So, he finally released his birth certificate.

I find it humorous that he tries to downplay it and make everyone who wanted to see it look childish. People were asking for proof of him being legal to be president, and it shouldn't be that big of a deal to just show it and shut people up, unless he has/had something to hide.

If a cop pulls me over, I have to show them my license to prove I'm legally driving. I can't just tell them to pound salt and trust that I'm legal.

He(and other people) have shown federally accepted proof of his birth in this country. However, it simply wasn't enough for the Right wing. The whole idea of a natural born citizen being the only kind of citizen eligible for president is idiotic to begin with; I dare go farther and say its just a nice excuse for the current Right wing to brandish its racist credentials without being overtly racist.

I was wondering when little BAF was going to bring this up. I assumed you would just call this a CIA forgery.

Please educate me on this... Do the so called birthers think that if, say, an American citizen gives birth to a child in Germany because her husband is stationed at a US base, that the child cannot ever become President? For example, wasn't John McCain born in Panama?

Or does it only apply when one of the parents is African?

Oh, and by the way, it's more like this:

You show the cop your legal state issued driver's license, but he refuses to accept it, asking for your passport instead.

I thought this issue had been resolved years ago. Even my crazy-conservative roommate was satisfied way back then.

I thought a birth certificate had the baby's footprints, etc.

Why would anyone think an American woman would chose to give birth in a 3rd world African country instead of in the US anyway?

So I did some reading up on McCain, and sure enough he was born in Panama. He later gained guaranteed citizenship through statutes / laws specific to the Panama Canal Zone, but these could not possibly trump the Constitution's requirement to be natural born.

So if you think that somebody is disqualified for not being born on American land, then McCain is also disqualified. You cannot cherry pick which candidates it applies to.

For instance, FDR Jr. was born in Canada. I'm not sure if he ever ran for President, but it's kind of funny to think that somebody whose natural father was President for 12 years would be not eligible due to not being a "natural born" citizen.

What? Are you thinking of the non-legal hospital's birth certificate found in your mother's scrapbook?

The paper with the baby's identifying footprints isn't legal? I'm dumb(founded!)

It is not. It's just something the hospital prints out for the fun of it. (If it is stamped with the county's seal and signed by the county clerk, then it would be considered a legal document... but as far as I know, they never are.)

I just got my "certificate of live birth" out, and I was born in the USA.

I am now the age my dad was when I was born. I cannot imagine having six children at my age.

Your dad didn't have a computer for entertainment.

[EDIT]

http://www.thetreeofliberty.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1495321#post1495321

The certificate has been out for a long time. Some time ago, they passed legislation in Hawaii allowing them to ignore requests for the birth certificate, because they had become overburdened from complying and sending out copies to all the nut-jobs who were asking for it.

My favorite part of today's headline is Donald Trump's reaction:

"Today I'm very proud of myself, because I've accomplished something that no one else has been able to accomplish. Our president has finally released a birth certificate."

lawlz!

I wonder if he'll do better or worse than Bush...

I don't know where my birth certificate is, but I can assure you I'm born.

Look at your avatar! You were hatched!

The first time I heard about this I checked wikipedia, and snopes and was satisfied. Did you know that the long form they kept asking for is actually less legal than the short form he already provided years ago?

And it wasn't like he could just go and get it like they keep saying. He had to have his lawyers FOIA it; they don't just give those out to you, and there's no reason to ever need it anyway, since they're not useful, the short form is legally accepted in any court of law.

This whole thing was a big ridiculous joke meant to distract us from the real issues, because we all have the attention spans of goldfish. And now Trump has the gal to clown around and pretend like he actually contributed something to society when all he did was waste everyone's time.

And the sad part is a large percentage of American citizens will believe him...

"finally"?

I like to think that this is a clever attempt by the Democrats to improve Trump's ratings. He has to be even easier to beat than Palin when it comes to the general election.

Because obviously releasing this will do almost nothing to silence the conspiracy nuts. That is why he never bothered to do this before... facts are irrelevant. The instant he released it, I'm sure there were hundreds of racist Photoshop bums proving that it was fake.

I once read a site where an alleged "expert" looked over his birth certificate (this was long before he released it) and found evidence of forgery. How true this is is anyone's guess.

Someone needs to either change the law or crack down on all abusers (MCCain, Obama etc...). It should probably be changed so the need to be natural born is removed and that only one of your parents need be US Citizens.

Either way, we have no such problems here in Canada and while I am not a fan of Obama and the democrats, it does feel like nitpicking to me as well.

I think the whole law is ridiculous to begin with. Its only useful if there is no legitimate reason to deny someone the presidency.

The law's intent is to ensure that anyone who becomes president is loyal to the country and rather than make up a bunch of random properties someone should have (have ever held some public office, or have lived in the US for at least 10 years, etc) the founders came up with the simplest requirement that seemed reasonable at the time considering most people didn't travel much back then.

I mean really, if a US born child was kidnapped and brought up in an alqueda camp for his entire life and then moved back here would you really want that person as the president?

The term "natural born" doesn't even have a definition. So even if Obama were born in Africa (but he wasn't), it's possible that the courts would still consider that to be "natural born" given his mother was a US citizen.

If McCain had become President, then we'd probably have a definition by now. Surely somebody would have challenged his eligibility, and the courts would have had to listen to arguments since he clearly wasn't born in the USA.

But I agree with you regardless. The concept as commonly understood is dumb. Better alternatives:

• remove it completely

• require one parent being a citizen at the time of your birth

• require X years of continuous residency in the USA

As it is now, a Mexican women can illegally enter the USA, give birth to a baby, and return back to Mexico... and that child is somehow a natural born US citizen that can be President when he is old enough.

