Where is the Nordyke birth announcement?

UPDATE! The answer to the headline question has been found. The Announcement is in the August 16 issue of the paper.

This question arrived in email, and is related to a YouTube video from Lucas (Inspector) Smith. The claim is that the Nordyke twins (born at the same hospital reported as Obama’s birthplace and one day later) do not have a Honolulu newspaper announcement for them.

While the Hawaii Department of Health has confirmed that newspaper birth announcements, such as that for President Obama, came from the health department, the argument goes: if that’s true then were is the Nordyke announcement?

On the surface that looks like a good question, but like many of those tough sounding questions from the denialists, it has a flaw. How do I (and you) know that the Nordyke announcement is not in the Honolulu newspaper? Are we somehow supposed to take the word of con artist and forger Lucas Smith?

Barack Obama was born on August 4, his birth was registered on August 8 and his newspaper birth announcement appeared on August 13. Nordyke gave birth on August 5 and her twins were registered August 11. We don’t know how long the delay was between registration, batches to the Hawaii Newspaper Agency, distribution to the newspapers, and how often the newspapers ran them. In order to say with any certainty that the Nordyke twins were not announced in the newspaper, one would have to examine newspapers from August 11 to August 20 (and perhaps more).

The much more interesting question is that if the registration sequence I gave above is correct, then why is it that Obama’s birth certificate is numbered later (by 4) than the Nordyke’s. The short answer is that there is a lot we don’t know about the process. Back in 1961, before email and electronic data systems, we see that the Attendant at the Nordyke birth signed the paperwork on August 11, the Local Registrar accepted it August 11 and the Registrar General accepted it on August 11. That’s remarkably fast processing. This only makes sense to me if someone at the hospital is performing the local registrar’s role (quite likely) and also the Registrar General’s role (less likely except that this hospital was the primary maternity hospital in the state). It is plausible that the numbering matching, however, was not at the hospital but at the state office, and that the documents were simply not numbered in the order they were signed (easily possible).

However, with all that, we come around to the original question as to why Nordyke’s announcement (if it was close to Obama’s in the numbering pile at the state health department vital statistics office) wasn’t in the same newspaper.

I can think of several possibilities, none of which is fully satisfying:

  1. The Nordyke announcement really is in the same newspaper as Obama, but the copies available are too fuzzy to read.
  2. The routing of names to the newspapers is independent of the stacking for the numbering machine.
  3. Nordyke’s certificate happened to be at then beginning or end of a batch and got in a different days’ newspaper.
  4. Nordyke’s announcement was just lost somehow.

Other suggestions are welcome.

Now here is another question: what would Obama’s long-form birth certificate add to our information on this question? Nothing.

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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78 Responses to Where is the Nordyke birth announcement?

  1. Expelliarmus says:

    If the information was typed onto forms that had been pre-numbered, then the order in which the information was entered into forms would not correspond to the order in which the forms were returned with signatures for processing. It’s obvious from the Nordyke certificates that there was a delay in getting a signature from an attending physician. So my guess is that 2 forms with pre-stamped numbers were sitting in the doctor’s in-box for him to sign; Obama was delivered by a different doctor.

    Here’s a simple exercise. Go look at the bank statement for your checking account. Your checks all have numbers on them and you probably write checks in order, so as you write them they are issued sequentially. And yet they are not processed in numerical order by your bank!

    Why not? Well, sometimes you hand people checks and sometimes you put checks in the mail. Sometimes you write a check and stick it in an envelope, but don’t actually get around to mailing it for several days. Some people that you pay are very prompt about depositing every check they receive — sometimes people wait for days and even (annoyingly) weeks before they cash your check.

    It would work the same way with pre-stamped numbers on birth certificates.

  2. Dick Whitman says:

    5. Mrs. Nordyke’s long form Certificate of Live Births for her children are fake.

    6. The Hawaii newspapers are out to get the Dunham, Obama, Soetoro family at any cost.

    7. Everyone else is wrong and Obama is as pure as the driven snow.

    Just think’n out loud.

  3. msdaisy says:

    Okay people get with the program here! The Nordyke twins’ birth announcements were never in the paper because they weren’t really born in Hawaii. Allison and Gerthina Keys planted the two girls and the fake long form birth certificates in the Nordyke home. They knew one day their son Alan would run for president against Obama and that BO’s American grandparents were going to plant fake announcements in the paper so they could prove he was born there and be eligible to run when he was really born in Equatorial Guinea with a big head. They blackmailed the Nordykes to raise the girls and to use the fake long forms when the time came as proof to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Obama’s short form BC. Their hope was that their son would win and be the first black POTUS, instead of some bigheaded shape shifting bi racial foreign kid.

    That’s my story and I’m standing by it. (It makes just as much sense as anything the birthers have come up with.)

  4. kimba says:

    “In order to say with any certainty that the Nordyke twins were not announced in the newspaper, one would have to examine newspapers from August 11 to August 20 (and perhaps more).”

    Geez, Doc, that’s too logical, why do you have to spoil everything? When it’s so much more fun to say “hhmmm, mmmmm, the Nordyke twins announcement is not in that paper, hmmmm, mmmmm.”

    What amazes me is that someone took the time to find a library that had the microfiche, took the time to travel to the library, saw boxes with microfiche for other dates around the time she was looking at but didn’t take the time to look at any other date but the August 13 paper?

