The audio is now available from today’s debate involving Dr. Jerome Corsi, Mara Zebest, Karl Denninger, Tom Harrison, Nellie Ristvedt and myself, and hosted by Tea Party Power Hour host Mark Gillar:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/markgillar/2012/01/21/experts-debate-obamas-birth-certificate
Unfortunately, the debate is a bit of a mess, with my opponents attempting to “win” by continually interrupting, shouting me down, employing ridicule, etc., instead of sticking to arguing the facts.
Far more listenable is the wrap-up show I did with Reality Check radio, where I had much better opportunity to explain the points I was making in the original debate:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rcr/2012/01/21/rc-radio–lfbc-debate-wrapup-show
MR. WOODMAN IS BUSTED AND THIS INFO. WILL BE SENT OUT TO EVERYONE!!!!! (WOODMAN’S BOOK IS PHOTOSHOPPED!!!)
Everyone (all #3 of you) who has bought Mr. Woodman’s book, please see pg. 66. Woodman Photoshopped (or in his case…Paint Shop Pro’d) the Figure to prove his point. That Blue number is not really 47, the “7″ should be identical to the other “7″ and in the G value and it’s not. There’s also a residue of a possible “1″ that remains before the “4″ – Screen figures have exact pixel-for-pixel characters.
Woodman edited out the “1″ from the Blue number 47 which should be 147…
The color is:
R=145
G=157
B=147 (no color version of 47 exists in Obama’s PDF… but the 147 is within the range).
BUSTED!!!!!!!
By the way, what REAL expert uses “Paint Shop Pro”????
LOL
I just noticed that “Joey” duplicate posted into this thread.
I gave a full reply to the nonsense accusation here:
https://www.obamabirthbook.com/http:/www.obamabirthbook.com/2012/01/most-birther-news-outlets-fail-to-cover-debate/#comment-652
Note that “Joey” never returned either to apologize for or to correct the false accusation. All in all, another great ambassador for Birtherism.
It appears that considerable editing has been done to the show audio. This show was 2 hours long and this file is 1 hr 10 minutes. Do you know what was removed John?
Funny thing, now Mark Gillar has the full show up. I wonder if he reads here? Never fear, I have both versions. 😉
I can tell from file sizes. The one I downloaded this morning had a length of 1:11:49 and the current version is 2:01:56.
I assume either it was an aborted download or a Blog Talk hiccup. I have seen that happen before. When I compared files the final 50 minutes had been chopped and there were no other changes.
Joey C. I especially like the part where Corsi runs away from the debate and lies about what Becket said. Lets also not forget that when Corsi is confronted about his lie on the numbering of the birth certificates instead of correcting his error he says that Hawaii is covering for Obama back in 1961.
When Jerome Corsi repeated the lie about the 1955 Hawaii Medical Journal article by Charles G. Bennett and George Tokuyama I had a copy handy and confirmed John Woodman’s allegation that Corsi misquoted the article when he said that it discussed the timing of the numbering of birth certificates. Corsi said he would refer to the Bennett article and read John the quote but he never does. Corsi also tries to deflect the criticism by claiming he was only pointing out an anomaly that the Nordyke certificate numbers are lower than the Obama number. Yet the title of the very article where Corsi misquotes Bennett and Tokuyama is titled “Nordyke Numbers Expose Obama Document Fraud?”. On my show John also repeated a quote from Corsi on the Alex Jones program where he made the same accusation that this was proof of fraud.
John then pointed out that the known birth certificates from August 1961 closely fit a pattern of alphabetical assignment of numbers except the Virginia Sunahara certificate. Corsi said something to the effect that “I have seen more birth certificates than you have” implying that he is in position of copies of additional certificates. He then says the numbers are all jumbled and that Hawaii should release the names and numbers of all the births from August 1961. These were two plays from Corsi’s standard playbook. First he alludes to sources only he knows about and no one else can see. Then he asks for Hawaii to release records they will never release because it would directly violate their own records laws. It was around this point that Corsi left without even as much as saying goodbye.
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Mr. Woodman,
I just finished listening to the debate hosted by Mark Gillar. I took your advice and downloaded the book and started flipping through. Pg 77 caught my attention (the identical o’s and i’s in the clip from “Truth Stranger Than Fiction”).
You mentioned that you can find other examples of identical-to-the-pixel duplications of letters and show a passage with 5 letters circled (3 o’s, 2 i’s). I looked at them and although they are similar, they are not identical. My notations are on the files here (links to pdf files stored at dropbox):
http://db.tt/01F12FYE (in-context i’s with notations)
http://db.tt/eLscr0Cz (enlarged i’s with notations)
As I’ve pointed out, these are not the same character down-to-the-pixel, so I don’t understand how this is a rebuttal of 3TruthSeeker33’s argument. Can you explain why this is a good counter-argument?
First of all, you get a great big huge round of applause for getting the book, reading it, and sorting through the facts for yourself!
From looking at your images, it appears to me that you’ve pulled them from the book. Because of the tiny scale of things we’re dealing with and inaccuracies that will come in at three different points, you won’t be able to make a real determination using that method.
The three points of inaccuracy are this: First, the images that I put into the book are not precisely representative of the originals, which involve very few pixels. In order to get images for the book, I had to convert these into larger images. This conversion was not 100% satisfactory. Second, you’ve got the translation of those fine-grained images into the print on the page, which definitely introduces some changes. Third, you have inaccuracies introduced by scanning the printed page back in. You may also have other changes introduced when resizing any scanned image.
Of the three I mentioned, though, I think by far the biggest source of changes in the image is likely to be the translation into the print used by the printer.
So you have to go back and work with the original files, including the original file from google books. When you do that, I am confident you will see exactly the same things that I saw.
Having said all of that — and being confident that I was extremely careful in all of my research — if you should find anything that you are unable to reproduce, let me know and if necessary I can more walk you through it. And if you should find any meaningful point in which I was incorrect, then I will issue a public correction. Offhand, I can’t think of anything in the book which shouldn’t be able to be duplicated pretty clearly and precisely, except for my sampling of pixels in the chapter on chromatic aberration. That was the result of a sampling of hundreds of pixels. No one would get precisely the same result there. But I’m fairly confident that I sampled enough pixels in that chapter so that a repeat of the experiment would likely give similar results.
Thomas, let me also recommend that you listen to the 1-hour debate wrap-up show that I did with Reality Check Radio. I’ve listened to most of both broadcasts now, and I find the second one far more listenable, for the simple reason that I was able to explain a lot of things without people continually interrupting and trying to shout me down:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rcr/2012/01/21/rc-radio–lfbc-debate-wrapup-show
The tactics used by my opponents in the debate were very interesting, and I think reflective of the impossibility of their position. Since the facts are not in their favor, they really couldn’t engage in a straightforward debate on the facts without getting their clocks cleaned. This, in my opinion, is why they resorted to the various tactics of:
If my analysis were in fact incoherent (or even in any way invalid), then some of these “esteemed experts” would undoubtedly have refuted the arguments in the book. Five months after publication of the book, not one single significant argument in it has been factually refuted. The only correction I’ve had to issue so far is from pages 187-189 where I incorrectly referred to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat” Party. I have an earlier blog post noting that correction.
In any event… enjoy the rest of the book! Let me know of any further questions; I will try and answer them.
John
Thanks for the kind words about the debate wrap up show. It was certainly my intention to let you take time to make points that were buried in the banter during the actual debate. I think you were successful.
Scott E. has accepted the RC Radio debate challenge but asked for an extra month to prepare. Frank Arduini has agreed to participate too. I am still working on the rules but this will be a more formal moderated debate with a central proposition and affirmative and negative sides. The scope will be more general around an agreed proposition for example:
“Proposed: Barack Hussein Obama is not a natural born US citizen.” or “Proposed: Barack Hussein Obama is not Constitutionally eligible for the Presidency of the united States.”
Both the affirmative and the negative side of the proposition will have equal time and be able to ask specific questions of the other side.
Scott E. says he plans to bring at least one other person. You are certainly welcome if you would like to participate.
I listened to the first video now, where John Woodman had a bad
appearance (IMO), I’m planning to listen to the other video later.
Were the points raised in that first video subsequently addressed
by Woodman ? I’d like to see a list of the points with links
or pages in his book where they were addressed.
As I understood the main point is that the WH-pdf can’t be the original
since it has less details than the AP-JPG (which in turn
doesn’t have the security-grid, so the SG-pics must show the
original).
This claim was vehemently refused by the other participants,
but I couldn’t hear why.
Maybe this was discussed elsewhere here ?!
And you’ll never hear why, because they have no answer for it.
There’s a fuller explanation in the book, along with visuals.
You’ll never hear Jerome Corsi back up his claim regarding Charles Bennett’s 1955 article, either, because the claim — which he based an entire major forgery theory on — is false.
Last fall, Corsi and WorldNetDaily accidentally leaked evidence onto their web site that disproved their own sequence-number forgery theory.
Notice they didn’t bring it forth voluntarily — they accidentally leaked it.
Neither Corsi nor WND has ever retracted Corsi’s false claim regarding Bennett’s article, or the disproven sequence-number forgery claim.
are they available for asking, do they also have blogs
or webpages or books or such ? Did you subsequently discuss
this (what is the original version), did they issue statements
about it ?
dou you agree that this is your
main,central point (WH can’t be the original)
I’m sure contact info is available for Corsi. He might have contact info for Zebest.
