What's This, FactCheck??

From the high-res photos that FactCheck provided, I was able to confirm a number of my findings that exposed the FactCheck COLB image as a manufactured forgery. To get everyone up to speed, there has been one, and only one forged image. From this one source image, several copies were generated. One was kept by the Obama campaign while one copy went to the Daily Kos, and the other went to FactCheck. Both the Daily Kos and the Obama campaign cropped their images before posting them on June 12. The Obama Campaign posted a very small, low-res copy to their "Fight the Smears" website, while the Daily Kos image was cropped close to the borders but left in its original size. FactCheck posted their uncropped image to their website four days later on June 16.

Here's what FactCheck said in their "Expose" about Obama's long sought-after birth certificate:

The truth about Obama's [bogus] birth certificate.

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.

Well, speaking for the huge population of skeptics, I beg to differ. Other than showing that Obama took a trip to Hawaii just to get this thing printed, and bring it out for a show-and-tell to FactCheck's affiliates, the "supporting documents" prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the image posted on FactCheck's website was NOT an accurate copy of a real "birth certificate," but was instead, a stone-cold, dyed-in-the-wool forgery.

First of all, it is important to realize that a photo of a document is not directly comparable to a scan of it. However, there ar a few key features common to both the photo and the scan that can be compared. Originally, I posted a list of things that I thought did not match up between the image FactCheck posted and these new photos of Obama's "Certification of Live Birth." After careful review, however, many of them are judgment calls due to the lack of sufficient detailed information on the scan and/or on the photos.

Nevertheless, given the secrecy and suspicious nature surrounding the appearance of these photos, dated March 13, and the contrived "review" of them only by members of the Annenberg group and the Obama camp, the facts about the forgery outweigh the counterarguments against it. There has never been a case like this one, where a very limited and highly suspect batch of photos of a paper document, taken by a camera from a distance and at an receding angle, by an overly biased think tank, are alleged to authenticate a very problematic scan of the same paper document that had been in hiding for over a year. This is like comparing apples to hand grenades.

As I mentioned above, I formerly had a large list things wrong with the FactCheck image vis-a-vis a genuine scan of a real 2007 COLB, as compared to the alleged photos FactCheck posted six weeks after the problematic scan image, known as the Kos COLB, was posted. No other scan has ever been done of this suspicious document.

Yet, FactCheck went on to make derisive comments about the claims that others made, including me, about the suspicious image they posted:

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 said in that interview that "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."

Never have truer words been spoken. Not so for the hard-headed hoohahs at FactCheck who still insist that the image they posted on June 16 was genuine:

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."

I must say that FactCheck is not known as a place that gets its facts straight. The only ones I care about are those that pertain to my research. No, FactChump (sic), I complained about there being only one "crease from folding evident" in your full-length image, when all others had two folds evident.

No, FuktCheck (sic), I did not talk about "strange halos" around the letters, but well-known and well-defined white and gray pixel halos BETWEEN the letters, when there should also have been greenish-colored pixels. Leave it to FlakCheck (sic) to come up with the reason why their image was fake, and not why this fast-food COLB has no pixel halos:

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.

No, FaxedChek (sic), not to "some" people, but to "one person" who spotted the telltale signs of an image that had been graphically altered only three days after you posted it. Plus, I am going to post all of my test images that failed to create ANY pixel anomalies or "digital artifacts."

By golly. You know, every one of my detractors have said stuff like this, as if there are thousands of the same "pixel halos" fully documented as being artifacts. In fact, FactCheck, I have never even seen one that matches the hack job you posted.

FactCheck pulls a fast one when it makes the following claim:

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.

Very clever, just like your Messiah. I, and others like ne, never doubted the content of your COLB image. What we sincerely doubted was the "authenticity" of the document image you posted on your website. It was a fraud, and you, FactCheck were complicit in promulgating it as the real deal.

The folks at FastChick (sic) quoted another one of the fraud perpetrators, PolitiFact.com, who "also dug into some of these loopy theories."

Now, them's fighting words. there is nothing "loony" about felony fraud. There's nothing "loony" about constantly deceiving the American public as Obama and his band of rogues have done. Here's Politfact's two cents:

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.

No way, Polident! (sic) The "overwhelming evidence to the contrary" was just posted by your buddies at FeltChunks. They confirmed what I've known all along: that the image purported to be a true copy of Obama's original birth certificate was, absolutely, a well-conceived forgery of what his "birth certificate" might look like -- but, one that had too many flaws to fool this expert.

For starters, there are those strange borders.

I had always said that they were added last to the image, but were the least compelling evidence that a forged image had been "manufactured." Now that I've had a chance to compare them to the genuine borders of real 2007 COLB images, I can now say, with 100% certainty, that these borders do resemble those of a genuine 2007 COLB somewhat. However, as I have said throughout this blog, the borders are not needed to prove that this FactCheck/Kos image is nothing else but a forgery.

The degree of smearing on them and the lack of any "real artifacts" were incongruous, given the high-resolution of the scan. Basically everything inside the borders were superior in quality to the borders themselves, and that is why they appear to have been added post-hoc to a forged image.

I also thought that the two vertical borders on each side of the FactCheck COLB image were not drawn as long, parallel rectangles, but as divergent ones. In reality, when I compared them to genuine 2007 borders, the vertical borders are parallel top to bottom -- what caused the discrepancy between the borders on FactCheck COLB and the genuine 2007 COLB is the result of the certificate image being slightly tilted to the left. These disparities showed up when the FactCheck COLB is made semi-transparent and laid on top of a genuine 2007 COLB image (as shown below). What I should have done is to make the FactCheck COLB more transparent so that I could actually see the border outlines of the image below.

