We argue a lot about Obama’s birth certificate, and in the last two years about the PDF file released by the White House—whether it is a forgery or not. A huge amount of effort has been expended by anti-birthers on this topic, notably a book from John Woodman, and recent work by NBC and Kevin Vicklund, assisted by others. From my point of view, any shred of argument that the President’s birth certificate is forged has been completely destroyed and I believe that anybody reviewing the complete evidence with even a minimum of intelligence and without bias would come to the same conclusion. So why are there birthers still who believe the document is a forgery?
I think that sometimes we do not appreciate how extremely compelling the birther argument is in a vacuum. Look at a birther YouTube video: They open the President’s birth certificate PDF with Adobe Illustrator and they can move parts around. They can make the text disappear. Have you ever seen anything like this before? Turn the clock back to April 26, 2011, the day before the long form was released—had you seen anything like? If this had been a Kenyan birth certificate for Obama, wouldn’t you have bought into the layers argument? This demonstration that the long form is composed of logical units that can moved around is a very powerful argument that the document is not just a scan, but something constructed by a human. Any fool can see it. Add the fact that the Certificate was rotated and saved in Mac Preview, removing tagging information that would have immediately identified the Xerox hardware, and you have a perfect storm for uninformed speculation.
And it’s not just unsophisticated people. Remember back to a news interview with Ken Colburn founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services & Data Forensics Labs. He watched the original Cold Case Posse videos and said:
When I first saw it it was very convincing until we did our test and saw that, wait a minute, our scanner does the same thing.
Even an expert wasn’t experienced in the arcane ways of Mixed Raster Content PDF compression, and had the same impression of the PDF that the birthers did, found the argument “very convincing.” The truth of the matter is that the argument for forgery is easy to understand and intuitive; it reinforces popular notions of how the world works. With the right “guidance” and a general dislike for the President, the argument becomes imminently believable. The argument against forgery requires learning more about how the world really works than most people are willing to do. It is technical; it is complicated; it takes effort.
So how can we counter the forgery belief? I think that saying that the birthers who declare it a forgery aren’t experts is a waste of time because any fool can see the objects moving around (“we don’ need no steenking experts”). Also, just mentioning “experts” is a reinforcement of the birther idea (“oh yes, there are experts saying this too”). Psychologists who write about countering misinformation suggest approaches, some of which I’ll mention here:
- Alternate account. “What looks like forgery is just the way a Xerox WorkCentre 7655 makes PDFs. You can try it for yourself.”
- Emphasis on facts. “The Hawaii Department of Health says on its web site today: ‘On April 27, 2011 President Barack Obama posted a certified copy of his original Certificate of Live Birth.’ They stand behind the document.”
- Simple brief rebuttal. Long arguments tend to get lost, or they are compared by length to a long birther argument and both considered equally valid.
- Foster healthy skepticism. “Do you really think that a US President could issue a forgery without the press and opposition political parties being all over it?” or “The Republicans are trying to do everything in their power to derail the Obama administrations. If there were anything to this forgery issue, they’d use it.”
- Affirm their worldview. “Look I understand that it looks really odd that objects move around in the PDF, but it turns out that the Xerox machine breaks down a document into objects to save space when it makes a PDF.”
We talk about goalpost moving and the general idea that “birthers will find something” no matter what the President puts out. But the fact of the matter is that belief in birtherism was cut in half after the long form was released. It was only the unfortunate accident that the document was released in PDF format that allowed birtherism to recover and flourish. It gave them a simple, compelling argument that, while not true, any fool can see.
There may also be a historical significance to this.
Birthers have repeatedly pointed their fingers at Chester Arthur and claimed he was ineligible and “hid the evidence”, thereby somehow “proving” they weren’t just after the black guy.
Maybe some 100 years in the future, another President (maybe the first Jewish transgendered half-cyborg Prez) will have to defend himself against similar claims and people will point to “how Obama was ineligible in the early 2000’s”. Of course by then, there will be no Xerox WorkCentres to invalidate those claims.
That’s why I think the “healthy skepticism” always works best since it requires the other side to dive deep into a huge conspiracy theory to keep their argument up. And no matter what the political motives, the vast majority of people simply have their BS sensor ringing whenever somebody starts claims of some ginormous conspiracy spanning decades and tens of thousands of people involved.
I am a big fan of “kiss” – keep it simple stupid.
For me the most effective way to debunk Zullo’s “forgery” argument is to simply point out that using his definition of “forgery” virtually every PDF ever produced must be a criminal act. Augment that with a statement that the State of Hawaii has affirmed the accuracy and authenticity of the President’s LFBC on multiple occasions. Then liken Zullo to Don Quixote for tilting at windmills.
Even with this, there will always be a resilient hard core group of intransigent birthers. We’re stuck with them in the same way we are stuck with failing septic systems – sometimes shit happens.
What the birthers don’t seem to grasp is that it is not enough to attack the LFBC. Whether the online version is authentic or a “cheap forgery” is beside the point.
The only thing that matters is whether he was born in one of the 50 states or a territory of the United States. Whether it was Hawaii or Iowa or New Hampshire or Oregon — he is still would be natural born. The birthers can attempt to knock down the evidence that he was born in Hawaii, but they have no positive proof that Obama was born anywhere else. They’ve made no effort to disprove that Obama was born in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, etc.
From BoingBoing:
Some copiers randomly change the numbers on documents
☞LINK
But can any fool see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
I like your approach. It’s always helpful to try to imagine seeing a situation from the perspective of those who hold different views.
On the other hand, it’s not just the birth certificate that’s the issue. As we know, birthers have dozens of objections to Obama that they believe make him ineligible and deserving of imprisonment or death. A common refrain I see in birther comments is that there is absolutely no proof that Obama is even a citizen of the United States.
In other words, they simply deny EVERYTHING about him. Depending on the day or hour, they deny he is the child of Stanley Anne Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. They deny he was born in Hawaii. They deny he has a valid SSN. They deny he registered for the draft. They deny he wrote the books he’s written. They deny he let his law license expire. They deny he’s a Christian or a heterosexual. They deny he went to Columbia. They deny he wants a prosperous, secure America. Of course, what they affirm about Obama is equally ridiculous.
Birtherism is a clever gardener. It re-pots discredited lies, nurtures those that refuse to wither, and sows the seeds for new ones as it harvests hate and paranoia. Even If you pull the birth certificate illusion up by the roots, there are other plants to feed the faithful.
p.s. I’m pretty sure it’s “eminently believable” rather than “imminently believable” — at least in the context it’s used in the article above.
“the day before the long form was released—had you seen anything like?”
Obviously not. And one reason is that so few scanners or PDF generating software use MRC. Even some of the lower end Xerox WorkCentre copiers don’t use it.
And even those WorkCentres that do use it, don’t use it consistently. Here is what the German researcher found when looking at another issue with the JBIG2 compression algorithm in the WorkCentres:
“The Xerox design in scanning modes contains three levels. Two standard levels (high and higher) and one that gives us small file sizes, but deliberately neglects data integrity (named normal). Now, the “normal” setting uses JBIG2 (as suggested) and therefore may indeed mangle characters. The “higher” and “high” levels use another compression, which also explains, why the image quality may actually decrease when switching from “higher” to “high” – another counter-intuitive thing, as we also discussed.”
http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0806_conference_call_with_xerox
It’s all about an agenda. The truth only gets in the way.
Joe Wilson would never have let idiocy like that occur.
There’s one problem…
They deny everything about the President to conform to their world view. For instance, one of the things that I constantly hear from birthers is that there’s no evidence that Obama’s a citizen. Let’s take a look at that view.
First, they claim that Obama was born outside the United States. Even if that were true, because Obama’s mother was a U.S. Citizen, when Obama’s mother returned to the United States, Obama would have been eligibile for citizenship at that point.
Then they go into a thing of, “Well, Obama gave up his citizenship at the age of 6 when he became an Indonesian citizen.” When you analyize that claim, you see that the State Department doesn’t actually allow minors that young to give up their citizenship, and the Supreme Court actually has a case that ruled that it was impossible.
Then they go, “Well, there’s no evidence of he’s a citizen.” without actually spouting a logical argument as to why.
Truth is that their arguments make absolutely no sense. But because they go against the President, they’ll stick to the arguments because they think it says something bad about the President.
Maybe they missed the video of his passport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvqgyV_2pHg
Re: “So why are there birthers still who believe the document is a forgery?”
Some few do believe that the document is a forgery. Others hope that there is a nut with a gun who believes it.
I’ve always wondered how birthers explain the paper certificate passed around and handled by reporters that the website image depicts. If the website image is a ‘forgery,” logically the paper certificate must be a forgery, too. So why go to the trouble of forging a paper certificate, then create another forgery for the website image?
