Posted on 07/06/2008 9:57:03 PM PDT by stravinskyrules
May I suggest much more important topics such as Our Pending Victory In Iraq, The Determination Of Our Soldiers To Succeed In Iraq, Obama’s Flip-Flops, and Nagging Problems On Flight 93 Memorial. This birth certificate myth is just not that import Addendum: I failed to note LJStrata (the computer guru behind the curtain here at that Strata-Sphere) was the one who put me onto the anti-aliasing lead. - end update
Days ago I looked into the forged Obama Birth Certificate Myth and realized it was all BS. Basically, we have a lot of people running around making mistakes and then trying to pretend revelations that destroyed their first claims are exposing other, new issues. All I see are people making wild claims, being proved wrong, and then moving onto new wild claims - to be proved wrong again. As proof of this pattern let me point to one of these ‘experts’ who did a poor job of examining the documents in the first place, a person called Polirak over at Town Hall.
Before we get into this I want to share what I discovered when I looked into these files, before I even began to look around the blogosphere.
There are three electronic images of birth certificates at the center of this silly controversy: (1) a BHO certificate Daily Kos posted initially [image loaded here], which Kos says he obtained electronically from the Obama campaign [image here], (2) the version of the certificate on the Obama website, and (3) a clearly mocked up “blank” form produced by a blogger who goes by the name Opendna (aka John Mckinnon).
In my analysis I find the Kos version to be the highest quality image file of the original document, produced in Jun of 2007 by the state of Hawaii. I find the Obama campaign site version to be a lower quality version of the original, probably because someone decided to shrink the file size to optimize download size for the web. And I find the Opendna version to be a deliberately manipulated version of the original Kos image, because the Opendna version has no evidence of bleed through from the back side, no imprinted time stamp, no weak impression of the state seal and signature area.
This analysis took about 30-60 minutes, not days and days.
I have been putting off this posting on this matter because there has never been anything ‘discovered’ that proved a forgery, but simply proved people were running wild with their imaginations. Polarik provides the best example of this.
On 6/20/08 the ‘expert’ Polarik claimed this certificate clearly produced a year ago was a forgery of an original from 1961, which Barack Obama claimed he had in one of his books from years ago. I have no idea if he has the original, but no ‘expert’ would jump to the initial conclusion this was a forgery, unless they did not understand how government document versions are controlled. He even noted the evidence that clearly indicates this is a modern document in his post:
At the bottom of the JPG image, reading right from left, one can see following text:
OHSM 1.1 (Rev. 11/01) Laser This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding. [HRS 338-13(b), 338-19]
There are a lot of problems with this statement, foremost of which is that the text in this document were produced by a graphics program and not a laser print, or any other printer, for that matter.
Actually, all the text on the document is produced by a laser printer (via a graphics program). All the text on the two complete versions (which means they have the bleed through images from the back) have a ‘haze’ around the letters. Polarik assumed this was because the text was photo shopped. My view is this is simply standard anti-aliasing of the text, something many word processing programs do:
The above example of an anti-aliasing feature (added to the S, not on the 3) shows how programs add pixels of varying shades around the curved sections of the letters/numbers to provide a smooth font edge on display and printing. Inspection of the files shows consistent anti-aliasing across all letters and images (e.g., the state seal in the middle). Consistent anti-aliasing across the document tells me this was induced when the document was originally printed - not from later manipulation.
Polarik mistakes this anti-aliasing feature with forgery, which is completely ridiculous. Anti-aliasing would show up on all Hawaii certificates since they are now digitally produced (and later I note this is the case). The biggest mistake Polarik makes here is comparing a laser generated certificate to an older type from NY. Unless your comparing apples to apples there is no way to determine a forgery.
Next he discovers, two days later, the image went through Photoshop, which is not really a revelation since someone could scan the original document and prepare if for email or web posting using photo shop. Somehow in his mind just using Photoshop is evidence of a forgery, which of course is ridiculous - as many have since noted. So I’ll just skip that mistaken jump to a conclusion for now.
