I was somewhat bemused, in the wake of so much fizzling and popping among the birthers after they proved ineffective at changing the outcome of the 2012 presidential election, to see a new article published today trying to discredit Obama’s birth certificate. I didn’t think I would ever publish another birth certificate image analysis article. (The birthers never fail to surprise.)
Long-time birther and birther plaintiff Pamela Barnett, author of the book, Obama Never Vetted: The Unlawful President, has a new article published by Joseph Farah’s Western Center for Journalism. The WCJ has been a home for a long string of birther nonsense, and continues with this new article: “Obama’s ‘Birth Announcement’ Microfilm Reels Are Very Different.” (Note that “reels” refers not to the microfilm itself, but the reels that hold it.)
She starts out off topic by taking images from Obama’s long form birth certificate PDF and blowing them up larger than the original images. The result is that the software algorithms have to make stuff up to show at the larger size, and Barnett then points out that the made up stuff in one place is different from the made up stuff in another. Well, duh, it’s all made up in the first place. Any sensible analysis would begin with the much higher resolutions images available from the press which don’t make stuff up so much.
She trots out the old “TXE” thing, which also is an illusion caused by low resolution images, and easily understood by looking at the higher-resolution versions. I debunked this ages ago.
Barnett then estimates based on WorldCat that there are only 70-100 copies microfilm copies of the Hawaii newspaper announcements of Obama’s birth—easy to replace them all, says Barnett, and according to Barnett, easy to cut and paste on microfilm and make a new reel. She never explains the “very different” in the article’s headline, but I know from her book that she means that at one library she visited, the Obama birth announcements appear on microfilm on a black reel and the others on a gray reel. No doubt some birther checking the film wound it onto the take-up reel rather than rewinding it. I’ve run across bad winding before and had to fix it by winding onto a different real.
Just for good measure, Barnett tosses in some nonsense about “lax” procedures for getting birth certificates in Hawaii, despite no birther ever finding a single incident of birth certificate fraud in Hawaii since statehood, much less a pattern of it!
Barnett makes another bizarre argument. She found a couple of 1961 birth announcement columns from the Hawaii papers—the original newspaper hard copies. She argues that the fact that no one has brought forward an original with Obama’s announcement in it says there is no such thing. Rich Obama supporters would have found it and published it if exists. Of course that argument goes the other way: rich Obama opponents would have published it if the papers exist without the announcement. After all, the Koch brothers are richer than George Soros.
I must say, this latest article is only for the really meat-headed true believers.
Another “absence of evidence is…” rehash. They’re stuck on replay…
Yikes! Stylistically, it reads like a sixth grade book report.
here’s great comment left by a birther:
A brilliant legal scholar named Leonard Daneman posted this on Facebook:
The electoral votes must now be counted and certified, and a simple letter signed by one Senator and one House Member can halt the proceedings to examine the following:
• The 1790 Uniform Naturalization Act et seq 1855 denied a U.S. born son of a British subject U.S. citizenship. This law stood for 99 years, until Wong Kim Ark.
• Conversely, a son of a British subject born on U.S. soil was a natural born British subject, under the 1772 British Nationality Act.
• The 14th Amendment guaranteed citizenship at birth to children of ‘stateless’ freed slaves, who had no nationality jurisdiction through the father.
‘Under the Jurisdiction Thereof’ is the analog of its antecedent Act, the 1866 Civil Rights Act’s ‘Not subject to any foreign power.’ It referred to the nationality of the father, not place of birth.
• Article 1, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution gave plenary power to congress, NOT the Judiciary, for the LEGISLATION of Uniform Naturalization law . . ..
• Minor vs. Happersett (U.S. Supreme Court, 1875) defined in judicial notice, i.e., stare decisis still valid to this day, that a ‘natural born citizen’ was of two U.S. citizen parents.
• Wong Kim Ark violated Art 1, Sec 8 by ignoring existing statutes, acts, and treaty and misinterpreted the 14th Amendment to apply to children born of aliens. Regardless, Wong Kim Ark did not, nor could not, redefine ‘natural born citizen.’
Fact: Obama’s April 27, 2011 birth certificate is an altered, fake, and forged document.
Fact: Obama’s SS# does not pass E-Verify.
Fact: Obama has admitted, in his own writing and voice, that he was born a British citizen.
Can we not find one senator and one house member willing to fight for the constitution?
McCain was booed when he tried to sooth the crowd, defending Mr Obama as ‘a decent person and a person you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.’ Minnesota, 2008
“Obama is a radical Communist. And I think it is becoming clear; that’s I told everyone in Illinois. I think everybody knows its true. He is going to destroy this country. We’re either going to stop him, or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.”
Ambassador Alan Keyes, February 19, 2009
“Congress shall be in session on the sixth day of January succeeding every meeting of the electors . . . and the President of the Senate shall be their presiding officer . . . Upon such reading of [the electoral votes], the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any. Every objection shall be made in writing, and shall state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received . . . No votes or papers from any other State shall be acted upon until the objections previously made to the votes or papers from any State shall have been finally disposed of.” 3 U.S.C. 15 Counting electoral votes in Congress
New York Times WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 [2000] – “Congress officially ratified President Bush’s election victory on Thursday, but not before Democrats lodged a formal challenge to the electoral votes from Ohio, forcing an extraordinary two-hour debate that began the 109th Congress on a sharp note of partisan acrimony . . . a single senator – Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who was sworn in Tuesday for a third term – joined Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Democrat of Ohio, in objecting to Ohio’s 20 electoral votes for Mr. Bush, citing voting irregularities in the state.”
So you’re moving on to a new career in Internet comedy? This is a good start.
To be fair, he did attribute that to “a birther on Facebook” … taking him at his word, it’s borrowed comedy at best 😉
Those are potent brownies.
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