  5. Scientist says:

    The “newspapers” are nothing but the house organs of the Marxist, islamofascist dictator Obama, so why would any right-thinking Murrican care what they say?

  6. My experience in the industry pretty much rules out prenumbered forms. It would not be possible to maintain a serialized numbering system with children born at different hospitals. One can start with the number one and estimate how many children were born in Hawaii in 1961 up until August 4, and Obama’s certificate number hits it pretty close. That would never work with batches of numbered forms floating around multiple hospitals.

    In your example that would be like expecting your check numbered 501 to be the 501th check the bank processed for the year.

  7. Rita says:

    Just an FYI, as a response on his comment page, Lucas Smith states that he has reviewed all of the announcements from August through December of 1961. Now, again, there is no way to definitively determine that it is not unless you pretty much eliminate every possibility, and in addition Mr. Smith has been known to con people and forge documents.

    In any case, it is a good initial question, but hardly determinative in terms of President Obama’s birthplace or evidence of some kind of conspiracy.

  8. Mary Brown says:

    There were other announcements in the paper for Obamas date. I assume some were born in the same hospital. So we can assume logically that something happened with the twins paperwork that was different than the others.

  9. Sarina says:

    Lucas Smith posted this on his video.
    “Hawaii has the original records for all birth going back when Hawaii was a territory and the President of the US can demand a certified copy of his original birth record, regardless of Hawaii 2001 policy change”
    ” I have 3 long form bc that Hawaii and Alvin Onaka issued in 2002″

    (You can see here, he is a BIG PATHETIC LIAR)

    I replied to him:
    Why Obama has to show the long form if the birthers are going to say it is a fake anyway and besides nor Congress or the Supreme Court are asking for it just a bunch of birthers.
    I told him about those Hawaiian bc you have are they authentic or another of your fakes?

    He never replied back.

  10. Expelliarmus says:

    But assume the number is put on the form when it is initially issued with the basic info but without the doctor’s signature. Then it is taken to the mom for her signature — so when the mom leaves the hospital, there already is a signed certificate and a corresponding number that can be noted in a log book — but the signature of the attending physician is still needed.

    In the Nordyke twins case that signature was delayed for a few days for some reason — so even though the certificates had been issued with the basic information – they did not come back to be filed until later, after the signatures were attained.

    I am not saying that huge batches of certificates would be pre-numbered — I’m just suggesting that if there are 6 newborns on the ward, there might be 6 certificates issued at once with the numbers already on them for the staff to complete. You can double check, but I think that the certificates do show that Obama’s mom and the Nordyke mom have the same signature date.

  11. WateryTart says:

    My experience is that the clerk at the hospital asked for me to affirm that I’d like the birth announcement included in the local paper. It wasn’t included otherwise. This seems to have been a wide-spread practice dating back more than 2 decades.

    I’m a few years younger than Obama. My name was never in the paper as my father asked that it not be included – he was a very private individual.

    When my oldest was born (21 now), we were asked if we’d like to have the announcement in the paper. There wasn’t any charge, but you did have to give permission. I’ve given birth in 3 states and in all 3, it was the clerk who came to get the information for the birth certificate who asked.

    Somewhere in there, in the last dozen years or so, the clerks at the hospital stopped asking about inclusion in the newspaper.

    My sense as a mother who has been through this several times is that privacy has become much more of a concern recently, but it has always at least a passing concern when it involved children, because 1) My birth wasn’t published and 2) more than 20 years ago my child’s wasn’t either.

    It has been reported – I’m not sure how accurate it is – that the father of the Nordyke twins was a doctor. If true, this may have played into why they weren’t published, since most of the doctors I know socially are very private people.

    ~~~
    As for the issue with numbering – Eleanor Nordyke is on record as saying that she thinks that her children’s certificate numbers are lower because she was in labor for a long time & may have been assigned those numbers when she was admitted. Obama’s mother went into labor later but gave birth sooner.

    All this, according to none other than WND, proving once again that birthers will ignore and trash every bit of evidence that doesn’t fit their biased view: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=105347

  12. But again, there would be no reasonable way to coordinate a statewide certificate numbering system if every hospital assigned the certificate number. The only way numbering systems like that have been implemented is to assign blocks of numbers to each institution, and that does not serialize births, which is what birth certificate numbers (approximately) do.

    I’m not sure what you mean by “same signature date”. We don’t have Obama’s hospital certificate, so the only date on it is the date accepted by the registrar, which is August 8 for Obama, and August 11 for Nordyke. Mrs. Nordyke gave birth on the 5th, signed her paperwork as the informant on the 7th and the doctor signed it on the 11th which was also the date accepted by the local and state registrar.

  13. I hesitated to suggest that birth announcements were optional because there’s no place to check that off on the paperwork we know about. Of course the real birth certificate is longer than the “long form” we have been talking about and may have included that option, or it could have been a “release form”.

    There is just a lot we don’t know.

  14. Sarina says:

    It is true that Hawaiian birth announcement can be found in microfiche in every library across the USA? I know that a microfiche announcing Obama’s birth is in a local library in Honolulu.

