Posted on 05/18/2011 12:58:05 PM PDT by American Dream 246
Jerome Corsi's much-anticipated book, Where's the Birth Certificate?, is important in ways that go beyond the eligibility of Barack Obama to be president of the United States. That question the book addresses but cannot quite resolve.
Perhaps more importantly, the book illuminates the David and Goliath dust-up between old school journalists like Corsi and the anti-journalists who now dominates the media. Although the outcome remains in doubt, the terms of battle do not. And unless those terms are changed, the Goliath media will continue its inexorable drift towards Pravda-style journalism.
Corsi's book could help level the battlefield. He is the Joe Friday of reporters, "Just the facts, ma'm." Even the skeptical reader will have to appreciate how conscientiously he makes his case that Barack Obama's eligibility is by no means a given. And for all its attention to detail, the book is well paced and always engaging.
In the way of disclosure, Corsi and I are both affiliated with the journal at the center of the controversy, WorldNetDaily (WND), Corsi more formally than I. WND Books, in fact, published Where's the Birth Certificate? I chose Simon & Schuster for my recent book, Deconstructing Obama, thinking that its reputation would help me penetrate the anti-journalism force field that protects the president. I was kidding myself.
As I have come to learn firsthand, the anti-journalist does not seek to report the news. The anti-journalist attacks the people who do report the news or, just as likely, ignores them completely. When in attack mode, the anti-journalist disregards the facts and dismisses the fact finder as partisan, whacko, reckless, and inevitably, in regard to Obama, racist. No reporter in America knows this form of abuse better than Harvard Ph.D. Jerome Corsi.
Corsi does not deserve it. In his book, he carefully walks the reader through what would seem to be an important issue, a candidate's constitutional eligibility to be president of the United States. As Corsi documents, that issue certainly seemed important when John McCain emerged as the likely Republican nominee for president in 2008.
"McCain's Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether That Rules Him Out," screamed a New York Times headline in late February 2008, one of many such articles questioning McCain's eligibility. The United States Senate took the question seriously enough to hold hearings on the matter, and even after the Senate decided in McCain's favor, the Washington Post questioned whether "Senate Resolution 511 was sufficient to prove that McCain was a natural-born citizen."
Corsi provides a useful history into the thinking that informed Article 2, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, the natural-born citizenship clause. In brief, the founders did not want a president with divided loyalties. Regardless of where Obama was born, the fact that his presumed father was a British citizen at the time of Obama's birth, and had every intention of remaining one, made Obama's case at least as worthy of adjudication as McCain's.
But that was not to be. From the beginning, one questioned Obama's eligibility, indeed any of his credentials, at his own risk. The introductory section of Corsi's book shows those who may have forgotten with what incredible impunity the Obama campaign was allowed to proceed.
In March 2008, contract employees for the State Department were caught breaching the passport files of the three still viable presidential candidates, Obama, McCain, and Hillary Clinton. While the media allowed Obama to pontificate about the sanctity of confidential records, they spared the public the knowledge that Obama's file was uniquely visited on three occasions and that that visitor just happened to work for Obama adviser John Brennan, now Deputy National Security Adviser. Two weeks later, Obama first disclosed that he had visited Pakistan in 1981, a fact curiously missing from both of his books. The media predictably averted their gaze.
Unlike every other candidate in modern presidential history, Obama did not choose to share any of his essential documents, and the media happily obliged him. As Corsi details, Obama has shielded those records involved with his adoption, his kindergarten, Punahou School, Occidental College, his passport and travel, Columbia University (including his senior thesis), Harvard Law School, his medical history, his Chicago law practice, his State Senate career, as well as his SAT and LSAT scores, and, until recently, his very birth certificate.
Then, too, there is the question of Obama's Connecticut-based Social Security number, a question that Corsi tackles, but the media inevitably dodge.
In a telling incident from late October 2007, the New York Times offered the then underdog Obama a chance to reconcile the account of his New York years in Dreams from My Father with the accounts of those who knew him. "Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
A campaign spokesman, Ben LaBolt, offered a conspicuously lame explanation for Obama's reticence: "He doesn't remember the names of a lot of people in his life." Lame or not, it worked. Obama's indifference to the facts on the ground may have shocked the Times, but it did not exactly shock the Times or any other media outlet into action.
