Genuine, World-Class Computer Expert Evaluates Obama’s Birth Certificate PDF

Obamabirthbook.com ^ | September 26, 2012 | John Woodman

[Tex-Con-Man]

(There is a lot preceding this section, but it's mostly about previous claims and counter claims regarding the Cold Case Posse. I start where he introduces the expert.)

...

As I examined patents and technical papers written on MRC compression, one name in particular seemed to pop up again and again — that of Ricardo de Queiroz.

Ricardo de Queiroz is one of the primary fathers of this entire technology.

The very first “mixed raster content” patent in the United States was granted to Leon Bottou and Yann Andre LeCun… But the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, and 13th patents were granted to Ricardo de Queiroz and his team. That’s about half of the first dozen or so patents. And some of his team members and students have also gone on to further develop the technology.

In addition, Professor de Queiroz appears again and again as an author of the available technical papers on MRC compression.

Now there are certainly many other individuals who have contributed to the development of this technology; and several in particular have made really big contributions. But I decided, based on what I read in the patent filings and technical papers, that if I were going to contact one expert in the world on this particular technology, the person I would pick would be Ricardo de Queiroz.

So I contacted him. And Dr. de Queiroz was gracious enough to reply — for which I thank him. In clarifying what compression technology is capable of, he has rendered a genuine service to all who have held any interest in this controversy.

...

[Tex-Con-Man]

This is an excerpt. I will post more in a reply...

Follow the link to the entire lengthy article.

[Tex-Con-Man]

Evaluation of Obama PDF File by Professor Ricardo de Queiroz

Dear Mr. Woodman,

There is no possible way I can tell if the PDF of President Obama’s birth certificate (POBC) made available by the White House is a “forgery” or not. The forgery can happen before being processed not to mention that the paper document itself could be forged, before the scanning. Thus, this is not the point.

[Note: This is very similar to what I said in my book on the birth certificate — JW.]

The question is whether all these artifacts we see after rendering the PDF of POBC are signs of forgery. I do not see that. I see them more likely as a result of inadequate processing.

The document has poor quality and it has been aggressively processed, no questions about it. The question is whether the corruptive processing was individual with the intent of forging it, or if it was automated within regular MRC segmentation.

If it was a forgery it was a very sloppy job. Any photoshop-knowledgeable person, of the garden variety, can do a much better job than that. If it is automated, it is a lousy job too, but bear in mind that algorithms for these jobs are not trained on specific documents. They were more likely developed, trained and tested on magazine pages and books. A US birth certificate is unlikely to give good results because it may be an outlier in the big picture of all documents they had in mind when developed their MRC tool.

MRC is about separating the single-image document into multiple layers, hopefully each one with a given characteristic. This has to be done automatically, in what we call segmentation. What I see in the document are signs of MRC segmentation consistent with strategies in line with the techniques pioneered by DjVu. I (and my students) do not advocate doing the segmentation that way, but that is not the point either. In fact, I would not be surprised if the software which segmented the WH document was derived from some DjVu tool.

They first try to “lift” the text to another layer. They can find more than one type of text and place them in different layers. The rest is background and they compress with standard image compression methods.

An Illustration From a Seminal 1999 Technical Paper by Professor and Inventor Ricardo de Queiroz Shows Multiple, Different-Colored Bitmask Text Layers.

In the POBC [President Obama Birth Certificate] I see lots of signs of that. It missed a lot of text, like the R in BARACK and in many other places. The missed text is aggressively compressed with JPEG for example, which justifies the damage to those text parts.

About the halos around some text: I am not sure why they do it, but it may be trying to suppress another halo problem caused by “lifting” scanned text that leaves some of the foreground in the background and vice-versa causing trouble to compress the layers. We wrote some papers about it. You can still see background through inside some “O” letters and inside the check boxes.

There might be morphological dilation around the text mask or the segmentation is block-based. The halo could be caused by the foreground in a dilated mask, or by processing the background. One plausible alternative is that the algorithm finds text as the letters with a bit of the surrounding background for safety. Some Adobe tools do that.