    Take a look at what Lucas replied to me:
    ” I have reviewed every birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser for Aug 1961, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec. There is no announcement for the Nordyke twins”
    (I havent’replied to this, I know he is lying)
    He also said that his Kenyan bc is not fake,lol! Listen to this: He said ” Even when I was in Africa I didn’t know that Obama was born in Mombassa ( what a lie!!) until I saw and heard the news from locals there in Nairobi( I think he is having an acid flash back)
    He also mentioned he was in the Caribbean and I told him, Bingo! So there is where you made your video, I knew it! People in the video are too light to be Kenyan!
    This idiot fell in his own trap!

  15. Rickey says:

    Eleanor Nordyke is on Facebook, in case anyone who is a Facebook member wants to send her a message and ask her if there was a newspaper announcement.

    http://www.facebook.com/people/Eleanor-Nordyke/1061071543

  16. elmo says:

    Who cares? The fact that a birth announcement was or was not in the newspaper for some other people has nothing to do with Obama’s official Hawaiian birth certificate, repeatedly and publicly confirmed by Hawaiian officials. It doesn’t even affect the Nordyke twins’ ability to establish their status as natural born citizens so they can run for president someday, if they want to. They have their birth certificates for that.

  17. Whatever4 says:

    I’m old enough to have worked in offices pre- computers. My theory on the numbering is that the non-numbered but filled-out forms were sent to the County Vital Records Office in batches. The batches went to a clerk’s inbox. The clerk checked some things, stamped some things, passed it on to the next clerk. Somewhere in there, the number was stamped on it. (Since the numbers don’t like up, it looks like a manual stamp, as do the smaller ones at the bottom.) I can’t imagine there was any need to actually put them in order of birth, except to separate out at the end of a year for tax purposes. So batch one might have 20 or so, batch two another 10, but the clerk does First in Last Out inside the batch. Thus the numbering is a processing order, not a birth order.

    Nordyke BCs

  18. Expelliarmus says:

    I’m saying — let’s assume that on the morning of August 7, 1961 (Monday), a staff member from the hospital goes over to the health department in Honolulu, tells the clerk that there were 5 babies born over the weekend and they need 5 certificate forms. The clerk issues 5 blank prenumbered forms. Those are delivered back to the hospital, where the appropriate information is entered and signed by the moms. The same day (August 7th), or very early the next morning, the attending physician for Obama signs the form, and the completed form is then delivered back to the health department via the same messenger from the hospital, whose job is to go over to the health department, deliver completed forms, and pick up the appropriate number of new forms, once a day, 5 days a week.

    However – under this scenario, the Nordyke forms are not delivered back because the attending physician has not yet signed them – and does not in fact sign them until the morning of August 11th (Friday), and then those certificates are delivered back to the health department later that same day.

  19. gwen says:

    The parents may have asked that the birth not be announced for personal reasons.

  20. gwen says:

    I was born in Honolulu in the mid 50s, I’ll have to look to see how long it took for the announcement to be made….if it were made!

  21. Expelliarmus says:

    That’s true, but there’s still an issue because Obama’s birth certificate appears to have been processed sooner, but has a higher number.

    But there are several steps that need to be done to get the certificate:

    1. Information must be entered on worksheets at hospital.
    2. Information must be typed onto printed birth certificate form.
    3. Mother’s signature needed.
    4. Physician signature needed.

    Obama was born on a Friday night, the twins on Saturday. So its possible that worksheets were filled out by the new moms on Sunday or early Monday (1), then taken to the health department; a clerk at the health department types them all up (2), and stamps numbers on the batch of newly type certificates, then gives them back to the staffer to return to the hospital. Then the mom signs (3), and then the attending physician signs (4) — and then the typed, numbered, and signed form is returned to the clerk’s office, where it is accepted and filed.

    This has all certificates numbered by the health department, but makes some sense because neither the new mom nor the doctor is going to be at the health department to sign the form – so it has to be taken back for signature. But the stamping of a number before the signatures does provide a way for both the health department and the hospital to track the certificate, in case one gets misplaced along the way.

  22. I should clarify, that there are all sorts of numbers attached to a birth. Commonly used are the “local file number” that may be assigned by the hospital or local registrar, the “state file number” that is assigned by the state and should be sequential in the order numbered, and then a “document control number”. This latter number is pre-printed and is a inventory control/security device.

    I’ve never seen a work flow such as you describe. Hospitals fill out birth certificates and funeral directors (some times physicians or coroners) fill out death certificates. The registrar (state or local) sees fully filled out and typed forms which they then verify, sign and number. Forms never leave the jurisdiction once they are accepted and numbered.

    Let me add one more thing. I have processed tens of millions of birth records in my career, and I have seen vast screw-ups, anomalies, and oddities. My own birth certificate has the doctor’s signature, but under the Informant’s Signature, my mother’s name is just typed in. I’ve never worked with Hawaii, but from what I can tell from the outside, they have one of the better systems around. Nevertheless, if the long form were ever published, I would not be surprised to see some kind of an anomaly that means nothing, but would set the birthers off on a high-speed trajectory to Mars.

  23. What possible value in such a work flow is gained by having to ship forms around unnecessarily? If such a pre-numbered form were spoiled, it would leave a gap in the numbers. The assignment of the state file number is part of the registration process, almost like the signature of the registrar. Think of the logistics involved for such a work flow for children born on one of the outlying islands.

    Let me add that these forms are just plain paper documents. They are photocopied/printed onto security paper when they are issued, not when they are registered.

