The Birther Rebirth

[Lumpy]

So I said I'd make a thread about this when more info came out. Unfortunately, nothing has and most news outlets beyond local channels won't touch this. When they do, they often only blast Arpaio and his previous attempts at this, without reference to the findings of the investigation.

Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff, known for his history of illegally stopping Mexicans and suspected Mexicans, supporting the birther movement, and the media's love of hating him, claims to have found evidence to once and for all end the birther issue.

He claims to have found a birth certificate that was used as a source to forge Obama's. A person named Johanna Ah'Nee was born 16 days after Barrack Obama, but a lot of the information recorded on the two documents match up almost perfectly, both in terms of spacing and in what's recorded. They claim to have found about 9 separate points of forgery, where the information was taken from the Ah'Nee document, and moved to the Obama one.

Here's a copy of the Obama certificate I got off whitehouse.gov
Here's a copy of the Ah'Nee certificate I found that was posted on a random blog 2 years ago. It was actually in an anti-birther article and being used to show the legitimacy of the Obama document at the time.

I actually tried matching a few things up between them myself. Some things match up a little too well for my comfort, but at the same time I feel like I see a few problems already. They pretty much broke it down into three areas, so I'll go through each.

1. The five text pieces: The spacing seems pretty exact. They were probably using a mechanical typewriter for returning to the next line, but the horizontal spacing seems exact as well. That would mean hitting the exact same number of indents or spaces for each placing, and even then I'm not sure it would be so perfect. The one video shows a set of certificates from twins and the horizontal spacing does not line up at all. This is five pieces of text, across four lines, that all align both vertically and horizontally relevant to each other exactly the same way on both documents.

2. The date stamps: Ah'Nee was born 16 days after Obama so these would have been modified if they came from the same document. The claim is that the angles of the two sets of stamps seem to line up between both documents. I don't have photoshop installed at the moment so I had trouble properly checking myself, but from what I can see, they do seem really close. If it's a forgery though, and they took each stamp independently, as they would have had to, and modified both separately, why not just rotate them a bit? This one's a bit shifty, but if anyone has photoshop, you should check if they even line up properly.

3. The X Boxes: So this one seems a bit strange too, but both of the crossed out boxes in "6D" and "6E" of the Obama certificate seemingly match the crossed out box in "6D" of Ah'Nee's certificate. So, on one hand, all three do look pretty similar when compared to the boxes that have been crossed out. The upper border of the box seems to cut through all three X's in the same place, and the bottom left corner of the X just barely touches the border of the boxes. On the other hand, this one doesn't make much sense. Why reuse the same box? Why are there only two instances where the crossed out boxes are directly copied? Also, from what I could see, the X in Ah'Nee's certificate box looks a bit more centered than in Obama's. Unfortunately though, this investigation was done through carefully produced scans of the original documents and sending them to an examiner, whereas we just have shitty old compressed images.

I really don't know what to make of this. One of my main problems with it is that it's not as good as it should be. Arpaio isn't the most immediately trustworthy character, particularly at the moment, but he's not the only one coming out with this. According to his department, it was independent examiners that made the call. Either they are lying as well, the sheriffs department is outright lying about their involvement or statements, or they themselves received a forged document to compare to. For me, at least until there are better sources for Ah'Nee's birth certificate, I'm not sure I'm 100% swayed by the evidence I can find outside the video.

 

[Steal Thy Kill]

 

[Easy]

In short, two different birth certificates from the same place, at roughly the same time, look kind of similar in places.

I feel like there's just not enough there, to be calling fraud on.

 

[Lumpy]

Deleted my last post since I typed up a more thorough comment elsewhere that I'll just reuse. Here's the picture of the difference in the O's.

I gotta say, I see a few problems with the Sheriff Departments analysis.

1. This one is just a suggestion, but for the vertical spacing, it may be that they used an auto-returning typewriter. I can't tell exactly, someone with photoshop will have to check, but the vertical spacing seems very similar on a few different BC's.

2. The horizontal spacing could have been due to putting in the same variable into a mechanical device, such as hitting the tab key an equal amount of times. Could be some very obsessive registrar. That said, no other two cerificates I've seen have the same horizontal spacing between even three different text areas, let alone five across four lines. I'm just suggesting a mechanical typewriter would control for many of the variables.