Furthermore, the text is lifted to the foreground and sharpened (nearly binarized) making the background surroundings to disappear. When the text layer is pushed back onto the background plane the letter surroundings become halo. There is also some grayish lifted text, which was perhaps found to have different statistics and was then treated differently. The mask is binary, the foreground (text) can have any color or texture, or even parts of the background around the text. All these are conjectures; different algorithmic choices might produce similar results.

I took a birth certificate which has a similar background pattern, scanned and compressed using an older DjVu tool. It has shown the same problems as POBC, like text letters that were missed and sent to background, and multiple text styles. It didn’t have halo, though, because its algorithm decided to obliterate the whole background pattern. Perhaps if I had time to toy around with packages and parameters I might find something very close to what was used to generate the document shown by the WH, but I unfortunately do not have the time right now.

In summary I can only say I see much stronger signs of common MRC algorithmic processing of the image rather than some intentional manipulation.

[faucetman]

Just confusing the issue with BS. Why do changes, anomalies appear in boxes that are important and not others? The naked eye can see these obvious forged changes to the document.

This guy is making rocket science out of a scan. You don't need to be an expert to see this is an obvious forgery.

You didn't like our expert......I don't like yours!

[butterdezillion]

At this point what matters for eligibility purposes is that Alvin Onaka has confirmed to AZ SOS Ken Bennett that Obama’s HI BC is not legally valid and that the White House image is NOT “a true and accurate representation of the original record on file”. He also confirmed to KS SOS Kris Kobach that the information on the White House image is NOT “identical to” the information on the original BC.

http://butterdezillion.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/complete-klayman-letter-to-bauer.pdf

http://butterdezillion.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/wheel-of-fortune-v-family-feud-final.pdf

http://butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/hdoh-did-not-verify-what-kansas-requested/

[kabar]

In fact, I found the technical evidence to be overwhelming in that direction. In other words, not one of the significant birther allegations — and I examined all of them — stood up under honest and competent scrutiny.

Once the term "birther" was used, the author lost all credibility.

[American Constitutionalist]

A Genuine, World-Class Computer Expert does not make a real world experienced criminal investigator.

Don't you think that Sheriff Joe also had his own experts looking at Obama's so called birth certificate ?

[Nifster]

and while all that is very interesting the truth is nothing will come of it.

What MUST happen is for every one to work as hard as they can to make sure that O is NOT reelected.

[Revel]

I suppose that he can explain away all the other abnormalities,
And even the little date problem on the draft registration card as well.

[Windflier]

Don't you think that Sheriff Joe also had his own experts looking at Obama's so called birth certificate ?

From the article:

"...the testimony of their “experts” was not consistent (!)

Secondly, Mr. Selaty is approximately 22 years old. One might easily wonder — with no disrespect intended to Selaty, who seems to have decent enough general computer skills for someone at the beginning of a career — why, exactly, was Arpaio’s Posse relying on a 22 year old for an “expert opinion” regarding the birth certificate of the President of the United States?

Personally, if I were accusing the President of the United States of having a forged birth certificate, I would rely on real, recognized experts in the appropriate fields. And most certainly, no 22-year-olds would be in the mix."

[jasonandtheb]

Ever consider Obama does have a valid birth certificate, but put out a facsimile just to enhance the diversion?

[patriot08]

Canada Free Press nailed it long ago:

Do you fear Barack Obama?

Canada Free Press

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12999

(snip)

Every member of the Supreme Court, every member of congress, every member of the Joint Chiefs, most members of the DOD, CIA, FBI, Secret Service and state run media, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, MSNBC, Fox and print news, knows that Barack Hussein Obama does NOT meet Article II – Section I constitutional requirements for the office he holds. By his own biography, there is NO way he can pass the test. The hard evidence is so far beyond overwhelming, it is ridiculous.

(snip)

But not ONE member of America’s most powerful people will dare confront Obama and his anti-American cabal on the subject. The Constitution does NOT stand.

(snip)

Half of the people you expect to stop this insanity are quiet co-conspirators in the silent coup. The other half is paralyzed by fear, motivated only by political self-preservation.

