Obama's Wrong-Form Birth Certificate Charade

Who does he think he's fooling? Not the Constitutionalists!

[Article completely re-written 2001 Apr 29. Additonal edits may occur.]

I have spent the past few days plowing through many web articles and comments about Obama's just-released long-form birth certificate. There are lots of folks claiming to be on the Right who say, let's move on to bigger issues, or, this is a distraction, as they have since the matter was first raised; as if one cannot be concerned about and discussing this matter while still being concerned about and discussing others! (Perhaps those complaining are themselves poor at holding more than one thought at a time.)

Everywhere, I found those from the Left claiming it's all racism, of course, but far worse, mocking and name-calling in such foul ways the reader needs a shower. Only one Leftie I read actually addressed substantive issues in a reasonable way, and that commenter was not without occasional nasty snarks.

Below, I post what I've found discussing the issues with the birth certificate PDF released by the White House.

  1. The PDF has layers? (Yes, but)
  2. Word processing instead of typewriting? (Not terribly evident)
  3. It's built upon Susan Nordyke's? (Unclear)
  4. It copies the Kenyan BC birth time? (Maybe, but)
  5. Halos around the text? (Yes, but)
  6. The fuzzy document number? (Yes, but)
  7. Why is one word one pixel higher? (As Yakko Warner says, "ehhhhnnn…")
  8. Hospital name and Kenya name are anachronisms? (Bogus)
  9. Hospital address varies? (Bogus)
  10. Sequence of file number is off? (Explicable)
  11. Where is the baby's footprint? (Bogus)
  12. Was the registrar's name supposed to be a joke? (Maybe by his folks)
  13. Where is the embossed state seal? (On the bottom layer)
  14. Father's Race = African? (In question)
  15. Why would they release such an obvious fake? (Or did they?)
  16. Obama is not a natural-born citizen? (Iffy)
  17. What about Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin? (Monstrous)
  18. A Mindful Webworker's updated opinion (Everybody's got one)

A Mindful Webworker has been unable to resist posting our own comments, copies on this site here, here[*] and here.[*]

Since Joe Farah is the mad hero who has been riding this horse since it was first saddled (and since late-to-the-game Donald Trump wore out his last bad wig), here's WND's straight-up no-comment original article w/ pic of the new birth certificate.[*]

And here's what I consider one of the best statements about the matter:
"...it has taken three years of national controversy for a sitting president to grudgingly dole out a milksop of compliance with the laws of the country, this is the best lesson from today." —Joe Kovacs at World Net Daily[*]


Issue: The PDF has layers?

On this issue, claims of expertise abound, with many conflicting observations.

They might be innocent, thinks Joe Brooks.[*] Also, the National Review (not linked).

BigFurHat at I Own the World[*] says the layers "cannot happen unless the document was edited. … Furthermore, what is layered and the method of the layering is peculiar. … Notice that the type is on its own layer, and when moved it reveals that the background was placed around the type and is absent behind it. This indicates that this document was most likely at some time worked on in photoshop. … The burning question is, why would the person who created this thing leave it editable before uploading? When you save a document in illustrator you have to proactively check a box that tells the program you want it left editable."

At Gateway Pundit, Connect the dots claims[*] to be "an Adobe Certified Expert in photoshop, and also use Adobe Illustrator on a daily basis for almost 20 years. I’m also a college level instructor in both. … I can tell you this document is NOT a scan of an existing physical document. If opened in Illustrator, it shows a number of clipping masks and layers, areas blocked out to be replaced with different content. This is clearly a doctored image. … If it were simply a scan of an existing document, it would have a single layer, also called a “flattened” image, not multiple layers with separate pixels."

Kurt Nimmo at InfoWars[*] complains that it "appears the date stamped on the document has been altered… contains text, numbers, and lines with suspicious white borders indicating these items were pasted from the original scan and dropped over a background image of green paper&helip; Let’s assume the state of Hawaii scanned the original document and placed it on the green textured background. This does not explain the broken out or separate elements. There is no logical reason for this to be done unless the government planned to modify the document and make it appear to be something other than it is… No issuing seal can be seen…."