  24. brygenon says:

    Dr. Conspiracy: Let me add one more thing. I have processed tens of millions of birth records in my career, and I have seen vast screw-ups, anomalies, and oddities. My own birth certificate has the doctor’s signature, but under the Informant’s Signature, my mother’s name is just typed in. I’ve never worked with Hawaii, but from what I can tell from the outside, they have one of the better systems around. Nevertheless, if the long form were ever published, I would not be surprised to see some kind of an anomaly that means nothing, but would set the birthers off on a high-speed trajectory to Mars.

    Flights of fantasy over trivia is common behavior for conspiracy theorists. They look for all the little surprises, cases where things did not come out as they would have predicted. They find some, simply because the real world is complex.

    Why aren’t the Nordykes announced in the same paper as Obama, and why do their birth certificates have lower serial numbers than Obama’s? Because reality doesn’t always conform to our initial guesses.

    As we saw with the 9/11-was-an-inside-job kooks, the Internet is a great medium for conspiracy theories, and that’s largely because it enables a kook community to pool their efforts in collecting all the trivia they find so significant. Whether the Internet is better for spreading myths or debunking them remains to be seen.

  25. I would agree with your points. It seems almost certain that the numbering of the certificates (by a manual numbering machine) happened in a separate process step than the application of the “Accepted” date stamp and by a different person. Stacks of paper accumulate with the oldest one on the bottom, but they are processed from the top, so a reversal of birth order and number sequence is not only possible but expected unless extraordinary effort were made to make it otherwise.

  26. Bob Weber says:

    Regarding the numbers assigned to the BC’s, my simple speculation is that the birth registrar processed them in batches, and being an anal-retentive like me, alphabetized the batch before numbering. I’m guessing that there are three names, with numbers, between “Nordyke” and “Obama”.

    Regarding the Nordyke listing, the microfilm/fiche of both newspapers is identical, but there aren’t anywhere close to the number of expected births in a week on Oahu. Either there are more listings on another page of the papers on the same date, or listings were released by Hawaii over the course of a week. Or, perhaps, parents were given the option of not having the birth listed, and many chose not to. A bit of historical trivia a person with time on his hands may wish to pursue.

  27. James says:

    If Obama was born in Kenya, then the grandmother who was immediately notified in Hawaii, filed her mail-in form with information that’s on Obama’s COLB. We would have to compare how the mail-in forms were processed versus hospital births which we know for a fact that the twins were born in a hospital. Since went don’t the derivative of Obama’s COLB, we can’t prove he was born in Hawaii. It has been speculated that Obama was born in Kenya but his birth was registered as being born in Hawaii based on fraudlent information most likely from the grandmother. This was used to get Obama US citizenship as no would thought baby Obama would grow and become the POTUS and the secret would be let out.

  28. aarrgghh says:

    james, while pretending not to speculate:

    it has been speculated that obama was born in Kenya …

    translation: “don’t shoot me! i’m not a birfer — i’m just the messenger boy!”

  29. Greg says:

    Perhaps you should proof read your posts before you post them.

    After you’ve mastered the English language, we can discuss the many factual errors in your post.

    Obama’s COLB proves his Hawaiian birth until credible evidence is produced which calls it into question. The fact that McCain and Hillary did not run with this issue provides strong evidence that there IS no credible counter evidence.

    There are allegations from felons, forgers and con-men. There are easily-debunked half-truths from DWI lawyers (travel ban, anyone?). There are April Fools’ jokes accepted as truth by birthers – foreign student scholarship, anyone?

    What there is not is anything that could possibly withstand the scrutiny of a judge taking even a half-interested look at it. This stuff doesn’t pass the laugh test, much less the tests for relevance or reliability.

  30. James says:

    Well, the Kenyan Ambassador confirmed Obama’s birth there. After he got caught, he changed his story:

    Clark: “We want to congratulate you on Barack Obama, our new president, and you must be very proud.”

    Ogego: “We are. We are. We are also proud of the U.S. for having made history as well.”

    Fellhauer: “One more quick question, President-elect Obama’s birthplace over in Kenya, is that going to be a national spot to go visit, where he was born?”

    Ogego: “It’s already an attraction. His paternal grandmother is still alive.”

    Fellhauer: “His birthplace, they’ll put up a marker there?”

    Ogego: “It would depend on the government. It’s already well known.”

  31. SFJeff says:

    “which we know for a fact that the twins were born in a hospital.”

    How do we know this for a fact? All we have is a copy of the Certificate of Live Birth and the mother’s word. If we accept that the Twin certificate of Live Birth are valid on face value, then we should likewise accept that President Obama’s certificate is valid on face value.

    If you don’t accept the President’s, then you should be equally suspicious of the Twins certificate of live birth.

  32. SFJeff says:

    James- I have quiz for you:

    When President Bush said: “It’s in our country’s interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm’s way” – was this evidence that he was trying to get our enemies out of harms way?

    When he said “When the governor calls, I answer his phone”, was this evidence that President Bush answered the phones for a governor?

    People mis-speak, especially when given misleading questions intended to trick them. As thinking individuals we can either believe in real evidence(a birth certificate, newspaper announcements) or grasp at tenouous straws that help reinforce what we already believe in, contrary to all real evidence.