Then 8 days after his original forgery claim, Polarik finally discovers the items that bleed through from the back, providing hard evidence the two version from Kos and the BHO campaign are actually digital images of an authentically produced birth certificate, created last year. But he was all confused because the Opendna version of the file did not have any bleed through section - thus forgery was at hand again. One day before Polarik’s post on the time stamp, Doug Ross did a great job of showing the time stamp, the stamp of the state seal and the signature area impressions coming in from the back of the Kos and BHO Campaign images, further proving their authenticity - not proving a forgery:
The date stamp from last year is clear, the stamp of the seal and signature area is less clear, but that just means someone applied little pressure - it is the ink that counts and I am sure we will see a scan of the back, when the blogosphere stop’s making themselves look foolish. All this evidence did not stop many sites from still claiming ‘forgery’, simply because they did not know how and where to look for the evidence, or because they jumped to newer, wilder conclusions to support their preconceptions. This is completely shoddy rumor mongering, in my opinion.
BTW, my analysis was backed up when someone compared another HI birth certificate from a Ms Patricia Decostas. You can go and see the same anti-aliasing around the letters, and a much firmer date and seal stamp impression (someone was clearly getting some aggressions out that day!). Download it and zoom in on to see the anti-aliasing for yourself. Since all the same telltales are found in this second “apple”, we see confirmation - again - that the certificate at BHO and Kos are genuine. Same state seal stamp size and shape with attached signature area, etc. People were piling on the evidence of authenticity, yet still only seeing forgery.
So that now leaves us with the black dots, which TexasDarlin noted as late as July 3rd:
There is another, smaller dot on the outside of the border, just to the right of the word “SEX” (no idea if this was part of the mysterious forgery plan or not). These dots show up on the Kos image, BHO campaign image and the Opendna hacked file - meaning something was shared between all three images. And this is the last lame bit of evidence there is to claim forgery. Doug Ross deals with the matter here, but there is a simple explanation, that is not so surprisingly proved by Polarik himself.
Before we get to it here is the conundrum which has some people scratching their heads. The Kos and BHO versions show the bleed through of the information on the back in their images. The Opendna version has no bleed through tell tales, but does have the black dots. This leads a lot of people to assume the dots came before the impressions on the back. But this is not the only answer to this puzzle.
The fact is it looks to me like Opendna photoshopped the Kos image to remove the Obama specific details (minus the island of birth and the time of birth - another bit of evidence all three versions share a common original document). Then added his infamous joke name into the field, and then he printed out his new doctored certificate TO REMOVE THE PHOTO SHOP DETAILS!
It is all so simple. If you want to remove the Photo Shop artifacts you reprint the document, rescan it and all the telltales will be gone. And so will those faint bleed through impressions. But the black dots will remain. Is there some evidence this happened? Yep - let’s go to Polarik’s last attempt to create a conspiracy out of thin air.
Here Polarik compares the resolution (again) of the images from the Kos image and Opendna faked image. Go to the post itself and note the key revelation is that the Opendna resolution is lower than the Kos resolution - which means the Kos image couldn’t have come from Opendna. It has to be the other way around. Therefore those dots, being clearer in the Kos image, provide proof that the Opendna image came from the Kos image. Opendna produced his mock up from the Kos image, therefore the authentic version came first.
But more than that, numerous people have called the state of Hawaii who initially claimed the document was legit, and that they did provide a new copy to Obama on the date noted on the back. Now they cannot claim 100% confidence of the images which, as Opendna quite easily demonstrated, can be manipulated. But if the state says they issued a new copy last summer, and the Kos and BHO images bear that out, where is the forgery?
The only ‘forgery’ is the clearly mocked up joke produced by Opendna. And he (Mckinnon) showed how good he is at this document analysis when he reprinted and rescanned his mock up to delete all the tell tales of his work. But Opendna is not running for President. And after being proved wrong over and over and over again, these people who have latched onto the myth the Obama certificate is forged have done just the opposite.