Ironically, of course, Obama won his U.S. Senate seat in Illinois only after the Chicago Tribune, likely at the prodding of Team Obama, forced both his primary and then his general election opponent to unseal their unseemly, and ultimately lethal, divorce records.
Of all the records, however, none is important as the birth certificate, the ultimate symbol of Obama's cryptic origins. Until the release of the birth certificate on April 27, I had assumed that Obama was born in, if not Hawaii, at least in the United States, the State of Washington, where he was first sighted as a three-week-old by his mother's friends.
A series of events has made me question my assumptions. One is the release a week after the birth certificate of A Singular Woman, the book about Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. I had expected the book's author, New York Times reporter Janny Scott, to clarify any remaining questions about Obama's birth given her two-plus years of research. In fact, however, she does the opposite.
Scott describes the Maui wedding of Obama's presumed parents with the word "reportedly." She tells us not one word about Dunham's whereabouts from the February 1961 wedding to the August 1961 birth. She offers no baby pictures, no tales of trips to the hospital or anxious grandparents, no account of how Dunham got from Hawaii to Seattle. Indeed, Scott purposely fudges the timeline of Dunham's Seattle exodus. Scott almost forces the informed reader to wonder what she is hiding.
The recent posting of Barack Obama Sr.'s INS records has likewise increased my skepticism. In September 2010, Heather Smathers of the Arizona Independent requested these records through the Freedom of Information Act. She received them in CD form on April 18, 2011, and posted them on April 26. The next day Obama produced his birth certificate.
In the 55-page release, only one page is fully handwritten by an INS official. That memo conveniently insists that "Barack Obama II" -- the same odd locution as on the birth certificate -- was born in Honolulu on "8/4/1961."
Most problematic is the content of the dramatically released birth certificate. Corsi does an excellent job documenting the many efforts made to keep that certificate from public view, efforts that put huge demands on Hawaii officialdom, engaged federal courts in needless ways, and, most inexcusably, sent Lt. Col. Terry Lakin to prison. If the birth certificate is, in fact, as innocuous as it appears, a real reporter has to ask why all the efforts to conceal it.
A real reporter also has to at least examine a document this controversial and long concealed. These past few weeks, Corsi and WND have been doing just that with interesting results. Meanwhile, the anti-journalists sit back and snipe at them. And the least sensible of these snipers, alas, are the anti-journalists of the right.
"BREAKING: Jerome Corsi's Birther Book Pulled from Shelves!
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/jerome-corsi-birther-book-5765410
Does the Corsi book explain the announcements of Obama’s birth in the local papers at the time?
It’s a parody piece...
He himself says the book contains inaccuracies.
Poor birthers here will be so deflated but will never stop believing the birther conspiracies.
Esquire says it’s satire.
Have to admit, Im confused. The article that says the book has been pulled is a joke?
Yes it is a joke. Corsi’s book is still out.
YEAH— and if you actually read it, anyone with an IQ over 90 can see that it reads like an Onion article. It also has a humor tag.
OK. I guess I get it. LOL
Esquire says that it is “satire”. The book has not been pulled.
“National mag publishes fabricated report attacking Corsi book”
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=300301#ixzz1Mjp929NP
Our Manchurian Candidate President is just that. I have no doubt he is a fraud and a traitor. But the GOP are his enablers so where does that leave us?
Well don’t feel too bad. I feel for it too, until I read it.
A second rate country approaching a Banana Republic.
So any media outlet can issue a report that is false and then later say it was all a satire?
Apparently. Looks like Farah is threatening to sue.
Actually, the controversy might actually cause the book to sell more copies.
Everyone knows the birth certificate produced by the White House is not a Xerox type copy. It’s a layered PDF version supposedly containing the information from the original paper copy. People are fixated on the numerous flaws in the layers instead of concentrating on the one piece of information that really matters – the certificate number.
Wide speculation is the number really belongs to the birth certificate of the dead baby Virginia Sunahara. The far left seems to have no problem creating false documents and hiding the real ones, what amazes me is that no one has produced a long form copy of Virginia Sunahara’s birth certificate (fraud or real) with the same number. Imagine the furor that would create?
We are like 15 years behind Venezuela but catching up fast.
