Sometimes I wish the birthers could hear themselves the way others do.1 I’m sure it would be a shock. 😯 Here’s a little bit of transcript from the Mike Volin “Where’s Obama’s Birth Certificate” Internet radio show yesterday talking about the delivery of his Sheriff’s Kit to members of Congress.
Caller: Hey Mike, I just wanted to mention that if we send these kits to like the TV stations, the news outlets, the papers and any other senators or congressmen, we should send them “certified” or “registered.” That way they actually have to sign for them. They actually have someone there, has to sign and acknowledge that they got the kit.
… doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of this – when it comes down, because anybody that is on the wrong side and has notification of the evidence in hand are complicit with this crime, and that is one of the things that we need to keep these congressmen and senators on their toes. “You’re complicit with the crime that you have been made aware of.”
Some words don’t mean what birthers think they mean, and “complicity” may be one of them. Knowing about the commission of a crime and not reporting it is complicity. Where I think the first caller is mistaken, is in confusing complicity with being an accessory to the crime. Generally complicity is not itself a crime without significant subsequent involvement. Let me list some problems with calling anything here “complicity”:
- The Sheriff’s Kit never specifies exactly what the crime is. Even if the birth certificate is a fake, putting a fake document on the Internet is not a crime, and every President lies (well maybe not Jimmy Carter which was one of his problems). The birth certificate was never submitted to anyone as a legal document or used in candidate filings. Lying on TV is not fraud.
- Even if we did say that Obama’s selective service registration was forged, it happened more than 5 years ago and the statute of limitations has run out.
- Even if we did say that Obama’s birth certificate was forged, the Sheriff’s Kit doesn’t say who did it, when or where.
- Reading the Sheriff’s Kit does not give a member of Congress any personal knowledge of the commission of a crime. Indeed the compilers of the Sheriff’s Kit have no knowledge of the commission of a crime, only conclusions. The presentation is a narrative of arriving at conclusions, not evidence of a crime.
- Complicity implies failure to report a crime. The Sheriff’s Kit is public information, and law enforcement is already aware of it. The birthers actually think that the information they are plying on Congress actually came from law enforcement in the first place! There is noting left to report.
- The birthers want people to do something about a crime (whatever it is), but failure to do so is not complicity. TV stations, news outlets and papers have no legal duty to do something about a crime they are aware of—that’s not complicity.
- Congress has no role in prosecuting crimes. They can remove someone from office through impeachment, but not prosecute them for a crime. The decision to impeach or not is wholly up to the members of Congress and the failure to do so is not complicity.
When I hear this caller, I think that she hasn’t a clue about what she is talking about, and that she is living in a delusional world where disagreement equals complicity in crime, and I can not see any justification for her irrational faith that something is “coming down.”
Another caller asked about one of the congressmen who was aware of Volin’s information, but had reached a “different conclusion.” The congressman was Trent Franks and his district includes Surprise, Arizona. With voice expressing incredulity,
Caller: … Once you’ve admitted to having read it [the Sheriff’s Kit], What conclusion–other than the conclusion that we’ve come to?
In the following dialog, Volin also expresses the view that no one can look at their information and not be convinced by it, citing another unnamed congressional interview that hit a wall of disagreement, Volin responding to the congressional staffer “what part of our presentation did you not attend?” What sort of mindset does it take to be unable to comprehend someone not agreeing?
The Sheriff’s Kit itself is supposed to be the basis of all of this, and it is comprised of seven exhibits, the first of which is the publicist’s brochure that mistakenly says Obama was from Kenya. Five are videos from the Cold Case Posse news conferences, and the last is an image of Obama’s Selective Service registration. In addition there is a copy of Mike Zullo’s affidavit presented to the Alabama Supreme Court.
I would think that most people as sophisticated as a member of Congress or their staff, would take one look at the Sheriff’s Kit and think “what a load of crap!” Even as conspiracy theory, it’s amateurish. There are no less than 128 lawyers in the House of Representatives and 45 in the Senate. They know what evidence is, and that the Sheriff’s Kit is not evidence.
Everything in the videos regarding the birth certificate’s authenticity and the selective service registration has been debunked (I’ve done some of it here, and others have as well), but a congressman even without access to the technical explanation of why those presentations are wrong, should recognize immediately that what he is looking is original research by a bunch of unqualified amateurs. None of that would be admissible in court. None of it is compelling.
