The “long form”
Before I retired, I spent 36 years in health care information technology, working on medical records and vital records systems both in the public and private sector. I wanted to share my own perspective on Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate.
One interesting feature of the document is a number of penciled notations in several data fields. These are classification codes. They were added almost certainly by the department of health, either when the form was originally processed, or later when the form was added to their computer system.
Particularly in older systems, numbers were used to represent data. Almost always, code “1” was used for “Yes” and “2” for No (sometimes “0” for “No”), and we see this here in block 7g for the “No” response. Race codes were not so standard, but almost always 1 – White and 2 – Black, and again we see this here in Ann Dunham’s race here labeled Caucasian. In the case of single-digit codes, code “9” was used for “Other,” and in fact “9” and “99” and “999” are still used by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) indicating “Other” for vital statistics reporting. We see “Other” coding for the Father’s race (“African”) and the “Kind of business or industry” (“University”).
One curious feature of the long form is the additional partial page shown on the left margin. We can say for sure that this is not the same layout as the right side because some of the lines don’t match up. I can’t say whether this area is part of Obama’s form or the one preceding it.
What the public may not be aware of is that hospital birth certificates are divided into two parts — the “legal” part and the “statistical” part (sometimes called the “medical” part). For example, in 1961 they asked the mother how many births she had given and how many of her children were still alive. We don’t have any specifics on all the other questions asked in 1961, but common questions asked today include birth defects, method of delivery (vaginal, Cesarean), whether forceps were used, whether there were any complications of labor, whether the mother smoked, whether she used alcohol and how much. This information is for statistical purposes only and is reported anonymously to the NCHS; it’s never part of a legal birth certificate. I can see on my own birth certificate where the medical information is cut off. This medical section seems most likely what is on the left margin of Obama’s long form.
Finally, I want to comment on what the long form physically is. It is the original certificate from a bound volume photocopied (hence the curved edge) onto security paper. The date stamp and the state registrar’s stamp were then added below. I don’t see an embossed seal, but such seals don’t show up well in scanned images.
Some silly claims are being made by a few folks that the document is a fake. All I can say is that such folks are too far down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories to be saved. They are beyond convincing, and it’s not worth trying.
Dr C: I don’t know where to post this.
Trump, Birtherism, and Race-Baiting
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/04/trump-birtherism-and-race-baiting.html
Dr C — you say this is stored as a bound volume — and the appearance of this BC shows that it was at least at one point a bound volume — but I’m wondering why they wouldn’t have transferred it to microfilm at some point. Do we know it’s still a bound volume? Is it unusual for health depts to transfer birth records to microfilm?
It’s perhaps worth noting that the photostatic copies made in 1966 for the Nordyke twins also bears the same penciled in writing.
http://www.wnd.com/images/090728birthcert.gif
se
Thanks for your take, Doc! I hope you’re enjoying the mountains of my former state, but you picked a hell of a time to go on vacation… (as did Jon Stewart).
Is it just me, or do I see a “date accepted” block on there! Isn’t that something the birthers have whined about? that his BC was just filed, not accepted?
Orly Taitz showed her complete mental breakdown on Lawrence O’Donnell tonight by refusing to answer a simple question.
It’s too bad Lawrence didn’t know enough to pivot to the fraudulently obtained document that she was just wetting herself in eagerness to show him – he would have had an awesome scoop!
Birthers are looking at it to. Now they’re saying that the mess check box in 19a proves it’s a fake. lmao
In the real world, mistakes add to the likelihood that the document is valid. What forger messes up a check-box? Or signs (Stanley) Ann Dunham?
Someone is now saying the BC was signed with a rollerball pen, which was not invented until 1980:
http://gawker.com/#!5796381/is-obamas-birth-certificate-signed-by-a-pen-from-the-future
You can’t make this stuff up.
I find it interesting that the Nordyke Birth Certificate (posted a couple years ago) and the Obama Birth Certificate, were both signed by the “Local Registrar” the same day and yet they were signed by different people.
Orly tried to staste “the 9th circuit on Monday……….”
Can’t wait till Mondy, that is going to be fun! She probably will have a breakdown.
“I thought of my ancestors, both direct and collective, who had fought and died so that I might be treated as an American. I then thought of this fetid, smug, hate-filled, wealthy white man taking credit for the release and yet still not being satisfied.”
http://www.baratunde.com/blog/2011/4/27/with-president-obamas-birth-certificate-klansman-trump-remin.html
NC1- Come out and play!
Look again, the Nordyke’s was signed in the 11th and the President’s was signed on the 8th.
Dr. C:
I have a theory that copies of long-form certificates do not bear a raised seal per Dept of Health policy, set out in the 2001 letter from the then-Director of Health. I posted about it on another thread:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/04/birthers-are-cockroaches/#comment-109574
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/04/birthers-are-cockroaches/#comment-109583
By the way, I found some better images of the “Danae” certificates than the ones I originally posted. Here:
http://myveryownpointofview.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/danae-4.jpg
http://myveryownpointofview.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/danae-5.jpg
(Though I’m sure you already have better versions.)
The “local registrar” could just be the clerk in the office who accepted the form from the hospital. Also – the Nordyke certificates were “accepted” on August 11, while Obama’s was accepted on August 8.
That’s beautiful. Thank you for finding this, Misha.
My linking the birther cause and Apuzzo’s legal “theories” to the KKK’s founding documents is well known on this blog.
Speaking of the local registrar, I see some are claiming that the signature is a joke and a sure sign the thing is a fake : “U K L Lee, ukulele, get it?”
