Deconstructing the President's birth certificate (read before you judge). | Hacker News Reader

Deconstructing the President's birth certificate (read before you judge).

13 pointsDeepThoughts11 comments

I'm new around here (real new), so I'm not sure how this will go over, but I thought it was an interesting piece of trivia. First of all, I'm not an idiot birther, so I don't have any questions about the president's legitimacy, but I thought that this article: http://wireupdate.com/video/2011/04/president-obamas-birth-certificate-pdf-has-layers/ made an interesting claim and decided to investigate it. Turns out, it is factually correct.

I'm a designer who's an expert in PDF's (stop giggling!) and hacking apart PDF's and similar types of documents is a small hobby for me. Granted, this isn't hacking in any real sense, but I certainly piqued my interest for non-political reasons.

Luckily for you, I've done a lot of the footwork for you and have posted my results below.

I just downloaded the form here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf and popped it open in Illustrator CS5. The article is correct in that it is not one flat scan, it is a composition. It's composed of 10 sub-layers most of which contain very small portions of scanned text.

More than likely, there were multiple scans made of the same document, and they were collated into this image or Optical Character Recognition was used for the scan. Editing isn't particularly surprising if certain sections needed to be touched up, but it is unusual.

It's not an issue really but, I don't understand why they didn't just flatten everything before converting it to final PDF.

For those interested, I made jpgs of the exploded document so that you can see exactly what is removed when the layers are sequentially turned off. Check it out here: http://imgur.com/a/Wy6li.

Maybe it's the equivalent of a clerical error, or maybe it's a political move to keep the birther's frothing at the mouth. Or maybe it's nothing at all. So it goes.

Before I say anything, I did read everything you wrote. That being said...

The birther movement pains me every time I hear it. It is the worse logic I have ever heard, and I immediately lose respect for any person that mentions it like it's possibly true. It pains me not just to see this stuff here rather than reddit, but the fact that enough people upvoted this so that it would get to the top of the 'Ask' section of HN. I wish the government never would have released Obama's birth certificate, because it only serves to somehow validate that the birther's claim "might" be true and thus must be disproved.

To the original poster: Don't take this personally. I actually enjoyed hearing you breakdown how this pdf was composed. Not only would pdf composition/hacking articles be interesting, but they would also be appropriate for HN. Write a blog, I'd check it out...

The anti-birther movement is more concerned about attacking birthers than ending the whole the issue. Legitimate questions should get answers. Are you into censorship too?

Legitimate questions should get answers.

I've had a policy for some time, where any time I see "common sense" in an argument, I discount the entire thing.

It looks like I'm going to have to institute the same policy for the phrase "legitimate question". The same thing keeps coming up in "truther" arguments as well, and this will help me filter those as well.

ADDED:

Are you into censorship too?

You need to get a handle on what that word actually means. Deciding that something's silly, and that we'd all prefer to ignore it, has absolutely nothing to do with censorship.

...should get answers

You are functioning as the heckler in a "Heckler's Veto"[1]. By constantly insisting that your "legitimate questions" must be answered you interfere with the conduct of any other discourse.

[1] http://www.rbs2.com/heckler.htm

Well, FWIW, I'd continue my line of thought and argument, but not if I'm going to martyr myself in the process. Common sense, dipshit.

Seriously? I'm totally indifferent to Obama. This isn't even about censoring material. This is about a whole group of people who think they can make accusations, then consider their accusations confirmed if the accused does not make every effort to disprove. THIS IS BAD LOGIC. As hackers and programmers, we should be able to see the logical steps that take place in this thinking and realize it is flawed.

If you want to attack or discredit Obama, thats fine. Just do it in a way that doesn't sound like a bunch of third graders arguing over someone having coodies. This inability to think critically is destroying America. We've become a nation of people that emulate the talking heads on t.v. that do nothing more than argue over each other until one gives up.

You do kinda have to admit that presenting an "edited" birth certificate is very unlikely to end the debate. What was wrong with a normal, plan scan ?

Of course that doesn't mean there's an illegitimate president. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

And there's certainly no shortage of stupidity on both sides.

To the left the state is there "god", to question its legitimacy is sanctimonious, to require proof is beyond the pale (you must immediately accept everything that there acolytes tell you without question) because they have belief in the state is so paramount to who they are that anyone dares questions there very faith, to question it's authority is to be a modern day heretic of the lowest order (a racist).

I'm not sure what the point of all this high-horse rhetoric you're putting out there is, but as an American citizen I think it's our duty to question and vet most of what our leaders say and do, even when we believe and agree. Without that vetting process, we invite a state of perpetual lies, because very few people in power will tell the truth when there is no consequence for telling a lie.

I don't think that taking the president and numerous government officials (who have little to gain by lying) at their word that Obama is a citizen is that much of a stretch of logic. If you think being called a racist for insisting that Obama is a foreign national is unwarranted, I'd ask when the last time you even considered such a thing about any president much less voiced it.

In the end, though, I firmly believe that Obama released this document for those in the center and center-right of the political spectrum, not for the hard-right who demanded to see it lest they initiate some kind of armchair revolution. Producing this document will not silence the far right, but the fact that it won't will push them further into the fringes in the view of mainstream Americans. They will appear unreasonable, unappeasable and extremist, all qualities that will slowly choke out their chances of claiming the White House.

Write up an article and submit it to American Thinker, maybe check out how other people have analyzed it. Try and reach a conclusion: needs further analysis. (also I'd consider inserting it into my unofficial feed @amthinker as an admin note)

I might just say that for O to come out so late in the piece with his long-form is in my view, poor character on his part, especially being a constitutional law professor.

I might just say that for O to come out so late in the piece with his long-form is in my view, poor character on his part, especially being a constitutional law professor.

I'd refute you but, like your comment, it would be off-topic for HN.

Just trying to show some internet civility: Didn't realize what you had posted before I posted and I don't want my post to be confused. Wasn't a personal attack, just arguing against ideas, not people. I apologize for that

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