As an aside, Volin makes a big deal that he has never said that Obama was born outside of the United States, yet his very first exhibit is a brochure saying Obama was born in Kenya. When a congressional staffer told Volin that the Congressman believes Obama was born in America, Volin emphatically denied every saying that Obama wasn’t born in America. Well if you don’t want people to think you’re saying Obama was born outside the United States, don’t lead off with an exhibit saying Obama was born outside the United States (duh!). Volin says, “we just don’t know.” In my book “we just don’t know” is not a crime.
We come to another phrase that doesn’t mean what birthers think it does: “personal knowledge.” The last part of the Sheriff’s Kit is the Zullo Alabama Affidavit, and the lawyers in Congress who actually read it (if any) will certainly shake their heads at Zullo swearing everything in the Affidavit is his “personal knowledge,” stuff that he obviously could not have “personal knowledge” of—stuff he knows, at best, second hand like:
[Sheriff Arpaio’s] expertise and success led him to top management positions around the world with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He concluded his remarkable federal career as head of the DEA for Arizona. Arpaio has over five decades experience in law enforcement.
It might be true, but Zullo has no personal knowledge of it, and it’s not relevant to Zullo’s expertise, and Zullo is the making the Affidavit.
A lawyer would note the appearance of conclusions and hearsay all through the Affidavit. A lawyer would note the vagueness of the document, for example; “We interviewed several persons, consulted many experts, tested and evaluated computer evidence using related software” without naming the persons interviewed, naming the experts, or providing details of what tests were performed, who specifically performed them, what methodology was used and what results were obtained—giving only conclusions. The conclusions in the document are no better than the persons who made the conclusions, and the Affidavit doesn’t even identify them, much less qualify them as experts.
“Evidence” doesn’t mean what the birthers think it does either. Conclusions, unless by qualified experts (of which Zullo cites none and isn’t himself), are not evidence. The Zullo Affidavit is devoid of probative evidence, and apparently Zullo is completely unaware of the nature of court testimony and the rules of evidence. The members of Congress who are career law enforcement should be especially aware of the affidavit’s deficiencies.
The birthers do not appreciate how these congressmen view them. Congressmen get many, many appeals from constituents, some well-advised and some crackpot. They have to decide which to look further into and which to benevolently ignore. Anyone can simply visit the Hawaii Department of Health web site and read “On April 27, 2011 President Barack Obama posted a certified copy of his original Certificate of Live Birth” and consider the matter closed. Anyone who is familiar with the birther controversy from mainstream news sources is already prepared with the media consensus view that birther claims are long disproven. That is a tremendous barrier to overcome. The fact that ONE county sheriff in Arizona buys the story is not going to sway a congressional staffer or congressman who is accustomed to getting testimony from the top people in every field at congressional hearings. They will take one look at the Sheriff’s Kit and ask “who are these people?” and the answer is “nobody.” If the chairman of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences presented the findings, a congressman would take note. Some anonymous experts that someone claims came to an conclusion is pretty much “nothing.”
And that brings me to the baffling question in this whole Zullo business. While I talk about no-name, non-credentialed experts, the birthers do have an expert with some credentials, Reed Hayes. For the life of me, I cannot understand why birthers don’t use the only slim chance they have to get a congressman’s attention, and why the Reed Hayes Report is not Exhibit 1.
Why should anyone expect some nobody showing up with a Sheriff’s Kit to convince anybody of anything except the presenters were a little crazy? It’s a farce.
The birther’s problem is that they just talk to other birthers. They don’t get any sense of what they sound like to outsiders. Mike Volin hasn’t accepted my offer to be on his radio show but he takes calls such as the ones above that reinforce his world view. I could help him. I just wish he could hear what he sounds like to others.
1If I ever say that Mike Volin and his callers sound like raving lunatics, I do not mean that I think they are insane. Conspiracy theorists are generally not insane—they just act like it in certain contexts (hence historian Richard Hofstadter’s phrase “paranoid style”).
Oh, so that’s Orly’s natural hair color.
To prove fraud wouldn’t they need to show that people actually depended on the LFBC in deciding to vote for him? How else could they be defrauded?
