Obama

[kieefer]

"negros" or "coloreds" wasn't it?

[Oh Shoot]

oops, how'd I do that?

Edited May 8, 2011 by OhShoot

[Oh Shoot]

"negros" or "coloreds" wasn't it?

"nigra" was a widespread southern term when I was a kid, and actually denoted at least a modicum of dignity compared to the also very common N Word.

"Colored" was even more widely used, and was actually an "official" term. Water fountains, restrooms, etc were denoted as "white" vs. "colored".

- OS

[Glenn]

I don't know if Obama was born in the US or not. I do know that a Certificate of live birth would not get me a passport, and the long form just released has been edited. I don't know why. But one thing I do know is that people that say it doesn't matter now are dangerous. So If you can get away with violating the Constitution one time that's the way it will stay? We need to get back closer to the constitution not further away.

Glenn

[mikegideon]

If they Republicans could get him on this, they would. They have the resources to do it. Do you really believe that the sideshow barkers that are spouting this crap have anywhere close to the same resources? When somebody credible takes this up, I'll have a better chance of believing it.

[Oh Shoot]

If they Republicans could get him on this, they would. They have the resources to do it. Do you really believe that the sideshow barkers that are spouting this crap have anywhere close to the same resources? When somebody credible takes this up, I'll have a better chance of believing it.

That's really the reason I've never given the matter much credence. Just about any GOP pol could rise to instant stardom and assure his place in the history books by getting the goods on O in this matter. The Donald didn't have the goods -- he's much more carny barker than astute pol.

- OS

[mikegideon]

I think they were all over it when it first broke. It pays some folks to keep it going.

Mainstream Republicans... nothing here, let's move on to something with substance.

Edited May 8, 2011 by mikegideon

[Glenn]

They mainstream Republicans are not really any different than the Democrats. We won't pounce on you and you don't pounce on us. If either party really wanted to kill the other there is plenty they could make a stink about. They both need the other in order to have a villain to talk about.

Glenn

[mikegideon]

That's one of the good things about this country. You're free to believe whoever and whatever you want.

[Guest Lathe guy]

Black...1/2 black 1/2 white, nigra, nigro ni##er....none of this really matters compared to his Rev. Wright view point. The view point of all his czars.

We have to pass the bill before we know what's in it.

We have to pass stimulus immediately or people will die.

The borders are more secure now than ever before.

I promise the most transparency

I'll STOP earmarks.

Bowing to other leaders.

There are too many flubs to list hear. This guy has ruined the chance to become president for any black in the next couple of decades.

HE HAS BANKRUPT THIS COUNTRY. The list of failures is too big to post here

We need to pull ourselves together and make sure this blunder does not have a 2nd term.

For you racist liberals, I only hate his white half.

.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I don't use esoteric features of photoshop enough to keep paying for the full thang lately. Definitely ain't gonna buy illustrator just to look at the thing closer.

Opened the pdf in PhotoShop Elements 8 for a look see.

Elements 8 gives two pdf import choices-- Pages or images. If Pages, you can also set import properties such as pixels per inch (with the default at 300).

If open the PDF as images, it comes in as a 150 dpi doc (which is a not-uncommon generic business scanner setting). The "images" import shows the backgroud in a "grainy" fashion with most of the text masked out white, with only a few pieces of hand-writing and a couple of checkboxes in black.

If open the PDF as Pages, anti-aliasing and other features turned off, 150 dpi to match the "images" native resolution, it has all the text and handwriting. All the black text and handwriting has a white border knocked out around every character and line which is a typical thing one might do to make a bad scan more presentable or readable. The color-bar background is much less grainy-pixellated.

Maybe these artifacts were done automatically by the state of hawaii computers, but an optical xerox of an old document, even printed on "anti forgery" paper loaded in the laser printer or copier, I don't think would have tidy white knockouts surrounding every line and character.

Maybe it is innocuous, but sure does look bad. Why couldn't they just take a picture of the original sheet, or run it thru a scanner without any manipulation?

Years ago I would occasionally process surveillance audio for intelligibility for court evidence. Sometimes the audio had to be left crummier than the ideal, because too much processing would make the recordings "unbelievable" to the jury, or even get the evidence rejected by the judge. In legal stuff sometimes ugly realistic is better than prettied-up.

[mikegideon]

We need to pull ourselves together and make sure this blunder does not have a 2nd term.

I don't think you'll find many that will argue with that. I certainly won't

[Oh Shoot]

...All the black text and handwriting has a white border knocked out around every character and line which is a typical thing one might do to make a bad scan more presentable or readable. The color-bar background is much less grainy-pixellated.

