“I mostly question the arguments. Onaka was evasive: he would not verify certain facts asked by the AZ SoS like verifying the father or mother's name and when asked by Kansas SoS, he didn't say the WH COLB was "identical" to the one on file, but only that the information matches. There may be some reason to Onaka's evasiveness, but it's not a legal issue.”I respectfully disagree and would ask that you humor me to question your arguments a bit. It seems we are in agreement that Onaka was indeed, as you say, “evasive” with his letters to the Secretaries of State. I am rather unsure of what you may mean by, “but it’s not a legal issue,” but I strongly suspect legal issues are in play with Onaka’s verifications.
The matter of the curious wording in those verification letters is in my view significant, not only because the letters apparently represent official communication directly from HDOH, but also because of the long string of maneuvers carried out by the Hawaii Department of Health and by the State Government leading up to the release of those letters. For the sake of brevity, I’ll only mention the simple fact that Ken Bennett’s original request was greeted by an eight week delay and much bizarre wrangling over how his request should be submitted, worded and justified before finally in the face of Bennett’s publically expressed frustration, was a letter at last produced. I propose that not even supremely inefficient government officials are likely to fight so hard in order avoid verifying public claims that have been fully true all along. And that, all the more given that a thorough, clear, unimpeachable verification letter would have served to partly assuage the arduous onslaught of scrutiny and accusation under which the HDOH has been laboring.
Is it not reasonable to suppose that Hawaii was trying to avoid falling into legal jeopardy or liability of some sort? I offer the speculative dialog below not under the pretense that it’s evidence, but to illustrate a proposed thought process internal to the HDOH that may represent perhaps a suitably plausible explanation of the delay and of the tortured language which emerged in the subsequently released verification letter.
“Wait, we should respond that his request isn’t in strict compliance with our verification laws. Of course we may have to answer Bennett eventually, but then again maybe he’ll keep letting us put this off until Obama is already on the ballot and the thing becomes moot. If he holds our feet to the fire, we’ll just have to do our best by sending something that sounds like an innocent verification to all but the most obsessively parsing skeptics. Who knows, maybe we will never be called to account for the deceptive intent of such a verification, but for now, lets avoid saying anything at all for as long as we can.”
I think Hawaii felt themselves caught between, either A) bringing great misery upon their heads by acknowledging that there’s something amiss with the Obama birth documents after all or B) responding with verbiage that they feel is technically true but would nonetheless expose them to charges of perjury or fraudulent intent to mislead.
You may offer a better explanation (which I would welcome) of what would motivate the HDOH to delay so fiercely and then to send the evasive letters. However, you should be careful to consider at least a half dozen other oddly chosen steps taken by Hawaii in the name of preventing the plain and simple truth from standing as witness to verify all the true story Obama has been telling us all along. Would Hawaii behave this way were there not both political pressures and the threat of real legal penalties at play?
“Similarly there may be a reason that the WH decided to muck around with the COLB after scanning it. But it's not a legal issue unless they altered something substantive (e.g. removed some text or added some text). There is scant evidence of substantive alteration.”There is fairly clear evidence, so far as I can tell, that there was indeed some alteration that happened with the document. How much, I do not know, but I am not so quick as apparently you are to dismiss Zullo’s conclusion that the digital file now on our tax-payer funded White House web site never existed as a single paper document, but was a fabricated piecemeal composite produced in image editing software. Add to that the fact that if the only editing done was the removal of a single small stamp indicating that the document was a representation of an amended certificate, that would be enough to open the floodgate to a world of false information filed without any attestation or support of being legally verifiable.
In the “amended filing” cover-up scenario, is it not just as likely as anything else that the amendments were made through a form filed around the time that the questions about Obama’s nativity began arising in earnest some 5-6 years ago? And then, would it not follow that whatever Hawaii may have had on file prior to that point could have been radically different from what Obama purports to be the truth about his birth circumstances? Conveniently enough, is it not also true that if there is an amended birth certificate as I am alleging on file in Hawaii, the HDOH could perform the necessary mental gymnastics as to justify some sneaky clearance to make statements which verify the “documents in their files” match what Obama purports to be the certificate, even though they know all the while that those documents on their files offer no conventional legal strength whatsoever to authenticate the claims of Obama?