  33. James says:

    The Kenyan Ambassador’s statement is probably one the strongest pieces of evidence that Obama was born in Kenya. It points to a governing authority to establish Obama’s birth. It’s very likely that all records pertaining to Obama’s birth in Kenya have been sealed by the Kenyan government. The Kenyan government is unwilling to cooporate that would allow possible documentation such as the Lucas Smith BC. Since Kenya is another country, it would difficult to get courts to order them to coorporate. We are pretty much stuck with usurper in office.

  34. SFJeff says:

    James- your statement is all full of ‘wrong’- oh lets be honest here- full of lies.

    “The Kenyan Ambassador’s statement is probably one the strongest pieces of evidence that Obama was born in Kenya.”

    If this is the strongest piece of evidence, then there is no evidence. A casual statement on a talk radio program by a non-native english speaker who later said he misunderstood?

    “It points to a governing authority to establish Obama’s birth.”

    No it doesn’t.

    “It’s very likely that all records pertaining to Obama’s birth in Kenya have been sealed by the Kenyan government. ”

    Its very likely there are no such records. What makes it very likely?

    “We are pretty much stuck with usurper in office.”

    And we get down to your true motives again- personally I am tired of traitors like yourself trying to ursurp the vote of the majority of U.S. Voters. I am tired of your lies and innuendo all designed to remove that Uppity Communist Black Muslim from the office he was legally elected to.

  35. James says:

    Well, alot of people say, Obama was born in Hawaii…What more proof do you need.

    Well, if Obama could produce a doctor’s signature, a midwife’s signature, or a eyewitness such as a nurse or ordely, I would start to become impressed.

  36. Scientist says:

    James: We are pretty much stuck with usurper in office

    So why bother us here? If that’s the case, then the best thing is to get on with your life isn’t it?

  37. Greg says:

    So, you think he forged a Certification of Live Birth, which includes a raised state seal, the signature of the state registrar, and is on security paper.

    Remember, of course, that the Registrar is alive. The governor of Hawaii is a Republican. The head of the Department of Health was appointed by a Republican.

    Having done all this forging of documents and signatures that could be easily checked by the living Republicans in charge in Hawaii, you think he’s balking at forging the signature of a dead physician or midwife? That being so ballsy as to forge the signature of a living Republican, he is balking at bribing someone to pretend to be an eyewitness?

    This is the problem with conspiracy theories. They cannot stand even a whiff of critical thinking. They fall down easier than a house of cards!

  38. aarrgghh says:

    if birfers had lives to get on with, they wouldn’t be birfers.

  39. sarina says:

    James

    Yeah right, an 18 yr old girl from Kansas living in Hawaii with no money willing to fly to a third world country, no English speaking, far from her family to have her baby there ALONE! then go back to register her son in Hawaii because she knew he will be the president of the US someday! Clever! Only in the mind of a birther of course!
    Recycling the same old lies won’t make it true the second time around. That was debunked long time ago by your birther paper WND look up. The guy who was interviewing the Ambassador “forced” a statement he didn’t ask directly. So change that lie you want to sell.
    BTW (I gave you the first thumb down!)

  40. sarina says:

    Listen James:

    Probably those people don’t remember Ann Dunham.
    (or they passed away) A nurse eyewitness! I am a nurse, do you know how many patients we see everyday? I’ve been a nurse for twenty something years.. do you think I remember my first patients? Unless something noticeable occurred that day I don’t remember!

    Why do you want to see doctor’s signature? anyway (I bet) you are going to say it is a fake signature.
    Who was Reagan’s, Bushes, Clinton, delivery doctors. What about Reagan’s bc? Why was nobody clamoring their bc?

  41. Rickey says:

    If President Obama’s birthplace was “already an attraction” and “already well known,” why is it that Jerome Corsi of WND was unable to find it during his trip to Kenya? Why has no one else been able to document the existence of this attraction?

  42. SFJeff says:

    James,

    I don’t know about you, but it would be impossible for me to provide the evidence you are asking for. I don’t have a doctor’s signature, an eyewitness. It really ridiculous. A year after my daughter was born, the nurse who attended her birth could barely remember it.

    Did you ask for such evidence from President Bush? From President Clinton? From President Reagan? Why for the first time are you and your fellow travellers demanding not only the birth certificate but reams of additional evidence- silly ones too like eyewitnesses to the birth and kindergarten records?

    To me the answer is clear- Fear- all of fear this african-american man who dared to think he could be President as much as Bush or Clinton or Reagan.

  43. Heads of state health departments impress me.

  44. SF Jeff, quoting: “The Kenyan Ambassador’s statement is probably one the strongest pieces of evidence that Obama was born in Kenya.”

    So what would you think is stronger? I can’t think of anything.

  45. Mary Brown says:

    Amen.

  46. Black Lion says:

    It looks like our friend Charlton at the Post and Fail is beating a dead horse. His new “holy grail” is that the state of HI is stonewalling him…Look how he automatically makes it into a case where the White House is responsible for everything…Amazing…You must read the article and his comments…He has some top secret attorney and legal strategy that will be the undoing of this usurper in the White House….

    http://www.thepostemail.com/2009/12/21/hi-department-of-health-refuses-oips-request-2/

    “In addition, note the footnote which Attorney Joesting added to her letter. It seems to indicate that she has spoken with Okubo before, and that Okubo is denying my UIPA request because she fears a backlash from the White House.”

    “They cannot deny the request I made, because it would have no supporting legal authority. They cannot grant it, if they are hiding something untoward, which in granting it, would be revealed; and which in being revealed, would cause Obama’s tyrannical rage to pour forth its venom against the Hawaii Department of Health’s future budget’s bottom line.”

