Okay, Mr. J.S. Fox,

Where is it?

ex animo
davidfarrar

Hmmm, I feel a recipe coming on....

Let's see - okay, here ya go:

Fried Birther Cake

1 David Farrar
1 Vat of Lard
1 Really Big Kettle

1 Fire'Cracker' Candle

Place Lard in Kettle, place over large HellFire and after Lard is bubbling .....

Okay, bet ya all can figure out rest of recipe!

How is that EPIC FAIL working out for you?

Oy.

Claim: A Certification of Live Birth document provided by the Obama campaign is a forgery.

FALSE
Example: [Collected via e-mail, June 2008]

I read that Obama will not release his birth certificate. Have heard rumors it's because he is listed as white. Or that because he isn't a U.S. born citizen.

Origins: In the first half of 2008, a number of rumors swirling around about presidential candidate Barack Obama coalesced in the claim that he "refused to produce his birth records" because doing so would demonstrate some or all of those rumors to be true: that Barack Obama was "not African," that he was a Muslim with a middle name of Mohammed, that he wasn't born in the United States at all (and thus didn't qualify as a natural-born citizen), etc.

In any event the rumormongers were likely to be disappointed. Information about religion and race, when it was collected for birth records, simply reflected whatever the parents identified themselves to be; those values weren't officially assigned to the newborn children as immutable labels. And of course, no infant has any control over whatever names his parents choose for him.

As things turned out, when the Obama campaign made a copy of his Certification of Live Birth from the State of Hawaii available on the Internet in June 2008, it validated none of those rumors: The certificate shows his full name to be "Barack Hussein Obama II," it lists his father's race as "African" and his mother's as "Caucasian," it contains no information about religion, and it reports his birthplace as being Honolulu, Hawaii.

A number of self-proclaimed experts immediately seized the opportunity to pronounce the certificate a forgery (even though none of them had actually seen the
original, just a scanned image of it), picking on such specious details as minor variations from other Hawaii-issued certificates and the lack of an embossed seal and signature. (Some forgery claimants even maintained that the certificate was actually an altered version of one issued to Barack Obama's half-sister, Maya.) Aside from the inherent absurdity of such claims (i.e., that a major party presidential nominee would risk his entire candidacy on a fraud that could be uncovered simply by a check of state health records), the supposedly incriminating details don't pan out: the certificate is consistent with others issued in the same time and place, and the embossed seal and signature don't show through very well on the scanned front image made available on the Internet because they were applied to the back of the original document, not the front. Those who have actually touched and examined the original certificate have verified and documented that it bears all the elements of a valid certificate of live birth.

Moreover, both of Honolulu's major newspapers (the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin) published announcements in August 1961 documenting the birth, in Honolulu, of a son to "Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama" on 4 August 1961:

In August 2008, Philadelphia attorney Philip Berg included claims of a forged certificate (among other rumors) as the basis for a suit in U.S. District Court challenging Barack Obama's eligibility for the presidency on the grounds that Obama was actually born in Kenya (not Hawaii) and/or subsequently gave up his U.S. citizenship and thus does not qualify as a natural-born citizen of the U.S. In October 2008 a federal judge dismissed the complaint:

In a 34-page memorandum and opinion, the judge said Berg's allegations of harm were "too vague and too attenuated" to confer standing on him or any other voters.

Surrick ruled that Berg's attempts to use certain laws to gain standing to pursue his claim that Obama was not a natural-born citizen were "frivolous and not worthy of discussion."

The judge also said the harm Berg alleged did "not constitute an injury in fact" and Berg's arguments to the contrary "ventured into the unreasonable."

(A similar lawsuit was dismissed by a U.S. District Court judge in March 2009.)

In October 2008, and again in July 2009, Hawaiian officials reported that they had personally verified that Barack Obama's original birth certificate was in the Hawaii State Department's files:

State officials say there's no doubt Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

"I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen."

Fukino says that no state official, including Gov. Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama's certificate be handled differently from any other.

She says state law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest in it.

In January 2009, a teacher at the Honolulu prep school attended by Barack Obama recalled discussing his birth with the obstetrician who had delivered him:

When Barack Hussein Obama places his hand on the Bible to take the oath of office as 44th president of the United States, Barbara Nelson of Kenmore will undoubtedly think back to the day he was born. It was Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu.

"I may be the only person left who specifically remembers his birth. His parents are gone, his grandmother is gone, the obstetrician who delivered him is gone," said Nelson, referring to Dr. Rodney T. West, who died in February at the age of 98. Here's the story: Nelson was having dinner at the Outrigger Canoe Club on Waikiki Beach with Dr. West, the father of her college friend, Jo-Anne. Making conversation, Nelson turned to Dr. West and said: "So, tell me something interesting that happened this week," she recalls.

His response: "Well, today, Stanley had a baby. Now that's something to write home about."

The new mother was Stanley (later referred to by her middle name of Ann) Dunham, and the baby was Barack Hussein Obama.

"I penned the name on a napkin, and I did write home about it," said Nelson, knowing that her father, Stanley A. Czurles, director of the Art Education Department at Buffalo State College, would be interested in the "Stanley" connection.

She also remembers Dr. West mentioning that the baby's father was the first black student at the University of Hawaii and how taken he was by the baby's name.

"I remember Dr. West saying 'Barack Hussein Obama, now that's a musical name,'" said Nelson.

Ten years after that memorable birth announcement, Nelson would hear the Obama name again. This time, the father, now a Kenyan government official, was coming to speak at the Punahou School in Honolulu where Nelson was teaching and where his 10-year-old son was a newly enrolled fifth-grader.

A birth certificate produced in August 2009 which purportedly documented that Barack Obama was born in Kenya was quickly revealed to be a forgery.

Last updated: 3 August 2009

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2009 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson.
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.

Sources:

Hinkelman, Michael. "Judge Rejects Montco Lawyer's Bid to Have Obama Removed from Ballot."
Philadelphia Daily News. 25 October 2008.

Koppelman, Alex. "Sex, Lies and Creatively Edited Interviews with Sarah Obama."
Salon. 5 December 2008.

Nakaso, Dan. "Obama's Certificate of Birth OK, State Says."
Honolulu Advertiser. 1 November 2008.

Nakaso, Dan. "Hawaii: Obama Birth Certificate Is Real."
Honolulu Advertiser. 27 July 2009.

Nakaso, Dan. "Hawaii officials confirm Obama's Original Birth Certificate Still Exists."
Honolulu Advertiser. 28 July 2009.

Voell, Paula. "Teacher from Kenmore Recalls Obama Was a Focused Student."
The Buffalo News. 20 January 2009.

Associated Press. "State Department of Health Declares Obama Birth Certificate Legal."
Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 31 October 2008.

Associated Press. "Challenge to Obama Is Dismissed."
The New York Times. 5 March 2009.

The Economist. "Born Under a Bad Sign."
28 November 2008.

Thanks for sharing your kookiness...

Forget the birth certificate for a moment, will you?
Are all of you who are discounting David's story saying that the copies of the Official Certificate of Nominations are fake? If so, say it.