Ghostwriters in the sky
Author Obama
During the last election, rumors flew about saying that former radical and education activist Bill Ayers wrote all or part of Barack Obama’s book Dreams from My Father. This rumor morphed into a small cottage industry of analysis trying to prove Ayer’s involvement in the book including a series of articles by WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill.
These allegations have been repeated in a number of right wing web sites such as The American Thinker and The Free Republic. Now WorldNetDaily has a new article, Author confirms Bill Ayers helped Obama write ‘Dreams’.
Of course, the “author” WND talks about is not the author of Obama’s book, but that of a new book, Barack and Michelle: An American Marriage by Christopher Andersen. Andersen should know because he had access to unnamed sources close to Obama. I should say that Cashill claims Andersen supports his view (in fact I have no confirmation of this).
The scenario alleged is in the typical nobama style. If alleges a fact (Obama was facing a deadline) that no one can easily verify but might accept because it it plausibled, it alleges another fact (Ayers lived nearby) that is non-trivial to verify and then it offers another allegation (the neighbors knew…) that no one can easily verify, but might accept because it is plausible and asserted. It is a good example of substitution of speculation for evidence made in the form of an argument. But this claim has no more substance to it than the travel ban to Pakistan argument, the born in Kenya argument and the Indonesian adoption argument: none.
So did Bill Ayers write Dreams from My Father? There is nothing in the WND article that would lead a rationally thinking person to jump to any conclusion.
Donofrio v FactCheck.org (Updated again)
Leo. C. Donofrio
[When I learned of Donofrio's article discussed here, I contacted FactCheck.org, and received a reply Sept. 3rd from director Brooks Jackson that FactCheck would be issuing a correction on one point discussed below in an article titled: Obama and Kenya Again. FactCheck suggests that they are tired of the whole Obama conspiracy mess, and have referred folks to another web site for more information.]
Leo C. Donofrio has challenged FactCheck.org and come out swinging.
Anyone who has been following Obama conspiracy theories and the attendant novel legal theories on citizenship will be familiar with the article by FactCheck.org, Does Barack Obama have Kenyan citizenship? from August 6, 2008. This article contains the famous quotation:
When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.’s children:
immortalized by its inclusion by the Obama Campaign in its Fight The Smears web site.
Donofrio, who has made denying Obama’s eligibility to be president his own personal crusade through a failed lawsuit (Donofrio v. Wells) taken all the way to the Supreme Court, and his Natural Born Citizen his web site, has now taken issue with FactCheck.org with a brand new article: CONFIRMED: Factcheck.org Published Bogus Fact Regarding Obama’s Kenyan Citizenship. We covered much of the same ground on this blog in my article: Is President Obama a British Citizen? But let no one deride this blog for refusing to cover the same ground over and over.
Donofrio opens his attack by planting a vague, undefined doubt:
The relationship between President Obama and Factcheck.org has been on my mind recently….
But propaganda tactics aside [Obama has no relationship to FactCheck], what is the meat of Donofrio’s complaint? (more…)
“It’s an insult to his mother”
Stanley Ann Dunham
The utter lack of disrespect that some birthers show towards the president’s deceased mother appalls me, particularly the frequent claims that she is a “liar”. I was raised not to disrespect anyone’s mother, and particularly not a departed one, and I was taught not to call anyone a liar unless I was pretty damned sure it was true. What compounds the insult is that there is no evidence whatever to support the nasty speculation.
The New York Times article earlier this month, carried comments from Congressman Neil Abercrombie.
… Mr. Abercrombie, who has represented Hawaii for nearly two decades in Congress, was a close friend of Mr. Obama’s parents, who were students at the University of Hawaii in 1961. The president’s father, Barack H. Obama Sr., was from Kenya, but Mr. Abercrombie said the suggestion that the Obama baby was born in Africa is an absurd impossibility.
“He was born in Kapiolani Hospital, right down the street from where I lived,” Mr. Abercrombie said. “They had no money. I can’t imagine how they would get to Kenya. It makes no sense at all. It’s an insult to his mother.”
I agree.
The Long Form – reconstructed
Over the months, bits and pieces of evidence have come forward that provide at a partial view of what President Obama’s original birth certificate must look like.
Starting with the COLB released by Barack Obama himself, we add the recently confirmed Mother’s Usual Address from the newspaper birth announcement, the certificate number from FactCheck.org photographs, the name of the hospital from the President himself in a letter to the hospital on the occasion of their centennial celebration, and some formatting hints from the Nordyke Twin’s certificate.
I took a birth certificate from 1963 and reconstructed a Barack Obama birth certificate with the most accurate content I could. I did not attempt to make a forgery: the fonts don’t match exactly and the security paper background is obviously cut and pasted. But if and when a long form is published, this is the content we should expect to see. The only thing I guessed about was the age of Obama’s father: I put 24, but it could have been 25. If anyone has his date of birth documented, please tell me (and tell the Wikipedia!).
I may kick myself for this but here it is:
Reconstructed birth certificate, click to enlarge
Exhibits:
- “Nordyke” long form 1961 (copy printed and sealed in 1966)
- Obama COLB 1961 (printed and sealed in 2007)
- “Edith” long form 1962
- “Alan” long form 1963
Musings on the Fake Kenyan Birth Certificate
Fake Birth Certificate
It looks like, at least in the eyes of its creators, the Fake Kenyan Birth Certificate has been a success beyond their wildest hopes. It has focused the scorn of the national press on the stupidity of the birthers, it has immunized at least part of the public against the next fraudulent document to come out and it tripled traffic here on Obama Conspiracy Theories. It was a very fine hoax because it was good enough to fool some of the people, but also bad enough so that thoughtful people could shoot it full of holes. The errors on it were in gradations of sophistication so as to drag out the agony for a few days.
What if…
What if it had been a forgery rather than a hoax, with the intent to fool rather to embarrass? What if the forger were Kenyan and had access to a real Kenyan birth certificate for someone born in 1961 for a model? Say they even found a blank form from the period in the bottom of some government agency filing cabinet, and typed it up on a vintage typewriter, using real official’s names, but of those no longer living. Forgeries of old documents have fooled experts, and even defrauded museums. It would be well within the realm of possibility that a Fake Kenyan Birth Certificate could be created that would defy all but the most sophisticated analysis.
Despite the offical record of Obama’s birth in the United States and denials from Kenya that claims Obama was born there are “baseless”, there are people whose judgment would latch onto such a document and never let go. In the end, it is not possible to force someone to believe what they do not want to believe through contrary evidence. It’s a fact that we just have to get used to. The birthers are here to stay.
Kenyan Official confirms: it’s all “baseless claims”
In a report on August 3, 2009, The Washington Independent quoted a Kenyan Embassy official:
Jon Chessoni, a first secretary at the Kenyan Embassy in Washington, can’t understand why his office gets so many baseless questions about whether Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
“It’s madness,” said Chessoni on Monday. “His father, in 1961, would not even have been in Kenya. When this matter first came up, the Kenyan government did its research and confirmed that these are all baseless claims.”…
Chessoni didn’t understand what Taitz was talking about or what her discovery (the gift of an “anonymous source” who’s “afraid for his life”) was supposed to prove. He showed the image [fake Kenyan birth certificate] to other embassy employees, who rolled their eyes….