At Gateway Pundit, Locke Step fervently declared,[*] "The different layers are because you have a (likely) microfiche document printed on 'official' paper (anyone who has ever gotten 'official' college transcripts has seen something like this). Then it was scanned and made into a pdf. Illustrator tried to be smart and identified part of a scanned document that it thinks are separate and assigns them layer.[sic] That is what is seen on this document and even if there were un-closed layers in the original doc. The act of making the pdf would negate them. Get over it people and let’s get on with defeating him in 2012 by kicking his butt on the issues!”

Also at Gateway Pundit, Ann N. Emous contributes (emphasis added),[*] "When you peel back the layers in Illustrator, like I did, you can uncover the bottom carbon copy in its entirety. It’s really faint, but all the same information is there. … It’s obviously been heavily edited, any fool can tell you that. For what reason can only be speculated. They probably just created a cleaned up copy of a 50 year old document in really bad shape, just like any graphic designer like myself would do in the same situation. Maybe it’s a fraud and who ever crafted the fake document was too stupid to flatten the layers before exporting as a PDF. I don’t know, I’m only speculating, and speculation is no substitute for fact. … In my professional opinion as a graphic artist with 15 years of experience with digital graphic editing, this is most likely a cleaned up digital scan of a real document. I know, because I do the same thing all the time."

On the same page, AuntieMadder weighs in with:[*]

No, the doc presented this morning is NOT a copy of the original long form birth certificate issued and filed in 1961 (assuming it exists). THE HAWAII DEPT OF HEALTH HASN’T CLAIMED IT TO BE ANYTHING BUT A COMPUTER-GENERATED COPY OR “ABSTRACT.”

So they admit it's computer generated. That might include all the photoshopping that seems to be in evidence. Another exception might be to not print the late or delayed or amended notification. Another exception might be to make this an abstract containing only the LATEST (most recent) permutation of all the facts contained in the “full birth certificate filing.” Which might mean elimination of the names of the biological parents, if he was adopted, replaced by the adoptive parents. Which might mean elimination of his name at birth, as opposed to what it is now, after being amended in their records. Which might mean elimination of the fact that at birth no father was named, but one was later added, via amendment, but this computer-generated abstract isn’t showing that out of deference to his status as president. You see how it goes?

Even he can't get access to the FULL information. So what was embarrassing on the original that is now not evident on this supposed long-form which is NOT a TRUE COPY OF HIS ORIGINAL LONG-FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE? It’s a computer-generated abstract, created just for him outside their usual policies and procedures. Didn’t a legislator want to pass a law so they could do just this? Create a 'something' especially for Obama? Well, looks like it’s been done without a special law.

(again, thank you to SapphireSunday, commentator at Post & Email News, for the preceding two paragraphs. I could have rewritten them and made them my own, but why mess with perfection?)

John Gargano comments at Gateway Pundit:[*]

I opened this document in Illustrator and I then expanded the actions tab in the Layers palette. It seems to me that while Illustrator may create layers when scanning a document, it does NOT create actions. It SEEMS to me that the actions palette has preserved the 24 basic operations done in Photoshop, including saving is [sic] as different formats. Some of the actions can even be expanded further, which means there were more like 40 operations performed on this file. Illustrator DOES NOT somehow on its own create a bunch of actions as an artifact of scanning a file.

Question – what was the origin of this file. If this pdf file was distributed by the Obama people, the single question that needs to be asked is, Why were 24 to 40 operations performed on this file in Photoshop, BEFORE it was made into a PDF?

I’m not saying this is evidence of a fake, but they should address these issues in no uncertain terms.


