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How do they know?

By on March 3, 2013 in Birth Location, Debunking

Recently, birthers have been recycling long-discredited rumors about Barack Obama. One way to recycle rumors is to aggregate them into a pile, where they look more impressive than singly. One such aggregation of old news appeared on the Orly Taitz blog from a commenter named “Adam.” I respond to this compilation of people who have said Obama was born in Kenya by asking the obvious question: how do they know? I ask because if there is no way they could have know, then they don’t know.

Kenyan National Assembly members state at various times that Obama was born in Kenya and is not a native born American:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/36604073/

The link in the proceeding is not any official source; it’s to a newspaper ad,  but there are a couple of quotations from Kenyan politicians that say, or might be understood to say, that President Obama was born in Kenya. I ask: how do they know? They were not speaking about where Obama was born, but about something else, using Obama just as an example. They weren’t authoritative statements on the subject of the President’s birthplace. Have you never heard a US politician make a glaring mistake, shoot from the hip, run off their mouth with their brain not engaged? If the Kenyan politicians don’t give a source, then don’t know any more than anyone else.

Kenyan Ambassador to the United States says on a U.S. radio show that Obama’s birth location in Kenya is well known:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH4GX3Otf14

In this case the Ambassador was misunderstood. He talked about the Obama birth place being a popular tourist attraction. That refers to Kogelo Village where Barack Obama Sr. was born. When contacted next day, a spokesperson for the Ambassador stated flat out that the Ambassador had no information about where President Obama was born. We needn’t ask how he knew, because he tells us that he didn’t.

Newspapers in Kenya and other African countries report as far back as 2004 that Obama is Kenyan born:
http://www.scribd.com/my_document_collections/2441535

A very few, relatively speaking, of these did appear. However, they never give sources, and they don’t explain how they knew. Some printed retractions.

Obama’s family members in Kenya say he was born there:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=107524

Obama family members might reasonably know where the President was born, but they never said he was born in Kenya. They consistently say he was born in Hawaii.

Michelle Obama the wife of Barack Hussein Obama says in 2008 that Kenya is her husband’s “home country”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4Afe1NVYI

Figure of speech. Even if Michelle Obama knew her husband were born in Kenya, she would never say so in public.

Michelle Obama the wife of Barack Hussein Obama in 2007 says her husband is a Kenyan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rep-MB-wbkU

Figure of speech. Even if Michelle Obama knew her husband were born in Kenya, she would never say so in public.

NPR radio says that Obama is Kenyan born:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=138293

How do they know? What source do they have that is not available to all of us? Anyway, they corrected the mistake quickly.

Gov Richardson of New Mexico says Obama is an immigrant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEjGmT1gmcw

How does he know? Whatever he meant, he has no way to know if President Obama was born in Kenya.

School records in Indonesia report that he is an Indonesian citizen:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=72667

Those school records also say he was born in Hawaii. If you accept the school record, then you have to throw out everything that says Obama was born in Kenya. According to school officials, the nationality of the parent (in this case Lolo Soetoro) was usually put down for nationality, as was the religion, Islam. Obama becoming an Indonesian citizen was impossible both under US and Indonesian law.

No hospital records exist in Hawaii proving Obama was born there per Tim Adams a 2008 Hawaii Election official’s sworn affidavit:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=254401

How does Adams know? The best he has said is that it was an office rumor or something his supervisor told him. How did the supervisor know? The Elections Division does not have access to any birth records in Hawaii. They had no way to know, so they don’t know.

Obama’s Hawaiian birth registration records was likely created by an affidavit led by Obama’s maternal grandmother declaring him born at home with no witnesses using a simple mail-in form available in 1961 simply to gain her new foreign born grandson Citizenship. Birth registration fraud to gain Citizenship occurs now and it occurred then. His vital records were likely subsequently amended upon the marriage of his mother to her second husband, Lolo Soetoro in Hawaii. His official name in the vital records of Hawaii may show his name still as Soetoro. The online Certification of Live Birth (COLB) is a forgery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZpwcRf3FQ

So how do they know this? Given that all the details on Obama long-form birth certificate have been verified by the State of Hawaii, and in particular that President Obama was born in a hospital, this is clearly not true.

This particular list omitted the publicist’s brochure mentioning that Obama was born in Kenya. However, the author of that brochure stated specifically that she had no information from Obama that it was true. So asking how did she know, we know the answer: she didn’t.

