Jul 09 2008
Obama Birth Certificate Not Forged – All Claims Otherwise Are Fantasy
I am really, really disappointed in how fevered the rightward swamps have become. After the purity wars and intolerance from the far right to differences of opinion from members of what was a governing conservative coalition, I did not think it could get much worse. But the lunacy over the Obama BC images is just embarrassing – and I mean cringing, hide-your-head-in-shame embarrassing. Especially after I thought explained why the conspiracists were all wrong.
“Experts” are being trotted out who have one common gift, how quickly and easily they demonstrate all “experts” are not equal. Just like some bargain brand scientists can’t get over their global warming fetishes, there are some “experts” out there I wouldn’t pay to wash my car, and I know I am NOT an expert in imaging. But if you can’t impress me, then your “expertise” is very substandard.
Update: I am a computer expert, which covers all aspects of computers and how they manipulate data. I am also a NASA engineer who focuses on and reviews computer and communications systems flight and ground. Documents are a simple niche in my world. This ain’t rocket science folks. Â
And I should also note LJStrata was at the forefront of information and computer systems, working on the first HTML, working on the first object oriented systems, plus much, much more. She is one of the best who has deployed many operational SW systems that do more than just handle documents. Those who pretend to pass us off as amateurs are showing that emotion is driving them, not logic and deduction. – end update
Let me pick on Pam of Atlas Shrugs to demonstrate my point. She wonders who died and made be the one to make the final call on the BHO BC rumors. Well, no one died, it was just a bunch of brain dead efforts to create a conspiracy out of whole cloth. Let me debunk Pam’s latest “expert” (and this took less than a few seconds to figure out). Â Here is the ‘smoking gun’ they have that supposedly proves the BHO BC is forged:
The left hand images are of the border from the BHO BC, the right left hand images are from a Hawaiian BC of a Ms Decosta. The stunning (and painfully obvious) conclusion of Pam’s expert is the borders don’t match!
No shit Sherlock!
This revelation has the poor guy all confused:
But upon manually stretching them to match edge to edge I caught a glimpse of what I and apparently everyone else had simply not noticed. The security borders do not match. Literally. They are not even close to identical.
…
I am unable to explain the differences between the security diamond sizes and counts and the un-centered portions (meaning the diamond pattern ends on an odd pattern instead of even where it meets the edges of the header and footer boxes).
…
I am convinced that the certificate is a fake (and not really a very good one) and I went into this with a completely open mind (something the Obamanationalists seem to have lost). I also have to say that everyone who has been looking into this federal crime (and it is a federal crime even if the certificates were never meant to be used for identification) have done a stupendous job and I wish they all worked for my lab. Talk about a winning team.
Gag me. Well, let me point our ‘expert’ to clearly evident information in the two images – the date stamps that bleed through both documents, noting the date they were certified. Decosta’s BC was issued Sep 2002, Obama’s Jun 2007. Â Gee, let me think on this …. Â You think it is possible HI changed their border or paper in the convening 5 years that span these two BC’s????
Now if you go look at what this ‘expert’ wrote up, until he actually opened his eyes and noted the completely different borders, he was convinced the BC was legit. Until he discovered the clearly obvious fact that the border was updated between 2002 and 2007 the man was debunking the myths too.
I have wandered around the BC fevered swamps and seen other silly claims. But no one can explain how the mocked up ‘blank’ BC Opendna produced is of lower resolution than the Kos and BHO images if it was the original. Â Lower resolution transformed into higher resolution after being Photoshopped? That is something that is pretty much impossible to do without really, really expensive imaging SW like the spooks use. You cannot create higher resolution in Photoshop (or MacPaint, which Opendna claims he used).Â
There is no way the Opendna image was used to create the Kos and BHO images. And until someone disproves that this myth stays busted! Â
Finally, to clarify my point about HI basically confirming they released a BC to Obama last year it was a matter of deductive logic. Â For all those deducing conspiracies from pixels, I was using logic and the behavior of the HI officials to make deductions. In all those interviews with HI there never was the statement to the effect HI was investigating a forged BC. They were shown the Kos and BHO images and simply claimed they could not divulge any details.
Think about it. If they were shown a forged BC for someone they would not be casually batting away inquiries like they have been – they would be noting an investigation was underway. In the absence of any legal investigation by HI it is therefore obvious to deduce they looked into the BC date and it jived with their records. QED – if you don’t know what it means look it up.
Back to my main point. If conservatives think they are going to win back America by running around make wild and clearly made up claims, based on BS technical ‘experts’, they are kidding themselves. Stop inoculating Obama from future stories and real issues with this dumb fantasy.  Really, it is embarrassing.