Evidence of word processing instead of typewriter?
The following comment by donh (no relation) at Gateway Pundit (same page as those above)[*] points up a matter that likewise struck me in looking at the Obama Birth Certificate:

"The beurocrats [sic] who made 1960s birth certificates had expert training in typewriter skills. Notice in the genuine Aug 11 certificate how all the entries at #9, #12b amd[sic] #14 line up neatly with the type beginning a hair space to the right of the vertical printed form line. On Obama’s bogus certificate the typed entries for #9, #12b and #14 have no set order and show random placements . The Aug 11 certificate also shows the data entries along the right side in perfect allignment[sic] along the left margin return lock set into the typwriter.[sic] On Obama’s bogus certificate only half the entries begin from the left margin return position. The stamped dates Aug 8 1961 in the lower corner boxes have a numerical and letter font that slightly varies from the Aug 11 certificate. The G in AUG does not have a horizontal bar . The U is wider. The 1 is thinner. The 6 has more space between the top tail and the belly o of the 6. There is a wider space between AUG and 1961 for stamping the day numeral."

Don't know about whatever Aug 11 BC this person mentions, but looking at the Nordyke BCs, boxes 9, 12b, and 14 don't line up any better than Obama's. The stamped dates could simply have been done with different rubber-stamps. Non-issue.


Issue: It's built upon Susan Nordyke's?

At the Obambi.com Blog,[*] Obama's & Susan Nordyke's birth certificates are superimposed:in an animated GIF. Nice work, matching them up, but the main thing to be observed here is that the forms match up, which shouldn't be too surprising, considering they're obviously the same form. Just how much manipulation was done to make them look like they match up is the question. Thinking that the most telling place would be where there is curvature on the left, I observe that the box numbers (1a, etc) are not positioned the same.


Issue: It copies the Kenyan BC birth time?

Harry H comments at The Sussman Show,[*] "…the Kenyan bc from Coast Province General Hospital, which has been in the public domain for a very long time, says baby O was born Aug. 4, 1961 at 7:24 p.m. The HI doc released today says Obama was born on the same day at EXACTLY the same time, down to the minute: 7:24 p.m. If the Kenyan bc were forged, what is the probability that a forger could have guessed the exact minute of O’s Hawaiian birth, which was unknown until today?

Don't know when the alleged Kenyan BCs showed up, but according to Jerome R. Corsi at World Net Daily,[*] the "short-form" BC released 'way back on 2008 June 12, had this same birth time.


Issue: Halos around the text?

"Notice the white around the text. That is known as the 'clarity tool' on photoshop."
The Sussman Show[*]

Possible explanation: No denying they're a computer-generated aspect, some say a normal part of the process of optical character recognition and text-enhancing.


Issue: The fuzzy document number

Karl Denninger on Market Ticker[*] says, "By the way, they were dumb enough to leave the cuts in the clipboard too. The bottom part (certification) I can see since it's clearly overlaid on a background. But the content itself? But that's not all! Look at this - the document number…"[*] is "soft," aliased and greyed out unlike nearby numbers.

Possible explanation: I thought this looked weird, too, but based on what others have said about how the document may have been run through optical character recognition and text-straightening, perhaps this single digit did not get picked up, and what we are seeing is a non-OCR original version. To test: does the last digit match the original layer which is reputed (by some, not others) to underlie all the layers?


Issue: Why is one word one pixel higher?

The Sussman Show suggests,[*] “Hussein” is typed one pixel higher across the page than the word “Obama”

OCR artifact? (What could possibly more trivial than one pixel?!? More info needed)


Issue: Hospital name and Kenya name are anachronisms?

Sherrie Questioning All[*] claimed that Kenya was not so named until December 1963, and the hospital did not get its name until 1978 (with many exclamation points). Wow-whee! If true, this would be rock-solid proof worthy of many exclamation points!!!!

Bogus! Unfortunately, the Nordyke twins' certificates show the exact same hospital name. And while the nation may not yet have been officially named Kenya, it was considered as Kenya, long before independence and re-naming, especially by those opposed to the colonial government, as may be inferred from this Wikipedia article.


Issue: Hospital address varies?

Some people wondered about two different addresses in box 6d. Careless readers, listen to Rick at Gateway Pundit:[*] "Let’s clarify, once and for all…. The 'address' is the mother’s address, not the hospital address."


Issue: Sequence of file number is off?