I guess that means this birth certificate is a fake too then:
http://omgq.com/13.jpg
Actually, I wonder what a judge would do if he asked himself how did Orly get a hold of another person’s SS#.
Wonder what trouble she’s going to get herself into now.
Did you notice she looked like she had been crying today? Kinda hard when Obama takes one of your gravy trains away from you.
She didn’t just have President Obama’s Social Security number – I believe she had his selective service form – the one Hollister probably broke the law to get. I’d love to see her get disbarred and Hollister go to jail…
Dr. C
Help me out understand the process of numbering certificates. According to the discussion yesterday (Stig’s COLB) it appeared that DoH numbered certificates after a certain batch was received and sorted alphabetically. In that case one would expect that all certificates numbered that day would have the same Date Accepted.
Obama’s long form says that it was accepted three days earlier than Nordyke’s yet the registration number is higher.
If we assume that both long forms are correct, the only process (I can think of) that fits this data requires DoH officials to stamp and sign the certificate as Accepted while the registration number is not on the document.
The registration number assignment would have to be a separate task (presumably the part of indexing task).
This does not seem to be efficient way of handling registrations and indexing. Why would they wait for days to manually sort the records alphabetically prior to stamping numbers and creating index. Weekly sorting seems like needles extra work without any benefits.
Can you count to 10? Can you count to 100?
That’s how numbers work.
I think that you are making the mistake of assuming that they simply leave the un-numbered certificates in an undifferentiated stack.
It’s more likely that after accepting the certificate, they would have put it into a temporary alphabetical sorter (like an expansion file): Like this: http://content.etilize.com/Large/1010040799.jpg or this: http://images.buyonlinenow.com/photo3.php?SKU=LEE14124
That way, its easy for them to find any given certificate if there’s an inquiry — it would probably be fairly common for parents to contact the health department within a few days after submission to provide additional naming details. (Parents often have not decided on the name at the time of birth, or change their mind fairly quickly).
Then — perhaps once a week, a staffer goes through all of the unnumbered certificates and stamps them, probably in conjunction with entering index data as well. Back in 1961 that probably involved log books and index cards, rather than computers. It’s possible that the next step after numbering was microfilming — if so, they might actually have had a technician coming in once a week to do the filming. (Microfilm was invented in the 40’s and were in standard use by the 60’s).
It’s actually more efficient in an office to do some tasks with batches rather than one at a time. That’s especially true if there is a multi-step process — for example, if after a document is stamped, the number has to be hand-entered onto several index cards.
They may have done it on a very regular basis — for example, every Friday afternoon — or they could have done whenever the staff member responsible for that task had time to get to it. Also, it may not have all been done at once. Doc hypothesized that it would be done at one time — explaining why N’s would be dealt with before O — and W would be much farther down the line. But it could also be the type of task that didn’t alway get finished. That is, maybe when the staffer sat down, she would pull out the A’s, the B’s, the C’s, etc. –and some days when 5pm rolled around, she wouldn’t have gotten through the entire stack — perhaps only getting far as the letter “T”. Then, by the time she got back to the stack to finish the task, more certificates had come in — pushing the U’s & W’s even further out numerically.
It wouldn’t really matter because whenever anyone asked for a copy of a birth certificate, they probably started by looking it up alphabetically. I think they would probably have had an index card file, and if they couldn’t find the name of a recent birth in the card file, then the next logical place to look would be the in-box.
If they were microfilming the records and then sending the hard copy to storage, it would be inefficient to have an interim third step (numbered but not yet photographed) — so it would actually make the most sense to do the numbering in batches at the same time as the filming. So then at any given time the document would either be in the alphabetical sorter for new, unnumbered records — or it would be available on microfilm, with an index card available reflecting its number & location.
I understand most of what you said but one thing that does not make sense is Accepting a certificate without baby’s name already printed.
If indexing and microfilming documents was done at the same time it makes some sense to follow a process that numbers are not stamped until just prior to indexing and microfilming. Having a document with a stamped number would indicate that the document has been processed and ready for archiving. A document without a number would indicate that indexing has not been done.
More likely in an office ‘Sorting Rack’ similar to this 3 by 4 sorting rack(several would be stacked on a shelf or under the service counter) or this floor standing version.
This was a government office, with an ongoing task. They wouldn’t use cruddy 50 cent (they were probably even cheaper than that in 1961) paper expansion folders.
I just laughed about the latest “theories” in the comments over at the Pest and eFail:
(1) One poster claims the Lucas BC has now been proven authentic because it would be impossible for Lucas to know the time of birth which has only just been released with the LFBC.
Of course he forgets (or deliberately ignores) the time was already on the COLB in 2008, before Lucas produced his forgery.
(2) Another poster claims it was strange that the LFBC says “Honolulu, Hawaii” when the Nordykes’ says “Honolulu, Oahu”.
Of course a quick look at the Nordyke BCs show that one of them says “Honolulu, Hawaii” and the other “Honolulu, Oahu”.
If I were a birther, I’d immediately assume that at least one of the Nordyke BCs must be fake because of these “inconsistencies” (they’re twins, after all, so why type different things on the two BCs?).
(3) Another poster says something along the lines of “now they’ll have to destroy the monuments and scrub the history and school books in Kenya”.
Funny no birfer could ever produce a Kenyan book stating Kenyan birth for Obama or a photograph of a “monument” commemorating Obama’s Kenyan birth.