And no — my main point is the sum total of 3 entire months , full-time, of analysis, explained in 221 pages.
but they have no blogs or discussion forums
like this one ?
———————-
listening to the other audio now … {but no controverse discussion there 🙁 }
{I prefer webpages over audios}
this was answered right at the beginning in
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rcr/2012/01/21/rc-radio–lfbc-debate-wrapup-show
you say the main point is (your very first words): SG is the original (not WH)
which makes sense to me and I’d preferred if this issue had been
discussed more, or even only,exclusively.
so, it could still be “forged”,edited,changed. But then, why ?
Obviously not so to change the wording, the content.
Maybe to distract the birthers
Maybe to make it harder to track the details to make
the proving/verifying process harder or impossible.
But then, why to give out the 3 different versions in the first place ?
Is this even what ´Corsi -or who it was-
was trying to discuss at the beginning,
asking you why WH released a .pdf ?
SG: http://teapartypowerhour.com/sitebuilder/images/GBCcoded-760×574.jpg
AP: http://www.delawareonline.com/graphics/2011-04-27-obama-birth-certificate.jpg
WH: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf
John Woodman says in the audio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rcr/2012/01/21/rc-radio–lfbc-debate-wrapup-show
immediately after his other ~2h-debate: (“Mark Gillar show”)
at 8:40min in the audio, his very first words:
> my main point is …the pdf and the AP are not the original, so SG is the original
Reality Check says: January 22, 2012 at 8:31 am
/2012/01/most-birther-news-outlets-fail-to-cover-debate/
>One fact John pointed out that was never seriously challenged by any
>of the other members was that neither the White House PDF nor the
>AP photograph are original documents. That is the elephant in the
>room that the pixel cult cannot handle
Greg says: January 24, 2012 at 1:15 am
(same thread)
In June 2011 … KD’s web site forum …
the AP version could not possibly have derived from the WH version
…both he and MZ still think that the 376 KB WH pdf is it is the source document.
…KD’s rebuke was so harsh .
John Woodman says: on February 3, 2012 at 12:20 am
Thus Vogt (and Paul Irey) appear to be putting forward a theory now that both the
PDF and the AP document are forgeries, or at least tampered with.
John Woodman says: June 9, 2012 at 1:55 am
/2012/01/audio-available-of-todays-debate/
> … And no — my main point is the sum total of 3 entire months , full-time,
> of analysis, explained in 221 pages.
and he is concentrating now on ancient US-law to examine the
natural born citizen clause.
——————————————————–
in the debate, (“Mark Gillar show”, Jan.21.2012) he made that very point
at 1:34 into the audio and it was not only his central point but also the
cental point of the criticism with big bruhaha at 1:35:38 , big laughter
at 1:37:40 and loud continuous shouting (I think that was KD)
Then starting at 1:37:40 in the audio KD explains how to create
a high resolution copy in 5 minutes from the WH-pdf using a scanner and
photoshop , which shows the same level of detail as the AP.
(his claim)
Has this ever been tried ? Is that picture available somewhere ?
(KD should really have published it !! )
Why do I find nothing about it on this blog, it _clearly_ appears
to be one of the central points of John Woodman’s book
and the whole discussion.
I would also like to see a transcript of what KD exactly said there.
I couldn’t understand everything since he was shouting and I’m no
native English-speaker and not so familiar with graphics-expressions.
———————————————————–
Have a look at this image.
In this one small comparison, compare every single letter (especially the small letters that have spaces or holes in them, like the i, g, n, a, e, o, P, a, e, n, o, S, a, l, y) and notice the higher level of detail on the PDF document.
Now realize that you have that difference in detail for every single letter on the documents.
Now you tell me whether Karl Denninger can start with the PDF and “create the AP document from it in 5 minutes.”
and notice the higher level of detail on the PDF document
Sorry, obviously I meant “notice the higher level of detail on the ASSOCIATED PRESS document.
Even the very first thing you look at: the dot in the “i.”
In the AP document, it’s round.
But in the PDF, there are not enough pixels even to make it round!
Look at this.
If you make the dot in the “i” from the AP document much larger — like this — you can count 93 pixels. And they are very nicely arranged in a shaded circular form.
The dot in the PDF document is made up of SIX pixels.
If the AP document is a copy of the PDF document, how is this possible?
Remember you have this kind of thing for every letter on the document.
How is it possible? It isn’t.
I know all this, I looked at the pictures.
But I have no photoshop, and rarely scan,
and my scanner-printer combination
may not qualify.
Still he _clearly_ claimed this.
And others thought the same (at least Maria Zebest)
There could be another document. There could be some special
method that the scanner software does automatically.
We should ask/challenge him to produce that image.
he even claimed anyone of the listeners could easily do it
Still he _clearly_ claimed this.
And others thought the same (at least Maria Zebest)
That should tell you something about the quality of the information he and Mara Zebest are giving to the public.
There is such a thing as software that will look at an image and try to decide whether it is an image of a letter — and if so, it will try to identify the letter, and make it a text letter and not a graphic.
Such software can produce perfectly-formed letters from imperfect images — but it gets a lot of the letters wrong.
It is called “optical character recognition” (OCR) software.
OCR software was NOT run to produce text letters in the PDF file. All elements of the PDF are graphic.
There is NO software that will automatically create graphic details when they do not exist. No software is capable of accurately imagining or guessing what details should be there.
Is it theoretically possible? Yes, just like it is theoretically possible for human beings to take a manned, 15-month visit to the planet Mars. We might be able to do that 20 or 25 years from now. And in 20 years, we might also have software that could imagine how to create something like the AP document from the PDF.
I cannot verify what -maybe hidden to me- information is
contained in the .pdf or even if I start from the same pdf
as he (KD) did. He said that he actually did produce that
high quality picture from the (a) WH-document.
Ask him to publish that pic !
I will do it, if you don’t, but I think you should
do it since he did attack you.
Go for it. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve wrapped up my involvement with the forgery issues.
the main point in that “Mark Gillar show” seems to
be the following: John Woodman saying that AP can’t
be the original (silent agreement ?), the WH can’t
be the original (loud bruhaha (disagreed)), so SG
must be the original (ridiculing laughter)
Denninger replies in that audio starting at 1:37:40
(shouting loud , parts in ~..~ are not well understandable to me)
———————————————————
…anybody who is listening to this broadcast they can
reproduce it for themselves. ~is probably~ need is
a pure scanner, OK. And ~then and~ – on that point – you don’t
have to read the rest of your book because the whole
thing ~were trashking~ and because you just made
a statement which is factually false ~because~ you didn’t verify
yourself , ~and you would it ~ take 5 minutes.
all you need to do is goto whitehouse
~dot dot take for me dot very well dot~
whitehouse is the original document
and put it on your ~colorfirm~
Now you got a piece of paper that has the so-called
original birth certificate.
And then I want you to take that piece of paper
..~I was stick~ you got it stick into your
scanner and you ~gonna~ run a 24-bit colorscan
of that document to a file on your computer.
Take that file and put it up in photoshop
and look at it. You will find that it has an appearance
very similar to what the AP produced.
You just told us that that’s impossible.
~None away , none away~ can argued
I _did_ do it.
————————————————
I tried to google for snippets on this
but didn’t find anything
gsgs
Have you tried the experiment that Karl Denninger proposed? He said anyone could do it and show that John was wrong.
no, last time I scanned is years ago.
He said you would need some “pure scanner”,
as I understood. Maybe you or someone else
can fill in the words in “~…~” that I didn’t
quite understand.
And I don’t know whether/how to do
a 24-bit-colorscan
who else can do it here ?
I had assumed that John Woodman would have
tried it already in Jan. Just to see which error Denninger
made or where is his flaw (and Zebest’s)
There is nothing to try.
It’s like claiming that you can take a pencil, draw a $100 bill, put it in a scanner, and have a scanner print a real $100 bill. The claim is ridiculous.
I want you to look at this image. It shows two examples of the letter “a.”
The first letter “a” is from the PDF, and that is the best quality we can get of it.
The second letter “a” is the EXACT SAME letter “a” from the AP document.
Now you tell me: If you print out the first letter “a” and scan it in, what scanner is going to produce the second letter “a” from that graphic?
Not even a Birthomatic (TM) scanner will do it. It’s not even remotely possible. It is, as I said, like claiming you can take a pencil, scribble a rough drawing of a $100 bill, run it through a scanner, and produce a real, authentic $100 from it.
Now consider: This is only one of literally hundreds of such examples we can get from these documents.
The claim — assuming you have told it to us accurately, I haven’t listened to the recording lately — is absolutely ridiculous. And you don’t need a scanner to tell that it’s absolutely ridiculous.
And this is not the only stupid claim Denninger has made.
He claimed that “kerning” is evidence of forgery. I showed that was false, that there clearly is no “kerning” in the document.
He claimed that one part of the text was supposed to be curved, and it wasn’t — and that that was “proof” of forgery. I showed (again clearly) that the curve he says isn’t there actually is there.
He claimed that because the typist didn’t use tab stops, but centered things, that that was good evidence for forgery. I showed that other known legitimate birth certificates from the same hospital didn’t use tab stops either. It was simply a typist who liked to center things.
The sad thing is that Karl Denninger is about the most technically competent person the birthers have. Tom Harrison is about as good, but he only ever made one point, which is also invalid.