    “Continued silence in this matter only indicts Dr. Fukino and Janice Okubo in conspiracy to obviate their legal responsibilities. If they are being threatened by the White House, they need to come clean. If the documents show Obama is a liar, they need to come clean. If the documents I requested show that they have not been straightforward with the American Public, they need to realize that releasing them will make lighter any future punishment a court will impose.”

  47. Greg says:

    According to a recent article in the Honolulu Advertiser, Kapiolani Hospital, which specializes in maternity care, was the birth Hospital for 34% of all children born in Hawaii, and 46% of those born in Honolulu. In 2000, there were 5,500 births at the hospital. in 2008, there were 6,565. Nearly 70% of the state’s infants who need intensive care are seen at the hospital.

    Conservatively, then, since Obama was born in 1961, there have been close to, or more than, 200,000 births at the hospital.

    I would immediately suspect chicanery if someone came forward and said that of those 200,000 they remembered a single birth!

    Birthers have no common sense!

  48. NbC says:

    The Kenyan Ambassador’s statement is probably one the strongest pieces of evidence that Obama was born in Kenya. It points to a governing authority to establish Obama’s birth.

    And the same Ambassador, correcting his statement should be as the strongest evidence against.

    Geez… You guys have not much now do you?

    Obama has a COLB showing him born in Honolulu…

  49. Whatever4 says:

    I haven’t been keeping up with the parsing of commas at the Hawaii Department of Health — why do the birthers “know” that Obama’s birth record was amended?

    But whatever they produce needs to fit what they’ve already told us – that there was an amendment to his record, that they have no affidavits, evidence, or (specifically) doctor’s, midwife’s, or nurse’s signatures submitted to amend his date, time, or place of birth or his mother’s race, no application to amend a COHB (which they had previously seemed to say he had – unless they had executed a VERY poor attempt at a Glomar response (“if any” type response, except this one said that “verification” wasn’t authorized – even though nobody asked for verification of anything).

  50. SFJeff says:

    “If the documents I requested show that they have not been straightforward with the American Public, they need to realize that releasing them will make lighter any future punishment a court will impose.””

    My favorite part.

  51. Bob Weber says:

    Whatever4 wrote:
    December 22, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    I haven’t been keeping up with the parsing of commas at the Hawaii Department of Health — why do the birthers “know” that Obama’s birth record was amended?

    ********************

    IIRC, this goes back to crazy Leo. He parsed Dr. Fukino’s statement that she had “reviewed Obama’s vital records” to mean that there must be MORE THAN ONE.

    Don’t you get it? RECORDS, NOT RECORD. Hence, it must be an amended BC!! I mean, what more proof do you need? (sarc)

  52. Rickey says:

    Sarina,

    Yes, an honest interviewer would have followed up to be sure that there was no misunderstanding. For example, “Mr. Ambassador, are you saying that President Obama was born in Kenya?” Or, “Mr. Ambassador, where in Kenya is President Obama’s birthplace?” But those follow-up questions weren’t asked, because they had tricked the ambassador into a “gotcha” comment and they didn’t want to bring his misstatement to his attention.

    You also nailed the point that it is ludicrous to suggest that Stanley Ann Dunham would choose to fly to a third world country to have her first baby when she had first-class maternity facilities available to her in Honolulu.

  53. Hawaiiborn says:

    I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii (70’s), and my birth announcement was never published in the two local newspapers.

    So it could be that sometimes they will publish it and sometimes they wont. Its not a guarantee that all births are announced.

    It also may be a point that I was born at Tripler Army Medical Center.

  54. Hawaiiborn says:

    Posted to a earlier comment, but one I would like to repeat:

    I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii (70’s), and my birth announcement was never published in the two local newspapers.

    So it could be that sometimes they will publish it and sometimes they wont. Its not a guarantee that all births are announced.

    It also may be a point that I was born at Tripler Army Medical Center.

  55. Pretty in Pink says:

    Do you have a long-form Certicate of Live Birth from Hawaii DoH?

  56. John says:

    I’m willing to bet the Hawaii Department of Health has been in close secret contact with the White House to prevent any release of records except the COLB which we have seen. This may seem reasonable. We still don’t know the derivitive of Obama’s COLB. Many believe the derivitive is actually the grandmother’s mail-in form with the information we see on Obama’s COLB stating basically that he was born at home with no witnesses. The prevailing theory that has yet to proven or disproven is that Obama was born in Kenya but his birth was registered as being born in Hawaii based on fradulent information submitted most likely from the grandmother. Based on research, this actually was very easy to do in 1961. This was an effort to get Obama US Citizenship because on the expense and effort to bring Obama through the immigration process. It’s also possible that Obama wouldn’t neccessarily have been granted US citizenship because of of residency requirements not met by the mother.

    The family had no idea that Obama would grow up and become the POTUS and this little family secret would be discovered.

    Charles Kerchner explains this in the following media clip:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZpwcRf3FQ

  57. Mary Brown says:

    He still would need documents with him. His mother could not just walk back into the US with an infant and no documentation. His birth was registered very quickly. Let’s see. Her daughter has the baby in Mombasa and quickly gets on her cell phone and calls mom in Hawaii. Mom gets the call and runs to her car, gets all the info she needs and runs to the Department of Vital Records and gets it all done. She picks up her cell phone, calls the daughter and somehow gets travel documents for this baby. Since mom attended University in Seattle within few weeks we know the timeline was not in grandma’s favor. But she got it done. All because of modern communication.

