For the Birthers to assert that Barack Obama was born overseas, they must deal first with his certified Hawaiian long-form birth certificate that says he was born in a Honolulu hospital in 1961. Some Birthers simply deny the authenticity of the certificate, despite repeated confirmation from the State of Hawaii to the contrary. A minority deny that the certificate, even if authentic, means what it says and that minority position is the subject of this article.
Authors Penbrook Johannson and Daniel Crosby at The Daily Pen, argue that the necessity of gathering data useful for predicting future population trends somehow forces birth certificates to contain false birthplaces, and makes birth certificates in general useless for determining a candidate’s eligibility for President. Their article is: Vital Records Indicate Obama Not Born in Hawaii Hospital (Part 3).
In Part 1 of this article, I examine Johannson and Crosby’s statistical argument and show that it is not only wrong, but contrary to law. In Part 2, I examine their claim that births occurring in a foreign country in 1961 were registered as if they had happened in the US, and I uncover a startling fact.
Any normal person looking at a birth certificate that says:
- 6a. Place of Birth: City, Town or Rural location – Honolulu
- 6b. Island – Oahu
- 6c. Name of Hospital or Institution (If not in hospital or Institution, give street address) – Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital
would conclude that the person named on the certificate was born in a Honolulu hospital. It’s right there on the form: “if not in hospital…give street address” and there is no street address. However, that conclusion is not acceptable to authors Johannson and Crosby, who publish an extremely long article that attempts to convince their readers that “born in a hospital” can mean “not born in a hospital.” Given their self-contradictory conclusion (“born in a hospital” = “not born in a hospital”) one knows from the start that there is a fallacy, and my purpose here is to point it out.
I previously showed the first two parts of the Johannson/Crosby series were false (see: “More Birther certificate numbering BS” and “Decoding the Long Form (Part 1)”. Now I point out the rather obvious problem in their third offering. (As I went through their article I found a number of questionable items, but the write-up was getting too long, so I deleted a lot to get to the main point faster. While I deleted my section on the Model State Vital Statistics Acts, I refer the reader to my May 2010 article on the subject. The reader interested in a more in-depth understanding of vital statistics is urged to read that article and the external links it references.)
Despite claims to the contrary, Johannson and Crosby have a fundamentally insufficient grasp of vital statistics practice (despite having obviously read a lot on the Internet). This is apparent to someone like me who spent his whole career in vital statistics and public health, because Johannson and Crosby do not understand (or pretend not to understand) the most basic concept: vital records are comprised of two parts, the legal record and the statistical record, corresponding to the two purposes they serve. This is one of the first principles that vital records subject matter experts drummed into my head decades ago as I worked to design software that would be used in a series of statewide vital statistics data systems.
Because a birth certificate is first and foremost a legal record and the information on it defines the legal status of the certificate holder (for example establishing his name, age, birthplace and his parentage), it is essential that everything on that record be true and verifiable before the birth is registered. Changes to the legal portion of the record are strictly controlled by regulations and statutes (some changes requiring a court order) and the idea that a hospital (or a State vital records office for that matter) would falsify the legal portion of a birth certificate for statistical purposes is absurd on the face of it.
Perhaps this is a good time to quote from the Model State Vital Statistics Act, 1977 version, where the objectives of the Model Act are listed, and in particular:
(2) to promote the uniformity of these policies and procedures to the end that all vital records will be readily acceptable in all places as prima facie evidence of the facts therein recorded [emphasis added]
Johannson and Crosby’s ignorance of vital records leads to the fallacy, which is clearly exhibited here:
Though commonly practiced by vital records data collection agencies of federal and state governments as a means of defining “residency” in birth data reporting, the policy completely disqualifies birth records as the only source of information about a candidate to determine Natural-born eligibility to hold the office of the presidency.
The birthplace shown on a birth certificate is entered as the result of the mother’s place of residence, not the location of the occurrence of the birth. [emphasis added]
The sleight of hand is conflating “residence” in the first paragraph with “birthplace” in the second paragraph (a statement which itself is an outright lie). As a sanity check, I invite all of the readers here to pull out their birth certificates and refer to the “birthplace” item to see whether it is their place of birth or their mother’s place of residence. If Johannson and Crosby’s assertion were true, then a birth certificate would be useless in proving place of birth for obtaining a U. S. Passport – only a birth certificate is the precise proof of citizenship most readily accepted in obtaining a passport.