And, of course, since the Hawaii state officials responsible for maintaining birth records are, necessarily, also part of this vast conspiracy, why would you need to forge anything in the first place?
Great minds think alike, I guess. I came to the same conclusion in an earlier comment:
“On the other hand, it’s not just the birth certificate that’s the issue. As we know, birthers have dozens of objections to Obama that they believe make him ineligible and deserving of imprisonment or death. A common refrain I see in birther comments is that there is absolutely no proof that Obama is even a citizen of the United States.
In other words, they simply deny EVERYTHING about him.”
Creating doubt might work in swaying an election (it obviously did not), but that ship has now sailed. Birthers are not smart enough to see that.
Yes, yes I had, having worked with PDFs since 1998, the LFBC PDF struck me as completely ordinary. In the ever-widening universe of PDF creation, darn near anything goes. And the LFBC PDF is a ‘good’ PDF, that is no errors occurred on its processing, no unwanted visual artifacts popped up (random black boxes, white lines, translucent masks, etc.). Imagine if something really weird had been there. The funny thing is, true artifacts usually happen on created files (digital documents not yet printed, output from word processors, spreadsheets, presentations, browsers, etc), never on hard copies scanned to PDF. The lack of weirdness suggests, but does not prove, it was a simple scan.
It took a while to gain the proper perspective, that is, that of someone with little or no understanding of digital imaging, who has never attempted to dissect a PDF before, and to whom ‘scanning’ was limited to flatbeds and photos.
You know how it is, like trying to help your non-technical ancestors use a computer or program a VCR (or DVR now).
And then I had to clue in to the fact that there were people out there who didn’t want to know the truth. They had an interest in remaining ignorant. (The hardcore birfers)
And then I had to wrap my head around the fact that they were people should have known better, could have known better, who probably already knew better … but were intentionally feigning ignorance, and encouraging others to maintain ignorance. (The shills)
These realizations of intentional stupidity were maddening, and depressing, but thankfully, the collective work of anti-birthers has been even more reassuring. It only seems like a Sea of The Stupid; there’s still honest, earnest curiosity out there. And judging by public reaction, common sense won out on this one.
Irrefutable logic. Well done!
suranis:
aarrgghh:
It’s all about the predisposition to believe.
If you want to believe something bad enough, you cease objectively evaluating anything and work instead to construct a narrative. I am not familiar with all the gory details that have been bandied about on the image, but I know scanners do stuff like that. So it never seemed particularly noteworthy to me, let alone remarkable.
But if you’re simply trying to construct a narrative, it’s a gold mine. There’s a ton of pointless information you’re target audience won’t be familiar with. So much information, in fact, that you can never explain away every last bit to people who not only don’t understand it, but who have invested their own sense of self-esteem and world view in the opposite conclusion.
To me, the act of incomprehensible stupidity is not carrying on about the image issues, per se. It’s losing sight of the fact that there it’s just an image of an actual document that the state of Hawaii has confirmed. That’s where anyone with a functioning brain stem ought to know better. But instead, you get this insanely tortured parsing of sentences to try and conclude Hawaii officials said the opposite of what they did. And, of course, the idea that the entire state is in on it. This kind of crap is where the madness is simply inexcusable in a purportedly competent adult. Which is why it almost invariably traces back to overt or latent attitudes about certain types of people, a simple reality the birthers get hysterical about whenever it is noted.
They want to believe in self-evidently ridiculous things, yet refuse to even countenance the discussion of why a person might want to do that. That’s why they cling to the silly image of themselves as Constitutional Superheroes.
There is an interesting article releated to Xerox WorkCenters: http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning
They just give it a big fat ol’ “I can’t hear youuuuuu!”
I just saw a post earlier today which talks about how no paper document ever existed. I believe this is a key part of the original CCP cant, as well. Certainly Gillar has said this.
WorkCentres
I suggest a new birfer meme, impugning the obvious, socialist nature of this deceptive technology, as indicated by the European spelling.
“Ursula Burns is in bed with Obama, and there’s something Fraunchy about those Xerox FraudCentres!”
All apologies to the French people.
I am amazed at how resilient some birthers appear to be to the simple facts… I have learned a lot in my recent interactions and Hermitian’s efforts have been instrumental in me being able to solidify the hypothesis.
It would be nice to show how the Xerox WorkCentre PDF displays the same effects as the WH LFBC using a video. Sometimes birthers require a visual stimulus as they lack the ability to understand the somewhat more technical details…
Somewhat maddening but I do understand why there are still people who deny the fact of climate change and the human contribution to it. Or creationism for that matter…
Whaaaaaaat?!? 😛
I briefly pursued the same dream in early 2012, to the point of contacting the local Xerox dealer on the pretense of working for a company in need of new equipment. A true premise, but a bit fishy as I would never be making that decision. Had access to a Mac lined up and ready to go.
Couple things stopped me …. was I really going to go to all that effort over PDF Madness? letting the ridiculous drive me to do the ridiculous … march into a Xerox dealership with a mockup of Obama’s BC as a “test” drive? …. and what exactly was I going to scan? I have a darn good mockup, but unless it’s the same piece of paper on the same WorkCentre, the results won’t be the same.
So, ultimately ….. meh. There’s no helping stupid, and I got worthwhile stuff to do.
No, their motivation is different. They believe that “proving the LFBC is forged” would be the first domino to start the avalanche – the next steps being “Congressional investigation” and “Issa digging up proof Obama was born in Kenyonesia”.
Just like they believed finding “one honest judge” would make all other judges in all other eligibility cases change their mind and rule in their favour.
Or that “getting Obama off the ballot in one state” would be enough to make enough people not vote for him anymore to hand the election to Romney.
That’s why they never felt the need to actually prove foreign birth. They were always about poking that first hole into the dam and hoping the rest would follow automatically.
The Magic M August 8, 2013 at 4:26 am (Quote) #
They were always about poking that first hole into the dam and hoping the rest would follow automatically.
Good point..
“5.Affirm their worldview. “Look I understand that it looks really odd that objects move around in the PDF, but it turns out that the Xerox machine breaks down a document into objects to save space when it makes a PDF.”
I agree that the xerox moves around when necessary, but how do you prove the necessity of the moves in priniting a single simple document!
You can’t. You can think it does , and if it supports your position you will accept that the document has things moved around, but if it doesn’t support your position you must accept that it didn’t move things around.
So it is again subject to to your beliefs.
Next, would you accept as a true copy of an original document a copier that moved things around for reasons not desired by the user?
And would not an alteration of a certified copy void the certification.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and you still can not demonstrate the validity any altered document.
These little technical things are irritating
Yep, those little technical things like Hawaii verifying that all the information matches what they have on their records keeps coming back to bite you in the butt.
Making a PDF (or any other kind of copy) of a certified copy does not change the certified copy, so copying cannot void it.
Try the following test. Bring a dollar bill to a copy machine. Put the dollar bill into the copier and copy it or scan it. Then remove the dollar bill from the copier and examine it carefully. Has it been altered in any way? Of course not. Even if you spilled coffee on it while putting in into the copier, you can still spend it. However, I wouldn’t recommend trying to spend the copy you made.
Nobody here is suggesting that the PDF of Obama’s LFBC is a “valid” document, if by “valid” you mean a document which can be used as proof of anything, However, it is an accurate copy of a document which has been verified as valid by the Sate of Hawaii.
Of course they are, because NONE of them support your argument. That would get annoying as hell after a while.
Very simply. You scan something that looks like the President’s birth certificate with the Xerox WorkCentre, and you see that separate moveable objects are created. This is what NBC and others did. Heck I did that with my birth certificate over a year ago using other scanning software.
It’s not a matter of “necessity”; that’s just what happens. That’s why all the birther forgery arguments have vanished in a puff of smoke.
It sounds to me like you haven’t tried to scan currency before.
Rickey: Try the following test. Bring a dollar bill to a copy machine. Put the dollar bill into the copier and copy it or scan it. Then remove the dollar bill from the copier and examine it carefully. Has it been altered in any way? Of course not. Even if you spilled coffee on it while putting in into the copier, you can still spend it. However, I wouldn’t recommend trying to spend the copy you made.
can you imagine the secret service testifying under oath that the (anomalies in the) PDF of that dollar bill is evidence of a forgery?
Apparently, the WorkCentres in my building will not copy currency. Somebody was copying/scanning a contribution of checks and bills and the copier came back with some security warning (why some people will still send cash in the mail is beyond me, as is why the staffer felt the need too copy it).
I suspect the developers never really considered what you could move around on a PDF if you opened it in Illustrator. The assumption wold normally be, if you were scanning a document to edit with a graphic editing software, you would scan it to a jpeg or some other graphic type, not a PDF.
You can only plan for a certain amount of odd user behavior.
When you get a scan of a dollar bill printed out, you do not get a dollar bill that is acceptable as a dollar, do you?
