While birthers have been saying repeatedly that “all this would go away” if Barack Obama would only release his long-form birth certificate, this hardly is the case. The usual suspects have started their campaign to invalidate what they were previously demanding. Since the newly-released Certificate of Live Birth closely follows the previously-released Certification of Live Birth, it is only natural that the same old discredited tales about the first one appear again — and so it appears that they will.
The first major recycled objection is that Obama’s birth certificate (both of them) list his father’s race as “African.” They make an appeal to ignorance and prejudice (not to facts) to make this sound wrong but it isn’t.
I debunked this myth two years ago in my article, The African Race and it remains debunked today. A link to this article also appears in the Debunker’s Guide to Obama conspiracy theories.
In 1961 Kenya itself, the suggested racial categories for its census were:
- African
- Arab
- Somali
- European
…and what’s all this crap coming about by people who supposedly examined the PDF and have detected “layers”? I work with Photoshop every day, I make PDF’s just about every day. I don’t care how many layers you have in PS, when you turn it into a PDF, the layers merge.
You are a logical human being. Birthers are not.
well, i´ve been scuttling around the web and watching the birfoons doing a dance which appears to be a mixture of headless chicken with a side order of vitriol.
so much for `show the birth certificate and it´ll be all over´.
all the birfoon sites i´ve visited (without commenting – i ain´t that cruel) are desperately trying to prove it a fake. seems they got the date format right unlike our friend lucas 😀
looks like they´re going to be around for a while yet. it´ll be interesting to see if the GOP makes a serious effort to put some distance between themselves and the lunatic fringe.
I knew African exchange students while attending University of Hawaii in the 60’s, none of them ever use American racial terms (nego, black,etc), to them trheir race was “African”.
.
Comment from Bovril on April 27, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Guys, if you’re gonna use my stuff at least use all of it….
1. “People self identify their race when a BC is filled in, the registrar does not”
2. “People can call themselves any race they want when they self identify”
3. “Only Americans called themsleves Negro as an identifier”
4. “Obama Snr, as an African, never mind in the ’60′s would NEVER call himself a Negro”
5. “I LANR plainly lied when I said I “work” with BC’s or I would know these facts”
.
Here’s the administrative paperwork for filling in the Kenyan census of 1962.
You know, Kenya, where Obama Snr was from..? Where he would SELF IDENTIFY himself…
Column 5. Race —- Write European, Arab, Somali or African etc. Asians must write Indian or Pakistan.
http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/IPUMSI/CensusForms/Africa/ke1962ef_kenya_enumeration_forms.en.pdf
haha so TRUE! I work in PHOTOSHOP every single day and I make PDF’s from box designs in Photoshop to pass along for approvals. PDF does not save layers.
Chris Matthews help up an Issue of The Globe, calling it the source for Trumps comments
that apears to be a reasobnable assumption if you see the article
.
I’m curious, Trump must have known that Obama has access to his long form, why did he go down this nasty road, he appears very foolish now.
Re Photoshop. I have the feeling that some of the birthers took the image of the long-form and then dumped it into Photoshop and then manipulated it, and then they said that it was Photoshopped, which of course it was.
I believe that some of the people who claimed that Obama’s Certification of Live Birth was forged did something like that too.
You’re not the only one. So did World Nut Daily
A separate WND investigation into Obama’s birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren’t originally there..
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73214
What I don’t get is how the foolishness of this isn’t obvious on it’s face. Obama’s long form, like his COLB, is an actual document. Why does anyone believe examining the Internet image of an actual document is a viable means of authenticating the actual document (absent, of course, obvious cartoonish errors a la Lucas Smith).
When I was in college, all students and faculty from Africa referred to themselves as “African,” not “negro,” which was detested.
I attended summer 61 University of Hawaii and the one African I knew that called himself “African” as a race had a white wife who had just given birth. I don’t remember any names but I came to the conclusion that it must have been Obama. He was not a “Nergro”!
> who supposedly examined the PDF and have detected “layers”? I work with Photoshop every day, I make PDF’s just about every day. I don’t care how many layers you have in PS, when you turn it into a PDF, the layers merge.
Illustrator shows layers in the PDF which are probably results of the scanning process.