When the facts show that every bit of “proof” put forth by the 0bama campaign is either fake or completely meaningless, the conspiracies tend to stick around and gain steam.
Please tell us what, specifically, has been proferred by the 0bama people that leads you to believe he was born in Hawaii.
* the COLB was/is fake
* the newspaper announcements are worthless
* the HDOH birth certificate is fake
That has been explained numerous times here at FR. Hawaiin law allows registration of births that occurred outside Hw, with very little proof. Granmother registered “birth”. Information went from registrar to Heakth Dept. to newspaper.
Yes, if it’s about a Conservative/Rep.
Right where they have wanted us for the las 180 years.
You are an optimist. Should the dead girl’s birth certificate match Obama’s...what would happen is more derision and laughter from the media and the left. They would ignore it...then announce that the girl’s certificate is a fraud.
These people are NOT going to allow this to be an issue. Remember Kerry’s disgraceful Vietnam service? In the long run it worked against him...he lost Ohio...but the media defends him to this day. They call the facts of his service “swiftboating”.
This is not likely to get any traction...at least in the short term. It will take Fox and talk radio to turn this fradulent document into an issue...and right now they will not bite.
Coburn bitch slapps the Senate—>> http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/clip.php?appid=599986131
Do you offer any explanations for the oddities in the recently released "birth certificate"?
Jack Cashill is an honest man & investigative Reporter.....He gives credit to Dr.
Corsi for this informative, investigative account of Obama’s “Fraudulent”
occupying the WH in his new book.
Amazon. com is offering new issues of Larry Sinclair’s book, “Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder?”
for upwards of $199.00!
Farah is most definitely threatening to sue.
“If the birth certificate is, in fact, as innocuous as it appears, a real reporter has to ask why all the efforts to conceal it.”
Because they needed to morph the eligibility requirement of Natural Born Citizenship (Born in Country to 2 citizen parents) into one of local birth in the minds of Mrs. and Mr. Joe Sixpack.
While Barack may be a “born citizen” because of his birth in the US, the fact of his father’s foreign citizenship should have rendered his ineligible.
The proposed t-shirt should be shoved down O’s throat with the Constitutional requirement by someone that is not only knowledgeable, but also has credibility with the population at large. Can anyone say 2012 October surprize?
There are plenty of explanations for the oddities. Do a bit of hunting, and you'll find 'em.
“The proposed t-shirt should be shoved down O’s throat....”
.....with the words “Made in the USA of Foreign parts.” overlaying the birth certificate in big bold red letters!
I already hunted up over two dozen cases of extremely unlikely duplication of character pixel patterns from the birth certificate. Is there an explanation for that?
Wow! I'd like to see the full list.
Yes, there are two explanations for that.
One explanation is that somebody scanned in letters separately (or lifted them from words already scanned in), then manually rearranged them to forge such significant things as "HAWAII DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH" (even though it would've been far simpler, faster, and easier to just scan it in), and then somehow spent many hours doctoring things so that at a lower resolution or farther away it looks just exactly, precisely like the real form!
The second explanation is that someone scanned in a form, which was then optimized by optimization software that either a) recognized a scanned item was similar to one it had already scanned, or b) simply produced a similar result because the same programming routine was run on data that was visually pretty much indistinguishable from previously encountered data, thus producing a nice small PDF file which can be more easily downloaded over the internet.
Here you go. I just added the last one today. I don't claim my list to be exhaustive at all. I don't have a good tool for being able to view two areas of the file at once.