Johannson and Crosby essentially argue that vital statistics practice is to falsify the information about place of birth and to make it not prima facie evidence of what it says. And that is absurd, and if this were not enough, Hawaiian law today, and in the 1945 version in effect in 1961 (following) says otherwise:
So why would any government model law or real state law deliberately make birth certificates contain false information and render them useless for their intended purpose? Johannson and Crosby answer: “statistics.”
Johannson and Crosby correctly state:
The allocation of births to “place of residence” protocol was implemented sporadically beginning in 1935 to provide for statistical integrity between decadal Census data collection and more frequently collected natality rates taken from real-time birth registrations.
For statistical purposes the place of birth is more or less an accident that doesn’t reflect the birth rate in the community where the mother lives and is useless in projecting future population. If someone tabulated births according to birthplace, virtually all births would be in a few tiny spots (hospitals) and towns with no hospitals would have no births, and hence no growth.
However, all this says is that births are now tabulated according to the mother’s residence, not where they give birth. This does not imply that the child’s place of birth is discarded and this legal fact birth is falsified to assist in federal reporting. Statistics can be tabulated according to the mothers’ residence without altering the place of birth on the birth certificate. Duh. It’s not as if there were some divine ordinance limiting the number of informational items in a birth record so that they have to collect mother’s residence or child’s birth place but not both! This is why on a Hawaiian birth certificate there are TWO SEPARATE AND DISTINCT data items, the birthplace of the child and the usual residence of the mother. In fact there have been separate entries for birthplace and mother’s residence on every U. S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth since 19001!
The Daily Pen article in its totality is so ridiculous that I was concerned that I didn’t understand it, and that there was some other subtle (but fallacious) argument that I missed. What I found were a number of curious false statements:
The [1956] revisions allowed coding and data collection from the “Location of Birth” and “Usual Residence of Mother” entry boxes from all certificates in the same manner, not just for those recording births occurring in the U.S., but also for births occurring to U.S. residents, anywhere.
The first certificates for out of state births were not authorized by Hawaiian statute until 1982.
They assert further:
The standard certificate used for births occurring in the U.S. must also be used for births occurring outside of the U.S. to resident mothers, but both circumstances had to provide the same formatting of information for data classification. Therefore, the location of the birth must state that the birth occurred in the U.S. in order for data from the certificate to be reported as a birth which impacts U.S. and state population figures. Simply stated, there is not a separate certificate for births occurring in the U.S. and births occurring outside of the U.S. to residents of the U.S., but both circumstances are recorded as births which, obviously, impact the population and municipal services of the U.S. [emphasis added]
However, there is no statement of where this claim comes from except an earlier reference to to the 1956 U. S. Standard Birth Certificate. Previous claims from Johannson and Crosby included fraudulent citations from documents they believed were not available for others to check. In this case, I can’t find a copy of the 1956 Standard Certificate. (The rationale given is silly because the number of American residents who give birth abroad is small enough to have a negligible effect on the need for municipal services. In fact, the NCHS reports that even the number of persons who give birth in neighboring states is not significant.) While the 1956 U. S. Standard Certificate is not available, the Model State Vital Statistics Act of 1977 is available and it describes the Birth Registration (page 12) process as:
Section 7. Birth Registration
(a) A certificate of birth for each live birth which occurs in this State shall be filed with the (Office of Vital Statistics) , or as otherwise directed by the State Registrar, within five days after such birth and shall be registered if it has been completed and filed in accordance with this section. [emphasis added]
You can read the rest of the section for yourself. There’s nothing about births that occur outside the state. This is consistent with the 1945 law in Hawaii in effect in 1961:
Note the phrase “in which the birth occurred.” There is no authority in 1961 for registering any child born outside of the state.
In a very long article Johannson and Crosby repeat the same mistake over and over and over, confusing place of residence with place of birth.
I hope that I have proved the obvious to everyone’s satisfaction, that a birth certificate means what it says. By law, it is prima facie evidence of the facts it states. If a birth certificate says somebody is born in Hawaii, it means that they were born in Hawaii.
BUT
Just when I thought it was safe to hit the “Publish” button, The Daily Pen article swerves into new territory, and that has to do with they describe as “Foreign Birth Transcript Exchange.”
That section of their report raises the claim that foreign births were registered in the United States based on reports from foreign countries. That doesn’t mean that all US birth certificates magically don’t mean what they say and that nobody gets a passport any more, but it does go against what I have said about the Vital Statistics of the United States only including births IN the United States (its territories and possessions). So stand by for:
Lies, damned lies, and statistics (Part 2)
Learn more:
- U.S. Vital Statistics System: Major Activities and Developments, 1950-95
- Revisions of U.S. Standard Certificates on Vital Events (1967)
1U.S. Vital Statistics System: Major Activities and Developments, 1950-95, Page 28.
