| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
My reply to Mark Gillar’s latest silly claims
Mark Gillar is a Birther and a BlogTalk Radio host of a program called the “Tea Party Power Hour”. He also has some connection with Mike Zullo and Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse that has been investigating President Obama’s birth certificate. Gillar has admitted to producing some videos that have been used in their presentations.
I posted a comment over at Mark Gillar’s YouTube channel the other day. Gillar suppressed the comment but replied via a PM. He challenged me to refute his latest stupid claim that the long form birth certificate posted on the White House web site is a fake. After exchanging a few messages with him I thought it was appropriate to reply publically via this blog post. Gillar has apparently now joined most of the other Birther blogs and is moderating (censoring) all comments. I think a few comments made by my RC Radio cohost Dr. Ken may have driven him to censorship. Here is my response to Mr. Gillar.
Mark
Pardon me if I do not waste even a few minutes debunking your stupid “clipping masks don’t hide things” and “Illustrator gives an error when you open a pdf with MRC compression” arguments because I have been at this for four years and I have seen every argument made by the Birthers crumble to dust. Then they always come up with something new. Birthers never explain or admit that the other 99 that got blown away. You are no different.
Let’s just look at a very brief list of myths and debunked assertions that is by far not complete:
Birthers: Obama’s middle name was Mohammed and he was born in Kenya.
Reality: He published a scan of his Birth certificate showing when and where he was born and that his middle name really was Hussein.
Birthers: It doesn’t have a seal and the number is blacked out.
Reality: The certificate was made available. FactCheck.org handled and published hi-res photographs that showed clearly the seal and the certificate number.
Birthers: There is no independent confirmation that he was born in Hawaii.
Reality: Both local newspapers carried announcements of the birth the same month. One of his teachers specifically remembers talking to the head of the department at Kapi’olani the night of his birth.
Birthers: But the name of the hospital is wrong. It wasn’t called that in 1961.
Reality: The Nordyke twins birth certificates issued the same week have the identical name for the hospital.
Birthers: But Obama’s certificate number should be lower that the Nordyke twins certificate numbers since he was born the day before.
Reality: Several other certificates from the same month are made public from August 1961 that are not in chronological order.
Birthers: Registrar Charles Bennett wrote an article in 1955 about Hawaii’s vital statistics system and said that certificates are numbered as soon as they are received.
Reality: The article doesn’t even mention certificate numbers.
Birthers: You couldn’t even play in the Little League using a short form from Hawaii.
Reality: Since 2001 at the latest the short form has been the only certificate issued. The Hawaii Little League team played in the World Series recently. They didn’t need “long forms”. Folks from Hawaii have obtained drivers’ licenses and passports with them without a problem.
Birthers: Obama could not have traveled to Pakistan in the early 1980’s on a US passport.
Reality: There was no US travel ban to Pakistan. All that was required is a US passport and a visa.
Birthers: Obama has spent millions to seal his records.
Reality: He has spent very little. The Birther “millions” claim is derived from the total expenses spent by the Obama 2008 campaign on all legal matters. The total on the FEC report was $1.7 million. The McCain – Palin Campaign also spent a similar amount for legal services. The actual legal expenses spent defending in Birther cases is much less than that according to estimates made by attorneys and probably under $20,000. In most cases US Attorneys have filed the necessary responses for the President as they are supposed to do under the law.
Birthers: The Chief Elections Clerk in Honolulu said he was told that Obama’s long form did not exist.
Reality: Tim Adams was not the Chief Elections Clerk. He was a temporary worker in Honolulu during the 2008 election period. He had no access to birth records. He would not name the person he claims him that “the birth certificate doesn’t exist”. His boss directly refuted his claims. Adams made the claim while appearing on a white supremacist radio show.
Birthers: Governor Abercrombe said “ we looked for the birth certificate and it is not there”.
Reality: Gov. Abercrombie never said that. The quote came from a radio personality who knew the Gov. but admitted he never heard that from Abercrombie.
On Minnesota’s KQRS-FM radio Jan. 20, Hollywood reporter Mike Evans, claiming to be a longtime friend of Abercrombie’s, said the governor had told him that he had searched “everywhere” at Hawaii hospitals and that “there is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii. Absolutely no proof at all that he was born in Hawaii.”
The same day, Evans made the claim on Austin’s KLBJ-AM.
Six days later, though, FoxNews.com quoted Evans as saying that he had misspoken. According to FoxNews.com, Evans said that he called Abercrombie’s office after reading online reports that the governor couldn’t find Obama’s birth certificate but that Abercrombie did not return his call. “I haven’t talked to Neil since he’s been governor,” Evans said.
Birthers: Obama’s Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya.
Reality: She said on tape that he was born in Hawaii.
Birthers: Obama lost his US citizenship while in Indonesia because he was adopted.
Reality: He was not adopted and could not have given up his US citizenship as a child regardless.
Birthers: If President Obama would only spend $10 and show a copy of his LFBC this would all be over.
Reality: :LOL: Do I really need to say anything? The Birther “experts” started crawling out of the woodwork the same day it was released shouting “It’s a forgery!”
Birthers: The LFBC is a forgery because it has layers.
Reality: Compression algorithms work by assembling like elements such as text in one layer and graphics in others. Author John Woodman found hundreds of Google Books documents with similar layers.
Birthers: Paul Irey and others claim it is a forgery because there is “kerning”, multiple typefaces, and that the letters do not follow the curve of the paper.
