Posted on 02/03/2011 4:21:18 PM PST by butterdezillion
The Problem with the Announcement Stories
Two items have been offered as evidence of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii: an online COLB image which the HDOH has indirectly confirmed in 2 different ways as a forgery, and online images of birth announcements in the Hawaii papers shortly after Obama’s birth. This post will explain why I believe we’ve been fed – and swallowed – a lie about where those images came from. Later posts will give a glimpse of just how far it seems somebody was willing to go in order to have something – anything – that would suggest Obama was born in Hawaii, a critical need since Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie told Mike Evans (transcript and audio link) he had gone into both hospitals (Kapiolani and Queens) with a search warrant but found no birth certificate for Obama.
First the claims:
Shortly after Barack Obama’s campaign website posted what they said was Obama’s Certification of Live Birth (COLB) and questions arose regarding its authenticity, Lori Starfelt decided to see if there was a newspaper birth announcement for Obama in Hawaii. She contacted the HDOH and was told that on Fridays they printed out a list of the week’s births; “The Honolulu Advertiser” used that list to print birth announcements in their Sunday paper. So Starfelt calculated that if Obama was born on Friday, Aug 4, 1961, his birth would have been on the list the following Friday, Aug 11th, and should appear in that Sunday’s paper – Aug 13th. She contacted the Hawaii State Library (hereafter HSL), asking for a copy from the microfilm of the Advertiser’s birth announcements on Aug 13, 1961, and was sent an e-mail with an image that had Obama’s announcement on it. She posted that image, along with her story, at Texas Darlin’ Blog around July 21, 2008. (See Post 7679 )
Several days later “Infidel Granny”, posting at Atlas Shrugs Blog, said she had asked a woman at the Advertiser office about birth announcements and was told to check the HSL. She asked the HSL for a copy of the Aug 13, 1961 “Advertiser” birth announcements and the librarian sent an e-mail with the image, saying she had it handy since somebody had just asked for it a week earlier.
On Aug 13th “Koa” at Texas Darlin’ Blog posted an image for the Aug 14th Star-Bulletin announcements, which he/she had copied directly from the HSL archives.
Around Oct 21 a poster at Prius Chat also posted an image of the SB announcement, saying, “Here's a copy I made today of the August 14th (could have been the 15th or 16th), 1961 Star Bulletin newspaper showing Obama's birth announcement stored on microfilm at the Hawaii State Library in Honolulu. I had to enlarge it to the point of losing the top of the page with the date and day in order to make it readable. The microfilm is stored in the basement of the library and was in the box marked Star Bulletin Aug 1, 1961-Aug 16, 1961. ..."
On Oct 29th Whatreallyhappened.com posted images of both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin images, which were said to be directly from the Star-Bulletin and Advertiser – which both had their microfilms stored at the Advertiser building. Note that he was not told to contact the HSL, as “Infidel Granny” says she was told.
Texas Darlin’ Blog archives, Atlas Shrugs Blog archives, the original article on Whatreallyhappened, and the Wikileaks page which also posted a copy which was a text-searchable file, have all been removed from the web, and the page at Prius Chat requires registration first; neither I nor several others who tried to register were allowed to do so. So the whole story of these claims and the images themselves have been scrubbed, except for fragments (such as the ones I link to) where others discussed and/or copied material, some of which have now been scrubbed from the web also.
I got Starfelt’s Advertiser image from a link referenced elsewhere as being Starfelt’s image, when the image was still available (“Infidel Granny” was given the same image). Whatreallyhappened still has their images posted. The Prius Chat Forum still has the link to their Star-Bulletin image. I copied Koa’s image from Photobucket when it was still available as linked to from the original post atTD Blog. (In my analysis links below I cite where each image came from.) So the images I have used come directly from the original sources.
To verify that I have not altered the images, here are some other places that still have images (as of today), although not necessarily saying the source: Both, Advertiser, Advertiser, Star-Bulletin .