Actually, it just got entertaining again. After months and months of endless repetitions of the same idiocies, the birfers scramble to make up at least another 100 reasons why the LFBC cannot be authentic, and they’re tripping over their own feet doing it. Great fun to watch!
There may be other reasons. Some babies die shortly after birth, and the regs provide for special handling of those certificates. There may be a lot of reasons.
The point being that they are more likely to need to access the record for a newborn for corrections or clarifications. The record needs to be located easily by name, number is meaningless for this purpose.
It’s done all the time. Someone, maybe Doc, even posted the statute about amendments to include the baby’s name a few days ago. I don’t remember exactly, but I think basically if the name is added within a specified time (maybe 2 weeks, maybe 30 days), then the statute specifically said that the b.c. did not have to be noted as “amended”.
I seem to remember being told when my kids were born that if we didn’t have the name ready at the hospital, we had something like 3 weeks to get it to the health dept. (California, not Hawaii).
So there could have also been a practice in place to hold all certs for a certain time frame just to give parents whatever the statutory period was to fill in that data.
The procedure for adding a name is called a “supplementary report”. The Hawaii statute says:
Hawaii Revised Stat §338-6 (b).
That appears to be the law in place at the time of Obama’s birth. You’d have to go back to regulations at the time to figure out what the time frame would have been for filing such a report. I don’t know whether they would have stamped a birth certificate with the names blank as “accepted” — or held it for some period of time before accepting it.
A supplementary report cannot be used to change anything on a birth certificate — just to fill in missing information, which typically would be the baby’s name.
What the Birthers are saying now
The evangelical Florida pastor who hosted a Birther infomercial responds to the new document: “Praise God”
11:55 am UPDATE: And here is WorldNetDaily CEO Joseph Farah:
“We’re gratified that our work has begun to pay off,” he said. “The certificate of live birth is an absolutely vital foundation for determining constitutional eligibility of any president. We look forward to reviewing it like so many other Americans do at this late date. But it is important to remember there are still dozens of other questions concerning this question of eligibility that need to be resolved to assure what has become a very skeptical public concerning Barack Obama’s parentage, his adoption, his citizenship status throughout his life and why he continues to cultivate a culture of secrecy around his life.”
“Dozens of other questions”!
Meanwhile, Mother Jones’ Suzy Khimm talks to another Birther heavy, Andy Martin:
“Well, I’ll be damned…it looks OK!” Martin told Mother Jones by phone, as he perused the document for the first time. “I’m stunned…obviously the pressure got to be too much.” …
Martin, however, says that the birth certificate doesn’t put to rest other questions about Obama’s past and rise to power. Echoing Donald Trump’s recent demands to see Obama’s college grades, Martin said he wants to see the “admission files and the transcripts” of Obama’s college years. “The pressure for his college records is going to become relentless,” he vows.
And TPM’s Ryan Reilly gets Orly Taitz:
But she still has her suspicions. Specifically, Taitz thinks that the birth certificate should peg Obama’s race as “Negro” and not “African.”
So there seems to be a split. Some like Bill Keller (see below) and Martin, are now satisfied that Obama was born in the U.S. Others, like Farah and and Taitz, are witholding judgment on the president’s eligibility.
10:40 am UPDATE: I just got off the phone with evangelical Florida pastor Bill Keller, the creator and host of a notorious 2009 Birther informerical (“Birthermercial”) that asked for donations to help build pressure on Obama to release his birth certificate.
“Praise God,” said Keller. “I mean what was so hard about this?” Most of the people I know have never bought into this thing that he was born in Kenya. But he created a controversy that didn’t have to be there.”
That’s a significantly different tone than Keller took in his famous Birthermercial, which asked viewers for $30 in order to send faxes to every state attorney general demanding that they demand Obama’s birth certificate.
I asked Keller: how is this new document any more convincing than the certificate of live birth Obama already released?
“It shows the name of the hospital. It shows the name of the attending physician,” he said. “I think it’s great. That issue is dead now.”
Would he consider this a victory?
“If it’s a victory for anybody, it’s for the nation.”
***
If the White House thought releasing the president’s long-form birth certificate would silence Obama’s conspiracist critics, it has already been proven wrong.
This morning I had an email exchange with Jack Cashill, who, as a columnist for leading Birther website WorldNetDaily, has built his career in recent years on proposing wild conspiracy theories about Obama’s origins. I asked Cashill: Are you now satisifed Obama was born in the U.S.?
Responded Cashill (emphasis added):
I never said he was born elsewhere. My argument was with who wrote his books and is the story they tell true. The story of his first two years remains false.
My question to you is why did the media not demand to see this in 2008 and why did Obama let Terry Lakin go to prison when he could have put his mind at ease a long time ago. And yes, Virginia, there is a difference between a certification of live birth and a long form certificate of live birth.
Cashill has in fact flirted with the idea that Obama was not born in the U.S. As recently as this month he wrote:
When asked why you don’t take President Obama’s word that he was born in America, simply reply, “Why should I? The story that he has been telling America about the first two years of his life is provably and profoundly untrue.”
The long-form birth certificate also clearly lists Obama’s parents as Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Dunham. Here’s a sample of what Cashill has written on the parentage front:
It seems altogether possible that the progressive and adventurous 17 year-old Dunham was impregnated by a black man while the family was still living in the Seattle area. If so, this pregnancy could have prompted the family to uproot to Hawaii where no one knew them and where mixed-race babies were more accepted. According to the Andersen account, whose source was Maxine Box, “There were loud arguments between father and daughter — fights that sometimes turned violent.” Ann did not want to go.