(Snip

Americans keep asking what they can do because they see that none of their leaders are doing anything to stop the demise of their beloved country. It’s the right question, because those leaders are NOT going to stop this thing.

(Snip)

Who will save freedom?

A brave few… This is how it was in the beginning, how it has always been and how it will be.

(Snip

Dr. Orly Taitz, Phil Berg and Gary kreep, all of whom have made defending the constitution and the American way of life a personal ambition in the absence of any constitutional leadership.

If the American people fail to get behind these brave few who are seeking peaceful redress, all the peaceful options will evaporate as if they never existed. We will return to a pre-1776 America overnight.

[cynwoody]

Ever consider Obama does have a valid birth certificate, but put out a facsimile just to enhance the diversion?

Good point.

The test is not whether the electronic document, per se, passes muster. Rather, it's whether the facts the electronic document asserts match what the State of Hawaii "knows". If not, forgery is an incidental artifact. If so, forgery is impossible.

Of course, what the State of Hawaii knows might not be the truth. But that's a whole other question, for which world-class computer expert credentials are irrelevant.

[Swordmaker]

This "expert" is talking about the White House and Hawaii using DjVu, an "alternative" file format for scanning and files used instead of PDF files that requires "alternative" readers and display applications, as well as alternative file manipulation application programs, that may have created the artifacting everyone has observed in the Obama birth certificate. Ask yourselves, does this scenario make any sense???? This is an obscure, very seldom used format.

DjVu has been promoted as an alternative to PDF,[citation needed] promising smaller files than PDF for most scanned documents.[4] The DjVu developers report that color magazine pages compress to 40–70 kB, black and white technical papers compress to 15–40 kB, and ancient manuscripts compress to around 100 kB; a satisfactory JPEG image typically requires 500 kB.[5] Like PDF, DjVu can contain an OCR text layer, making it easy to perform copy and paste and text search operations.

He TOTALLY ignores the mix of raster scanned image and digital text placed on the BC, mixed resolution scans, and varied rotation scans, as well the kerning found in supposed typewriter fonts. Registration problems, changing typewriter typefaces, all issues that have been identified as existing on the Obama long form BC, which are NOT issues that could be created by artifacting by DjVu layering errors and human intervention to correct said errors. Finally, DjVu could not have inserted the spurious happy face found in the the stamp ONLY on this single copy of a Hawaiian BC, or duplicated check boxes with exactly identical pixels in seven different locations. Signs of cutting and pasting to remove boxes with 'x's in them from the original template used.

[vanilla swirl]

“We will return to a pre-1776 America overnight.”

I think we are there.

[Iron Munro]

Why is it so hard for some people to accept the birth certificate as a fraud when everything else about Obama is fraudulent, lies, half-truths, cover-ups, counterfeit, pipe dreams and Unicorn gas?

If the birth certificate did turn out to be authentic it would be the only thing in Obama’s life that is.

The birth certificate doesn’t stand alone as one single questionable item in a life standing on concrete hard proven facts. Rather, it is one item of many that seems to have little substance and doesn’t quite mesh with what facts are available.

Everything about Obama is truly like visions built of smoke and mirrors. There is nothing solid, substantial, well documented and believable about the man.

It’s as if he appeared out of the clouds or was dumped off by a passing train with a good story in hand, but a story that has little substance, doesn’t quite ring true, and falls apart under the most cursory scrutiny.

[Progov]

Reminds me of a paid trial witness. They will say anything for money.

[JohnnyP]

In spy tradecraft this type of fake identity story is prepared for an agent and is called a “legend”.

[SeminoleCounty]

Until we see the REAL, LEGAL, OFFICIAL OBAMA HAWAII BIRTH CERTIFICATE....we do not know whether the previously released copies are frauds

However, I am way more confident with the people Sherrif Arpaio used than some pro-Obama scientist. Arpaio’s people have experience in investigation....anything pro-Obama and Science is suspect

None of this changes the fact that Obama spent millions to prevent the release of his real birth certificate before he started producing the phony ones

And, the PhonyCon Liberals need to stop attacking those who want Obama Eligibility answered. If you are not an Obama Birther by now....you are definitely an Obama Supporter

[rawcatslyentist]

Ever considered Occam's Razor?

