August 29, 2012

The weirdest thing in "Barack Obama: The Story"

The weirdest thing in David Maraniss's highly respectable biography Barack Obama: The Story is that the veteran Washington Post reporter does not appear utterly convinced, after years of research, that President Barack Obama Jr. is the biological son of Barack Obama Sr. 

I wasn't sure if I actually believed that Maraniss was hinting that he's not completely confident in Obamas paternity until I saw that in James Fallow's review of Maraniss's book in the New York Time that the prominent Atlantic journalist picks up and retransmits Maraniss's dog whistle:
(Grandfather Stanley, with his long face and big ears, is also the forebear with the most striking physical resemblance to Barack Obama; the president looks almost nothing like his African father.)

Fallows likes interesting ideas and he also likes being an establishmentarian journalist. This is a well-played dog whistle that a tiny number of New York Times readers will pick up on, while also maintaining completely plausible deniability that he hasn't had the slightest unorthodox thought in the direction of any kind of oddball birtherism.

Maraniss has various governmental records of the marriage, and even a new third party confirmation that "Stanley had a baby" as a doctor at the hospital laughed a few days later at lunch. But he points out repeatedly that almost nobody can remember ever seeing the couple together, before or after marriage. The main witness to seeing them together in the book is Obama Sr.'s college friend Neil Abercrombie, the current Democratic governor of Hawaii, whom Maraniss doesn't appear to trust. 

Maraniss can find zero evidence that the couple ever lived together. He says that Stanley Ann was in Seattle to attend the U. of Washington within a month of the August 1961 birth, without her mother but with the baby, which I'd heard before but still sounds screwy to me. We have long had a witness, a lady who took care of Barack Jr. in Seattle during the Spring 1962 semester, and we've had Stanley Ann's grades from Fall 1961, so I guess it fits.

This raises obvious questions about Obama's career-launching 2004 convention keynote address that starts out talking about his parents' "improbable love." 

In general, most of Maraniss's new revelations of sizable falsehoods in Obama's works can't really be blamed on Obama, since they stem from before he can remember. He writes, for example, that his parents were together for two years, but you can't really blame him for getting wrong facts from his infancy. He comes from a long line of people who like a good story and don't mind spin. You'll notice that Obama often puts a little skeptical spin of his own on stories passed down to him: everybody listening to that speech took "improbable love" to mean that, awwwwwww, it's just amazing that two people from the opposite ends of the earth fell so deeply in love with each other and tried to make a life together. But, Obama is also not ruling out that what he was told was a crock: Hey, I told you all it was "improbable," didn't I? Likewise, in Dreams he says he was assured that his parents were married in February 1961, but that he's never had the heart to look into it. 

In general, Obama does not like to tell baldfaced lies, especially when some lawyerly language would accomplish the task almost as well.

What do I think? I dunno.  I'll have to go through and copy out Maraniss's relevant passages and think about this. 

Maraniss hypothesizes that maybe they tried living together and Obama Sr. punched out Stanley Ann like he beat Ruth, his next American wife, so Stanley Ann bolted.

One way to look into this paternity questions would be to look at pictures of Obama's presumed half siblings, such as Mark, his half-Jewish half-brother. Mark seems to look enough like Barack Jr. to me to not set off my alarms, but I don't claim to be an expert at family resemblances.

The youngest Obama half-brother is George Obama, who is all East African. He is interviewed in Dinesh D'Souza's new movie (reviewed by me here.) In the movie, George's posture looks strikingly like a jet black, super elongated, somewhat District 9-like version of Obama. On the other hand, George could just be imitating the President's famous look-how-comfortable-I-am-in-my-own-skin body language.

The various non-Obama Sr paternity theories that have been floating around (Frank Marshall Davis! Malcolm X! etc.) don't do much for me. So, I'll think about it some more.

In general, uncertainty of paternity doesn't sound like it really ought to matter. There was some uncertainty regarding Gerald Ford, who only talked to his biological dad once for 15 minutes, and there are lots of theories, but not much proof, about whom Bill Clinton's real father might be.

But Obama's birth, uniting the two warring tribes in one flesh, one blood, as he implies in  is his keynote address always dabbled deeply in the mythic, in what my son the comic book fan calls the trope of the "orphan of destiny," of the son who isn't sure who is father is, like, say, Luke Skywalker.

