Posted on 08/03/2009 6:27:13 PM PDT by kristinn
Jon Chessoni, a first secretary at the Kenyan Embassy in Washington, can’t understand why his office gets so many baseless questions about whether Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
“It’s madness,” said Chessoni on Monday. “His father, in 1961, would not even have been in Kenya. When this matter first came up, the Kenyan government did its research and confirmed that these are all baseless claims.”
Nonetheless, Chessoni spent part of his day fielding inquiries about an image posted at the fringe conservative web site WorldNetDaily–a purported “certified copy of registration of birth” belonging to “Barack Hussein Obama II,” submitted by attorney Orly Taitz in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, part of her undying quest to get a judge to listen to the conspiracy theories about the 44th president of the United States. “I’m forcing the issue, where Obama will have to respond,” Taitz told the Website. “I am asking the judge to give me the power to subpoena the documents from the Kenyan embassy.”
Chessoni didn’t understand what Taitz was talking about or what her discovery (the gift of an “anonymous source” who’s “afraid for his life”) was supposed to prove. He showed the image to other embassy employees, who rolled their eyes at what was, for some, only the latest forgery being passed off as an official document from Kenya. “It’s a red herring,” said Chessoni. “Maybe there are not enough facts out there.”
SNIP
On Sunday and Monday, the forums at the conservative web site FreeRepublic.com roiled with discussion of Taitz’s new allegations and the forged document. Some prominent “birthers” chimed in to attack Taitz. “Dr. Ron Polarik,” an anonymous “forensic analyst” whose attempts to prove that Obama’s Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth is a forgery has been widely accepted by “birthers”–and even filed as evidence in one of Berg’s lawsuits–accused Taitz of shopping around “another BOGUS BIRTH DOCUMENT.” Jim Robinson, the founder and owner of the site, started his own thread, asking whether the certificate was a fake. On Monday, the site took the unorthodox step of linking directly to the two threads with a sort of disclaimer: “Welcome Visitors! If you’re looking for the Kenyan Birth Certificate story, click here! Or is it a fake?”
“The story broke at a perfect time [early Sunday morning] for people to sit at their computers all day,” laughed Kristinn Taylor, a spokesman for FreeRepublic. Taylor pointed to the combative threads about the “birth certificate” to show that the the conservative site’s readers were treating the story much the way they had treated the September 2004 CBS News story on President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. A FreeRepublic poster named Harry McDougland (sic), who went by the handle “Buckhead,” did key research on the documents used in the original CBS News report that led producers to admit that they were probably forged, and eventually led to the network retracting the story.
“A lot of people are looking at this with a jaundiced eye, especially in light of what happened five years ago,” said Taylor. “One thing I really hate is people using forged documents to score political points. I didn’t like it in 2004. I didn’t like it when people went after Michelle Obama with that forged room service receipt, saying she had racked up this big bill at the Waldorf-Astoria. I don’t like it when it’s done to anybody.”
Taitz’s find has proven just as controversial with lawyers who’ve worked with her in the past. Gary Kreep, a California attorney who assisted Taitz when she filed her first lawsuits in the state last year, worried that Taitz had jumped the gun. “I’ve advised her in writing, along with several other attorneys, that if she has an original document that seems to bolster her case, it needs to be examined by a professional document examiner,” Kreep told TWI.
Kreep’s concern about Taitz’s “Kenyan birth certificate” came out of his own experience in being offered fishy or fraudulent “smoking gun” documents about Obama’s past. “I’ve gotten tips about birth certificates that are purported to be original, snuck out of Kenya, yadda yadda,” Kreep said. “Then, all of a sudden, the people offering these things disappear into the woodwork. Some people are definitely putting together hoaxes to damage our cause.”
SNIP
Yes, it is our duty to remember, and to keep up the fight!
I think its kinda cool that, whatever comes up, the folks at FR are the ones that finally get to the bottom of it. I’ve seen some pretty good analysis pro and con over this thing.
I’m not sure I’ve actually figured it out, but I know where to go to read the latest.
If in the end it turns out to be bogus, FR helped to prove it. And if it turns out to be true, again FR helped to prove it.
So, just who was the forensic document expert that declared this piece of paper a forgery? Has someone owned up to it or what?
Because he's playing rope-a-dope, and conservatives are playing the part of dopes.
Obama is a marxist thug, but we are playing right into his hands with this stuff. He is perfectly willing to sit back and allow us to be branded as "crazy lunatics" by the media.
Speculation:
If this thing continues to get pushed, whether by true believers or agents provocateurs, then Obama steps forward with a certified copy of his Hawaiian BC that has been witnessed to by Hawaiian State Officials...
Well, it would result in at least a modest loss in credibility by the Republicans if only through implied guilt by association.
Then if further, more legitimate, issues are brought up the administration has a good hill to fight from. It would then be much easier for them to dismiss claims or accusations as just another baseless fishing expedition like that whole BC thing.
I am beginning to think that Zero doesn't want this to go away.
I am also starting to feel like a dog that chases its own tail.
Round and round we go, never really getting anywhere.
Basically true, and seriously scary because there is zero evidence that this latest document from Taitz is authentic, nor any evidence that anybody who matters believes it is. The "memogate" memo, on the other hand, was obviously fake -- at first glance by anyone who'd been an adult in the 1970s, it was clear that it could not possibly have been produced when it was alleged to have been produced, by the office that was alleged to have produced it. And almost immediately, instructions emerged enabling anyone with a current or recent version of Microsoft Word to produce an absolutely *identical* document using the default settings. Yet it was being touted by CBS News as having been professionally verified as authentic, and much of the voting population of the US believed this because of the source.
I worry that Free Republic is not going to have much influence on the political direction of the country, if phony documents with no authentication backup whatsoever, can generate a 5000+ post thread, made up largely of posters who are terribly excited because they believe that 1) it's very likely real, and 2) that it stands a realistic chance of bringing about their fantasy of having President Obama removed from office. Seriously, a lot of posters on that thread sounded every bit as out of touch with reality as Dan Rather and his CBS pals did when they were insisting that the obviously fake memos were real, even long after it was clear to the whole country that they were amateurish fakes.
I agree. I cannot help but suspect that they are hoping this thing peaks a few months before 2010 elections so they can use it to deflect attention from other issues.
So what do you recommend we do?
It looks like this is the guy that found the Australian BC.
Did he create the fake?
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:koyaan/index?brevity=full;tab=comments
This is why we need to be focusing on the release ALL records, the BC being first and foremost.
Major Cook is certainly not a "kook" and they know it. They rescinded his orders rather than face the court battle.
That is the way to fight this issue...and it is being fought out there as we speak.
No Sh!t Sherlock. That's the base of the problem.
Point taken. The crap he has shown is all worthless.
Methinks the forged document may well be the Aussie one.
They are trying to make a big deal about this, but If I wanted to, I could forge a Hawaii COLB, so this just shows how you cant trust a document unless you see it for yourself, and second where he was born has nothing to do with it his father was never a American. The Media loves to skim over blatant that fact.
Heck I registered joined the service a year later then got the same letter.
F-bombs will get your posts TOSsed, as will much of the ghetto attitude that makes heroes of the maggots over there.
You can still get the idea and quote across by using astericks & such, and believe me, I walk that line as much as most ;~)
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