Posted on 08/22/2008 7:51:31 PM PDT by Polarik
What's This, FactCheck??
From the high-res photos that FactCheck provided, I was able to confirm a number of my findings that exposed the FactCheck COLB image as a manufactured forgery. To get everyone up to speed, there has been one, and only one forged image. From this one source image, several copies were generated. One was kept by the Obama campaign while one copy went to the Daily Kos, and the other went to FactCheck. Both the Daily Kos and the Obama campaign cropped their images before posting them on June 12. The Obama Campaign posted a very small, low-res copy to their "Fight the Smears" website, while the Daily Kos image was cropped close to the borders but left in its original size. FactCheck posted their uncropped image to their website four days later on June 16.
Here's what FactCheck said in their "Expose" about Obama's long sought-after birth certificate:
In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake."
We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.
Well, speaking for the huge population of skeptics, I beg to differ. Other than showing that Obama took a trip to Hawaii just to get this thing printed, and bring it out for a show-and-tell to FactCheck's affiliates, the "supporting documents" prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the image posted on FactCheck;'s website was NOT an accurate copy of a real "birth certificate," but was instead, a stone-cold, dyed-in-the-wool forgery.
There are a lot of things that do not match up between the image FactCheck posted and these new photos of Obama's "Certification of Live Birth." In fact, there are a whole host of things wrong with the image FactCheck posted when compared to genuine scans of real 2007 COLB's.
FactCheck went on to make derisive comments about the claims that others made, including me, about the suspicious image they posted: Since we first wrote about Obama's birth certificate on June 16, speculation on his citizenship has continued apace. Some claim that Obama posted a fake birth certificate to his Web page. That charge leaped from the blogosphere to the mainstream media earlier this week when Jerome Corsi, author of a book attacking Obama, repeated the claim in an Aug. 15 interview with Steve Doocy on Fox News. Corsi said in that interview that "there's been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce."
Never have truer words been spoken. Not so for the hard-headed hoohahs at FactCheck who still insist that the image they posted on June 16 was genuine:
Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are:
* The birth certificate doesn't have a raised seal.
* It isn't signed.
* No creases from folding are evident in the scanned version.
* In the zoomed-in view, there's a strange halo around the letters.
* The certificate number is blacked out.
* The date bleeding through from the back seems to say "2007," but the document wasn't released until 2008.
* The document is a "certification of birth," not a "certificate of birth."
I must say that FactCheck is not known as a place that gets its facts straight. The only ones I care about are those that pertain to my research. No, FactChump (sic), I complained about there being only one "crease from folding evident" in your full-length image, when all others had two folds evident.
No, FuktCheck (sic), I did not talk about "strange halos" around the letters, but well-known and well-defined white and gray pixel halos BETWEEN the letters, when there should also have been greenish-colored pixels. Leave it to FlakCheck (sic) to come up with the reason why their image was fake, and not why this fast-food COLB has no pixel halos:
The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.
No, FaxedChek (sic), not to "some" people, but to "one person" who spotted the telltale signs of an image that had been graphically altered only three days after you posted it. Plus, I am going to post all of my test images that failed to create ANY pixel anomalies or "digital artifacts."
By golly. You know, every one of my detractors have said stuff like this, as if there are thousands of the same "pixel halos" fully documented as being artifacts. In fact, FactCheck, I have never even seen one that matches the hack job you posted.
FactCheck pulls a fast one when it makes the following claim:
We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect.
Very clever, just like your Messiah. I, and others like ne, never doubted the content of your COLB image. What we sincerely doubted was the "authenticity" of the document image you posted on your website. It was a fraud, and you, FactCheck were complicit in promulgating it as the real deal.
The folks at FastChick (sic) quoted another one of the fraud perpetrators, PolitiFact.com, who "also dug into some of these loopy theories."
Now, them's fighting words. there is nothing "loony" about felony fraud. There's nothing "loony" about constantly deceiving the American public as Obama and his band of rogues have done. Here's Politfact's two cents:
Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what's reasonable has to take over.
No way, Polident! (sic) The "overwhelming evidence to the contrary" was just posted by your buddies at FeltChunks. They confirmed what I've known all along: that the image purported to be a true copy of Obama's original birth certificate was, absolutely, a well-conceived forgery of what his "birth certificate" might look like -- but, one that had too many flaws to fool this expert.