71 comments:

dearieme said...

I'd still like to know what O is hiding about his birth. I give no credence to the rubbish about his having been born in Kenya, but the bugger's hiding something. What?

Anonymous said...

If Barack now knows [with some certainty] that Frank Marshall Davis is indeed his biological father, then it would go a long way towards explaining why he's never given Mark or George so much as the time of day.

Similarly, to the best of my knowledge, Bill Clinton never made contact with his ostensible half-brother, Henry Leon Ritzenthaler, which suggests to me that Virginia Kelley may have told him about his true parentage.

On the other hand, maybe the reason these guys don't seek out their [ostensible] half-brothers is because they're so consumed by hyper-narcissism that they just don't give a damn.

Anonymous said...

The theory that makes the most sense to me is Stanley getting pregnant by the married Davis and her father prevailing upon one of the few blacks on the island to marry her to give the baby a name.

B van Sandt said...

Silly statement by Fallows. Obama looks nothing like a white person. Black looks are so dominant that Obama would always identify and be considered by others as black.

The most interesting story about Obama to emerge is that he did drugs nearly ever day for around 6 years. He said he did about everything "except heroin." Does this mean he was smoking crack too?

It's nearly comical that this loser is president.

sunbeam said...

I don't understand what you are driving at.

What you write sounds reasonable, and might be true.

But what exactly is the relevance?

I'm sure some people think being born out of wedlock or something puts some kind of moral smear on you that affects your behavior the rest of your life.

I could care less.

You can't confirm or disprove any of what you are saying. A dna test could, and Obama could have one done if he wishes. Maybe he has, or maybe he doesn't want to.

It's entirely possible that this is the narrative of himself he wants to believe.

Lot of possibilities. As for it being a marketing tool, come on. This is America. EVERYTHING is a marketing tool, image has trumped reality for a long time.

For example FDR was in the wheelchair, and everyone famously pretended he wasn't. Kennedy was supposed to have youthful vigor, when in actuality he had a debilitating back condition and liked his little treats from the doctor (how the man managed his extracurriculars, I don't know).

If you wish, I'll gladly find some tidbits like this on Republican presidents. None pop into mind, but I know, as surely as gravity exists I will find them.

Heck I'll lay odds 50/50 that somewhere out there is a web site devoted to speculating which US Presidents may have been born illegitamately or who were the products of an affair.

LeRon said...

Then there's the question of paternity of this George Obama:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George_obama.png

I'm guessing Bush II is the pitcher and Barack is the catcher here. You can say what you want about Bush, but at least he was more masculine and less metrosexual than Barack.

Anonymous said...

So maybe Stanley Ann didn't like getting punched out eh? That's funny, the idealistic women most willing to go with black men are the least able to take the treatment they mete out. They must go into utter shock at the revelation.

Black dudes won't tolerate the smart backtalk from women that white betas come to expect.

Chicago said...

The drab, commonplace story of having some hit-and-run biological father gets turned inside out and is spun by Obama as being the greatest love story of all time. Myths manufactured according to the needs of the moment seems to be Obama's greatest talent.

Dahlia said...

From whom else could those east African genes come?

James Kabala said...

"third poverty confirmation"

Autocorrect fail, as the kids say these days.

irishman said...

O come off it steve, he is clearly East African. This shines through in appearance, temperment even intellect.

How many east Africans were there in Hawaii in 1960?

It might have been a pro forma marriage but Barack is clearly the father of Barack.

Jim O said...

I give up. What's third poverty confirmation?

Anonymous said...

I give up. What's a third poverty confirmation?

Chuck Ross said...

Speaking of Fallows and slightly OT, I found it interesting that the man used as Obama's doppelganger for The Atlantic cover boxing photo is Hispanic. That's racist or something I think maybe.

Anonymous said...

Might be a good time to dump on BO senior. The convention wants to avoid hard economic realities in favor of hardscrabble stories involving women who were wronged--especially those wronged by raping men--one of whom could have been the skin tone supplier.

Unknown said...

Might be a good time to dump on BO senior. The convention wants to avoid hard economic realities in favor of hardscrabble stories involving women who were wronged--especially those wronged by raping men--one of whom could have been the skin tone supplier.

Anonymous said...