It's one of those things that probably made sense at the time it was written, with the war of independence fresh in people's minds. Probably a way to reduce the likelyhood that whoever became president didn't have a secret agenda to return the country to the dominion of the British.

LMAO!!! Watching american news is like watching "reality tv".

Does anybody have a copy of Adobe Illustrator to check this? All I have is the Gimp, and the Gimp claims it's a single layer. OTOH, the different characters in different colors does check out.

On the gripping hand, an ASCII dump shows several "objects" of varying width and height.

If it is fake, it might not affect his eligibility to be the Prez, but it does reflect poorly on his honesty.

Sounds like it was scanned with OCR enabled to me.

And the Hawaiian officials would be the ones responsible for a fake, not Obama. How would Obama even know where he was born?

I'm pretty sure I could whip up a convincing-at-first-glance PDF that claimed I was born in Hawaii and my name was Leroy Jenkins, but I'm insufficiently motivated.

Even the 'R' in Barack looks off. If I zoom in and scroll around in the PDF within Acrobat, it's slow rendering will draw the background layer or whatever, with white spots behind the text (as shown in the video), then the allegedly fake handwriting will show up a second after.

So it turns out that Trump is polling pretty high. But I recall hearing that polling high so early on in an election means you're pretty much guaranteed to NOT get elected.

When somebody posts a video of Trump's certificate having layers, let me know.

I'm starting to really believe that the Democrats are playing the Republicans hard on this. While the racist right will eat this stuff up, the middle independents will stick with Obama when people are still talking about this come next election time.

Hahaha. I'm going to have to grab another beer. This is almost as much fun as beating the hawks.

Racist right?

I'm skeptical about the birther claims. I'm far from racist, nor do I necessarily believe their claims. Obama isn't that great of a president anyway - my dislike for him stems from much more than some claims of him being born in Kenya. And it has nothing to do with him being black.

Yes, there's a large group of right-wing Republicans who are racist. Is that news to you? And the more extreme you are, the louder you are.

Yes, but I'm still trying to figure out why you even brought race into this.

If Obama's father were an English speaking white Canadian with a less scary sounding last name and there was a similar 0.000001% probability that he was born in Vancouver instead of Seattle, this would have blown over a long time ago.

If he were white, then people wouldn't be scared that he was a closet Muslim looking to destroy America. There are not many occasions where I would attribute something like this to race, but this is definitely one of them.

Again, these same people don't seem to care that McCain wasn't born in the USA. Why? Partially because he's a Republican, but mostly because he doesn't look like a scary terrorist to them.

And no, I don't think every person who has (or had, at least) doubts is racist, but I think the driving force behind this topic are a group of people looking to cater to the person who is scared of somebody who doesn't look like a righteous, white, God-fearing Christian.

The government verifies information about me if there is any suspicion. The IRS will audit my tax return if they think it's not legal, they will perform background checks and such to gain security clearance.

It has nothing to do with race, religion, etc., at least for me. I would support similar probing and verification of McCain, and disqualification on grounds of being born outside of the country. I just think that the rules should be upheld - if I break a law and the government finds out, you can be sure they will want to hold me accountable.

Well put ML!

As far as photo shop goes, people have said they've held it, again, one was a republican department of official:

This isn't an isolated incident. The Snopes people (or was it factcheck? I can't remember, it's been so long.) have pictures of them holding the original too (since the photoshop claim was used for that one too.)

And lots of other right-wingers have come out and said he was born in Hawaii too.

This whole thing is ridiculous. I'm not an Obama supporter, but he's better than the current alternatives and I'm sad to say, as ML put it, that I will be voting for him in 2012 as well.

As for right-wing racists, keep in mind also that many of the right-wing presidential possibilities for 2012, though they have denied it, have been doing and saying some crazy racist things lately. It's scary that people like this aren't in jail.

Edit:

I don't. Most of the rules we have anymore are just for the legalization of crimes committed by the government and big corporations... We certainly don't get to hold either of them accountable ever. At any rate, there's more than enough proof that this is all retarded and that you're just buying what trump is selling (that's his job after all.)[/opinion]

I have heard that they now have it encased and on public display somewhere in Hawaii.

This whole birth certificate has been pretty ridiculous anyway. We're talking the US Government--CIA, FBI; they know everything about everyone. I highly doubt they would let anyone become President, gaining full access to the little red blow-up-the-world button, without checking him/her out first.

Is Donald Trump not a member of any race?.. Hold on, checking his birth certificate(not really), I'm gonna say he's caucasian. He has a race. This makes you racist. Tell me, if you paint a white man black, does that make you hate him less and defend him vigorously? I would like to get in contact with you so we can perform some experiments to determine the extent of your racism, and you clearly are a racist. There's absolutely no doubt after these comments regarding Trump. It's just so awful that you would say a thing like that.

Now, we all know about the KKK. I saw a show once a long time ago where they had a member of the KKK speaking, he was doing community service, forced to pick up trash alongside the highway. The quote, as I remember it (it's been years), "Having to put this white trash in this black bag... it just bothers me!".. Now, I, not being racist, conclude that while different races may look different, they all express racism in the same manner, because we are after all human. I don't think there's a necessary mental difference between races. Therefor, it is completely possible to also be racist against your own race.

Now, there's a clan which you may not have heard of. It's a super secret underground liberal organization called the JJJ.. We at the Foundation for the Study of Racism have determined this to mean Jell-o Jive Jiggolo or something along that line. This is actually a group of people racist against so called 'whities'. Yes, they do wear black robes. See, the reason you haven't heard of them is because during their secret nightly meetings, they're all dressed in black. You can't see them! That's why the KKK is so well known and the JJJ isn't! Now, I know what you're thinking... The KKK surely knows about them even if we don't. You're right. They do. But they're two racist groups. Having that in common, they get along just fine.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure if I try to get you to put black trash into a white bag, you'll be thoroughly disturbed by it. When we perform this experiment, I'll have you in a white padded room so that you won't hurt anyone during your highly racist rampage... Which will probably drive you even further over the edge, but hey, it's the only color I can get on such short notice... In fact, I don't think they make black padded rooms. Your problem, not mine.