He forged one because he doesn't have one.

[9YearLurker]

Interesting, thanks.

[butterdezillion]

That theory was blown away by Onaka’s confirmation that Obama does NOT have a legally valid Hawaii birth certificate.

[butterdezillion]

Alvin Onaka was legally required to verify specifically - if he “knew” (that is, if there was legally-sufficient evidence to support the claims) that Barack Hussein Obama, II, male, was born on Aug 4, 1961 in Honolulu on the island of Oahu to Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Hussein Obama.

He did not verify any of those things.

Hawaii does NOT “know” any of those facts. And Obama’s forgery was made to appear that they do know those facts. That is precisely why forgeries are made.

[Iron Munro]

In spy tradecraft this type of fake identity story is prepared for an agent and is called a “legend”.

I postulate that sometime in Obama's disjointed history he spent time in a KGB style "Charm School" or something like it.

[bluecat6]

There is an audio of a debate on this (unknown) guys website. He gets hammered by real, published Adobe experts and others.

I hope this fraud was paid well. His book is a laughing stock. He was offering for free from his site. So yes, I read it. It was joke. Worse than a joke - it was fraud with a capital F.

[Menehune56]

The discovery of Obama’s born-in-Kenya biography at the New York literary agency Dystel & Goderich for 16 years confirmed that there is a legitimate question about Obama’s eligibility and people wanting answers to that question cannot be dismissed as “birthers.”

[New Jersey Realist]

That theory was blown away by Onaka’s confirmation that Obama does NOT have a legally valid Hawaii birth certificate.

I can't find the reference/source of the denial. Could you please provide?

[butterdezillion]

Here are some links that relate:

http://butterdezillion.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/complete-klayman-letter-to-bauer.pdf

http://butterdezillion.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/wheel-of-fortune-v-family-feud-final.pdf

http://butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/hdoh-did-not-verify-what-kansas-requested/

I had a discussion with the legal department of NE SOS John Gale this morning, and his original argument was that Ken Bennett had not even requested verification of Obama’s gender, date of birth, city of birth, island of birth, mother’s name, or father’s name. When he had to acknowledge that those things WERE requested, he said he had no way of knowing whether Onaka responded correctly. I said the presumption of regularity says you legally presume that he did, unless you have evidence otherwise. Ultimately he said he doesn’t have to care what Hawaii said to Arizona and even if Bob Bauer, Villaigarosa, and Germond were all sent to jail for perjury and election fraud for submitting that Certification of Nomination, Nebraska law would STILL require the SOS to put the candidate’s name on the ballot - and he would not be required to report any suspected perjury or election fraud.

The more I see of these government critters, the more I realize that we need a total overhaul of our laws. Nebraska’s law, for instance, at the very least, has to be revised so that everywhere a document is required it is stipulated that it must be a LAWFUL document, what constitutes non-lawful documents, who is reponsible to check whether it is lawful and when, and what recourse the people have if that “public servant” is negligent in carrying out that duty. EVERY stinkin’ place a document is required. That’s a heckuva lot of code, but these weasels are going to worm-wriggle their way out of everything unless we pin them to that kind of legal accountability.

The discussion actually involved whether somebody could lawfully swear that Obama was eligible if all you saw was birthday cards from Grandma in Hawaii - whether that is an acceptable LEGAL standard of evidence. Seems to me that for legal purposes, legal standards are what apply - and if it would be terrible for a SOS (supposedly on a whim) to determine that Obama is not eligible, it would similarly be terrible for Bob Bauer, Antonio Villaigaroso, and Alic Travis Germond to decide (on a whim and knowing that Obama had already produced a forgery of an official document) that he IS.