Indeed PS layers do not carry over if the document is exported as PDF.
I could use the help of anyone who cares to discuss documents and alleged forgeries to this
posting by Angelo Campanella:
“I immediately scrutinized the release, only to find that it was a “more convincing” form of the same old COLB. But it still is dated 8 Aug, 4 days after the alleged birth time. It’s perhaps more convincing since it has two signatures. But I find four things fishy about this COLB version:
1- the check mark for the “attendant” MD slot was over-marked,
2- there are lightly penciled-in numbers 1, 2(twice), 9(twice), x – x as if someone had to be prompted to supply values for them. 3-
The right edge of the form is bent back out of sight as if to conceal the information specified and written. That bend-back is obviously longer – and contains attached real information – than the apparent slot remaining open; to the left is blank green bar blank paper; strange. A good copy of ANYTHING is both clear AND complete. There is no way the record could have been stored that way for almost 50 years and not be compressed to a fold. Yet the tiny green watermark bars align almost perfectly. What’s being hidden? Finally 4- What’s last Monday’s date (April 25, 2011) doing stamped on a document that is supposed to be 50 years old????? As Corsi says; “Let the Games Begin!”.
Angelo Campanella, Ph.D.(physics).
Over at this site:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/obama-blinked-now-game-begins/
\
I replied:
Re: “What’s last Monday’s date (April 25, 2011) doing stamped on a document that is supposed to be 50 years old????? ”
That is so it could be a CERTIFIED DOCUMENT. A mere image of the original, not printed on security paper and without the seal, would not be certified. So, I believe that you are right, it is not a simple image of the original. It is a printed image of the digitized image of the original printed on security paper with the seal and signature added.
Are you saying that you would like to see an image of the paper copy? Why? Just for the folds?
Are you saying that you think that the facts on the paper copy would be different from those on the digital copy?
(Obviously, if the authorities wanted to forge a copy of the paper document without the seal and the security paper they could do just as easily as the digital image.)
Re the Aug 8 date. A guy gets born in the evening on a Friday too late for an entry on that day. Then there are Saturday and Sunday, and say that the clerks were busy on Monday and so some of their work slipped over into Tuesday.
Tell her to get medication; it’s obvious she needs it
Naturally, the non-forgery-birthers are now fixated on “natural born citizen” and as I understand it (to be clear, I don’t have a JD, but did get my grad degree in poly sci) there is no clear definition of what that means in the Constitution. The birther argument is that it means born to two parents, but if all we have to go on is the framers’ intent, doesn’t the fact that they allowed for citizens at the time of adoption to be eligible (mere “citizens” could have had TWO foreign born parents after all) make it awfully hard to argue two US citizens parents would be needed for post-adoption citizens?
I know this probably isn’t the best place to ask, but I haven’t seen this addressed anywhere.
That should say two CITIZEN parents
I can give you the short answer, but there are others here who can speak to that more in depth than I can. In the Wong Kim Ark SCOTUS case, the lower court found that Ark was a natural born citizen even though both his parents were not citizens, but he was born here; they said that he could even qualify to be president because he meets the qualifications. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling and said that to establish who is and is not a natural born citizen, English common law must be referred to, which said that anyone born under the jurisdiction of the king, regardless of the parents’ nationalities, were natural born subjects.
This subject has been gone over here in great detail. There never has been any requirement for parent citizens, and the common law is clear we are a jus soli nation in terms of citizenship. Do a little search for jus soli on this site, and you’ll find all the support you need (don’t mean to brush you off, but nothing I could throw together could do the discussion and citations found herein any justice).
I’ve seen the legal arguments… I just don’t have the patience to sift through legalisms when there are people familiar with the law much better suited to do it. For my simple mind, and my fellow simple-minded birthers, it seems that pointing to a provision actually IN the Constitution they want to defend so bad that specifically ALLOWS citizens of foreign born parents to be president could be convincing… at least to those open to being convinced.
Just click on the Debunkers Guide to Obama conspiracy theories and scroll down to the Natural Born Citizen section.