The general response: how did then know, or how do you know, is a fairly non-aggressive way to argue, and quickly arrive at the result that the speaker believes something without good reason and really does not know.

Read more:

New film: Barack Obama Made in Hawaii

By on February 22, 2013 in Birth Location, Videos

This is a promotion for the film, currently in post production.  Class act.

BARACK OBAMA MADE IN HAWAII (Inaugural Edition for VIMEO) from Gloria Borland on Vimeo.

More racist comments at ORYR

By on December 26, 2012 in Birth Location, Racism, The Blogs

I’ve been spending a little more time over at the Obama Release Your Records site as a result of the article there about the box labels on INS records at the National Archives. What struck me is the detachment from reality that I saw in comments on that article. Folks there say all sorts of things, declaring them facts, without any sources whatever. It’s almost like they were taking some hallucinogenic drug that made them see things that aren’t there. Further, they accept such things uncritically from others.

ObamaReleaseYourRecords.com site banner

One must wonder how and why these fantasies are so easily spun from straw into gold and how they believe that anybody and everybody is a participant in the conspiracy that  stretches from this blog to the highest positions in the US Government. One commenter (“Natural-born citizen”) made up this story about us:

Knowing you bow before Obama and pray nightly to him precludes you from being non-bias (sic). Every story you have is in favor of Barry. Not one thing Barry is accused of and proven, do you agree with. It’s almost as if you are being paid to spew.

You claim to know so much… problem is, none of what you preach to the drones is correct.

No specifics because there are simply so many… Knowing that if Barry were to descend before you and admit he was the foreigner that he is… you would call him a liar too.

YOUR AGENDA PRECLUDES YOU FROM BEING ABLE TO RECOGNIZE OR DISSEMINATE THE TRUTH. It is simply against what you want to believe and that the Conservatives are evil, Liberals are gods. Story after story after story…’those conservatives are wrong’ That is why you are simply another Jim Jones. Your followers are the low information voters formally called MORONS. You may have them fooled but anyone with an education can see you motives.

Don’t you have somewhere else to be where they believe the shit you shovel?

That remark, it appears to me, reflects a political prejudice against liberals in general. There’s also that phrase “low information voters” that could be a code word for something unstated (since black voters overwhelmingly voted for Obama). Of course, at least among the commenters here, I find high information folks (not all voters). Rather than being a site where people are “fed” a line of information, commenters here in the main are contributors and equal participants.

We need not invoke code words, however, to interpret this further comment (turn off irony meters) from “not easily fooled” at ORYR. It is plain unvarnished racism:

Lets look at this from God’s perspective. Well-meaning whites have been trying to lift up their brown brothers from the middle of the 19th century until now, pretending that the average brown man is capable of the same achievement as the average white man.

This has all been BLASTED TO SMITHEREENS – THE EMPEROR TRULY HAS NO CLOTHES! Sorry, facts and events from the past few years have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are not our equals, and can only bring us down if we continue to pretend that they are our equals.

Facts: Widespread cheating on academic tests at minority-dominated schools. The "No Child Left Behind Act" sought to identify and punish supposedly underperforming schools and teachers who were holding back black and brown achievement. The only thing that NCLB proved was that the black and brown children were holding back their well-meaning teachers! If their teachers were teaching at white schools they wouldn’t be suspect. The unlucky teachers assigned to minority schools were blamed for black and brown under-achievement. The teachers knew this and engaged in widespread cheating to hide under-achievement!

Now we have the spectacle of whites being unable to bring themselves to admit that the president is a fraud from top to bottom. Revealing his records etc (sic) would show the whole affirmative action enterprise has been a waste of time. It is so bad that whites are asked to look past ignorant efforts at evidence tampering! How stupid do you have to be to think that you can get away with, e.g., whiting out a date, or cutting a date stamp in half, and that it wouldn’t be evident exactly what was done?

None of this is meant to mean that there aren’t black and brown men who are equally as apt as smart white men. There just aren’t as many of them, and it seems that the current system only promotes the relatively unqualified to the top.

In fact, it is the birthers who are the low-information voters, and it only takes a minute reading comments at ORYR to pick out rumors and misinformation masquerading as fact. Here’s a good example of that:

I remember a blog last year having info regarding arrivals in the US from Kenya in the last 6 months of 1961 in that there was only one child that entered the US from Kenya between July and December 1961.

Barrack Obama Sr. had 2 sons born in Kenya (his only sons at the time) prior to Kenyan independence in 1963 and then several more born after 1963. His 2nd son was born in 1961 in Kenya. Barry is his 2nd son. This info was gleaned from the Kenyan Archives in London where Barry’s BC was on public display until 2009 when Hillary had the files sealed on her first trip to London as SoS.