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/

How gop lost the middle class.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2012/08/sdt-2012-08-22-Middle-Class-01-03.png

Thursday said...

George and Barack definitely look alike. Ears, mouth and even the nose. Barack looks less African, of course.

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-08-22/politics/bts.obama.brother_1_half-brother-kenyan-father-barack-obama?_s=PM:POLITICS

Thursday said...

Barack and Mark look pretty alike too. But it is weird how none of them seems to look all that much like Barack Sr.

Anonymous said...

http://beforeitsnews.com/obama/2012/06/bombshell-the-real-reason-barack-obama-and-michele-lost-their-law-license-2288275.html

Dutch Boy said...

The only assurance of one's paternity (absent a DNA test) is the virtue of one's mother. Obama cannot have any such assurance.

Dutch Boy said...

Ditto for Clinton.

Pat Boyle said...

Let me repeat again my observation that presidential birth controversies are not new and indeed the Obama one isn't the biggest.

There was a minor controversy about where Nixon was born but it had no political resonance so it never seemed to get much traction.

The two biggest American political conspiracy theories are probably the Kennedy assassination and the Holocaust Denial. Holocaust Denial is intimately connected to birtherism.

Eisenhower is held by many Holocaust deniers to have been really a Jew born in Austria. This theory has been on the web for at least a decade. It is central to the Holocaust Denial cause because Eisenhower was such firm opponent of Holocaust Denial and he was so trusted as a public figure. You can't really believe in Holocaust Denial and also believe in Eisenhower. One of them had to go.

There are likewise many conspiracy web pages about the birth place of the senior George Bush. He was, we are told, born in Germany. That was because his father Prescott Bush was a Nazi party official. These web sites appear to be well frequented and these topics receive millions of hits on Google. The Eisenhower and Bush birther theories are approximately the same size as the Obama theory and deal with even hotter political issues. Bush was by his birthplace "proven" to be a Nazi. Eisenhower was similarly "proven" to be an anti-Nazi (perhaps a communist?).

I noticed this by accident while just noodling in Google.

The Obama birther conspiracy theory benefits the Obama administration because it brings disrepute onto his political enemies. It is typically cast as a form of racism. But these three birther conspiracies - Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush - are all about respectable white Republicans. Maybe this story can't gain traction because it shatters the Democratic Party's template for birtherism.

Albertosaurus

Paul Mendez said...

Steve -- Have you watched Joel Gilbert's video, "Dreams from my REAL Father"?

It makes a pretty compelling case for Frank Marshall Davis being Obama's real father. I'm not well versed in Obamatrivia, but the physical resemblance between the two men is striking enough all by itself to convince me.

If true, the Davis-as-father story does not make Obama ineligible to be POTUS, but it does strengthen the Obama-as-compulsive-liar meme.

Even if you don't believe Davis is Obama's real father, the video provides a good chronology of Obama's radical youth and how powerful leftists helped him get to where he is today.

Also -- Gilbert provides some photographs that hint that Obama has had a nose job.

Pat Boyle said...

I wonder about the future of book reviews. If I were a book reviewer I might worry about my future career prospects.

When you mentioned this book, I did what I always do, I checked the reader reviews on Amazon. First I look for the shape of the distribution. For most products I want to see a distribution of opinions with a strong skew towards five stars. So if a flashlight or vacuum cleaner has about as many negative as positive reviews - I look elsewhere. I want to buy products where nearly everyone was happy with what they got.

Political books are different. Most tend to have bimodal distributions - a lot of pluses and a lot of minuses. These kind of books seem to generate a lot of fake reviews too. I read a few of the bad reviews to gauge the quality of the reviewers.

You get the point. Nowadays I don't have to rely on the sagacity of just one reviewer. I get a whole survey.

You see something similar in movie reviews with "Rotten Tomatoes". In an earlier day everyone wanted to be Roger Ebert - the Walter Cronkite of movie comment. But now that Ebert is getting old it doesn't look like there will be a replacement. Now I can see a whole range of opinions at once.

There is still room for analysis by an individual but for basic buying guidance the web survey has supplanted the solo reviewer.

Albertosaurus

beowulf said...

Legally, it doesn't matter where Obama was born. His parents weren't really married because Obama Sr. was already married. Under federal law at that time, a single mother regardless of age passed US citizenship to her child.