Mara Zebest knows how to use Photoshop (very well) but from everything I can tell she is not technically that competent an individual.
And all of them, when it comes to this particular issue, are clowns. And I mean that almost literally.
The function of clowns is to put on an entertaining show. And that show is colorful, it’s noisy, it’s silly, and it makes the crowd feel happy. But it has nothing to do with reality.
This is the kind of show put on by Corsi, Zebest, and Denninger. The only thing we are missing is the clown music, horns to honk, and the clown make-up.
There are many more examples in the book I wrote of things that Corsi, Zebest and Denninger have claimed that do not stand up under examination. Mara Zebest is not specifically covered in the book, because when she made her claims the book was almost finished and there was really nothing new in her claims; she was almost entirely just repeating things other people had already said. But the claims are covered. Corsi and Denninger are covered in some detail.
I have emailed Mr. Denninger to ask him to point me to the results of the experiment he said anyone could do to show you could produce the additional details by printing and scanning a document that do not exist in the original. I also asked him what settings one needs to do that. I suspect the secret is that you need to have a Birthomatic brand scanner. 😆
I will let you know if he replies.
why not instead just ask him to upload that file,
which he claims he did already create ?
And send a copy to Mark Gillar so he can put it
on his webpage like he did with the Tom Harrison
animation from that same audio !
…
and then the Obots can go and prove it’s a forgery 😉
Denninger had a video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eOfYwYyS_c&feature=feedu
Debunked in the book, like pretty much the rest of what Denninger has said.
The “debate” (I refer here to the overall “debate,” not just the radio show with Corsi, Denninger and Zebest) is frankly pretty one-sided. There is literally no good evidence at all that the birth certificate is a forgery, and almost every claim made by Corsi, Denninger & Zebest was debunked in the book. The absolute falsity of their position was what gave me confidence to feel I could readily take on any and all of the birther “experts” in a debate, even single-handed.
Unfortunately, I didn’t entirely anticipate all of the tactics they might use. If I had fully anticipated all of those tactics, I would’ve gone for a much more structured debate, and not five against one.
Corsi’s technique was:
It was mostly a defensive technique. The goal, apparently, was to get through looking like the Harvard-PhD professional who supposedly knew what he was talking about, and to cast me as someone who might be well-intentioned, but who supposedly didn’t know what he was talking about.
To do this, he needed to steer things away from any hard facts which showed that he had repeatedly — 23 times in a row by my count in the book — promoted claims to the public which do not stand up to scrutiny.
In the book, I showed that not a single one of the 23 claims publicly backed by Corsi showed any good evidence for forgery at all. Not one.
Denninger’s technique, for the most part, was to try to shout me down.
I think all three — to some degree, at least — employed the tactic of ridicule. The goal there is to try and make the audience believe that your opponent is simply a fool. What you do is try and convincingly act as if the opponent is a fool, and as if his arguments have no merit whatsoever.
And some of the audience will be convinced by the act, and will believe you simply on the basis of the act.
Others will examine the actual facts, and the points made by each side, and realize that you are putting on an act because when it comes to the actual facts, there is no way you can stand up in an honest debate.
Mara Zebest in particular behaved herself in a shameful and unprofessional way (in my opinion). She couldn’t argue the facts, so she was reduced to the ad-hominem attack of resorting to ridicule in the attempt to save her skin.
All of this was followed up by what amounts to an appeal to authority, in the use of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
About 30 years ago, there was a well-known television series about a doctor — Marcus Welby, MD. The actor who played Dr. Welby did a fine job of portraying a likable and authoritative physician.
It wasn’t long before the pharmaceutical companies recruited the actor — whose name was Robert Young — to put on a white lab coat and appear in commercials hawking their products. And the drug companies sold a lot of pills that way, because people saw “Dr. Welby” hawking a product, and trusted the “doctor,” and went out and bought it.
Right now, there is an advertisement playing widely in which a “sheriff” advises various people to take “5-Hour Energy” (a “shot” drink with caffeine, B vitamins and citicholine) instead of coffee. He appears like a real “authority.”
There is of course no way of knowing for certain, but I think it’s just possible that this advertisement might actually have been inspired by the birthers’ use of Sheriff Arpaio to advertise their “product” — birtherism. Because that’s what it really is — marketing.
Anyway, if you get beyond the theatre, as far as I know, every single claim made by Corsi, Denninger and Zebest has been pretty much debunked — and there are dozens of them.
Almost all of them, in fact, were debunked in the book. The few new claims that they brought out at Arpaio’s press conference were promptly debunked as well, most of them within days.
On the other hand, nine months have passed since the book was published, and out of the 221 page analysis, not one single significant point has ever been successfully shown to be invalid or untrue.
but you couldn’t so well present it to the people. Most people can’t easily check and
verify your “proofs”, provided they are valid.
It was not over after the debate. You could still have “debunked” them here
on your blog or in an additional chapter.
They made some arguments in the show which I haven’t yet seen addressed.
You can’t expect that listeners had read and understood the book.
Was it ever resolved what Corsi was referring to ? Is there a statement
by the WH, why they released a .pdf ?
I think Corsi was reaching when he made something sinister out of the pdf vs. jpg debate. However, you asked a valid question. Why did the White House choose a pdf file?
I suspect the answer might be as simple as that is what the default choice was for the software used to run the scanner. I have a scanner and I usually choose the pdf option over jpg because I assume the pdf was probably give a smaller file and would more likely display properly on another computer. As it turned out I was probably right.
PDF vs. JPEG – What output to scan to?
September 10th, 2007 by Chris
Question: Our company scans many documents daily; currently, the output files of our scanners are JPEGs. We are considering switching to PDFs. However, within out company we are split as to whether to convert to PDFs, or keep them as JPEGs, as we have been doing forever. Could you help me make my argument to my colleagues. Would it be possible to make a quick list for reference of the advantages of scanning to PDF opposed to JPEG.
Answer: We come across companies all the time with similar questions regarding what output to scan to. As document imaging professionals, we find that in most to all cases, it is best to convert company documents to PDFs. Per your request, I have listed some of the advantages of converting to PDF opposed to JPEG below:
* Viewing from any of 500,000,000 computers
* Editing using readily available tools
* Web optimization allowing downloads to open immediately
* Text Searchability with text within the document using OCR
* Compression up to 1/100th the size of JPEG
* Metadata with info about the document travels with the document
* Portability to any OS/Hardware
* Additional file control using advanced tools.
I know at my place of work we switched to scanning everything to pdf’s vs. using TIFF and jpg formats several years ago almost entirely. I think one reason not mentioned in the article is that they handle multi-page scans much better.
replying to Reality Check
June 10, 2012 at 5:23 pm
(no reply button on that post)
—————————-
as I understood Corsi was asking for an official statement from the whitehouse on why they chose the pdf, not speculation. Suggesting that such a statement does exist.
I think they should have released several formats and resolutions
and they should have explained the process.
Even after all the forgery claims came up they didn’t clarify about it.
Is that also their general strategy how to deal with skeptics and accusations ?
spyplanes,wikileaks,WMDs in Iraq,
Cuba missiles…
what sort of (non-)reactions can we expect wrt. discussing the details ?
so apparently KD indeed started from the same 385354 bytes – WH-pdf
but then misinterpreted the mixing,smoothing of the borders that he got
from the print-scan process as additional added information content.
The AP-document however is 919540 bytes, as compressed jpg !
And it clearly can be seen that it has additional details that the 385354-byte .pdf hasn’t, not just the
smoother borders.
That makes him and Zebest look quite bad in retrospective.
You can be wrong sometimes,OK, but not when you
demonstrate so much certainty and rhetoric. (IMO)
Right. It’s not necessarily a disaster to be wrong about something. But when you are wrong, and keep claiming boldly and confidently you are right, in the end you do look quite bad.
I made a pic here:
http://magictour.free.fr/dennin3.JPG
Yes. In that picture you can see particularly the letters in DEPARTE (which is smaller) are not as sharp. It also becomes different information, because some of the pixels in the PDF don’t show up in quite the same places. You can see that in the 1.
Of course it shows up better in the smaller letters.
By the way, the only thing “hidden” in the PDF is a bit of the border area that’s trimmed off (hidden) by a “clipping mask.” There is no meaningful information “hidden” in the PDF at all.
And you can get the official copy of the President’s long form birth certificate PDF directly from the White House web server, here.
why didn’t you reply earlier ? I think it may change
the whole debate. And maybe even the whole
birther movement
I did reply earlier.
And the birther movement — from any factual point of view — is dead.
There is no good evidence at all that Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery — in spite of the fact that Corsi et al. have recruited Joe Arpaio to help them market their nonsense claims.
The State of Hawaii very clearly affirms that he was born there.
We have corroborating testimony from other sources such as the newspaper accounts, his high-school English teacher, the Governor of Hawaii who states he remembers him as a small child in Hawaii, and US government documentation from the 1960s that states clearly that he was born in Honolulu.
And in spite of the great deal of noise and massive number of claims made by birthers such as Mario Apuzzo, there is nothing either legally or historically to the claim that it takes two citizen parents to make a natural born citizen.
So from a factual point of view, the birther movement is DEAD.
Can they keep it going for a while by continuing to deny the obvious truth and by continuing to pump out the propaganda? Certainly. There may even be some folks who believe in the birther movement for the rest of their lives.