Both the “Dunham as father” and the “anonymous black father” scenarios would make the Obama camp wary of sharing Obama’s actual birth certificate, either because Dunham was not Obama’s mother or, if she were, because Obama was born much earlier than August 4, 1961.
Asked if he is now satisfied that Obama’s parents are Obama’s parents, Cashill responded:
That was one of four scenarios I posed. As I wrote in the book’s penultimate chapter, from Axelrod’s perspective, “The best suspect remained Barack Sr. Yet every time he looked at that picture of a smiling Stanley Dunham waving Aloha to his supposed scoundrel of a son-in-law he had to wonder even about that. ”
My second best candidate has always been “Pop,” Frank Marshall Davis. There is nothing here that rules this out.
In other words: the conspiracists aren’t going anywhere.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/04/27/worldnetdaily_responds/index.html
NBC had a post back in October that had one form with an alteration adding the given name a months later (see link below).
I had noticed that there were some who decided Obama’s form was questionable because of the handwritten numbers, the “mysterious XX” in the “this birth” field and the pre-printed M in the time field. Yet, these same reasons for their questions show up on many other examples of the original birth records in Hawaii (see same link below). Really, before deciding something is fake, they should actually look at a real one first.
http://nativeborncitizen.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/evolution-of-the-hawaiian-long-form/
The best part is that she & Kreep have ONLY 20 minutes combined that they have to share to make their argument…
That should be very entertaining. Like Orly can ever get to the point, talk on topic or make an argument. Her 10 minutes will be up before she gets to anything relevant at all and will be left screaming “Let meeeee feeeeneeesh!!!!”
I think some folks from Fogbow or RC Radio will be at the hearing in person. Can’t wait for the reports!
Thanks for sharing that. That made me well up. He’s right on with what is wrong with what is going on here and how sad and shameful for all of America that it can happen still in 2011.
Agreed!!!
Now that President Obama has released this document I predict that he will be far less willing to let any of the states do their birther bill nonsense. Any Constitutionally invalid bill is going to be jumped on with the full force and might of the Federal Government.
Thanks for explaining the pencil marks. I was curious about their meaning and purpose.
Sef is right! It is worse than we thought.
“Now that President Obama has released this document I predict that he will be far less willing to let any of the states do their birther bill nonsense. Any Constitutionally invalid bill is going to be jumped on with the full force and might of the Federal Government.”
Yes that way bin Laden’s “sleeper” anchor baby with a COLB will be able run unchallenged in the 2020 election. Nobody wil be able to challenge him based on NBC stautus.
Obama is not the manchurian candidate after all he is the advanced wave that was created to eliminate future challenges from concerned citizens and pave the way for imposition of the Sharia dictatorship.
But where are the shadows?
Mr. Polard
Why don’t you send your findings to the FBI, Hawaii DoH, Hawaii AG, The US Dept of State, and Wikileaks to alert them to the massive fraud going on by the WH?
I’ll say! Like I said when the story broke, this is a game changer. It feels like your favorite TV show returning with all new episodes after a summer full of reruns.
What’s significant here is that the scanned image HAS been meddled with. Zoom in close on the first instance of “BARACK.”
http://www.q-audio.com/images/barack.jpg
You’ll see that the “R” was left untouched. But the “BA” and “ACK” were meddled with in order to enhance the text. Basically, it took most of the text and simple graphic elements in the original scanned image and essentially turned them into 1 or 2 bit bitmaps.
Unfortunately, whatever software was used to do it, also cut that text out of the original scan and placed it on separate layers and whatever White House flunkie that did it didn’t bother to flatten the image to a single layer.
The flunkie at the White House unwittingly just handed the birthers a “smoking gun.”
se
Reading Cashill’s spew cited above, I am sickened all over again at how casually they will slander someone’s dead mother.
And the unabashed racism inherent in the speculation about her various relationships with “black men” is just stunning.
BS, some of the letters are just lighter because they were typed on a manual typewriter. Look at the K in Kenya and in Kansas. When you scan and blow it up that is how the pixels come out. I printed a copy and rescanned it and i get the same effect on the lighter letters.
Steve
I misunderstood your post. Remember this was done with two scans. The original document was scanned. It is probably not on security paper. Then this scan was printed on security paper and signed and stamped by Onaka. Then that was scanned to the pdf that was released.
I’m not sure how they would have done this in the past. There seems to be more information or extraneous stuff (like the bleed from the other records in what looks to be a bound volume). The Nordyke BCs were obviously negative images from microfiche, and I would guess that the original microfiche process was aligned carefully and with that statement on the bottom covering up whatever wasn’t supposed to make it to a certified copy.
I’m thinking Obama’s new certified BC was made by scanning it then trimming the borders before printing it to security paper.
How did most clerical employees correct typing errors on forms in 1961?
Yes, I know.
But it WASN’T a straight scan to PDF. If it was, then ALL of the text and graphic elements would look like the “R” in the first instance of “BARACK.”
The scanned image was boogered with BEFORE the final PDF was saved out. And in the process of that boogering, the enhanced text was cut out of the original scanned image. That’s why the various bits of text are solid colors (mostly black, but others are a shade of gray) and on multiple layers.
In other words, you’ve got your bottom layer which is the original scan with the enhanced text cut out of it (leaving behind the white “holes” where the original text was). And on top of that, you’ve got multiple layers comprised of the 1 bit “enhanced text” bitmaps.
A straight scan to PDF wouldn’t have all of that. So as I’ve said, they’ve given the birthers a “smoking gun” with which to “prove” that it’s a fake.
se
The Nordyke’s are what’s called photostats. Basically, it’s a single step photographic process that photographs a document directly onto photographic paper instead of an intermediate film negative which is then exposed on photographic paper.