And next the documents themselves:
When a person looks at the documents and claims about the documents, and compares them to what is actually in the Hawaii State Library microfilms, it is obvious why somebody would want these claims buried – although I am not making any specific allegations about who has done what. That should be investigated by someone with subpoena power. Here is a concise summary of what we have:
The Advertiser image that Starfelt and “Infidel Granny” supposedly got from the HSL is pristine. But in reality the HSL microfilms are so scratched up they are nearly unreadable. When a colleague asked the HSL librarian in late April, 2010, for a copy of the Aug 13, 1961 Advertiser birth announcements – the exact image that Starfelt and “Infidel Granny” supposedly got from there - this is what she was told about the condition of the microfilm (emphasis mine):
"As for your request for the Aug. 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser birth announcement page, I looked it up, but unfortunately, the microfilm is so worn down on top of being poorly microfilmed, that it is hardly legible. You might be better off asking another library that has a better, less used copy than ours. Or does it have to be the Advertiser? I checked the Star-Bulletin and that date and that film is fine. Let me know."
The Starfelt and “Infidel Granny” images are pristine, with no sign of being “poorly microfilmed”, which would be a constant state for the microfilms, not affected by usage. Those images are clearly not from the HSL microfilms as claimed. However, they match perfectly the images WRH got from somebody at the Advertiser office (with the exception of one C&P line in the left margin below the Asing announcement, which disappeared by the time WRH got a copy). A comparison of the images is here.
Conversely, the Star-Bulletin image – which is the exact same image for WRH, Koa, and the Prius Chat poster (right down to the same piece of hair caught in the viewer when the copy was made and the same waviness in the page being scanned), even though they each claim to have acquired their copy independently, and WRH even claims a different source - has a large scratch down the column of text. But the HSL’s Star-Bulletin microfilms are pristine, including the copy from Aug 14th, where there are no extra marks or scratches anywhere. A comparison of the images is here. To believe the stories of Koa and the Prius Chat poster, you’d have to believe that scratches disappear over time.
Summary:
It is clear that what we were told about where these images came from is not true.
It appears that somebody at the Advertiser office gave out images to select people with the instruction that they were to peddle them off as genuine – the Advertiser image to the librarian at the Hawaii State Library, the Star-Bulletin image to “Koa” and the Prius Chat poster (who may have been the same person), and both images to Whatreallyhappened.com.
This is according to the statements already made and images already made public, which show glaring discrepancies in the stories. There are other discrepancies in the claims which stand out to those who have researched the microfilms as well, and those will be addressed later.
But for now the question is this: Why would somebody at the Advertiser office deceive the public into thinking their birth announcement images were actually copies made directly from the Hawaii State Library microfilms by individuals acting on their own? Why intervene at all, rather than letting these individuals get what really IS in the HSL microfilms? And who was in on this deception?
Those are questions that deserve an answer. Those like Bill O’Reilly and certain “news sources” who cite these images as their reason to ridicule “birthers” would do well to find out exactly why somebody worked so hard to deceive them on where those images actually came from.
bump for later.
Re: “Sr’s Christmastime visit in - was it 1971? - was the only time Barry ever laid eyes on the man.”
Here’s what I have:
http://www.theobamafile.com/_family/Senior.htm#ChristmasVisit
And, yes, that was the only time they ever laid eyes on each other.
I dont think he was born in Hawaii. Just registered there. He cant release a longform from Hawaii because it doesnt exist. He wasn't born there.
excellent read ping!
I’ll get into the actual microfilms in a later post, but for now the issue is that the stories we were told about the provenance of these online images are definitely false. They supposedly came from independent people looking in the Hawaii State Library and the Advertiser office but in reality there is just one scan for each of the announcements, and those scanse were made by somebody at the Advertiser office.
Why did somebody at the Advertiser office try to hide that the scans were from them, and why didn’t they just let these independent people find what was really in the library?
Contrary to what we’ve been told, the birth announcements don’t prove anything about where Obama was born. Like everything else, we’ve been fed a lie about how those announcements could get in the paper. The reason to care about this is because there are people who wrongly buy into the story and think these announcements prove something.
And when a person sees just how badly we were lied to and by whom, and (later on) the destruction of historic government documents (which is a crime, I’m sure) we can see how desperate Obama was for anything that would support his narrative.
So this is mostly an expose’ of the lies.
The biggest enemy we face right now, I am convinced, is the treasonous media. And it very much looks like they are the people who PERPETRATED the fraud of the birth announcements. We need everyone to see and comprehend that, so the media is exposed for what it is and loses credibility with EVERYBODY - including the useful idiots who simply believe whatever the supposedly “legitimate news sources” tell them.
Top 10 tings you don't know about Romney , Number 2 - He said he doesn't know where his BC is.
Everyone is joking about it, and I think this is getting the people at the head of the DNC very nervous.
I have decided that I will file a lawsuit and file complaints of election fraud in PA if he gets on the ballot without showing a LF-BC.
