I do graphic work, specifically, print production. That means that for the last 15 years, I have dealt with the nitty gritty of digital file creation and printing. Hell, I've even had to make fake 'official' documents that look good printed as part of an overall designed page. It's not rocket science. It only takes a few extra tweaks to make something look good to the average eye.

After I heard that folks were saying it was a layered file, I had to see for myself. And lo and behold, it DID have 'layers', or rather, subgroups in a group within a single layer in illustrator. Then I heard the possible explanation for why some random chunks were in the file: that whomever had scanned the damn thing had the OCR (object character recognition) software turned on. And I sort of accepted that initially, but then I thought, wait a minute. If that were the case, wouldn't some of the text be editable? And since it's not, why did they bother to only rasterize the type and not the whole document?

Then I saw this video by another graphics person who noticed things like under the oddball text, there was tone, which there shouldn't have been had there been OCR issues, among other things, some of which I agree with, some I don't

So now I'm trying to wrap my head around how they could've made this document, and here's my theory: it's odd appearance, the page with the herringbone pattern was the paper they printed on from what they want us to think is microfilm. I just don't think it was the original microfilm, or the original microfilm image has been tampered with.

If someone gave me a microfilm image and told me to change a lot of the info, I could do it pretty easily. I'd also make sure to use as much as the original artwork as possible so it all looked the same. Trust me, I could do a MUCH better job than this piece of crap. (Though, maybe mine would be too perfect.)

Anyway, my point is it's absolutely f-cking clumsy. If they wanted to negate the entire controversy, they could've just opened the PDF in photoshop, flattened the file, and re-saved it as a photoshop PDF with layers turned off, then reopened it in Adobe Acrobat and saved it as an acrobat PDF. THEN, it wouldn't have any of the digital anomalies. Hell, they could've just rasterized the whole damn thing in Illustrator and be done with it.

And don't get me started on some of the weird info in the document itself. As has been pointed out by more than a few folks, Kenya wasn't called Kenya until 1963, and his father is categorized as African instead of negro which was probably more the custom in 1961, just to point out a few things. I'm just going to leave the info alone. There's too much this and that out there, I don't feel like verifying any of it.

But all of this is neither here nor there. The REAL question is "WHY THE HELL ARE THEY DOING THIS?" It's obviously a manufactured document. There's not a doubt in my mind they tampered with it and what's worse, they WANT you to know they tampered with it.

But why? Why are they feeding the trolls by even releasing such a thing, unless of course they want to keep the trolls fed and alive, which is obviously the case.

What will be the result of all of this? At some point, when it looks like he's going to really go into the crapper because of the birther issue (because this latest release was done in such a way that even folks like myself who considered the birthers ridiculous are now giving the documents a second look and the subject a second thought) he will 'be forced to reveal' some embarrassing truth that he was trying to keep secret that not only proves he's a US citizen through and through, but that the other side is playing 'dirty politics' and can't be trusted to do the right thing ever. (Mike Rivero's theory is that Obama's dad wasn't the Kenyan, but that his mother had an affair with some other guy from Chicago and they covered it up for some reason or other. Which would certainly explain how Obama ended up in Chicago after Hawaii, Indonesia and NYC.)

So there you have it. This whole birth certificate nonsense is just a manufactured distraction so that any focus on the real issues and the real let-downs and disappointments are not fully discussed or acknowledged. And The Donald? Of course he's in on it. I wouldn't be surprised if he were a paid employee of the Obama campaign.

Don't get sucked into this stupidity. Yeah, it's bogus. But there's a reason it's bogus. They WANT it to be bogus. They WANT the controversy. Every second spent discussing the certificate is a second NOT discussing the fact that Obama is warmonger of the highest magnitude.

Update: Let me be clear: I do not necessarily think that the damn thing is a forgery. It's certainly possible that it is. I can see exactly how they did if it IS a forgery. The way that Illustrator is looking at it, I've looked at solid scanned images before and they don't pop up with all those vector boxes. HOWEVER, the point is, again, THEY WANT YOU TO THINK IT'S HINKY. IT'S A DISTRACTION. THAT IS ALL.

Focus people, FOCUS!