But for anyone who is interested in the honest facts and evidence, it’s dead.
The latest twist in the Birtherverse (Phony Identity branch, not Vattel branch) is moving the goalposts entirely out of sight… by claiming that some all-powerful Evil Conspirators forged BHO’s identity, without his knowledge, and without Hawaii’s knowledge, and the people who did it are all now dead.
That allows BHO to claim his identity is real, AND Hawaii to verify his birth, but still they are both wrong and don’t know it… and conveniently there is now no evidence of the plot and no witnesses.
Brilliant!
Of course! It’s the work of KAOS! The old Cold-War-era Kounter-American Obot Squadron!
Except that learning how to Get Smart eludes the Birthers.
By the way, anything I have to say would only affect people who are willing to go with the facts and the evidence.
That doesn’t include most birthers. So for a lot of these people, it literally doesn’t matter what you say, or how obvious and convincing the evidence is. They will continue (and have continued) to make claims that have already been shown to be false many times over.
but I think this will reduce, when they watch more and more people that they respect
changing their mind. You can’t expect normal people reading a 200-pages book.
(is there a short form, a summary ?) Is there maybe even a better book ?
or webpage ? From a professor maybe ? (I don’t trust Corsi)
gsgs
I hope you also listened to the second link that John Woodman posted above for the post debate show on Reality Check Radio. John had time to make his points about the documents without the shouting.
I will have to go back and listen to see if Denninger really made that claim. My view of the debate was that after John pointed out that Corsi had lied repeatedly Corsi wanted to exit as soon as he could. Mara Zebest added very little other than talking over John. Denninger had some substance but mostly tried to talk loudly over John. Butterdizillion said nothing (I am not sure why she was even there). Tom Harrison? was also a non-participant.
On the the followup show John explains why the AP document cannot have been made from the pdf because it has detail that is just not present on the pdf. If Denninger made the claim that the AP document with more detail was produced from a scan of the copy of the pdf he certainly hasn’t produced such a copy. John explains why the AP photo cannot be the original source since it lacks the color in of the security background. So the conclusion is that the photo taken by Savannah Guthrie must be of a paper document that is the source for the other two. Therefore, any discussion of “anomalies” in the pdf is superfluous and a complete waste of time.
yes, I saw it.
Why can’t AP be the original ? The security grid weren’t grasped
on some copying machines or scanners, I had heard.
And there are remnants of the grid.
Isn’t there a better resolution available on the SG ?
Does it contain any details that the others haven’t ?
.—————————-
2 google hits for “woodman is wrong” obama birth certificate
4 google hits for “woodman is right” obama birth certificate
one of them coincidentally adresses the pdf-issue
also mentioning RC (=you?)
http://jbjd.org/2012/03/29/obama-long-form-bc-pdf-jpeg/
long reading, sigh
gsgs
Thanks for the link to jbjd’s blog post. Yes, she appeared on my show and we had a pleasant exchange of ideas. I don’t understand her point. She quotes as authority on pdf’s an anonymous person from the Democratic Underground who posted the very same day the LFBC was released. “Elena I Am”’s points have been explained by John Woodman. As John explains in the book the green security background is separated into a layer in the pdf because it is the only part of the document that is in color. Since color pixels take more bits to represent than grays it makes sense for an optimization routine to separate those out. Elena I Am made the same mistake that many amateur analysts did by rushing to judgment within hours of the release of the LFBC in April 2011. As a matter of fact some of the very same issues were brought up in the March 1 Cold Case Posse news conference by Mike Zullo. Yes, there is one layer that consists mostly of the green security background and yes it can be moved around independently in Illustrator. No, it is not evidence that someone forged anything. Funny how these things never die isn’t it?
Frankly, I do not understand jbjd’s claim that release of the Obama birth certificate and the news conference were “campaign events”. jbjd seems to have the mistaken belief that the Communications Director and apparently every other official who works at the pleasure of the President are part of the campaign. While the person filling this position normally comes from the campaign they are employees of the White House while in that position and not part of the campaign. If you can figure out what she is trying to say about the WhiteHouse.gov web site please explain it to me. She quotes a bunch of meaningless statistics from Alexa.com and then seems to imply that the domain was registered in 2003 but was only used starting in 2011. That is obviously wrong. It was used throughout the Bush years. She quotes her graphic artist friend who claims the pdf was assembled. This firend brings up the fact that the COLB on Whitehouse.gov looks different than the FactCheck COLB photos. It is a black and white version of the one published in DailyKos. The green security background doesn’t show up well. Imagine that?
I think jbjd is wrong and there are valid reasons why one would use a pdf instead of a jpg. One of the biggest ones is security. A jpg can be edited by anyone with a copy of Windows Paint. Editing a pdf would take a level of sophistication beyond the average level of compute skills. PDF’s offer many options for security that jpg files just do not. Even though most of the security features of a pdf were not required to be used for the LFBC I believe that the vast majority of documents exchanged and published by the White House would be in pdf format as opposed to any other option. If you were the White House Communications Director would you chose to release a smaller file that would be more difficult to edit and could be opened correctly on almost any computer or a larger file than can be edited by the vast majority of users and may not display or print correctly on some computers? Would you have thought to care about layers? I think this is just another example of how Birthers can make a mountain out of any molehill. Butterdizillion has made a career out of pointing out what (insert your favorite villain here) didn’t say rather than what they clearly did say.
If you really want to fully understand the issues, you need to read the book, if you aren’t already.
Regarding: Why PDF format? The answer is simple: That’s what the government uses for documents.
Google reports that the White House web site has around 33,000 JPG files, and about 13,000 PDF files.
So the ratio of PDFs to JPGs is about .39.
The JPGs include almost every web page graphic on all of the site’s web pages. So that is a huge ratio of PDF files to JPG files, and it indicates that they post a very great deal of material in PDF format simply as normal operating procedure.
By comparison, the Microsoft web site’s ratio of PDFs to JPGs is about .02. They have about 5 million JPGs, and only about 108,000 PDFs.
I don’t want to interrupt the flow of a good debate on such technical issues that captivate many. However, it’s worth a pause to offer a reminder that insofar as any challenge to President Obama’s Constitutional eligibility, the discussion of the electronic White House LFBC is legally irrelevant.
The Constitution requires that a candidate be a “natural born citizen.” It does not demand that birth in the U.S. be proven by a birth certificate (birth certificates as we use them today weren’t really in widespread use until after World War II). Even less does the Constitution require a certificate in any particular form.
But Courts are accustomed to admitting vital records information into evidence. And the usual procedure is through having the proponent establish a foundation for the authenticity of the information by having the Agency (state or local) attest that the information was created and maintained per the legal obligation of the record-keeper to do so, and through its usual procedures. That, together with an affidavit or certification by the agency as to the accuracy of the information submitted, suffices in most all instances.
Here, the only items of information that are relevant are: 1) Barack Hussein Obama II’s birth, 2) such birth having occurred in Hawaii, and 3) such birth having occurred at least 35 years ago. All else is extraneous to the precise legal question being disputed.
There has now been submitted in the Mississippi case, a statement by the State of Hawaii verifying 1) that the state possesses an original birth record pertaining to Barack Hussein Obama II and 2) the information in the record matches the information stated in the electronic record published by the White House. Thus, the place and year of birth within the U.S. is established.
There. End of discussion.
Birthers and their counsel can posture all they want about the “anomolies” and “suspicious irregularities” and “serious questions raised” they conjure up about the electronic record. It’s all irrelevant. And it’s irrelevant because <ithe proponent isn't claiming the original record is electronic! Nor (under a scenario like Mississippi) is the electronic record the evidence being used to prove the key facts in issue. The evidence is the verified information from Hawaii. The electronic copy/facsimile/creation is utterly beside the point.
Nor is any judge anywhere likely to entertain the notion that the supposed “suspicions” about the electronic version is cause for the Court to order some additional discovery of Hawaii’s records. Courts require allegations of fraud to be stated with particularity. The hearsay that’s been tossed around on Birther sites (e.g., someone at sometime past heard someone in Hawaii say there was no birth certificate) won’t cut it in court. It would require someone to come forward with the direct, first-hand information (e.g., “I worked in vital records and was directed to help create and insert into the records a new (altered) record many years after the event was stated to have occurred.”). Even that might not work; but it would at least present a more credible argument. But the Birther “suspicions” to date are all smoke and mirrors. Courts usually see through that.
BrianH
You are entirely correct. The discussion about the pdf , etc. is irrelevant.
if I had been the whitehouse, I would have released several versions.
And I would have explained and documented how they were created.
And I would have let more than one person see and touch the original copy.
And I would have attached an organised discussion forum with archive and
sophisticated search and a FAQ and I would (at least occasionally)
participate in the forum and answer questions.
——————————————————-
You argue that a pdf was chosen because of the higher level of security,
while -as I understood- jbjd argues it was chosen because of the _lower_
level of security.(and thus they can’t be held responsible)
(“…But by fashioning a document in PDF, thus making it so easily manipulated
that even people with minimal computer savvy can play with the image;….)
—————————————————
Didn’t they anticipate the confusion that this would cause ?
Did they even want that confusion, to distract from the other
outstanding records. Or to only clarify about it later at a politically
good moment, as they did e.g. with Trump and the Obama
comedy show ? Or to save the material and get it exclusively
published in the Obama memoirs later, so to boost the sales.