"How do I loathe thee. Let me count the ways."
For starters, there are those wacky borders.
I had always said that they were added last to the image, and were the least compelling evidence that a forged image had been "manufactured." Now that I've had a chance to compare them to the genuine borders of real 2007 COLB images, I can now say, with 100% certainty, that these wacky borders were poorly drawn replicas of what real borders are supposed to look like.
The degree of smearing on them and the lack of any "real artifacts" were incongruous, given that this image was a high-resolution one. Basically everything inside the borders were far superior in quality to the borders themselves. Proof-positive that they were added post-hoc to a forged image.
Furthermore, the two vertical borders on each side of the FactCheck COLB image were not drawn as long, parallel rectangles, but as divergent ones! When comparing them to real 2007 borders, the border on the left side went from being narrow at the base to being wider at the top. Conversely, the border on the left side went from being wider at the base to being narrower at the top. These disparities show up when the FactCheck COLB is made semi-transparent and laid on top of a genuine 2007 COLB image (as shown below).
To demonstrate the disparities, I created a semi-transparent New 2007 COLB image and placed it on top of the FactCheck COLB image, so that we can see the underlying FactCheck COLB image through the partially transparent 2007 COLB image. I lined both of them up at the top border corners.
For comparison purposes, I also created a semi-transparent PD COLB image to place on top of the FactCheck COLB image. Recall in my previous post that I found a very close correspondence between the 2002 PD COLB and the "2007" FactCheck COLB.
When the top borders of the FactCheck COLB were aligned with the genuine 2007 COLB, the alignment of all the printed information common to both COLBs, grew worse as you progress downwards to the bottom of both COLBs.
Here's a visual comparison of the FactCheck COLB image placed on top of a New 2007 COLB:
The next step was to compare the 2002 PD COLB to the FactCheck COLB . I measured the width of the FactCheck COLB image (2369 pixels) and divided it by the width of the PD COLB image (900 pixels). The result came out to be approximately 2.632, which was then used as a multiplier. I multiplied 2.632 times the height of the PD COLB (921 pixels). This is how one can make the size of the PD COLB image comparable to the size of the FactCheck COLB image.
From there, it's just a matter of making the PD COLB image semi-transparent and then placing it on top of the FactCheck COLB image and aligning its top border corners.
Here's the overlay of the FactCheck COLB image placed on top of the PD COLB image.
The fit of the PD COLB image is so much closer to the FactCheck image than a real COLB from the same time period, there can only be one conclusion: The Obama/Kos/FactCheck image was created from other COLB images, including the one from 2002, the PD COLB.
Good grief. After debunking the borders, what's left? Well, after studying the photos provided by FactChecka, I found lots of features on the photographed COLB that was not in the FactCheck image (and vice versa).
Here's what I've found on FactCheck's original SCAN that do not match their counterparts on their "newly photographed" COLB, and their counterparts on my 2007 COLB photos and images:
There will be more to come, along with "supporting documentation" (aka images), illustrating the mismatch between FactCheck's original forgery and the "original" photos their stringer took of something that does bear a slight resemblance to Obama's "year-old" paper COLB. So, please keep checking back for updates.
Most importantly, as Frank Sinatra would sing, Start spreading the news.
PLEASE, tell the faithful that the COLB issue is not dead, but given new life. The COLB forgery really does have a life of its own, and it is up to you to let these lowlifes know that we are not going to let them get away with perfidy.
Essentially, yes.
Huh? No need to end a controversy before it starts.
As Polarik's post here (and posts by others elsewhere) amply prove, down at the blog level, controversies never end. They just keep getting recycled.
That's Back@ss thinking.
I disagree.
As I said, at the blog level, controversies never end. And as long as they stay down at the blog level, no one else to speak of knows anything about them, so in the larger scheme of things, they're not a problem for the campaign.
However if the campaign did anything to address these blog level controversies, in doing so, they couldn't help but to draw wider attention to them. And why would they want to do that? That would indeed be some "back@ss" thinking.
So no, from a campaign standpoint, the prudent thing to do would be to ignore the blog level stuff, and only shoot at the odd one or two that might rise up from the underbrush, as happened with Corsi's claims on Fox News.
k
Sorry, that's not true. I have a 1974 certified photo-stat of a Florida birth certificate, including the signature of the attending physician. Those certified copies of originals can usually be obtained by special request (at additional expense).
The data for the computer-generated certificates is input from those original certificates, and I doubt that any state has disposed of the microfilms of the originals. They are necessary legal documents (since they contain more information than the computer-generated short forms) which can be subpoenaed in court cases, so yes, even though you may have computer-generated certificates dating back to the '60's, there are originals on microfilm somewhere in that state.
There are differences in the way the different states do things. No doubt what Florida believes sufficient is not sufficient in more advanced parts of the country.
Here's a clue for you ~ no matter what kind of document you might concoct and claim as an "original birth certificate" it will not be recognized as valid if no one bothered to REPORT your birth to the appropriate authorities at or near your time of birth.
Further, if you should lose what you believe to be the "original", you can still obtain verification of your having been born in the US from the state.
The "report" or "document" believed by the government is the only one that counts.
There are differences in the way the different states do things. No doubt what Florida believes sufficient is not sufficient in more advanced parts of the country.
As usual, I have no idea what you're talking about -- especially since Florida's procedures are no different than New York State (which I assume are quite as "advanced" as Indiana). When a child is born in a hospital, the event is recorded on a form, with the birth mother supplying the information as to parentage, addresses of parents and name of child, and the hospital supplying information such as birth weight, time of birth, attending physician, etc. The form is submitted to the Department of Health, and the data from that form input into a computer system. The original form is then microfilmed, or more recently, digitized, and stored.
Here's a clue for you ~ no matter what kind of document you might concoct and claim as an "original birth certificate" it will not be recognized as valid if no one bothered to REPORT your birth to the appropriate authorities at or near your time of birth.
That has nothing to do with your statement that there is "no such thing as an original birth certificate." It's a red herring.
Further, if you should lose what you believe to be the "original", you can still obtain verification of your having been born in the US from the state.
Of course you can. I never said you couldn't.
The "report" or "document" believed by the government is the only one that counts.
Again, why do you bring that up? I was contesting your statement that "there is no such thing as an original birth certificate."
It's been reported that the exif (whatever that is) for the photo of the “new” COLB at Factcheck indicates that the picture was taken March 12, 2008. This would be three months before another photo was posted on Factcheck as the real COLB. (And 5 months before they claim they had face time with the actual document.)
What's mighty odd is that it was also in March 2008 that the MSM reported that people (who turned out to work for friends of BO) had broken into his passport files.
Now, do you think that it's possible they did so in order to make sure that there wasn't a COLB in those files that did NOT exactly match this version that they were posting online?
What a coincidence that the break-in took place the same month that Annenberg’s Factcheck was photographing his “real” COLB.
The answer: "A Long Form is a certified 8.5” X 11” photo copy of the original birth certificate."
That just tells you what the camera's internal date/time was set to, not necessarily when the photos were taken.
k
Lots of luck on that ~ my “short forms” have all the information on them that’s in the data base, or the data entry document submitted by the recording nurse.
"How can changes be made to a birth certificate? Please contact the Corrections Section of the ISDH Vital Records office at 317.233.2700 and ask for instructions for correcting the information."
That's why the ONLY DOCUMENT they produce that they'll stand behind in terms of legitimacy had to be signed by a computer (or machine signed) back in the 1960s ~ that "original" just won't cut it ~ it's just a "revisable" picture.
Let's stay in the '60's, before digital images, and for most states (probably all) computerized certificates didn't exist either.
You made the statement that there's "no such thing as an original birth certificate."
The "changes can be made to a birth certificate" don't affect the "original birth certificate" (that you argued doesn't exist).
Changes could be made, as any new parent who received a photostat of the original will tell you (since it's accompanied by a letter urging parents to correct any erroneous info) -- but those "changes" (if approved) will only appear in the computer-generated printout, if they fall within the range of the (abbreviated) data printed out on those. (And the "changes" usually involve misspelling).
The original -- the document submitted by the hospital, remains the same (that has changed recently with computer submissions, but we're talking about the '60's here).
I have no idea what you're talking about in regard to documents that "had to be signed by a computer (or machine signed) back in the '60's."
I somehow doubt that the state of Indiana was so far advanced in the '60's that all their certificates were "machine signed" and "computer generated."