Through the discovery of the bleed through images (stamp AND seal), the anti-aliasing of the letters, the resolution, even those little black dots, all the evidence points to an authentic certificate issued last year. Enough - this myth has been busted (and it was in my mind last week after less than an hour of analysis).
Update: OK, I did not address the weakest argument - the misaligned border corners. My view is the entire background image and fields is now inside a graphics program. If you look at the Decosta’s certificate you can see it is a different version, and the background pattern is much less clear. This is also born out with the anti-aliasing in the newer, BHO certificate (released 5 years after the Decosta’s certificate), which shows the aliasing merging with the bamboo pattern, which is crystal clear.
I have had to create so many NASA logos for so many years prior to the web taking off I am going to bet these misalignments (which are actually hinted at in the Decosta corners as well) may have been the result of a final resizing of a group of independent rectangles in a graphics program that threw off the alignment a bit. Or it could be a deliberate effect in the original. When government organizations do this kind of transition to digital, you find they hand this off to new hires out of school, which leads to some minor imperfections.
No matter, the corners do not negate all the other evidence and all the other false claims I dealt with above. Myth still busted.
It seems Polarik’s work is the most thorough and answers questions AJStrata leaves hanging- also for those who haven’t seen it- there’s an interesting piece over at Atlas Shrugs:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-tech-expe.html
Makes little sense for BHO to ignore this BC issue...
No candidate for President has ever done this, and I SERIOUSLY doubt that Obama will do it for YOU.
“One also wonders where the birth certificate that was used to get his passport, wasn’t used. Why did he get a new copy, last year?”
Good question. He didn’t have to use a BC the first go ‘round though. There’s been several posts laying out the other docs that could be used to secure a passport. Also, maybe he used a foreign BC the first go ‘round, if in fact it WAS a BC. Since we don’t know where he was born, it could be a BC from Kenya(?) Indonesia(?)
Makes perfect sense to me.
No one who would think about this "issue" for a nanosecond is going to vote for Obama. EVER.
So why not ignore it?
That's just flat out nonsense. In exit interview after exit interview, many Hillary supporters said the number one reason they had problems voting for Obama is that they "just didn't trust him". And this issue adds to that distrust. Someone posted how this is vigorously discussed over at some pro-Hillary web site.
Your best case on why the issue should be ignored?
bttt
Yes but Hillary is waiting in the wings for all this atuff to get worked out.
You are missing the point. THEY DON'T WANT IT TO GO AWAY. Even if he was born in Iran, with his connections, he could produce an absolutely perfect microfiche of a fake birth certificate.
I agree. The whole point of anti-aliasing is to make text look smooth and natural, not garbled. It should be confined to the contours of the letters themselves, but in this image the distortion extends WAY outside the text.
Anti-aliasing reflects what is printed but not what is not printed such that you wouldn't see a band of disturbance extending well beyond the letters in the background image because the background image is green on white vs the black on white of the lettering.
To me the letters stomping on the green/white background pixels away from the letter and doing it inconsistently looked like an artifact of having a very high JPEG compression ratio. The image is broken down into 8x8 blocks which are each compressed. If you have a letter end right against the edge of the 8x8 block, it won't have any effect on the next block. On the other hand if you have the leftmost column of pixels be solid black in the uncompressed scan with the other 7 columns showing the weak background, that can cause detail in those remaining 7 columns to be destroyed once compressed.
At least one of the scans I saw had an over 10:1 compression ratio, which is far too high to use with images with a lot of line art in them like text. JPEG was designed for pictures with nice gradual transitions, not text.
Also, since there are two different resolution files out there, it looks like someone scanned it, compressed it, which was then changed in resolution and recompressed. There are two words for compressing an reresed JPEG image - UG and LEE. I don't even like cutting and pasting from a JPEG unless I do it on the 8 pixel boundaries to minimize the recompression issues.
I agree, that’s why you ask for the hospital records.