If you're interested, let's set it up. You can contact me at princealdubiofnigeria@yahoo.com . If you think the e-mail address is fishy, I borrowed it from a good Nigerian prince friend of mine that I met just recently through my e-mail. I'm pretty sure he's black, heck, he may even be racist like you, so you shouldn't be offended by e-mailing him. By the way, we'll want to set it up within the next 3 weeks. I'm expecting a 20 million USD check in the mail and I'll be living it up after that and no longer care about studying you.

[EDIT] I may need piccolo to provide me some assistance with some of that kick ass technology he's always whipping out. Maybe a perpetual-motion powered racism detector device.

This has nothing to do with Trump at all. I've thought the whole situation was fishy since day one, long before Trump ever started blabbing about it.

It had nothing to do with Trump, but now he is using it as a platform to relate to the conservative / WASPy Republicans. He knows he won't stand a chance against the Huckabees of the party if he doesn't get some solid backing from those people.

I meant my "buying into it" has nothing to do with Trump.

Yep, they'd want somebody who does what he's told.

They say the national pass time for the french is complaining, the british is drinking tea, and for the americans.. i guess its outlandish conspiracy theories?

I think the national pass time for canadians is being at fault.

{"name":"v6ERw.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/d\/fd3ba09953411c4ce81a7a6ebdeed347.jpg","w":640,"h":466,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/d\/fd3ba09953411c4ce81a7a6ebdeed347"}

Is "pass time" Canadian for "pastime"?

Would that also explain the discoloration of the ink that the video claimed?

No disrespect Matthew L., but I think you are much further from independent middle than you realize. If you spent any decent time around conservatives to recognize their differences you wouldn't be so vocal about your beliefs.

I saw nothing that looked out of the ordinary given compression artifacts and OCR style of optimization techniques. I'm sure somebody soon will release a step-by-step video that shows himself scanning a document that ends up with layers and the same sort of "inconsistencies."

Even if the document had been a 10000MB PNG, the same number of people would be complaining that they could see "pixels" and in their "expert" opinion it was a fake.

The problem I was referring to was where some of the writing was a single, solid color (instead of the fuzzier colors on the rest of the writing). One of my friends is using this as the most damning piece of evidence of forgery.

The same people who use verbal virtuosity to end-run the US Constitution are all of a sudden worried about a little-used and generally unimportant clause. If only they could have the same zeal about Article I Sections 8 and 10, or Amendments 9 and 10, then they might have a point.

Yawn.

Obviously it could be a fake; it would be easy to do. Scan your own birth certificate in using the same software and see what results you get.

However, according to the letters* that were sent back and forth, somebody stopped in and picked up the documents in person. So if it is a fake, that means that:

• The Hawaiian officials gave Obama's people a fake document

• Obama's people scanned in that fake document and then faked it again.

Thus, you'd be dealing with a fake of a fake. Does that make any sense?

So then you'd have to reason that the Hawaiian officials gave Obama the PDF as well as the hard copy. Which means that Obama had nothing to do with the forgery, but only the state did.

Or maybe Obama and the Hawaiians are both completely in on this. Then we get into a big conspiracy where it took the government three years to produce a fake document that was debunked in five minutes by some redneck with an iMac.

(* I wonder if anybody analyzed those letters to make sure they weren't faked too.)

I just found out about this little gem yesterday.

http://www.disastercenter.com/laworder/11000.htm

[EDIT]

I suppose I should add this too

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/voices/2002/Executive_Order-11000_Authorizes_the_splitting_up_of_family_units.htm

Obama's birth certificate has become a very big issue, shadowing the real problems the world has. It's just a shame.

{"name":"card2873.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/a\/caf9093df27451405f28fac2f619e622.jpg","w":851,"h":521,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/a\/caf9093df27451405f28fac2f619e622"}
(Courtesy of Indexed)

That looks pretty convincing to me. Lets not start up the bullshit machine and start saying that Obama didn't know... he had to know this is a fake, it's a modern forgery, they didn't have adobe illustrator back in 1961 (or whatever the real date it).

Can we apply the same standards to all presidents? They wanted to impeach Clinton for lieing, they wanted to impeach Bush.... this is proof positive that Obama is lieing about his birthdate, he has supplied a forgery. He is responsible for supplying an original document, nobody else.

No matter if you feel this is important or not, apparently Obama does because he supplied a forgery. Seems to me that lieing about such things should be impeachable.

So Neil, in your opinion, who created the fake certificate? Do you believe the published correspondence between Obama's lawyers and the Hawaiian officials is fake? i.e., Did they not really stop by in person and pick up two certified copies as the letters claim?

How widespread is this conspiracy? Does it date back to 1961 when the state (yes, the state) placed a legal birth announcement in the newspaper?

It is blatantly obvious that the PDF copy of the birth certificate has been significantly altered. No scanning software will do that to an image.

The possibilities that come to my mind are:

• The certificate is genuine, but someone thought it couldn't be scanned properly so they (or perhaps another person) tidied it up in Illustrator (or similar);

• Someone in Obama's camp doctored the certificate beyond just tidying it up, which could have been done for a variety of reasons and may or may not have been done with Obama's knowledge; or

• Someone wanted to make his long form certificate look like a obvious forgery.

You have to ask yourself, why not just scan the image at high resolution and publish the image? If you're not forging it, why add fuel to the birther fire unnecessarily?