—————————————————
the main argument against forgery for me from the beginning was:
why would they release an obvious forgery that could be revealed
such easily ? They can’t be such silly. There was no real need
to release the document at all. And then there was no need for
a .pdf, we already had the SG and AP.
——————————————-
JW, I’ll check the book in more detail later. I found an European
seller who has it but it still takes 6-8 days. With >200 pages you should
give a page or a keyword when you refer to it and a shorter
summary version would be good. And electronical updates.
It is from summer/fall 2011 so e.g. the arguments from the
debate are not included.
——————————————–
.pdf is also used for texts published by the WH, you won’t take
a jpg for that.It’s also being used for scientific articles
(why not just use plain ascii_text – easier to copy,quote,discuss –
I never understood that)
But using a pdf for a plain image, a scanned copy still seems a bit
unusual to me.
—————————————-
BrianH,even if it’s not needed, it’s better for his popularity (he wants to be elected !)
as well as for the transparency and credibility of the whole US-administration
and his Democratic Party.
———————————————-
And, BTW. I think you should change the constitution. Birthplace is not so important
these days.We do not really doubt his loyality to USA, do we ?
————————————————-
RC, pdf vs. jpg is important to judge about most of the forgery claims.
So it _is_ important when you enter the discussion about the BC and those claims
in the first place, what you do.
—————————————————
John Woodman says: on June 11, 2012 at 3:35 pm
> I am in process of writing my final article for this blog.
so, is there a suitable place where we can continue posting
when this blog is closed ? I think a forum would be better
and I found the foggy (who was also in the RC-debate ?)
forum but I couldn’t register
RC has a blog ?
Try here:
http://nativeborncitizen.wordpress.com/
or here
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/
neither site requires registration and for the most part comments are not moderated.
Just click on my name to reach my blog: http://rcradioblog.wordpress.com/
You have to have an email address to post. Your first post is moderated. After a post is approved you posts will not be moderated. It is a WordPress blog.
You should be able to register at the Fogbow. I would try it again and check to see if the registration email was mark as junk mail.
“was marked as junk mail”. Even the 30 minute edit window isn’t enough for me. I think I am beyond hope. 🙁
Back to BrianH’s remark…
I would like to say that the latest verification by the state of Hawaii ended the silly controversy over the pdf image. As John W. and others have said you cannot have a forgery when the issuing authority says the document is valid even if it is written in crayon. There never was a real controversy on where Obama was born. From the moment that the campaign released the COLB in 2008 we instantly had more information to verify where he was born than for any previous candidate in history. Everything released and learned since then has just been verification on top of verification.
So if gsgs wonders why an Obama supporter like me might have just a wee bit of animosity towards people like Apuzzo and the Birthers I hope I have given you a clue.
@R.C. I would like to say that the latest verification by the state of Hawaii ended the silly controversy over the pdf image
You’re such a dense, wishful, cool-aid-stuppored Obot. You would like to say that, wouldn’t you? But you can’t.
Ended? But for your blindness you’d see this all the more raises suspicions about how vast the conspiracy really is. No, now it’s even more imperative the original be produced. The Usurper claims a doctor signed it. OK, then there should be oil residue on the paper where his hand touched it. Let’s see if the DNA matches samples from the doctor (whose body will, of course, need to be exhumed). And if the Obot enablers resist this, it will be further proof of the cover-up. Transparency and Truth will demand even further inquiry!
(Someone on Fogbow remarked something like: “We have now moved into truly theological territory — can God create a goalpost a Birther can’t move?” Too apt and too funny.)
Gsgs says: BrianH,even if it’s not needed, it’s better for his popularity (he wants to be elected !) as well as for the transparency and credibility of the whole US-administration and his Democratic Party.
Gsgs, I’m curious. Does it ever happen that the ever-looming Cloud of Conspiracy breaks for a moment and you wonder, however fleetingly, if the White House posting what it did was simply a shrewd political move that both 1) laid the birth matter to rest for the vast majority of Americans who didn’t care that much about it in the first place and yet 2) kept the fanatical wing frothing at the mouth so as to keep driving independent voters to the Democratic Party on the perception the Republicans are too influenced by their wing-nut element? Do those dark moments within the soul ever arise?
Because as far as popularity goes, it’s doubtful that President Obama stands to gain any more by having more produced on this matter. It’s the law of diminishing returns. The LFBC did what it needed to do for the masses.
“Let’s see if the DNA matches samples from the doctor (whose body will, of course, need to be exhumed).”
Nice satire above. I bought it for 45 seconds or so.
He had me for about 10 seconds. I was trying to figure out how to word that comment. I do not concede there is any controversy. Obama was born in Hawaii and is therefore a natural born citizen. End of story. The Birthers on the other hand will never accept anything as proof. That is why I chuckle when gsgs asks why the President’s staff doesn’t release an explanation of why they released a pdf document instead of a jpg. Are you kidding me? Butterdizillion and jbjd would write for months about how sinister little details were left out of the explanation. One characteristic of conspiracy nuts is that the more factual information that is presented to them the more hardened they become in their beliefs.
not true. See the polls. Some like Corsi won’t admit their
errors but the whole movement clearly went down.
Your argument is that they shouldn’t explain things
since some people won’t believe it and would try to find
flaws in it ?? With this argument you would stop
all science.
I think those birthers which you may have in mind were
hardened in their belief _because_ the WH did such a
bad job to explain things and to handle this.
Why do we even discuss here and not on the WH-blog ?
Because the WH doesn’t discuss things.
“we have more important things to do” said Obama.
But explaining the details or allowing inspection in
Hawaii is only very little effort as compared to dealing
with the ongoing conspiracies and the people’s distrust
in their government.
I tend to believe what BrianH hinted at above: I don’t think there’s any political incentive for the White House to do anything different in regard to this issue than what they have done. I don’t think the existence of the birthers is hurting the White House or Obama at all; most Americans view them as fruitcakes, and I think the movement as a whole is only damaging to conservatives.
Beyond that, though, they are damaging to the truth, and the Constitution, and the country; and I don’t like to see that.
John Woodman wrote: June 13, 2012 at 2:42 am
> I tend to believe what BrianH hinted at above: I don’t think there’s any
> political incentive for the White House to do anything different in regard
> to this issue than what they have done.
which is OK for you ? Isn’t it their task to address the concerns of the people ?
Wouldn’t that have save you 500h ?
> I don’t think the existence of the birthers is hurting the White House
> or Obama at all;
it did already. Proof: all the dismissing trials, Obama did release the BC,
he reported on TV several times how much it bothers him.
> most Americans view them as fruitcakes, and I think
> the movement as a whole is only damaging to conservatives.
but they chose to move. Would you let your “enemy” move as it wants
and welcome any of its moves ? They might have their reasons
> Beyond that, though, they are damaging to the truth, and the Constitution,
> and the country; and I don’t like to see that.
what I think is even more damaging is the way how WH (not) handles it.
Do you want to see this secrecy and not-addressing issues more
and more become the principle of US-politics ?
what I think you should have done in that debate after the Denninger
monologue :
pointing out that you disagree his pic would show the same details
as AP , challenging him to upload his image to Gillar’s webpage
and challenging Gillar to place it next to AP and make both
available on his webpage. (since that was the central point
of the whole debate)
But it’s hard to find the right words in live-discussion and
you were busy making your points after the interruption –
did you even fully listen and understand what Denninger said
there ? Well, you should at least have re-listened and posted
those two pics here or on some webpage.
John — I’m debating someone who is a graphics “expert” who works with PDFs and scans all the time. I asked him to scan something as a PDF then open it in Illustrator to see if there are layers. He says there aren’t. (I sent a PM to your TFB handle, but I guess you aren’t checking there.) What should the process be for creating the scan? I know optimizing is involved, but I don’t know the steps.
Thanks.
I found Mark Gillar’s comments here:
http://birtherthinktank.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-birther-banshee-or-the-dianna-screeches/
Gillar: I know all three of them (Denninger,Corsi,Zebest ?)reviewed his (Woodman)
work prior to the show
invited John Woodman to a 2nd show
so much additional info and discussion hidden in some blog and not linked or mentioned !
links for Whatever4:
http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/473-Keystone-Kops.html#comments
http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/428-After-Birth.html
more details on pdfs , already back in April-June 2011
also Mark Gillar videos at youtube
(where he got 45 layers with optimization)
Gillar, Zebest, et al. claimed at Arpaio’s press conference to have “disproven” optimization. All they demonstrated was that they didn’t have the right program and settings.
They claimed (as I recall) that “more complex” files generate more layers, and that if optimization had been run on Obama’s PDF we would’ve ended up with a whole bunch more layers than it had.
Well, it’s not a matter of how “complex” the graphic is, per se. It’s chiefly a matter of how many different shades the optimizing program detects to split out into different layers.
Anyway, even if you kind of just go with their claim, as compared to the file I showed in the book that is known to have been scanned and optimized, and compare the number of layers in that one with the number of layers in Obama’s PDF, the number of layers in Obama’s PDF is reasonable. So their own theory demonstrates the falsity of that claim.
The second thing in their press conference was the claim that a “clipping mask” in the file hides data, so it had to have been the work of a forger.