It’s a set-up, really. The bait was thrown out and the fevered ones took it.
They just cannot ever get the point of this:
It takes a pitcher AND a catcher to keep the ball going. Who really reads the fevered swamps anyway? I don’t.
Thanks AJ for bringing sanity. Linked. We should be talkig for instance how Obama lied yesterday to Latinos as to effort son immigration reform
http://opinionatedcatholic.blogspot.com/2008/07/obama-lied-to-hispanic-and-latino-group.html
or pick you rissue. THis stuff is just pollution
Thanks BigSLU!
AJ
Lets say somebody had a 4000 x 6000 scan of a certificate to work from.
Could they not then put whatever size they wanted on a site by choosing the final smaller resolution.
Also couldn’t you blur things by reduction to a small size and then resizing it back to something larger introducing pixelation?
After all some of these are not direct substitution but mathematical manipulations?
As to the borders AJ why would you have a seemingly better quality of work old border replaced by a newer one of much less graphic quality?
If you have a perfectly good working border setup why change it to something that is so poorly executed as the second border is?
Most of these systems are template driven for all the forms used in a government vital statistics office.
It doesn’t seem to make sense to revert to a lesser quality choice.
Your confusing pixel (data set size) resolution with image (lens focus) resolution. When you increase the number of pixels to a blurry image file you simply get a high quality, blurry image. Now, if you take a high pixel image file and reduce the pixels you can get blurs when you blow it up, at a reasonable size the image looks fine.
Just go to google images and test it for yourself. You can find high and medium and low pixel resolution images which all look fine in their natural state.
When you blow them up larger the low pixel resolution image loses its ‘focus’, while the high resolution image will retain ‘focus’ because it at a much denser pixel base to begin with.
When you look at the BC files it is obvious at once which one is the lowest resolution, so you know which had to come last in the line.
Actually, my look at the borders on the older style show a similar slight misalignment. Could be a protective ‘error’ to detect forgeries.
Who knows why people design what they do? But I have seen a lot of garbled graphics in my day. It happens. Doesn’t prove anything.
No AJ
What I am saying is if you had a 4000 x 6000 original you do all manipulations at that scale.
Then send one size to Kos and a smaller version to the second site and you get you situation of how could you go from the smaller to the larger.
You didn’t since both started from and even larger image to start with.
If I scanned the original document in at 600 dpi I could have that kind of working resolution easy to do my changes and save out at whatever sizes I wanted for the final products.
The Obama seal thing I did in a very simple photo retouch program, now imagine what I could have done with something like GIMP for example with channels, layers and blend gradients.
If I put my mind to it I could probably build any of those items completely from scratch or grab components from all around the web and layer them and merge the layers for the final images.
Even in that simple photo retouch program I can set the pixel resolution for scanning and the pixel resolution for printing.
Not by size but in dpi.
If Obama was going to forge a birth certificate, no one would catch it on a border or something like that. The whole thing is silly.
You can’t add resolution to a file. (ie…”rez” it up). It’s a common request by people that don’t know/understand the technology, (despite the fact that Photoshop and other programs like it have an option to do it via interpolation).
AJ: again, I don’t know where you are going with this, but you cannot make the claims that you are making, not at all!
It’s not logical, you’re trying to debunk a myth, without seeing the underlying ORIGINAL; so you are claiming to debunk a Forged Birth Certificate, without ever seeing the Original!
You can’t do it!
1) I don’t know anything about Obama’s Original BC, but I can guarantee you, that no one on the Net, including you, and all the other experts, have ever seen his “original”, to begin with! So no one, can make any comments about it, definitively, at all!
2) The so-called “orginal” Obama BC, that was posted at the Daily Kos, IS A FORGERY!
That IS A FACT!
3) We KNOW that, because the person who Forged it; ADMITTED that they forged it! It’s that simple. AJ, you cannot “debunk” a forgery, and say it is “real”; when the person who committed the orginal forgery, has admitted that they forged the document.
That’s what’s going on here, and that’s what you are doing; which is impossible to do!
4) the person who forged the original Obama BC, even posted the link to the photoshop “blank” that’s available on the internet, that they used to make the first forgery with!
That’s also beyone dispute.
5) After the “original forgery” was posted by the person who forged it; the Obama campaign, took the forgery, posted it on their website, and said it was REAL!
That’s the REAL issue in this whole nonsense, which you continue to ignore; why would they do that?
I don’t know, but they did.