I can be fairly objective about this because I don't care one way or the other. For one thing, I'm not a US citizen. And to be honest, I don't mind Barack Obama as a US president and don't think that there should be two permanent classes of citizenship for any purpose. If he actually was born overseas and the law allowed overseas-born citizens become president, then all the better for the country, because he would then be the ultimate role model for immigrants and that sort of inspiration can only be a good thing.

It's not a conspiracy if the official document on a government website shows layers where it was edited. It is fact. The document forged is fake, it was faked with modern software.

This isn't a conspiracy, it is fact. Obama is responsible, just like a criminal who hires someone to murder their spouse is responsible for the murder. A forgery was made, it was posted as genuine, and it is Obama's responsibility to make sure it is genuine, and it was not.

Also, as Steve++ stated, I have no stake in this either way, as a Canadian I don't care one way or the other, but the document officially posted is fraudulent, as many suspected and I think the public has a right to know why they have been lied to by their leader.

That's not the "official" document. Do you understand that the PDF is a scan of the certified copy that Obama was given? The federal government does not own the official (original) document.

To be clear, this is the timeline:

• Obama's lawyers writes the Hawaiian officials for an exemption to their policy of not releasing the full certificate, asking for two certified hardcopies of the original.

• Hawaiian official says okay.

• Obama's lawyers pick them up.

• Somebody in the White House scans them.

• Those PDFs become available on the website.

My question remains... Why in the world would Obama forge a forgery? It doesn't make any sense.

Do you understand the PDF posted contains an image that has been edited in Illustrator and not scanned?

Or do you put on the blinders and pretend it isn't true and just cry "conspiracy theorists!"?

Correct.

Now you're just extrapolating the facts until you reach what seem to be the most obvious conclusion. If you just stick to the facts that you know, then you can't honestly come to any conclusion yet.

Neil, Let's take this one step at a time...

I'm asking about the two certified, hard copies that the state of Hawaii gave to Obama. Do you think those are fake?

Why not just scan them at high resolution with a high quality scanner and release the raw images? Surely that would settle the debate to the extent that it would be quite a stretch to still cry foul (which some birthers will no matter what).

Matthew: Have you actually SEEN these original documents? All I can go by is what Obama has officially released on the government website, if I can't trust that, what can I trust??

Because I doubt a computer expert made the scans. e.g., When I ask my mom to scan something for me (I don't have a scanner), she emails me a PDF ... even if it's a photograph.

My point remains: you cannot claim the PDF is forged without believing that the state of Hawaii is in on this. i.e., It must be a conspiracy issue.

It's laughable to think that Obama took one of the certified hard copies, scanned it in, forged it, forgot to flatten the layers, and then the Hawaiian official never piped up to say "wait a minute, those aren't the documents I gave them."

No. I've never seen my original birth certificate either.

So are you saying that the Hawaiian official who said she certified the copies is lying? i.e., A conspiracy.

I am saying that the document that was officially released on the government website contains a forged image. It IS forged, you cannot deny it. Why? Who knows. This isn't a conspiracy, it's fact.

Never thought of it that way. If the certificate that Hawaiian officials gave him were genuine, why edit them? If they were forged, why fake a fake? It makes no sense.

Anyway, good thread guys, keep it up.

EDIT:

@Neil: How do you know its forged? You know because others say so or because you know your forged documents so well?

Does anyone have Illustrator? I can create exactly the same kind of layers (e.g. letters which are a bit darker than the rest go into the same layers) in Inkscape when vectorizing a bitmap. The default even is 8 layers. So this might not even be OCR just Illustrator doing a vectorization pass on the scanned in bitmap.

I'am dazzled, unbelievable, but I'm not surprised, I'm just truly wondering do the people of the US care about anything anymore, how can they ignore the criminality of the last ten years?

Its the same in every country. Anything that makes the news will usually overshadow the real issues. Still, its way more fun this way.

This a bad question to ask, because you've just diverted away from the core issue of why it doesn't make any sense.

You should go more like this: Let's assume the document is forged. Now tell me: who forged it? And then work your way backward to the source.

Neil is unwilling to reason that out because he doesn't want to jeopardize his belief that it is a forgery. And he doesn't want to come out looking like a conspiracy nut. So he sits tight at "it's a fake, and I don't care about anything else."

Somebody took Trump's certificate and ended up with layers too. But again, that will never prove anything to anybody. I prefer to point out the logical inconsistencies of how a forged document makes no sense unless there is a conspiracy at hand.

That's a ridiculous point. You're trying to override facts by being dismissive about the motive. I don't give a flying fuck about a single possible motive - If that single possible motive is some crackpot conspiracy theory, then somehow that invalidates the cold, hard evidence.

I'm just a technical person and it pains me to see such incompetence at this level of any government, especially that of the largest developed nation. When you look at just the PDF as a technically knowledgeable person and don't really care one way or another about the implications of what you're seeing, then you're in a good position to make a judgements as to the likelihood of it being a forgery.

Now that I think of it, that's at least plausible. Think about it - Obama might not be an Illustrator expert, but he most probably knows enough to identify software fit for the purpose, purchase, download and install it, then be able to use it to achieve the crappy result you're seeing. The only thing is that he probably wouldn't have the time. Still, it's quite funny to imagine the president of the USA doing this himself.

I don't really understand what you're saying, to be honest.

I'm just arguing that there's only two scenarios here that have any sort of logical consistency:

1. The state of Hawaii supplied Obama with a forged PDF and a forged certified copy. i.e., A conspiracy.

   
   

2. The PDF was a result of scanning and optimizing a legitimate certified copy.

If somebody wants to take scenario 1, then I'm fine with that. I completely disagree with them, but I cannot discount them on logical fallacies.

It's very difficult to see how that theory is even plausible. It's reeks of burying your head in the sand.

I would really like to see similar results reproduced by scanning software on other documents.

I've never used Illustrator, but it seems highly suspect that the software would randomly split the image into all those layers, and randomly change colors of parts of the text, etc.

But, if you can show that Illustrator does this as some sort of "optimization," I'll be less skeptical.

The issue we have is no one here has Illustrator. Once we find someone who has it, then we can see about handling this stuff.

I looked at the PDF of the long form, and just by looking at it I can tell that it is very likely a fake, it is so obvious that it almost seems like it was an intended joke!

The Kenyan birth certificate that's floating around the web for Obama looks more real than his 'real' one.

Just download and install the trial version. Easy.

For your viewing pleasure...

http://whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

Me too.

Have you seen Trump's certificate?

Just want to add that we can't rule out the possibility that they tried to brush the document up so that it is sharper because they were afraid that people will say you can's see signatures and such. In any case at that point it still forgery but perhaps it is still the original.

This is also interesting:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2326800

From 2009. Obviously Obama could have planted that message.

Oh no! A *gasp* reasonable explanation of why it might have been 'doctored' a bit?

But then they should have posted the original as well and say well we had brushed up the faded areas but here it is...Different from assuming people are bunch of morons and they won't notice. In any case they should not have touched the original and deal with the fact that it is so faded that it is useless, this just makes things worse...

Examining a scanned version of a copy for fraud is kind of dumb to begin with... Even if it looked perfect, it wouldn't prove anything (especially to birthers).

You have to examine the original one on file, which none of use will obviously ever be allowed to do.

Hawaii ought to make some money on this and let experts analyze the original for $1 million per person.

This is NOT! the scanned version if it was it would not have layers, and even if it was scanned you can still see that it was tempered by an image editor.

Layers being split up in that fashion are not the result of content loss or corruption.

What was changed vs the hard copies? The hard copies exist which IS FACT. So what did they need to change on the LEGAL birth certificate? Especially on the short form which is MORE legal than the long form?

Wasn't he there at the time? All kidding aside, I think the president should be born in the U.S. for the reasons the founding fathers intended. Releasing the document will not stop the birthers. This thread is proof. People are saying it's a fake or it's real and pointing out details on the document to support thier position.

Although I wish he would have shown the file being layer-less before doing anything. Anyway, you can download the Illustrator trial and try for yourself, can't you?

I don't think there's a demo of Illustrator. I'm trying out an alternative method of obtaining it though.

But it's possible at this point that Obama has teamed up with Adobe to ensure that all new demos/downloads will produce layers.

It doesn't matter where he was born, the issue is why bother trying to hide the truth. The issues are that we have rules and laws that are outdated and people are distracted and consumed by pseudo problems like where was the president born. This is ridiculous, if we cared so much about this then how did we let this happen, how could he possibly become president in the first place? I feel like the world is becoming a circus...

Start here.

There's only a "buy" option for Illustrator.

@Neil Black, great video. Proves that guy wasn't really born in Germany.

As luck would have it, a scanned copy of my brother's birth certificate is on my mom's old PC here. I'm going to see if it's a fake.

Adobe must be generating a lot of sales from this... is Obama secretly in league with them? What can their motives be? Perhaps they are behind the PSN scandal as well? Are they selling American credit card information to the Chinese?

Seriously, you're on par with McCarthy. It's actually hard for an outsider to believe that this whole issue is anything but a joke.

This demo of Acrobat Pro is useless. It doesn't even have an optimize feature that I can see. Off to try alternative sources.

Lolololol. Just saying that it's a little arrogant to assume you can expertly detect a forgery when most of you don't even know how image compression or scanning technologies actually work. Even fox news says STFU about this whole affair.

Uhm, we watched a guy who said he was an expert from Georgia show us layers.

That's a fact. You just have your head buried in Canadian oilfield.

Can you seriously trust Fox News? They have been working with Obama and Hawaii since the 60s.

Load the PDF up in Acrobat, zoom in, and scroll around. The split-second lag where it only renders some of the layers seems to back up the fact that there are separate layers. Unless you think Adobe made Acrobat split the PDF into layers, just so it could optimize rendering by only drawing some of them.

I don't have access to the example file he used in the video. Scanning in my own is pointless, because I don't have access to the tools that he's claiming cause the layers.

BAF, nobody is questioning that there are layers. Of course there are layers. They are created when you optimize a PDF, which is often something like an "optimize for the web" option.

I tried it out on a scanned certificate, and I got layers and seemingly mismatched text as well. The only conclusion must be that my brother wasn't really born in Illinois.

Did you watch the video? Did you see that man's obviously fake date.

This goes beyond Hawaii. This is a global conspiracy. All of our birth certificates are fake!

Make a detailed video, showing the scan having no layers or mismatched text before optimization, and then having layers and mismatched text after. Be sure to leave no room for doubt that they were added by the optimization process and aren't simply something you've doctored beforehand.

Because surely a reasonable, detailed explanation will calm the people claiming it's a forgery.

Any evidence against a forgery just becomes part of the conspiracy. That's just how it works.

The video you linked to shows sufficient proof that layers are a natural part of optimizing a PDF for the web. Even if I were to take the additional steps that you are suggesting, that would not prevent me from cheating. I could easily have two versions (doctored and clean) and silently switch between them.

If somebody is genuinely interested in the truth and doubts videos like the one you supplied, the only thing he can do is try it out for himself. And then maybe he would even have to study up on how the entire process of scanning documents works from a technical perspective.

And furthermore, what's to stop people from saying "Fine, these scans are authentic, non-forged digital copies of the certificate... but the certificate itself is fake."? Nothing.

As I've already said, these "forged" scans must be an indication of a conspiracy between the Hawaiian government and Obama. There's absolutely no way for Obama to be the only person involved. So people who believe in the forgery obviously believe in some sort of higher conspiracy; debunking one aspect (fake PDF) does nothing to the overall birther movement.

