Despite the obvious fact that the birth certificate floating around the Internet taken from a filing in the Hollander v McCain lawsuit is a very clumsy forgery, there are folks who doggedly support it, including one fellow who submitted a comment to this blog via email. I’ve written about the McCain certificate a few times already, pointing out that the fonts are different for McCain specific information than from other parts of the form, for example the font used for time of birth is different from the font used for date of birth.
Despite my attempts to point this out, I got this in reply:
I did focus on the numbers 6 and 3 and [they] are no bigger or smaller than the 29 digits or the month August. They did not have fonts in 1936. Only typewriters. You did not look at the birth certificate or the one from retirement from the Navy. While it could appear in typed words or letter to be higher or lower as something is type to the right that is only paper is not perfectly lined up when inserted into a typewriter. I magnified by 400 and could see nothing.
I tried to explain that typewriters do have fonts, which relate to the shape of the letters, and pointed out exactly what was different, the date and time of birth. I suggested that if he couldn’t see that he ask someone else to look at it with him, to which I received this:
typewriter do not have fonts. They have keys one for a capital and one for lower case. I increased the numbers 400 times and saw numbers. It is clearly a printed and numbered form for typing birth [records] like the one I have which was done in Idaho in 1939. You are full of crap and do not write me again.
Following are the two examples of the number 6 that he couldn’t find different.
Exhibit 1
Exhibit 2
Who is so deafe, or so blynde, as is hee, That wilfully will nother here nor see.
[1546 J. Heywood Dialogue of Proverbs ii. ix. K4]
{{{Is holding fingering in ears and eyes tightly shut}}} na na na na na na I can’t hear you na na na na…
Sigh… Obviously, your visitor only came to tell you that you were wrong. He obviously had no intention to discuss the issue or listen your side at all. Too bad he/she could not realize that, indeed, a typewriter has a font. The difference between that and a computer is that a typewriting only has the one font (and it is not scalable). Therefore, if the font of the date is different from the rest of the page, it not from the original typewriter
IMHO, the are way to neat and tidy, compared to the other certificate, to have come from the original. Of course, you pointed that out last time.
“You are full of crap and do not write me again.”
Now this is really funny, what an idiot!
“They did not have fonts in 1936. ”
this will come as a surprise to anyone who laid out ( or has seen ) a magazine or newspaper from 1936. hell, this will come as a shock to johannes guttenberg ( inventor of the movable type printing press in 1440 ).
as stated above he is obviously confusing a computer’s ability to change fonts and a typewriter’s use of a single font ( altho typeface would have been correct term in ’36 ). different typewriters could have different fonts/typefaces but i think it’s fairly obvious that the mccain forgery was created using a computer.
He’s never heard of the IBM Selectric. Or a Varityper from the 50’s.
Undoubtedly true, however, neither was available in 1936. Different fonts were though.
My mother had a typewriter she got as a high school graduation present in the late 20’s. It was in Italic, and she loved to write her personal correspondence on it for over 50 years.
A quick Google search shows that Varityper;s history goes back to at least 1933. I don’t know the features of those & the probability of a hospital in Panama having one is remote.
I stand corrected on the Varityper. I was aware that IBM’s golfball range was not the first interchangeble typeface machine, but I didn’t think it went back that far.
I don’t see the point of someone changing the typeface font from line to line on the same document though, do you?
Unless, I guess, it was done just to drive people to distraction in 70 years time. Sorta like God putting all those dinosaur bones out just to drive biologists crazy trying to come up with an explanation for 100 million year old fossils in a 6000 year old world. 😉
Agreed. Once again Occam’s razor cuts through to the answer.
I hadn’t thought about the Varityper for a long time, so the Google results were an interesting read.
I should clarify that font characteristics include shape, weight, and size.
One ploy to support the McCain certificate is to say that the McCain-specific information faded out (due multi-generation copying) and had to be manually put back to make it readable.
And they talk of Obama using desperate ploys. If the faded information had to be put back in, wouldn’t it be best to insert it after the original text so we know it is actually clarification of what is printed? Why would they go through the trouble of erasing (rather sloppily, I might add – they bumped other text with the erase tool), the previous “faded out text.
I suppose this could clearly demonstrates that Obama uses much better forgers than the opposition.
Or that the Obots have better forensic document image analysts.
Better than ‘Dr.’ Polarik? Surely you jest!