The Nordyke copies were made back in 1966 when the photostatic process was common.
Yup.
se
Yeah…good luck with that.
Utterly delusional. *sheesh*
Cashill is truly a despicable and loathsome turd.
I would imagine it was using white out (or what we call typex over here) or by using a pen to manually correct it.
Dumb/rhetorical question.
Why aren’t any of Donald Trump’s birth certificates being held up to the level of scrutiny as any of Barack Obama’s?
Simple. He’s white.
se
Fascinating Fact #4,310: It was Monkee Mike Nesmith’s mother who invented white out.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program.
se
Yes. And this process would explain why the bottom “certification section” of the Nordykes is also a negative image….not just the original birth record being copied. The way I understand it, the negative image is the first generation photostatic copy, which could then, if they wanted, be photostatted again to produce a positive image.
Someone was adding white to “Barack”. There’s your conspiracy.
Cashill is truly a despicable and loathsome turd.*
* factual statement!
Yup. Just like black and white film photography. When the film is exposed, it creates a negative image. When that’s projected onto the photographic paper, it results in a positive image.
se
Actually, it’s to impose the Torah. The Muslim thing is just to throw you off. He’s really a secret Jew. This photo proves it!
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRnTjpA40ANPNN59WSOMN90EtQvQB9g5jHwpEGYI7ChGNj4j14MIQ
I notice that the Hawaii Department of Health has updated their page:
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html
“On April 27, 2011 President Barack Obama posted a certified copy of his original Certificate of Live Birth.
For information go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate ”
Got that birthers? The government agency that issued the document says the image is the real thing.
Keller is a convicted felon.
Well, that may be the certified copy of his certificate of live birth, and Hawaii may have acknowledged that it is a copy of his certificate of live birth, but until the state of Hawaii verbally confirms that it did, in fact, issue him the certificate of live birth, the possibility exists that Obama was born in Kenya and smuggled into the county when he was only a few weeks old.
I too am no expert, and I agree with the gist of your post…but, I think you are leaving out a step.
I think the original document would have had to have been either scanned into a digital format, cropped, and then printed onto security paper…..OR photocopied onto plain white paper and then photocopied onto security paper. These are the options I see to explain the black triangle in the upper left corner not extending to the edge of the page. Since the DOH is accustomed to printing on security paper from a digital format….I’m going with option 1.
Sure.
Yup.
Not this paper. There’s nothing about it designed to interfere with the process of photocopying/scanning/printing. This same type of paper has been used for such documents long before photocopiers and digital scanners. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it used as far back as the 1930’s.
Sure.
But not everyone has such a high standard of proof. And all I’m saying is that the dog and pony show “demonstrations” by the birthers can be quite effective at raising doubts among those who aren’t dyed in the wool birthers.
That’s because you can’t simply say that what’s shown in these “demonstrations” isn’t true. Because it is true.
While you’ll never convince the birthers there was nothing nefarious about this and the release of this document changes nothing in that regard, what the White House has done is give the birthers a FAR more effective tool at convincing non-birthers that there is something nefarious going on.
Why they didn’t just do a straight scan to PDF I’ll never know. And I hope I’m wrong, but I really think this has only made things worse.
se
I’m going to make coffee.
Just like canister #1….imagine that.
More importantly, who has been hiding Cheney’s death certificate?
HA!
se
Huffington Post has all the things wrong with the LFBC: (SA)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/birthers-still-have-quest_n_854591.html
Well I’m convinced.
I liked these comments.
“I looked at it on line and when I ran my finger over the “raised seal” I could not feel any bumps.”
“You’re right. I tried the same thing and no bumps. I even tried to print it out and still no bumps. It is obviously bogus. Think we should tell Donald Trump?”
“Yeah, let’s fax him a copy so he can feel for himself!”
“Is it legal for a ukulele to be a registrar, even in Hawaii?”
Love it!!!!!
Come on guys. Lay off the birthers already. This is devastating news. They still need a little time to play Word Legos and reconstruct every statement into something nefarious.
Steve,
After reading the rest of your comments, I owe you an apology – I’ve got a low tolerance for birthers today. To your statement that this will only make things worse with the birthers, I would point out that that is part of why I think this will turn out to be so successful at marginalizing the birther movement. It exacerbates the wedge between birthers and independent voters. Believing in the legitimacy of the LFBC is now a litmus test for birtherism.
All the more reason to use ‘Shock and Awe’ now and goad them into statements that can be used against them later. I believe that Sun Tzu would approve…
I found this at Puzo’s site:
[quoting] 8by8 said…
This seems critical.
The time of birth 7:24 pm is the same on the Lucas Smith Kenyan BC and on the Hawaii BC from Obama yesterday. Too bad they did not put on the weight of the baby.
It looks like Hawaii has a copy of the Kenyan BC as its primary BC. No other way to explain the exact time on both. The Lucas Smith bc came out in 2009 or 2 years ago. The time on the Hawaii BC did not come out until yesterday. That can not be an accident that the times are identical. They have to be linked. The only way to link them is to assume that Hawaii has the original BC of Obama from Kenya.
So Obama basically authenticated the Smith BC and admits he was born in Kenya.
This is really important. It is the huge smoking gun that convicts Obama without a doubt.
We should ask Hawaii for his birth weight. We should check Obama’s footprint with the Kenya BC.