Why did Obama wait three years before requesting an exemption to the policy of not releasing the long form certificate? Precisely because of this circus; there's nothing to gain. People who understand the fact that he was born in Hawaii need no further proof. The conspiracy theorists will simply widen the scope of the conspiracy.

Wow, Matthew, if you bury your head any deeper in the earth it'll pop out in Beijing! LMAO.... it's like talking to a fricken wall.

Everyone else is thinking the same about you Neil.

You can get it at whitehouse.gov....

It would be nice to see some evidence that the layers are created by optimization. I'm not buying it, and I'd rather not have to acquire expensive software and buy a scanner just to test the idea.

I didn't realize you spoke for everyone Thomas.

Don't worry about him, he's just bitter.

Its pretty obvious. I just made an educated guess.

^ This. Everybody saying it's definitely a forgery must either be an image processing expert or they're bullshitting. I can't tell it's a forgery. I think it's fair to say that I've also seen scanned documents with imperfections like that and even seen imperfections like that on documents I've scanned at home. As for the layers thing, that can easily be attributed to whatever software was used to generate the PDF. It's a PDF! It's not an original legal document anyway so it isn't actually worth anything. Merely being scanned into a computer immediately made it useless for legal purposes. So yes, it isn't a valid legal document, congratulations on your discovery!

You're all a bunch of racists.

Assuming for a minute that Obama really wasn't born in the USA, if the CIA, FBI, etc., don't know the truth then I think that the birthplace of the president of the USA should be the least of any of your worries.

Oh, there's no question that the CIA, FBI, etc are incompetent money-sucking leeches. Thanks for pointing out the obvious.

So if we don't want the government to turn into Big Brother, we have to wait for a white guy to be Prez again? So we can argue for getting everybody off the gravy train. That's racist!

[EDIT]

This post was written was before I knew the crap Obama was going to pull, I did already know the crap the white furball known as Billary would have pulled.

http://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/594296/714013#target

In unrelated news... First, they try to deport his favorite aunt, then they question his birth certificate, now they are casting aspersions on his father. What next, they frame him for robbing a man at gunpoint, like O.J.? Obama must have really ticked them off.

It's not like Obama's a straight shooter either.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/25/secrecy
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/65600
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100121/1418107862.shtml
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=69601
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell082410.php3
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/obama-finally-accepts-his-transparency-award-behind-closed-doors/2011/03/31/AFRplO9B_blog.html
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/07/232224/Obama-Administration-Wants-Your-Old-Email
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1377479/Obama-administration-unveils-national-online-ID-system.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-administration-officials-tried-to-keep-sandp-rating-at-stable/2011/04/19/AFfAeO8D_story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?_r=2

Actually, when I state that what was officially release on the website is a "forgery" I am talking about the image itself, not nessecarily the document. The image has been "forged" that is, it has been altered as evidence by the layers. Does the image in the PDF represent the original document? There's no way of knowing without seeing the actual document, but if the image was edited, and that appears most likely, than that leads one to believe that it no longer represents the original document, which means the image has been "forged". It is being passed off as if it were an exact digital copy of the original when it has obviously been edited.

Why was it edited? What are they trying to hide?

No matter how you look at it, the original document is NOT being shown online, the image you see has been edited. Play your word games all you like, but a misrepresentation has taken place by the man (it is ultimately HIS responsibility no matter who did the actual editing) in the highest office your country.

Using that logic I would say it is pretty obvious that everyone thinks you're an @sshole.

Only sometimes. At least i kept name calling out of the discussion.

And how do you know it was edited? The most logical thing to assume is that the image was scanned into that image editor and then saved for the web.

Why wouldn't the Hawaiian officials who have seen the original certificate and have given Obama the document speak out if Obama has doctored it?

That's the biggest reason why it makes no sense that Obama has somehow altered the official document he was given.

"Edited"? No, that implies textual changes were made. But is it a direct 1:1 scan? Obviously not. I think the most likely thing is that it went through an "optimize for the web" process.

I have confirmed that it creates layers on my own scans. This is the opposite of "burying ones head"... it's called doing your own research. Don't believe me? Don't believe that video posted earlier? Try it yourself.

Is the PDF a legal document? Absolutely not! It's an unauthorized scan of a certified copy that has no legal bearing whatsoever.

The two certified copies are legal and sufficient proof. I've not seen them myself because, well, there only exists two of them right now, and Obama didn't think I should have my own personal copy. I assume one of them is on display somewhere if you really want to go look at it. Maybe Obama should send each American citizen a certified copy.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/afterbirthers-demand-to-see-obamas-placenta,6866/

Am I not understanding something? The document process layers as Matthew demonstrated, no edits required. How is this evidence if it supports the opposing theory?

I don't know one way or the other what's going on here, but are you really so naive that you think this couldn't be pulled off? Give the right person a bribe, and nobody ever speaks of it. As if these sort of things don't happen all the time in the government as it is - there is plenty of corruption.

The simplest answer is most likely the correct answer.

I guess someone couldn't distinguish between the phrases "forged" and "optimized by a scanner"...

I call 'em as I see 'em.

Optimized by a scanner? How would layering an image "optimize" it as opposed to a simple scan and compression? Please....

Then they should have paid some fucking attention while Bush Jr. was in office.

The layers don't tell you anything about what put them there. It could have been automatically done through software or it could have been humans. You can't know. How do we even know what software was used to create the PDF? Everybody seems to think it was Adobe Illustrator, but I haven't seen any proof of this.. Without knowing the software used it's impossible to say. Could a computer program have manipulated a computer file? ZOMG, I think it could have. So there you go.

