The IBM Selectric commercial. We can bury the forgery claims.

[gardenista]

Camera angles low on the selectric, with the ball popping up to type the damning Killian memo. Each letter is displayed after the ball pops down, including the subscript "th".

Then, on black screen with an updated font: Where was George Bush?

[The Traveler]

1. I like it! (n/t)

[BurtWorm]

2. Now we just need that damn ball with the superscript "th!"

;)

[Career Prole]

5. Anyone check ebay? Oh sh*t!

Crashcart probably cornered the market!

[cheshire]

10. Cheney will accuse you making a living of ebay.

[jean]

6. someone posted an ebay link here showing a pic of many

of those balls! Ha! (sarcastically) do you think the RNC is busy trying to buy up all traces of these things?

[gardenista]

7. They'll never have enough balls to bury the truth! nt

[gauguin57]

61. LOL!

"not enough balls." hee

[guitar man]

14. I remember

When I was a kid, my father drove big rigs for a major freight line. It would have been '71 or '72, he took me in and showed ma all around the terminal. I remember in the dispatch center, there were rows of teletype machines, IBM, that for all intents and purposes looked just like an electric typewriter that would start typing all by itself, which I found fascinating as a lad of 8 or 9 years.

I remember clear as yesterday, most of the machines had the ball that looked just like the selectric balls, but there were a few that had a "daisy wheel" on them. The ball types would rat-a-tat-tat type away at their work at a rather slow pace. I remember Dad pointing out the daisy wheel machines and saying "watch this". When the message came in, it would just brrrrrrip! right through and be done. I remember thinking it was pretty advanced stuff back then.

I don't know much about the machines other than what I can remember, but It seems to me that the technology was a hell of a lot more advanced then than the "it's a forgery" crowd is trying to make it out to be.

[jeff30997]

3. Great idea!

[Old and In the Way]

4. For the 1000th time we ask....Where was George Bush?

[TexasUnderground]

85. Does it matter where he was?

Does it matter if Kerry was a war hero in Vietnam or not?

Does it matter if Shrub was a coke fiend and an alcoholic hiding away in the Guard or not?

I could care less if Shrub did or did not report for duty in the Guard. I could care less if Shrub went to Vietnam and personally killed Ho Chi Minh.

It wouldn't change anything about this ELECTION! Our obsession with Shrub's guard record because of the dirty tricks from Rove is blinding us to what our true objective should be: deciding for the American voters who is the right person to be leading this country!

Thanks to Shrub, assault weapons will now be flooding the streets again. Remember the North Hollywood Bank Robberies? Shootouts like that will soon be coming to a town like yours!

Thanks to Shrub and his mishandling of diplomacy (the Repug's supposed strength), our long time allies Germany and France are now actively working against us. We now have the best allies money can buy, assuming Tobago was doing the spending.

They are using the rising oil prices, which THEY caused by engaging in these reckless wars for Haliburton, to try and justify despoiling our pristine wilderness areas!

They are using this reckless war to justify a spiraling deficit.

They are using the deficit to justify abandoning badly needed social programs that serve as the safety net for millions of poor Americans and minorities who have been left behind by the Bush recession.

And don't get me started on the Supreme Court.

[Old and In the Way]

97. Of course it matters.

The policies of this adminisitration are a direct result of this man's life experiences. Throughout his life, he's been able to game the system for his personal benefit, just as he's doing it today on a macro level. In a just world, we could let his record speak for itself....and he'd go down to defeat in a landslide. But that is not the case. We have a corporate media who are bought and paid for; they are not doing their job of informing the American people.

For the people who are undecided and apolitical, this stuff does matter. We live in a society that is marinated in TV programming. Unfortunately, this medium is not interested in serving democracy...it's interested in increasing marketshare and catering to the basic instincts of the viewers. "Reality TV" dominates the programming, not exposes into government corruption. The stuff that passes for news is a joke. Laci Peterson, Kobe Bryant, and Micheal Jackson are the lead stories...and then rehashed over and over on the Sunday talk shows. When they do get around to politics, they filter the discussion through the mouths of Republican pols, strategists, and special interest groups aligned with this Party.

The Republicans spent the 90s conducting a witch hunt on Bill Clinton. $70MM of taxpayer money on looking for every sordid detail and rumor that they could use to undermine his Presidency. The fact that his policies and stewardship gave us unprecedented job growth, a strong budget, and a world that admired the US because they trusted Bill Clinton, didn't matter to these people. Their 8 year focus on character assassination made the 2000 election close enough to steal.