The Nordyke BCs have numbers slightly higher than Obama's even though they were born earlier.

Again, Rick at Gateway Pundit[*] offers this excellent explanation emphasis added: "…the file number is meaningless. It was not assigned by the hospital, but rather pre-printed on the department of [sic] blank forms and is to keep them unique, not as proof-positive that births are sequential, so a later birth could have a lower number, and back in ’61 I don’t think folks were as serious about first in, first out. It was just a pile of blank forms. My DMV has stacks of license plates waiting for people to come in, and if I walked out of the DMV office into the DMV parking lot and saw somebody driving out with plates higher sequentially than the ones in my hand it would not prove a fraud occurred. … There are dozens of legitimate beefs with this, my favorite being the exactness of the date of the mother’s signature, or maybe the race being 'African', or maybe… So, let’s lay the address and file number aside and focus on the real issues. Deal?"


Issue: Where is the baby's footprint?

The Sussman Show suggests,[*] "Any other birth certificate that didnt have the footprint and statistics of length and birth weight at time of delivery? No…"

R_not echoes this,[*] "Where is his footprint?"

The Magic M (a rare voice of reason from the left — and not quite as rude as most — responded,[*] Does the Nordyke twins’ BC have these data? No. … And which US state has BC’s with footprints? None. Prove me wrong, I challenge you…."

A Mindful Webworker responded,[*] Oklahoma 1952. Chicago 1985. Just to name two. (Pardon me if I don’t provide “proof” by uploading my own and my sons’ birth certificates. When one of them runs for President, maybe.) Apparently not Hawaii, though, as you rightly point out. Both sides can lay that one to rest.


Issue: Was the registrar's name supposed to be a joke?

Many folks, including the Israeli Insider,[*] were convinced that the signature of the registrar, which appears to be U K L Lee (although at least one commenter saw it as "Vick"), was a joke (i.e. a play on "ukulele") by the person faking-up the document. At Free Republic, one Patlin offers[*] a copy of a 1962 birth certificate with the same signature. Poor UKL Lee!


Issue: Where is the embossed state seal?

R_not wonders at Sussman Show,[*] "Shouldn’t there be a seal of Hawaii?"

At Gateway Pundit, the aforementioned Ann N. Emous[*] who said the bottom layer was a faint copy of the original, and the document was likely valid but so badly cleaned up as to look false, also commented, "Embossed seals don’t scan or copy very well, which this certificate obviously was. You can tell where some of the lower typed text was slightly offset by embossing, but any stand alone raised sections that did come through the scan have been erased."


Issue: Father's Race = African?

This comment is something I also thought at first look: From the Smoking Gun:[*] "AFRICAN was not used to describe anyone's race in 1961. It was *** or Colored." ("Negro" is apparently not allowed on Smoking Gun!) Pretty much the whole list at Smoking Gun looks to me like birther-baiting silliness. Many of these points quickly became internet fodder.

Commenter Magic M suggested at the Sussman Show,[*] "Race was not picked from a pre-defined list but by the parents as they identified themselves.

A Mindful Webworker countered,[*] Maybe in Hawaii at that time. Many other places, pre-defined list, like it or not. White (or Caucasian), Negro (not Black until, what, at least the late 1960s, probably later), Other. Or, in some states, Indian (AmerInd, not Asian).

Magic M continued, "It makes perfect sense an African would identify himself as 'African', not as 'Negro' — especially during a time where blacks were still effectively second-class Americans."

Mindful's response: "African" is not a "race" then or now; it's not even a nationality. (In the Goode Family cartoon show, the liberal clan adopted an African child. Joke was, he was white.) And comparison with other BCs from the same time and place will not prove anything, unless we find another actual African parent listed as African. Not terribly likely, but we could at least see if others were marked as Negro, just out of interest. I might've guessed "white" would be used, not "Caucasian," in those days, but from the Nordyke BCs, that guess would be wrong.


Issue: Why would they release such an obvious fake?

emrntyfgd comments on I Own the World: "Never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity. They didn't release this unlocked image to stir up trouble. They released it like this because it was done by an Obamaton who is so arrogantly convinced of his own superiority that he never bothered to double-check himself."