  58. John: I’m willing to bet the Hawaii Department of Health has been in close secret contact with the White House to prevent any release of records except the COLB which we have seen.

    That’s the problem with conspiracy theorists, their beliefs do not rely on evidence. Now I could believe that if the Department of Health were about to release the birth certificate, they might give a courtesy call to the White House, but since they are prohibited by law from releasing it, I don’t know what they and the White House would have to talk about.

  59. aarrgghh says:

    sigh …

    john, john, john … or can i call you charles?

    i’m willing to bet …

    i’m willing to bet you have no proof.

    you do realize why they invented birth certificates in the first place, right?

    so no one would have to listen to fools like you.

  60. SFJeff says:

    John,

    One of the things that I really, really dislike about Birthers is how casually they impugn the dead.

    “the prevailing theory that has yet to proven or disproven is that Obama was born in Kenya but his birth was registered as being born in Hawaii based on fradulent information submitted most likely from the grandmother.”

    I am betting that if President Obama’s grandmother was still alive that this accusation would not be so casually made. I tell you, if someone were to just casually tell the world that MY grandmother went around defrauding the government those would be fighting words. You birthers are quick to malign President Obama’s mother, father, wife and grandmother.

    Have you no shame?

  61. Scientist says:

    John: I’m willing to bet

    Oh, do I FINALLY have a taker? Just in time for Christmas!

  62. Black Lion says:

    Could “John” be John Charlton”? That would make sense since your post, like Charlton’s articles are full of unsupported innuendo and farfetched conspiracy theories…There is no admissible evidence that the President was born anywhere other than HI. No proof that the President’s mother has ever been to Kenya. As a matter of fact didn’t a birther request the passport records of the President’s mother. What ever happened to those records?

  63. milspec says:

    I’m willing to bet that John has been in contact with the little voices in his head.

  64. The person posting here under the name of “John” is not John Charlton. John’s participation here reminds us that there are strong ideological opponents to President Obama (and certain specific progressive ideas) participating in the birther movement. It’s not just racists who are vigorous in their efforts to unseat Obama.

  65. Actually it is neither John Charlton nor Charles Kerchner.

  66. misha says:

    “I’m willing to bet that John has been in contact with the little voices in his head.”

    No, I think the tinfoil is shielding him from those voices. Hey, I hear voices that say ‘John is clinically insane.’ And I’m not wearing tinfoil.

  67. Tibor says:

    Don’t feed the troll!

  68. BlackLion says:

    OK…I was just wondering since the posting was very similar to Charlton’s ridiculous articles…

  69. Hawaiiborn says:

    No. My parents lost my original Long form CoLB when we moved several times. The only copy I have is the Short Form, which I got in 1990, when I got my first job. The same short form that Obama has.

  70. Sarina says:

    John said ” I’m willing to bet the Hawaii Department has been in close secret contact with the White House to prevent any release of records”..

    You forgot to mention, John, that the “REPUBLICAN” gov. of Hawaii, Lingle was keeping the secret too and covering for him”
    right?

  71. NbC says:

    I’m willing to bet the Hawaii Department of Health has been in close secret contact with the White House to prevent any release of records except the COLB which we have seen.

    And you would most likely lose by any standards. Just like your other ‘dirty secrets’ which lack in any supporting evidence and are contradicted by the known facts. Why do you hate the President so much that you are willing to make up these myths?

    Have you no self respect?

  72. Expelliarmus says:

    Turns out that the announcement is in the August 16th issue of the Advertiser – see:
    http://myveryownpointofview.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/newspaper-e1262911600421.jpg?w=496

    (Announcement at bottom left)

    And how was this feat of investigative brilliance accomplished? Apparently some rocket scientist made a request for it via interlibrary loan, and a librarian in Hawaii dug it up in response to the request. See:
    http://myveryownpointofview.wordpress.com/2009/12/29/nordyke-twins-newspaper-birth-announcement-found/

  73. Many thanks for the citation. Inspector Smith defrauds again.

  74. dannoboy says:

    — Bureauocracy in Action – not fraud —

    Claim #1 “According to the DOH, certificate numbers are issued on the day they are filed. If true, Obama’s could NOT be higher than the Nordyke twins. Must be fraud!”

    Wrong. Here’s why:
    Obama born was at Kapiolani Hospital Friday August 4, his doctor gave his signed Birth Certificate (BC) to the ward clerk, who put it in the stack for the Department of Health (DOH). Several other births occured over the weekend, and other BC’s were added to the stack (on top of the Obama BC), including those of the two Nordyke twins born Saturday August 5. On Monday, the stacked BC’s went over to DOH in an envelope and were taken out by a clerk. One by one the BC’s were taken off of the stack and given an incremental “certificate number” by a stamping machine (or other method). The Nordyke BC’s came off and were stamped before the Obama BC. The Obama BC was given a higher number.

    =========================

    Claim #2: “The Nordyke certificates were not signed by the doctor and the state registrar until the Friday after they were born (Aug. 11). Obama’s BC was allegedly filed by the state 3 days earlier (Aug. 8). The birth announcements in the newspaper support this timing, as Obama’s announcement was published earlier than the Nordyke twins. If they were filed by the state the same day, then maybe the numbers are that close together and out-of-sequence, but three days apart, no. Must be fraud!”