All that the clipping mask conceals is a little bit of the border, where there is what looks like a couple of small smudges. Frankly, I’m not 100% certain whether this was the work of an automated program — as I recall the borders at top and bottom are to-the-pixel identical, and the same for the left-right borders, which indicates it very could be. Even if it isn’t, and somebody added a little bit of white space to conceal a couple of smudges at the right and make it look better without those little smudges, that’s hardly “forgery.” That would be called “making the file that you’re going to present to millions of people look professional without the smudges over there at the side.”
Incidentally, the Savannah Guthrie photo doesn’t have the smudges, which is yet another thing on top of an uncounted of others that the forgery theorists simply have no explanation for. Like everything else birther, if you really understand the situation well, it would be laughable if there hadn’t been people making trips to Washington, DC to “arrest Obama” and stuff like that.
The only other new claim I can think of offhand that they made in their press conference back in March was the claim that the postmark on Obama’s Secret Service Registration back in 1980 was forged. It was missing the “19” on the stamp, so they claimed that someone had gotten ahold of a 2008 postmark stamp, taken the “08” out of it and swapped them around, and that it was a forgery.
This idiot claim was blown out of the water, cannon-style, within a couple of days by Kevin Davidson (Dr. Conspiracy at ObamaConspiracy.org), who noted that the postmark stamp said “USPO” and not “USPS.” The US Postal Office became the US Postal Service in the 1970s, and the last known USPO postmark was made I think in the late 1980s. So the claim was utterly disproven.
Within days.
As far as I can recall, every other claim presented to the public in the press conference in which Arpaio’s office publicly claimed the President’s birth certificate was a “forgery” was debunked in my book, published 6 months before.
I twice contacted the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to offer my assistance as the only person to conduct an independent, 500-hour investigation of the birth certificate and forgery theories and publish the results in a book. They never contacted me.
Oh — and they mentioned my name and my work at the press conference (as if to show those who had heard of me that they had “dealt with” my work), but seemed to be careful not to ever mention that I actually disagreed with their conclusions.
Disagreed? Debunked is more like it.
So the mention was a complete surprise to me. I was given no opportunity to respond or give input to the “investigation” in any way, or even notification that I would be mentioned.
And yes, there is quite a bit of good information, I think, over in that thread.
why is it so difficult to produce something similar
to the WH-pdf from the AP and present it to
the public ?
What’s the currently best imitation ?
Well, first of all, I think that many of those who might be interested — or might have been interested — (I must confess that after more than a year and the obvious disproof of the forgery theories my own interest in the topic is waning and I am ready to move on with my post-birther-investigation life, and frankly I pretty much left the forgery theories after Arpaio’s press conference produced nothing but hot air) — first of all, many folks don’t own or have ready access to Macintosh equipment and software. And it is clear that the document went through those kinds of systems. I myself am in that category.
If you have access to the right hardware, you then have to figure out or find out what software was used. I actually contacted google to ask them what they use for their google books, but they never replied. And I took some initial steps to contact the White House as well but ultimately didn’t totally follow through. Way too much else to do, and it’s just not worth it to me at this point to try and “duplicate” the PDF.
I already know beyond any personal doubt where almost all of the “anomalies” come from, and the few minor ones I might not be entirely certain about give no advantage to any forgery theories. So I really see no chance of any decent evidence at all that there is evidence for forgery there. The forgery theories, as far as I’m concerned, are disproven and not worth further time and effort on my part — unless, of course, you want to hire me to do further investigations. But I can tell you that I have no doubt you would be wasting your money, because when you’ve turned over every rock looking for buried treasure and there is none, you don’t need to wash all the rocks, catalog them and entertain ideas that one of these rocks might be a gold coin in disguise.
Anyway, once you figure out the right hardware and software — and you also have the complication of not knowing how many steps were involved, and the fact that there are like dozens of programs that can produce Adobe PDFs, because it’s an open format and has been for many years — then you have to get close to the right settings. Some programs like Adobe Acrobat have multiple pathways to produce a PDF, and those pathways can have literally billions of combinations of settings.
There are far more combinations one can use to produce a PDF than there are people on the planet. Of course many of these are similar, but there are still a lot of possibilities.
So again, if someone wants to hire me to try and do that, and provide all the equipment and software I would need, I’m open. But given the sheer number of possibilities it could get expensive.
One further comment: It might be difficult and time-consuming to find the exact combination that would produce a decent “duplicate” with all the anomalies, etc., through the automated processes — but:
1) We already have known “duplicates” of virtually every odd characteristic in the document, and we know what innocent processes (including optimization) were used to produce them, and
2) Where it might be time-consuming to find the right software combination, it very much appears impossible, in any practical terms, to do by hand… and to explain why you did it that way.
It’s not absolutely “impossible” to do by hand, but it is. practically speaking, impossible to do and to explain.
Or to put it another way: We have two theories of where the Grand Canyon came from.
First theory: It was carved by running water over a long period of time.
Second theory: People from Atlantis, some 20,000 years ago, brought advanced excavating equipment to the American desert and artistically carved a meandering simulation of a river-carved canyon. Why would they invest that much effort into such a project? We don’t know. Then they destroyed all evidence of their advanced technology, so that not a hint of it remains today, and took off for the stars, leaving a great man-made work of art behind. Why would they then abandon it, and the earth? We don’t know. They just did.
One of these theories makes sense. The other is completely cuckoo. It’s the same way with the PDF.
you’re not here to disproof forgery … you’re here to debunk birther claims 😉
that’s the purpose of your book.
let’s ask the computer-folks in the Mac-forums !
No, I’m not really here for either, and that wasn’t exactly the purpose of my book.
My original purpose was to uncover the truth, wherever that truth might lead, and then reveal it to the public. And demonstrate some expertise along the way, and maybe — if all went well, make a few bucks in the process, which has really not worked out. And also, to stand up for the truth, and also the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the rule of law.
My purpose now is to wrap this up properly, leave the issue, and then move on with whatever is next in life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS/Quartz
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2000/05/mac-os-x-dp4/4/
with a forum : http://arstechnica.com/civis/ucp.php?mode=register
(but long terms to read, sigh. This is going to be a major disease of modern times (IMO))
i heard it again (searching for the passage where they said
what would satisfy birthers-didn’t find it)
and got the impression that you appeared not so good,
less convincing to those who didn’t read the book,
mainly because you were slower (?!)
Well, that’s a shame.
I’ve never done a public debate before — let alone on technical and controversial matters against 5 people including some (such as Corsi) who’ve done dozens or hundreds of appearances. But I thought I did fairly well nonetheless. But probably I do need more practice and experience.
People ought not to judge based on how quickly a person speaks, but on what he says when he does. In my case, if I don’t speak quickly, it’s because I would prefer to make sure that I’ve thought well enough that what I’m saying is going to be entirely accurate before I open my mouth.
most people cannot easily and quickly decide
who is right and who is wrong
You’re right. Particularly in an issue in which many arguments can be and are being made.
That being the case, some people simply choose the side they like.
why is there so few security paper on the AP-document ?
Is it possible to scan with a green-filter so the security paper
doesn’t show up ?
Shouldn’t there at least be tiny small hints to the background
at several places ?
There are also small black marks along the upper border
of the certificate, as it the certificate was cut and placed onto
another paper
Green security paper is made to disapear when copied. Some security paper will disappear and hidden words such as “void” will appear. Other security paper just disappears. Search Amazon.com for “green basketweave security paper”, they actually give examples.
can it disappear so exactly, no hints no pixels remaining
despite high resolution ?
It didn’t disappear well at the left border
and the black bars e.g. above the R of
CERTIFICATE, marking the upper border,
is not seen on the Savannah Guthrie
photograph.
Relics from a photocopier.
wrt. John’s “elefant” :
that AP can’t be made from WH because it has more details
and thus WH can’t be the original:
Couldn’t it be possible that the original was still entirely computer
generated, 5000×5000 pixels or such , and then the document
that SG photographed was printed from it with a high density printer
and then it was resizes and compressed and that gave the WH-pdf ?
I could be possible that there is a rainbow colored variegated unicorn in my living room who magically becomes invisible every time someone walks into the room. One of these days I am going to sneak up on it. One of these days.
found this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/69215253/Dr-Ron-Polland-How-I-Made-Obama-s-Long-Form-Birth-Certificate
Dr. Ron Polland,10/10/2011: How I Made Obama’s Long Form Birth Certificate
Abstract A research study was conducted on the PDF document released
by the WhiteHouse in April 2011 purported to be a certified copy
of Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate to determine how it
was actually made. The methodologies used in this study include:
(a) identifying and deconstructing the individual document elements,
(b) reverse-engineering the technologies required to produce them, and
(c) reconstructing the individual elements and combining them
into a composite PDF document.
In addition to the technical aspects of document construction,
this study also investigated the human factors that influenced its
author. The results confirm that the PDF document is a fabricated
contrivance: a one-of-a-kind virtual forgery that mimics a nonexistent
physical document, but with flaws and complexities purposely added
to lead investigators down blind alleys and dead ends.To achieve
his objectives, the document author intended for it to be ‘exposed
as a forgery’ but one that would thwart attempts to classify it
as such should the matter go to court. The forger knew that PDF
documents can contain naturally-occurring phenomena that unsuspecting
investigators have mislabeled as the evidence of forgery.
The forger relied on his personal experiences with PDF documents
and the technologies used to produce them to replicate the
unusual appearance and structure of Obama’s PDF.
In summary, this PDF document was never intended to be an authentic
copy of agenuine Hawaii State certified birth certificate.
