Big surprise: the Kenyan birth certificate is fake

Yeah, we really didn't see that one coming, did we now?

You may be aware that a few days ago, crackpot "lawyer" Orly Taitz (a woman so dumb she was recently eviscerated on The Colbert Report and apparently didn't even realize it) produced a Kenyan birth certificate for President Obama and was pushing to have it validated. It was, of course, trumpeted by the usual idiots (including, but not limited to, WorldNutDaily and Vox Day – who now actually seems quite bitter about the hoodwink) as more proof of Obama's ineligibility and so forth – until, that it, it was found to be a complete and utter fake. So fake, it's almost a parody:

The most obvious problems:

- It records Barack Obama Sr’s age as “26.” Obama Sr was born in 1936; his son was born in 1961.

- Its publication date is February 17, 1964, but it purports be a document of the “Republic of Kenya.” Kenya did not become a Republic until December 12, 1964, a year after it won independence from Great Britain.

- It’s signed by “registrar E.F. Lavender.” Earth Friendly Lavender is a kind of detergent, and government officials who use vanity initials on official documents are, to put it mildly, rare.

- The kicker? The image is part of the extremely ill-informed conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Mombasa—conveniently, one of the more Muslim parts of the country.

This has always been a red flag for conspiracy theorists, so it deserves some explanation. Barack Obama Sr. was born and educated in Nyanza Province, in southwestern Kenya, on Lake Victoria. This is the area where Obama’s family lived and continues to live; Sarah Obama, the step-grandmother of the president, lives in Nyang’oma Kogelo, a small town in the province. But Mombasa is a city on the Indian Ocean, a thousand miles to the east. It didn’t even have an international airport until 1979. And the city wasn’t even part of Kenya when the future president was born. Mombasa was a part of Zanzibar until December 12, 1963, when it became part of the newly independent Kenya.

The new forgery? Why, it claims that the president was born in Coast General Hospital in Mombasa.

- As some FreeRepublic posters have pointed out, the document contains a number that’s either a humorous coincidence or a wink by the forger. It’s number 47,044. Barack Obama, 47 years old, is the 44th president of the United States.

(They forgot to note the "0" in "47,044", obviously for "Obama".)

Birthers fall for the cheapest of cheap forgeries in their asinine, increasingly desperate attempts to prove Obama's presidency should be voided (which, as Jon Stewart pointed out, is merely them raging against him and those Evil Liberalz^TM rather than actually having evidence or justifiable doubts concerning his eligibility) – and then they wonder why everyone views them as stupid, deluded and borderline insane? The mind boggles.

Now awaiting the next forgery. As the Washington Independent article points out, it's like these false certificates are only being released – and subsequently exposed – as to make birthers appear more and more ridiculous as their cherished bits of "evidence" keep blowing up in their faces. A valid theory, I suppose.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)