After correcting the tilt in the FactCheck COLB (clockwise rotation of .02 pixels), I created a semi-transparent New 2007 COLB image and placed it on top of the FactCheck COLB image, so that we can see the underlying FactCheck COLB image through the partially transparent 2007 COLB image. I lined both of them up at the top border corners.

For comparison purposes, I also created a semi-transparent PD COLB image to place on top of the FactCheck COLB image. Recall in my previous post that I found a very close correspondence between the 2002 PD COLB and the "2007" FactCheck COLB.

When the top borders of the FactCheck COLB were aligned with the genuine 2007 COLB, the alignment of all the printed information common to both COLBs, grew worse as you progress downwards to the bottom of both COLBs.

Here's a visual comparison of the FactCheck COLB image placed on top of a New 2007 COLB:

The next step was to compare the 2002 PD COLB to the FactCheck COLB . I measured the width of the FactCheck COLB image (2369 pixels) and divided it by the width of the PD COLB image (900 pixels). The result came out to be approximately 2.632, which was then used as a multiplier. I multiplied 2.632 times the height of the PD COLB (921 pixels). This is how one can make the size of the PD COLB image comparable to the size of the FactCheck COLB image.

From there, it's just a matter of making the PD COLB image semi-transparent and then placing it on top of the FactCheck COLB image and aligning its top border corners.

 

Here's the overlay of the FactCheck COLB image placed on top of the PD COLB image.

 

 

The fit of the PD COLB image is so much closer to the FactCheck image than a real COLB from the same time period, there can only be one conclusion: The Obama/Kos/FactCheck image was created from other COLB images, including the one from 2002, the PD COLB.

What else is wrong with this picture?

From a second look at all of the features I found on the photograph versus their matching features on the scan image, the conclusion I reached is that this "paper COLB" is not the same COLB depicted in the image allegedly made from it. What is a dead giveaway was the absence of a second fold -- a fold not visible at all, despite every image enhancement trick in the book. If this was the paper COLB used to make the scan, there is no way that its sharply creased, second fold would not have been picked up by the scanner.

The conclusion is that this "paper COLB" (we don't know what it is because FactCheck refuses to scan it) was never used to make the alleged scan image posted to the FactCheck.org, the Daily Kos.com, and the Fightthesmears.com websites.

Now, if the absence of the second fold is not enough to convince you, take a good look at the top fold in the allegedly photographed "paper COLB." That fold was made on a diagonal, while the fold on the FactCheck COLB is perfectly horizontal and parallel with the border. I measured at least a 20 pixel difference between the fold and border on the left side, and between the fold and border on the right side.

Now, don't let anyone tell you that it was folded "Twice," because each of the two folds appear in the photos as clean creases.

I removed the other differences I originally listed because it was too difficult to match the image to the photos, given that FactCheck did not take a shot of the entire back of the COLB. No, what they did post was cropped images of three small sections on the back.

The was not even one photo showing the entire Seal, date stamp and entire signature block.

 

FactCheck has shown itself to be dumb as well as deceitful. They did not get the significance of the Certification Number -- that it contained the birth year, which if it was not 1961, then Obama would have been nailed right away. They brushed aside my research on the lack of colored pixels between the letters, by calling them "pixel halos that were articfacts of the scanning process."

Can you say, "BALONEY?" no matter how hard you search, you will never find any image or photo of "scanner artifacts" on the Internet. Not on Google. Not on Photobucket. Not as of August 24, 2008. And, certainly not like anything I found on the bogus Obama COLB.

Those colorless pixels came from graphic alterations of an existing image, not "scanner artifacts." End of story.

I think it should be patently clear here that nothing presented by FactCheck or the Obama campaign represents reality. America still has never seen Obama's current birth record. Obama made a special trip to Hawaii. He absolutely should have gotten a current copy of his birth record while in Hawaii. That is, if he had nothing to hide. People who support him need to stop making excuses for his perfidy and deceit. Most importantly, as Frank Sinatra would sing, Start spreading the news.

PLEASE, tell the faithful that the COLB issue is not dead, but given new life. The COLB forgery really does have a life of its own, and it is up to you to let these lowlifes know that we are not going to let them get away with perfidy.

The following findings are too big to call it a "smoking gun," so I called the "smoking cannon" because it's going to knock down a lot of other theories surrounding the infamous image allegedly made of Barack Obama's "birth certificate." If you've been following my posts, or even if you are a first-time visitor to this site, you will learn why my research conclusively proves what no other author can claim-- namely, that the image purported to be Obama's birth certificate, or rather, his "Certification of Live Birth (COLB)  cannot possibly exist as anything but a manufactured image forgery.

In fact, this image is so far removed from reality, that its rightfui place should be is in the Twilight Zone.

Before I continue, I need to mention that all but this post have been closed off to comments. If you wish to comment on my research, please do so here, or visit the website, texasdarlin.wordpress.com. In addition to having a few excerpts from my blog, and my comments on other posts, it has a wealth of information about why Obama does not want the American people to know what is on his current birth record.

One other caveat before I begin. There are two other COLBs listed in my posts that belong to other people. Both belong to women, but in the case of the most important one, it belongs to the mother of the website owners whose geneology site is where this COLB has been posted for the past two years. The owner is not happy about her mother's birth record being used for purposes that were not intended. In respect of her wishes, that COLB will be referenced by the initials, "PD," rather than her last name (which begins with "De").

Ok, now for the analyses.

The subtitle of this post ought to be, "You don't always find what it is that you're seeking on the Internet. At least, not when you could have really used it."

I decided to search through the web archives to locate other COLB images that have not been seen since their original posting. What I found was downright shocking!

First, props to Brian Ledbetter and his blog, The Snapped Shot, for providing both the references to my original, June 20 post, and for providing what was presented as "proof positive" that the Kos image was genuine. The "proof" provided was an animated GIF showing the DeCosta COLB morphing into the Kos COLB.