Maybe these artifacts were done automatically by the state of hawaii computers, but an optical xerox of an old document, even printed on "anti forgery" paper loaded in the laser printer or copier, I don't think would have tidy white knockouts surrounding every line and character.

Maybe it is innocuous, but sure does look bad. Why couldn't they just take a picture of the original sheet, or run it thru a scanner without any manipulation...

Yeah, I finally fired up Illustrator CS and Photoshop CS.

I used this one, straight download from:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

Viewed at full size you can see much of the wackiness of this file without opening in any particular app, just viewed with Adobe Reader plug in , or whatever app is set for your browser for PDFs.

I do NOT see the multiple layers that folks keep mentioning, both Illustrator and Photoshop report "layer 1". The PDF is a raster file, not vector.

I agree there's some obvious manipulation from a straight scan. The white fields around both typing and signatures is quite odd, and odder still, though, that even the supposedly pre-printed form info fields also have this, not just the typing and signatures.

And they obviously extended the form background to surround the actual scan ... and it is this extended field whereon the registrar put his certified info, so maybe that's the way they do it (by laying a physical overlay around the actual bound certificate or something), but then the hash marks are carefully lined up on the flat areas of the abutment, so I rather doubt that, too. Here's an actual pixel size rendition of a section of the PDF, opened at 300ppi in PS, saved as 100% quality JPEG:

I could go on, lots of oddities in this thing, obviously much manipulated, so I agree, the whole thing is contrived and convoluted, just like O's entire administration.

Tricky Dick opened my young eyes to just what lying dogs they can be at the top, but I must admit, through all the presidents in between, O has forged an entirely new level of total distrust, now for ANYthing coming out of his admin.

- OS

Edited May 8, 2011 by OhShoot

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Thanks OS

Maybe somebody flattened the downloadable PDF as now available. Dunno.

If I import the pdf in Windows Photoshop Elements 8 using the "pages" mode, it is a single layer that I can't split, which looks like the PDF viewed in a PDF viewer.

If I import the pdf using the "images" mode, it comes in as a 150 dpi doc turned sideways. Apologies if the following snips are too big and slow on the browser.

These are saved in PNG. PNG has non-lossy image compression, so the image ought to be the same pixels I was seeing. I took the liberty of rotating the image 90 degrees (which was originally imported from the pdf sideways).

First pic is a trimmed piece of the central part of the image, at the original 150 dpi as determined by Elements 8. You should be able to download that pic and look at it in your software with no data lost if you wanted to.

For sake of interest, this second image is not 'pure' as it is a zoomed-in detail clip-- 4X expanded and saved as 96 dpi typical computer screen resolution. But usually Photoshop doesn't add significant artifacts with such operations. I just supply it as an example that is convenient to view.

Maybe there is some alternate explanation, but it looks like at the very least the "pdf import images" mode in Elements 8 can't open any 'hidden layers", but the Elements 8 code is 'imperfect' enough to not properly import extra object data saved in other alternate layers inside the pdf.

Perhaps that is entirely innocent, but doesn't look good at all.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

BTW, the most interesting video I've seen so far on it, is this one--

[Oh Shoot]

....Perhaps that is entirely innocent, but doesn't look good at all.

If you used same file I did, then Elements is doing a fairly poor job. I did have Photoshop rasterize it at 300ppi, and that's about the same quality as Illustrator did with no parameters set, so maybe you just needed to go higher. I used Elements briefly way back when.

Straight image formats opened in Photoshop, like jpeg, tiff, png, etc, generally show as just "background" in the layers palette, assuming there are no layers, but this PDF shows as "layer 1" which in one of the common image formats that can save layers (tiff, psd) would indicate that the background layer was deleted and layers were preserved in the save as, but I see that all PDFs open in Photoshop showing "layer 1" which is obviously the way the PDF is rasterized, even if the PDF is simply a holder for an already raster image, as it is here, so that's no proof that there ever were layers during any of the manipulation.

I'm like you, a straight scan in a lossless format like TIFF, PSD, BMP, or even high quality JPEG or PNG would have cut to the chase and eliminated much of the speculation. One thing's for sure, the White House or State of Hawaii, whoever is responsible, doesn't have any decent digital image folks worth a hoot on payroll. I hate incompetence almost a much as skilled deception in gooberment matters.

- OS

[mikegideon]

Anybody else see a faint image of Jesus in that? I think you're on to something, Lester

[Oh Shoot]

Anybody else see a faint image of Jesus in that? I think you're on to something, Lester

I thought it was one of the big eyed aliens they're keeping (and breeding) at Area 51.

- OS

[mikegideon]

I thought it was one of the big eyed aliens they're keeping (and breeding) at Area 51.

