Why can't we see Obama's real birth certificate?

Answer 1

One answer:

But we have. Repeatedly. Unfortunately, there are a group of people called the Birthers who refuse to accept that the president was born in Hawaii. No matter how many times reputable people in the government of Hawaii (including two governors, one Republican and one Democratic) or people who personally knew the Obama family in the early 1960s (including the son of the Doctor Who delivered him when he was born at the hospital in Honolulu) attest to the validity of Mr. Obama's birth certificate, this same group of people insist it's not the "real" birth certificate. But it is.

Another answer:

"We" in context would seem to be "the citizens of the United States". If so, the question should actually read:

"Why can't 300 million people see Obama's real birth certificate?"

But additionally, "real" in context would seem to be "A different certificate than the one already seen by the authorities as 'we' feel the one shown already was fake". If so, the question should actually read:

"Why can't a third of a billion people personally receive the training to know the difference between a real and forged certificate issued by the government of Hawaii in the nineteen sixties?"

To answer that, one takes the amount of time it would take someone to become an forensic document examiner and multiply that by the number of people needing to become that.

It so happens that of five universities world wide that have a training program for such, only one is in the United States. Oklahoma State University offers such courses as a post-graduate study in the broader field of Forensic Science in general.

After the four year degree, and the two year post-graduate degree, the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Standards) recommends two years apprenticeship under an already trained Forensic Document Examiner. One should also allow for the time needed to develop a knowledge of a specialized area of the field. (In other words, being an expert in today's documents wouldn't make you one in the documents of the nineteen sixties.)

So it would take one person six years of college, two years of apprenticeship, and let us say - to be charitable - two years of specialization. (As the ASTM actually recommends two to four years of apprenticeship, that's not a stretch.) In other words, after a decade of study, one would be qualified to tell if a certificate of birth from Hawaii in the nineteen sixties was "real".

Now obviously we would not simply multiply that decade by the number of people, as more than one person can take the course at a time. OSU had 32,000 enrolled in 2009, and let us assume - though obviously they never would do this - that given the level of interest in Obama, that they decide to jettison all other academic fields and focus on Forensic Document Examination.

If we started in the Fall Semester of 2010, with the first 32,000 citizens, we could get everyone sent through OSU by the year 11,385. Actually, 11,391 A.D., as the last class of 32,000 would need six years like everyone else. Of course, it is regrettable to note that the population of the U.S. may have increased somewhat in the next 10,000 years or so. The U.S. population has - very roughly - increased by five times every 100 years, so in the next 94 centuries, if all stays equal, there will be

126,217,744,835,361,

888,865,876,570,445,

250,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000 citizens. Approximately. (That's about 126 trillions of 888 trillions of 250 trillions of a trillion of trillions. On the upside, that's still well under a googol!)

And after the graduation of each class, they'll all still need the two year apprenticeship and specialty training, which adds 1.2 billion extra years to this (just the original populace) - as you can't have "apprentice classes", it must all be one on one.*

In any case, all of the above is why "we" can't see Obama's "real" birth certificate. "We" will have to content ourselves with the fact that those already trained in such matters have seen it, and found it "real", and thus cleared the way for Obama to have been sworn in.

*In fairness, if we processed 32,000 Americans per month in an intense 30 day "quickie course" in which only Hawaiian birth documents of the early 1960s were studied, we could shuttle the whole population through in a little under 8 centuries. And if we assumed the other four universities could accomodate 32,000 citizens per month as well, we could conceivably have everyone trained in Hawaiian birth certificates of the 1960s by the year 2166, or about the time of the bicentennial of Obama's birth.