Anyway, the legal dept of the NE SOS’s office disagrees with Klayman’s letter because Villaigarosa could have seen a birthday card from Obama’s grandmother that proves he was born in Hawaii on Aug 4, 1961, and that is good enough to certify the man who holds the nuclear football and has the power to set the Muslim world aflame against the US. The initial reason to blow off Klayman’s letter was because the actual application form - the subject of Klayman’s whole letter - was accidentally “overlooked”.

Sheesh.

[Perseverando]

Thanks for the post.

Just wanted to be sure I’m also counted as a confirmed “birther” in this thread. Hey, if Obama says something is true, you know he’s lying.

[Perseverando]

Absolute great comment. I’ve rarely heard such a succinct common sense statement on Obama’s rise to power.

[Smokeyblue]

Yeah, he has a valid birth certificate from Kenya.

Criminal forgery is pretty stupid for a diversion.

Hawaii has NOT taken ownership of that PDF file which has uses their certification stamps. FRAUD,FORGERY and a litany of other charges await.

[Tex-Con-Man]

I can't find the reference/source of the denial. Could you please provide?

You may need this...

[DiogenesLamp]

There was a time when I would have accepted an objective expert opinion on something like this, but I have since learned that such things just do not exist in our political reality. Now I must first convince myself that the expert does not posses the same sort of political bias as is amply demonstrated by everyone who works in the News and Entertainment industries.

College Professors are known for their liberal tilt here in America. This man seems to be from Brazil. Does this tip the scale more to the right or left? Left I would think. Not only is he a College Professor, but one who is a citizen of a very socialist country.

Should his opinion be accepted at face value? I wouldn't. At least not without better explanations than he has provided. It's like accepting what the Media says at face value.

I happen to know something about computer graphics, image rendering, file formats and compression. (I grew up programing machine code in Hexadecimal .) I have yet to see what I consider to be a reasonable explanation for why different characters in the same word would be rendered in different bit depths and resolutions.

There is no mechanical process or algorithm of which I can conceive that would make this result a reasonable byproduct. Whatever process or algorithm that chose the bit depth and pixel resolution for the letter "A" should have chosen the same bit depth and pixel resolution for the letter "R".

Changing formats mid word accomplishes no useful benefit in terms of compression or clarity for the document. It produces no optimum effect. In fact, it destroys whatever benefit might be obtained from choosing one format or the other. (Clarity or Compressibility.) Why would any sanely written piece of software make such a decision?

What value or benefit can be obtained by mixing two different formats in the same word? That simply does not make any sense, and I have yet to hear from anyone explaining how it should make some sort of sense.

[DiogenesLamp]

The linked website is home to an entire Democrat menagerie of Obama supporters. Just linking to it damages credibility in my opinion. It is an ally website of “Dr. Conspiracy”, an Obama supporting nut job. (aren’t they all?)

Squeeky Frome, (God what a fool!) is also prominently mentioned in the comments.

[Smokeyblue]

They put that forgery up on OUR government website (the people’s government...not Obastard’s....not the Demorat’s...the people’s government.

A government website owned by the people to be used to convey facts with legal weight, authority and credibility.

Diversion, my ass. It’s criminal.

There was only ONE PURPOSE for that image to be put on that website and that was to DEFRAUD the public.

Diversion, my ass. It’s criminal.

[Mr. K]

This is just plane BULL$HIT

I have done computer graphics and imaging software for a living.

Despite all the techno-jargon this guy has no clue what he is talking about.

[DiogenesLamp]

Personally, if I were accusing the President of the United States of having a forged birth certificate, I would rely on real, recognized experts in the appropriate fields. And most certainly, no 22-year-olds would be in the mix."

I put no great significance on the man's age. 22 is old enough to have learned everything anyone needs to know about this sort of computer technology. Image rendering and compression is not all that difficult. I've got C code samples illustrating various compression formats, and it is not hard to understand what is being done and how it's being accomplished.

As a matter of fact, i've noticed that a lot of people with some age on them aren't always up on the latest stuff. The younger seem to be far more interested in making their mark on the world than do the already established types, and to accomplish this they study and contemplate what other people are doing contemporaneously.

In Computer technology, age is not necessarily indicative of expertise, or lack thereof.

