A Response To One Birther

Over here. I keep seeing this guy cited authoritatively as an expert on the long form's falsity. He's an expert on Adobe photoshop and imagery analysis because he says so.

Now, "TechDude" and the other guy who claimed the original COLB was fake also swore they were experts, too, and every single thing they said, even the most basic stuff, turned out to be 100% false. Like saying the COLB should have a signature (it actually should be on the BACK of the document-- where it actually was), and a stamp (also on the back), and a watermark (zoom in, hoss, it's got that too).

So every single thing these experts said turned out to be 100% horseshit. Didn't stop them from further "investigation" into the matter, of course.

But that was then, this is now.

We have new "experts" telling us pretty much the same crap TechDude did three years ago.

So let's believe these guys. At least, they haven't been proven to be full of shit yet.

Let's skip past the beginning of MarketTicker's analysis and focus on a statement he makes, the reasonableness or unreasonableness of which can be easily determined without any of the "expertise" he claims for himself.

But let's look at why Denninger now thinks that might be real -- what he thinks is an odd "coincidence" -- that the time of birth (and now the certification dates) on the Kenyan punking match the ones on the long form?

Here is his cached, original version of the post. The version before he began rewriting it to edit out laughable errors once people had pointed them out.

Other curiosities include the fact that the time of birth is exactly the same on the (now-discredited – or is it?) Kenyan birth certificate that has been floating around the Internet. How did a purely fraudulent document in a foreign nation happen to wind up with the exact same time of birth as the alleged "real" certificate – if Hawaii never released that information until now?

First of all, let's just note that the "Kenyan birth certificate" appears fake. (Note: See correction at post's end.)

Is it a strange "coincidence" that the time of birth on the Long Form should match, precisely, the 7:24 time of birth on the Kenyan hoax? Really?

And does that odd coincidence tend to suggest the Kenyan hoax was real?

Really?

The short-form COLB which has been available on-line for coming on three years always showed the time of birth as 7:24.

So you tell me -- is this coincidence, suggesting an obvious hoax is real, or is this just the guy who made the hoax copying data from the COLB available online?

As to the next claim (which I think was added to cover up his previous illogic) that the COLB doesn't show the "certification dates" -- well, I see rather plainly an August 8, 1961 date of registration on the short form. Also long available.

So you tell me: If this guy takes a strange "coincidence," which is not a coincidence at all, but rather just a hoaxster copying a time of birth from a publicly available document, proves that hoax is actually genuine --

How much should I trust his claim of expertise in the field of document authentication and the conclusions he derives from that expertise?

Tell me.

Because it seems to me, based on his bewilderment at the "coincidence" of a forgery matching the 7:24 time of birth that has been well known for almost three years, that he is not capable of considering even the most basic alternate possibilities before rushing headlong to his desired, traffic-sucking conclusion that the Long Form is fake (and, bizarrely, the confessed spoof "Kenyan Birth Certificate" is real).

You tell me. How much credence shall I place in this guy's self-asserted expertise?

Credibility counts.

And those who piss it away on lies and foolishness and rathole fantasias won't have it when they need it later.

Update/Rewritten: This post got complicated because the post I meant to respond to seemed to change before my eyes.

Yes, Market Ticker began re-writing his post to avoid making the obvious stupid errors I was ripping him for. But here is the cached, original version of the post. The one he had written before he realized I was calling him out.

Other curiosities include the fact that the time of birth is exactly the same on the (now-discredited – or is it?) Kenyan birth certificate that has been floating around the Internet. How did a purely fraudulent document in a foreign nation happen to wind up with the exact same time of birth as the alleged "real" certificate – if Hawaii never released that information until now?

As I suspected, when he saw I was pointing out the gaping hole in this illogic he changed the post, to claim he always knew the time of birth was always well-known, and adding in that he didn't see how the "certification dates" could have been known.

So what do we have? Well now we have someone saying incredibly stupid, ignorant shit, not even doing the most basic research into this or thinking about any alternate possibility besides "the Long Form is FAKE!"