Natural born citizen is not defined in the Constitution. I always ask them to show me where their definition of natural born citizen is in the Constitution, and they can’t because it’s not there. In Senate Resolution 511 from 2008, it states that it is not defined there.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=sr110-511
Simple summary. States recognize citizenship in two ways (there are of course now hybrids of those two ways, but I’m generalizing). Jus soli (law of soil) and jus sanguinis (law of blood). The term “natural born citizen” derrivies form the English Common Law, “natural born subject.” English common law is jus soli. When a term in the Constitution is not clearly defined, we resort to the common law. There is no doubt we inhereted jus soli from the English. The opposing view that birther take, that one had to come from citizen parents was argued by the government in the Wong Kim Ark case that went to the Supreme Court. The Court made clear that we adopted the common law. The only time there has been a case that said that a person born on US soil was not a citizen, was the completely repudiated Dred Scott decision, that even at the time it came out was considered a black eye on the Court. Since then, it has been generally accepted the the correct statement of law was J. Curtis’ dissent. (oh…and just to throw in one radom point, there are only two kinds of citizens, citizens at birth, ie natural born citizens, and naturalized citizens). I’m leaving out any additional minor points and exceptions, for the sake of simplicity, but that sums it up,.
You might point out to them that the Nordyke twins were born on August 5, and their long-form birth certificates (which the birthers swear are genuine) weren’t dated until August 11.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17772843/NBC-Nordyke-Birth-Certificate-Photos
Because Obama was born on a Friday evening, the typed Certificate of Live Birth probably wasn’t prepared until Monday, which is when Obama’s mother signed it. Dr. Sinclair may not have been on duty on Monday, which would explain why he didn’t sign it until Tuesday. After it was signed by both mother and doctor, it was reviewed and accepted by the local registrar, who then signed it and forwarded to the registrar general. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He was gambling that Obama wouldn’t release it. He lot his bet.
He only wanted the publicity for his TV shows anyway.
When I was in college, all students and many faculty with African ancestry referred to themselves as ‘brothers’ and/or ‘sisters’. In mixed company when a distinction was necessary, they would refer to themselves as ‘black’ or ‘afro-American’ (if they felt it necessary to emphasize their American roots at the same time). Official forms would have got ‘afro-American’ and there probably would have been a sh*t-storm if someone insisted on using ‘Negro’..
They never, under any circumstances, referred to themselves as ‘Negro’. Ever.
I don’t want to dismiss you out of hand, but are you really sure you haven’t seen this discussion anywhere?
I’m sure you have come to the right place to get the correct answers to your legitimate questions, but it is really, really hard to believe that you haven’t seen this discussion before.
I think that this is shaping up to be the main meme of the ‘FORGERY!’ sect of the birtherstani (as opposed to the ‘faux-Vattelists’ or the ‘Indonesianites’ [or the group that’s satisfied that President Obama is natural born and now wants to see his college records – or, as I like to call them, the ‘racists’…]). This is yet another example of the birthers fixating on something that they think cleverly proves their point that in actuality is completely unremarkable and expected. As if we needed any more to see the birthers for what they are…
Until and unless someone secures a criminal conviction for forgery against Dr. Alvin Onaka, it means nothing.
Has anything the birthers have said meant anything? (besides that they were ignorant bigots?)
In the Birther universe, lead by the cheerleader Corsi, they were successful in proving the President Clinton lied about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. That was a “Perry Mason” moment, or one of those twists at the end of “Law and Order.”
Having succeeded once, they are like Captain Queeg in “The Caine Mutiny.” Captain Queeg successfully discovered that the theft of some food was a result of someone having a duplicate key. When some strawberries disappear, he decides that the same thing must have happened and goes searching for the duplicate key. Of course, there is no duplicate key; the mess stewards simply ate the left-over strawberries after dinner.
Captain Queeg was nuts. He would forever be searching for that “aha” moment. And Birthers, who seem now to prefer the theory that the LFBC is forged to the adoption or dual citizen theories, are still searching for an “aha” moment which will never come. And we, as a society, try to keep Captain Queeg and folks like him of being in charge of things where there are sharp objects. If we don’t succeed in that task, we’re in trouble.
Send him this link:
http://ryanbarrett.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345259a469e201156fc23c7b970c-800wi