In 2000, Bush was not vetted publicly on his ANG service, his mysterious missing public records, his Harkin inside trading, his use of eminent domain to enrich himself and his backers on building the Texas baseball stadium. We didn't know about his personal financial relationships with the House of Saud. It appears that the media not only isn't investigating again, they are actively working to keep the issues from being part of the public discussion. Instead, they are focusing the character question on Kerry, using SBL to justify another character assassination on the Democratic challenger.

By all means feel free to go after Bush in the way that you think will help insure his defeat. But trying to derail people from looking and exposing Bush's real history is counterproductive, IMHO. The more the American public learn about his past, the better informed they are on judging the two candidates on the most important issues for choosing a President: character and leadership.

[gardenista]

98. It matters plenty! ALL of it matters! nt

[TexasUnderground]

100. You guys miss my wider point

We all know what a bad candidate and President George Bush is.

America knows it as well.

The problem is, I think we as a party have been focussing on telling and retelling the George Bush is bad story to the exclusion of our own agenda and how we will improve the life for everyday working Americans.

[demwing]

106. I understand your point, butonlyhalf agree

a fair percentage of Americans think GW is a decent guy.

With that image shattered, Kerry could cake walk into the Whitehouse.

But I agree that we need a two headed hydra of a campaign. Destroy Bush AND Deliver a message of hope.

If that became the case, Kerry wouldn't just cakewalk into the Presidency, he would be lifted up on the shoulders of America and swept into the Whitehouse in an unprecedented landslide.

But I'll settle for anything that gets Kerry in and Bush out.

[rocktivity]

109. He's an AWOL commander in chief, for Cheney's sake

:headbang:
rocknation

[gatorboy]

8. So which model was it suppose to be? II? III? Anyone know?

EOM

[gardenista]

9. Somehow I thought it was the II.

I barely remember how it worked, but I used to type on an IBM Selectric II. I recall that my boss, who was the secretary to the higher muckety-muck, had special balls for her own Selectric, and they had all kinds of cool stuff on them, including things like superscript "th"s.

I never got to use it because I typed only lowly, inconsequential, internal stuff.

[IndianaGreen]

11. I was on active duty at the time, and we didn't have such equipment!

IBM Selectric were not part of the equipment used by line units back in the early 1970s. They cost well over a thousand dollars back then, and they were not part of the military's Table of Organization and Equipment. We didn't have them, and we were with active duty at the headquarters level. I can't imagine an Air National Guard having better stuff than USAEUR.

Look for the TANG's TOE and see if they had any IBM Selectrics, I will bet you that you won't find any such thing. Besides, the son and the wife of the late Colonel that supposedly signed the CYA memos (that should have raised a red flag right there) already denied CBS's version of events, including Ben Barnes's own daughter.

A very smart DUer pointed out yesterday that the documents, which appear to be fake, may have been planted by Rove in order to discredit all of the more credible stories about Bush's service record. The fact that these documents can be debunked as easily as the Niger yellow cake uranium stories, leads me to believe that someone in the Bush camp is behind this.

[unslinkychild1]

12. Not so fast, IG

I had a selectric in the military, don't remember which model, but it eventually died, so I brought in my OWN typewriter to keep the work from piling up because it would be WEEKS for me to get a new one. Weird shit happens in the military, and probably even weirder shit happens in the N/G. I bet they got these copies from the secretary, and I bet he/she has the hand-written originals. * musta pissed this person off something awful, is what I think.

[IndianaGreen]

17. This was in the early 1970s

and all the equipment your unit was authorized to have, from personnel to equipment, would have been listed in your unit's TOE.

[gardenista]

13. So you are positive that the documents are forged?

[IndianaGreen]

15. I suspect they are a GOP plant

Leak documents that can easily be shown to be forgeries. Use eager and ambitious partisans, such as Ben Barnes, as the unsuspecting accomplice, and Voila! In one swift stroke one succeeds in portraying as suspect all of the other, and far more credible and better documented, stories about Bush's TANG service.

CBS admitted today that they don't have access to the originals.

[yardwork]

19. If that was the plan, it doesn't seem to be working for Rove

CNN is starting to back off its earlier assertions, and CBS is standing by its story.

I doubt anybody can prove that TANG had no access to any machine that could type that memo. As has been discussed exhaustively on these threads, lots of machines were capable of typing those documents in the early 1970s.

[IndianaGreen]

You have to show that such equipment was authorized for ANG units

and the only way to show that is by looking at the TOE for Bush's TANG unit. I think the documents are forgeries, and I suspect that Rove is behind it in order to cast doubt on all of the documentary evidence about Bush's service. We are being played for suckers!

[goclark]

96. I can't believe that they want this story

to be discussed for any reason.
Their faithful don't need all this,they only need to know..
"That is a LIE, George Bush is my Lord and Savior and he would never do anything Wrong!"