This is KILLER INFORMATION. The more I think about it the more damaging it becomes. Check the time of birth.
Here is the Smith BC posted in 2009
Now check the BC from the white house yesterday. from the white house.
Note the time of birth.
Impossible to be the exact same minute unless they are linked. The link has to be that Hawaii has the Original BC from Kenya.
Must be why his birth was NOT ACCEPTED on his previous COLB.
April 28, 2011 6:37 AM [end quote, internal links omitted]
Source:
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7466841558189356289&postID=6250199596770480741
You know, for a nanosecond, I had a flash of worry that the COLB did not actually list the time of birth, that Lucas was right, that the new long form was a fake based on the Lucas certificate, and that the birthers were right all along.
Then, as Steve Martin used to say, I thought “Naaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
So I did what all empiricists have done ever since the Dark Ages ended, when the Renaissance began, the lights came on, we all started painting, and Galileo suggested that we test hypotheses in order to try to falsify them with repeatable experiments and observations.
Took a look at the COLB. Time of birth, 7:24 PM.
Lucas copied the COLB.
Mario, if you see this, send the following to 8by8
“Um, 8 by 8, did you look at the COLB the Obama campaign put out in 2008?
‘”Thought not.
“Go take a look.
“There.
“Now don’t you wish you had checked there first?”
The lights are going out all over the birther movement. We shall not see them lit again in our time.
Sir Edward Grey said as the Great War broke out in 1914: “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time”.
Whoever said that is an idiot. The Time was on the COLB, released before Lucas Smith came out with his. In fact, this was something I raised as an objection to Smith’s fake birth certificate back when it came out.
I wish they had had the foresight to videotape the transaction between his attorney and the state of Hawaii when they went there to pick the birth certificates up like they did with that Hawaiian guy in the AC 360 investigation
It’s quite common, or it was. Now they scan them digitally.
> Whoever said that is an idiot. The Time was on the COLB, released before Lucas Smith came out with his.
Heck, even the Pest and eFail allowed comments stating that the COLB has the time and predates the Smith BC. Too funny some birfers are still spouting that nonsense in the face of truth. Must be too crazy for the Pee and Eee, and that says something.
> and Galileo suggested that we test hypotheses in order to try to falsify them with repeatable experiments and observations
You forget that a conspiracy theory wouldn’t be one if it were falsifiable.
Reminds me of crackpot physician Ryke Geerd Hamer (who caused the death of at least two people who believed in his crank theories of how to cure cancer). At some point he claimed his opponents had planted “death chips” into the heads of his patients. So he could conveniently claim that, should any of his patients die under his treatment, they were killed by his opponents using the death chips…
Some blacks see racism in ‘birther’ questions
(AP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Shortly after President Barack Obama declared himself an American-born citizen with papers to prove it, Baratunde Thurston declared himself a disgusted black man.
“I find it hard to summarize in mere words the amount of pain and rage this incident has caused,” Thurston said.
“This” would be the nation’s first black president standing in the White House, blue power suit and all, going on TV to debunk, in more detail than before, the persistent, he-ain’t-really-an-American rumors fanned anew by Donald Trump, the developer and might-be presidential candidate.
Many African-Americans responded to Wednesday’s scene with a large sigh. The rumors and the controversy had a particular, troubling resonance for them: They’ve seen, heard, lived, the legitimacy of black people being called into question so many times before that, they said, they weren’t shocked to see it happen to Obama over something as simple as a birth certificate.
But they were sad about it, too, seeing what they felt was a high-level manifestation of the idea that when a black person accomplishes something great there must be something wrong.
“The stress of feeling constantly called into question, constantly under surveillance, has emotional and physical consequences for us,” said Imani Perry, a professor at Princeton University’s Center for African American Studies. “It also puts us in the position of not being able to be constituents, with respect to our politicians, because we feel we have to constantly protect the president. … You see people attacking him, and he’s the president, what happens to those of us who are not the president?”
This week, black people struggled to deal with what many of them perceived as a racially motivated dis of Obama at the hands of Trump and the “birther” movement. Fleeting thoughts about boycotting Trump’s hotels and casinos, or pressuring advertisers to pull away from Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” reality TV show bounced around Facebook and Twitter, the barbershops, the suites and the corner.
Much of it was just a notion, however. At the end of the day, many blacks said they remained at a loss for how best to process the falsehood that just won’t die.
Obama said he had “watched with bemusement” as people kept alive for two years the idea that he might have been born outside the United States and therefore wasn’t eligible to sit in the White House. “I’ve been puzzled at the degree to which this thing just kept on going,” Obama said. He added that he understood the copy of the official birth certificate he produced still wouldn’t silence all believers in this “silliness.”
Ellis Cose, author of an upcoming book that explores anger and race, said there is a sense that Obama has become the lightning rod for a general longing among certain whites to “take America back to a time when people like Obama could not be president.” For blacks, that’s “clearly an aggravation,” Cose said.
“A lot of folks are amused, and a lot of folks are upset about this,” Cose said. “In addition to uncertainty about the economy and America’s place in the world, a lot of people who grew up in confidence that America was a very white country are having that reality shaken.”
Trump, who may or may not seek the Republican presidential nomination, stepped up to a microphone in New Hampshire within minutes of Obama’s appearance to claim credit for forcing the president’s hand. He said he still wanted to scrutinize the birth certificate to make sure it’s legit.
Trump also wants to eyeball Obama’s college grades, in search of bogusness around the bachelor’s and law degrees the president got from Columbia and Harvard respectively. Trump said he’d “heard” Obama was a poor student unworthy of an Ivy League education, but offered no real proof.