The conclusion reached by the eager detractors and debunkers of my theories was that the similarities between the two prove that both images are genuine, and that all of the differences I found in the Kos image -- the anomalies of the text -- were, and I quote:

"inconsistencies that've been pointed out can now be attributed to scanning/copying/encoding/transmission artifacts."

Or, the SOS, the same old stuff that every detractor has tried to postulate as the only reasons for the vagaries of the Kos.


A light went off in my head, and lights were flashing.

Unwittingly, the creator of this GIF just provided me with the smoking gun I needed that conclusively proves my theory!

After cropping both the Kos image and the PD image down to just the outer edges of the borders, I decreaed them proportionately to 921 x 903 pixels each.

First, the PD image:

 



Now the Kos image:

 




To make my case even stronger, I performed Sobel edge detection on each image, and then created an animated GIF from both to demonstrate the closeness of the alignment.

They overlapped perfectly. Presenting, the DE-KOS-TA composite:


 





OK, like what are the odds of having two COLBs, one that we know was from Sep 9, 2002, and one that was 'allegedly' from June 9, 2007, with different border patterns, lining up perfectly on the placements of the borders, images, headers & footers, text fields, and data fields?

Like the odds of winning the lottery.

What are the odds that the Kos image was manufactured directly from the PD image?

Take the odds! You'll win every time.

For comparison purposes, here is a composite of the PD image with an overlay of Michele's image (another genuine COLB):




As you can see, although the top of the COLB image is similarly placed -- which is what you would expect it to be -- while there is quite a difference in the placement of the text, which is also expected given the different time periods in which they were originally produced.

But, what is not expected are the anomalies in the Kos image. From where did the other date come? Why does it seem like the 'hidden seal' on the Kos image is smaller and shifted up and to the left relative to the PD image? Why is the date stamp on the Kos in a different place? Why does this date stamp look so prominent on the Kos when the 'hidden seal' is hardly visible?" Why is the font of the Kos date stamp different from the PD date stamp when everything else is the same?

Because  there was a second, more recent COLB used to recreate the background. The PD image could not be used for that purpose for two reasons: one, the background is not clear enough, and two, there were a pair of deep folds running through the top third and bottom third of the PD image -- and right through the text on it.

Those two folds are two more pieces of key evidence that PD' COLB was used for the placement of the text and borders on the Kos, and what brought this to light were comments on a critic's blog.

The critic was trying to do his own analysis on the border placement of the Kos image, just as TechDude had done in his analysis. He made a comparison of the Kos COLB image to Michele' COLB image, and proceeded to complain about the aspect ratio, or the ratio of height to width, of Michele's COLB relative to the Kos COLB. The blogger thought that I messed it up somehow because its aspect ratio didn't match the Kos image.

In other words, he was claiming that the Kos COLB image was a true original copy, and that Michele's COLB image was not -- a statement that I found to be rather bizarre in light of my findings.

There is a difference in the aspect ratio of Michele's COLB due to the height of the image: it is "taller" than both the Kos and PD images.

Whereas, the aspect ratios of the Kos image and the PD image match perfectly.

The reason why Kos and PD match is something this critic, and every other critic totally missed.

The deep folds in the PD image did not allow the COLB to be stretched out to its original length, and consequently the scan came out "squished," or rather, shorter in height.

There is one other COLB image that also has similarly deep folds in it, and that's the Smith COLB. I checked it and found that it, too, came out "squished" or shorter in height, because of its folds, and that its aspect ratio matches both the PD, and the Kos.

The fact that the Kos image has only one, thin fold line, but matches the the dimensions and aspect ratio of the PD further proves that the Kos was based on PD.

The reason why PD's image was used at all is because it was the only COLB that could be found on the Net at the time the forgery process was begun. However, because of reasons cited below, another actual COLB, or COLB image, was needed. This second COLB or COLB image also allowed the forger to create an image of much higher detail, as well as replicate the full-size of one.

The reason why I believe that it was an image of a COLB, rather than the COLB itself, because if they had the original, paper COLB, then they could have produced another image if they needed it, But, since there has been one and only one Obama COLB, it seems like the forger did not have access to the paper original, but an image of it with some of the fields possibly covered over.

The PD image became the "template" and not the second, more recent COLB, because the process had already been started using the PD image -- the ONLY COLB image on the Net. The second COLB definitely had a better background that was more suitable for cloning it.

Anyway, here's the order of events as I now interpret them.

I am going to create two Kos clones using two different graphics programs, One of them is a simple, but quick web graphics editor called WebPaint, and is the program I used to create my first Kos clone. The second one is the high-powered Photoshop CS3, the same program used to produce the final Kos image.

With Photoshop, I'm going to recreate the Kos image, step by step, using as my first "layer" the PD image to map out the placement of the borders and the text.

Creating an image from an existing image in Photoshop is basically analogous to how animation artists create "cells" -- one single frame that is created from differentl layers: one layer for the background, and one layer for each characters in the scene.

As you noted below, from the forger's standpoint, the actual text and background of the PD image cannot be used on the final copy BECAUSE of the deep folds in it that run right through the Seal image above and the text under "MOTHER'S RACE." Plus, having any identical-looking folds on the forgery would be a dead giveaway that PD's image was used to make it.

The forgery HAD to look different enough from the PD image because it was allegedly produced five years after it.

So, I believe that the second layer consisted of a green-and-white background constructed from the second COLB along with the upper half that contained the masthead (the seal image and titles like, "STATE OF HAWAII", and labels like "CERTIFICATE NO."etc), and the 3 inch background "stub" above that -- the upper section of the paper COLB that is detachable from the certificate itself.

The COLB is, after all, printed on an entire 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of green-patterned paper, and after the 3" stub is detached, what is left is a nice, 8 1/2 inch square certificate ("suitable for framing").

The FactCheck image is the entire forged image -- like Michele's -- while the stub was cropped off of the forged image to make the Kos image (and Smears image).

The reason why I feel that the seal stamp and signature block came from this COLB, and the reason why they are hidden from view and the seal is smaller, is because that's just the way it was on this COLB. There was also no way to separate just the PD seal itself without including the background behind it.

Overlaying two different backgrounds is a no-no.

Then, the order of the layers were switched, with the newly-created background layer being the bottom layer, followed by the PD layer -- but only after the density of the image was reduced; i.e., the layer was made partially transparent.

Then a similarly-sized "empty" layer comprised the third layer, and it was on this layer that the new text was written -- right over the PD text --- so that everything would line up correctly on the finished document.

The last step was the creation of a new border pattern on this layer, or more likely, on another "empty" layer -- so that if the forger screwed up the border, the text layer would not be affected.

SPECIAL NOTE: I am of the opinion that the border on the Kos image was intentionally made to be obscure, so that whoever doubted the authenticity of the Kos image would focus all their time on this oddball border, to the exclusion of all else.

To put it bluntly: it's a red herring. It was the last thing to be put on this forged COLB.

The next step was to draw a black rectangle over the "CERTIFICATE NUMBER" This act is the reason why I firmly believe a second COLB existed -- that the CERTIFICATE NUMBER came from that second COLB -- and that it had a DIFFERENT BIRTH YEAR as a part of it.

Then, after all the text was entered, the CERT # was covered, and the border completed, the PD layer was deleted since it was no longer needed.

The composite layers were then merged downwards to make the final flat-imaged JPG.

This, of course, is a complicated process, and the actual process could have been much, much easier. To see if the forger used a simpler program, I'm going to recreate the Kos image using WebPaint.

For the final touch on the Kos images, an office date stamper will be used after the final image was printed -- to give it that "authentic" bleed-through look, and to explain why it was made of a different font, and why it was so prominent when the seal stamp required edge detection to see it clearly, and the signature stamp required even more image enhancement chicanery to make it barely discernible!

As I said earlier, the actual border pattern used on the forgery is a red herring and would be irrelevant to my research even if it were an actual border printed on certified Hawaiian COLBs.

These questions certainly do not detract from the fact that the PD image served as the basis for the Kos, but it raises the question as to whether there was a second COLB -- one that could have been Obama's -- but contained information that he did not want to release to the public.

After all, the first one used for the forgery belonged to someone other than Obama.

Since I created my Kos clone to be the same size as the Kos, there is no doubt that an enlarged copy of the smaller PD image became the "canvas" for the Kos "original. Then, copious amounts of cutting and pasting from another COLB's background was done to cover up the existing information, followed by typing directly onto the copied background while in Photoshop, or another image editor.

The bottom line is that the Kos was never a true copy of Obama's birth record, if it ever existed as a COLB. There is nothing to rule out the copying of parts from a second COLB (such as the background, seal stamp, and date stamp) belonging to someone other than Obama.


To me, this case is closed.


Now, the only thing left for me to do is to follow the same procedure I used to create the Kos clone shown in my previous post (which was made from Michele's COLB) by using the PD COLB as the starting point for the Kos clone.

THEN, we can now bid adieu to the doubters, the detractors, and the debunkers who were way off course with their rebuttals, and welcome back the faithful who never waivered from that nagging feeling that what they were looking at, was a fake!

All hail the DE-KOS-TA image.

FIRST, A LITTLE HOUSEKEEPING

There are three facts about Internet blog stories that you need to know:

1. Plagiarism is rampant on the Internet.
   
2. You cannot always believe what you see and read.
3. When you see the word, "EXCLUSIVE," in the title, it does not mean that the story was the first one or even the only one.

You can imagine my chagrin when I read the following headline in the Atlasshruggs blog:

ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: FINAL REPORT ON OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FORGERY CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN

What this headline, and the story it trumpets, confirm is that all three of the "facts" listed above are validated by this story.

Actually, my first reaction to it was, "Yawn." Here is an article proclaiming to have the exclusive findings that Obama's Birth Certificate image is a forgery -- or, using the acronym that I alone coined, Obama's "COLB ("Certificate of Live Birth") is a forgery.

The only problems with that statement are as follows:

• More than a month before this "EXCLUSIVE," was posted, I posted my own exclusive findings that the Obama COLB images were "poor forgeries" made from a genuine COLB.
• This so-called, "FINAL REPORT" is far from being final, and
  
• This so-called, "EXCLUSIVE" report is far from being the first to claim a forgery occurred.
  
• More than a few original findings and ideas of mine were "borrowed" without attribution.

How can an article, posted on July 20, or a full month after my original proclamation that Obama's COLB image was graphically altered, be labeled as exclusive? I will admit that the techniques used by the author, TechDude, were not the ones I used to discover the forgery, and that he was the only one, to my knowledge, to have used them.

For that, I'd like to offer a pat on the back to TechDude for the work that he did, but also a slap on the wrist, to both Techdude and Pam Geller for misleading the public by implying that they were the first ones to present evidence of a graphic forgery.

Now, that they've basked in the glory of their nonexclusive, "Exclusive," it's time to set the record straight.

On June 19, I wrote the following on my TownHall blog, The Greater Evil:

"The Daily Kos blog has posted a JPG that allegedly is Barack Obama's "Certificate of Birth." From a detailed analysis of the image and the text, it looks like it was created by a graphics program, and is not a true copy of an original, certified document."

So, which part of that statement did they miss? It also appeared on The Free Republic about the same time, and afterwards, on TexasDarlin's blog.

So, which part of these blog stories did they miss?

In my first post, I did make some wrong assumptions, for which I replied, Mea Culpa, and made the necessary changes.

Now, my gut feeling tells me that the forger intentionally made this weird-looking border to throw researchers like myself off the track. I guess that he or she thought that I would take the bait and waste all my time trying to reproduce it. Unfortunately for the forger, a reconstructed border was not even needed to prove my points.

So, that's why I am of the opinion that the border on the Kos image was intentionally made to be obscure, so that whoever doubted the authenticity of the Kos image would focus all their time on this oddball border, to the exclusion of all else.

However, my essential thesis was then, and has always been, that the Kos image, and all of its relatives, including the FactCheck image, were graphic forgeries, even though I focused on different aspects of it than TechDude did. For him, the border was a crucial part of the puzzle.

For me, that border could have been red hearts and purple flowers for all that it mattered.

I focused on the anomalies of the text, which were many and not explained away by the reasons cited by my critics.

Now, this is not to take away any of the work that TechDude has done, which is notable in its own right, and if you read my blog, you will see proper attributions made to him and his work.

HOWEVER, I do take exception to the lack of any attribution to my work, and is a very egregious oversight, at best.

At worst, it smacks of plagiarism, and there are more than one instance of that, such as the upper left-hand border comparison which was originally mine and emailed to him.

Also egregious is the fact that TechDude, myself, and TexasDarlin had agreed to publish a joint document, and, as you have now seen, one of us renegged on that agreement and stole the spotlight.

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade here, but I would like to point out that there never was an "uncropped Kos image" posted online. A scan of the entire COLB was never posted to the Kos or the Smears. It was always a cropped image, and I was the one who confirmed the true "birth order" of the images -- especially those of OpenDNA (who was initially "charged" with making the Kos image forgery.

Now, the FactCheck image was, indeed, posted as an uncropped version of the Kos image, although one cannot escape the likelihood that the extra border was added, post-hoc.

What I did confirm is that all of the online images came from one source file.


I also confirmed that my critics and detractors, coincidentally, are also the same to TechDude and his research. It is safe to say that there will always be people who are antagonistic to others who reveal unpleasant truths.

But, now is the time to separate the men from the boys, so to speak. The critics and detractors who claim that the Kos image is NOT a forgery, demand to see someone actually create one from scratch.

I couldn't agree more. it is one thing to postulate that a forgery has been created, but it is entirely a different matter to actually create one that is a clone of the Kos image.

What may surprise these critics and detractors to learn is that beginning about two to three weeks ago, a clone of the Kos I created was posted to my latest blog post.

You see, the image that I referenced as the original Kos imageis actually the clone I created more from Michele's 2008 COLB image.

Here's the Daily Kos image from their website:



Here's my clone of the Kos image:



Keep in mind that this is not a point-for-point clone of the Kos image, since I did not proceed from an original, scanned image (a bitmap that has never been seen by the public), but it's darn close, and nobody was the wiser.

How do you tell my clone from Kos?

The "Time of Birth" on my clone is 7:25 AM; on the Kos it's 7:24 PM.

I replaced everything, EXCEPT the funky border. Like I said, the "security" border is not very secure when it can be reproduced by a scanner.

Making an exact "forgery" in terms of the Kos image dimensions, file size, JPG compression and resolution was not an easy job, although I spent less about an hour to make it. I'm still feeling the effects of a flu bug.

In the next few days, when I feel a little better, I will post a real "exclusive" --  a step by step guide showing exactly how I produced this clone, as well as posting a sampling of all of the dead ends I reached using the explanations professed by the nonbelievers.

I have about 320 images in all, but I'll post a sufficient number of them to satisfy anyone's doubts.

Like I've said in previous posts and in comments made on other blogs, if someone can make a Kos clone just by scanning, reducing the size, changing the compression, or any combination of these ways, they are more than encouraged to try.

Until then, I stand by my conclusion that I made over a month ago: that the Kos image looks the way it does because the original text on a previous image was graphically altered or replaced.

"Why" it was done is still open for debate, but the discovery that I made over a month ago still holds true. The image is not a "horrible" forgery, IMHO, because it fooled a lot of people...and that's the sole purpose for making a forgery.

Hopefully, the critics and detractors will come up with their own clones made in the ways that they claimed. In the meantime, the evidence provided in my posts and in TechDude's posts far outweigh any evidence that the images are are genuine, accurate reproductions of a paper COLB document.


It may look like a duck, but it walks, talks, and flies like a Dodo bird.


PREVIEW:

When I received a true copy of a recent COLB from a person named, Michele, I promised my readers that I would manufacture a clone of the Kos image to demonstrate how it was created. In doing so, I would validate my theory that someone's actual COLB, or a scanned copy of it, was used as the basis or template for creating a forgery.

I had theorized that the pixel patterns between the letters on the Kos image I was viewing were not JPG artifacts, or scanner artifacts, as the critics claimed they were.

These pixel patterns were characteristic of text added to an existing image while the image was an 8-bit, 256-color bitmapped image, and not while it was a 24-bit, 16.7 million color JPG.

Before I reached that conclusion, I had tried every other way possible to duplicate the Kos image.

People may say that OpenDNA, aka Jay McKinnon, already tried to do that -- that he produced two images that were also graphically altered.

However, both of these images were 800 x 781 pixels  @ 96 DPI, which is a far cry from the larger, 2427 x 2369 pixels @ 300 DPI Kos image. Basically, OpenDNA's "forgeries" were easy to do given how small was the area that needed to be modified.

"Cloning" the Kos took a little, more work than that.


I ask that all of you to be patient as I recover, and that you will soon be rewarded with the recipe for forgery.