Can you provide a link or some proof to that effect?
As I said, at the blog level, controversies never end. And as long as they stay down at the blog level, no one else to speak of knows anything about them, so in the larger scheme of things, they're not a problem for the campaign.
However if the campaign did anything to address these blog level controversies, in doing so, they couldn't help but to draw wider attention to them. And why would they want to do that? That would indeed be some "back@ss" thinking.
No, that's not the honest thing to do. It's disingenuous and deceptive, and at the worst, it may cover up for wrongdoing, but I should expect that behavior from your side.
An honest person would let reporter pools inspect the document(s) in question, and not use biased websites like Annenberg.org "FactCheck" and the DailyKos.
However, it's more likely that it was set to the correct time and date.
The purpose was simple ~ to get a Social Security number. Back then you didn't need one to get a bank account, but you sure did need one to get into college or work for a major corporation.
I'm glad your here because now I can get feedback my way of doings things versus your way - which, for those not privy to our conversations, concerns the definition of "image," "aspect ratio," and the effects of cropping.
Now, in response to my question, "What's fradulent about the Kos/PD overlay, you said the following:
What's fraudulent about the Kos/PD overlay is that it does not reflect the reality. In order to get the borders and text of the Kos and PD images to perfectly overlay each other as you have shown, the aspect ratio of one or the other image needs to be altered, i.e. the height and width need to be changed by a disproportionate amount (squeezed or stretched) in order to "force" the two to overlay perfectly.
I'm surprised, Steve. I thougth that you'd be happy that I followed your recommendations as to how to do an overlay. I even used Xara Extreme like you did. I made an overlay of the PD COLB by setting its transparency level to 50% and then I aligned its center with the center of the Kos COLB. I locked the aspect ratio, and then I used the SHIFT-CLICK_DRAG operation which keeps the image in place, as well as the keeping the aspect ratio the same, while I expand the border of the PD COLB to approximately match the Kos COLB. NOTE: these operations needed to be done at low zoom levels (<20%) in order to see both of them fully. I then zoomed in at 100%, and continue to resize the PD COLB image until I could line up the top borders.
Then, I needed to rotate the PD COLB slightly to make it even with the Kos COLB. When the top border corners were aligned, I checked the bottom border corners and resized them until both the top corners and bottom corners were in the tightest alignment I could create.
Nothing was forced or otherwise massaged to get them to fit. I did not change the width independent of the height, or vice versa. The aspect ratio was maintained at all times.
Despite what you and your cohorts say about me on your own blog, I do not lie, and never have. I'm not perfect, and like everyone else, I make mistakes -- but not like the former folks, I'll always acknowledge my errors and make the necessary changes or retractions, provided that I can also locate the error, and replicate the methology used to find the error.
One thing that I refuse to do is to accept, prima facie, an unsubstantiated statement. There is a sort of mindset on the other blog that just by saying something, it becomes the Gospel.
OK, back to image analysis.
First of all, we need to keep in mind that the Kos COLB image is almost three times the size of the PD COLB image. Being off a pixel at the Kos level is no big deal. Whereas, being off one pixel on the PC COLB image, is a big deal.
Check it out. What exactly is "aspect ratio?" It is the relationship of height to width. So, the easiest way to determine the aspect ratio of an image is to divide its width by its height. Right? Well, that is what you told me; i.e., to compare "one whole image to another whole image."
Steve, you were complaining that the Kos COLB does not have the same aspect ratio of the PD COLB. Here are the actual dimensions of both "whole" COLB images and their calculated aspect ratios:
KOS COLB IMAGE: 2369 X 2427 pixels. 2369/2427 = 0.9772 aspect ratio
PD COLB IOMAGE: 900 X 921 pixels. 900/921 - 0.9761 aspect ratio
Basically, there is about one pixel difference in the height of the PD COLB image that accounts for the rather tiny difference between ratios. You know that I've mentioned over and over that the PD COLB was slightly distorted by its folds, and that can be verified by comparing its height to the other two COLBs from that time period as well as the ones from 2007 and 2008. If you let me have that one pixel (which, BTW, I did not add to my comparison), then the calculation of the PD COLB's aspect ratio would be 900/922 or 0.9761 -- the exact aspect ratio of the Kos COLB.