You scan a copy of a certified copy you get a copy of a certified copy and that copy is not certified.
And now everyone wants to believe that a xerox copier of some copy of the bc did indeed create all of the problem on the bc, including that , invisible to some, smiley face and that strange R in Barack.
But belief is a stronge persuader, is it not?
No, they planned for it. It’s the PDF software that allows you to move things around and they would have had to know how the objects were saved to be able to interpret, edit and save the changes. People do edit PDF’s all the time.
http://www.labnol.org/software/edit-pdf-files/10870/
Helen, simple question, how do you certify a birth certificate?
Jim: Helen, simple question, how do you certify a birth certificate?
and what is HI law regarding verifications in lieu of certifications?
338-14.3 Verification in lieu of a certified copy. (a) Subject to the requirements of section 338-18, the department of health, upon request, shall furnish to any applicant, in lieu of the issuance of a certified copy, a verification of the existence of a certificate and any other information that the applicant provides to be verified relating to the vital event that pertains to the certificate.
(b) A verification shall be considered for all purposes certification that the vital event did occur and that the facts of the event are as stated by the applicant.
(c) Verification may be made in written, electronic, or other form approved by the director of health.
(d) The fee for a verification in lieu of a certified copy shall be a maximum of one half of the fee established in section 338-14.5 for the first certified copy of a certificate issued.
(e) Fees received for verifications in lieu of certified copies shall be remitted, and one half of the fee shall be deposited to the credit of the vital statistics improvement special fund in section 338-14.6 and the remainder of the fee shall be deposited to the credit of the state general fund. [L 2001, c 246, 1; am L 2010, c 55, 1]
Thats one of the points people are trying to make against the birther arguement of “Well the PDF isn’t a legally binding document!” Birthers are the only ones saying that people are claiming it to be. It was uploaded to the WH website as a courtesy.
The actual BC has been certified by the State of Hawaii as legit!
Article IV, Section 1 of a certain document you birthers CLAIM to be all about upholding, says that Hawaii’s word is good enough as far as all other 49 states are concerned.
End of story. Birthers lose.
That is precisely the point. NO ONE IS CLAIMING THAT THE PDF IS A CERTIFIED DOCUMENT! It is a copy of a certified document.
There are no “problems” with the PDF copy. What you are seeing are normal compression artifacts.
Helen: put your head in a copier. Make a copy. The copy is not the original. You still have your head. Your head is genuine. The copy is just a copy. You can think. The copy cannot.
Caution: this may not work with Helen’s head.
Precisely. Which is why the WH PDF is just a way of showing the BC to everyone, not a document that is meant to be used for legal purposes (as Obama’s lawyer said in court which of course birthers perverted to “Obama lawyer admits BC is a forgery” – why would “seekers of the truth” do that again, Helen?).
But you have built yourself a nice Catch-22 world.
(a) When the BC is presented in a form everyone can see (PDF on the web), you yell “not enough”, “not a legal document”.
(b) When the actual certified copies are presented to actual persons who can touch and feel it, you yell “they are lying”.
and by extension
(c) If the actual certified copy (or even the vault original) were ever presented in court and the judge accepts it, you’d yell “judge was bought or threatened”.
So what kind of proof would be sufficient to you? Obviously none since you’ve already convinced yourself beyond repair that Obama was not born in Hawaii, so to you any evidence to the contrary must be “lies”, “forgeries” etc.
Since you’re FUBAR, why would anyone listen to your claims or jump through your hoops?
Simple answer, do don’t!
When the mother verifies the information on the birth certificate, and the attending physcian attests to it, that is all the certification that can be done to the birth certifcate,
Now when they make copies the cerrtify that the copy is a copy of the birth certificate but they can not certify the information is correct as that has already be done by the unsworn mother and attestor.
You can not certify something that you did not see done or did yourself.
Oh, you can do it, but it has no value
Ricky, there is no certification by the state of hawaii on any original birh certificate, as they did not see the signatures of the mother and doctor signing the document.
they can certify any copy that they make , but If I sent them your birth certificate they could not certify it because they did not create it , or were there when it was attested to by the Doctor.
Simple sample, Can you certify that I wrote this document and put it on the board?
Nope, because you don’t know who I am
A court might accept a certified copy, but that does not mean that the certified copy is anything more that a copy of a fake document.
the state can make a photocopy, certify the photocopy, and have a pen signature and seal on the certification, which is probably what a court would ask for if the evidence required it.
But it would still be a copy of the document which might be fake.
Do you deny that a certified copy of a fake document would be entitled to the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution?
The State of Hawaii has on multiple occasions stated that the birth certificate released by the President is a certified copy of his original birth certificate on file with the State of Hawaii.
Article IV Section 1 of the Constitution states:
This was strengthened by Congress in 1790 by a full faith and credit act passed under the authority of Article IV and further defined by the Supreme Court in Mills v. Duryee in a decision by Justice Story:
The Full Faith and Credit clause is not some magic transformation that makes the records of one state above challenge, but rather affords these records the same validity in all states. In the case of Hawaiian birth certificates, they are considered prima facie evidence in a court, and that means that the certificate is sufficient proof of the facts on it (and in this case that President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961). In Hawaii (and anywhere else) evidence could be mounted to challenge the facts on the certificate, but without a judicial determination that the challenge is true, the record stands. Under US law and the laws of the states, President Barack Obama is eligible to be President.
Conspiracy theories, inconsistent and wildly implausible scenarios, the opinions of people who have no knowledge upon which to base their opinions, strange re-interpretations of what people say, and arm-chair crank image experts do not constitute judicial evidence. I should point out that in Atlanta, Orly Taitz presented in court the case that Obama’s birth certificate was a fake based on the testimony of two prominent birther arm-char crank image experts, Paul Irey and Doug Vogt, and the judge rejected their evidence because the witnesses were not qualified.
This discussion belongs perhaps on my other article:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2013/07/how-obamas-birth-certificate-could-have-been-faked/
I go back to the difference between healthy skepticism and conspiracy theory. The newspaper announcements make it wildly improbably that the birth certificate in Hawaii is not from 1961. Anyone that asserts otherwise is not engaging in healthy skepticism. Maintaining a conspiracy theory in the face of a birth certificate that has to be a period document from 1961 and the copy of which is authenticated by the jurisdiction that issued it is not healthy but just plain ignoring the facts. Such beliefs (or doubts if you prefer) are not reasonable, and don’t demand repeated reconsideration.
For 5 years now, birthers have been coming up with stuff (see the almost 3,000 articles on this blog) and none of it held up to scrutiny. Birthers have brought bogus evidence forward hundreds and hundreds of times–and your objections are no different from the rest (in fact rather below par).
If an attending physician signed under penalty of law that he witnessed you write your comment, and I had a state-certified copy of that statement, I could prove it.
Fixation on flawed, currency-based analogies, incredulity at the quirky wonders of modern technology, and closing with wannabe Yoda-esque rhetorical. Yep, that’s Trolljack.
It used to be 100-dollar bills, “Helen”, have you fallen on hard times? And why the gender confusion?
Belief can be a ‘stronge’ confuser. For a really ‘stronge’ persuader, observation and firsthand experience wins me over every time.
😉
I think in Helen’s case, the copy has a better chance of thinking.
The whole pdf thing has always bored me to tears, and I’m not easily bored. It’s never been the least bit relevant.
Dr C.
There s no iviolation of the law in the doctor attesting the fact of the birth, as he does not attested to the information on the birth certificate, The mother verifies the information andd a verification does not , I believe, have the effect of a sworn statement
Simply looking at the LFBC would you, as a unbiased person, certify the document signature of the mother? If you had not seen her sign the document?
There are no sworn statements on the birth certificate!
No one doubts that the record is presumed to be true enough to be entered into evidence without needing to look at the original!
However , if challenged in court, which some are trying to do, then the court has to decide whether to request more than a certified copy, and may request an authenticated copy of the record..
BWAHAHAHAHA!!! What’s the difference to you (not to the courts, they accept certified copies from the states)?
Dear Helen, can you enligthen me: What is the difference between a certified copy, and an authenticated copy of the record?
.
Hey Helen, your John is showing.
As to the birth certificate itself.
Now you assert that the copying machine, it self , will alter the face of the document as necessary to accomplish the task in accordance with the instructions of the programmer, you have now admitted that the face of the document has been altered!
More, or less, who knows.
But, it is a fact that alteration of a certified document invalidates the certification, or do you think that a certified document may be altered and still be considered to be an accurate copy of the original document.
Yes! In fact, let me blow your mind:
There are some copiers that, when you copy a document, will remove all traces of color from it! No, really! I’ve seen it!
The thing which you’re missing, over and over, is: it doesn’t matter. Because, the copy is not what matters. It’s a copy. We all know this.
The original document is what matters. The PDF. Is. A. Copy.
