Moderated Obama birth certificate CT / SSN CT / Birther discussion

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This is all just so stupid: all this ridiculous talk about copies and copies of copies and alterations and whatever other nonsense Robert tries to bring up. He's just making it more complicated than it ever even remotely needs to be. You know how I know Barack Obama is eligible to be President of the United States? Because if he wasn't eligible, he wouldn't be the President of the United States. That's it. If he wasn't eligible his opponents would have contested his nomination. They didn't. He won the election. The End. Now go do something constructive Robert.
 
FWIW, Larry Klayman, the brilliant legal scholar that he is, is also relying on Minor v Happersett to determine natural born citizenship.

That is, despite Minor v Happersett making it plain as day that they weren't making a judgement on what constitutes natural born citizenship, as it was irrelevant for the case at hand.

On the subject of German cuisine, spare a thought for Schnitzlen mit pommes und sauerkraut. As a kid, it was the only thing remotely appealing on the menu, whenever we passed through Germany on the way to or from our summer holidays :D
 
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EventHorizon said:
This is all just so stupid: all this ridiculous talk about copies and copies of copies and alterations and whatever other nonsense Robert tries to bring up. He's just making it more complicated than it ever even remotely needs to be. You know how I know Barack Obama is eligible to be President of the United States? Because if he wasn't eligible, he wouldn't be the President of the United States. That's it. If he wasn't eligible his opponents would have contested his nomination. They didn't. He won the election. The End. Now go do something constructive Robert.
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This is where I'm at... there isn't yet a plausible narrative for why first Clinton, then McCain, refused to request his disqualification, if it can be shown that he is not eligibile.
 
Event horizon has hit the nail on the head Obama's political opponents would have used it against him to get him debarred from the nominations and the election if any of this nonsesne was true, and becasue it is not true and is arrant nonesense they have not.
 
Minimal faith in humanity - 15 years in the legal field, and 26 years in the military have somewhat jaded me, but damn, that's a really depressing level of hate, and ability with the English language...
 
Robert Prey said:
One out of 1200 replicated might tend to prove innocence. But no such luck.
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Looking at how the White House digitised the paper copy sent to them by Hawaii is not going to produce any evidence of what Hawaii may or may not have done in producing the paper copy; only of what the White House did when they digitised it. You are looking on the wrong place.

Do you really not see your problem here?
 
EventHorizon said:
This is all just so stupid: all this ridiculous talk about copies and copies of copies and alterations and whatever other nonsense Robert tries to bring up.
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It's the standard runaround, whether it's being offered from the conspiracy-theory vantage point or the troll vantage point: the goal in each case is to keep the discussion going around in circles and/or mired in minutia, with no resolution.

He's just making it more complicated than it ever even remotely needs to be.
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And I've said as much on many occasions, but Robert simply writes it off as too simplistic an answer.

The answer is simple. There is no legal basis to challenge further the authenticity of the birth certificate. Hawaii has certified by the Constitutionally-provided method that Barack Obama was born in that state. Further attempts to challenge that certification violate, not sustain the Constitution.

Sure, Robert wants to write that all off as pure legalism that dodges the real question. But the "real" question (i.e., is the birth certificate authentic as a matter of fact?) matters only if there's an eventual legal peg to hang it on, that would result in a meaningful question to Obama's eligibility. The certification stands in lieu of any evidentiary challenge, so that's that -- it exists so that there won't be a need to investigate the question from an evidentiary standpoint. We rely on evidence and judgment when the question must be answered that way, when no better way exists. When the law can circumvent such examinations, it does -- such as by stipulation and certification.

In good faith, and out of an abundance of charity, we examine the authenticity question from a purely evidentiary standpoint. And when we do, we see the same sort of smoke and mirrors we get in every other kind of conspiracy theory: "expert" opinions from non-experts, rhetorical games, sensationalism, shifting goalposts. There is a very good reason the evidence allegedly for forgery doesn't even come close to meeting a legally significant standard of proof.

The Birthers want to unseat the duly elected holder of the highest office in the land. They had better have some pretty strong evidence. But they don't; they just place their speculative hopes in the next incremental iteration of the demand for exculpatory evidence.

If he wasn't eligible his opponents would have contested his nomination. They didn't. He won the election. The End.
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Indeed as is expected in American politics, the GOP has expended effort to hinder the success of the rival party. And the supporters of that party expect its leaders to make good use of the resources they contribute, in the hope of gaining political power. If there is a legitimate reason to unseat the current administration, why would that not be pursued?

Robert's answer is that everyone except the Birthers is "brainwashed." There you have it.
 
Just a question here (I have no doubt that the bc is authentic): Did the White House have to scan the document and create a PDF to put it on the web? Could they have just put up a photograph? Or would a digital photograph be the equivalent of a scan? Suppose they took a photograph with a film camera? Could something have been put up without creating all these "layering" issues?
 
Bob001 said:
Did the White House have to scan the document and create a PDF to put it on the web?
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No. There is no requirement that candidates for President present their birthplace credentials at all to the public at large. The public's interest in validating candidates for office is represented by duly sworn election commissions, who have the statutory authority to act as notaries for such applications.

Could something have been put up without creating all these "layering" issues?
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There are no "layers" in a PDF file. That's inappropriate terminology. There are only objects, contained as a flat list of versioned descriptors, some of which contain displayable elements and others of which implement the document structure. Romney's birth certificate in PDF form supplied by Reuters, for example, contains eight objects.

Could the PDF have been "flattened" (i.e., reduced to the minimum number of objects)? Yes, certainly, using easily available tools. Could the scanned document have been released in a different (simpler) format? Yes, without difficulty. The Birther conspiracy theory requires the alleged forgers to be uncommonly inept, and to leave "blatant" evidence of forgery for them to find.

Would this solve the problem? Of course not. The Birthers made the mistake of going on to question other aspects of Obama's eligibility, with equally inept and disastrous results. Further, they went on to try to analyze other images released from the White House, attempting to detect forgeries. The problem with the Birther claims is not that the certificate could have been release in a less problematic format. The problem is that the Birthers are demonstrably clueless, and clearly motivated only by politics.
 
Hawaii state officials have certified that the information shown on the scanned birth certificate matches what they have on file. So, it doesn't matter what layers or objects or whatever are in the PDF file.

-- Roger
 
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