OBAMA’S FAKE BIRTH CERTIFICATE: why I’m STILL right, and they’re wrong.


READER'S NOTE: The following is an update to the original post that explains the theory behind the research, and to assist those who have not read any of my previous posts. Also, comments have been reopened.

BREAKING NEWS! Blog contributor, TechDude, has released a long-awaited document that represents a cooperative venture among myself, TechDude, and TexasDarlin. By combining my original analyses along with his own, TechDude has validated what I have been saying since June 19 -- that the images posted on the Daily Kos website, the Obama campaign website, and the FactCheck website are indeed, fakes, frauds, and forgeries. We have demonstrated in our empirically-derived evidence why these images are not genuine, to which the most that our detractors can offer are endless conjectures and ad hominem arguments.

You can find a link to his report at TexasDarlin.WordPress.Com.

Now, allow me to provide a brief synopsis of my work and how we got to this point.

I said in my first post, “Was Obama's "Certificate of Birth" manufactured?” that when I first saw the image that people portrayed as an actual scan of Obama's, I noticed a number of oddities. At the time, very few people knew what a Hawaiian "Certificate of Live Birth" even looked like, or why Hawaii uses it instead of a more recognizable format.

What bothered me were the fuzzy white pixels found in between the letters of the text on the Kos image -- the highest quality copy of the images posted online (although not really high enough). I, like others familiar with scalable laser fonts, recognized that what we were looking at were bitmapped letters made by a graphics program. I feel that all of us expected to see a copy of a lser-printed document.

It was laser-printed, but the fonts that we were so used to seeing were not there.

As I mentioned in my first post, it is my opinion, as a highly-experienced user of computers and computer graphics, that the images posted on the Kos website, on the FactCheck website, and on the BarackObama website (aka, Fight The Smears) are not the original scanned images of Obama's Certification of Live Birth or COLB.

A COLB is a document that Hawaii introduced to replace the laborious task of finding either an original paper birth certificate, or a photostatic copy of the original birth certificate. It is a computer-generated form, and not a photostatic copy of an original birth certificate.

A great many people were taken aback by the lack of vital information on this COLB in comparison to their own birth certificates that have such entries as the name of the hospital where someone was born, the attending physician, the height and weight of the infant, and so on. Many people raised issues with the way some of the information was recorded, such as labeling Obama's race as AFRICAN, when Hawaii reported to me that they have use the term, BLACK, for quite some time.

The Hawaiian COLB is, for all intents and purposes, a valid birth record providing that it bears the embossed Seal of Hawaii and the signature block or stamp of the Registrar for the Department of Health. Of course, these two provisions were meant specifically for the paper document, and not a scanned image, for obvious reasons; e.g., a person cannot "feel" the raised Seal (which is essentially the same as the seal made by a Notary Public.

To make matters a bit more complicated is the fact that both the Seal and signature stamps are made to the reverse side of the paper document, and as we've learned, these elements are elusive to the naked eye, and often require image enhancements to bring them to light. However, the overriding issue is that Hawaii will not certify an image as being accurate and valid.

Hawaii only certifies the documents they provide. Other than taking someone's word for it, how does one verify that the image presented as a true, genuine reproduction of an original COLB? The only way to do it empirically, is to find other COLBS from which genuine, original scans were generated, and to compare them with the image alleged to be likewise genuine.

I did not reach this conclusion on the spur of the moment, but only after repeated experimentation. I was well-aware of the limitations of JPG image files, and if you own a digital camera, then you know what they are. There is always a trade-off between maintaining the accuracy of the original and keeping the use of memory to a manageable limit. JPG is to images what ZIP is to text.  The problem with JPG files that are a small fraction of the original, are what is called, visual artifacts.

Basically, the smaller the copy of the original document, the more artifacts will be created when the image is viewed, or printed, as its original document size.

JPG images are called, "lossy," because pixels of information are lost in their creation. I took this fact into account when I did my experiments.

A lot of research on my part, and on the part of other interested parties, sought to determine if the image, purported to be a genuine copy of Barack Obama's COLB, is what people say it is. This research would have been totally unnecessary if Obama had simply produced his birth certificate when asked.  But the repeated refusal o produce any record of his birth raised suspicions as to what it contained.

John McCain, his Republican counterpart, has already done that. The media has seen his paper birth certificate, and he wa also certified by our government as eligible to be President.

What we, the researchers, have done cannot be called, a "Conspiracy theory," because we only deal with the actual data presented to us, and this data does nothing to confirm the validity of this COLB image. On the contrary, it raises more questions than answers.

Now for the experiment I intend to run.

First,  I am going to present what a true, original copy of a COLB should look like.  Taking into consideration, the fact that this one was produced in June 2008 while Obama's (if it is his) was produced in June 2007, the following image file below is almost equivalent to the Kos image. The file size is somewhat smaller than the Kos file becuase it has no Exif data -- data that proclaims, "I came from Photoshop."

Because of my agreement of confidentiality with the owner of this scanned document, most of the personal information has been covered with tape, but, the owner has changed her mind about the sensitivity of the information, and she will provide me with a more revealing COLB.

To begin this test, I start with the original Kos image that I saved to my computer on June 13:


 




For comparison purposes, I am going to attempt to recreate the image above, using as its starting point, a larger, higher quality image provided by a friend named Michele. Michele has the original, paper Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth, and a high-end scanner on which to copy it.

Keep in mind that the image I create to resemble the features of the Kos, will not be, pixel for pixel, an exact clone of the Kos image.It will be close enough for you to see how easy it is to modify an existing image and to portray it as being the actual, original scanned image.

HISTORY OF THE NEW COLB.

