Yesterday I received a letter with a certificate made out to my late father thanking him for his military service. He was a WWII era veteran. The certificate bears Barack Obama’s signature, or a facsimile thereof.
The certificate is on dapple gray card stock. The signature appears in a thick black pen, like a Sharpie, so there are no subtle changes in pressure or ink flow. But it didn’t bleed through the paper.
What do you think?
BTW the timing is weird because he left the service in the 1960’s and died October 2007. So I don’t know why I’m getting this now.
No way would Obama have the time to sign shit like that. Under special circumstances he might actually personally sign a letter. Almost all the time they use a signing machine.
You might research the document itself. Somebody might have posted an on-line copy of their certificate (it sounds like a fairly impersonal mass-mailed document from your description, though I don’t think I’d call it “shit like that”) and compare the signatures. If they’re exactly identical, you’ve got a signing machine artifact.
I agree it’s exceedingly unlikely that the President would have either time or stamina to sign all such documents. The congressman I once worked for used an autopen for virtually all his correspondence, and he only had a single district to worry about.
Good idea. I didn’t find any signed by Obama but there a lot of older ones. I quickly found three signed by Bush with absolutely identical signatures, so it is mass mailed and not signed. It’s decent quality with a gold embossed eagle, but I have no idea what I’m going to do with this.
I got a form from the State Department a few weeks ago. Signed by Hilary herself. I think that office does at least a couple of hundred documents a day, so she must be due for some RSI real soon.
“You know, people have asked me, 'When did it hit you that you are now president?”’ he said. “And what I told them was the most sobering moment is signing letters to the families of our fallen heroes. It reminds you of the responsibilities that you carry in this office and the consequences of the decisions that you make.”
It seems to indicate that Obama does in fact sign letters to the families of deceased members of the military. I presume that refers to those currently serving, though. And it doesn’t explicitly rule out the possible use of a signing machine.
JFK was notorious for using an autopen, but I read (I think in one of the William Manchester books) that he took the time to write a brief note to the next of kin of every U.S. servicemember killed in action during his administration.
I saw a letter signed by GHW Bush to the family of a deceased government worker. He died quietly in retirement after a colorful career. Most of it unofficial. There was a brief handwritten note which doesn’t seem strange given GHW’s previous employment history.