Thanks for the ping!
The birth announcement means nothing unless it specifically states he was born in Hawaii. I know people who lived in MA then moved, but, when they had children a small birth announcement would appear in the local newspaper saying Jane and Joe so and so announce the birth of their baby - most locals know that jane and joe live in France now -
Sorry for the confusion. I thought the Library of Congress was part of the archives.
http://www.archives.gov/preservation/professionals/differences-loc.html
Ping for later. This is interesting...I am someone who believes one of two things about this:
1.) He is a natural citizen but has no proof
2.) He is, by law, not a natural citizen of the US.
I guess that makes me a birther, then.
You’ve done amazing work. But it’s a little hard to follow the story in part because you’re so meticulous about details. I encourage you in your blog to first “tell the story” and then use either footnotes (probably not feasible in WordPress) or an Appendix to provide all the details regarding claims/provenance/location of images with a header clearly distinguishing each (Infidel Granny Advertiser Image, Koa Star-Bulletin Image, etc.).
There’s 2 parts to the story. First, that Koa, Prius Chat and WRH claim to have gotten their images independently, yet they clearly are identical. This story would be most compelling if in WordPress you could display the images either side-by-side or sequentially, since going back and forth between clickable links is much harder and many readers won’t bother. Since you’ll point people to the original images (or your prior blog posts), in your Problem with the Announcement version, it would be worth circling key points of comparison/similarity, e.g., the hair, where images were cropped etc. I believe you make this case for both Advertiser and Star-Bulletin images. Again, for the sake of clarity, keep these separate. FIRST establish that Advertiser images are identical. Then turn to establishing that SB images are identical.
The second part is that these images are not from HSL. Since you’ve already established that the images are identical, you need only compare 1 example from the 3 to the genuine scans from LadyForest or whoever. This is the “where did the scratches” go story. But again, I believe you have a different story for Advertiser and SB. In the first case, the allegedly HSL copies DON’T have scratches while the genuine copies do. But in the second case, the allegedly HSL copies HAVE scratches, whereas the genuine images are pristine.
(If I have botched what you are trying to say, that just reinforces my claim that it’s hard for even an interested reader to follow the story).
With clear headers in the Appendix, any interested reader can drill down to get the details of where image X originally was posted, the specific claims made about it etc. But for purposes of telling your story, it’s cleaner to simply assert “Koa, Whatreallyhappened and a poster at Prius Chat all posted images of the Obama birth announcement published in the August 16, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser that they claimed were obtained independently. However, the following comparison of those images shows that is highly unlikely, if not impossible (you be the judge).” To the degree that you include clickable links in this section, it might be better just to have clickable links for each poster’s name that have within-page pointers that jump the reader directly to the Appendix section that details the who-what-when-where related to that image.
Anyway, once you’ve “repackaged” your stuff in this fashion, I encourage you to send it to Drudge, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and O’Reilly, and to Joseph Farah at WND so that this gets much wider exposure. You can try sending it to Darrell Issa and all the Republican members on House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but I’m guessing they’re more likely to have an interest in holding hearings or exploring this further only after some “buzz” has been generated by one or more of the individuals above, who have huge megaphones to the public.
Technically, there isn’t a law that defines natural born citizenship. This is what the Supreme Court said in at least two cases. The definition is extraconstitutional.
What Obama lacks is proof of birth in Hawaii. His birth appears to have been registered in Hawaii, but it was either registered as out-of-state, en route or unattended. In all three circumstances, there’s no solid evidence to confirm where he was born and his real Hawaiian birth certificate exposes this fact. Rather than trying to address that deficiency and the obvious questions that would have threatened his viability as a presidential candidate, he had the COLB doctored, and perhaps the birth announcements were created to back up the appearance of a local birth.
They are Kenyan Birthers.
Good suggestions, and yes you’ve got the story correct. Keeping all the details straight in my own mind and being able to document them all was a major hassle because so much has been scrubbed from the web and I can only use what I’ve got already copied or screenshots of, since I don’t know what may disappear today. So my brain was fried just making sure I could document everything that needed to be documented, in such a way that those who want to tear apart every detail can be rebutted.
But you’re right that it is hard to follow, so I need to get it in more digestible form. Which would be easier to do now that I’ve got the sources documented. Ideally I WOULD like it to break on the national scene via Drudge or the others. I’m technologically challenged though, especially in Wordpress, which is why I keep posting PDF’s. Plus I’m neck-deep in working on Nebraska’s eligibility bill.