…
Dr. Ron Polland Page 13 10/10/2011
The White House had released to the press a second copy of
Obama’s long-form that was much larger and visually superior
in resolution to what was released in the PDF file posted
on the White House website. Either this larger certificate
form served as the basis for making a lower resolution PDF,
or it was generated from a different form, including one that
was made to order. Consequently, I also created a form grid
by drawing a series of clean, straight lines that were smoothly
curved along the left edge just as they appeared in the press copy.
Even the field headers in the form may have been computer-generated,
and I explored that possibility as well. Either an already
curved certificate form was used or made.In the feature deconstruction
stage, once I found a particular feature, I would then proceed to
identify all the possible methods that could have been used to
create it. As I discovered during this stage, there was more than
one way to re-create the same feature. I chose to illustrate all
of the ways possible to re-create a feature, and then to
decide which of these methods was the one most likely to have
been used to construct this particular PDF document. …
…
Polland spent literally weeks trying to hand-duplicate the PDF and came up with a poor imitation that does NOT have the various artifacts of optimization — such as the to-the-pixel duplicate letters — that the original has.
It was a pretty good illustration of the practical impossibility of trying to create such a thing by hand.
where is the Polland birth certificate ?
is it available ?
apparently you saw it ?!?
I did see it. I don’t have a ready reference. It was one of a great many things I’ve seen.
But yeah, go out, find a copy, blow it up to high magnification, look for the various characteristics — like the to-the-pixel duplicate letters present in the real PDF — and be disappointed.
You can also verify for yourself how long it took Polland to create it. But I’m pretty sure he spent weeks on it.
he says 800 hours.
Well worth it from Obama’s point of view.
(ignoring all the other evidence, of course)
(and it would mean that the observed artifacts can be explained from a scanning and optimizing process,
no problem with that assumption)
800 hours.
FIVE MONTHS of full time work.
And he didn’t BEGIN to duplicate the characteristics of the real document.
And it’s KNOWN AND DEMONSTRATED that those characteristics are duplicated in MOMENTS when a file is optimized, just as similar files have been optimized for Google Books.
Do you start to see now how ridiculous the birther claims are?
high resolution JPG , better than AP:
http://theobamafile.com/_eligibility/BirthCertificateII.htm
article about Polland :
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.de/2011/10/dr-ron-polland-how-i-made-obamas-long.html
Polland JPG:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WBKYffsKdgY/TpzW5J-5YoI/AAAAAAAADew/Nt6Qpy-y5E8/s640/111014polland.jpg
Polland PDF:
http://www.wnd.com/files/2011/10/CLONEFINAL.pdf
As far as I can tell the only possible way you could’ve gotten the PDF from a high-resolution computer file would be to convert such a file into a flat image and then optimize it. In which case we’re back to the same scenario we get from simply scanning in a paper document.
In any event, practically speaking, it’s not possible that the “entire thing was computer generated.” You’re proposing that somebody hand-created the form? No, that would be like digging the Grand Canyon by hand. That part of it had to be scanned.
Okay, well then, someone scanned a form and then altered it. But the internal evidence of the document shows no such thing. For example, the curvature of letters that Karl Denninger claimed did not exist and was therefore proof of forgery does in fact exist. In other words, a close examination of the document is perfectly consistent with the proposition that it started out as a paper record, in a book, with Obama’s information already on it.
There is no explanation for the document that is not far more unwieldy and implausible than the obvious one: That it is a legitimate and genuine record of a birth in Hawaii in the year 1961.
what’s a “flat image” ?
You’d have a large array (10000*15000 or such)
of 3-byte-pixels
where you copy,calculate,resize the elements
into. Then you print it. Creating the seal
should be no big problem.
Then you proceed
as the WH is supposed to have proceeded
once they got the 2 copies from Hawaii.
Creating the seal should be no big problem.
Right.
Have you actually done any computer graphics work?
Either you have to scan in or import an image from something that’s real, or you have to create it using artwork.
To hand-draw something takes an enormous amount of time, and it never turns out as good as a photograph.
Well, the Hawaii Department of Health must be complicit in any forgery, because they’ve claimed that they sent two paper documents to the White House, and they’ve verified that the PDF on the White House web site is what they sent. Right?
So they must have taken an image of a seal and incorporated that into a computer file that they then emailed to the White House.
Except it would’ve been far, far simpler, and far, far less work, and far, far more foolproof, and given far, far less chance of being caught, if they were simply to print out a certificate on their equipment there in Hawaii and apply a real seal to it.
And what’s the evidence of any massive conspiracy on the part of the people in Hawaii? There is none. It’s all a fantasy dreamed up by birthers.
“There’s all this evidence that the PDF is a forgery.”
“Um… actually your evidence only points to the fact the paper certificate was scanned and optimized.”
“Okay. But it’s still a forgery.”
There is no evidence to support that conclusion. But having come to the conclusion, now we have to stretch things to absurdity to back up the conclusion that was invalid, wrong, fantastic to start with.
So then, if we continue with our fantastic proposition — that the Hawaii Health Department went to all kinds of contortions to create a computer file that produces a document that is absolutely consistent in its visual qualities — ignoring the degradation that has come from the optimization — when it would’ve been about 100 times easier for them to print something out and apply the official seal to it — now we have to bring an NBC reporter in on the conspiracy to validate it.
It’s ridiculous. The birther claim, and all of the contortions they go to in order to try and prove it, is like somebody sitting and writing “scientific research papers” trying to prove that the earth is actually flat and not round at all.
As someone who has analyzed this whole thing to the nth degree, it is obvious to me that these two propositions — that the earth is flat and not round, and that the PDF shows evidence of forgery — are about equally likely.
> Have you actually done any computer graphics work?
not really. In the early days I tried implement OCR with several strategies.
Speed was the main issue, AFAIR. Then I wrote some simple programs
to manipulate 1-byte=1-pixel files. And programs to display/compute bio-data,
rotate in n-dim and such. I don’t know much about existing graphics software.
But I do think I have a feeling of what’s possible, how long it takes,
how much memory and such.
> Either you have to scan in or import an image from something that’s real,
> or you have to create it using artwork.
no problem.
Or analyze existing BCs , find the patterns , make a program to create new ones.
> To hand-draw something takes an enormous amount of time, and it never turns
> out as good as a photograph.
you can draw in high resolution and then reduce it
> Well, the Hawaii Department of Health must be complicit in any forgery,
> because they’ve claimed that they sent two paper documents to the White House,
did they ? And what was on them ?
> and they’ve verified that the PDF on the White House web site is what they sent. Right?
yes, but only after you wrote the book and had that debate. And it’s not entirely
clear whether they confirmed that nothing was left out
> So they must have taken an image of a seal and incorporated that into a computer file
> that they then emailed to the White House.
they=Hawaii ? No. The seal is wellknown and can be reproduced.
> Except it would’ve been far, far simpler, and far, far less work, and far, far more foolproof,
> and given far, far less chance of being caught, if they were simply to print out a certificate
> on their equipment there in Hawaii and apply a real seal to it.
yes, if they cooperate. They would still have to create a suitable document with the Obama data.
> And what’s the evidence of any massive conspiracy on the part of the people in Hawaii?
> There is none. It’s all a fantasy dreamed up by birthers.
that’s another issue.
> There is no evidence to support that conclusion.
not true. WH, Obama-campaign behaviour is the evidence.
> But having come to the conclusion, now we have to stretch things to absurdity
> to back up the conclusion that was invalid, wrong, fantastic to start with.
even if true, that’s what your book is about and why we are here.
> So then, if we continue with our fantastic proposition — that the Hawaii Health
> Department went to all kinds of contortions to create a computer file that produces
> a document that is absolutely consistent in its visual qualities — ignoring the
> degradation that has come from the optimization — when it would’ve been
> about 100 times easier for them to print something out and apply the official seal to it
they could have assembled something from their existing data. They had more data
available than the Obama people, and the stamps,security paper,seal,signature.
Not 100 times easier, IMO. But even if, costs were still reasonable.
> — now we have to bring an NBC reporter in on the conspiracy to validate it.
no.
> It’s ridiculous.
even if, your book deals with ridiculous things
> The birther …
doesn’t matter. We’re not talking about the birther claims here.
I do not buy the argument from Harrison and Gillar that Obama couldn’t
have got a more qualified forger and might have taken one that made
all these silly mistakes that they claim are signs of forgery.
not true. WH, Obama-campaign behaviour is the evidence.
Which is just as easily explained by:
a) The White House thought they had some political advantage by keeping evidence in reserve, or
b) The White House thought that releasing anything other than what they had already released would only give credibility to the conspiracy theorists and end up adding to the conspiracy theories.
I have heard b) advanced as an explanation. At this point, I believe it. What was the result of releasing the short-form birth certificate in 2008? Rampant claims that it was a fraud.
What was the result of releasing the long-form birth certificate in 2011? Rampant claims that it was a fraud.
So while I initially had the same question, I no longer actually find the White House behavior suspicious.
> — now we have to bring an NBC reporter in on the conspiracy to validate it.
no.
Yes, because Savannah Guthrie stated in public that she FELT THE RAISED SEAL.
So either she’s part of the conspiracy, or there IS no conspiracy.
bizarr claims by Polland at:
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.de/2012/06/snopes-scrubs-article-on-obamas-mamas.html
June 17, 2012 12:06 PM
Dr. Ron Polland said…[Reply]
Stanley Ann Dunham, the photo, is a composite image.