The original document was not digital so it's obviously not an exact digital copy. I have a rule: I hate computer<->paper interfaces (AKA printers and scanners). Why? They do a poor job and are usually giving you balls more than they're working for you.

Matter of fact, just today I spent a good 40 minutes trying to finally get working drivers installed in Linux so I could print directly to the office printer instead of through a colleague proxy (I tried months ago too, but failed). Even though the exact model was identified and drivers were installed, they didn't work. I had to go on HP's Web site (which insisted that distros usually keep up to date and that I've probably already got the up to date drivers), which redirected me to a third party Web site, download some I don't even know, let that run, log out, run something else... Ugh. Fuck printers and scanners and fuck paper too.

No matter how you look at it, you are not an expert and can't possible know that. You are making assertions about the format of a computer file and the software that created it that you are not intimately familiar with. Pull your head out of your ass already.

Go fuck yourself.

I'd give up now before digging even deeper, Neil. The layers, they mean nothing. Accept it.

Matthew reproduced it; what more do you want?

Of course it could. The moon landings could have been faked. The 9/11 attack could have been staged. Elvis could be alive.

Faking a single document (via bribery) would be simple for Obama, and not too far fetched. But this "controversy" goes far beyond one "fake" PDF.

What's the motive behind faking a long certificate? It only makes sense if the short certificate is faked, and the official state announcements in the newspaper were faked in 1961, and that the people who have claimed to witness Obama in the hospital and in Hawaii shortly after his birth are lying.

And could that all be a lie? Yes. But only through an incredibly irrational thought process.

I know somebody who thinks the government kills people in jails and burns them in ethanol plants simply because "every ethanol plant I see is near a jail." Can I disprove that notion? No. Could it happen? Yes. But it's ridiculous.

I seen no such reproduction. You'll excuse me if I don't take his word for it.

I don't really have a dog in this fight because I'm Canadian and don't care, but this is getting kinda retarded here.
Even if you don't believe his evidence, you don't have any either (if you tried it yourself, you might. But you won't).
Also, that Onion link is amusing.

If I had the scanner and editor I would, I'm curious, but... ah well, I'll drop it as I honestly don't give a rats @ss who is president. I'm happy up here in Canada, never been to USA and don't plan on it in my lifetime so enjoy.

Yes, but I'm not claiming any of this. I'm simply questioning the PDF.

I know. But there must be motivation for releasing (in your opinion) an obvious fake.

The motive for the Hawaiian officials could be a bribe. But what's Obama's motive? Why jeopardize your legitimate and legal short form birth certificate with a fake long one?

Is the motive to win over birthers? Perhaps, but that would be very misguided. Any sane person knows you cannot convince a conspiracy nut of anything contrary to what he believes.

Is the motive to give Trump bigger ratings? That would be funny, but I don't see how it's reasonable.

I have illustrator and have seen the pdf. It's in fact divided into layers. But I think the reason was just to sharpen the text. The (few) text that is on the background layer is blury (and very illegible BTW), all text that's on any other layer is sharp. Here are two screenshots. The first one is the full view, in the second one I've removed the background layer:

{"name":"604025","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/9\/c9350416ff6ab6b0d674a5b75556cd15.png","w":961,"h":646,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/9\/c9350416ff6ab6b0d674a5b75556cd15"}

{"name":"604026","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/8\/d84fbfd85ac45761840429a9bdc09002.png","w":960,"h":643,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/8\/d84fbfd85ac45761840429a9bdc09002"}

[edit]
So to me it looks like they just attempted to sharpen the text to make it more legible (probably with an automatic method, due to the ramdoness of the layers).

I had a scanner about 8 years ago that somebody gave me FOR FREE, he'd gotten it himself FOR FREE, so it must not have been very good. Still, when I tried it on a magazine cover, I didn't think it worked, until I noticed that the scroll bars were extremely small. I was looking at individual ink "pixels" and scratches rather than a recognizable image. I couldn't possibly imagine why anything needed to be "sharpened".

The optimized "web save" even rotates the image in an attempt to straighten it out... It took my 10MB TIFF and created a 136KB document. I wouldn't expect it to look like a 1:1 scan after that.

Because someone saved the scanned document as a low resolution and low quality jpg You can see that in my first screenshot: lots of jpg artifacts on the non-filtered parts of the image.

So yeah, that's just an example of bad work, nothing more

Think of the cost to tax payers!

I've always thought Obama was out to lunch, but this birther nonsense always seemed nuts to me. Like 23 and Neil, I have no 'dog' in this fight being Canadian but I always find your politics more fascinating (and understandable) than ours up here...

Any digital anything can be forged. Hawaii officals say the document is authentic, that's the best proof you can get.

For giggles, let's imagine the document was released as a high-resolution png. In that alternate universe, this thread would have been almost exactly the same except instead of "layers" the culprit would be "pixels".

I would have accepted the conspiracy-theory if it had been released as a PNG with layers.

A PSD would have been better. Especially one with comments.

Since when has that stopped democrats?

Or republicans!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIsQJNTvlUE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eOfYwYyS_c

http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/herald-review.com/content/tncms/assets/editorial/d/c0/d14/dc0d14fc-70df-11e0-8720-001cc4c002e0-revisions/4db830df6bba2.pdf.pdf

http://youtu.be/n9mzJhvC-8E
3 min
[edit I keep forgetting how to link to youtube videos]

edit: Fuck, beaten while I was looking up how to embed them!

edit 2: This horse is not dead yet! Come on guys, we can do better than this!

NO WAY, I HAVE TWO TOKEN BLACK FRIENDS JUST SO YOU CAN'T SAY THAT! PLUS THE BLACKS LOVE ME! ;-)

Fine, my mistake. But like I said earlier, from my day 1, I just looked it up and found out it was all bullshit and that it started out as a chain letter -- from people who had actually held his legal birth certificate (and took pics of themselves doing it), from the supreme court (republican dominated -- and who thinks this is not worth having a case about), and even from right wingers (even crazy ones like Bill O'Reily has come out on this one guys, wake up!)