What I’d really like to do is to give this information to a capable writer who is not technologically challenged and have them run with it and do what I’m not as capable of doing. You write very well and clearly have a good grasp of the content as well as how it could be presented to the public in the most compelling way. Is this a project you’d have any interest or ability to pursue? Or do you know of somebody who I could contact?
I intend to have additional posts about other lies/deceptions we’ve been told and about the evidence from the microfilms themselves, at several different libraries. Those involve even more technology because of the image analysis. Again, I would love to be able to just give the content to somebody who has the skill and connections to give the story the attention it warrants.
If anybody has any input that would help me farm this out to somebody who can do it justice I would be eternally grateful. DrC it sounds like you have a great idea for the formatting. Is there any way you could do a mock-up of how you would envision it being most effective?
lol. Welcome to the club. Especially after Abercrombie’s statements to a reporter and to Mark Evans, combined with asking his HDOH director to resign and being caught lying about that, the club is growing in size every day. In spite of a media that outright lies and mocks the truth at every turn.
There’s just one thing I noticed that I should maybe clarify. I believe that the microfilms that are at the HSL right now are not genuine either. They’ve been changed out, most probably by somebody at the Advertiser office who had access to the micro FICHE of the Advertiser and the master microfilm of the Star-Bulletin.
But that’s an issue for a later day. The point for now - as you say - is that all the Star-Bulletin “discoveries” are identical, all the Advertiser “discoveries” are identical, and none of them match what’s in the Hawaii State Library right now.
Heart stopping, heartbreaking TRUTH. God bless you, butter, for ALL your time, diligence and devotion to revealing the most despicable and horrendous purposeful coup ever perpetrated on this nation. The magnitude of all this evil makes one weep. It just cannot stand. Lord, protect and save us.
Rush Limbaugh
“And don’t tell me he can’t run for president of Egypt because he wasn’t born there. I don’t want to hear that. Apparently, he can be president anywhere he wants to be. Maybe a movement to get Obama’s name on the Egyptian ballot. He likes it over there. I’m halfway serious about this.”
Read more: Rush Limbaugh: Send Obama to be head of Egypt http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=258837#ixzz1D0qgmAXq
“And don’t tell me he can’t run for president of Egypt because he wasn’t born there. I don’t want to hear that. Apparently, he can be president anywhere he wants to be. Maybe a movement to get Obama’s name on the Egyptian ballot. He likes it over there. I’m halfway serious about this.”
Read more: Rush Limbaugh: Send Obama to be head of Egypt http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=258837#ixzz1D0qgmAXq
The video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvolwf4ZQhI&feature=player_embedded
Also see #7
Disregard the duplicate in the above post.
“Is this a project you’d have any interest or ability to pursue? Or do you know of somebody who I could contact?”
I’m sorry I don’t have time to pursue this. I think I’ve provided reasonably clear guidance on how to repackage it and any decent writer could reshuffle the content you’ve already assembling follow that “roadmap.” So perhaps there’s a Freeper with way more time than I’ve got currently to take this on and do it justice.
The one thing I invite you to consider is how to answer the “so what?” question. If the mendacious posters had posted fraudulent versions of the birth announcements—i.e., containing content different than the actual versions held at HSL—that would be a far more explosive finding (analogous to Polarik’s work questioning the validity of the COLBs posted on-line, which, despite his efforts, have never really broken out to become a national news story).
So essentially you’ve established that disparate posters were essentially working in concert while trying to hide this fact from the public. Despicable behavior, to be sure, but not really equivalent to fraudulently posting an official document whose contents likely have been altered from the version that Hawaiian officials have succeeded in keeping hidden from the general public.
In short, you’re not challenging the veracity of the birth announcements themselves (maybe you are, but not in the “story” as contained the The Problem with the Announcement Stories). So it’s not that clear that these posters substantially aided and abetted a fraud. That is, they simply lied about the provenance of their images, but had they actually taken the time to go to HSL and track down the real deal(s), the SUBSTANCE of what they posted would have been identical.
And their main point—even if they resorted to questionable means to do it—is that contemporary newspaper accounts are consistent with Obama’s having had a birth certificate filed in Hawaii in August 1961. This surely doesn’t prove he was born in Hawaii, for all the reasons we know, but it does establish that in that time-frame his birth was reported to DOH.
Polarik.
He actually makes some good points in these videos.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.