3. The X's don't seem to have been transferred by the entire box like the video claims. It says the text above it was partly grabbed as well. If you look at the two boxes on Obama's certificate however, the box in 6E has a bigger gap toward the bottom. They also could not have grabbed the text above, as the X's are placed differently relative to the above comma they touch. One is slighly more to one side. I also don't get why they would reuse anything at all, when they could have taken a different X. Also, why only those two boxes?

4. Why did they place the date stamps exactly as they were, despite having to change the day? If they were going to modify them, why keep the angles? It's like they did more work that they had to have known would end up getting them caught.

5. This is the biggest flaw I see. One of the O's in Oahu doesn't match the supposed source. If you look at 6b, the O in the Obama document appears smaller, and higher than in the Ah'Nee document. Despite this, they seem to pass it off as an exact match in the video. The overall placement is right, the "Oahu" is not. Could be more of those I'm not catching too.

Also, Easy, do we really disagree on just how crazy of a coincidence it would have to be to have 5 text areas line up both horizontally and vertically on two separate, hand-typed documents, while at the same time having two separate pairs of date stamps with the same angles between them on said two documents? You feel zero need to question or attempt to explain that? Even if your explanation is "It's seven coincidences", I can see it. But really?

Regardless of the fact that I've done more to call this conclusion into question than the entirety of the American press as of yet, am I seriously the only one that still finds any of it strange?

 

[13thforsworn]

So I'm gonna watch the 27 minute video at some point, but don't have time at the moment because I'm working on an assignment, but I had a quick question that I was wondering if they addressed. Assuming one of these documents is forged, did they show that Ah'Nee's is real and not forged? As in, that it was forged based on Obama's and then claimed to be the original? Not saying that that is what I believe, but just a question that came to mind.

 

[Chickenspleen]

Joe Arpaio is a piece of work. He set up what is essentially an internment camp at the local jail.

 

[Lumpy]

So I'm gonna watch the 27 minute video at some point, but don't have time at the moment because I'm working on an assignment, but I had a quick question that I was wondering if they addressed. Assuming one of these documents is forged, did they show that Ah'Nee's is real and not forged? As in, that it was forged based on Obama's and then claimed to be the original? Not saying that that is what I believe, but just a question that came to mind.

I thought about that too. The presenter, Mike Zullo, says he took it off a man named Jerome Corsi, who just so happens to be a well-known conspiracy theorist. That said, he does have a PhD, so I'm personally not 100% behind the idea that he forged it himself with the interest of throwing his career away like some articles suggest. It's very hard to find info on how he got a hold of the document though, since they are all drowned out by this. I've found a few blogs and articles that mention that he was given permission by Johanna Ah'Nee. If the info I found is true, the first time he posted the certificate online, he blacked out anything that he thought could lead back to her, but apparently left just enough for people to find her. How her full birth certificate hit the scene, and when exactly, relative to his book and Obama's BC release, I'm not sure.

It's funny, all the experts up until this point have been verifying Ah'Nee document as authentic, and the conspiracy theorists have been claiming it was a forgery as "practice for Obama" or something. Up until this point, the Ah'Nee document has been used more to debunk Birther claims than used as evidence for them. In fact, it's authenticity was essentially one of the key elements in debunking many Birther claims for a while.

That said, other than maybe the repeating X that I'm not so sure is repeating, there wouldn't really be much reason to believe Obama's is the fake, but this one isn't. I could be wrong, but the authenticity of the Ah'Nee document might still need to be proven.

Joe Arpaio is a piece of work. He set up what is essentially an internment camp at the local jail.

Hard to get over the timing too. One month after the election and this comes out? And only a day before Obama's press conference on the Russian "election" hacks.

But from what I can see, there's no reason Sheriff Arpaio wouldn't think he's right here. Either a document is forged, or all of these variables they show to line up have to be controlled for mechanically. They had a few other documents to compare to, certainly not enough, but the more data they added, the more certain they became. You can look at other birth certificates yourself

Here's an image showing the Nordyke twins BC's, who were born back to back. No similarities in placement in the slightest, let alone 5 accompanied by 2 hand placed stamp angles.

 

[Lumpy]

I put the full video in the first post instead of the 27 minute one. At 40 minutes in, they talk about interviewing Johanna Ah'Nee.

So, there was apparently a lot of fuckery going on there. A lot of people dispute her claim of having possession of her birth certificate since the '90s, and say records only show her getting it some time around '06 I think. Those people have all been Birthers that think she's in on the conspiracy. Anti-birthers believed her.