An auxiliary observation incurred during the progressive interpretation of dissertations on the part of Johannson and Crosby intimates these essayists likely possess a predilection toward the utilization of abstruse verbiage, employing a ponderous lexicon in contemplation to evoke the geneses of conceptual ideals within the cortices of observers who peruse their treatises, of the essayists themselves as efficacious expositors regarding their leitmotif.
Or, in other words: The other thing I’ve noticed is that Johannson and Crosby use the biggest possible words, and as many of them as possible, in order to impress their audience and make them think they know what they’re talking about.
It’s like the goal is to have the reader say, “Day-umm!! I didn’t understand a thing they said. They MUST know what they’re talking about.”
Reader’s Digest version: birfoons always lie.
So then you wade through the article, and just as you’ve noted, the actual point is complete horse manure.
As in the present example, where a birth certificate that explicitly states a baby was born in Kapiolani Hospital actually means he wasn’t born in any Hawaii hospital.
What horse puckey.
Yep. That pretty much sums it up.
As you will see in Part 2, “lie” is the right word.
Birthers lie, cottonmouths bite, bears relieve themselves in the woods, and the ocean is wet.
Nothing new here.
Eschew obfuscation. Espouse elucidation.
If mother’s place of residence was listed as place of birth, mine would be listed as New Jersey, rather than Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where I was actually born.
Ah, but what if the actual goal is obfuscation?
My comment:
Reality Check said…
“outside of United States”? Did you guys go to the He, Lucas Smith School of Forgery? Nice try but you’ve been busted boys.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/03/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics-part-2/
Then these garrulous gadflies will continue to proselytize to gnathonic gobemouches with sesquipedalian loquaciousness and asinine amphiboly.
If mother’s residence is the place of birth, then my mother must have resided in a hospital. I know she worked there, in the bookkeeping department, but until I looked at my COLB I was unaware that she slept there and did her hair and makeup there each day as well. I wonder why her “address” is someplace different …
I’m compelled to wonder whether or not these particular birthers are actually conducting a psy-ops experiment to see what it takes to convince some people that black is white, up is down, and fiction is truth. The convolutions are breathtaking as well as absurd.
Yes, there certainly is direct intent of doing just that amongst the propaganda con artist faction of the Birtheristani.
For many of them, that has been the intentional purpose all along.
I have my birth certificate and it has the place where I was born (name of hospital) and on the other side, it has my mother’s address on there and guess what??? It is NOT the hospital where I was born. They are different because I was born in the hospital and my mother does not live in the hospital……damn, stupid birthers!!!
I just noticed this – my BC shows where my mother lives, but it doesn’t have a place for both my parents. There’s the space for mom/dad, age, etc. Interesting. My parents were married and stayed married for 55 years until my dad died a couple of years ago.
Anyway, damn stupid loony nutjob birthers!!
Hmm.. Mine does not have the hospital address but only the name (you need the address if you were not born in a hospital, according to the form). If my mothers address is the hospital address, than the hospital is really small because I have seen the house where my mother lived (I only lived their for a couple of months. or so I am told). My dad does not have any information beyond name, age and birthplace (no race either). I suppose we are supposed to assume he was a citizen, being born in Missouri.
But then again.. maybe it does not say what I think it says but something completely different. And it gets worse. There is no Birth Number, which is likely due to it being a county copy and not from the state (though the registrar stamp says true copy). What’s worse, there is no hospital to put up a plaque since the building I was born in is gone as the hospital moved a block away.
Obviously, by birther rules, I could not be President because there are questions about my birth. Yet, they would not even ask for the information. And why is that?
It is no longer necessary to argue obamas’ birth certificate, it is a fraud. If you still need to prove that to yourself, or others, or just to double check Arapios’ findings, here is the place:
http://www.stockton.x10.mx
You will find links to all the necessary materials and a brief description on how to use them, with links to show you how to do the forensics … now you can KNOW!
So, then, you are saying obama is pretty damn stupid to commit a fraud, a crime, when there would have been no reason, and therefore, he has become a criminal for nothing?
Interesting … http://www.stockton.x10.mx
But, obviously, there is much more to it than what you are stating!
Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, With Spishak’s “Docuramalamadingdong” you too can learn forensic document examination at home, in your spare time. No need to go to University for years, and get all those fancy degrees. In just 20 minutes you can become your own forensic document examiner*, and prove to yourself and any other weak minded person exactly what you already needed to believe.
So call today and get your very own Spishak Docuramalamdingdong, only 21.95 + S&H
*does not qualify you as a forensic document examiner in a court, or any other sense.
Hmm.. copying the same thing on every post. You better check your calendar. Tis the season for corned beef, not spam.
As a repeat so you don’t miss it Winnie dear.
================================
Oh Winston you poor delusional fool……
Your definition of “forensics” is alas, how can we best describe it…childishly lacking.
Even IF the image of the original posted on line was legally probative, ACTUAL data forensics woud include all or more of the following.
http://www.thefogbow.com/arpaio-report/document-forensics/
Not ONE of these steps has been demonstrated as having been undertaken by the Cold Custard Pussies.
Lets be honest (if you posibly can) the CCP and Arpaio describing an individual whose sole “qualifications” to perform a legaly sufficient forensic analysis is that she was a minor contributer to a couple of out of print books on Adobe PhotoShop over 10 years ago as, “World class expertS” shows the paucity of your arguments.
Lets not forget, the VERY VERY FIRST task that a REAL expert in physical or digital data forensics would perform before starting an analysis of an image of a physical document.
Care to guess….
Well, the very first thing is you call the custodian or issuer of the ORIGINAL paper copy and ask them if they issued such a thing, what format it should tke and any content they can share.
So did the CCP do that……well, that would be no…..
FAIL….NEXT
==============================
Ah, Spishak . . . purveyor of fine products for the home and garden. It’s hard to decide whether I got more pleasure from my Spishak’s “Bug Zapper Only The Bugs Are Deers Instead”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh_2be0zHng&feature=related
or Spishak’s, “Hey, It’s Ovens for Kids.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9EZex-ApMM
I pity poor Winston when he figures out he’s been had.
Just to be on the safe side, ol’ son: don’t let anyone in the door who tells you the have a bridge for sale.
YOU NEED TO PITY YOURSELF!!!
You can’t use the tools provided, you don’t have the education to use them, you are COMPLETELY unaware that this is ABSOLUTE PROOF. And, as valid a proof as any DNA evidence in a murder trial, as valid as any fingerprint evidence in a burglary, as valid as the rifling marks used on a bullet to convict a shooter.
You have opinion and innuendo, the proof and the tools can be examined by anyone, with an education, the damming proof is not going to go up in smoke … obama is crook, and proven so by the very birth certificate HE HAS POSTED AND IS CLAIMING IS HIS!
It is a fraud, and a damn poor one at that … end of story.
We are simply without a president, since we would, as honest Americans, refuse to recognize a criminal inhabiting the whitehouse! The military is without a commander in chief … and we are in deep dudu!
You forgot to add a bunch of exclamation points your post. That makes your argument a lot more believable.
Aww…..poor widdle Birfers crying big ol’ Birfer tears…. mmmm, so delicious. Cry us some more, I need to water the asparagus. They like salt, and Birfer tears are the saltiest.
You guys fall for the most laughable nonsense.
Excellent parody Winston, but I’m not buying. just not sincerely birthery enough.
Another birther asking that we ignore the Constitution.
Why do birthers despise the Constitution so much. It really is a fine document and has all sorts of really cool stuff about Presidential eligibility, and how a President can be removed from office.
And the Orly for best performance by a birther in a domestic melodrama goes to . . . . Winston Court for his performance as Admiral Outrage in “ABSOLUTE PROOF!” Winston, do you have anything to say to the audience?
Thank you, Winston. If you would just move off to the right, those men in the white coats will fit you for your Orly.
That’s not what the Academy thought! The Academy of Psychiatry and Law, that is.
Hey everybody, do you like my “Do not feed the Trolls” sign in the right sidebar? I think it is really cool. Every day I’m liking it more and more.
When you don’t have anything, when you can’t argue the evidence, when absolute proof stands in your way … do as you have done, obfuscate, make some inane statement about trolls … AND RUN to your hiding hole … hoping no one will notice, I guess … ROFLOL! … sad, so very, very sad …
http://www.stockton.x10.mx or simply click on my name …
This visitor trust that solicitors will be banned.
ROTFL… Absolute proof… You’re a funny dude. But totally clueless about evidence or what was shown .
His COLB nd LFBC both show him born on US soil, as certified by the attending physician, filed soon after his birth and certified as accurate by the Department of Health of Hawaii and with the required Seal.