Birther's have to simultaneously believe Obama Jr. was born in Kenya and that Obama Sr. was not a bigamist to have a case (even then, Obama would have a lock of an equal protection lawsuit that a child of a married US woman should have the same citizenship rights as a child of an unmarried American woman or the child of any US man). Somehow I doubt they think it through that far.

The conspiracy theorists who drive me CRAZY are the sovereign citizen/ "the US is a corporation" folks. Its like there was a contest for the dumbest possible conspiracy theory that morons would believe and this was the winning entry. :o)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cornforth-Strategies/message/23863

Dana Thompson said...

How hard can it be to lay the rumors to rest? Two barbers need to be bribed, that's all. The hair clippings will prove or disprove a match on the Y chromosome.
Likewise, you'd think there might be some barbers employed by the British royal family who are in a position to earn some money on the side.

Anonymous said...

"The theory that makes the most sense to me is Stanley getting pregnant by the married Davis and her father prevailing upon one of the few blacks on the island to marry her to give the baby a name."

A lot of people look nothing like their parents. Just look at Woody Allen's son.
And does Chelsea look like Bill or Hillary?

If Marshall is the real pa, it can easily be proven. Just get a hair or skin cell from Obama and check its DNA and then match it with other kids of Obama Sr.

Anonymous said...

Steve -- Have you watched Joel Gilbert's video, "Dreams from my REAL Father"?

-------------

Birthers used to say Obama was born in Kenya. Now, it's by Frank Marshall. Will they make up their minds already?

Otis McWrong said...

sunbeam said: <<"I don't understand what you are driving at.What you write sounds reasonable, and might be true. But what exactly is the relevance?...I could care less.">>

Yet you still bothered to post a reply.

<>

Please do. Then publish the results on your own blog. Which theoretically should keep you too busy to write 238 word responses to things you "could care" less about (which by the way implies that you do care. You meant that you COULDN'T care less).

Marc B said...

He doesn't have much of a resemblance to Frank Marshall Davis either, but they have almost the exact facial expressions, body positioning and posture. He looks nothing like Barack Obama Sr.

I'm leaning more toward the FMD hypothesis mostly because of that manipulated long form birth certificate he released. There is no way an obvious fake like that would be created unless he was actually born in the USA and could eventually prove it later. He did this to purposely incite skeptics of the official birth story. I edit US government forms in non-writable pdf files at work, and the layers look just like they did on that BS birth certificate.

eah said...

"improbable love"

Uhh, "improbable" my ass, and "love" my ass.

An irresponsible young black man knocked up a 17 y/o kid, which back in them days probably counted as statutory rape in some states, and then abandoned her and the baby. It's not "improbable" because the same thing happens all the time -- check black illegitimacy rates (of course most of the women knocked up and abandoned by black men are black). And that certainly does not look like "love".

Obama is so full of shit.

Anonymous said...

B van Sandt:"Silly statement by Fallows. Obama looks nothing like a white person."

Actually, as many others have observed, Obama does bear a fairly strong resemblance to his White maternal grandfather.


"Black looks are so dominant":False. "Black looks" appear to be dominant to Americans because they have well-developed "Blackdar." They are conditioned to look for any racial "tells" of Blackness and simply ignore White characteristics (e.g., I've actually encountered Americans who hold up half-White Halle Berry as an icon of "Black" beauty).

jody said...

steve dismisses out of hand the idea that the birth documents produced by obama could possibly be fradulent, but is now open to the idea that barack obama senior might not be barack obama junior's father.

wut.

occam's razor steve.

which is more likely? which is the easier thing to fake?

i'm confident the documents they produced are fake. and i'm not a birther. i can believe obama was born on US soil. i'm also 100% convinced he's hiding something. guy was president of the united states for years before producing "evidence". we seriously think he could not have used the vast resources afforded to him by his new position to produce some forgeries? they were bad forgeries too, like everything that comes out of the white house now. bad idea after bad idea.

Paul Mendez said...

George and Barack definitely look alike. . .Barack and Mark look pretty alike too.

They ALL look alike, Thursday. Remember?

Anonymous said...

Dreams from my father. Chin from my mother.

jody said...