The COLB owner, Michele, was born in Honolulu and she sent to TD (TexasDarlin.WordPress.Com), a colleague of mine, a scanned copy of her certificate that was issued by Hawaii in 1997. The document she sent looked like an original Birth Certificate (BC) in that it had many fields of information, including hospital, parents’ signatures and professions, addresses, etc.

That’s when TD realized that the 2001 form adopted by Hawaii resulted in minimizing the amount of information provided on a registrant’s certification. When TD talked to the Attorney’s General office in Hawaii recently, TD was told that the Office of Health Status Monitoring (OHSM), otherwise referred to as the Dept. of Health, definitely kept all of that original information on file for registrants.

That is how we know that there is more information in Obama’s file than what appears on his alleged COLB. We know that Hawaii has on file his original BC; and that Obama could authorize its release easily if he so desired. So far he has not cared to address that request. (All of this is true, of course, ONLY IF there is in fact a Hawaii BC for Obama).

Meanwhile, TD asked Michele to order a new COLB. She did so right away and asked for a rush. She ordered two copies in case TD or someone TD trusted needed to see the original. They were issued on June 30th, and when they arrived, Michele immediately scanned both sides of one COLB and sent the files via email to TD.

At that point, none of Michele’s information was covered or hidden. Michele trusted TD with her COLB but asked that she share them with me. Subsequently, I received the same scans that TD received on the condition that I agree to not share any of Michele’s information without her consent\(which I did).

But, wait, there's more! What you will see first is a scan of the entire COLB with the Seal of Hawaii clearly visible:

The original image above was presented in its entirety to dispel any doubts about it's authenticity.

Now, here's the image that I will use to rercreate the Kos. Like the Kos image, the Seal is not visible to the naked eye.

There are a few more things that I would like for you to observe on image,:

• There are no "pixel haloes" around any of the letters,borders, or graphics  (e.g, the Seal of Hawaii).
• This original scanned image was 3MB in file size, 5100 x 6600 pixels in image size, and 600 DPI in print resolution. This corresponds to a letter-sized image.
  
• To replicate the file size, image size, and resolution of the Kos image, the original was cropped, and then reduced proportionately, to 2427 x 2389.pixels, 300 DPI, and 516K in file size. The Kos image is 2427 x 2369 pixels, 300 DPI, and  534K in file size.

Here's the new COLB image that is referenced above:


:

To me, the Kos image has lots of  "anomalies" that are not present on this COLB. It's a clean copy. The border patterns are clear, black, and uniform. The field headers (CHILD'S NAME, etc.) are dark and clear as are the corresponding field data (MICHELE etc.).

Really, not much to argue about the way it looks.

On the other hand, all one needs to do to prove that Kos image was altered, is to view the space between the double “s” in Obama’s (alleged) middle name, “HUSSEIN,” under increased magnification, such as making the image 300% or larger. 









Now, if you had a graphics program that could enlarge “HUSSEIN,” up to pixel level, the smallest unit of the image that can be seen, and look just at the pixels in the vertical space between the double “S,” you will see only FOUR (4) PIXELS, out of about 120 pixels, that are colored any shade of green.

Check it out:





NOTE: Before you go any further, I need to point out that this is a copy of the Kos, and as such it will have some degradation from the Kos image itself. For that reason, I brought in the new COLB to be my new, working copy that will produce results duplicating the Kos image in terms of text. Later on, I will tackle the other parts.

Zoom in on this image. Notice how similar are the HUSSEINs? There is no way for me to make them identical since I'm working with a copy of the Kos image. If I had access to the original scan images, then, I would be able to recreate it exactly.

Keep that in mind, as you view a close-up of the pixels:






That second “HUSSEIN” was added by a graphics program that works with 8-bit, 256 color bitmaps. When one opens an image of a different format, let’s say the Kos JPG, it temporarily converts that image format to an 8-bit, 256 color bitmap.

Now, you can re-save your image back to JPG, but when you do, you do not get a bit-for-bit copy because JPG files are 24-bit, 16.7 million colors versus 8-bit, 256 color bitmaps. Hence, the loss of color pixels.


Why is this significant?


Because when you look at any other image that really is a true copy of an original COLB, the space between letters mostly contains green-shaded pixels. These green pixels come from the green part of the pattern that is found on the actual paper document.


But, wait. You might have noticed that the "HUSSEIN" I added below Obama's middle name does not look exactly like it. It is very close, but it seems to be typed in a different font.


Yes, you'd be right, the second font is different, and you can see the differences in the "S's."


Ready for a shocker? The double "S" in Obama's middle name does not match the font used to produce the double "S" in Daddy last name.

First, Obama's double "S" --




Now Daddy's Double "S"


 
If you look carefully, you will see that the "S" in Daddy' name looks more like the font I used to add the 2nd "HUSSEIN" than the font used for Obama's "HUSSEIN" in the Kos image. The differences are subtle, but there, nonetheless.


Now, back to the pixel comparisons. As another example, compare the letters, “BIRT” taken from “DATE OF BIRTH” on image crops taken from both Obama’s COLB and a new scan of a COLB from another Hawaiian-born American. Both images are enlarged to show the pixels.


First, OBama's





Now, the new COLB:






Both crops are approximately the same size, the same resolution, and the same JPG compression ratio. Same, but very different.

Clearly, when comparing Obama’s to the new COLB, there is very little in the way of green
shaded pixels between the letters on the Obama image as compared to the newer one.
image.

I can tell you what is NOT the cause of this difference:

Laser Printing
Anti-Aliasing

And, the critic's favorite claim: JPG artifacts!

Here is a clip from Michele's COLB, with as much detail as the Kos image, showing STATE OF HAWAII, HONOLULU, before and after very high JPG compression.

First, the original:





Now here's the same image compressed all the way down to 1/100th of its original size:





 I still see green all over the place, and no white pixel patterns between the letters.
 
I recommend that you try it yourself.