That’s what bothers black Americans so much — that sense that nothing they do can ever be considered good enough, said William Jelani Cobb, professor of Africana studies and history at Rutgers University. He recalled being on a flight recently, and expressing amazement when his seatmate, a member of Congress whom he did not name, said he, too, believed Obama was not really an American.
“It’s partly American tradition of paranoia, and partly just plain old racism,” Cobb said. “Illegitimacy is the rule, not the exception. It’s the sort of thing that people come up with regularly when there are African-Americans operating at high levels.”
Thurston, co-founder of the political blog Jack and Jill Politics, found out about Obama’s action when he checked Twitter on his way to work. He was so disturbed that he sat before his webcam and poured his feelings into a seven-minute video that he then posted. Most of Thurston’s ire was aimed at Trump and his glee over what he’d accomplished.
“Black people are taught, ‘Your bar is higher. You have to answer harder questions. And you’re never really, satisfactorily accepted,'” Thurston said in an interview. “That’s a good motivator as a kid, it makes you run fast. But at some point, it’s exhausting to carry such historical baggage in your daily life.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h4VIlR9qbzeAvlEHGtmD1Su2J5kg?docId=80f172bf2bbc424b895f838dc77bc9f4
I imagine for some blacks this evokes memories of the time Michael Jackson had to submit to a strip search to confirm a description of his private parts. There is a certain person I will not name who made a description of Obama’s, and I think he’d like nothing better than to subject Obama to the same humiliation as Jackson.
It will be very interesting to see the proportion of the black vote that goes to President Obama in 2012 – I’m guessing it will be higher than in 2008… Great job, birthers!
Donald, keep talking.
It’s also going to resonate with Hispanics, too. Show us your documentation! The Republicans are better at shrinking their base than the Democrats.
Also too? Didn’t mean to type that. I think I just channeled Sarah Palin.
The Dems better already be working on ‘Papers please’ ads…
It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
I agree.
I wanted to add that It should register with any minority race or group that has to go through life dealing with people that refuse to treat them equally and treat them as “not one of us”. Xenophobic bigotry in any form is bad for society and a stain on America’s soul.
My mom said today “This makes the Republicans look bad. Yay!” (Believe it or not, she once voted for Reagan.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA2AVsDhKps
This gentleman attempted to prove the birth certificate posted by obama was in fact real. He is a Pro with the different types of Mac’s and Pc’s and uses these and other programs every day in his business. He took two days to shift through everything and when he was finished concluded his view points had changed because of FACTS and not opinions such as he had before embarking on this little quest of his. Follow the Russian’s methods on YouTube and if you know anything about the programs and the methods he employed (he explained every method in detail) you can make up your mind for yourself. No trickery and no name calling. Just plain facts. And that is what this debate is all about, not emotion, but facts.
He’s wrong. Fact. Also, the name is Obama or President Obama. And stop abusing apostrophes. They never hurt you.
Some alleged professional on YouTube is not an authoritative source, Snake. How do you know his video isn’t faked? Are you an online video or imaging expert? How do you know he had not reached a conclusion before he started or that he’s a professional? Because he said so?
Or is this a set up? Tell the truth, Snake.
Do you like to donate money to anonymous sources who tell you things you like to believe? I’ll bet you do.
Yeah too bad for him and you that the long form has been verified by the state officials who actually produced it.
Apparently your “expert” isn’t quite as expert as he, and you, seem to think he is.
Watched the video and had to suppress my laughter.
I am a proficient user, but not an expert with those programs, and even I could tell he was a noob with Adobe products. He didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about.
If his business depends on his Adobe skills, then I hope he didn’t mortgage anything he cares about to finance it.
An internet posted scan of a birth certificate is not what would ever be used in a court of law or before a congressional committee. If there was a formal proceeding looking into President Obama’s eligibility, a hard copy of the original document would be subpoenaed and there would be sworn testimony from Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the previous administration’s Republican appointee as Hawaii Director of Health and Ms. Loretta Fuddy, the current Democratic appointee as Director of Health for the state of Hawaii, along with civil servant Dr. Alvin T. Onaka, Registrar of Vital Statistics for the state of Hawaii whose name appears on President Obama’s long and short form birth certificates. Those are the people who would, under oath, swear to the authenticity of the President’s birth records as they have already done in media releases.
INTERNET POSTED SCANS ARE LEGALLY IRRELEVANT and they are for informational purposes only.
NEWS RELEASE
NEIL ABERCROMBIE
GOVERNOR
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 27, 2011
HAWAII HEALTH DEPARTMENT GRANTS PRESIDENT OBAMA’S REQUEST FOR CERTIFIED COPIES OF ‘LONG FORM’ BIRTH CERTIFICATE
HONOLULU – The Hawai„i State Health Department recently complied with a request by President Barack Obama for certified copies of his original Certificate of Live Birth, which is sometimes referred to in the media as a “long form” birth certificate.
“We hope that issuing certified copies of the original Certificate of Live Birth to President Obama will end the numerous inquiries related to his birth in Hawai„i,” Hawai„i Health Director Loretta Fuddy said. “I have seen the original records filed at the Department of Health and attest to the authenticity of the certified copies the department provided to the President that further prove the fact that he was born in Hawai„i.”
On April 22, 2011, President Obama sent a letter to Director Fuddy, requesting two certified copies of his original Certificate of Live Birth. Also on that day, Judith Corley, the President’s personal attorney, made the same request in writing on behalf of the President. (Letters from President Obama and Ms. Corley are attached).