However, the State of Hawaii has certified, multiple times over, the data that is shown on that copy.
Reading that gave me a headache.
Your argument boils down to a claim that no birth certificate issued anywhere in the United States can be relied upon, because the doctor was not present when the mother signed it and the registrar was not present when either the mother or the doctor signed it. That is mind-boggling.
I was born in a hospital, but my birth certificate does not even contain the name of the doctor, much less the doctor’s signature. It doesn’t contain my mother’s signature, either. It is, however, certified with a registrar’s signature and a raised seal. It was good enough to prove to DMV that I was old enough to get a driver’s license. It was good enough to prove to the Social Security Administration that I was eligible for a Social Security Number. It was good enough for the U.S. Navy to prove that I was old enough to enlist. It was good enough for me to register to vote. It was good enough to prove that I was eligible to receive a U.S. passport.
So my birth certificate, with no doctor’s signature and no mother’s signature, was accepted as valid by the following agencies:
New York State DMV
Social Security Administration
United States Navy
New York State Board of Elections
United States State Department
But Helen knows better than all of those agencies.
as zullo recently said: “The truth about this pdf, this birth certificate is you can’t bring it into a court of law. The truth is it cannot survive judicial scrutiny on any level.” he said “you couldn’t take YOUR birth certificate, scan it into a computer and have somebody tell you ‘okay, i’ll accept this’, it’s NOT GONNA HAPPEN”
the DATA has been THRICE verified and, pursuant to HI law, a) Subject to the requirements of section 338-18, the department of health, upon request, shall furnish to any applicant, in lieu of the issuance of a certified copy, a verification of the existence of a certificate and any other information that the applicant provides to be verified relating to the vital event that pertains to the certificate.
(b) A verification shall be considered for all purposes certification that the vital event did occur and that the facts of the event are as stated by the applicant.
(c) Verification may be made in written, electronic, or other form approved by the director of health.
So, are you saying that YOUR BC has no value and illegitimate???
Oh, the stupidity is off the scale!
I use computer printed checks that when they are copied the copy has a faint “copy” mark on it.
Other documents….like birth certificates…..produce similar images on copies.
In neither case is the original document changed or modified. Understand?
all this cargo cultist understands is that you speak blasphemy.
</birf>
Helen may have trouble wrapping her head around that one, but what you say is true. I have a Xerox copier (not a WorkCentre 7655!) and it prints everything in black & white. I’ve tried fiddling with the settings, but I can’t seem to get it to print a color document in color.
But here’s the funny part: when I remove the color document from the copier, it is still in color! No smiley faces, either.
Folks, I think Helen has had us all.
First, let’s recall Moynihan’s observation that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. I wouold propose a corallary: Even the profoundly ignorant and stupid are entitled to their own opinions, but not to having those opinions taken seriously.
I don’t think Helen is as ignorant or stupid as (s)he lets on. I think (s)he tries to top his/her last outrageous statement with one even more outrageous, just to get a rise out of us.
It’ll be hard, however, to top the loony assertion that no birth certificate is valid unless the person certifying it was actually present at the event.
I do not doubt that a material alteration of a certified copy might void the certification.
But the President was born in Hawaii, and Gov. Lingle and Gov. Abercrombie have said so. The President says so, and I take him at his word because he is a good, honorable and decent person.
Unlike Helen, who is willfully loony, and a racist.
Stop ducking the question Helen. Where was Pres. Obama born?
No, I do not deny that. Because that certified copy would be accepted as valid in the state that issued it, the full faith and credit clause would apply in the other 49 states until someone presents evidence that the original document upon which it is based was a fake.
In my amateur opinion, if there was something materially incorrect on the certified copy Obama’s birth certificate such as listing a hospital that did not exist or having the signature of a doctor who was not yet born, that would have opened the door for a closer inspection. But given that nobody has provided any valid reason to suspect that the information on the certified copy is incorrect or impossible, there is no reason to question the validity of the original.
If the person who created the original document stated that the copy had the exact same information as the original (as Hawaii has done with the PDF that Obama posted online), then yes I would accept it as a true copy.
The birth certificate is not just verified by some unknown bureaucrat. The information was vouched for by two Governors.
Oh,goodness me.
People actually believe that the certified copy means that the information in the document is correct!
And,yet, believe it or not, and i know that you will not believe it, the HDOH allows corrections to original document, amendments to the original document, and name changes on the original document, and yet you think a certified copy of a document must be correct.
Spare me your comments that none of this applies to the Obama birth certificate because 2 Governors have seen it, the HDOH certified a copy of it, and the registrar name was stamped on the document, along with a suspicious registration stamping.
Nothing a state can do will make a fraudulent document a valid document, except perhaps by authentication of the fraudulent document for party purposes.
Why everthing that the Democratic Party has ever done is strictly legal and no one of them would ever lie to advance their position, and that is also true about the Republican party.
And you believe that Abercrombie and Lingle are honest?
My damn Lenovo cursor jumps all over the place as I type.
Thank you for sharing that with us. Anything else we need to know?
theobamafile
“Around August 21, 2008, FactCheck.org staffers had a meeting at Obama campaign headquarters. FactCheck.org describes that event:
FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as “supporting documents” to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said
”
there you go, they saw the ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE!
Did you believe them?
Are you channeling Mrs. Featherbottom?
Who do you believe…..about anything?
No, a certified copy means that the information on that document is correct to the best of the issuing authority’s knowledge at the time it was issued. Unless there is a reason to doubt the issuing authority’s knowledge of the facts (or to doubt that the information on the certified copy matches what is on the original document), the certified copy will be accepted as valid proof throughout the entire United States. (EDIT: Assuming of course that the issuing authority is duly authorized to do so. ie. a state DMV or dept of health and not “MattR’s document Hut”)
Yes, this means that certified copies based on a fraudulent original document will be accepted as valid, but the alternative is chaos. It is just a variant of Blackston’s formulation. Better that a single person be able to sneak in a fraudlent document than 1000 people have to prove that their authentic documents are not fraudulent.
I believe that Republican Linda Lingle who was an avowed McCain supporter would not have hid something that could have helped McCain win the election.
The cursor is the least of your problems. Have you seen the crazy stuff your keyboard’s been typing?
Or, you can read the actual original FactCheck.org post at http://www.factcheck.org/2008/08/born-in-the-usa/ .
If you read that post and think it means to imply anything close to, “We saw the vault copy of Obama’s birth certificate” … you just may be a birther.
She did not go on to add, “As part of my duties as Chairwoman, I of course plan to actively suppress any evidence which would demonstrate that Senator McCain’s opponent is not actually eligible for the presidency.”
I was just reading comments at another blog that devolved into a conversation about religion. There was one person there who was nitpicking the definitions of the words agnostic and atheist and was refusing to acknowledge that colloquially they are often used interchangably (or more to the point that agnostics will commonly refer to themselves as atheists). I can understand wanting to be precise with your own language or to seek clarification to make sure you understand what is meant by a term, but neither that commenter nor helen are trying to do that. Instead they are just playing word games to try and prove their superiority.
To be fair, Lingle was smart enough to realize that all of Obama’s votes would just go to Green candidate Cynthia McKinney. After all, she is black so obviously anyone who liked Obama would like her.
Yes. I have seen no evidence, and certainly none from you, that suggests otherwise. As Misha frequently points out, Gov. Lingle is a Republican who campaigned for Sen. McCain. And Gov. Abercrombie met Pres. Obama and his parents when the President was a baby.
Where was Pres. Obama born? Stop ducking the question.
I have more reason to believe that they are honest, than I do that you are sane.
Much more reason to believe them than you, because I haven’t noticed them spouting factually false nonsense.
Helen, I’ve posed this question to you multiple times…
Your entire argument seems to be that no birth certificate, anywhere, is adequate proof of the place of birth. You don’t have any specific argument against Barack Obama’s birth certificate that wouldn’t apply to any other birth certificate.
So, what’s your proposal for people proving their citizenship, such as is needed for access to things like Passports, or Driver’s License? This is a very simple question. Please answer it in a way that proposes a general rule that would have to apply to anybody.
Yes I believe them.
They saw the original Certification of Live Birth which Hawaii provided to Barack Obama. Whether you believe it or not, the Certification of Live Birth is an official, legitimate Hawaii birth certificate. It says right on it that “This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.”
FactCheck never claimed that they saw the original LFBC which is in Hawaii’s vital records.
Indeed! I completely agree.
Agreed. That is essentially the absurdity of her faux argument…
“The confirmation rendered by an officer of a court that a certified copy of a judgment is what it purports to be, an accurate duplicate of the original judgment. In the law of evidence, the act of establishing a statute, record, or other document, or a certified copy of such an instrument as genuine and official so that it can be used in a lawsuit to prove an issue in dispute”
and
Well, a certified copy is stamped and stamped signature, And authenticated copy is a copy 8 1/2 x 11 inches , and the signature is by pen!