Also Volin says he is trying to interview the Michigan gubernatorial candidate who has doubts about the President’s birth certificate. Hopefully this Friday.
Since when is a politician lying to get votes unusual?
A great piece, Doc! Demonstrates what lunatics and liars the active Birthers are!
I admire you for doing this, Doc. However, wouldn’t it be easier to just list the actual words that Birthers know the correct definitions to?
I suppose Vollin will limit calls when people pick apart the candidates claims.
“I admire you for doing this, Doc. However, wouldn’t it be easier to just list the actual words that Birthers know the correct definitions to?”
.
that would be an empty list
I think this is partially the result of the birther inability to come up with a single narrative as to why President Obama is ineligible, what (if any) acts of forgery and fraud were committed and by whom, and the appropriate avenue to redress these issues. Because of this, they can only find consensus when they stick to generalities like “complicity” and then point to their mound of examples of how not to collect evidence and imply that, since they’ve made up and misunderstood so much stuff, someone must be guilty of something…
Dr. C: “Sometimes I wish the birthers could hear themselves the way others do.”
Which leads us to this verse from:
To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church
by Robert Burns
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
I see Hawaii changed the link for the DOH Faq page. Google searching doesn’t seem to work for it like it used to
Obviously, “someone” has fraudulently modified Volin’s radio show recording. Your studio publicity photo seems to only vaguely coincide with the audio you linked.
I have managed to locate the actual, authentic, real audio from Volin’s radio show.
No, please… don’t thank me. At least not until you’ve checked out my archived copy of Zullo’s most recent press conference. 😎
I added the following to the article:
Yes, but all the links on my site to it work, including the quick reference link lower right on every page.
We all suspect that the Reed Hayes report does not say what Zullo has claimed it says.
Yeah I know the changed they link this used to be the link: http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html
I get a dead link now and I noticed you had the new one.
Two possibilities:
First is that it is the bombshell they think it is and he’s holding it for the book. How he will explain inflicting a usurper on the country while he fiddles around will be interesting to see.
Second is that Rickey is right. It doesn’t say what Zullo claims and, at this point, he’s painted himself into a corner that he can’t get out of gracefully so he’ll milk “any day/month/year now” as long as he can.
Either option demonstrates he’s a grifter scamming the gullible birthers.
Don’t underestimate how thoroughly Frank Arduini destroyed Zullo’s first affidavit in his work “The Annotated Zullo”. I am sure Zullo still has a major butt hurt from that one. He knows that the graphologist’s anything for a buck quick and dirty analysis would be similarly destroyed.
Because Volin has no access to the elusive Hayes report?
Based on the email from Hayes to RC, I believe that the Hayes report does conclude that the Obama certificate is a forgery. My theory is one of these:
1. The Hayes report is a crappy report
2. The Hayes report cannot be attacked if it is not made public
3. Zullo wants to make money from it.
My bet is 3.
But, but, but aren’t Zullo and Volin on the same side?
I agree.
Next question: How long does he have to make this scam work? Strikes me that the clock is running down on the charade as general interest wanes
I can’t imagine that the Hayes report will be the silver bullet Zullo needs and if it is he’ll have to explain why he kept it hidden for so long. He can’t win……and won’t.
“I would think that most people as sophisticated as a member of Congress or their staff, would take one look at the Sheriff’s Kit and think “what a load of crap!”
In my opinion, this has never been an impartial “investigation.” It is purely political in nature with a particular, predetermined goal as the outcome. Zullo’s daffydavit is in a word, ridiculous. The key indicator of forgery, the race codes, are not even mentioned by Zullo in his daffydavit. The people and the “experts” he has surrounded himself with are uniformly birther zealots that wouldn’t know truth from fiction if it hit them over their collective heads. The truth doesn’t matter. Ignoring their articles of incorporation that specify the CCCP is to avoid political propaganda is proof positive that the CCCP is very much a rougue body with very questionable motives, certainly, least of all, the truth. This is the foundation for the “Sheriff’s Kit.” Doc, you expressed it very well. “What a load of crap!”