BUT, you know that I do things differently than you (which drives you batty). We can let the unbaised FReepers decide if my ideas are off-the-wall, or a sound methology.
iMHO, comparing two images that have the same, square COLB image, but are surrounded by radically different image margins, or canvas sizes. What you had so much trouble understanding is why I want to compare just the dimensions of the certificate itself rather than including their problematic margins. So, I measure the exact sizes of the certificates itself, from corner to corner, and from outside edges to outside edges. I'm not one for doing "eyeball" comparisons -- the more the human element is not involed, the better the precision.
I am using the actual dimensions of the Kos COLB image -- even though I refer to it as the FactCheck image, for continuity sake. Except for the absence of cropping, the FactCheck COLB and Kos COLB are exactly the same. So let's stick with the Kos version.
I stated in the paragraphs that followed the Kos COLB vs. the New 2007 COLB overlay that:
The next step was to compare the 2002 PD COLB to the FactCheck COLB . I measured the width of the FactCheck COLB image (2,369 pixels) and divided it by the width of the PD COLB image (900 pixels).
The result came out to be approximately 2.632, which was then used as a multiplier. I multiplied 2.632 times the height of the PD COLB (921 pixels). This is how one can make the size of the PD COLB image comparable to the size of the FactCheck COLB image.
I did not mention what was the product of 921 pixels x 2.632, but it happens to be 2,424 pixels. The exact height of the Kos image is 2,427 pixels. The three pixel difference is a result of that one pixel difference in the measured height of the PD COLB.
As I said before, had the PD COLB been scanned flat, the image height really would have been 992 pixels. Multiply that times 2.632 and you get 2,427 pixels.
If both the height and width are multiplied by the same constant, this has no effect whatsoever on the aspect ratio, which is also a constant.
Thus, the PD image was proportionally-scaled on both dimensions, and I produced the same matched overlays using either your method or my method.
At the blog level is where the rest of the world gets to read the truth that the MSM refuses to carry. It is not that the controversies are "not worthy" of their time -- it's that anything that tarnishes the image of their Love Child, Obama, they are prone to ignore
Plus, it's the little lies that coalesce and turn into big, fat lies at the world level.
What? Did you think that the MSM has been reporting the truth about Gaza, as opposed to what their Hamas handlers have been feeding them?
Yes, there are bigger issues than a bogus birth certificate image, but it sure is funny how apoplectic the OBamanites get when they realize it's not going away.
It's rather funny to hear things like, "Oh, that stuff is just artifacts from scanning," when no one, in the entire world, in the past two months, HAS EVER posted an example of one that matches the patterns on the Kos forgery.
And they have the gall to say that "Either I'm lying, or that my 320 images does not represent ALL of the possible images that could be made."
I mean, how wacked is that? Whereas I have 320 images that demonstrate why they cannot be "Scanner artifacts."
Oh please. Dispense with the melodrama.
And what's this "your side" stuff? It has absolutely nothing to do with any "sides." It's called "politics." And no campaign would jump into action and respond every time someone on some blog hatched some theory or other.
An honest person would let reporter pools inspect the document(s) in question, and not use biased websites like Annenberg.org "FactCheck" and the DailyKos.
And what unbiased reporter(s) have shown up at Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters (where the certificate is supposedly kept) and asked to inspect the document(s) in question but have been refused or otherwise turned away?
Are you aware of any? I'm not.
You say that Obama's campaign shouldn't publish scans and photos of the certificate on biased websites, but yet they're expected to address those who are unabashedly biased against him and post on similarly biased websites?
What's up with that?
k
I don't know that it is. How exactly do you go about establishing the odds for such a thing? Bottom line, you can't really say with any certainty one way or the other.
k
I'm still not quite convinced.
I recently wrote two posts that have yet to be posted. Maybe moderation's just running a bit slow on a Saturday night. But if they don't show up I'm not going to spend a bunch of time responding to your latest posts if they're likely to just end up in the bit bucket.
k
But before I reply to Polarik's latest posts, I'd like to ask him to explain to those reading this why he claimed that the date stamp is never placed right above the signature stamp on any existing COLBs when he knew this was not true.
He completely ignored this issue in his subsequent posts, and if he expects to be taken seriously, I think it's deserving of an answer.
k
Must be. You're still here.
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.