The Birther-Againers

Lawrence Auster quotes extensively from a reader who has tentatively concluded that the long-form birth certificate recently released by Obama "was tampered with at least, perhaps completely forged."

The reader then enumerates many details that have led him to this tentative conclusion. However, absent from the reader's explanation is a brief articulation of two crucial factors in any conclusion of document-tampering or forgery:

1) How technically did the suspicious detail occur during the tampering and/or forgery?

and/or:

2) Why is it there at all -- what would be the possible motive on the part of the document-tamperer or forger to feel the need to include such anomalies in his tampering or forgeries, if they weren't unavoidable mistakes?

The technical occurrence of the suspicious detail has to be plausible, before such a serious charge is bruited about. And that plausibility has to be defended. The reader in question has offered not a shred in that regard.

Consider, for example, the first suspicious detail on his list:

Check out the B in "OBAMA," in box 1c (child's last name), and in box 8 (Full name of father). These two Bs are exactly the same. Identical to the last pixel. This is highly, highly improbable.

Now, how (or why) on Earth would a document-tamperer or forger use two identical Bs in the name "Obama" as it is presented in two separate boxes of the form in question, but leave the other letters (O-A-M-A) non-identical? It makes no sense. (And that isn't even considering the question of how the reader using the program "Acroread" can determine the two Bs were identical "to the last pixel".)

Then in his second suspicious detail, the reader goes on about how different words, and different parts of words, are either in green or black ink. He never stopped to wonder why a document-tamperer or forger -- particularly one producing such an excruciatingly controversial and internationally infamous forgery as this one -- would bother to use different colors of ink. Merely pointing out two different colors is not sufficient even to begin suspicion. The next necessary step has not been taken. If one of the two colors is supposed proof of the "tampering", then this needs to be explained with an articulation of plausible motives with specific reference to the content of the colored words in question.

His third example is almost laughable:

Check out the ink color in 17a. The text is "None," supposedly typewritten. But the "Non" is green, and the "e" is black. Perhaps they changed the ribbon, typed three letters, and changed it back? (No, again this is a separate layer.)

Why on God's green (pun intended) Earth would a document-tamperer or forger input a "None" in a box or slot with green letters for the "Non" part and black for the "e"? You'd think a document-tamperer or forger would simply use one color, so as to avoid suspicion. Is the reader alleging that Obama's document-tamperer or forger was egregiously inept? Again, a plausible explanation of document-tampering or forging (in terms either of technical mistake or content motive) for this anomaly has to accompany the mere report of the anomaly, before any suspicion can begin to gain traction.

What someone (preferably with expertise in document-tampering or forgery) has to do before the Re-Birthers keep going off on their limb is to posit in precise detail what a forgery of a long-form birth certificate would entail.

Imagine a very wealthy person who has no long-form birth certificate but needs one. Imagine he hires the best document-tamperers or forgers: How would these document-tamperers or forgers go about producing a long-form birth certificate that in reality is phony but which is intended to appear legitimate. What, technically, would they have to do to produce it? Could these document-tamperers or forgers produce it without any of the anomalies noticed by the various Re-Birthers out there? If they could, why are the anomalies there? If they are technically incapable of it, then explain why, technically. And while you're at it, explain why Obama and his cohorts who supposedly produced this tampered and/or forged document would go ahead and issue it knowing that it would be festooned with strange and suspicious anomalies that even the best document-tamperers or forgers money can buy would be technically incapable of avoiding.

Also of help would be the production of several long-form birth certificates from Hawaii from the same time period, for detailed comparison.

I.e., I'm asking the Re-Birthers to stop and think before they become a (rightfully pilloried) caricature of a Jon Stewart skit.