[advertising guy]

I no longer post here but it must be said...I KNOW TIM SELATY Jr. PERSONALLY..

bein 22 years old has not a damned thing to do with a damned thing

Tim Selaty Jr is not smart , he is savant brilliant

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Whatever process or algorithm that chose the bit depth and pixel resolution for the letter "A" should have chosen the same bit depth and pixel resolution for the letter "R".

That's addressed in the letter:

[The tools] first try to “lift” the text to another layer. They can find more than one type of text and place them in different layers. The rest is background and they compress with standard image compression methods. In the [Birth Certificate] I see lots of signs of that. It missed a lot of text, like the R in BARACK and in many other places.

The point is that the software doesn't know "BARACK" is a word and should all be treated the same way--all it sees is a mix of pixels and makes its best guess as to which ones represent letters. In the case of the 'R', it guessed wrong.

From the beginning, such anomalies seemed to me to be the obvious artifacts of some kind of algorithmic processing. You ask "What value or benefit can be obtained by mixing two different formats in the same word?" The answer is, None--it's a processing error. But I ask, What process would lead a human forger to create letters in two different ways?

[Smokeyblue]

Watch Lord Monckton's videos. Mara Zebest and a host of others have also documented all this many, many times before. The OP is trolling.

I'm not going to look them up for you.

The register stamp and date stamp were a safety feature to verify the authenticity of the document. But the fact that those stamps were IMPORTED FROM AN OUTSIDE SOURCE shows with certainty that it was fraudulent since those 'safety verification stamps were completely moveable to any point of the document.

It was not one single scan of a birth certificate. The stamps were imported. It is a composed computer file.

[DiogenesLamp]

The point is that the software doesn't know "BARACK" is a word and should all be treated the same way--all it sees is a mix of pixels and makes its best guess as to which ones represent letters. In the case of the 'R', it guessed wrong.

It doesn't "guess". It follows a process known as Optical character recognition. This is a relatively mature technology. I see no reason to believe that it cannot decode an "R" as well as it decodes the other letters.

From the beginning, such anomalies seemed to me to be the obvious artifacts of some kind of algorithmic processing. You ask "What value or benefit can be obtained by mixing two different formats in the same word?" The answer is, None--it's a processing error.

That is what people are saying, but my understanding of the technology involved does not lend itself to this sort of error. Even if it was an error, why render in a cruder format? The letter "A" is rendered in four times the pixel resolution of the "R".

But I ask, What process would lead a human forger to create letters in two different ways?

And that is an easy question to answer. The 50 States of the Union produce yearly 120,000 adoption birth certificates. These have to be created to look like an original birth certificate from the adopted child's birth year. Every state has a staff which creates these "fake" birth certificates, and they do it by cutting and pasting data from samples stored in their files.

Over the years, digital storage methods have changed and been updated, possibly several times. What was a digital file storage method for the State in 1987 might be changed to a very different storage method in 1995, or in 2007. Depending on what file is accessed, the source data may very well come from multiple files with different file formats. Since modern rendering software can seamlessly manipulate files stored in all past formats, an person cutting and pasting might not realize that they are grabbing a piece of a word in one format, and pasting it in the midst of a destination image which is mostly saved in a different format.

If you have multiple files open on your desktop, you may grab this piece from one, and that piece from another. When the document get's printed, all characters end up being in the same resolution and bit depth, so these sort of discontinuities will not be noticed on paper.

Why would they copy just one letter? How many birth certificates are likely to have the word "Barack" in them? One way or another, you are going to have to patch that word together from pieces elsewhere. (Assuming you are creating a replacement birth certificate for someone named "Barack".)

[DiogenesLamp]

And, the PhonyCon Liberals need to stop attacking those who want Obama Eligibility answered. If you are not an Obama Birther by now....you are definitely an Obama Supporter

As strange as it may seem from our perspective, there are indeed rock solid conservatives that absolutely want to accept the common narrative regarding Barack's origin and documents. Ace of Spades and crew are prime examples of this. Tex-Con-Man has a weird obsession with this issue, but an examination of other things that he writes about would reveal that he is pretty conservative about other issues.

