I’ve written before on the fact that various official documents of Barack Obama, Sr. show two different dates of birth, one in 1934 and one in 1936. The latest birther flap relates to an apparent disparity in the spelling of his given name, “Barack” and “Barrack.” (There are other variants in the name in other documents as well.) Based on this, and some assumptions about what “authentic” documents are supposed to look like, the writer of the email comes to the conclusion that Barack Obama, Sr. didn’t attend the University of Hawaii at all, and “probably never set foot on the islands of Hawaii.” The argument takes the “Barrack” spelling as correct (never mind what it says on his tombstone) and then claims all other documents are fake, including the President’s birth certificate, and the newspaper announcements of a son born to “Barack” Obama.

The writer also seems to be unable to understand that some people (e.g. Stanley Ann Dunham) start college before age 18 and so she must have still been in high school in Washington state when the President was conceived.  (My son started college at 17 and his mother started at 16.)

Following is the email verbatim:

Doc, we know from the release of UK files listing foreign students from Kenya Colony circa 1960 that the correct spelling of Obama Sr is Barrack. >From the Certificates of Eligibility for 1960 and 1961 for Barrack Obama we know his birthdate is June 18, 1934. Those certificates have been altered where it says Honolulu, Hawaii when it should be Honolulu, Oahu, and "the University of Hawaii" or "University of Hawaii" when it should be University of Hawaii and branch.  But not important as those items were made by a different typewriter than the main body and thus ALTERED meaning Barrack Obama never attended the University of Hawaii and probably never stepped foot on the Islands of Hawaii. Same goes for ‘Barack Obama’ who never legally had even the mispelled (sic)Barack name.

The FBI lists records by name and birthdate. Many have the same name but chances of having the same name and birthdate are small¹. That would be one chance in 366.

There are no legitimate documents, newspaper articles, photos, birth announcements, birth certificates that place the Obamas in Hawaii in any way, shape, or form. Remember if it doesn’t have Barrack with the double rr and the Birthdate June 18, 1934 or an age calculated to that birthdate it isn’t a legit Obama Sr document. The alleged birthdate of August 4, 1961 is a sure sign that the document is forged. Obama is at least 10 years older than that birthdate implies. But more important Stanley Ann Dunham’s birthdate of November 29, 1942 made her close to age 18 on the alleged conception date November 1960. As her birthstate Kansas has a school attendance cutoff date of August 31th, her high school class was Class of 1961 so she was in attendance at a Washington state high school, Mercer Island High School, on the alleged conception date NOT IN HAWAII.

Furthermore the high school handwriting samples of Stanley Ann Dunham don’t match all of the forged Stanley Ann Dunham signatures on a brace of Obama documents. Google Annwriting1 for the handwriting samples.

¹For common names, the same name and birthdate is extremely common. Barack Obama, of course, is not a common name.

In researching this article I found a number of other web search tools that go beyond basic search listings¹, either with graphic displays or through clustering results in some way. Here are some of the ones that gave useful or at least interesting results. I’ll be back to some of them in the future when exploring the Birther universe.

The first was the Cluuz search. I used Cluuz to search for keyword “birther” and it seemed to understand a little about birthers. It highlighted Orly Taitz and Donald Trump, for example. The site lets you just search news, or the entire Web. It pointed out some articles I was familiar with, and some interesting ones I hadn’t seen. Some of the site features don’t seem to work.

The Constellations web site works somewhat like TouchGraph. It’s visually somewhat confusing, but I can see the linkages well enough. The mouse wheel scrolls in and out, and you can highlight linkages by hovering the mouse pointer over the site. Here’s the cluster results for BirtherReport.com. Some of the site features don’t seem to work.

IBoogie is just a search engine; however, it clusters subtopics together and returns pretty clean results.

PolyMeta is another graph of related search terms. Click on “Topics Graph” to get the graphic window to pop up – it takes a while the first time. It alternately displays subtopics in a tree like IBoogie.

I searched for “Birther” at the Spezify web site and was presented with an interesting collage of web page images on the subject, including an image from BirtherThinkTank and some neat cartoons.

The UMLS Visualizer uses similar technology to TouchGraph, but works on semantic relationships rather than hyperlinks. Unfortunately “birther” isn’t one of the topics it understands. You can type in “paranoia” and then expand the node (by clicking on the blue box). Be sure to check the box “All relations” before you start. Visuwords is another semantic graphic site that doesn’t understand “birther.”

The Wiki Summarizer works with the Wikipedia to organize topical information for ease of research in a tree view. Give it a try and click the “+” to expand the results.

Lo and behold, one of those candidates with no name recognition is actually a name I recognize, 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate Gail Lightfoot (pictured right), who was one of the early Obama eligibility litigants, suing California Secretary of State Debra Bowen over Obama’s appearance in the ballot in California. Who was the plaintiff’s attorney of record in Lightfoot v. Bowen?¹ None other than Orly Taitz. Taitz is running against her former client.

The Obama Conspiracy Theories blog hereby endorses Gail Lightfoot for second place in the 2012 Senate race in California. I actually agree with some of her positions.

¹Lightfoot v. Bowen was appealed to the US Supreme Court, who declined to hear the case.

simply put, “advanc(ing) the ends of justice” does not include using the courts to make claims that are flatly untrue in furtherance of a political agenda.

As the number of dismissed lawsuits rises, I would think that harassment claims gain credibility.

AZ – LLF – 2012-05-09 DNC Motion for Sanctions

Judd himself is an interesting character, and you can read about that at The Charleston West Virginia Gazette.