6) the person who committed the original forgery, was outted by Israeliinsider, they posted on Daily Kos, what they were going to do, before they did it, provided an example of what they were going to do; provided a link to the photoshop “blank” that they were going to use, make up at least one or two other forged examples, then the fake Obama one, then, when confronted by the Israeli Insider article, basically admitted they did it.
7) All Israeliinsider did, to expose the original “forgery”, was post an Original Hawaiian BC from someone they knew, and showed the differences, and end of story.
8) AJ, no one ever said, that Obama himself, or his campaign, released an Original BC, nor deliberately, a forged one.
Some Daily Kos nut, said he could forge one, took a BC “blank” from a website, made one, admitted it, and that was it!
9) After that, several people debunked the forgery for what it is, and was, a crude, photoshopped Forgery, which it is, was, and always will be, because the person who did it, HAS ADMITTED IT.
10) Stupidly, foolishly, for some reason, Obama’s own website, posted the Forgery, and claimed it as “proof”. Who knows why, that website does all kinds of stupid stuff; 99% of which Obama himself probably doesn’t even know about.
11) This is, and was, the end of the story. You can’t deunk a forgery, that’s admitted by the forger, as “real” AJ!
It’s NOT “real”, it’s a FAKE; that doesn’t mean that Obama’s original BC is a fake, it just means that the one that the idiot on the Daily Kos admitted to faking, IS A FAKE.
That’s the end of the logic chain. You can’t do anything more with that. You’re trying to disrpove a negative, so to speak, when you cannot do it.
12) I don’t know what Obama’s REAL BC contains, none of us do, because none of us have seen it!
We’ve only seen an admitted Forgery, which has been correctly debunked, and the REAL one, has NOT been seen on the Net; it’s that plain, that simple!
13) AJ, this does not require discussions about “dpi” and “resolutions” and “bleed thrus” and “seals” and “imprints”, and all that technical stuff.
The document posted on the Daily Kos, as Obama’s BC, WAS A FORGERY, done by an admitted Obama supporter, who admitted what he did, how he did it, and where he got the baseline “blank” document!
14) It appears to me, you’re trying to “prove” that a forgery, is in fact “real”, when in fact, the actual forger, has already admitted he “forged” it!
15) AJ, this does NOT mean that Obama’s own REAL BC is fake or a “forgery”; we just do not know!
16) As I pointed out before, he has a US passport; he PROVED to someone, somewhere, in the US Government, that he was a legally born US citizen, in order to obtain the US Passport, ergo, somewhere, he has a REAL BC, that was verified by someone.
But we have NOT seen it on the net. We’ve only seen a crude forgery, that was disproven by several people, and his idiotic campaign claiming it was the ‘real” one; when it obviously was not the real one, and the person who faked it, has admitted they did it.
AJ, you can do nothing more with this, from these basic facts, and to attempt to “prove” that an acknowledged forgery, is “real”, just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Very interesting…..
Dale,
You don’t know where I am going? Look, I understand that to many people computers are an enigma. I don’t expect you to be a brain surgeon either. But if you start trying to act like a brain surgeon (or computer expert) and you end up looking like a kook or worse – not my fault.
Obama was born to an American citizen, doesn’t matter when or where, it makes him American – check your constitution.
The BC Kos and BHO posted images of has no evidence of being tampered with, and neither do the images. None. And what information there IS in the images does prove one thing – the Kos and BHO images COULD NOT be derived from the Opendna image. No chance in hell.
And since all three images include the same tell tale laser printer dots on the front, the Opendna image could only have been created from one of the other two.
Facts. Facts based on dpi, etc – things you conveniently ignore. The Opendna image is not an original blank used to create the images.
Get over it.
AJStrata
Thank you DC for noting the obvious about image resolution.
Cheers, AJStrata
Merlin02,
I know what your trying to say, but the Opendna image is the lowest resolution when magnified – those clown sites showed that themselves.
There is no way that the Opendna file was the original, it is too ‘fuzzy’ to create the nice crisp versions BHO and Kos had, even though the BHO one has less resolution (clearly saved for the web formats).
[…] soap opera side show (as well as the Obama Birth Certificate idiocy I tragically got sucked into here and here). There are serious issues with serious repercussions out there, so why is anyone wasting […]
AJ: well, you couldn’t help yourself; you had to insult me, when I did nothing of the sort to you, and won’t by the way!
Ah well..
Bottomline, just like the Michelle Obama “Whitey” tape, which you advocated from day one, you’re adopting a position, and come hell or high water, attempting to PROVE it, when you cannot do it!
You were wrong about the Michelle Obama tape, just like the whole immigration fiasco, just like your last two election predictions, etc., but I don’t insult you about it, I just move on.