Reality: Irey is a conspiracy nut with no experience in document analysis. Most of his so-called anomalies are the result of trying to blow up letters far beyond what the image resolution would warrant. See John Woodman’s book and blog for details. Investigating the Obama Birth Mysteries
Birthers: Dozens of experts say the document is a forgery.
Reality: No real expert has said any such thing. WND hired two certified document examiners and neither of them supported the forgery claims. None of the Birther “experts” have ever been admitted as an expert witness in any legal proceeding where they had to go through a voir dire process.*
Birthers: The race of Barack Obama’s father is shown as “African” on the birth certificate, but next to that is a penciled number “9” that indicates “not stated.” The code is wrong, proving that the form is a fake.
Reality: The Cold Case Posse presentation used the wrong codes. The “9” code in 1961 was for “other non-white”, which is correct for the senior Obama. The CCP either was being deceptive (lying) or were themselves duped by The Daily Pen blog, who made the same “mistake”. The Daily Pen article had been debunked by Kevin Davidson months earlier when the CCP made the same claim.
Birthers: The Cold Case Posse is only out to find the truth is just following evidence where it leads them.
Reality: (See the previous item) John Woodman, who spent hundreds of hours analyzing claims about the LFBC and forgery and even wrote a book about it, offered twice to come and meet with the CCP. They refused but instead relied on characters like Jerome Corsi who has been making money on the Birther movement for years and who has been caught lying several times, and Mara Zebest who claimed the photos of the White House situation room taken during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden were doctored to add the President’s image. She claimed he really was not there.
Birthers: Obama is not a natural born citizen even if he was not born in Hawaii because a natural born citizen must have two citizen parents.
Reality: No recognized Constitutional scholar supports this view. The Congressional Research Service published a lengthy report on the subject and disagrees. The courts, beginning with an Indiana case in 2009 have ruled against this view. The fact is that anyone who is a citizen at birth is a natural born citizen.
Birthers (Actually this is a new one from Gillar himself): Barack Obama worked for Baskin -Robbins in 1974 but did not get a social security number until 1977.
Reality: Obama would have been 12 years old at the beginning of the summer in 1974. Baskin-Robins was hiring them very young back then. 
I am adding this one because I found it is not the first time a Birther used the Savannah Guthrie photo in a forgery claim:
Birthers: The word “Hawaii” is spelled ” Huwaii” in the Savannah Guthrie photo and this proves Guthrie is in on the conspiracy.
Reality: This is more shoddy work from Cold Case Posse “expert” Mara Zebest. Zebest’s original article is here and John Woodman’s debunking of this idiocy is here. John Woodman posted a copy of the Guthrie image in the original size but cropped to show only the relevant portion:
This is what Zebest used for her cracker jack analysis. Woodman enlarged the image without using the smoothing effects that graphics programs use for readability and looked at the 12 pixels that comprise both of the “a”‘s in “Hawaii and this is what you get:
You can read John Woodman’s article for the details on what Zebest did wrong in her amateurish analysis.
As I said this is a very abbreviated list. Please fell free to add more in the comments.
So what is Gillar’s latest claim that we are now supposed to debunk after those first 100 didn’t pan out? Well just watch this video Gillar made outlining his stupendous find:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Wa-SHnBb220]
Now I could make one or two snide remarks about the production value and how Gillar is literally (and figuratively) out of focus in the video but I will not. When I watched this video all I can say is WTF is he talking about? Is this supposed to be the smoking gun? Really? Are you freakin’ serious? That’s it? After the opening music I was expecting more. I got nothing. In the video Gillar said at the 4 minute mark that he had “computer experts look into it [the smudges] and they match the color range of the pencil marks on the document”. I wonder if those “computer experts” might just be Mara Zebest (of the doctored situation room photo claim and who couldn’t get Corsi’s computer to work with a projector at a news conference) and one Garrett Papit who got trounced in comments at John Woodman’s blog when he tried to claim to be an expert on Mixed Raster Content (MRC) compression and got his clock cleaned? We do not know since Mark didn’t bother to name them.
I guess Gillar has really done it. After four years, two elections, 200 court cases, and hundreds of Birther failures who knew that a smudge on the LFBC would drive Obama from office? Mark Gillar will go down in history – or not.
So Mark, when I get a few spare minutes I might actually address “The Smudge”. It would be nice though if you would just be a man and admit how may of the myths that I listed above that you bought into and that you know now are wrong. If you did that I might be a little more inclined to look at your little smudge. I await your answer.
*[Edited 2/2: Both Doug Vogt and Paul Irey have appeared in a legal proceeding to try to sell their analyses of the LFBC. Vogt testified at David Farrar's ballot challenge hearing in Atlanta last year. Since the Democratic Party chose not to appear his credentials were not challenged. This was an informal administrative law hearing and not a trial. Judge Malihi in ruling against Farrar said "The Court finds testimony of the witnesses, as well as the exhibits tendered, to be of little, if any, probative value, and thus wholly insufficient to support Plaintiffs’ allegations." He went on to say “the unqualified testimony of the witness [is] not competent evidence.” Paul Irey took the stand in a state case filed by Taitz in Indiana. Judge Sherry Reid allowed Paul Irey to testify in a rather bizarre hearing over the objections of the Indiana Deputy AG. Reid then ruled against Taitz and struck all the testimony given by Irey from the record.]
http://rcradioblog.wordpress.com/
2013-04-12 21:45:47
Source: http://rcradioblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/my-reply-to-mark-gillars-latest-silly-claims/
Source:
