Posted under "Birther" & Media
Yesterday to get some updates on the WND press conference I searched Yahoo using “world net daily press conference sue esquire” (no quotation marks in my search), and I would like to point out that my blog post from 28 Jun on the issues was the number one search result. While this is good for my ego and this site’s credibility, it doesn’t speak well for how larger news organizations have covered the press conference.
But some stuff has been trickling out, and as usual it is more snark than honest reporting. The reports are more an excuse to ridicule birthers than to report the news.
Here is Forbes’ report. (I have a comment below it.)
What these all have in common, besides substituting snark for the actual reporting of facts, is they all accept the long-form birth certificate the President released at face value. This is journalistic dereliction of duty. Given all the controversy and delay, the MSM should have immediately investigated the authenticity of the document the White House released. I do not believe this is a debatable point among objective, fair-minded people. If you believe the press should have accepted the long-form bc at face value, then you are either deliberately incurious or a shill. The press is supposed to be skeptical of the powers that be, not defenders of the conventional wisdom.
Here is what Corsi had to say on Facebook about The Atlantic Wire article:
Here’s the left’s spin on the WND law suit — Left wants to keep laughing it off — in blind belief that the WH released birth certificate settles everything — if the birth certificate issue had involved George W. Bush, the Left would be up in arms — demanding a forensic examination of the original document. Only lies keep Obama in office at this point.
Corsi is right, of course.
RedPhillips on 30 Jun 2011 at 4:09 am #
Actually, I don’t think my comment has appeared yet at the Forbes’ blog. It was visible to me, but I don’t think it is visible to all yet.
Brock Townsend on 30 Jun 2011 at 4:30 am #
Vox was on it today.
Where is the REAL birth certificate?
http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2011/06/where-is-real-birth-certificate.html
Foggy on 30 Jun 2011 at 10:45 am #
Epic fail.
Two years ago, the birthers brought out the declaration of Sandra Lines, a real document examiner, who stated under oath that you can’t tell whether a document is genuine or not without looking at the actual document. That meant, to the birthers, that somebody should examine the short-form birth certificate to see if it was genuine.
Now the birthers have thrown Sandra Lines under the bus. All these amateurs think they don’t need to see any document. Just looking at the PDF tells you the long-form birth certificate is a forgery.
Yesterday at the press conference, Mara Zebest said it was a forgery created by an amateur using Adobe software. But the document properties of the PDF itself prove she’s an idiot. The PDF wasn’t made with any Adobe software, it was made with Mac OS X 10.6.7 Quartz PDFContext.
Is it any wonder that there’s no real press coverage of that press conference except the liberal press laughing at the pathetic losers?
RedPhillips on 30 Jun 2011 at 12:44 pm #
Welcome Foggy. I actually feel honored that a major league anti-birther such as yourself has felt the need to respond to our little blog.
Of course looking at the original would be ideal, but there is much you can learn looking at a scan. I’m sorry but your dodges are no longer sufficient. Several forensic issues have been raised that bring into question the authenticity of the long-form bc (kerning, different fonts, identical characters, antialiasing, etc.) that have to be explained away SPECIFICALLY by another expert. They can not be explained away with hand waving. Where are the experts attesting to the authenticity of the document? And you can’t say the Fox news guy because he says his answers were taken out of context. (Something Fox has yet to correct.)
So produce some document experts attesting to the authenticity of the document or concede the field.
Matt Weber on 30 Jun 2011 at 6:34 pm #
I read the Forbes thread, and have to say that the author got the better of it.
RedPhillips on 30 Jun 2011 at 9:45 pm #
Matt, I haven’t read all the comments because they have multiplied exponentially, and I just got back to the post recently. But the author actually proves my contention. He suggests that there is no need to look into the authenticity of the long-form bc for the same reason that there is no reason to look into the idea that reptilian aliens have secretly taken over the country or some such absurdity. I rest my case. He accepts the President’s narrative and bc at face value and believes not doing so is the equivalent of believing that world is run by aliens. What more proof do you need? He is either a damn fool, intentionally looking the other way, or a shill who has no interest in ascertaining the truth.