Identical Character Pairs in Obama's Birth Certificate 1) The "B" in "OBAMA" (field 1c.) matches the "B" in "OBAMA" (field 8.) 2) The first "E" in "CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH" matches the "E" in "LIVE" 3) The "D" in "Date Last Worked" (field 17b.) matches the "D" in "Date of Signature" (field 18b.). 4) The "F" in "Full" (field 8.) matches the "F" in "Father" (field 10.). 5) The first and second "A"s in "HAWAII" in "STATE OF HAWAII" at the top. 6) The first "I" in "CERTIFICATE" matches the "I" in "LIVE". 7) The first "T" in "CERTIFICATE" matches the "T" in "BIRTH". 8) The second "E" in "DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH" matches the third "E". 9) All three "T"s in "DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH" match. 10) The two "H"s in "DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH" match. 11) The two "1"s in "FILE NUMBER 151" match. 12) The two "e"s in "1e. Last Name" match. 13) In field 1, the "I" in "HUSSEIN" matches the second "I" in "OBAMA, II". 14) In field 4, the "d" in "2nd" matches the "d" in "3rd". 15) In field 4, the first two check boxes match. 16) In field 5a, the "a" in "Day" and "Year" match. 17) In field 6a, the two "o"s in "Town or" and in field 6c, the first, third, and fourth "o"s in "of Hospital or Institution" and all three "o"s in "in hospital or institution" all match. There are appear to be many more "o"s that match this pattern in the document. It may well be a highly likely pixelization for that character. 18) In field 6d, the two "I"s in "Is Place of Birth Inside" match. 19) The "7"s in the labels for fields "7c" and "7e" match. 20) The "7"s in the labels for fields "7d" and "7f" match. 21) In field 7d, the first "d" in "Address", and in field 7f, both "d"s in "Address", and in field 19a the "d", and in field 20 the "d", and the "d" in "Delayed" at the bottom all match. 22) The "S"s in fields 18b and 19b match. 23) The "a"s in the word "Signature" in fields 18b and 19b match. 24) In the certification statement prior to field 19a, the "d"s in child and "and" match. 25) The two "u"s in fields 18b and 19b match. 26) Five of the "T"s in the certification stamp are identical.
Note that in all but two of the cases above, the pixel patterns that appear are "noisy" and contain pixels that would not normally be associated with an ideal representation of the character.
Perhaps the most convincing item I have heard described is that the file released by the Whitehouse contains editing information from prior editing sessions on the file. I have been told that the "clipboard", which is where any selected item will be held for later pasting, contained the image of three text characters, "Non", which just happens to appear in the word "None" in field 17a.
I can't imagine any OCR process which would leave such an image in the clipboard. It is especially noteworthy that the word "None" in field 17a is obviously a combination of two images.
Additionally, others have pointed out that some of the check boxes have identical, but not likely, pixel patterns. Specifically, the first and second check boxes in field 4 are absolutely identical pixel patterns. This is troubling because possible sources of formatting for a forgery such as this are the birth certificates of the Nordyke twins. Either the first or the second box would be checked on their certificates. It would be necessary to edit one of the boxes to remove the check mark.
It would seem that I need to buy this book and read it for myself and make up my own mind as there some real far out theories going around speculating on the subject including here.
This seems to be normal with PDF scans using optimization software. I found numerous examples of it on nearly every scan on Google Books, a site I know does some sort of optimization. I pulled up a book at random and found that in the title, two of the T's are identical down to the pixel while the other is different.
http://i.imgur.com/C6rhW.jpg
ping to william tell.
*******
I'm still trying to figure out why Obama had to order a new long form birth certificate in April 2011 in the first place.
1. Did the President of the United States somehow lose his original long form birth certificate?
2.Year 2007: If Obama lost it, he must have lost it sometime in 2007 or earlier, because that is the date stamped on the back of Obama's short form birth certificate that we see on FactCheck's site.
3. I would think that Obama must have lost it, because most people don't order another birth certificate unless they lose the one they had.
4. LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE: So it looks to me like Obama did not have a copy of his long form birth certificate from at least 2007, when he ordered a new birth certificate from Hawaii.
5. Scared mainstream media: The mainstream media is so scared of Obama that they wouldn't ask Obama a simple question at the press conference on April 27, 2011, when Obama released his long form birth certificate: Why did you have to go to all the trouble of ordering a new long form birth certificate from Hawaii? Did you lose the one you had?
Well, you've certainly contributed to the discussion.
I downloaded "Alice in Wonderland" and was able to quickly identify duplicated character patterns with a frequency which seems to be similar to the frequency of occurrence of such duplications in Obama's released document.
But what does this mean? That someone on Obama's staff simply chose to "optimize" during scanning? Are we to believe that it is just a coincidence that a staffer chose to use a scanning technique which just happens to make the detection of forgery much, much more difficult? How convenient.
What else can you tell us about such optimization? What criteria would the software use to decide that pixel patterns are sufficiently identical to make them identical? Without sufficient understanding of this "optimization" process it's going to be extremely difficult to determine the meaning of some of the other idiosyncrasies in the document.
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