Issue: Obama is not a natural-born citizen?

"…the documentation reveals that Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan national subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, was the father… would disqualify Obama because of the Founders' requirement in the Constitution that a president be a 'natural born Citizen,' commonly understood during the era of the beginnings of the United States to mean a citizen offspring of two citizen parents."
— World Net Daily[*]

At Gateway Pundit, TC notes[*] that "McCain had to appear before a Senate Committee to PROVE his eligibility, which no one else was questioning … he was born to two American-citizen married parents living together while one was stationed in Panama on active-military duty… and the RNC vetted his elibigility upon his nomination. … No such ‘committee’ held a hearing about a senator who had already received questions about eligibility from statements by him, his wife, and quoting reporters, and he was NOT vetted by the DNC upon nomination. His own COLB, fact or faked, proves him ineligible by Supreme Court decisions. Since his mother was under 19 at the time (the law in 1961 was 5 years residency past age FOURTEEN), and his father was a British-subject foreign student, NOT a ‘resident alien’ (i.e. immigrant), he may very well be a ‘native-born American’, as is any other ‘anchor baby’, but fails the Supreme Court’s definition of the Constitution’s ‘natural-born citizen’."

As with many Constitutional issues, but especially citizenship, there's a wide array of opinion, and jurisprudence, apparently. Some insist one must have two citizen-parents and be born on US soil. Not the first time this matter has come up. Read in this Wikipedia article[*] about Chester A. Arthur's possible birth outside the USA, and his one citizen-parent.


Issue: Why not save Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin?

Here's a most excellent question many are asking.

Lefty Be Gone:[*] "Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin… is a decorated vet who, in 2010, after serving eighteen years in the Army, decided that he could not in good conscience serve for a president who may not even be eligible to risk our soldier’s lives at all. He was court-martialed, dismissed from the Army, lost all benefits, and imprisoned three days before Christmas, taken from his wife and three kids. He remains in prison to this day, nearing completion of his six-month prison term. It was at the moment that Obama learned of the imprisonment of Terrence Lakin that Obama should have put an end to the questions once and for all. For Obama to let a man go to prison because he is taking a principled stand against Obama’s secrecy, and to not at that moment save Lakin from imprisonment, is an atrocious injustice. …"

Carol A. Taber at American Thinker:[*] "Mr. Obama sent Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, a decorated combat-experienced Army flight surgeon, to jail because Obama refused to release his birth certificate. That document couldn't have been produced 6 months ago to prevent Lt. Col. Lakin's being manacled and shipped to Fort Leavenworth prison to rot in a cell? What possible explanation and what sort of character does Obama have, especially as Commander-in-Chief, for sending a soldier to jail, ruining his career, over the very same document the soldier had to produce for his military deployment orders?"

By the way, "Friends of Lt. Col. Terry Lakin are hoping a few hundred people will show up to greet the jailed military doctor when he's released from prison and returns to Baltimore, Md., on May 14." Find out more, and how to support Lt. Col. Lakin, at this article by Drew Zahn at World Net Daily.[*]


A Mindful Webworker's updated opinion

Although I have commented on a couple of websites that I could imagine this being a Machiavellian plot more intended to enflame Obama's critics, more and more it keeps looking like maybe somebody was stressing in Hawaii to make a really nice copy of Obama's birth certificate, and in the process clumsily made it look really questionable. Considering that, when we see the thin-skinned narcissist's slow smolder and not-so-subtle threatening simply because the seal fell off his podium, it's not hard to imagine that whatever low functionary caused this new set of headaches for Obama will find himself soon at the bottom of the Pacific — metaphorically, of course… we hope.

I tend to think, if Obama were any good as a leader, then, regardless of race, religion, party, parentage, or birthplace, there wouldn't be this controversy. President Brackish Rebozo makes Richard Nixon look as honest as George Washington. Immoral, incompetent, and a disaster of an administration, he can't be gone fast enough to save this nation.