BTW, Kevin Davidson, who is commenting at Forbes, is Dr. Conspiracy, so the big guns of anti-birtherism are obviously out policing the threads. We even merited Foggy at our little ol’ blog.
RedPhillips on 01 Jul 2011 at 1:18 am #
Matt, make sure you click on the “all comments” button and not just the “called out comments” button.
Matt Weber on 01 Jul 2011 at 2:26 am #
I was reading only the called out comments…I read all the rest and it just sealed the deal on the birthers. The author noted that Farah was straight up lying when he said everyone who examined the BC declared it a fake. There were several explanations posted for the weirdnesses with it, the government of Hawaii verified that it was real, there was a link to someone who took a picture of the actual paper and felt the raised seal…
What else is there? Ok, the NYT didn’t have an in-house expert examine it, but why would they? Fact is, you can raise question after question until the cows come home and the Forbes guy is right…at some point the matter is just closed. For the birthers, that point was late April. Obama settled the matter, let’s just let it lie.
RedPhillips on 01 Jul 2011 at 4:43 am #
“Ok, the NYT didn’t have an in-house expert examine it, but why would they?”
Matt, you are wrong on several counts. First of all, of course the NYT and the rest of the MSM should have forensically examined it. (And I didn’t say in house. They should have hired a high powered expert.) Again, I don’t think this is debatable. There were doubts about the existence of the BC, then suddenly it appears 2-3 years after the fact. I’m sorry but this is suspicions and due diligence demands it be examined. Anyone who says it is not suspicious circumstances is only seeing what they want to see.
“There were several explanations posted for the weirdness with it”
The explanations as to the anomalies are plausible, but as far as I have read no one has definitively said Mac, OCR or whatever does account for them. They have more said that it could account for it and that the people claiming it is a forgery haven’t sufficiently taken this into account. But there are several problems. First, none of this accounts for the kerning and different fonts issue. (Aren’t fonts what smoked out the Bush National Guard letters fraud and cost Dan Rather his job?) Second, the anti-birthers like to pick apart the credentials of the debunkers, but do they have the expertise they demand of others? Is Dr. Conspiracy a document expert, or is he just passing along stuff he has read and been told? Even he is left saying the OCR did a bad job. Are we really supposed to be satisfied with that? Were are the forensic experts who attest definitively that the Mac vs. Adobe issue or OCR issue definitely explain the anomalies.
“there was a link to someone who took a picture of the actual paper and felt the raised seal”
Matt, think a little. If the allegation is that the scan is a created document, then it follows automatically does it not that the hard copy was created from the computer document. So the existence of a hard copy presents no problem at all?
“the government of Hawaii verified that it was real”
It also goes without saying that if the document is a fake, that some people within the government of Hawaii were in on it. I guess you could allege that what Obama released is different than what Hawaii actually sent, but that isn’t what is being alleged as far as I know. What is being alleged is that there was either no bc or a somehow incriminating bc and the forgery was slipped in and then copied. Now I will concede that having to have government officials in Hawaii involved presents a barrier, particularly the more you have to involve, but that someone within Hawaii was in on it is inherent in the allegation. So that Hawaii vouches for it changes nothing.
“The author noted that Farah was straight up lying when he said everyone who examined the BC declared it a fake.”
Farah exaggerated, but the author of the article revealed his ignorance. He cited the expert Fox News consulted, but wasn’t even aware that that expert had said his opinion was misrepresented. The expert did not declare it a fake, but said neither did he vouch for its authenticity.
I’m sorry, but the document Obama released should be examined by several neutral forensic experts for authenticity. (As should the original it is allegedly based on.) This is not debatable by reasonable fair-minded people. It simply isn’t.