The DOH furthermore has certified President Obama’s birth in various occasions and certified the accuracy of the documents.
And you want to believe that a poorly done analysis of an electronic version of obama’s birth certificate shows exactly what?…
Oh, don’t ban Winnie! He’s amusing . . . in a hysterical sort of way.
Winston may not be familiar with my investigations of the long form birth certificate which shows, quite conclusively that the so-called layers, are in fact optimizations performed by the scanning software which separates the document into a backgroud, foreground and mask layer. In Adobe Acrobat, the output is a background JPEG, in 8-bits and monochrome bitmaps for the text.
I doubt that Winston will be able to address this
I actually didn’t allow Winston to post his birther spam onto my own blog.
NBC has pointed to his own investigation, which he says conclusively demonstrates that the anomalies in the LFBC are due to optimization. I’m hardly surprised. That’s exactly what my own, weeks-long investigation showed last year.
NBC, have you read the book I wrote on the topic? Or did you start from scratch?
I am now pretty much ashamed to admit that I’ve spent as much of my life on this idiotic pile of nonsense as I have. Somehow, it seemed like a reasonably good idea at the time.
Oh, I enjoy his rambling too, until they degenerate into latant pitches for his south-of-the-border webpage. I’d rather believe he was a crusader nut, than a wannabe shill.
Doc, as much as I respect the anti-birthers here, I have to admit that most lack self control (myself included often). It’d probably be more effective if you just put trolls into moderation instead of relying on us to police ourselves.
No more effectively than did “borderraven” anyway. Her mumble was hysterical, and depressing. NBC has done some great work. It isn’t definitive (yet?), and not in a form accessible to the nontechnical, but it’s a good start.
Is there a market for the PDF Madness cure, tho?
Any “answers” should be focused on explaining away the evidence of a crime, until this is done, by authorities, there is only the evidence — the rest is simply opinions, innuendo, guess work, reading tea leaves, psychic impressions, old-wives-tales, etc.
It does take a rocket scientist, simply someone capable of understanding the evidence and the crimes …
http://www.stockton.x10.mx
A smoking gun is not explained away with the “reasoning”, “Someone might have put a smoking match in the barrel! Or, “The dog ate my homework!” ROFLOL!
OK, how’s this for explaining it away? The state of Hawaii has repeatedly confirmed that Obama is born there and that the birth certificate is not a fraud. They have the final say as to who was and was not born in their state. There is no authority higher than them. If they say someone was born there, that’s the end of the story. And thanks to the Constitution, all other states are forced to recognize that.
There you go, ironclad proof that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural born citizen of the United States. What now, Sparky?
There is no evidence of a crime. You basically had a couple of people who had already pre-formed opinions going into the investigation, write a report that they basically tailor-designed and didn’t even take the minimal efforts to even determine if he was actually born in Hawaii.
HERE’S THE ACTUAL EVIDENCE
1. A Birth Certificate that Barack Obama scanned and put out on the internet. When asked about the birth certificate, the Hawaii Department of Health said, “It’s a valid Hawaii State Birth Certificate.”
2. A Birth certificate that has the greatest chain-of-evidence (though those aren’t actually needed by birth certificates) in the history of the United States. It has affidavits from the officials in charge of the birth certificate saying that they were there when it was copied, they certified it being a “true copy or abstract of the file in the State Department of Health” and then handed it directly to Obama’s personal attorney. They then linked to a PDF that the White House made of it on their website, and say, “See, the birth certificate is actually here.”
So, basically, what you’re saying is that the entire Hawaii Department of Health is involved in a 50-year long conspiracy started in the 1960s to get a black guy with the middle name of “Hussein” to be President? If the real goal was to get a manchurian president, I’d pick a white guy from Kansas.
Winston:
“the rest is simply opinions, innuendo, guess work, reading tea leaves, psychic impressions, old-wives-tales, etc.”
Oh I shouldn’t feed the troll…but can’t stop my tippy typy fingers…
Sorry, Winston- that is what Birthers use.
We rely upon actual evidence, confirmed by an actual authority, the State of Hawaii. Not opinions, not innuendo, not even faux investigations by unofficial posse’s paid off by Jerome Corsi.
And the evidence shows, beyond a reasonable doubt that Barack Obama is President and furthermore, the evidence shows, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the only President that Birthers have ever demanded proof of eligiblilty is the one black candidate.
No crime, no smoking gun. Nothing to explain. Except why you believe or promote such nonsense and lies. Any explanation for that?