"Silly statement by Fallows. Obama looks nothing like a white person. Black looks are so dominant that Obama would always identify and be considered by others as black."

he's clearly part european and is instantly identified as not african whenever he is standing around actual africans. it couldn't be more obvious. americans are used to seeing african americans, who are almost all part european, and aren't that familiar with what pure blooded africans actually look like.

during his 2008 campaign, many african americans repeatedly asked, this guy IS black, right? they were uncertain about him from his appearance and behavior, and had to be reassured continously. this is a topic steve had covered extensively, obama's obsessive drive to prove he is african enough.

next we'll be pretending that austin rivers "looks completely african and would never be mistaken for anything but a zulu tribesman." stand him next to his dad, the boston celtics coach, and they don't look that similar. didn't we just go through this with blake griffin, who has red hair, but his dad is a black as a coal mine at midnight?

probably most freaky are boris becker's kids. and now that dirk nowitzki is engaged to the "swedish" beauty queen (she is very good looking, but LOL she's not swedish), we'll see some odd looking kids for sure. what is crazy: nowitizki and his woman were seen together in july...in kenya. oh noes! more future birther madness?!

Anonymous said...

I'm sure some people think being born out of wedlock or something puts some kind of moral smear on you that affects your behavior the rest of your life. I could care less.

So could I. And I can't understand how or why the child must suffer. The parents, I can see, but the child?

jody said...

"Let me repeat again my observation that presidential birth controversies are not new and indeed the Obama one isn't the biggest."

obama has probably committed identity fraud which is a felony offense. so yes, it's the biggest.

Anonymous said...

It's likely not even Stanley Ann knew who the real father was. That's the American dream for third world students:knocking up wild underaged coeds- on your tax dollars.Suckers.

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/U73ThwR43qg

Anonymous said...

http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/feature-articles/yes-we-must-improve-ourselves-damsels-in-distress/

Anonymous said...

President Obama looks nothing like Obama senior.  I'd say its a 50-50 proposition that Frank Marshall Davis is President Obama's father.  Davis had the opportunity (to impregnate Ann) and if he was the baby daddy, it would've made sense back in the nearly Victorian like era of 1961 to find a stand in father.  Obama Senior was the perfect stand in, as he would be gone in short order.  The fact that noboy with any credibility is around to recall the Obama Dunham relationship is a red flag.  There are plenty of witnesses who knew either Ann Dunham or Obama Senior or both and can't recall ever seeing them toegether.  In fact, we have no evidence that Obama Senior ever laid eyes on Obama Junior as a baby (he returned to Hawaii for a brief period when President Obama was about 10 years old to recover from a drunk driving accident).
 
If President Obama is actually President Davis, it would be a huge story, not least because at some point Obama Junior would've known who his real father was.  And that would mean he was lying beyond the lie he told about his parents being together for the first two years of his life (which he would've known wasn't true at some point). If Obama is really Davis, it raises the other interesting question as to who else knows Obama's secret? 

Mercer said...

The interesting thing to me in your review of the Maraniss book is that Obama hanged out with Pakistanis in college. Who were the Pakistanis? What was their backgrounds? Where are they now? What do they think of Obama's current actions in their country.

Since we are currently bombing Pakistan with drones I think it should interest many people.

Anonymous said...

so in reality it looks like you've all been punked.

isn't america GREAT ?

lulz to the birthers.
Evidently if it wasn't his father , then we have some special choices:

1. An alien Father - Mars or another Galaxy
2. God.

you choose.
either way, you're totally punked !
keep it up, oh uncertain ones.

Anonymous said...

oh i see that you bias...er moderate your comments.

Anonymous said...

Eisenhower is held by many Holocaust deniers to have been really a Jew born in Austria - - - You can't really believe in Holocaust Denial and also believe in Eisenhower. One of them had to go.

I think you are reaching a bit there.

Anonymous said...

Did you quit taking your meds? You've been coherent as truth lately.

not a hacker said...

In an earlier day everyone wanted to be Roger Ebert

I've never gotten a bum steer from Mick LaSalle.

hbd chick said...

i can't see that barack looks anything at all like mark obama, but i think there are similarities between barack and george. the way george is smiling here -- the eyes and the expression around the eyes -- very barack.

Carol said...