If “the Klown’s” latest batch of ebidence is so wonderful, then all he needs to do is take it to the county prosecutor or the state AG. Oh wait, they’ve already told him at least once to pound sand unless and until he actually comes up with something that wouldn’t get them laughed out of court, and I’m betting this isn’t one bit different than his last efforts at fantasy fiction. This will no more see the light of day than any of the rest of it has. The Reed Hayes report isn’t going to be anything different either, since he isn’t qualified to pontificate on anything that would be of substance with regard to the LFBC, so still and all, Zullo’s got the same nuttin’ he’s had all along.
I’m quite familiar with that and its thoroughness.
4. All of the above.
I’m going with all three, for the following reasons:
1. Hayes has no expertise that could possibly be of any value to the Klown possee.
Hayes has no expertise in anything except graphology, which quite frankly is a pseudo art at best.
He is not certified in anything else that would remotely be of value to the Klown Possee.
There is nothing Hayes could possibly report that would be of any value whatsoever, and Zullo knows it,
which is why it hasn’t been released.
2. If it had contained anything at all viable, Zullo the Klown would have been tumpeting it from the rooftops.
3. If Zullo can keep it under wraps and pretend they are proceeding based on the report he ban beg for more money.
Seconded.
#1 is obvious because I think the chance that we’ve all been wrong and actual evidence of actual forgery turns up this late in the game is negligible.
This becomes even clearer when you realize how much attention Zullo is trying to divert to his other hand (“look over here, universe-shattering information, forget about the Hayes report”). If the report had anything substantial, he’d keep referring to it.
#2 is what actually puzzled me. I never thought Zullo would worry what Obots could do to his prrrecccciousss evidencccce. Especially if his alternative is to risk putting off more birthers with vague claims of “in a few months”. I can only guess that some of his “VIP” contacts (i.e. idiots like Steve Stockman who might risk going full-tilt birther) have told him they can’t support him publically as long as his “evidence” keeps getting shredded within days of being published. People like Stockman need plausible deniability – they can go “this law enforcement guy promised me what he’s got is rock solid”, they cannot go “hey, I know this has been shown to be bullcrap but I still believe in it anyway”.
#3 is Zullo’s endgame, a final milking of the faithful.
The name says it all. They invented it because they have tried Congress for 5 years now, to no avail, so their next strategy was to try every single sheriff in the country (hoping for some kind of avalanche effect). The fact that the “Sheriff’s Kit” now winds up back in Congress shows how little they achieved with it.
there is another #4 other than “All of the Above” Zullo is too incompetent to think of putting his best piece of evidence up front.
Quite possibly, but I would bet that the report also includes major disclaimers to the effect that forgery cannot be proven without examining the original document, or words to that effect.
I would find any claims of forgery to be quite limiting if they are based on the PDF alone. Furthermore, as I have shown that most ‘signs of forgery’ can be explained by a simple xerox workflow, I am not sure if Hayes would continue to make his assertions.
It depends. There are at least three different levels on which forgery can be proven, and two of them have been (unsuccessfully) tried by birthers.
1. The pure physical level. For a physical document, this would mean “proving the ink used wasn’t invented back then” (something that shot down the “Hitler diaries”). For a digital document, the concept doesn’t quite apply (it would rather be #3 applied to metadata, such as discovering a document allegedly produced by Acrobat in 2005 contains a modern Acrobat X header).
2. The alteration level. Proving clear signs of alteration (error level analysis for a digital image, paper being sliced off and overwritten on a paper document) proves forgery.
3. The data level. Proving the data on the document cannot be as they are. An example would be a purported 1950 document that says “Republic of Kenya”. For the LFBC, birthers tried this with “Race: African”, “wrong codes”, “number out of sequence”. Another example would be to prove the doctor who signed it never worked there.
Only #3 would be possible by only looking at the PDF, so any “100% proof that convinces the greatest skeptic” would have to be a clear anachronism in the data.
One ex-sheriff from Arizona is now offering an authentic looking CSPOA (Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association) badge in a fold out wallet for a price. One can even pick out their rank as a badge holding CSPOA Posse Member. Can you imagine the legal fun these CSPOA Posse Members will have when they show their badges to people across America? Is this intended to give more authority to the Sheriffs Kits? What a hoot!
Our right-wing loons are selling “German Reich ID cards” which they claim have been “accepted by several foreign states” (by that they mean the Principality of Sealand). Their other claim to legality is that nobody has ever been indicted for using forged IDs when using them (the correct explanation is that these “ID cards” are considered toy documents by the authorities).