The regulars took that as fact and ran with it, even though most of it is untrue. (The INS report showed one person entering the US from Kenya, but it did not say it was a child, nor that it was in August, thereby precluding Obama and his son from both traveling. No US citizens entered in that period, precluding Obama’s mother. The birth certificate claim is a complete fabrication.)

National Archives corrects label on box; birthers call it a crime

By on December 22, 2012 in Birth Location, Lawsuits

Jerome Corsi looked at INS arrival records for Hawaii for 1961, around the time President Obama was born. He reported that records were missing, or at least that’s how his reporting was described. More accurately, as I understand it, the images on the microfilm were unreadable towards the end of the reel. Someone, I presume Corsi, took a picture of the microfilm box that was labeled: “INS, HONOLULU, July 28, 1961 – August 8, 1961.”1

Now, the box label is changed, or so says Mr. Sibley in an emergency motion in his lawsuit, and in a color report at ObamaReleaseYourRecords. The new label says “July 28, 1961 – August 1, 1961.” ORYR makes a federal case out of this:

Thus, indisputably the box has been tampered with – a criminal offense – to hide the fact that the microfilm for the August 2 through August 7, 1961 arrivals is now missing.

I don’t see what the big deal is. If the records aren’t on the film, it makes perfect sense to change the box label to accurately reflect what’s in it. How is that in any way a crime? And if there really is no other box starting with August 2, then it remains obvious that such records are “missing.”

The other weird thing is that the normal way to get to Hawaii from Kenya in 1961 was to come via New York, and that’s where INS travel records ought to be. The final leg to Hawaii would have been a domestic flight with no INS paperwork at all. Besides, we already know from 1961-62 INS statistical reports that no US citizen made such a flight from Kenya.

1I never have understood why birthers, who doubt just about everything about Obama’s birth certificate, doggedly insist on the actual August 4 date of birth, even on the fake Kenyan certificates.

Mother Jones: The Obama Conspiracy-o-rama

By on November 2, 2012 in Birth Location, Media, Misc. Conspiracies

Mother Jones Conspiracy ChartMother Jones has done an impressive chart of many of the conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, and this puts into perspective how little of the total nuttery about Obama that I actually cover on this blog.

Following the chart is a list of what’s on the chart, with explanation and follow-up hyperlinks. Somebody did a lot of work. You’ll have to visit Mother Jones to see the full-sized chart, but I will include just this one item from among many:

Obama was born in Kenya: In early 2008, fringe theorists began a push to prove Obama was born on foreign soil and was therefore ineligible to live in the White House. The theory gained national attention thanks to the efforts of perennial GOP candidate Alan Keyes, "birther queen" Orly Taitz, and Corsi. Related: Obama’s birth certificate is a fake, he killed his grandmother in Hawaii because she knew the truth, sealed access to his birth certificate and other damning documents, and did pretty much everything horrible you could possibly do for the sake of a phony birth certificate.

I was already familiar with the chart, but one of the commenters here tipped me off about something I didn’t know, that the first and last hyperlinks in that section point to my own Debunker’s Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories. That was nice!

Startling image proves Obama born in Hawaii

By on October 31, 2012 in Birth Location, Videos

We all had a good laugh at the Obama birth video last weekend. While factual inconsistencies abounded, a detail in the film dated it not to 1961 but to a time since June of 2012, the striking image from the calendar taped to the wall in the “delivery room.”

image

It turns out that this image came from the “Flower Spirits 2013 Wall Calendar” featuring the work of artist Steven N. Meyers. The calendar was published this past June, meaning that the video was made since then.

That’s old news; however, startling new information arrived today that involves that same image, proving that Obama was born in Hawai’i (see below). Note the USA flag on the ukulele, as well as the distinctive Hawaiian lei.

ObamaUkeCalendar

The flower image in the video is actually from October 2013 and remarkably, just as in August of 1961, the 4th is on a Friday.

Nimrod Kamer has released a new video showing the making of the Obama birth video. Yours truly is featured, and if you look closely at the black and white footage of the calendar at the end of the video, every day is NOT the 4th.

Continue Reading →

Interview with Peter Rehnquist

By on October 27, 2012 in Birth Location, Videos

I just finished a 20-minute phone interview with Peter Rehnquist, the fellow who has made available a video that purports to show Barack Obama being born in Kenya. Due to technical problems, my recording of the interview didn’t work, so this will have to come from memory.