As for this issue; let me be clear, one more time:
The person who forged the document, has ADMITTED it, that’s the end of the story.
If doesn’t matter that YOU think you can prove otherwise, the person who did it, has admitted it,
That ends the story, and debunks not his forgery, but YOUR “analysis”.
End…of….Story!
You can talk all the imagined “facts” of “dpi” you want; the person WHO DID IT; has admitted it!
The other FACTS, you conveniently ignore, is that you cannot, in any manner, PROVE, that the so-called “orignal” BC of Obama’s that was posted on the Daily Kos, is, in fact, the Actual Original BC of Obama!
YOU CANNOT PROVE THAT IN ANY MANNER; NONE!
And, you haven’t! And saying you have, 100 times, doesn’t make it so!
AJ; I warned you about this before, and you just don’t listen!
YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR OWN ANALYSIS; and you wont’ listen to sense, nor logic, afterward, even when I prove you wrong!
You’ve done it again!
AJ; I am a trained Analyst, YOU ARE NOT!
I know how to “analyze”, and the first trap for Analysts, is NOT to “fall in love” with your own analysis; you do it all the time, and every time you do it, you end up being wrong.
Witness again the Michelle Obama “Whitey” tape; I told you it was bogus, you wouldn’t listen, and viola, that topic has suddenly “gone away”!
As for this lastest BC issue; again, YOU JUST AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION!
I, ME, MYSELF, I, have MADE IT CLEAR; several times; so let me say it again!
a) this is a NON-ISSUE
b) it is a BOGUS ISSUE
c) you’re taking a document, that YOU CANNOT PROVE, EVER, that was real, and attempting to do that!
d) you’re taking a document, that a person has ADMITTED to forging and saying its REAL, when you have NO IDEA, that the real orgininal, looks like
e) I SAID, TWICE, that Obama is a US Citizen
f) I SAID, TWICE, that he has a US PASSPORT
g) I SAID, TWICE, that he PROVED his Citizenship and his place of birth, to the US Government
h) I SAID, TWICE, as a result, this was all analyis of a NON-ISSUE
j) I SAID TWICE, that it doesn’t matter what you say about the BC on the Daily Kos, because you are analyzing an admitted FORGERY; which means what? It means it wasn’t Obama’s Original BC, which means you cannot say ANYTHING about his Original one, because you, and no one else, has NEVER SEEN IT!
“Obama was born to an American citizen, doesn’t matter when or where, it makes him American – check your constitution.”
Why should I check the Constitution?
I said, NOT YOU, but ME, I said, that Obama is a US Citizen; I SAID IT TWICE!
You just DON’T LISTEN!
MY ONLY comment, to you, TWICE, was it was just curious, that his own website, used an OBVIOUSLY Forgery, done BY SOMEBODY ELSE, NOT THEM, as proof of Birth, and it’s bogus, it’s bogus before your “analysis”, it’s bogus after your “analysis”, and it’s STILL BOGUS!
AJ; all you have done, is “analyzed” the Hitler Diaries, and just proved them Real, even though the person who forged them has admitted it they were forged!
That’s all you’ve done!
In other words, you’ve take a bogus Forgery, of a non-issue, since we already know that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, is a US Citizen, has a US Government approved Passport, taken a Bogus Forgery Passport, where the person who did it, outted himself and admitted forging it, and you’ve proved it was “real”, when in fact, it was never real to begin with!
Well done!
Dale,
I did not force you to drink the Kool Aid. Your claim that someone admitted to forging the images is a joke – like this entire idiotic issue.
The end of the story was a long time ago—any child born inside the US is a US citizen (whether the parents are or not). It’s been that way for some time. Obama is a US citizen because he was born in Hawaii/US. Period. Full stop. End of story on that issue.
As you say you understand that, what possible purpose is there to continue with this? I don’t get it.
I thought the entire reason some people were continuing with this “forged BC” was because they were trying to prove that Obama was hiding the status of his citizenship (which as I said was a none-starter to begin with). Given that has never been in question, what possible motive is there for going forward with this at this point?
To prove some KozKidz are nutz??? To prove some left nut forged something that has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether or not Obama is actually a citizen of the US or not?
As far as the images themselves go, there is nothing that has been posted to date that proves that the BC image first posted has been forged or was manipulated from one of the later posted images. AJ is absolutely right on that from technical standpoint. And I’ll back him up on it…having many years in commercial pre-press/advertising (including image retouching).
What else is there to say?
[…] credentials don’t equate to talent. Anyway, his first post on the matter was really a joke (see here) and he deserved a good fisking. As I noted in my previous post, HIS own words claimed the Obama […]