[dansolo]

114. How were the fakes created then?

They sure as hell weren't created with Microsoft Word. Try it. Print out the documents, and hold them up to a light and just try to get them to match. You will never get Word to create a document exactly like the Killian memo. The burden of proof is on the people saying that they are forgeries. If you try to recreate the document in Word like the accusers claim, there are plenty of discrepancies. The baselines don't match, the character widths are slightly off, and character weights are all different. The whole premise of the forgery claim is that the document can be recreated exactly using Microsoft Word, which is not true.

[ConsAreLiars]

16. The only debunking that has happened

is of the "forgery" arguments. You know, the Rovian line that typewriters back then did not have superscript 'th' symbols, that they matched up with Word docs, no proportional type on typewriters, etc. Assertions that were easily proven false. The content of the memos is absolutely consistent with everything else known about chimpy's "service" record. The CBS site does a full exposure of those lies, in case you missed the broadcast or are unfamiliar with the facts.

As for the "very smart DUer," there are a lot of them, but some are just a bit too easily spun by moles and a belief that "everything" is a hoax emanating from plots by the white chair society.

[IndianaGreen]

20. Where is the TOE for Bush's ANG unit for that period of time?

It would have listed the IBM Selectwriter. TOEs were very specific as to what units were authorized, and Guard units did not have the top of the line stuff that active duty units had.

The computers of that era were mainframes with less memory than today's desktops. There were no PCs at the time!

[ConsAreLiars]

28. IBM Selectrics,Executives, and variants were commonplace

They had the characteristics required to produce this type of document. See the CBS site for details. I have no clue what your reference to the computers of that era has to do with anything at all.

[IndianaGreen]

102. The date and format of the documents appear to be civilian in nature

not military. We never used Y2K formats on dates. For example, a date of August 18, 1973, would be written as 18 AUG 73, the first three letters of the month in caps and no four digit year. If the document was to be signed, the date would not be typewritten on it, but stamped after it was signed.

Military documents always adhered to a strict format, so titles for a MFR would be in all caps: MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD.

[EST]

They had 'em at Ft. Rucker at that time.

Maybe not everywhere, but they were plentiful around the area where I worked. Also they were really old hat at Scott air base a couple years later.

[SoCalDemocrat]

81. umm try mediamatters.org for debunking

These were taken from the mans private files from his home. They were not from a military unit or government office.

I'd like to see a link proving they cost that much. I think they were pretty inexpensive machines. BTW the IBM Selectric II was available by like 1969. The original came out in like 1961.

See mediamatters.org for a full debunking of these fraud claims.

[girl gone mad]

88. IBM leased out its typewriters.

It was common for IBM to lease out the more expensive machines, rather than having a company buy them.

There is no reason to think the cost would have been prohibitive.

[nonkultur]

18. Some freeper is offering $17,600

toward the first person who can recreate the CBS memos with a 1972 typewriter.

http://defeatjohnjohn.com/2004/09/17600-and-rising.htm

[yardwork]

21. Is it up to $17,600?

Earlier tonight another freeper was trying to get me to clink on that link and win $10,500. Somehow I didn't trust the little newbie and his linky.

[nonkultur]

23. I saw it on Fark

He says he has $25,000 in pledges but $17,600 on hand so far.

[dansolo]

115. I'd like to see them recreate it in Word first

There is no way that the memo was written using Word. Close inspection reveals far too many discrepancies.

[gatorboy]

22. Another complaint from the Republican bloggers was how evenly spaced

the words were. From this page I found:
http://ibmcomposer.org/ They go into detail about how the IBM Selectric worked just click the typewriter at the top:

"The first IBM Composer was the IBM "Selectric" Composer announced in 1966. It was a hybrid "Selectric" typewriter that was modified to have proportional spaced fonts. It is 100% mechanical and has no digital electronics. Since it has no memory, the user was required to type everything twice. While typing the text the first time, the machine would measure the length of the line and count the number of spaces. When the user finished typing a line of text, they would record special measurements into the right margin of the paper. Once the entire column of text was typed and measured, it would then be retyped, however before typing each line, the operator would set the special justification dial (on the right side) to the proper settings, then type the line. The machine would automatically insert the appropriate amount of space between words so that all of the text would be justified."

[goclark]

24. Funny how much detail they take on this story

Why don't they take as much detail in finding out why he was AWOL.

[nonkultur]

25. It is top secret.

Wasn't he flying guns and drugs to and from Guatemala for the CIA with James Bath?

[Guaranteed]

26. Freaking GENIUS.

You are REALLY FUCKING GOOD.

WELL DONE. :)

[gardenista]

27. Why thank you! Unfortunately, I have no skills

when it comes to film/animation.