I do not understand why any conservative would want Obama to be right, and further more put in so much effort in attempts to demonstrate that Obama is right, but the facts are such do exist and do work to legitimize this shady character. It's a WTF situation for me, and believe me, I understand completely how anyone advocating for his legitimacy would engender suspicion amongst those of us who inquire into this issue.

[DiogenesLamp]

He forged one because he doesn't have one.

I have no doubt that he has a Hawaiian birth certificate from 1961. I have doubts that what he presented is said document, and I suspect he has gone to great lengths to make sure no one can see what is on his actual and Original Hawaiian birth certificate document.

I suspect it indicates that he was not born in a facility where the facts can be verified. I suspect very strongly it lists his as an "at home birth." I suspect his mother was actually living with Relatives in North West Washington State, or Canada when he was born, and he ended up being born in Canada, with his Grandmother alleging he was born at home in Hawaii on his paperwork.

[DiogenesLamp]

The discovery of Obama’s born-in-Kenya biography at the New York literary agency Dystel & Goderich for 16 years confirmed that there is a legitimate question about Obama’s eligibility and people wanting answers to that question cannot be dismissed as “birthers.”

It seems like virtually every "birther thread" troll would keep repeating that there is no evidence that he ever told anyone he was born in Kenya. I would post several articles where people were reporting him as having been born in Kenya, but they would always brush them away as not being proof of anything, but now that his Dystel and Goderich bio, these people have all pretty much shut up on this point. Yes, Obama DID lead people to believe he was born in Kenya.

I personally do not think there is any reasonable evidence indicating he was born in Kenya, and I think it is far more likely that he was born in Hawaii than Kenya. However, I regard it as quite probable that he was born in Canada. That is where Stanley Ann's Aunt Eleanor Birkebeile Dunham was living at the time, and it makes perfect sense that a girl with an embarrassing pregnancy would be sent to live with a female relative.

I think Obama Sr's INS papers indicated that their plan was to give him up for adoption. Stanley Ann was supposed to come back sans baby, but I suspect she ran into trouble when she found out that nobody was likely to want a half black baby in 1961.

[DiogenesLamp]

I recall that statement from Chiyome Fukino, and my first thought was "How the h3ll would she know if he was a "natural born citizen"? That's a legal term, not a medical term, and is outside her area of expertise.

It smacked of an attempt to legitimize him which was beyond her role as a stater of the plain facts. It's was advocacy in my opinion, and it didn't smell right.

[Smokeyblue]

I have a theory about someone like ACE and those blogger types like him. In my opinion, he veers towards establishment quite a bit. More than he would like to admit. Not always but it’s a strong undercurrent. Right or wrong.

He’s a proprietor. It’s his house and the establishment (GOPe/Rats), the government (the people who can make your like miserable), and the vandals (Fogblowers, threats, etc.) have been merciless on this issue.

So someone like him, I think he either goes along to get along or just puts the issue on the back burner with no real thought or investigation.

Now someone like him might have an excuse. He’s just one guy. Who needs the aggravation. He just wants to write on political news of the day.

Breitbart was only beginning to see the light. I’m sure Sheriff Joe’s investigation was a turning point for him. He finally would of had a place to hang his hat. A starting point backup by an authority that he could have run with and I really believe he would have.

The Breitbarts of the world are few and far between.

It’s the followers, who think that just because others have ducked means that there is nothing there. IE. if Ace, Michelle, Rush won’t talk about it there must me nothing there.

So the followers follow. All cult like.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

It doesn't "guess". It follows a process known as Optical character recognition. This is a relatively mature technology. I see no reason to believe that it cannot decode an "R" as well as it decodes the other letters.

Yes, I know that computers don't "guess." When I start to type an address and my mail program automatically fills in the last names, it's not "guessing" either, it's performing some sort of programmed operation. I was using "guess" as a sort of anthropomorphic metaphor that I thought would be clear. Let's say "attempts to construct the proper result based on incomplete information," then.

