Verification is the process of actually proving that something is true. Verisimilitude is the appearance of something being true. Our courts have well established procedures for verifying documents. The reason for these procedures is that there is a long history of less than honest people producing fraudulent documents. The measure of the truth of a document is not how pretty it looks, but rather whether or not it has been verified. Most of us learn through experience to cross check documents, particularly with regard to important issues. This is why a title search is required, in most cases, before purchasing property.

In the case of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, much of the main stream media has failed to distinguish between verification and verisimilitude. Barack Obama has produced a document that he claims is his birth certificate. At first he only allowed release of a fuzzy photocopy of the document with the date of issuance and the certificate number redacted. That alone should have sent up a lot of red flags. Later he allowed factcheck.org to handle the document and take several pictures of it. However, Obama has never allowed the State of Hawaii to verify it. Just for fun, we tried to see how difficult it would be to produce a Hawaii birth certificate, similar to the one produced by the Obama campaign. Following is the result. This took nearly five minutes:

The most astonishing thing to me is that this is so easy to check. For example, all one would need to do is deliver a copy of this birth certificate to the Hawaii Department of Health and ask them to verify that they issued this certificate and that the information is identical to what they have on file. But, that has never been done, because Barack Obama will not authorize release of his records. An unverified birth certificate is proof of nothing. NOTE: ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE.

 Let’s compare this to a real world situation. If you have ever had the privilege of getting pulled over by a police officer who wants to describe your driving habits, you know that the officer will always ask for your driver’s license, your vehicle registration and your insurance information. In most cases, they will require you to take your license out and hand it physically to them. The officer will then have that information verified. If the information does not match the DMV records you are going to be asked a lot of additional questions. Just imagine that when the officer pulls you over, you don’t actually have your driver’s license. Instead you give the officer a photocopy of your license with the date of issue and the driver’s license number blacked out. The officer is unlikely to be impressed.

Then you tell the officer you won’t let him see your actual driver’s license, but you will have a friend look at it. Your friend looks at your license, says: ”yup, this looks good to me.” Do you really think the officer would buy that? Yet that is exactly how Obama has handled his birth certificate.

The real story here is why are so many people buying this? Obviously some people accept this because they are true Kool-Aid drinkers and no documentation would ever change their mind. These are similar to the people who were on the first O.J. Simpson jury. Other people accept this because they are afraid of being considered racist. Still others accept this because they are ignorant of the facts. The truth is that Obama has never produced his birth certificate and finally we have someone with the stature of Donald Trump who is willing to state the obvious.

This is hardly the first time someone has tricked a lot of supposed smart people into believing something that is obviously untrue. Bernie Madoff bilked people out of billions by promising investments returns that were mathematically impossible. Yet for a long time, no one dared question Mr. Madoff. Those who did challenge him were quickly silenced by the cultured elite. That is why he was able to steal so much money. It is also why so many people are deeply embarrassed by their obvious stupidity in failing to recognize the difference between verification and verisimilitude.

TDM