This is a scam fronted by Richard Mack, former sheriff of Graham County in eastern Arizona, who now lives in Texas.
And its intent is simple…..to separate the gullible from their money.
Well, maybe they think the badges will get them “law enforcement”discounts as they travel across the country with their important evydunce contained in their Sheriffs Kits.
If they’re foolish enough to buy one of the badges and they’re foolish enough to flash it around then I suspect the only discount they’ll get is a free night’s stay in the local lockup.
I thought he moved back to AZ.
It looks like he is now in Higley, a little town in southeast Maricopa County.
I see that he was going to sue the SPLC in 2011…how did that go for him?
I was going to make an off-topic comment that Graham County has one of the most beautiful ‘unknown’ drives in America, but the I checked the map for the highway number and it is actually in Greenlee County next door.
Highway 191 runs north to south and if you start out from say, Alpine, about a half hour before dusk and head south to Safford, you get to watch the day turn to night; you can actually see the terminator move across the sky (assuming there is no cloud cover, of course). Make sure you are driving a convertible and put the top down. I love that drive. It is incomparable to any I have seen anywhere.
Yes…..it’s the Coronado Trail and you’re right…..it is a spectacular drive.
The rest of the story, as they say, is that it used to be U.S. 666. Between the satanists and the folks who stole the route signs to hang on the wall of their dorm room the state finally convinced the feds to renumber the route in the 80’s or 90’s.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that!
The NM parts were only renumbered 10 years ago:
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/us666.cfm
http://www.rense.com/general39/bye.htm
The signs are still hot items.
Long decried as a deadly route, they’ve finally started widening and upgrading old 666. Meanwhile, on the eastern side of NM, I’ve found state highways that are still only gravel roads!
I’d forgotten about the section in NM. Never drove it.
I’ve done the section in AZ a number of times and the north to south trip is the best as you drop over 4,000 feet and its all laid out in front of you.
I recently found some prints (remember those?) of pictures I took on my first trip in the mid-60’s.
Oh Yeah!. And on a a night with a full moon? Wow.
Lying and Fraud at obamaconspiracy.org…
“Even if the birth certificate is a fake, putting a fake document on the Internet is not a crime, and every President lies (well maybe not Jimmy Carter which was one of his problems). The birth certificate was never submitted to anyone as a legal document or used in candidate filings. Lying on TV is not fraud.” – Dr Conspiracy
Wikipedia says “fraud” is:
In criminal law, fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent, and verb is defraud. Fraud is a crime and a civil tort at common law, though the specific criminal law definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud.
If wikipedia is correct, then lying on tv might be fraud if it is done for personal gain or to damage another. Wouldn’t lying to keep the pampered presidency job count as a lie for personal gain?
Do conspiracy doctors have the same license to lie as presidents?
just askin’
No.
Next question?
Why is CarlOrcas as casual a liar as presidents and conspiracy doctors?
Why don’t you tell us what crime(s) have been committed by people posting on this blog?
Be specific, please: Definitions, elements, jurisdiction. You know….that legal stuff. And, no, Wikipedia won’t cut it.
Off topic. Of course, you’re right. Kindly explain why the prosecutor in Maricopa County refused to file charges when Sheriff Joe, America’s sheriff, reported the crime?
Of course, first and foremost, there is the small detail that the President has not lied in this matter.
just answerin’
While you were looking up “fraud,” you apparently forgot to check Wikipedia for the answer to your question.
Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
You may want to consider that such questions, like the one you ask below, could be called fraudulent, at least ethically, if you care about such things as much as you suggest.
A smarter man would know when he’s licked–
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1537/
“The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) out of it again–and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers–or else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten out that little difficulty, but it looks different now.”
/quote from ORYR:
Lysander Spooner 1 day ago
Dr. Con-job is getting weak in the knees. He recently published this profound change in approach:
“Even if the birth certificate is a fake, putting a fake document on the Internet is not a crime, and every President lies (well maybe not Jimmy Carter which was one of his problems). The birth certificate was never submitted to anyone as a legal document or used in candidate filings. Lying on TV is not fraud.”
Good luck with that, Davidson.
/endquote
I am sure that the concept of relevance is like rocket science for birthers …