And certainly OCR can decode an 'R' as well as any other letter. But first it has to recognize that it's a letter to be decoded.

Even if it was an error, why render in a cruder format? The letter "A" is rendered in four times the pixel resolution of the "R".

The point is that it's not rendered as a letter at all. The software recognized that the 'B', 'A', 'A', 'C', and 'K' were letters and processed them accordingly. For whatever reason (we'd have to see whatever they scanned to know why), it failed to recogize the 'R' as a letter and so treated it as part of the background image. It's not a coincidence that its pixels are the same size as the green ones.

When the document get's printed, all characters end up being in the same resolution and bit depth, so these sort of discontinuities will not be noticed on paper.

Are you saying that if I printed the posted birth certificate PDF, the 'R' and the other letters would all look the same?

Why would they copy just one letter? How many birth certificates are likely to have the word "Barack" in them?

Well, his original certificate, for one. I forget whether you're one of the people who think there's no original Hawaiian certificate at all. But even if there isn't, "BAR" wouldn't be a hard combination to find (Barbara, Barry, Barney).

[DiogenesLamp]

The point is that it's not rendered as a letter at all.

Upon rendering, everything is an image.

For whatever reason (we'd have to see whatever they scanned to know why),

Great plan! I'm all for it. Why haven't we seen the original?

it failed to recogize the 'R' as a letter and so treated it as part of the background image.

Yeah, I got the theory, i'm just suspicious of it's plausibility.

It's not a coincidence that its pixels are the same size as the green ones.

That observation is not helping your argument at all. The Green Background hash pattern is known not to be normal on Hawaiian birth certificates of that era. It shouldn't be in the background at all, let alone have a typewritten "R" on top of it.

Are you saying that if I printed the posted birth certificate PDF, the 'R' and the other letters would all look the same?

i'm saying they will all be printed in the same resolution. The pixel size will translate to printer dots per inch. Printers do not have different sized pixels. They have one size, and the characters will be printed with that size, and they will be represented within the bit depth characteristics of the printer. If it isn't clear to you what i'm saying then just skip it. It's not important.

Well, his original certificate, for one. I forget whether you're one of the people who think there's no original Hawaiian certificate at all. But even if there isn't, "BAR" wouldn't be a hard combination to find (Barbara, Barry, Barney).

I firmly believe he has some sort of birth certificate document from 1961. I suspect it is not a normal one. As for "Bar" being easy to find, to find it you must open a birth certificate file possessing that same type font with such a name in it. It may or may not be convenient to find it and open it. It may be more convenient to just grab a couple of bits from documents already on your desk, and already using the correct type font.

This is in an area where solid predictions as to what someone else will do cannot be made. It could be done one way or the other, but there is no evidence that all people will always do it the same way.

[DiogenesLamp]

Ace follows Allahpundit and Ed Morrissey like a puppy dog. When they came out against it,(after the birth announcements surfaced) Ace partook of the subsequent preference cascade.

I told him yesterday that he simply got his opinion on the issue from them. He was not pleased with my comments. I have been sending him Emails since 2008, and he simply has no interest in looking at anything which does not fit his adopted narrative.

All such efforts to sway his opinion regarding Obama’s eligibility are labeled “Conspiracy theories” and reason with you he won’t.

[Windflier]

I KNOW TIM SELATY Jr. PERSONALLY. Tim Selaty Jr is not smart , he is savant brilliant

Well, there ya go. A personal voucher for the guy's professional skill.

I didn't post the excerpt upthread to knock Tim Selaty in any way. It was a response the another post. I don't have a dog in this hunt.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Upon rendering, everything is an image.

Well, yes and no. I'm a little confused now by exactly what you mean by "render." On screen or when printed, everything is ultimately just an arrangement of dots. But as I'm sure you know, with a vector graphic the computer "knows" what shape it's drawing. (Can I say "knows" metaphorically without an objection that a computer doesn't really know anything?) Similarly, software trying to do OCR "knows" where the text is and in some circumstances creates a different image for it, aka renders it differently.

Why haven't we seen the original?

They haven't told me any more than they've told you. :)