But, believe what you wish, as nothing will change your mind!
there is no general rule.
There are numerous ways to verify what you request.
Alll the states have various ways to determine your citizenship and your right to be in the country.
And criminals can get around most of them.
U.S. Birth Certificate
Certification of Report of Birth (DS-1350)
Report of Birth Abroad of a U.S. Citizen (FS-240)
State Department Certification of Birth (FS-545 or DS-1350)
U.S. Citizen Identification Card (I-197 or I-179)
American Indian Card (I-872)
Northern Marianas Card (I-873)
Final adoption decree showing a U.S. place of birth
Proof of adoption of a child born outside U.S. and in the
legal/physical custody of the U.S. citizen parent (IR-3 or IR-4)
Proof of U.S. civil service employment before June 1, 1976
U.S. military service record showing a U.S. place of birth
U.S. hospital record made at the time of birth *
Life, health, or other insurance record *
Religious record recorded in the U.S. within 3 months of
birth showing U.S. place of birth and birth date or age
Early school record showing a U.S. place of birth, date of
admission, birth date, names and places of birth of parents U.S. Birth Certificate
Certification of Report of Birth (DS-1350)
Report of Birth Abroad of a U.S. Citizen (FS-240)
State Department Certification of Birth (FS-545 or DS-1350)
U.S. Citizen Identification Card (I-197 or I-179)
American Indian Card (I-872)
Northern Marianas Card (I-873)
Final adoption decree showing a U.S. place of birth
Proof of adoption of a child born outside U.S. and in the
legal/physical custody of the U.S. citizen parent (IR-3 or IR-4)
Proof of U.S. civil service employment before June 1, 1976
U.S. military service record showing a U.S. place of birth
U.S. hospital record made at the time of birth *
Life, health, or other insurance record *
Religious record recorded in the U.S. within 3 months of
birth showing U.S. place of birth and birth date or age
Early school record showing a U.S. place of birth, date of
admission, birth date, names and places of birth of parents
But, as I said, you will not agree with any of this
This is a pipe? No, it is a picture of a pipe.
A copy of a document is a copy of a document and not the document, even if the copy is certified.
Do you really believe that there are no fake documents in the HDOH?
Your source?
Ah, how you squirm. Of course it was the certification of live birth, but it was NOT the original birth certificate, as no one even knew that there was a difference between the certification of live birth and Certificate of Live Birth.
Of course , you will claim that there is none, as you believe that the created the two types of forms for fun and to confuse people.
Or did you fail to realize that the is a certification signature on one and not the other.
Do you really believe that there are no legitimate documents in the HDOH?
Look up the rules , I am not Google
No!
I agree, show me where the HDOH ever confirmed the validity of the information on the file BC,
They have confirmed that a document is on file, but they have never disclosed all of the information in the file!
Governer Abercrombie lied about knowing Obama as a baby and that he had seen Obama and his mother and father together.
As Senior Obama never lived with his wife , Anna Dunham after she moved to the State of Washinton in August 1961, and never saw his son until his son came back to Honolulu when he , Obama, was 10 years
Obama was born where-ever his mother was when he was born!
We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate
you mean they lied?
What in the world do you mean that you think they were not talking about the original birth certificate that Obama said he had in a book?
helen:
below find a link to the motion by the attorneys for the Democratic Party of Mississippi to Supplement Response to Motion for Sanctions together with a copy of the letter to Fuddy requesting the verification (and including plaintiffs’ assertions), a copy of Obama’s COLB and a copy of the verification of birth pursuant to HI statute 338-14.3 certified by Onaka
http://www.scribd.com/doc/96200621/2012-06-06-MDEC-Motion-to-Supplement-Response-to-Motion-for-Sanctions-S-D-Miss
i cannot fathom any court not finding this sufficient proof of birth pursuant to the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution
First, and most importantly, I felt you should know that I now hear all your posts in the voice of Tobias Fünke in drag.
Second, and also most importantly: you’re blowing smoke. Stop it. It’s just sad.
The post said nothing about birth certificates in books. It was referring to “a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate.” Of which they saw the original.
They have a picture of it in their post. Since we know the document in that picture is dated later than the memoir which you’re paraphrasing, there’s no way they can be talking about the “birth certificate that Obama said he had in a book.”
How do you know?
So I guess we assume from your response and lack of support that you simply made it up. Got it.
Your source?
Ah, so you’ve reached the very bottom of your deck.
What’s next? Godwin’s law?
Why isn’t there a circumcision certificate on that list?
Donna, full faith and credit means, in this case, that the original does not have to be brought into court to have it authenticated before allowing it to be entered into evidence.
If, after evidence is entered , indicating that there is a problem in believing the facts of the admitted evidence, the court might require an authenticated copy , or the original, to be submitted.
If the adverse evidence is strong enough to indicate that there is a troublesome fact about the original, then the court would have to have a verification of the truthfulness of the original document.
A certified copy , admitted into evidence, may still be declared to be evidence of a fraudulent birth certificate application.
ergo, BustamanteX11l
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1608338.html
“Our holding today does not question the general proposition that birth certificates, and official duplicates of them, are ordinary public records “created for the administration of an entity’s affairs and not for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact at trial.”
In the dissent
“Bustamante’s reliance on the California delayed registration of birth is not persuasive because the government presented testimony at trial from Reverend Masters, the senior pastor of the Holman United Methodist Church, that the church did not own the building listed on the delayed registration of birth until 1951, 5 years after Bustamante’s purported baptism at that location. Additionally, the government produced evidence from the church’s records that Bustamante was baptized in 1971, not 1946 as listed on the baptismal certificate relied upon for his delayed registration of birth. Bustamante does not point to any evidence in the record that contradicts Reverend Masters’s testimony or calls it into question. Thus, the only reasonable conclusion that a jury could draw based on the evidence is that Bustamante’s California delayed registration of birth was invalid because it was based entirely on a fraudulent baptismal certificate”
You need not consider anything that will disturb your present belief
How could they have seen the original that was posted at various places at about the same time? Oh, they said it was the original copy!
It could not have been because the first one was not folded, was it?
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/08/born-in-the-usa/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/06/12/534616/-Obama-s-birth-certificate#
And notice that FactCheck in showing the seal showed it on a folded BC and the original is not folded.
But believe, for believing makes it true!
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/08/born-in-the-usa/
“We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship”
But believe, for believing will make you strong!
and now, the piece de resistance,
Ann Dunham got her social security card in 1959 as Ann Dunham.
She changed the name to Ann Dunham Obama in 1963 just before she divorced him
“. according to Obama’s official biography, when he was growing up, Ann Dunham was a poor single mother on Social Security. Additionally, when she was older and was afflicted with cancer, according to Obama, his health insurance company denied benefits, so it was widely assumed that the benefits came from the SSA. However, according to the letter July 29, 2013 from Dawn Wiggins, FOIA officer, which was received by Taitz today, Ann Dunham never received any SSA benefits. Taitz is trying to reconcile these inconsistencies.”
“. It is not clear, why did Ann Dunham apply for a change from Dunham to Dunham Obama in 1963, when she divorced Barack Obama senior. One would expect her to change her name in February 1961, when she reportedly married Obama, not in 1963, when she divorced him. This application for SSN change for Ann Dunham was released for the first time today.”
Ah, the secrecy of it all, Now tell me if that is not why the signature of Ann Dunham on the birth certificate was not change to Stanley Ann Dunham Obama after it was signed Ann Dunham, and they needed Obama’s family name on the BC
Who know what is going on. But what fun!
”
because if they are all fake , and all legitimate, there are no valid documents in there.
But , ask away, as If I refuse to answer you will claim something or the other to indicate your vast ability to act in a manner that shows something about your beliefs.
Because it is not a requirement for the ladies!
Um, I think you’ve gotten a little lost, here. Let me know when you get this all sorted out in your own personal brain.
Like you, of course, you mean. Just in case you’ve forgotten. You’re “Helen” at this point.
Lenovos don’t work well with a wireless mouse. I had to ditch mine.
I am glad that you have it all sorted out.
Now tell me why the Savannah Gutheries LFBC for Obama has a different spelling of Hawaii if they are photographing the same copy.
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/06/savannah-guthrie-busted-again-hawaii.html
I am using touch pad on the laptopl Think I will go to mouse
Thank you! I wish you well in your quest for the same.
Oh, honey.
So, tell us Helen (or Jack, or whatever), is your BC valid since no one can personally attest to ALL of the information on it?
Is your driver’s license valid, since some people have been known to use fraudulent ID in order to obtain one? How can the Hiway Patrol know that you really passed the road test, since they, individually, are ignorant of whether you did?