Also why would the White House take the precaution of sending an attorney with whom attorney client privilege may be claimed to ferry the document by hand a quarter of the way around the world, if it were not indeed a very intentional precaution?
Are you sure that the evidence of significant alterations is so scant that further investigation should be deemed unwarranted?
The second point that I usually make to some of the eligibility people's supporters is that issues like amnesty and gun rights infringment having nothing to do with eligibility. There is a potentially huge price to pay if one thinks otherwise. I am not willing to pay that price because I want to keep America free and strong via the political process and there are obviously some people who do not and eligibility is one of their excuses not to.This latter point is harder for me to argue with. I suppose its possible that you’re right, and that I’m roughly wasting my energy on waging an unimportant and/or hopeless battle. In my defense I will simply posit, that there may indeed be at least a small and indirect link between A) ignoring the reasonable possibility that our current president is being suffered, unchecked by the press and ignored by constitutional checks and balances, to hide behind fraudulent documents openly circulated on his behalf through government channels and B) the swell of boldness by a growing cabal of those in power to increasingly employ widespread deception and corruption as most formidable tools in their mission to rob the American people of any and all freedoms otherwise ensured by our constitution.
If in the next year someone should produce incontrovertible and un-ignorable, smoking-gun evidence that Obama is guilty of multiple counts of identity fraud in service to his claim to the presidency, I here contend that such a victory may bear meaningful dividends toward pushing back against the evils of bad immigration policy and violations of the 2nd amendment. If you might answer that I’m chasing after a vapor, I can but concede that time may prove you right . . .
How about just political pressures (i.e. WH pressure)? The WH says don't send any reply. HI wrangles and says their law says they must reply. They go back and forth for 8 weeks. We do know for a fact that the WH has no intent of giving a full public explanation and viewing of the records. We just don't know why.
There is fairly clear evidence, so far as I can tell, that there was indeed some alteration that happened with the document. How much, I do not know, but I am not so quick as apparently you are to dismiss Zullo’s conclusion that the digital file now on our tax-payer funded White House web site never existed as a single paper document, but was a fabricated piecemeal composite produced in image editing software.
I have not read "Zullo" and probably don't need to. I read a lifetime supply of the Polarik nonsense in the summer of 08. I have image processing experience and a ton of common sense. I know exactly how to take a scanned document and turn it into layers and post process some layers and leave others. I suggest you ignore such rubbish.
Add to that the fact that if the only editing done was the removal of a single small stamp indicating that the document was a representation of an amended certificate, that would be enough to open the floodgate to a world of false information filed without any attestation or support of being legally verifiable.
I agree. That's not an "added" fact, that is the only relevant possible fact. I certainly cannot rule out any alteration of the scanned doc
Are you sure that the evidence of significant alterations is so scant that further investigation should be deemed unwarranted?
Not I am not sure there was alteration or not, I have no way of knowing. I know that further "investigation" will not be useful if it takes the form of past "investigation", things like Polarik's ignorant pontifications about digital processing.
f in the next year someone should produce incontrovertible and un-ignorable, smoking-gun evidence that Obama is guilty of multiple counts of identity fraud in service to his claim to the presidency, I here contend that such a victory may bear meaningful dividends toward pushing back against the evils of bad immigration policy and violations of the 2nd amendment
I don't mind your pursuing this in the various threads that it pops up in. I will continue to point out flaws when there are obvious flaws and I have the time to do so. If evidence of fraud arises then I will join the apology thread as needed. The post processing of a couple layers of a scanned doc is evidence of at least immaturity, maybe conspiracy or collusion with a coverup, but not ID fraud. It is far too easy to simply scan a doc and manipulate a couple of layers (sharpening, etc) while leaving others. Then export PDF. My theory is that this was done to perpetuate the birther movement. I have no proof other than the same evidence that points to potential alteration with removal of critical information. The evidence points equally either way.
OTOH the evidence of purely digital provenance is essentially nonexistent. There is also ample evidence that a 1961 paper artifact is in the book in HI. We do not know what is on that artifact because nobody trustworthy has seen it.