that he sent a valid and legal copy but there is no proof that what obama received or presented himself is THAT valid copy.
Again, until and unless we hear differently from the Hawaii Department of Health, I think we have to assume that what was very publicly published was what was sent.
10. It doesn't have lines in it, therefore the certificate is a fake.
According to the documentation we have, the copies were hand delivered by the DOH to Obama’s representative, not mailed. So no lines is not particularly surprising.
And the really big thing is the letter from the Director of Hawaii’s Department of Health testifying to the certificate’s authenticity.
Anyone wanting to prove a fraud needs to somehow get past that.
11. The Nordyke births occurred the day AFTER the Nordyke births. Why aren’t their certificate numbers AFTER his also? I smell a rat.
World Net Daily speculates that stacks of forms were placed in different places. One Freeper likened it to a checkbook. There are groups of forms, number (for example) 1-24 and 25-49. When you can't find the 1-24 checks, you use the 25-49 ones.
Actually, this is the kind of minor discrepancy that's actually a pretty good argument FOR legitimacy.
Most forgers would probably iron out such little wrinkles.
Real life is seldom 100% straightforward. Offices have 2 or 3 different people who fill out certificates, and there's a bit of variation in how things are done. Someone rips off a small stack of forms and puts them in one place, or hands them to one person, another small stack of forms goes somewhere else. A piece of paper sits on someone's desk for a day instead of being filled out immediately. When it's filled out, they use yesterday's date stamp, then notice later that they need to change the date.
There are probably a hundred different ways for minor variations to take place. The people who do the work are ordinary people. Sally, who didn't do that well in school but landed a job with the state. Bill, who's going through a divorce and doesn't really care that much about doing a good job right now.
Nobody thinks it will ever be, or even seem, important, to anyone. In 299,000,000 cases out of 300,000,000, they're right.
12. The delivering doctor is dead. Very suspicious.
The reported physician was Dr. David A Sinclair, who died in 2003:
"Dr. David A. Sinclair, 81, of Honolulu, a retired physician, died Aug. 20, 2003, at home. He was born in Portland, Ore. He is survived by wife Ivalee; sons David, Karl and Brian; daughters Margaret Peterson, Rebekah Luke and Ruth and Katherine Sinclair; 11 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild."
He is identified here as "a longtime obstetrician/gynecologist:"
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Aug/23/ln/ln50aobituaries.htmlDr. Sinclair's widow confirms that the signature is her husband's, so we have the right guy.
Obama turns 50 this year. The average age of an Ob/Gyn is probably around 40 years old. MOST Ob/Gyns who delivered babies in 1961, sadly, are gone.
13. The "H" in Honolulu is different. This is very suspicious. What could have caused that?
Irregularity in the texture of the paper, the typewriter ribbon, the fold of the typewriter ribbon, the amount of ink that was on the typewriter ribbon, the amount of dust or small-paper-bits residue that was on the original piece of paper, the amount of pressure applied by the typist striking the typewriter key, the speed at which the typewriter key was struck, or some combination of the above.
14. "African" is not a race! In 1962, the term used would have been "Negro."
Freeper x notes: "State and local authorities... in many jurisdictions...
go by what the mother or doctor or hospital told them."
"Though birth certificates are official documents there's more leeway than there is on the really official statistics that are sent to the federal government."
"That was especially true in Hawaii. The race on your birth certificate might be 'Japanese,' 'Chinese,' 'Korean,' 'Filipino,' or even 'Puerto Rican,' none of which are 'actual races.'"
"Given how things were at the time, the family probably didn't want to see 'Negro' anywhere on the birth certificate and the registrar was willing to comply with their wishes."
"I don't know if this thing is real or not, but if you really think the registrar was going to be a hard @ss on this and write in 'Negro' or 'colored' anyway, you probably don't know Hawaii."
15. Here is the Problem with Obama’s Birth Certificate..... Kenya was not so named until December 1963! It was British East Africa Protectorate.
National Geographic’s 1960 world map (available on the web shows Kenya as part of a larger British territory, but it is clearly delineated and named "Kenya."
And National Geographic referred to the larger area not as "British East Africa Protectorate," but as "Tr. Terr. UK."
Americans until the dissolution of the Soviet Union (whose official name was "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" referred to that country as "Russia," even though Russia was only its largest state. Americans to this day refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as "England."
It seems highly unlikely that a state employee in Hawaii in 1961 would've written what was popularly known as Kenya as either "British East Africa Protectorate" or "Tr. Terr. UK."
16. It doesn't show the baby's length and weight.
Neither does Susan Elizabeth Nordyke's.
One Freeper went further, claiming that today's certificate "was yet another 'Certification Of Live Birth'... Where is the 'footprint?' The 'baby's weight and length?' Actual 'long form birth certificates' have all these things, and were certainly standardized to include them by the 1960's."
The answer is the same: None of these things are present on Susan Elizabeth Nordyke's long-form Hawaii birth certificate.
17. Snopes previously stated Dr. Rodney West delivered Obama!
Yes, they did, on the word of Barbara Nelson (although it's unclear from the original whether Barbara Nelson actually made that particular claim).
Barbara Nelson apparently did not know the Dunhams and was not present at the birth. She claimed that Dr. West told her of the birth after the fact.
So it's kind of a double hearsay almost 50 years after the fact, with Dr. West (who is deceased) not around to say whether he did or did not state to Barbara Nelson back in the summer of 1961 that he had delivered Stanley Dunham's child. She could well have just assumed he had made the delivery, on the basis of the fact that he was talking about it. Or she could possibly have slightly misremembered a casual conversation from almost 50 years ago regarding someone she didn't even personally know at the time.
18. But Obama paid $2 million to avoid releasing his long-form birth certificate!
It is known that Obama's campaign has paid $2 million to lawyers since the election. What is not known is how much of this has gone to the eligibility lawsuits.
John McCain's campaign, which didn't raise as much money as Obama's has reportedly (unverified, someone can check) paid $1.3 million to lawyers since the campaign.
The following seems to be a fairly comprehensive list of the lawsuits filed. There have been many, but Obama appears as a plaintiff in only three.
http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/BIRTHER%20CASE%20LIST.pdf
It is known that Obama's lawyers filed at least 44 pages of legal documents requesting these suits be dismissed. However, the suits do not appear to have been solely about his birth certificate, but also question eligibility on other grounds as well. A few threatening letters have also been sent by Obama's lawyers.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110412120619AAON7BA
The bigger issue for me than the money spent is: Assuming the long form is legitimate, why didn't Obama release it before now? I can only think he may have thought he was getting an opportunity to label opponents as wackos. Or perhaps there's something else he's hiding (see the writings of Leo Donofrio). In any event, his delaying is in my mind inexcusable, especially as he allowed Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin to be court-martialed and sentenced to jail when could've presumably stopped that mess with a letter to the HI Dept of Health. Completely, utterly inexcusable - at BEST.
19. You're a "newbie" (having registered just over a year ago), or you're a "DU troll."
This is the weakest argument of all: the ad-hominem attack. It is a sign that you can't attack the points made, so you attack the messenger.
It is in fact an acknowledgement that you have no answer to the substance of any point made. If you disagree with any particular point, attack the POINT. Attacking the messenger only indicates you have nothing meaningful to say.
By the way, these are ALL the arguments against inauthenticity of which I am aware - which is to say that so far, I haven't found a single argument that seems to really hold water. That isn't to say one won't come along, just that as far as I can tell, I don't believe I've seen it yet.
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