Maybe our friends at Take Back The Media can help?

[ItsThePeopleStupid]

29. IBM Selectrics didn't have proportional spacing.

The Executive did and the Selectric Composer did. From Google's cache:

Even so, all Selectrics were monospaced -- each and every character was the same width. Although IBM had produced a successful typebar-based machine, the IBM Executive, with proportional spacing, no proportionally-spaced Selectric office typewriter was ever introduced. There was, however, a much more expensive proportionally-spaced machine called the Selectric Composer which was considered a typesetting machine rather than a typewriter.
http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:tcI2gAksWeQJ:www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Typewriter+%22ibm+executive%22+typewriter+military&hl=en

[Guaranteed]

30. We need to get ahold of one of those Executives or Composers

and make this commercial.

It would be an unbelievable slam.

[gardenista]

31. Woohooo! Yep, whatever type of typewriter it was, we need one!

BullGoose, you're really making me think we need to do this!

[Guaranteed]

33. We do.

If we can do it, it's definitive, and it'll blow that fucker Rove right out of the water.

Type it out RIGHT IN FRONT OF EVERYONE, ON CAMERA. There's nothing better.

[Guaranteed]

35. deleted

[gardenista]

38. Uh oh. It's from Massachusets. You know what that means!

:eyes:

Better find one from Texas!

[gardenista]

36. How about asking the seller to type up a sample? nt

[Guaranteed]

37. I don't think we want to let them

know how much we want it, or what it could be worth...

I did just send them an email asking how much they wanted for it right now

My question is, though, is this the right one...it is a SELECTRIC Composer...are the Composers that we're talking about not "Selectric?"

[Guaranteed]

39. Look at this:

http://www.ibmcomposer.org/SelComposer/description.htm

Look at the two pictures...

Looks like exactly the same thing, to me.

It looks kind of complicated...would be tough to make a commercial with:

"Since it has no memory, the user was required to type everything twice. While typing the text the first time, the machine would measure the length of the line and count the number of spaces. When the user finished typing a line of text, they would record special measurements into the right margin of the paper. Once the entire column of text was typed and measured, it would then be retyped, however before typing each line, the operator would set the special justification dial (on the right side) to the proper settings, then type the line."

[gardenista]

42. Well, since you have to type everything twice, maybe a 60 second

spot instead of a 30 second one! LOL

It may be tough to make a commercial with, but it sure would be great to be able to prove that the type *can* be proportional, and that the "th" can be superscripted!

[Guaranteed]

43. We could figure something out.

Ads execs can be very creative.

[gardenista]

45. Yep. I know there's a way.

[ConsAreLiars]

46. The double typing was not needed to do proportional fonts.

Only to get right justified columns. Bull... is confusing these two features.

[gardenista]

48. Of course! nt

[Guaranteed]

49. What about centering?

Can that be done fairly easily? Like, within 5-10 seconds?

On second thought, you know, we may not even have to center it on camera...we could set it up beforehand.

[mellowinman]

54. Centering

For fuck's sake! We were all fucking CAVEMEN before Microsoft Word!

I did typing in the 70's. Are you ready for this?

You always had a center tab.

You tab to it.

You spell out the line you're about to type in your head, and backspace on EVERY OTHER LETTER. If there's an odd number of letters, the Selectric II had a 1/2 space, so you do one extra backspace, and then use the 1/2 space. Then you type your line, and "woila!" it's perfectly centered. I do mean PERFECTLY centered.

I was 12, and I could do this as easily as I could tie my own shoe.

Could it be done within 5-10 seconds? In those days, if you didn't type at least 80 words per minute, you couldn't have a job typing, and remember, that 80 words per minute had to be with NO ERRORS, since half the shit you typed was with CARBON PAPER! YOU WERE MAKING COPIES OF EACH THING YOU TYPED!

Yes, these jobs demanded PERFECTION. Human error was considered VERY POOR WORK HABITS.

I know that's a little hard to comprehend, but there was something else back then: NO SPELLCHECKER. You used a dictionary, but even more so, YOU JUST FUCKING KNEW HOW TO SPELL, OR YOU WERE CONSIDERED STUPID.

[AmyStrange]

59. What about the smaller "th" subscript...

how was that done?

According to the 17,600$ prize website, that's the part that was impossible to do with a IBM Selectric Composer - according to the manual and the website offering the prize anyway?

d

[Guaranteed]

60. I don't know...anyone? Anyone?

Mellowinman?

But look at post #56.

[mellowinman]

67. That's simply not true.

The smaller superscript th was possible on many typewriters INCLUDING the Selectric, and the Executive. More importantly, on documents released by the White House from 1969, the smaller superscript th appears! So we have authenticated documents from PRIOR to the 70's with the subscript th.