On April 25, 2011, pursuant to President Obama’s request, Director Fuddy personally witnessed the copying of the original Certificate of Live Birth and attested to the authenticity of the two copies. Dr. Alvin Onaka, the State Registrar, certified the copies.
President Obama authorized Ms. Corley to pick up the documents. On April 25, 2011, Ms. Corley appeared in person at the Hawai„i State Department of Health building in Honolulu, paid the requisite fee, and was given the two certified copies, a response letter from Director Fuddy to President Obama, and a receipt for payment. (Letter from Director Fuddy is attached).
In June 2008, President Obama released his Certification of Live Birth, which is sometimes referred to in the media as a “short form” birth certificate. Both documents are legally sufficient evidence of birth in the State of Hawai„i, and both provide the same fundamental information: President Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawai„i at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961, to mother Stanley Ann Dunham and father Barack Hussein Obama.
In 2001, the Hawai„i State Department of Health began computer-generating vital statistics records. Since then, its longstanding policy and practice has been to issue and provide only the computer-generated Certifications of Live Birth, and to not produce photocopies of actual records to fulfill requests for certified copies of certificates.
Director Fuddy made an exception for President Obama by issuing copies of the original birth certificate. The departmental policy to issue only computer-generated Certifications of Live Birth remains in effect for all birth records that have been computerized. Director Fuddy, in her capacity as Health Director, has the legal authority to approve the process by which copies of birth records are made.
“The exception made in this case to provide President Obama with a copy of his original Certificate of Live Birth was done according to the letter of the law,” Attorney General David Louie said. “Director Fuddy exercised her legal authority in a completely appropriate manner in this unique circumstance. We will continue to maintain the strict confidentiality requirements afforded to vital statistics records, such as birth certificates. These requirements help protect the integrity of the records, and keep us all safe from crimes, such as identity theft.”
Governor Neil Abercrombie stated: “Considering all of the investigations that have been done and the information that has been provided, no rational person can question the President’s citizenship. We have found a way – once again – to confirm what we already knew: the President was born here in Hawai„i. State officials of both parties have verified that President Obama’s birth records show that he was born in Honolulu.
“President Obama’s mother and father were dear friends of mine, and we must respect their memory. It is an insult to the President, his parents and to the Office to suggest that he was not born in Hawai„i. The State of Hawai„i has done everything within our legal ability to disabuse these conspiracy theorists. We granted the President’s request for certified copies of his birth certificate so we can all move on from this unfortunate distraction and focus on the real issues affecting people today.”
###
For more information, contact: Donalyn Dela Cruz, Press Secretary, (808) 586-0012
http://hawaii.gov/gov
P.S. Most importantly, your post is meaningless and irrelevant.
Not quite.
If there was an official proceeding looking into eligibility, the hard copy COLB produced to factcheck in 2008 would suffice. It is legal and admissible for all purposes, and the seal & certification makes it so.
However, if someone wanted more testimony to back it up — and that “someone” was a party to a proceeding with proper jurisdiction — then they might issue a “subpoena duces tecum” directed to the Hawaii Dept. of Health and requiring production of the birth certificate. In that case, the “custodian of records” from the Dept. of Health might appear with either a printout of the COLB or a photocopy of the original long-form (the one we saw released on April 27) — and said “custodian” would testify that their job entailed maintaining the records and that whatever document they produced was indeed a reflection of the records they had on hand. The “custodian” could be Alvin Onaka or a subordinate — it really would be up to the Dept of Health to designate that person.
What lay people do not understand is that the original birth certificate itself is hearsay — it is not the first hand testimony of the doctor who delivered the baby. It is merely a piece of paper that doctor signed long ago — that is, it is a written report of an event.
But the notices published in Hawaii newspapers of records in 1961 are the same: written reports of events. And a certified copy of the record, in any form, is the same.
The reason that these documents have force in a court of law is that they fit within recognized exceptions to the hearsay rule, and the reason those exceptions were created is based on some basic assumptions concerning reliability as well as pragmatic concerns about availability.
Birthers can go round and round and round about this, but the fact is that if Obama had never produced anything — and the only “evidence” available were the announcements in the Hawaii Advertiser and the name in the Department of Health index record — that would legally be enough in any tribunal, absent clear and unequivocal evidence of fraud. It is not Obama’s duty or the Department of Health’s duty to prove the absence of fraud — the records themselves carry the assumption that they are legitimate. It is the duty of whoever challenges them to come forth with specific and particularized evidence.
> and when he was finished concluded his view points had changed because of FACTS and not opinions such as he had before
So what exactly does he conclude? He could not reproduce a certain end result, but what inferences does he draw from that?
(1) That he is simply not “expert enough” to do so?
(2) That Obama’s LFBC cannot be photoshopped (as birfers claim) because he could not reproduce the steps from a photoshopped document to the types of layers in the LFBC?
(3) That the LFBC must be forged *because* he was unable to recreate the alleged forging process?
I really love how you birfers shoot yourselves in the foot…
Thanks for that excellent review of the legal exigencies, Expelliarmus. You really spelled out the particulars of what a “self-authenticating” document is under the federal rules of evidence.
Since the long form’s arrival via the media, I have been wondering if the Doctor who signed as “attending physician” on August 8th, 4 days after the birth, was even the delivery doctor or merely a staff OB/GYN who was on duty when the hospital data was ready to forward to the Health Bureau. An “attending physician” is any doctor with hospital privileges who is no longer a resident.
I will be using the knowledge I gained from your post on “birther” web sites!