    Wrong. Here’s why:
    Nordyke BC’s were signed by their doctor, local registrar and general registrar all on the same day, indicating their doctor personally went down to the vital records office on Punchbowl St. to sign them. Likely the Nordyke BC’s had been recieved from the Kapiolani Hospital on 8/7 or 8/8/1961, along with the Obama BC, stamped with a certificate number (as previously described in #1), and set aside because the doctor hadn’t signed them yet. Obama BC was all in order when recieved and was signed by the registrars on 8/8. Obama info released in the Health Bureau statistics given to the newspapers on Fri 8/11, and published in Sun/Mon papers. On 8/11, Nordyke BS’s finally completed and signed. Nordyke info released on Mon, printed in Weds paper 8/16.

  75. dannoboy says:

    Note #1: There are Three possible reasons that the Nordyke babies and their documents may have been unsigned initially.
    First, Robert A Nordyke, father of the twins, was also a physician (an endocrinologist who studied effects of South Pacific atomic tests on the thyroid gland). Doctors’ wives and children are treated differently than the average patients (certainly different than an 18yo mother and an African father in 1961). The interactions between doctors and other doctors’ families are not always better. There may be more attention to social conversation and less to things like paperwork or getting an adequate history. He also would not have hesitated to go down to the Health Department to sign their BC’s in person later on.

    Second, the Nordyk babies were twins, and in 1961 this probably came as a shock to everyone, including their doctor. Twins tend to be smaller and sicker, and there’s two of them. So, again, their doctor may have given less time and attention to completing paperwork.

    Third, it’s possible (but less likely) that the Nordyke’s doctor may have been absent for several days after the birth (out sick or August vacation), requiring him to go down to the Health Department.

    Note #2: The mother of the Nordyke twins, Eleanor C Nordyke, wrote: “Blacks in Hawaii: a demographic and historical perspective.” Publisher: Honolulu, Hawaii – East West Center, 1988.

    Obama’s mother, Stanley-Ann, studied at the U.H. East-West Center, where she and attained a bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. in anthropology. She also met Obama’s step-father, Lolo Soetoro, at the East-West Center, where he was a student from Indonesia.

  76. dannoboy: Nordyke BC’s were signed by their doctor, local registrar and general registrar all on the same day, indicating their doctor personally went down to the vital records office on Punchbowl St. to sign them.

    That’s not how it generally works. The Hospital generates the certificate, the Attendant signs it and then it goes to the State for registration. While the numbering process varies from state to state, more likely is that the number wasn’t stamped until sometime after it was signed by both the doctor and the local registrar. It has to be downstream from the local registrar to create a statewide unique sequential numbering system. Having the doctor sign after the birth was reported to the State is a very convoluted, error prone and delaying scenario.

    I might add this further speculation, that the local registrar was a hospital employee and quite plausibly a hospital administrator, and even possibly Dr. Rodney West. This would explain his talking about the interesting name to a friend over lunch at the yacht club as reported in the newspapers.

  77. dannoboy says:

    You could be right, but I don’t think so.

    Knowing the way our State bureaucracy operates, the Local Registrars would have been Health Department employees based in each county/island (one for each). The outer-island registrars collected and verified that BC’s were complete before sending them to the main office in Honolulu to be numbered and given final review and signature by the statewide registrar.

    The process may have been different for the Honolulu BC’s since the numbering machine and both registrars were all at the main vital records office. The Honolulu BC’s may have been numbered on arrival, just like the outer island BC’s, but before any review by Honolulu’s local registrar.

    I have little doubt that if the clerk or local Honolulu registrar discovered an unsigned certificate (already numbered), they would have set it aside, contacted the hospital or physician, and to arrange to have it signed.

    Honolulu is not a very big place. The vital records office is only a short drive from the Kapiolani hospital and is accross the street from the Queen’s Hospital. It would have been no problem for the doctor to have signed it there while he said hello and “talked story” with the registrars and other nice folks who work there. Alternatively, this could have been done by courrier.

    The details of the process could likely be solved by a careful study or the certificate numbers, registration and signature dates, and birth county for a sequential sample of records from that era, along with the ordering of the respective names released to the newpapers (which are not chronological).

  78. Well, let’s look at an example, the Alan certificate from 1963 for some one born at the Tripler Army Base in Honolulu. Who is the local registrar? The name is blacked out, but not the title: LT COL, MSC, USA. It sounds very much like at an officer at the Base served as the local registrar. Now was that for the whole island or just the military hospital?

    However, looking at the Nordyke certificate, I think my Rodney West theory is busted. I can’t make out the local registrar’s signature, but it’s definitely not West.

    Section 57-7 of the Public Health Statistics Act, the law in force in 1961 as best I can determine, says:

    Appointment of local registrars and deputies. The board, on the recommendation of the registrar general, shall appoint local registrars, provided that the county health officer may be designated as local registrar in counties having organized health units. A local registrar with the approval of the registrar general may appoint deputies.

    In Honolulu, it is very likely that the county health officer was the local registrar. If the county health officer was indeed the local registrar, that person likely had more pressing matters to attend to than verifying birth certificates, and probably had deputies. If the military base hospital had a deputy, then surely the main birthing hospital in Honolulu would have warranted one.

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