"http://beforeitsnews.com/obama/2012/06/bombshell-the-real-reason-barack-obama-and-michele-lost-their-law-license-2288275.html"


I dunno, I would surrender my license in a heartbeat if I didn't need it for my job. My employer pays the dues, but you have to sit through these gawdawful continuing ed sessions. Why on earth would someone holding higher office keep going to CLE every year?

Seems like the Obamas had bigger fish to fry.

beowulf said...

"There was a minor controversy about where Nixon was born but it had no political resonance so it never seemed to get much traction."

Really, what's the story on that? Couldn't find anything about it on the googlebot, I did find more counter-intuitive evidence of Richard Nixon, civil rights pioneer ("In 1854, when Richard's grandfather, Franklin Milhous, was six years old, the family moved west again, to Jennings County, Indiana. The family was abolitionist, and the farm was a way station on the Underground Railroad.")
http://www.amazon.com/Nixon-Vol-Education-Politician-1913-1962/dp/product-description/067152836X

Anonymous said...

Steve,
You refer to him as "Barack Obama Jr."
According to the released birth document the man is named "Barack Hussein Obama II".
There is a substantial difference between "Jr." and "II".
"Jr." is supposed to be the biological son. "II" can be uncles, brothers or ?????

Anonymous said...

"So could I. And I can't understand how or why the child must suffer. The parents, I can see, but the child?"


American compassion has led to society of bastards.

Anonymous said...

On the other hand, maybe the reason these guys don't seek out their [ostensible] half-brothers is because they're so consumed by hyper-narcissism that they just don't give a damn.

If I thought for a micro-second that I had any honest-to-goodness half-brothers or half-sisters out there, then I'd walk over broken glass to make contact with them, and you can be dadgum certain that I wouldn't allow one of them to live in a mud hut with a cardboard roof.

Furthermore, if there were any doubt whatsoever as to my paternity, then I'd be following people (paternal candidates) around and picking their bubblegum up off the sidewalk in order to have the DNA tested so as to uncover the truth of the matter.

The very fact that these guys don't seem to give a rat's ass about any of this stuff simply flabbergasts me.

Anon87 said...

OT: So are crops rotting on the vine, or do US farmers eye record profits?

Anonymous said...

"So could I. And I can't understand how or why the child must suffer. The parents, I can see, but the child?"

American compassion has led to society of bastards.


Maybe it has, but please explain to me, using modern Western logic and not ancient Middle Eastern logic, how "a society of bastards" is a bad thing. And while you're at it, please explain why a human being must suffer for the mistakes of his parents, and how that benefits Society.

Anonymous said...

"The very fact that these guys don't seem to give a rat's ass about any of this stuff simply flabbergasts me."

I guess you don't know too many black people then. I worked with six black guys, only two of whom were reasonably sure who their father was, and one of these hadn't seem his dad since he was about twelve years old. Illegitimacy is a way of life in black communities.

Whiskey said...

Birthers feel there is something suspicious about Obama and his birth certificate, because no one trusts him. On much of anything. Reason? Obama lies about pretty much everything, and as Steve noted comes across like a space alien for most Americans.

Did Obama claim foreign birth to gain preferential treatment/loans/scholarships at Harvard/Columbia? He's listed as Kenyan born in his author autobiography for years after writing "Dreams." His birth certificate is never released, just a short form abstraction. Not the real thing. His long form has a lot of problems/errors in the posting on the web. Was it the real thing?

People don't TRUST Obama because he is not trustworthy. The man who knifes his mentor in the back to gain a State Senate seat is not trustworthy. The man who is down home folks-yall with Blacks and condescending college professor with rich Whites is not trustworthy. The man who hangs around rich Pakistanis about whom NOTHING is known is not trustworthy.

By contrast, everything about Bill Clinton was well known. Likely the same iffy background on paternity, a born hustler, but people knew him and his type. A small town shady guy, with typical BIG American appetites.

The weird thing about Obama, is that money does not interest him THAT much. Which comes across in action and words. In notoriously corrupt Chicago/Illinois, he's STILL paying off loans over a decade later? By contrast Denny Hastert of the Republicans left office with over $25 million net worth. That's the REPUBLICANS. Where midwest payoff opportunities are much, MUCH lower.