Matt Weber on 01 Jul 2011 at 3:11 pm #
I think you misunderstand. I didn’t say that the case was airtight. Rather, the sum total of all the evidence clearly points in the direction of it being authentic. The birthers thus far have provided no evidence of their assertions, and their questions have been answered satisfactorily for my tastes.
I’m glad you recognize that the entire government of Hawaii being in on it presents a problem for the birthers. An insurmountable one, I’d say but then I admit that when I said that I didn’t figure that they would ever go so far as to turn this into an actual full-blown conspiracy theory. I’m trying to give them as much credit as I can, but it gets more difficult every day. Although, it does explain how we got a document with a raised seal, doesn’t it?
You seem dead set that those of us who demur are shutting off our brains or conspiracy-phobic or simply being unreasonable and unfair, but consider for a minute that we simply have looked at the evidence that’s available and concluded that Obama isn’t perpetrating a fraud — no more no less.
RedPhillips on 01 Jul 2011 at 5:26 pm #
Sorry. I get a little overheated on this issue sometimes because it seems so clear to me, and I can’t understand why it isn’t equally clear to others.
I looked at the evidence early on and concluded that Obama was probably not born in Kenya. But based on the number of documents that were being withheld and the overall lack of details about the guy and the murkyness of his narrative, I concluded he was probably hiding something. Not necessarily his place of birth, but something that was at varience with his official narrative or otherwise incriminating. The most I have ever asserted is “probably hiding something.” I have been very careful not to make definitive claims, other than that he didn’t write Dreams which is I believe a virtual certainty.
I realize that a rational person could look at the same info and come to the conclusion that he is probably not hiding anything of significance if at all. (I do think it is pretty clear he doesn’t want us to see his mediocre grades.) I don’t think there are suifficient grounds to conclude he definitely isn’t hiding anything (which is the anti-birther position. “Nothing to see here.”) anymore than there are grounds to definitively assert that he is hiding something.
What I don’t understand, and what bugs the heck out of me, is how anyone could be satisfied with “He probably isn’t hiding anything.” The guy is the President of the United States of America. I’m supposed to be satisfied with he probably isn’t hiding anything? I refuse to accept that. I want to know if he is hiding something. I want to see the supressed records. I want the murky narrative made less murky. I can’t understand how anyone can be satisfied with less.
Matt Weber on 01 Jul 2011 at 7:39 pm #
He probably is hiding things, but not all things he could be hiding are on the same level. I was with the birthers while he was withholding the birth certificate, because it involved a constitutional requirement for the presidency. He may well be hiding his sad grades, but as they do not involve any legal issue pertaining to the presidency no one can demand that he release them. The President isn’t obliged to release anything just because someone asks for it, so other than complaining about his obstinacy there’s nothing any of us can do. Maybe he didn’t write the Dreams book–I have no idea–but if he put his name on it it was obviously with the consent of Ayers or whomever the author really was, so no crime was committed.
Now, you can definitely bring these things up in the sense that a President shouldn’t be a complete anonymity that came out of nowhere–which is pretty much what Obama is. But at that point, you are at the mercy of the people and their reaction–which is likely to be complete apathy. The media isn’t going to pursue it both because of time/money constraints and because many of them find the question embarrassing. I sympathize with you here, because I agree a leader should be someone known by the people at least in a general sense…but I don’t know what anyone can do.
RedPhillips on 01 Jul 2011 at 10:54 pm #
The issue with the school records is not just the average grades which even Obama concedes. The suspicion is that he might have attended designated as a foreign student and/or got a scholarship for foreign students. Or maybe that he self-identified as a Muslim. Or maybe there was a disciplinary action for drugs. Probably only the first would be a game changer because Obama has said he didn’t start identifying as a Christian until later.