Nice, helen. You seem to have acknowledged that birth certificates do prove place of birth, and that you think that they should. So, now why are you arguing in the very next post that you write that no birth certificate can ever be accepted as proof of place of birth, because of Bustamante’s case (which was a completely different document in a completely different State).
Believe it or not, I agree with you. Birth certificates, the first thing on your list, do prove place of birth. You’re the one who doesn’t agree with that list of documents that prove your citizenship.
That list that you provided says that Obama’s proven his citizenship, and he didn’t it all the way back in June of 2008, when he released his “Official Hawaii State Birth Certificate” to the public.
Now, that you’ve acknowledged that birth certificates are proof of citizenship, will you state the next conclusion: Obama was born in the United States, based upon his birth certificate?
Actually understanding what you read will make you even stronger. The FactCheck link does not say they saw the original birth document. It clearly says they saw one of the certified copies….in Chicago:
“Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago.”
Yes, indeed……it’s a “piece”…..that’s for sure.
Short answer: They’re not both photographs. The one that you think shows the word misspelled is a very low resolution scan. Understand now?
Helen, in the Bustamante case there was evidence he was born elsewhere. That is what the case was about.
Where was Pres. Obama born, Helen? Time to stop ducking the question.
It doesn’t.
John Woodman debunked this really, really stupid claim by Mara Zebest here.
*rolls eyes*
Of course there are numerous differences between various state rules. And of course crime is *possible*. You are an absurdist to the extreme and can’t tell the difference between possible and probable at all.
You are simply someone who can’t handle the complexities of the real world that is not very binary at all. Most of us normal folk are well aware that this is an imperfect world with imperfect people and imperfect processes. That doesn’t suddenly turn everything into being “suspicious” or “criminal”. You have an unhealthy level of unreasonable paranoia, closely wrapped into your personal confirmation biases. Simple as that. You are being ridiculous and your faux conclusions come across child-like in their inanity.
Are you arguing with yourself here? We’re the ones trying to point out the difference between a scanned copy and an original document to you. You are the one who is inconsistent in what you are trying to say. All of that is irrelevant, when the original underlying DATA is all that matters, which has been confirmed from the HI DOH multiple times. As they are the only official authority for BCs in their state, the buck stops there, no matter how much you want to throw an absurd tantrum. Tough cookies for you. Welcome to how the real world works.
As to your second point, you are still barking at completely irrelevant and indirect tangents that get you nowhere. I have no knowledge of any “fake documents in the HDOH”. Does that mean there are any or that it is merely *possible* that some could exist?
Completely irrelevant to the matter at hand. Simple fact – there is ZERO actual tangible evidence of any fraud in regards to Obama’s BC. All you have are your spurious “suspicious”, based off of nothing but your own bias and paranoia.
In other words, you let your imagination run away with you. Yet at the end of the day, that is all it is – your imagination, with no DIRECT, TANGIBLE connection to the real world. Sorry.
*DERP* Wow…that makes absolutely no sense at all.
Sadly Helen, I can only conclude that you are an irrational person who can’t deal with the real world. You simply claim that anything you don’t want to hear must be a lie and that anything you don’t want to see must be a fraud.
Obviously, with your choice of “belief” always in your words, you are not someone who deals well with empirical evidence.
You asked in another post what the HI DOH has verified. Well, they HAVE vouched for the documents and the data on Obama multiple times. They even devote a whole section to their website to do so:
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html
When Ken Bennett of the AZ SOS asked for verification, they DID verify the underlying data on the form. So yeah, unlike your crazy denials, there is NOTHING in dispute in reality.
While you distract your tears and misery with make-believe, nothing changes the fact that every actual document and statement on this issue ALL say born in Hawaii for him. That ends the whole “is he an NBC” nonsense right there.
But hey, keep crying and wailing your bitter tears of denial, whether here or some street corner with a cardboard sign. Your detachment from reality only serves to impact your own life negatively and has ZERO consequence to the President…
Well Helen, I have good news for you…for all the bloviating and carrying on you’ve been doing, you have one vote. The majority of Americans don’t agree with you, you lost.
Biirth places are not always a fact that convey citizenship.
What have you been reading, nothing posted by me. As I KNOW that if you are born of two American Citizens in China, you are an American Citizen.
And if you are born in the USA and are the progeny of diplomats ,you may not be American Citizens.
But,your beliefs support you, so believe what you want.
You are amazing,indeed!
You can assert that what you think the words say are one thing and deny my ability to assert they say something else.
they said, asserted, vouched, that they had held and seen and photoed the original birth certificate, did they not?
the place that he was born is where Ann Dunham was at the time.
I do not know where Ann Dunham was when her first child was born!
take your choice, Kenya, Hawaii, or British Columbia, I do not know
No one has ever verified the data on the document, they have verified that the words are on the data, but not that the information is correct
They have no way to do that! Read that again, They have no way to verifiy that the data is correct.
they have to take the words of the attestor and the mother at face value, and a person that take words at face value when it is important is a person that does not know what facts are.
I have no fears, no misery, and feel no ill will to the person of the Presidenct .
But , believe and trust, that the world will continue regardless of what you and I think
No one is denying your “ability to assert they (words) say something else”. Quite the opposite, in fact, since you keep doing it over and over.
What I and others are saying is that your assertions are flawed.
It’s clear from the totality of the FactCheck article that they are not talking about having examined the original vault copy of Obama’s birth certificate. The picture clearly shows the certified long form certificate and they say they looked at it in Chicago.
Other than your willingness to believe their use of the word “original” means they saw the vault copy there is absolutely no evidence to support your claim and plenty to demonstrate that it is utter nonsense.
I see that John Woodman did the same thing that other have done , but in relation to the word Hawaii.
Namely, claiming that if you expand the image to the maximum that the things all look alike as was done with the smiley face in the signature. and the TXE in the certification.
But they don’t want to do to the signatures which show different dpi’s.
Oh, well, people interpret according to what they want to see!
(It’s actually the 2007 abstract. But this doesn’t change your point.)
You’re right. I mistyped. But it will not make any difference to helen: She knows nothing but believes everything.
The data on the document has been verified by the State of Hawaii. Multiple times.
Where was Pres. Obama born, Helen? Why do you keep ducking the question?
Oh what a bunch of total BS! Sorry Helen, we can see right through you…
Again, you go to extreme lengths of unreasonable absurdity in claiming “don’t know”.
What you are babbling on about here applies to EVERY birth certificate out there, not just his.
Yet you don’t seem to have the same sort of “angst” against any other person who has run for office and their credentials, seen or not.
Your whole argument basically comes down to “nobody can know anything”…which is just absolutist nonsense. Sorry, but the real world doesn’t function like that. People use driver’s licenses, birth certificates and other forms of documentation all the time – for many different purposes – and they are accepted and assumed true by default. Only REAL evidence of fraud or contrary factual evidence would cause something to be in question – of which there is NONE in Obama’s specific situation. Just spurious made up cr@p by a bunch of malcontents whose “worldview” is too fragile to deal with the reality of his election – TWICE.
There is a huge difference between some fraud existing within the world (it always will) and LEAPING to assume that everything must be fraudulent…or even that a specific situation *must* be “sinister”…simply because your own biases don’t “trust”…
But hey, keep playing “trust no one” in your own over-the-top and excessively hyperbolic paranoid head-game. How’s that working for you so far? …Didn’t think so.
Your comments are inane. Everybody (and I mean everybody) knew that there is a difference between a Certification of Live Birth and the long form birth certificate – one contains more information than the other, but both are valid birth certificates.
And you are wrong again – both documents have certification signatures. The COLB was signed on the back, and the LFBC was signed on the front.
This is like the whole “Embossed – Debossed” line they were pulling out before this.
And the only Birther that managed to get a copy of her “long form” was Danae of Free Republic, and she got a non signed, non stamped photocopy of her vital records. And a copy of the COLB, which she was told to bring with the copy of the vital records when she applied for native Hawaiin status as that was her actual Birth certificate, the other thing was just informational.
*rolls eyes* Not buying it Helen. Face it, under your own crazy premise, you don’t “know” where any office holder or candidate’s parents were when their child was born. Yet somehow…this is *only* an issue of “concern” with you, in regards to Obama…a person of whom there has been more official statements and corroborative evidence backing up his place of birth and his birth story than ANY other President -ever. (Thanks to you silly birthers, BTW).
So spare us your absurdist clap-trap. It all comes down to you being incapable of dealing with him as a REALITY. Nothing more. Nor is there anything you can do about it. The elections are over. That ship has long sailed. You had your ability to vote and were never forced to vote for a candidate that you didn’t feel “comfortable” with. Yet there is a VAST difference between YOU personally not being “comfortable” and the majority of the country as a whole, feeling otherwise. Time for you to move on.
Being a wingnut/crank is always about twisting reality into a pretzel until you’ve found a reason why your fringe minority opinion should trump the views of the vast majority.