In my previous article, I pointed out a number of points folks have made that led them doubt the authenticity of the video. I asked Mr.  Rehnquist how he reacted to the fact that the video is being met with skepticism everywhere. He replied by saying that he believes the video is authentic, inviting me, and he sounded sincere, to prove that it was not.

So we went through some of the issues already discussed on the blog.

  • The wrong flag? He claimed that that image “was in existence” in 1961 although not yet adopted. (No proof offered.)
  • Big baby with teeth? He said that some babies have teeth. (This is true 1 of 2000 births.) Then he suggested that perhaps the video was actually a re-enactment made by Obama Sr. in Kenya when Barack was 6 months old. He really suggested that! I pointed out that baby Obama was seen by Governor Abercrombie of Hawaii within a few weeks of the birth. Mr. Rehnquist said perhaps they went back and forth to Africa.
  • Calendar on the wall marked, but later in the video not marked? He said that maybe there were two calendars, the second shot done because the first was fuzzy. (Of course no one could know that the first one was fuzzy until after the film was developed days later.)
  • I asked Mr. Rehnquist specifically where the video was taken, and he said Mombasa. I asked about the King George VI hospital photo from Nairobi on the wall. He thought the two hospitals might have had the “same owners”. I asked why it wasn’t framed; he said it as a poster.
  • When I started talking about the video format, it was obvious that he was aware of the objections made that Super 8 video didn’t exist in 1961, answering before I mentioned that detail. He said that maybe that was a “typo” and it really was regular 8 mm. I had asked him whether he had seen the full 15 minutes of the video and he said that he had; however, further conversation made this muddy. Apparently he himself has not handled the film. His “contact in Kenya” sent him the images “on a DVD”. He said something, and the Skype connection garbled it, about his contact perhaps being persuaded to release more of the video. He also mentioned something about $10,000 necessary to get access to the film. He mentioned that Donald Trump should pay some money to get the whole film.
  • I specifically questioned him about the fact that the video was shot at 24 frames per second when amateur 8mm  equipment runs at 16 frames per second. This one took him by surprise. He asked me if 24 FPS technology didn’t exist in 1961, and of course I said that it did, for professional equipment. He said that perhaps they brought in a “big camera” to take the film – lots of “rich people went to that hospital”. (The film is clearly of amateur quality.)
  • I said I didn’t think the woman in the film was Ann Dunham. He thought it was.

I am only guessing here, but the fellow sounded sincere, and that he sincerely wanted to believe that the film was authentic and was asking me to help him understand objections to the film’s authenticity. He kept mentioning his “Kenyan contact” as the one who was making the decisions, who would provide explanations to objections, who was wanting $10,000, who had the original footage, and who controlled what would be released or not. The hospital scene looks very African to me, and the flag of Kenya pin on the doctor is something much easier to obtain in Kenya than here. What Rehnquist said sounded so very much like the email exchanges that I had with a Kenyan detective a while back who was trying to lead me on to send him more money for a “spy cam” video from a Mombasa hospital of a contemporary interview. (I shared with Mr. Rehnquist a little of my experience with the Kenyan detective.)

It was a cordial call and he gave me permission to publish the recording, which I wish had worked out.

Just moments after I got off the phone, I got an email from blog commenter bgansel9 sharing a link that they also posted on my other article, pointing out that the distinctive x-ray artwork that appears on the calendar in the video was done by photographer Steven N. Meyers, in 2005 according to the artist. bgansel9 also provided a link to the 2013 calendar with that image. You can buy your own copy of the 2013 calendar here. I suppose that it is just coincidence that August 4 is a Friday in both 1961 and in 2013. bgansel9 is hereby awarded a gold star junior detective award from Obama Conspiracy Theories.

image

Just for reference, here’s the calendar image from the video.

image

And here is the image from the back of the 2013 calendar.

image

After receiving these images, I sent an email to Mr. Rehnquist saying:

I regret to inform you that your contact in Africa is attempting to defraud you. I just learned a couple minutes ago that the calendar on the wall in the video is a 2013 calendar with "1961" put on it. The flower image is modern. See here to order the calendar:

https://www.rsvp.com/item.php?item=1772

Here is an image showing the picture from the calendar in the video.

http://img2.imagesbn.com/images/165910000/165912911.JPG

The artist who did the images didn’t start doing this kind of work until 1971.

I hope you haven’t lost any money.

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