As far as the book, I believe that a ghostwriter is always inherently dishonest. If you got help then you should credit a co-author, and I say this knowing my candidate is rumored to have utilized a ghostwriter or writers. But politicians utilize ghostwriters frequently my scrupples aside, so the ghostwriter issue per se is not scandalous. What is a problem is that Obama specifically said he wrote his books to a group of teachers where the implication was clear. I actually wrote mine and we know most other politicians don’t. Also, much of the early genius buzz that propelled the campaign initially was based on the idea that Obama was some sort of literary genius based on Dreams. And if Ayers was the actual author, which is near certain, then Obama specifically lied about his relationship with a former terrorist. He blew off the relationship by saying something like “He lives in my neighborhood, and I think our kids went to school together or something.” I don’t know if this is a game changer, but it would be a problem for him if it became widely publicized. (I think the informed Obama defenders know he didn’t write the book because they tend to stay away from defending him hard on that issue.)
I agree that the press finds asking these questions embarrassing, but I also think they actively don’t want them to be true and have deliberately not looked into them. You can’t find anything if you don’t look. Instead they have substituted ridicule of the question askers. (And some of the birthers have set themselves up for ridicule.) This is an unseemly and dangerous position for the press to take. The whole press is playing the role of poor Lanny Davis in the Clinton affair. The press is not supposed to act like a bunch of partisan pundits. This drives me mad, and when I see conservatives seemingly acquiesce to this state of affairs it drives me even madder.
RedPhillips on 01 Jul 2011 at 10:59 pm #
I wish Foggy would come back because I think he would find my measured minimalist birtherism harder to combat than what he normally deals with.
I’m particularly curious if Foggy is willing to go to the mat that Obama wrote Dreams himself.
Kirt Higdon on 01 Jul 2011 at 11:20 pm #
As I’ve said before, I assume that any president, including Obama, is hiding plenty, most of it having to do with the misdeeds he is up to right now, not issues from his infancy, high school, or college days. The hiding something applies to the entire regime which has millions of secrets, I’m sure many of far more consequence than Obama’s grades, use of ghost writers, or use of dope. The point is that what is known publicly about Obama and his policies is more than enough reason to vote against him many times over. If the electorate is willing to give Obama a pass on high unemployment, increasing inflation and permanent war in north Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, the idea that some past dope smoking or using Bill Ayers as a ghost writer (99 out of 100 people will ask “Bill who?”) will be a “game changer” is ludicrous. And the fact that he lies? He’s a politician; lying is his native language. Lying is to politicians what fornication is to prostitutes.
RedPhillips on 02 Jul 2011 at 3:36 am #
Kirt, look back. The only thing I said would be a game changer is if he attended school designated as a foreign student or went on a foreign student scholarship. That would be met with widespread outrage because it would mean he self-identified as something other than American. Do you disagree with that?
Otherwise, as I have said over and over, this isn’t about whether Obama deserves to be supported/re-elected. I voted for Chuck Baldwin because I thought McCain was too liberal. Is there any doubt I think Obama is unworthy of support? It is about our press and other sources of conventional opinion that are deliberately looking the other way (and especially the snarky way they go about it) and (most irritatingly) conservatives who seem OK with this state of affairs. This state of affairs really pisses me off, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why it doesn’t piss off the anti-birther conservatives to the same degree. This state of affairs is not OK, and we shouldn’t allow it to seem like we think it is OK. We (that means you Kirt) should be decrying it vociferously at every opportunity.
Kirt Higdon on 02 Jul 2011 at 5:00 am #
“Kirt, look back. The only thing I said would be a game changer is if he attended school designated as a foreign student or went on a foreign student scholarship. That would be met with widespread outrage because it would mean he self-identified as something other than American. Do you disagree with that?”
In fact I do disagree with that. Again, anyone who gave him a pass on everything he is doing now would be unlikely to hold that against him. Gaming the system in college is an almost universal practice and many would think he was quite clever to snag a scholarship intended for foreign students. Claiming to be of some favored ethnicity in order to get a scholarship or other government benefits is a quite common practice, and not even necessarily dishonest considering that the ethnicities are not defined with any precision.