This is most openly reflected in those people who call the 99.9% of sane voters “brainwashed” and basically claim they should all lose their voting rights until they have been “re-educated” to see it the cranks’ way.
I’ve actually seen cranks take this all the way – when in court (no matter if criminal or civil case), they demand the judge show them ID to prove he is he and further proof to show he really is a judge, then refuse to make any statements because the judge “failed to prove his identity and legality”. An easy way to lose 100% of your cases. 😉
And you never thought of that when GWB was President? Or Reagan? Or Nixon? Only when the black guy took office, you suddenly realized that birth certificates “aren’t proof of anything” and nothing is really proof of anything anyway?
*facepalm* *sigh*
How can their behavior be classified as anything but clinically insane???
Oh, for heaven sake, Why did Hawaii stop issuing the Certifications and replacing with COB?
Because of the uproar about the certification not being a certificate.
ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE, means what, to the honest man?
It means the one that was provided to the mother and father, and filed with the government, is that is required.
It means nothing less!
Attack the person , not the words.
I was hoping Keyes would run, Would have voted for Powell, Did vote for McCain but only because Palin, a woman , was running for VP.
I have never thought that birth certificates were worth nothing, I have always said I object to the COLB and theLFBC as they do not, to me, appear to be authentic.
if a person tries to pass a phony document on to me , I do not trust that person for future transactions.
What uproar….when, where?
You see , I looked at the reference at Fact Check and noted that the certification was on the back of a folded document , and the COLB was not folded.
And why would that be? How do you know it was he same document?
Oh, you trust people who say what you believe in!
Google it, Or ask Dr. C.
I’m not sure what you think was replaced with a cob, and I don’t want to know.
ALL INFORMATION ON BIRTH CERTIFICATES THAT ARE INSERTED ONTO THE FORM ARE VERIFIED OR ATTESTED TO BY PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF THE HDOH.
No one in the HDOH will have actual knowledge as to the facts inserted onto the forms, unless they were participants in the action.
No one in the HDOH can verify the facts without confirmation by participants in the action
Do not think that saying the data is there means that the data is accurate.
They can not, and will not, guarantee the information is accurate or legal.
certificate of birth
A certificate of birth was replaced with a cob? You’re not making a lot of sense, Mrs. Featherbottom.
helen: Oh, for heaven sake, Why did Hawaii stop issuing the Certifications and replacing with COB?
in arguing with a birther, i once called his home state (i think wisconsin) and was told they did away with long form birth certificates when they got rid of photocopiers and that LFBC’s give up too much info for identity thieves
in NY, since at least the 70s, they have issued “short forms” called “certificate of birth registration” – ask trump what his kids’ birth certificates look like since they too were born in NY in the 70s
and on the reverse side of those NY certificates are “records of immunizations” completed by the pediatricians
RI BCs from 1967 and 1985 are a “short forms” and titled “copy of certificate of birth”
ALL were used to obtain drivers’ licenses, passports, etc
No, I’m asking you so you get to answer.
Let’s see if we can narrow it down so you can cope with it:
Are you saying that Hawaii has stopped issuing short form certifications because there was some “uproar” about them?
If so….when? If not….what in the world are you talking about?
Can you point us to a PDF of a “certificate of birth”…..anyone’s?
A cob was also used in the outhouse, a descriptive for a horse, and abbreviation other meanings
And still has zero relevance to the topic at hand…
Now you are just trying to go off on meaningless tangents, in a vain attempt to distract from how you are constantly being called out for saying nonsense that doesn’t match up with reality… just about nothing you say lines up with how things really are…
Helen, put up or shut up, you stupid cow.
Putting your fingers in you ears and going “Lalalalal!” and trying to change the subject are for kindergartners.
Sorry for the name calling on your blog, Doc, but my tolerance for stupid is at an all time now.
Looks like somebody pushed your button.
Having grammar problems?
For a medical billing wonk like me, COB is “coordination of benefits.”
So how do you propose guaranteeing any data in public records are accurate?
In addition to birth records how about deaths? What about deeds? Divorce records? Recorded wills, trusts, etc.?
Its why I would make a terrible judge. I’d be too likely to leap over the bench and gavel someone everything they say something incredibly idiotic, like Helen here. Facts backed up with citations be damned. As far as she’s concerned, none of that matters, because it doesn’t fit her pre-made judgement of the situation.
You can lead a horse to water, and all that jazz.
Also, thanks for pointing out the typo.
OK Helen. You voted for Sen. McCain. What document that you can link to persuaded you that he was a natural born citizen? He does not even claim to be born here. Most of us here would accept his birth certificate, so you can link to that.
And you voted for Gov. Palin. Could you link to whatever documentation you relied upon that Gov. Palin is a natural born citizen. Surely you know that Gov. Palin said that her family often crossed into Canada for free health care. Maybe she was born there. It can’t be she’s a citizen only because her Mother was a citizen, but if that’s what you believe, you can provide a link to her Mother’s birth certificate.
I’m confident given your high standards that you must have relied on something. It can’t just be that they were white and Republican. It’s not that Helen, is it? Your not a racist? No, of course not. You would have voted for Amb. Keyes (can we see his birth certificate, please) or Gen. Powell. You do know that Gen. Powell’s parent were not citizens, right? And that he speaks Yiddish. Could be an Israeli spy. Misha would know. But we’ll settle for whatever document you think shows that Gen. Powell is a natural born citizen.
And for Gov. Palin it can’t be something the Governor of Idaho said because government officials lie and Idaho allows delayed registrations.
So, Helen, how about it? Exactly what did you rely upon to decide that Sen. McCain, Gov. Palin, Amb. Keyes and Gen. Powell were natural born citizens.
It can’t be that some of them were in the military. Heck, you don’t even have to be a citizen to be in the military.
It can’t be that Amb. Keyes was an ambassador. You don’t need to be a natural born citizen to be an ambassador.
It can’t be that Gen. Powell was Secretary of State. Madeline Albright held that job and she was Austrian (and Jewish.) Henry Kissinger had that job and he was German (and Jewish). (Misha, I’m sensing a pattern here.)
So how about it Helen. Where is your evidence?
And while you are at it, where was President Obama born? Stop ducking the question.
—–
Thank you for that whole comment; well done.
Thank you, J.D.Sue, but I made a typo: “your” instead of “you’re.” I am embarrassed by that anomaly.
—–
Ah, the irrelevant ever-present typo. I didn’t even notice it.
And , contrary to public opinion, I do not get excercised over anything said on the web.
Why anyone would get upset about a posting is really strange.
I look at them and wonder how they arrived at that conclusion, and either agree, or disagree.
I know that everyone has different opinions , and believe it or not, anyone’s opinion is not necessarily right, even mine.
Cool off, enjoy trying to point out where I am wrong on my statements, as none of this makes a great big difference in the scheme of things.
I seem to be unable to get anyone to point out specific errors in my postings , so if you do ,point them out and let us discuss them.
Everyone on this board has preconceived opinions!
Powell’s parents were Jamaican citizens when he was born. I would gladly vote for Powell. He is a Rockefeller Republican, a warrior and a scholar.
Ted Cruz was born in Canada to an American citizen mother. He is a US citizen by birth, and is eligible to run. I’m going to be watching the Denialists when he announces.
Last i checked a scan of a document is not folded unless you have a folded monitor. I’m sure Xerox would be interested in your advanced folding jpeg tech.
And the factcheck looked the same as the jpeg and obviously was stamped and had a raised seal. Even if you are trying to argue that the jpeg was not a valid BC certified by Hawaii then the fact check document certainly was. And both look exactly like the BCs issued by Hawaii at the time.
And yeah, they later changed “certification” on their BCs to read “certificate” because they don’t want their citizens harassed in the future by stupid bigots. If your President got a new BC now it would read “Certificate of Birth.” But guess what? The one he used in 2008 is still valid, just like everyone that was issued between 2001 and 2009 which would have had the word certification, like this one which was waved aroind by Birthers as a “real BC” at one point.
http://truebluenz.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/birth-certificate-real-hawaii.jpg?w=632
Aside from the fact that he lied his ass off to the entire planet because Bush the Lesser told him to, I’d have no real problems seeing Powell as President.
By the way, for those interested, here’s an image of an Irish Birth Certificate. Spot the layers!
http://www.irish-birth-certs.com/inc/images/full-Michael-Collins-birth-cert.jpg
Time for answers, Helen. Try answering my questions. Stop ducking the questions.
Check out the photos that are linked to there on the Fact Check. You can clearly see the folds on the document that they took a look at, which is a “valid Hawaii state birth certificate”, which has all the information required by the State Department to prove citizenship.
Here’s a clear photo showing the folds over the entire document. You can replace the number in there, with any number between 1-9, and see other photographs of the document.
http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/birth_certificate_2.jpg
Photographs 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 clearly show the folds of the COLB.