THis thing is going to be like the Tar Baby, excuse the anology. The longer he puts this off the stickier it’s going to get.
1. Why post a forgery?
2. Who forged it?
3. If it’s not a forgery, why was it released through Daily KOs and not his own website?
4. This is a basic question, your birth.
“If the myth is busted, you would think Obama could just release a certified, true copy of his birth certificate to the press and lay it to rest. Why keep it alive?”
Guys and gals who make a living with so called conservative blog sites warning us about the dangers of communism and other isms, while the average voter doesn’t care about any ism threat, have a lot to lose if the Obamination gets disqualified due to his fake certificate of live birth.
Communists are terrible, but most American Voters could care less!
Those, who yell or scream and say a forged Certificate Of Live Birth is no big deal, remind me of an uncle, who went to his grave moaning that Al Capone only went to jail for tax evasion.
My grandfather, whose wisdom was great, would tell his blathering SIL, “Grow up! No one cares. Capone is in jail and that is all that matters!”
If we can take out or disable the Communist/Islamofascist Change Merchant with this forged certificate, so be it. He is a double danger, a communist/socialist and Muslim in disguise. I don’t care what causes him to lose or drop out of the election just so he loses or drops out.
I’m seeing a lot of the same bs arguments that were advanced against our Swift Vets.
Thank God, the Swift Vets helped derail that communist traitor SOB, Kerry.
No candidate’s birth has ever been questioned. If we’ve uncovered a possible forgery....I would think the FBI is looking into this, as it would be a federal offense.
This is total BS unless someone got an original digital image from Hawaii. Antialiasing in this case applies to line art (such as text) that was converted to a bitmap within an application. It doesn't apply to digital line art that has been printed. In printing you get halftones, error diffusion patterns, etc., but not different shades around the edge. If the original was antialiased then you'd see a halftone representation of that antialias, not the antialiasing itself.
Anybody got a high-res version of this I can check out?
Notice on Obama's official site, his birth certificate says OHBM 1.1 in the lower left corner.
The original document displayed on the Daily KOS website says OHSM 1.1 in the lower left corner.
The million dollar question is: If the Daily KOS document was supplied by a Obama campaign staffer, as was reported, then how on earth can these two documents differ?
There may be a Hawaiian state agency or department with the initials 'OHBM', but I'm not aware of any.
The agency that you request a copy of a birth certificate from is the 'Office of Health Status Monitoring', OHSM.
The genie is out of the bottle now and it's impossible to "take back" the images. They are immortalized all over the web on different sites. Anyone can see this hard proof of skullduggery for themselves.
Why is the certificate # blacked out?
African is not a race! In 1961, wouldn't Negro or Negroid have been used to describe his Father's race instead of African?
Where is the indentation of the official seal and the folded marks, the rest of us have on our valid birth certificate copies?
Last but not least: What are the reverse purple lettering past the last entry line on the lower middle right? What do they mean, and why are they there?
Did Dan Blather's liar/chief forger, Mary Mapes create this bs?
Is this phoney birth certificate just another example of the Real but Fake Hussein ObamaMessiaHamas, the Islamofacist Manchurian Candidate for Changing America?
Compare this doctored and phoney BC with a real one shown below:
Hey Obami, man of undocumented place of birth. You can settle this very quickly. Just authorize the officials in Hawaii to send official copies of your birth certificate to Jim Robinson and other conservative sites. Then, they can post the real authorized copies for everyone to see. We will take up a collection to pay for the authorized copy and Fed Ex overnight delivery to Jim Robinson/Free Republic so you will not have to worry about the cost.
Reality break: We probably have as much chance of seeing a real copy of Obami's birth certificate as seeing John Kerry’s full military record. Kerry refused to release his military records, and Hussein ObamaMessiaHamas, the Islamofacist Manchurian Candidate will probably not show his BC. We will be labeled as racists for daring to question his birth place. The lying spinning MSM will continue to cover for Hussein ObamaMessiaHamas.
Poor analysis, frankly.
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