Agreed. The most mundane legitimate thing I can think of is "why is oil $4 a gallon... and why are we still using oil anyway?" yet instead, a birth certificate when he's already been legally accepted... Really?

The right might have you think that, but only because of how far right they are; it's insane. I can't speak for M.L. but what they do with their farce news networks is amazing. The Nazis would be proud.

Because of the miscolored letter? That will happen when a mechanical type writer doesn't strike with enough force. State of Hawaii says it's good, so it's good, got a problem? Take it up with Hawaii.

I think the people have a right to know they've been lied to by their TVs... Just heard in Canada they're trying to roll back some law that makes it so their news can't lie to them. If it goes through, maybe in a few years we can join up and become one super misinformation nation! Or at least we can tell people we are, and use lots of emotional arguments to make them think it's patriotic and good for them; the 3% who fact check will be branded as left-wing nut jobs, so it's all good.

Maybe you haven't heard, but this is now the Incorporated States of America -- as long as it makes a profit, who gives a fuck about human rights, or exploiting the weak? Also, if you see that bastard Assange, shoot him for us like a good mindless "patriot"...

THIS! * high five *

So you're wasting our time then?

I see a pattern here. Why question something that has no bearing on anything? What point are you trying to make?

So let me get this straight, in a country full of corruption, "they" couldn't find a puppet politician willing to be our president, so "they" found one in Kenya? Makes sense to me, that's what I'd do.

He speaks for me with that statement, took the words right out of my mouth, and then phrased them more coherently.

No I'm pretty sure that's you again...

I also haven't seen the tax records he promised...

Truth!

There's some logic for ya. Guess it is that time of the morning though. Might as well.

Another little prank; Donald Trumps signs a copy of Obama's "birth-certificate"
http://twitter.com/#!/KatieS
and now back to the regular program of bashing each-others heads in.

The BC is a good way to make people forget the real issues America is facing. It's a hell of a distraction.

I agree, the oil cost should be much higher than it is now.

Here, one liter is ~1.3EUR or 7.27$ a gallon.

Here in France we're around the same prices as Vanneto.

Here in "America" with such a low population density many have to travel many kilometers to get to work or school (some travel 200+ km everyday). If When gas costs us $7+/gallon we'll be fucked. Well, not so much me anymore. I only have to travel ~8 km/day now. Used to be more like ~60 km/day though. Gas is usually a bit less expensive on the other side of the Canada-USA border, but I don't think it's worth a cavity search.

I cross the border every week and have not had a single cavity search. I find the dentist does a much better job anyways

I did get asked to pull over (States side) and step out of my car once, but whatever they did was finished in less time than it took me to drink the cup of coffee they offered me.

So I've been pulled over once out of at least a hundred or so visits since I got my car

http://www.wptz.com/news/22826310/detail.html

I was joking about the cavity search. I've only been across maybe 3 times in the past 5 years. The first of which I had my car searched, my pockets (and all other occupants' pockets) emptied, and was questioned. The USD$300 spending money I had brought with me drew attention apparently because I distinctly remember one of the border agents holding it up to show the others. I think they profiled me because of my baggy clothes and hoody. It wasn't all that bad really. It usually isn't. Most of my encounters with law enforcement are actually kind of pleasant, but it still doesn't quite sit right when you reflect on it and realize just how powerless you were. And realize that the next time you might not get the friendly cop.

I've been thinking about going across, but it's unfamiliar to me and that still scares me. I always feel like there's something I don't know about new things that everyone else does, and that I'm expected to know. For example, maybe I show up at the border at 3:13 PM, surprised to find no line up at all, only to discover that it's illegal to go across the border at 3:13 PM so now I get a free forth class flight to Guantánamo Bay. While this example is ridiculous in nature, that sort of thing (albeit, much less serious in nature) happens to me more often than I'd like. That probably has something to do with why I don't like to try new things.

You drank the "coffee"!??

Yeah. Things got all fuzzy after that.

Actually it was quite good. You Americans know how to make a fine cup. (Well I suppose it was government coffee... so naturally it's all premium) Haha

I was detained and questioned for an hour at the canadian border (on the canadian side). Apparently they thought I was a terrorist because I had never used my passport before and neglected to sign it. Seriously - I asked what the problem was afterwards, and they told me it was because I didn't sign my passport...

The document you gave them was not legal. They should have thrown you in jail until you supplied your long form birth certificate sans layers.

{"name":"KDssc.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/6\/16fc816bf10fa3c671a000be85cf4768.jpg","w":450,"h":286,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/6\/16fc816bf10fa3c671a000be85cf4768"}

That's right it should be, but it's not yet. The real problem is "Why are we still using it? Electric cars worked and had great range 15 years ago" (by some accounts longer, but 15 years is easily verifiable.)

The amount you personally travel has little impact on how much the price of oil affects you. Think about the logistics of how food gets to your super market, and how insane gas prices would inflate the price of food.

The same cannot be said of everyone. Jacob Appelbaum, for instance, despite not having committed any crimes, has all his technology (cell phones, memory cards, laptops, etc...) seized every time he crosses the border, he is detained for hours and "interviewed" and though the ACLU has showed up to represent him, since he's not technically under arrest (though he doesn't have the ability to leave) he doesn't have the right for his lawyers to be present during the interviews. They tell him that he's randomly selected everytime, and then immediately comment on his prior day's twitter status not a minute later...

If it was gov coffee that just means it was made by the lowest bidder. ;-P

Or Peter Watts.

That's atrocious. Incompetent security personnel are the least of my issues with this crap. It's just disgusting.