What pisses me off is all these "experts" suddenly acting like there were all these things typewriters couldn't do back then, as if it was the fucking dark ages or something!

WORD puts the superscripts so that they line up at the top of the line. Old 70's typewriters DO NOT. They put the superscript ABOVE the line. That could simply be a custom font ball, and the anal secretary stopping, rotating the platen 1/2 turn, and putting the "th" there.

See, back then typists considered what they did a SERIOUS JOB, and not a "temp job" stepping stone to something else. Some of them did it for YEARS and YEARS. You can bet any decent secretary took the time to put "th's" and "nd's" after numbers where they belonged!

It's a ridiculous argument, NOT EVEN WORTH PURSUING, and yet "expert" Bouffant doesn't know something I knew when I was 12!

[AmyStrange]

71. but how did they make the "th" smaller...

than the rest of the letters?

I'm not trying to prove they were forgeries. I WANT them to be true, but the smaller "th" font doesn't add up,

d

[gardenista]

62. Here ya go!

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/11/authenticity_backed_on_bush_documents/

Analysts who have examined the documents focus on several facets of their typography, among them the use of a curved apostrophe, a raised, or superscript, ''th," and the proportional spacing between the characters -- spacing which varies with the width of the letters. In older typewriters, each letter was alloted the same space.

Those who doubt the documents say those typographical elements would not have been commonly available at the time of Bush's service. But such characters were common features on electric typewriters of that era, the Globe determined through interviews with specialists and examination of documents from the period. In fact, one such raised ''th," used to describe a Guard unit, the 187th, appears in a document in Bush's official record that the White House made public earlier this year.

[AmyStrange]

66. But is the "th" smaller like in the Bush docs?

sure you could do subscripts (or is that superscripts), but how did they make them smaller than the other letters? What specific keys do you use to make the "th" smaller in font size than the other letter font sizes?

d

[gardenista]

72. That I don't know, but the article infers that it was possible.

In addition, the smaller font "th" seems to appear in other docs, previously released by the WHITE HOUSE!

[AmyStrange]

77. If THAT's true...

then all those other docs are fake also... now wouldn't that be one hell of a story if they could ALL be traced back to Bush or Rove as being planted by them!

d

[gardenista]

78. I think it's more likely that they're all real. nt

[AmyStrange]

83. you're probably right...

reading on all the stuff about getting specially made balls with small subscript "th"s and I could see the military spending money on it just so they can keep their budgets the same every year.

Sent a note to the defeatjohnjohn.com site (cc: [e-mail]) that if those Bush docs are fake then all the docs released by the WH (with the small "th") are fake also and it just means the WH is releasing fake docs.

Should be interesting to see what replies I get back.

Thanx for taking the time to reply back to my post,

d

[yardwork]

104. The little 'th' was on the golf-ball that printed the letters

Every time the typist hit a different key, the character on the ball that corresponded to that key smashed the character onto the paper in ink. It worked sort of like a piano. In a piano, you hit the key and that pulls a lever that thumps a wire and produces a sound. With a typewriter, you hit a key that activated the little ball to thump the impression on paper.

There were dozens of balls with different font sizes and characters. The machines even had open keys that corresponded to the special characters on different balls.

It's very difficult to explain to somebody who has never used a typewriter, but to those of us who used them in the 1970s, it is obvious that these documents could have been produced on the typewriters of the time.

Imagine trying to explain to somebody how to play a video game if they had never seen that particular technology.

Edited for spelling. Thank goodness I didn't type this in triplicate. Where's the white-out?

[gardenista]

56. And for my 1000th post, I refer you to this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2338464

Philip D. Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the documents in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, one in a wave of similar media reports. But Bouffard told the Globe yesterday that after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.

IBM Selectric Composer

[Guaranteed]

BEAUTIFUL.

And congratulations! ;)

[gardenista]

40. Might be worth it. But I don't know if it's the right one.

Could we ask them to type up an unrelated sample?

And, as you pointed out in another thread, could this help lend credibility to Cheney's employment claims? We're treading on thin ice here!

[zignovis]

32. Selectrics weren't proportional.

IBM made one typewriter, called the Executive, that could do proportional spacing. These were available at the time. But it still looked like typewriter output -- straight apostrophes rather than curved. And its spacing wasn't all that perfect -- it only had a fixed number of character widths.

To do the memo shown in the picture would have taken professional typesetting equipment. It technically could have been done -- obviously they could print magazines and the like -- but that stuff was for setting type, and was very expensive and cumbersome to work with. On the IBM Composer, for example, you had to type everything twice.

I can't, for the life of me, see why he would have prepared these memos that way.