There is only ONE way for the lack of any green-shaded pixels to occur on the image.
Only ONE way for the predominance of white and grayish pixels to occur on the image.
And, that way is by importing the original scan as an 8-bit, 256 color bitmap into a
graphics program and proceeded to change/add text to the image.


It is NOT the result of any scanning, and it cannot be produced by scanning alone. You do not get, nice clear black images, text, and white pixels in between them to the exclusion of all other colors.

It should be obvious to anyone seeing this that if I can add the name, “HUSSEIN,” to where it looks pretty darn close to the Kos image “HUSSEIN,” then the claim that the Kos image is a direct copy of a laser printed document is BLOWN CLEAR OUT OF THE WATER!

Now, if the forger was smarter, he or she would have altered the text using a 24-bit JPG editor and would have produced a  higher-quality forgery as a result.

Here's what it could have looked like if MS Paint were used to modify the text. Again, look at the two HUSSEIN's. The one below is much higher in quality than the one in the original Kos image.




Here's a closeup of the "new and improved" forgery:




That’s it, folks. Listen, if I had the original scan to work with, as opposed to the copied
Kos image, I could have produced an absolute, dead ringer for the Kos image using my 8-
bit graphic editor. But, I do not have the original scan, and the Kos image is far from it.

To conclude: I just proved that the Kos image is not a true copy of a paper document by
demonstrating why the text on the Kos image looks so differently from the text on the
new COLB image. I have ruled out ALL other theories as to how the Kos image got to be
the way it is.

I have also shown that all of the images on the internet are directly related to the Kos
image, so if the Kos image is a fake, then all of them are fake.

It is time to stop the fraud being perpetrated on the American public. It is time to demand
that Obama produce a paper record of his birth instead of carrying on this charade.

---

I asked myself the question, "What can I do with MS Paint, a COLB image, in the space of two minutes ?" I set this challenge to duplicate the actions taken by Jay McKinnon/OpenDNA, as admitted to the Daily Kos.

And, what I did was start with a 1024 x 1000 image, 300 DPI, and proceeded to modify it just by using the exact, same cutout of the background. That is, I highlighted a rectangular piece of the green patterned background, pressed Ctrl-V to paste a copy of it to my image workspace, and then drop it into place as quickly as I could while trying to align the images.

Keeping in mind that I had two minutes to do it.

Here is the original:




And, here is the resulting "template."




Proving just how easy it is to alter an image in even a primitive program like MS paint, WHICH defaults to 96DPI, or the default text size.

After two minutes, the only data field not erased was FATHER's NAME, which I could have done in another five seconds.

Below is an image of Obama's alleged "birth certificate" which we now know is a  COLB or Certification of Live Birth."

Notice that "Barack Hussein Obama II" appears twice. Which of them was the original and which was the altered version?





Both of them are graphically created.

SO, the $64,000 question is:

Does the State of Hawaii's Vital Records office use a graphically-created template, filled out with field names and these poorly-drawn borders?

If so, how does the data entry person get the information onto the graphic? Via a Macintosh and Photoshop CS3?

That doesn't sound very cost effective or efficient.  Or believable. Can it be done? Sure..but why not import an image into Adobe Acrobat, create a PDF template, and then add form fillable fields?

Well, certainly, that could easily be done, and it would not have EXIF information identifying it as a file created on June 12, 8:42, on Macintosh running OS 2.0, using Photoshop CS3.

If a REAL image of Obama COLB had been made, and the Kos claims they got it from the Obama camp, then why not show the same one as they do? Why do the borders on theirs line up while the Kos borders overlap? Why did they further crop it and/or resize it so that it lacks the same aspect ratio as the Kos?

If the Kos used Adobe Photoshop CS3 "only" to make it smaller for view on the web, then why not use Photoshop's SAVE FOR WEB option which strips out the EXIF info to make the file smaller.

Since the EXIF info is missing from the  "Smears" image, what did they use to modify the image that the Kos says they got from them?

If this was just a case of graphic resizing, or something like it that they could easily explain, then why haven't they?

Would it be a crime to admit to using a graphics program to make an image suitable for the Web?

That is, if they really did ONLY reduce the size and not also the information it contained?

Do they think we are that stupid that we would not stop this?

Many thanks to Texas Darlin and Greg Gelembiuk, but props to the GIMP development team (http://www.gimp.org/) for providing the software used to examine these images. The GIMP program was used to apply an edge detection algorithm, known as Sobel, to the various versions of the COLB image. Greg provided the settings for the Sobel detection. With it, we can examine the underlying impressions made on whatever was the basis for these images. The following question has been raised by the blogsphere:

• QUESTION: Are there seals hidden from view on the "Certificate of Live Birth" images posted to (a) the Daily Kos. (b) BarackObama.com (aka "Fight the Smears") and/or (c) the two images posted on OPENDNA's PhotoBucket account?
  
  
• ANSWER: YES to (a), but a big, fat NO to (b) and (c)

(a) The Daily Kos COLB:


 



(b) The "Fight the Smears" COLB:





(c-1) OpenDNA's 1st COLB:





(c-2) OpenDNA's 2nd COLB:




For comparison sake, Pat DeCosta's COLB:





For comparison sake, Jason Tomoyasu's COLB:




And, last but not least, Jeremy Smith's COLB:





So, what have we learned from all this?

There's more than meets the naked eye, for one.

You can do a lot of devious things with graphics program, for another.

Mostly, however, we STILL do not have any GENUINE certified copies of Barack Obama's birth certificate or Certificate of Live Birth.

Memo to Sen. Obama and anyone else trying to pass off images as being a copy of your birth record:

"Either show us the real deal, or don't show up at all"

Sharp-eyed Buckhead spotted this gem for us.

JPG files can con