Dr. Taitz has already announced that she doesn’t care if Sen. Cruz is natural born as long as Pres. Cruz tosses former Pres. Obama in the clink.
Thereby establishing that Dr. Taitz has no principles, including that the President must be natural born. `(Sen. Cruz fails the Vattel test advocated by Dr. Taitz.)
Of course, Dr. Taitz does still have one principle: A Black man is not eligible to be President.
How about you, Helen. Are you going to tell us the proof upon which you relied when you voted for McCain-Palin? The evidence that Gen. Powell and Amb. Keyes are natural born? Where Pres. Obama was born?
Helen says: “I seem to be unable to get anyone to point out specific errors in my postings , so if you do ,point them out and let us discuss them.”
Well Helen, I’ve pointed your errors out, as did others. Time to tell us the scrutiny you gave to other candidates. Surely you checked and vetted them as thoroughly as Pres. Obama.
http://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/2013/07/birth_certificate_1.jpg
Fake seal on a folded document
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=hawaiian+department+of+health+seal&hl=en&biw=1280&bih=631&tbm=isch&tbnid=aMLUxRcODDOmOM:&imgrefurl=http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2010/12/hawaii-department-of-health-releases.html&docid=yt8P-ckg1-7a6M&imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1lGFYYNkw_o/TPtXHqzG40I/AAAAAAAACN4/O_tPxSzZDVo/s400/embossedsealnoted1.jpg&w=490&h=440&ei=DeAJUruSGorqyQH_1ICwDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=284&vpy=118&dur=4555&hovh=213&hovw=237&tx=129&ty=104&page=1&tbnh=144&tbnw=161&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:87
Compare them and see which one is accurate and readable.
Well, that’s easy. The first one is a match for what’s on my son’s birth certificate, including the very small “of”.
Some of us who post here have Hawaiian birth certificates, so, yeah, we know what they look like.
Helen,
People here have been pointing out errors, both specific and general, in every post you make here. Everyone has noticed how completely biased you are and how you have an impossibly high standard for President Obama and a ridiculously low standard for John McCain, Sarah Palin, He L*c*s Sm*th, the Maricopa CCCP, Mitt Romney, and probably many more.
Most of the commenters here, on the other hand, don’t make mistakes often, but when they do, they acknowledge their error and correct their statements accordingly. This is how honest people who discuss things in good faith act. While we have positions that are very firmly set, it is not because we came to this issue with a preconceived bias. On the contrary, we came to this issue with an open mind long ago (I myself was worried about the accusations made in Texas Darlin’s blog before the 2008 election) and quickly learned that all of the legal authority says that people born in the US are natural born citizens (ambassadors, enemies, yada yada yada…) and all of the evidence says that President Obama was born in Hawai’i. In addition, we’ve watched the birthers repeat their lies one after another in a seemingly endless loop, never admitting they are wrong even when caught red-handed, moving the goalposts whenever it was convenient to do so, never decrying the racists, fools, idiots, and liars in their midst, and never worrying about making heinous accusations against anyone who disagreed with them without any evidence whatsoever.
While some people, like Doc C, may treat you politely and with respect, you should never be fooled into thinking you deserve it as it is just a reflection of the quality of their character, not yours. The things that you and others of your ilk write are both rude and incredibly dishonest. Whether said politely or not, a lie is still a lie, willful ignorance is still willful ignorance, idiocy is still idiocy, and bigotry is still bigotry. You, Helen, and all your birther friends are truly pathetic excuses for human beings and I hope that Obama’s presidency and your impotence to do anything about it brings you misery every day you hold on to your hateful, deceitful ignorance.
Have a nice day.
Hear, hear.
Bravo!
Actually, in helen’s case, I wonder if it’s not a mild form of mental problem of some kind… Sadly, since having to deal with my two elderly parents, I’ve become acquainted with alzheimer and other forms of dementia.
My father, for instance, refuses to accept the authenticity of any papers sent by his bank and is totally convinced they’re stealing from him. No proof, no logic, no papers will convince him otherwise.
Fortunately, as the only son, I’m the curator, but if I wasn’t, I could easily see a “helen-type” conversation being carried with the bank, to no good results.
I now skip over and ignore “helen”-trolljack’s inane, worthless and puerile drivel.
The only goal of a birther jackass is to be a jackass.
Actually, helen, that image is from an article on ORYR claiming that image is a genuine Seal of Hawaii. I found this out by using my crack investigative skillz and pressing “visit original page”
Now they have an inage of the EMBOSSED seal on the same page
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1lGFYYNkw_o/TPtXiDqSX1I/AAAAAAAACN8/sN673GJm3Yw/s640/obamaclose1.jpg
Now here’s the thing. You do realize that an embossed deal is not going to be exactly the same as a stamp seal, because an emboss has to wet, heat and generate these big dents in the paper. They are also not made of ink but a series of lines made of the aforementioned dents. So they will necessarily look totally different. That actually does not change whether they are valid or not.
Plus there was no attempt to compare the “fake” embossed seal with the Embossed seal on a “genuine” BC, just comparing an empossed seal woth an ink stamp and then sitting back and Smirking that they didnt look the same. Well Duh
So lets just compare it with the BC that birthers WERE saying was genuine back in 2011
http://truebluenz.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/birth-certificate-real-hawaii.jpg?w=632
GOSH, the embossed seal looks the exact same as the factcheck photo. WHAT A SHOCK!!!
And for those curious (you’re not, and I don’t blame you) here is the article Helen’s image came from
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.ie/2010/12/hawaii-department-of-health-releases.html
Yeah its from December 2010. Recycled rubbish, anyone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_embossing
“Often used in combination with foil stamping, embossing alters the surface of paper stock or other substrates by providing a three dimensional or raised effect on selected areas. The procedure requires the use of two dies: one that is raised and one that is recessed. The dies fit into each other so that when the paper is pressed between them, the raised die forces the stock into the recessed die and creates the embossed impression. A specific level of pressure is applied to the dies in order to squeeze the fibers of the paper, which results in a permanently raised area in the paper.When the dies are produced, a die maker engraves the desired image into several metal plates, which are the embossing dies for use on an embossing press. A thorough understanding the process will enable a more successful result. Generally, embossing is the process most often employed to attract attention or convey a high quality textural contrast in relation to the surrounding area of the paper stock
Where , oh where, did you ever get the idea that a seal is done with heat and water?
You take your document, insert it into the embosser, and away you go
http://shop.allprostamps.com/UI/en-US/Product/All%20Pro%20Stamps/DESK-EMBOSSER,-BLACK—1-625-ROUND-DIE/20130204174933741?gclid=CPa61sua-7gCFQHZQgodBVsAkw
Doesn’t that blow your mind, that you don’t need a lot of stuff to emboss as seal.
Amd can you read the words on your birth certificate on the seal
Try reading them on the factcheck one.
Ever see a seal stamped on paper that you can not easily read the words. Oh, I guess so, look at the FactCheck seal
I guess, Helen, that you can only aspire to be as wise as a fool, you’ve got a lot to learn before you can be merely ignorant, you’d need to be much smarter to be considered stupid, and have a lot more integrity to just be a liar. Or maybe Lupin is right and you’re suffering from the onset of dementia. How sad for you.
So what you’re saying, is that she is too stupid…to be considered stupid.
Dang it, Slartibartfast! If you break reality, I doubt they’ll let you make another Fjord for as long as you live! 🙂
I made a mistake in the emboss process. So freaking what? You going to admit your mistake on Ink stamps looking the same as embossed stamps? Maybe you would prefer that Obama’s BC breaks the laws of physics.
And where oh where does it say that an Embossed seal has to be n exact match for an INK seal, and where does it say that because an Embossed seal looks different to an ink seal that means its invalid?
That’s the point of what I am saying dearheart, which kind of makes your whole screed completely wrong. Trust a birther to focus on an irrelevant mistake and use that to try and make the real point go away.
And what do you say to obama’s embossed seal looking the exact same as other embossed seals on other Hawaiin BCs? Even the ones touted by birthers as genuine? Didn’t that blow your mind?
I’m saying that calling her stupid would be an insult to stupid people. Besides, I borrowed Zarniwhoop’s artificial reality, so if I break this one, I’ll just go in there and reprogram it so that the Total Perspective Vortex tells me that I am a cool and froody guy. Who makes damn fine fjords, if I do say so myself! 😉
Not so much. Paper is indeed embossed that way, just not run-of-the-mill, small, simple embossed notary seals. Large-scale deformation of heavy paper takes more than dry physical pressure.
Yeah that must have been what I was thinking of.
“Aristotle was not Belgian! The central message of Buddhism is not ‘Every man for himself!’ And the London Underground is not a political movement!”
What was that middle thing?