Plus, you've got to admit that there are Microsoft Word clues in the memos. Like the spaces in "9921 st" and "111 th". In Word, you do that to keep the program from automatically subscripting. Back in 1972 you would have just typed "9921st" -- which is how a lot of Word users wish you could still do it today!

The smoking gun is the precise match you get when you re-create some of the documents using the default settings in Word. I don't think it would match in WordPerfect -- is it just a coincidence that this high-tech typewriter of the early seventies produces the same output as MS Word? I doubt it.

I'm more concerned about pro-Bush backlash over this. ABC and the Washington Post appear to be running with the hoax angle, and it's gonna get some airtime.

[gardenista]

34. Ultimately, documents from the same time period, from the same office

will be released. We can then compare the spacing, proportionality of the font, and the "th".

Perhaps this will debunk, once and for all, the absurd idea that someone would attempt to forge these documents using Microsoft Word.

[ConsAreLiars]

44. IBM Executive and Selectric Composer did this

The documents produced by MS Word are altogether different from the CBS docs. Repeating the Rove line does not change the facts.

Read this thread if you have any interest in the facts regarding the "just like MS Word" fiction:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x782924

[Name removed]

53. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mellowinman]

50. Bullshit bullshit bullshit -JUST STOP IT, OK????

http://juliusblog.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_juliusblog_archive.html





Here are some things you can notice with the naked eye:
Kerning is different in both documents


Numbers are different (compare "187")


CBS document type obviously has some characters that persistently print over or under the baseline (as typewriters do). For instance the "s" prints under baseline.


The roundness of the "o" is quite different.


The capital "B" has a different size on the top loop.


Check out the top of the "l" on both documents. The typewriter copy from CBS has a serif ornament that Times New Roman lacks in the MS Word sample.


Even the super-script "th" is absolutely different in both documents. Apples and oranges, people!!!

This is pathetic. These "experts" are either blind or plainly lying. Too bad people at AP, or WP didn't even take the time to test this by themselves. This "evidence" wouldn't pass in a court of law with REAL typographical experts under oath.

So, lets go through the allegations, one by one:

- No typewriter could use that Times-like font in the 1970s...
CONFIRMED LIE! IBM Selectric and Executive models did since the 60s. By the way, that font has been available since 1931.

- No typewriter could use that kerning in the 1970s...
CONFIRMED LIE! IBM Selectric and Executive models did since the 60s.

- No typewriter could use upper-script "th" in the 1970s...
CONFIRMED LIE! BLATANTLY FALSE! IBM Selectric and Executive models did since the 60s.

- You can reproduce the document EXACTLY using Times New Roman in MS Word...
CONFIRMED LIE! Even the examples they provide are not that similar to the CBS document, and they even confess they had to fix the size of their image to make coincide with the PDF document. WTF?

[zignovis]

58. No, it's not Bushshit.

Most of that analysis is useless without the originals -- or at least a much higher resolution scan. All those gray pixels in the graphic are antialiasing, which obscures the detail.

As for the "187th" thing, that could just be the choice of font. For example, a 12-pt Times New Roman is top-aligned, but a 10-pt TNR rises up like the memo.

Most of that stuff I never argued against, but if you want something to defend, consider the use of "9921 st" and "147 th". Those are Microsoft Word tricks, used to defeat auto-superscripting -- on a typewriter you would just type "9921st".

[ConsAreLiars]

69. You obviously missed the display of the docs on CBS

and are relying on the low res crap you've seen, uh, elsewhere. CBS had VERY high res magnifications of sections of the documents on the news Friday eve.

[mellowinman]

74. Yes it is bullshit

On Bush's NG docs from 1969 one of the entries has the smaller "th."

Did you do a lot of typing in 1972? Because I DID.

Some electric typewriters had special keys for those common superscript letters "th" "nd" and "st" as well as "1/2" and "1/4" keys.

I know what I'm talking about because of EXPERIENCE. This shit was drilled into our heads back then.

I typed 80 wpm with no errors and no spell checker. That was pretty fucking impressive for a 12 year old.

It didn't hurt me in the job market when I was in high school, either.

God DAMN IT!

[TexasUnderground]

86. I'm afraid this is just a big hoax

Some of the right-wing blog sites have recreated the documents pretty damn close to exact using the default word settings.

Whoever did this didn't even try. It's almost like they wanted to be caught.

Hmmm...Karl Rove anyone?

I fear that the more we try and believe this to be true the more we will look like idiots when it's exposed.

Like I said earlier, Bush's NG history is not an issue.

The environment is an issue.
Healthcare is an issue.
The illegal war in Iraq is an issue.
Tax cuts for the rich is an issue.
Veteran's benefits are an issue.
Gun control is an issue.