And then, when caught being a perfect jackass, he stealth-edits, without any acknowledgement of a correction or rewriting, to try to cover up his absurd errors.

Here's what he got wrong:

1. Everything he thought.

2. Everything he wrote.

3. Everything he re-wrote in a futile attempt to hide his embarrassing errors on this score.

But oh, by all means, Let's follow this man to the Gates of Hell. He seems to know what he's talking about.

Whatever.

Are we smarter than this? Or are we really this dumb?

Are we this credulous? Are we this stubborn? Are we this impervious to logic and fact, preferring our cherished delusions over the hard reality of the waking world?

In short -- are we everything the liberals say we are?

I didn't think we were.

I am now wondering, however.

I have learned two uncontestable facts from the Birth Certificate Conspiracy Theory Saga:

1. There is a sucker born every minute.

2. Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4th, 1961.

And I learned a corollary:

For every person who goes to market seeking to purchase snake-oil and magic geans, there is at least one person who will set up a stand and agree to sell him such products.

Correction: I retract the claim that he began stealth-editing only when I caught him.

He definitely stealth-edited his egregious mistake -- witness the cached version -- but he may have done that far earlier, when one of his commenters pointed out how dumb his claim was.

Which leaves me wondering -- how is it I *read* his original not-stealth-edited version before he corrected it?

It could be that he was stealth-editing in response to his commenters pointing out his errors just as I was reading his post.

Or it could be I actually misread his post -- but, oddly enough, the way I misread it (and then remembered it) was exactly right as far as the previous, unedited version.

Weird coincidence that would be, huh?

Well, not really. See, if you want to catch someone in an error, you just might actually make an error in finding an error. As Market Ticker did.

Maybe I did the same thing... but got lucky, because my misreading was actually, by coincidence, actually congruent with his previous version of the post.

That is, maybe I misread but just happened to misread in such a way that I correctly figured out what he'd originally written, before he started adding in "Oh of course I know the date was 'out there' despite the fact my whole argument is premised on my ignorance of that."

The reason he might not have known any of this is that he's apparently not a Birther and hasn't been following this stuff. (Commenters tell me.) Apparently he just made the very-inadvisable decision to jump on the Birther train after it had collided hard with reality.

Ah well. Bad timing.

Anyway, there is an old saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Please, please, please... can we honor the heritage of our 18th Century Enlightenment forebearers and begin honoring their commitment to reasoned propositions like that?

And stop making outlandish claims based upon nothing but "I think the font in that four looks 'hinky'" and "this guy on the internet told me it was fake"?

Correction 2: I got two "Kenyan Birth Certificates" muddled. I thought there was only one forged Kenyan Birth Certificate. No, turns out there were too; the first one the Birther Emeritus Philip Berg seized upon, and the second one, slightly better, that Orly Taitz seized upon.

One, which I thought was the only fake birth certificate, is not being referred to by Market Ticker. That one is an admitted fake. The hoaxster confessed to that one.

The one he's referring to is not an admitted fake. Just an apparent fake.

Sorry for getting the two fakes confused -- the confessed fake Philip Berg submitted vs. the apparent fake Orly Taitz began peddling.

However, my mistake aside, it doesn't change the fact here that part of Market Ticker's reason for thinking this second-chance-let's-get-it-right-this-time-forgery is real is that it contains the time of Obama's birth -- something he alleges was unknown until the long form was released.

It wasn't unknown; it was known, and part of Birther lore, for years. It was listed on Obama's COLB, his short form, the one first released way back in the summer of 2008.

Thanks to Rip for pointing this error out. I have rewritten the part of the post dealing with this for clarity and readability -- if I included this correction in the post (as I just attempted to), it would be difficult to read.

But here's notice of my error -- yes, I did think there was only one "Kenyan Birth Certificate," and I erroneously thought then that Market Ticker must be referring to that forgery, the admitted one.

But there are two, the original, and then the second attempt at forgery.

posted by Ace at 04:59 PM

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