- OS

That's it! Big eyed alien. They're trying to yell us that Obama is an alien! We have found the answer. Just need to call washington and get them on it.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

If you used same file I did, then Elements is doing a fairly poor job. I did have Photoshop rasterize it at 300ppi, and that's about the same quality as Illustrator did with no parameters set, so maybe you just needed to go higher. I used Elements briefly way back when.

Straight image formats opened in Photoshop, like jpeg, tiff, png, etc, generally show as just "background" in the layers palette, assuming there are no layers, but this PDF shows as "layer 1" which in one of the common image formats that can save layers (tiff, psd) would indicate that the background layer was deleted and layers were preserved in the save as, but I see that all PDFs open in Photoshop showing "layer 1" which is obviously the way the PDF is rasterized, even if the PDF is simply a holder for an already raster image, as it is here, so that's no proof that there ever were layers during any of the manipulation.

I'm like you, a straight scan in a lossless format like TIFF, PSD, BMP, or even high quality JPEG or PNG would have cut to the chase and eliminated much of the speculation. One thing's for sure, the White House or State of Hawaii, whoever is responsible, doesn't have any decent digital image folks worth a hoot on payroll. I hate incompetence almost a much as skilled deception in gooberment matters.

- OS

Hi OS

If I use the Elements 8 "pages" import option, it comes in at whatever resolution I set in the import dialog, and looks smooth with all image elements in-place. The default res is 300 dpi, so that is the res of the "pages mode" imported doc. If I set 1200 dpi, it imports the pdf as a 1200 dpi document.

But that mode gives you an image with built-in photoshop processing while it is reading the PDF and assembling the bitmap in-memory. Photoshop does really fine resizing/scaling and such. Of course it will look better. In the "pages" import mode it also imports the image vertical rather than sideways.

When I import with 'pages' mode, the layer has the title "Layer 1".

Importing with "images" mode, and no special options set, it is importing the base bitmap portion of the document, which I showed in the above file. The base bitmap comes in 150 dpi turned sideways, with most black text and writing knocked out. Whether it is accident or intention, the rest of the image is stored somewhere other than the base background bitmap.

On that image, the single layer is titled "Background" rather than "Layer 1" and the layer can't be unlocked by clicking on the "lock" controls in the layers window.

I don't think it is a matter of Elements 8 doing a bad job. It is just importing the background layer and nothing else, which is 150 dpi with a lot of stuff masked out.

That is exactly what I would want the program to do in that mode whether it was Elements or full-blown photoshop-- Open exactly what is in the file with no processing.

Edited May 8, 2011 by Lester Weevils

[Oh Shoot]

Hi OS

...

If I use the Elements 8 "pages" import option, it comes in at ....

Gotcha.

Well, whatever was done to this image, it's FAR from a straight scan from WHATever WHOever started with. It's just typical though. You don't have to have wear a tin foil hat to be legitimately distrustful of this guy period.

- OS

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Gotcha.

Well, whatever was done to this image, it's FAR from a straight scan from WHATever WHOever started with. It's just typical though. You don't have to have wear a tin foil hat to be legitimately distrustful of this guy period.

- OS

Thanks, OS. There is reason to distrust em all.

It's been about 20 years since I used Illustrator. For my purposes it was a solution in search of a problem. CAD vector graphics and bitmap editing were more useful to me than postscript vector graphics.

Tonight downloaded a free program Inkscape which runs in X11 on Mac. PC versions also available.

Inkscape only shows one layer. However by selecting the doc in Inkscape, click on the image, and select menu option "object|ungroup", it can be broken down into 8 sub-objects. Not as many sub-objects as some folks claim to see in Illustrator.

The background looks like what I earlier uploaded, a grainy color scan with most text masked out white.

The other objects (when zoomed in and placed on a neutral background) appear to be 1-bit black'n'white bitmap images of text, such as what you would get from a low-res fax, or if you high-quality color scan a paper document, then demote to gray scale, then further demote to 1 bit black'n'white using 50 percent threshold.

It may be some kind of automated data reduction done during a scan process using some combinations of scanner + driver + acrobat. Dunno. Dan Rather's TX Air Natl Guard document hoax (which he apparently continues to believe) kinda set the tone for suspicion of documents.

Anyway, found out about that Inkscape program. Maybe it would contain a solution to some graphics problem I might have sometime or t'other in the future.

[bubbadavis]

Some people just can't seem to get a grip that "one of those" is running the country. They're offended...I'm offended that they're offended.

I'm offended that a liberal is running the country. There, I said it...

[Glenn]

Photoshop doesn't show it. Here is a screenshot from Illustrator. Note the layers and the links, which are files created in another program and added to Illustrator.

Glenn

[Links2k]

I'm offended that a liberal is running the country. There, I said it...

Whew. I am relieved. I thought that you were going to say Kenyan.