Stuff like Bush's National Guard and the Smear Vets CLOUD the issues. We can win on the issues. We can't beat the Republicans at being dirty and cheap, not when they have the national media on their side.

[gardenista]

99. That's kinda cute.

I like how you try to obscure the smoking gun by reminding us of the "real" issues. Sadly, those real issues are not enough to break through the media wall. This will. And I'll wager that SOME PEOPLE SAY they're scared shitless of what will happen when it does!

[TexasUnderground]

101. And if it blows up in our face?

Because that is where it looks like it is heading.

I think we are ethically bound as a party to offer something other than a candidate and a campaign that looks just the same as our opponents, except ours has a (D) besides the name instead of an (R).

Bush's National Guard record wasn't enough to sweep him away from the 2000 election. I doubt they will do that for this one.

We need something a little more substantive to come out into the open. You know, like our agenda. Like how we are going to make the lives of everyday working Americans better.

Because trading insults between groups for truth is a bit like rolling in the mud with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it. We are getting played, and you guys don't even realize it.

[yardwork]

105. "Our face?" If it blows up in "our" face? Whose "we" white guy?

Somehow I don't think you'll be around.

[TexasUnderground]

113. And why is that?

What prescient talent do you have to divine such things?

[gardenista]

111. I think it's quite likely to blow up in YOUR face. nt

[TexasUnderground]

112. What the heck is that supposed to mean? EOM.

[girl gone mad]

110. Look here:

On the left is text typed in MS Word. The middle immage was typed on a Selectric. The right is the other two images overlayed. This took me 5 seconds using only MS Paint.

[dansolo]

116. Pretty damn close is not good enough

There claim only works if it matches *EXACTLY*. They don't. The character weights are different. The character widths are different. The baseline isn't even straight. Even pixelation doesn't explain away those differences.

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[gardenista]

47. I'm quite sure he'd find a way to weasle out of paying up. nt

[Name removed]

51. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mellowinman]

57. They are not the LEAST bit suspicious.

This whole line is UTTER BULLSHIT. They are obviously typed documents. Any person who is over the age of 35 and has ever had an office job, even as a summer temp knows that this is all BULLSHIT!!!

They are NOT questionable. They are SO OBVIOUSLY typed documents from the early 70's I just don't know where to fucking BEGIN!!!!

Some of the letters don't line up right. Times New Roman was invented in the fucking THIRTIES. Don't you READ? This has been covered OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.

There is not ONE SINGLE THING that is even a TEENY TINY BIT SUSPICIOUS IN THE LOOK OR "FEEL" OF THESE DOCUMENTS. They look like EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE.

JESUS!

[Name removed]

64. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[hobbit709]

65. Typing

Back more years than what I want to think about, I was taught to do super or subscript all you had to do was turn the paper knob up or down a hair, hold and type, then go back to the regular line.

[EST]

80. In case you haven't noticed-

Most of the people who are playing with this are doing just that-playing!
They are just shitting around! Sure there are a few oh-my-god types, but they are the reason the rest of us are fucking with it. Heehee.

I lived through that era and I worked for IBM 1966-1974. There were a couple of military bases I was sent to occasionally, and yes, selectrics were enormously popular. And you know what? You could buy type balls in a huge array of styles, and, if you wanted, you could have a special type ball made up with any damned thing you cared to have -pictures of fish?- sure, no problem. It took about 2 months and cost about two hundred dollars for the first one, but after that they were almost the same price as any other typing element.

The military liked them precisely because of the fact they typed special superscript characters, such as th, a lot. Put it on the ball-you could get a bunch of special characters- and every time you hit the right key, it printed the little th in one whack; nd was another popular key. Piece of cake. Proportional spacing has been around almost as long as typewriters-over 125 years.

El cheapo typewriters, of course, were just straight ahead simple shit, but expensive ones, and the friggin government had more money than God, could do damn near anything. Deezus f*** christ! Do you think we were morans?!? Sure most things had a very high mechanical constant but, dammit, we were smart. I almost feel like I'm in a time machine!!

Find some old geezer like me and ask him about 407 tabulating machines. Or 080, 082, and 083 sorters. Or 519 summary punch machines.

This whole discussion, for the most part is just us DUers making fun of freeperland! Heheh!

[Guaranteed]

87. Awesome post. Everyone should read. nt

[EST]

90. I don't think most really care about facts.

They're having way too much fun!

[mellowinman]

52. I don't care what you think.

Nobody cares what anybody "thinks." Either prove it, or shut the fuck up.

They are NOT fakes.

Read the post above, and the link to JuliusBlog.

They're not fakes.

[Name removed]

55. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ConsAreLiars]

63. Maybe if you had one fact to support your claim of "fake"

it would help. What is the evidence? Got anything that has not already been proven to be a lie?