Stanley Ann Dunham, the person, is a composite character.
There never was one Stanley Ann Dunham (especially since
Obama called her Shirley in his DFMF, 1995 edition, and
the first SAD died in the 1970’s).
SAD never graduated Mercer Island High School in 1960,
never went to Hawaii in 1960, never met Obama Sr. there.
That Senior yearbook photo of her is a morph of young
Obama’s face with the face of FMD’s nude model.
That’s why she was tagged as SAD.
Spend two bucks and buy my book, “A picture is worth 1,000 lies”
http://1000.dr-rjp.com/index.html
It contains 100 annotated Photoshops of Obama’s life
along with a tongue-in-cheek description of how they were faked.
June 17, 2012 12:12 PM
is it that Polland ? Paypal says : email invalid
————————-
Amazon has it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Alias-Barack-Obama-picture-ebook/sim/B007MTY7QA/2
twitter: https://twitter.com/thedrrjp
youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BiKVG4tRoQ&feature=youtu.be
Yes, it’s that Ron Polland.
As you can see, Polland’s a real crackpot.
it doesn’t matter how ridiculous the birther claims are.
Even the existence of birthers has nothing to do with my
scenario.
I claim, it would be possible and cost less than a million
and not detectable.
So your elefant doesn’t prove much, except that it
addressed the then-existing birther claims.
(ignoring the Hawaii confirmations)
————————————————
Hawaii could have sent the 2 copies, but WH could have published
something else.
E.g. assume they just deleted mother’s mailing address = Davis’ address.
Hawaii would only be complicit in that they kept silent although
they knew WH had deleted it. Not illegal, AFAIK.
What you’re saying is that it’s theoretically possible to forge a birth certificate, or that it’s theoretically possible Obama’s birth certificate is forged.
But I think we knew that. It’s theoretically possible to forge a driver’s license. Is that evidence that a particular driver’s license is forged? No.
It’s theoretically possible that Obama is a disguised alien. It’s theoretically possible that you’re an alien. Or a time-traveler from the future. Or someone who was born immortal in the year 526 BC. Or that an asteroid will destroy Paris next year, or that Elvis is still alive.
Do we have any good evidence for any of the above? No. Does it make sense to believe in any of those things, and to try and convince an entire country that they are true? No.
John Woodman says on July 5, 2012 at 11:55 am in lines quoted with “>”
>> not true. WH, Obama-campaign behaviour is the evidence.
> Which is just as easily explained by:
even if, it’s still evidence.
> a) The White House thought they had some political advantage
> by keeping evidence in reserve, or
> b) The White House thought that releasing anything other than
> what they had already released would only give credibility to the
> conspiracy theorists and end up adding to the conspiracy theories.
how could they have been so silly … it didn’t work and Obama
had to release the LFBC in 2011 anyway.
Well, he could choose the timing.
> I have heard b) advanced as an explanation. At this point, I believe it. What was the result
> of releasing the short-form birth certificate in 2008? Rampant claims that it was a fraud.
he won the election.
> What was the result of releasing the long-form birth certificate in 2011?
> Rampant claims that it was a fraud.
Trump withdrew, birthers almost halfed.
> So while I initially had the same question, I no longer actually
> find the White House behavior suspicious.
still the birthplace hasn’t changed in the meantime
> Yes, because Savannah Guthrie stated in public that she FELT THE RAISED SEAL.
which could have easily been forged so to trick her
which could have easily been forged so to trick her
Forged how?
The Hawaii Department of Health has testified that they SENT two paper documents.
They’ve testified that what’s up on the White House web site is what they sent.
The artifacts in the PDF are indicative of optimization. We have a raised seal on a photograph of what is obviously a paper document. The State of Hawaii testifies that they sent two paper documents.
Again, you argue the most implausible of things. Why aren’t you out there instead arguing that Obama is an immortal who was born in 526 BC and took part in the Battle of Thermopylae, studied under Leonardo da Vinci and arrived in America on a schooner in 1681? There’s about as much evidence for that scenario as for the one you’re arguing.
I now know, as well, why this entire discussion is a bit irritating to me. I actually retired from the forgery claims issues back in March. They were disproven as of that point, and they’re still disproven now. I need to move on with my life. If you have any questions or comments that you think are important, please ask or make them as I want to put this issue to bed permanently. Thanks.
By the way, I’m sure you will find people who are happy and willing to discuss the forgery issues from now until 2015 over at Dr. Conspiracy’s blog, ObamaConspiracy.org.
John Woodman said on July 5, 2012 at 11:45 am
> What you’re saying is that it’s theoretically possible to forge a birth certificate,
> or that it’s theoretically possible Obama’s birth certificate is forged.
both. The latter I give ~10%, and if then probably not because of eligibility
> But I think we knew that. It’s theoretically possible to forge a driver’s license.
> Is that evidence that a particular driver’s license is forged? No.
hmm, you’d have to forge the signature, no printer-ink.
> It’s theoretically possible that Obama is a disguised alien.
but way more unlikely, right ?
> It’s theoretically possible that you’re an alien. Or a time-traveler from the future.
> Or someone who was born immortal in the year 526 BC. Or that an asteroid
> will destroy Paris next year, or that Elvis is still alive.
> Do we have any good evidence for any of the above? No. Does it make
> sense to believe in any of those things, and to try and convince an entire
> country that they are true? No.
your point ? Now you sound like one of those Obots in the forums and blogs.
My point, obviously, is that there is no REAL sign of any forgery. The entire issue has been beaten to death, and all we have is literally dozens of ALLEGATIONS that have ALL proven false. Every sign, every indication is that Obama was born in Honolulu. The birth certificate passed every single test I could possibly throw at it, and that included every significant birther allegation ever made. And the scenario that Obama’s mother flew alone to Kenya to have her firstborn child — as also detailed in a previous article here — is about as likely as my firing a golf ball from a modified shotgun at random and making a hole-in-one on a golf course 2 miles away.
That being the case, it is absolutely mystifying to me why you or anybody else now gives the slightest bit of credence to ANY of these theories.
> why you or anybody else now gives the slightest
> bit of credence to ANY of these theories.
I did not argue for these theories (that you dealt
with in your book)
When you follow my posts you’d rather notice that in
contrary I was more debunking them.
This recent discussion arose from Pollands article and
whether the forgery were possible and how likley and
what would have been the best way.
OK, I also had expressed doubts how strong your “Elefant”
argument was wrt. to a skilled forger who invests much time.
But it’s still valid for debunking the claims in your book,
they all assume a silly forger who overlooked something.
I could delete the security paper background
by loading the WH in irfanview, then
image
Decrease Color Depth
2 Colors [black/white] {1 BPP]
a bit of security paper remains at the left as in AP, but with
worse resolution than in the press copy (AP or 4047*4851 obamafile.com).
This has no grey pixels, only black or white.
Then presumably this high resolution black/white copy
was scanned with the 2008 COLB and other papers behind it
and printed for the press.
(why not give them the direct B/W-copies ?)
this produced the grey pixels, the chromatic abberration,
the shadow of the 2008 COLB,
and the light grey (babyblue ?) background
the B/W copying also deleted the signs of the seal
usually the security background does copy. We have lots of examples.
Try to print the pdf and then copy it.
Denninger scanned it (color scan) and got lots
of security paper.
When you convert any picture with the green background to grey-scale,
then you still see it.
If you do a normal grey-copy then I assume it should also show up.
I think it only disappears with 2-bit scan/photocopy
but I haven’t tried it yet.
(hmm, or do normal B/W photocopiers do 2-bit with randomizing ?)
OK, I tried it now with my Epson Stylus SX125
printer-scanner-copyer .
Lots of security paper background with B/W.
With color, the background looks more yellow
than green, much different from the original printout.
So I assume the WH used a special photocopier/scanner
with a 2-bit high-resolution mode.
Printing the PDF and copying it will not produce remotely the same results. If you want to experiment, you need a photocopier and the exact same official safety paper the Hawaii Department of Health uses.
sorry, always when I said “2 bits” above , I meant “1 bit”
trying to delete the security paper background while keeping the other details :
http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=7866&start=100
http://magictour.free.fr/obcgs1.GIF
http://magictour.free.fr/obcwhbw1.GIF
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/HistorianDude/ObamaLongFormBWScan.jpg
wrt. John’s “elefant” –
while a forger could have done an assembly in high-resolution
and then
1) printed it out, applied a faked seal to produce the original
that SG saw,touched,photographed
2.) reduced it in size and optimized it to produce the WH-pdf
,
it would still have been increadibly stupid to do so.
Instead he could have scanned the “original” produced in 1)
and then proceeded with that scan to produce the .pdf.
That’s one possibility less to get caught.
So any possible signs of forgery should rather be found
in the jpg from AP/press_copy/obamafile.com or in the
SG-photographs.
what Woodman post was deleted here :
http://theobamafile.websitetoolbox.com/post/Adobe-experts-to-debate-Obamas-bogus-birth-certificate-5672090?highlight=woodman
Well, now you see how birthers treat people who stand up and speak the truth.
It’s a lynch mob, basically. Very evil people.
You made an assertion that in my experience is factually untrue, and you used a word that is not permitted here in doing it.
If you want to try again without the slur, it will post.
Yes, you.
You might reword it by saying there are some on the other side that are bad as well. 😉