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To: Polarik
"Signature gives it away, as does the phony masthead: just the letters, “The White House, Wsashington,” which is typed computer text as is the rest of ther letter."

I disagree. The article has a close-up of those words:

That appears to be blue type, not black, imprinted as the stationery masthead. Others are free to judge for themselves whether that looks like computer type.

"REAL MASTHEADS have a raised Seal and raised type professionally printed, with a Linotronic, for example."

Not necessarily. See this letter from Bill Clinton, which has an imprinted seal like this letter's. It also, for what it's worth, has a dark blue "The White House" masthead, much like Obama's letter.

"No signature line! Should say “Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States,” blah. blah, blah."

No it shouldn't. In fact, it definitely shouldn't. Do a Google image search for White House letters. NONE of the White House letters have signature lines. None of them (or at least none of the results I see) say "President of the United States" under the signature. Not Bush's, not Clinton's, not Reagan's, not Nixon's.

So I'm not sure where you even got the idea that there *should* be a signature line on a White House letter.

"Same thing for the Salutation. Just the hospital’s name?"

Again, that's not unknown or uncommon for White House letters. It's certainly not a universal standard practice. Sometimes they put an address (most often, it seems, for private individuals), sometimes they don't. For instance, see here or here, to cite two examples.

"The formatting is alsowrong. This should have been done in block or semi-block. This is a impersonal, informal style - and not what a government office would do."

White House letters often use block formatting, but not always, so it can hardly be said to be "wrong" or what the government wouldn't do. It comes down to administrative preference. George W. Bush appears to have preferred block, but Bill Clinton was not wedded to it. For instance, see this Clinton letter or this letter, where the paragraphs are fully indented like on this letter. Here is another Obama letter where he does not use block formatting.

"Left formatting should cause breaks in “two,” “birth,” and “one,” instead of keeping them on the previous line."

The word "two" does not even appear in the letter.

Did you do *any* research into what White House letters can look like before making all these claims up? You make a lot of firm statements about what a White House letter "should" look like, when there are plenty of White House letters over the decades that don't. In particular, the claim that there should be a signature line when the overwhelming practice is that White House letters DON'T have a signature line like that is just inexplicable.

71 posted on 07/17/2009 8:25:18 PM PDT by LorenC
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To: LorenC; null and void; Beckwith; stockpirate; PhilDragoo; Candor7; MeekOneGOP; Myrddin; ...

Do you get the PICTURE now, Loren, what a real letter is supposed to look like? People who are not trying to jerk the reader around DO NOT show a perfectly flat Eagle Seal here, and a perfectly formed signature there.

They show THE WHOLE FREAKIN' LETTER!


75 posted on 07/17/2009 9:14:09 PM PDT by Polarik (Obama: When destroying America is not enough.)
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