[AmyStrange]

68. the smaller "th"

how was that done?

d

[gardenista]

73. Dunno, but I bet it will be demonstrated in the coming days. nt

[ConsAreLiars]

76. I asked for evidence of forgery,

but my understanding is that special superscript'th' 'rd' and 'st' characters were available on some IBM typewriters of that era. IBM's marketing strategy in that era was to provide top of the line (looks like real book type, not lame typewriters) capability. Atrios has an ad from well before that time illustrating this approach: http://atrios.blogspot.com/ (now about half-way down the page). There's a lot more here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x782924

[EST]

82. See post 80

n/t

[AmyStrange]

84. just read it and thanx for the info (n/t)

[Name removed]

70. Deleted message

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[gardenista]

75. What he said!

[Name removed]

79. Deleted message

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[andym]

89. Selectric composer in 1970s and MS Word today: virtually identical type

Selectric composer in 1970s and MS Word today can produce virtually identical type.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1644869,00.asp

Therefore, similarity to MS Word is not valid evidence that the documents are fake. Selectric composer could clearly have created these documents, especially given that heads containing super/sub script were available-- see the table of contents from the manual linked in the PC Mag article.

[girl gone mad]

91. Excellent link!

Thank you.

Will PC Mag claim the $17,000 prize?

[Snellius]

92. Focus on the font has ignored the quality of the print

Though the font and spacing seem sophisticated for the period, the poor quality of the printing suggests a mechanical printer like a typewriter. It's difficult to know how many generations the copies went through, but the samples being published would be difficult to emulate on a modern ink-jet or laser printer. The quality of even the worst modern printer is far superior to the crude output of these memos.

[cthrumatrix]

95. of course....it's facts....they run from facts

[allemand]

93. Evidence that the memos were typed on a Selectric Composer

http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/0...

Look at the similarities ! Even the "4" is exactly as it should be. So the typeface can be identified as "Press Roman" (maybe 11-point).

The author of the blog still tries to dismiss the evidence, but the one who provided the example states that he could have reproduced the memos with absolute accuracy:
"Yes, if I had really tried, I could have matched the spacing (leading). The leading on the composer can be finely adjusted. Don't know if it is down to the single point level, but it probably is since you can set the leading according to the font, and the leading dial goes from something like 6pt up to 14pt."

Bouffard now also says that it was done on a Selectric Composer:
"Bouffard, the Ohio document specialist, said that he had dismissed the Bush documents in an interview with The New York Times because the letters and formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database. But Bouffard yesterday said that he had not considered one of the machines whose type is not logged in his database: the IBM Selectric Composer. Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples obtained from Interpol, the international police agency, Bouffard said his view shifted."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/11/a...

[girl gone mad]

94. Oh, I agree.

I think that is some of the best evidence for the docs beong made on a selectric. They are trying to argue that it doesn't match, but it actually matches better than I had hoped it would.

http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html

[John_H]

118. I've already laid this to rest in my mind, but 2 points:

1) notice all these freeper sites either don't mention the Executive Model D or dismiss it simply by saying it nwas never made with the exact same font? My source says the font (he named it in passing, but I can't remember it) is similar enough so as to be indistinguishable in a document photocopied several times. \

2) The IBM composer guy tells the page author several times that he could have gotten closer to the original if he adjusted his machine differently, which tells me that each composer was probably "set up" differently. The author of that site uses that fact to say the document is different from the CBS document. But guess what? On every major criterion the docs are identical.

Bonus point: If I were going to forge a document--I might spend 25 bucks at a junk shop to get a 1968 selectric. How about you?

[girl gone mad]

119. The second line..

doesn't match because he left out a comma (After May).

Some of the other inaccuracies in the match up might have to do with something I read in a post on Slashdot. The poster was an experienced typist who said that his or her first impression upon seeing the documents was that they were created on a typewriter which had not been properly serviced. The poster stated that the Selectric required frequent, complicated adjustments to produce perfect results, and that judging by the unevenness of the letters at the baseline, whoever owned the typesetting machine probably did not have a maintenance contract with IBM.

[Protected]

103. It also might have been typed on an Executive Model D

Check out this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x792773

[allemand]

108. Does the Executive Model D also have a typeface with a closed "4"?

I am already very glad that we found one model that is able to reproduce the memos (and better than any MS-Word ever could).
Two would be wonderful, of course.

[John_H]

117. I'll call my guy back mon. AM, although he didn't

seem pleased anotherasshole was calling him anbout the memo, instead of buying a ribbon for the old carona.

Could it be possible that the closed 4 is a result of the repeated copying?

[reprehensor]

107. Nice.