OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Slim Shady?

dispite the lie that this site is really loking for answers it is simply here to make us feel warm and fuzzy while

obama sells out for socialism.

There is some guy named david langer who is going thru all the posts asking for the BC on OB and flagging them as duplicates for removal...I'll bet there were thousands more before these liberal "spammers" started deleting all these posts. Do you think it is really worth it to post to this site. I doubt that OB even looks at it or gets the info about all the BC demands.

Please, please, please...keep making these arguments.

The fact that you knuckle dragging, wingnut, kooks spend all your time ignoring the fact that Obama is a US citizen - and making that your prime pitch at what conservatism is about - is perfect.

I thank you from the bottom of my pinko commie heart for this gift. PLEASE DON'T STOP!!!

Please, don't start talking about anything that might sway moderates to your side or make people think of you as anything other than a bunch of tin-foil hat wearing kooks.

Don't talk about investing the social security trust fund to earn interest, or holding down the cost of government, or eliminating no-bid contracts, or helping businesses succeed, or limiting the power of government to intrude in your private life, or protecting the constitution, or states rights or maintaining a strong defense. I don’t want your platform legitimized with more moderate stances.

I don't want you talking about any of the traditional republican policies that legitimized you. I want you and your party marginalized and discredited for the racist, knuckle dragging, wingnut kooks you are. So, from the bottom of my heart...THANK YOU!!!

We will just leave you completely out of any meaningful impact on the direction of the country. This is the proper place for wingnut kooks like you.

Concentrating on Obama's birth certificate while we are fixing the mess you guys made is just going to ensure that we will continue to win for the next 40 years...so get used to being a marginalized fringe group.

This just might be the time for the Green party or the Libertarians to finally do away with you kooks and become the other player in our 2 party system.

Fact is, I don't want you to shut up. You are EXACTLY the kind of guys I WANT speaking for the conservative republican viewpoint.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

Born in the U.S.A.

August 21, 2008

Updated: November 1, 2008

The truth about Obama's birth certificate.

Summary

In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake."

We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Update, Nov. 1: The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed Oct. 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu.

Analysis

Update Nov. 1: The Associated Press quoted Chiyome Fukino as saying that both she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.

Fukino also was quoted by several other news organizations. The Honolulu Advertiser quoted Fukino as saying the agency had been bombarded by requests, and that the registrar of statistics had even been called in at home in the middle of the night.

Honolulu Advertiser, Nov. 1 2008: "This has gotten ridiculous," state health director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said yesterday. "There are plenty of other, important things to focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy." . . . Will this be enough to quiet the doubters? "I hope so," Fukino said. "We need to get some work done."

Fukino said she has “personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."

Since we first wrote about Obama's birth certificate on June 16, speculation on his citizenship has continued apace. Some claim that Obama posted a fake birth certificate to his Web page. That charge leaped from the blogosphere to the mainstream media earlier this week when Jerome Corsi, author of a book attacking Obama, repeated the claim in an Aug. 15 interview with Steve Doocy on Fox News.

Corsi: Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?

Doocy: What do you mean they have a "false birth certificate" on their Web site?

Corsi: The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released, and the campaign refuses to release it.

Doocy: Well, couldn't it just be a State of Hawaii-produced duplicate?

Corsi: No, it's a -- there's been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce.

Corsi isn't the only skeptic claiming that the document is a forgery. Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are:

The birth certificate doesn't have a raised seal.

It isn't signed.

No creases from folding are evident in the scanned version.

In the zoomed-in view, there's a strange halo around the letters.

The certificate number is blacked out.

The date bleeding through from the back seems to say "2007," but the document wasn't released until 2008.

The document is a "certification of birth," not a "certificate of birth."

Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs.

The Obama birth certificate, held by FactCheck writer Joe Miller

Alvin T. Onaka's signature stamp

The raised seal

Blowup of text

You can click on the photos to get full-size versions, which haven't been edited in any way, except that some have been rotated 90 degrees for viewing purposes.

The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: "your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records." The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above.

The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.

We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that's when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and "all the records we could get our hands on" according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn't release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama's citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number. Says Shauna: "[We] couldn't get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we've found out it's pretty irrelevant for the outside world." The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641.

Blowup of certificate number

Some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated about Obama are quite imaginative. One conservative blogger suggested that the campaign might have obtained a valid Hawaii birth certificate, soaked it in solvent, then reprinted it with Obama's information. Of course, this anonymous blogger didn't have access to the actual document and presents this as just one possible "scenario" without any evidence that such a thing actually happened or is even feasible.

We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect. Instead, some speculate that somehow, maybe, he was born in another country and doesn't meet the Constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen."

We think our colleagues at PolitiFact.com, who also dug into some of these loopy theories put it pretty well: "It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over."

In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:

Obama's birth announcement

The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama "likely" was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.

Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.

Update, August 26: We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health. They couldn't tell us anything about their security paper, but they did answer another frequently-raised question: why is Obama's father's race listed as "African"? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father's race and mother's race are supplied by the parents, and that "we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be." We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama, Sr., would have thought of and reported himself as "African." It's certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.

When we asked about the security borders, which look different from some other examples of Hawaii certifications of live birth, Kurt said "The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised." He also confirmed that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for "all reasonable purposes."

–by Jess Henig, with Joe Miller

Sources

United States Department of State. "Application for a U.S. Passport." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

State of Hawaii Department of Health. "Request for Certified Copy of Birth Record." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

Hollyfield, Amy. "Obama's Birth Certificate: Final Chapter." Politifact.com. 27 Jun. 2008.

The Associated Press. "State declares Obama birth certificate genuine" 31 Oct 2008.

Nakaso, Dan. "Obama's certificate of birth OK, state says; Health director issues voucher in response to 'ridiculous' barrage" Honolulu Advertiser 1 Nov 2008.

This site has been rigged so that the posts asking for Obama to support transparency by providing his own birth certificate, health records and college records are not properly counted, even if they do not get deleted.

It is possible to review this site to find the most rquested ideas by scanning "Top Rated" posts.

According to the liars running this website the most requested item has NOT been Obama's birth certificate.

(My email is ricardomigrant@aol.com - inlcude your email address if you want me to reply to you)

Hey luvwith the hint was the obama camp released it.By the way I have the deed to the brooklyn bridge here in front of me I'm selling it cheap.

People like luvwith are on someones payroll or is benefitting some how to make these arguements & make others think that conservatives are nuts.It's been going on for a long time & is exactly what liberals what everyone to believe take things that people like that say with a grain of salt.

Response three and counting.

I will make the exact same response to this as post as I will for every single one of them on this site.

I say again "Because it is annoying to have to read through these posts when they have absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of the site.

It prevents people who want to discuss how to make government more transparent from doing so because they are wasting time reading through posts that don't serve any purpose. This isn't a place to ask the administration questions or to make specific policy proposals."

I'm with luvwith, please keep up with these wacko right wing statements that that our President is not a USA born.Show the world and America what true conservatism is and how narrow and bigoted your movement and the Publican party is

In spite of a catchy site name does anyone really think that "Factcheck.org" is a legitimate certified forensics lab? Give me a break. I doubt that a finding by these slapdicks would be accepted in small claims court.

sarahraek, I'm so sick of this that I am not even really using this site anymore. I came here to have a real discussion about transparency and participation in government and instead this has turned into a spammers heaven. ttemple's post is an example of this. I don't want to go to my email and read these kinds of comments.

If anyone knows how I can stop receiving email alerts for a specific idea please let me know since I haven't been able to find one and these comments are getting on my nerves. Let the spammers have their heaven.