Jerome Corsi apparently did hold her original birth certificate for a time 10 days AFTER the Obama release. If the Ah'Nee certificate was modified, this would have been the time. Zullo does seem to suggest Ah'Nee's certificate is still an investigative lead, but clarified that she isn't a suspect.


EDIT: Another issue, and I don't want to alarm anyone here, the Whitehouse has the ability to create jpegs.

 

[Easy]

how crazy of a coincidence it would have to be to have 5 text areas line up both horizontally and vertically on two separate, hand-typed documents, while at the same time having two separate pairs of date stamps with the same angles between them on said two documents? You feel zero need to question or attempt to explain that? Even if your explanation is "It's seven coincidences", I can see it. But really?

Dunno about the "exact" nature of this or that space alignment, as I haven't tried superimposing them on each other. And anything less than perfectly exact is very different, where this sort of thing is concerned.

The chain of logic that would lead to the creation of such a forgery strikes me as unrealistic, to begin with. Why make a fake certificate where entire sections are lifted from a real document, but others are filled in from scratch? And why bother? Forget that Hawaiian officials have repeatedly confirmed Obama's certificate's authenticity; even if he still somehow hadn't been born in the US, he'd still be just as eligible for the Presidency as Ted Cruz. There'd be no need to create a half-assed forgery just because of that time when Crooked Hillary founded an uncouth and inflammatory conspiracy theory, on no real basis other than Obama's name and skin color, which has since been righteously and magnanimously put down by your nation's great, wise, and benevolent leader, the undisputed truth-master, Donald Trump.

But, hey. Maybe an investigation will uncover something to the contrary.

 

[Lumpy]

Alright, I finally got the two documents in photoshop and made a bunch of lines over them. For the most part, it all seems on the up and up, and most of the similarities can probably be explained by the nature of a mechanical typewriter. One thing I didn't logic through was that they would only need to hit space until they were at the border of the next box, then space to the start of the word. i.e. instead of 50 spaces from the previous word, it's 5 spaces from the box-border. Takes out a whole lot of room for error. Another thing is, the two X's really only had two or three spots they could go with these two certificates. Coupled with the stamp angles, it's all still a little odd, but maybe not as much as it would seem. And again, I'm not sure about the rest of the lettering, but there is that discrepancy in the O's.

That said, Obama's does look a little weirder than Ah'Nees. It's strange that only that O is out of line for instance, sitting higher than the baseline. And the word "Male" on the second line has a different starting margin than the rest of the words in the certificate, and in a pretty strange way. Each letter in the word is about a half-letter to the left of all the others on the page, including on the same line. That doesn't match up mechanically with all the other certificates. They would have had to readjust the paper from what I can tell.

I drew the lines and boxes I wanted though, so I'm done.

The chain of logic that would lead to the creation of such a forgery strikes me as unrealistic, to begin with. Why make a fake certificate where entire sections are lifted from a real document, but others are filled in from scratch? And why bother? Forget that Hawaiian officials have repeatedly confirmed Obama's certificate's authenticity; even if he still somehow hadn't been born in the US, he'd still be just as eligible for the Presidency as Ted Cruz.

They never go into the possible source for the rest. Could be "filled in from scratch", but if they altered it, I'd very much doubt it.

True on the rest. Really the reason I never even looked into the birther thing myself. Of course, I had no problems with the people that did, there was a lot of reasons to find the whole thing suspicious, but I'd always point out it wouldn't make a difference either way. I never got why it became so god damn big in the first place.

If I had looked into this before however, I totally would have been duped by the certificate being split into fucking layers for text, background, etc. Never could have imagined there'd be a logical explanation for that.

There'd be no need to create a half-assed forgery just because of that time when Crooked Hillary founded an uncouth and inflammatory conspiracy theory, on no real basis other than Obama's name and skin color, which has since been righteously and magnanimously put down by your nation's great, wise, and benevolent leader, the undisputed truth-master, Donald Trump.

Well go easy on the poor woman! To be fair, Obama was the first one to ever claim he was born in Kenya. Twice. And his father is from there. And a good amount of his family is from and still lives there.

Really, I remember the name and skin thing, before he and everyone else fully and illogically retweaked it, had more to do with him being a secret Muslim. The exact same tactics with the exact same reasoning as declaring Trump a Russian shill, and from the exact same person at that. And even then, for the non-rednecks, and for the majority of them as well, it had more to do with the picture of him in Muslim garb, growing up in Indonesia, and having a Muslim father and step-father, not his name or color.