What's weird and space-alien about Obama is not that he's corrupt, but how little relatively he sipped at the trough. A house to keep Michelle happy. A few million here and there off books and speaking engagements. His personal net worth is what, around $5 million or so?

THAT is weird. People don't understand Obama. He's NOT about the money. He's not about the Cheeseburgers. Or interns. People fundamentally don't understand him, or are afraid they do. He's on a mission from Allah. That's scary.

eah said...

OT (aber immer noch 'Obama-ish')

Obama Honored Fallen SEALs By Sending Their Parents a Form Letter Signed By Electric Pen

A commenter says: The man has no soul.

Uhh, yeah.

Anonymous said...

Obama couldn't jump - or dunk in high school.

East African, not West African

Anonymous said...

"And does Chelsea look like Bill or Hillary?"

The pre-plastic surgery Chelsea looks exactly like Webster Hubbell. Bill Clinton told Juanita Broaddrick that he was sterile from childhood mumps, so Hillary probably got sperm from their friend.

Truth said...

"now that dirk nowitzki is engaged to the "swedish" beauty queen (she is very good looking, but LOL she's not swedish)"

First you are clamoring to be Alison Felix' boyfriend, now Dirk's black wife is "very good looking"?

Is there something you're not telling us Jody?

Anonymous said...

Dirk's old lady: Jessica Olsson

Not Swedish but not too shabby either.

Rev. Right said...

Obama not really being Barack Jr. would explain Sr.'s quick exit out of the picture, although so would the fact of his other marriage.

In any event, Barack Sr. never expressed any interest in his namesake, and only saw him once, in the airport, when he came back to Hawaii not to se his son, but to hook up with old friends.

Anonymous said...

how "a society of bastards" is a bad thing.

High crime, high poverty, all the chicks have scary daddy issues.

Si Tu Disais said...

Steve, probably nothing of substance, but Barack did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit for 30mins.

Too bad you couldn't have asked a few pointed ones eh?

Anonymous said...

I guess you don't know too many black people then. I worked with six black guys, only two of whom were reasonably sure who their father was, and one of these hadn't seem his dad since he was about twelve years old. Illegitimacy is a way of life in black communities.

Two points:

A) I'm talking about both Barack (the clean, articulate one, with the snappy crease in his pants) AND Bill Clinton - two guys who attended HLS and YLS respectively, and who (at least presumably) ought to give a damn about just who their biological fathers were (or were not) and just who their various biological half-brothers and half-sisters are (or are not), and

B) Isn't your complaint PRECISELY why we are all gathered here at iSteve in the first place - because we most assuredly do NOT want to live in a nation where, in any random sample of six men, only maybe two of them have any idea as to who their biological fathers might be - because, as I indicated above, the very idea that such a nation (or even a community within a nation) could possibly exist is, to us, simply flabbergasting?

Anonymous said...

George has a physical resemblance; Mark doesn't but when you watch the CNN video some of the mannerisms are there. Both Mark & Barack were probably adept from youth at picking up the socially approved way of carrying oneself, aka "acting white"

Wanqi said...

"Truth said...
"now that dirk nowitzki is engaged to the "swedish" beauty queen (she is very good looking, but LOL she's not swedish)"

First you are clamoring to be Alison Felix' boyfriend, now Dirk's black wife is "very good looking"?

Is there something you're not telling us Jody?"


You're the one who keeps using the term,"ghey" instead of "gay", which homosexuals do when they are fearful of negative connotations.

Sou you tell us, Truth- projection on your part to assume it about Jody?

Truth said...

"You're the one who keeps using the term,"ghey" instead of "gay", which homosexuals do when they are fearful of negative connotations."

You don't understand; "gay" indicates physical sexual contact between two men or women, "ghey" is just when the strong indication is present, but there is not proof of it, i.e.:

"Will and Grace" was "gay."

The latest "Superman" movie was "ghey."

Get it?

"Sou you tell us, Truth- projection on your part to assume it about Jody?"

OK, bro, I tried to keep it secret on this board for so long now. You were the first one who was able to see through my projection. I am coming out TO THE WORLD today, on Isteve, with your help to reveal that like Jody I am....


...UNQUESTIONABLY ATTRACTED TO BLACK WOMEN!

HAHAHAHAHAHA, SUKKKKKKKKKKKKA! Stay in your own lane, SUNNNN, the SLOW LANE!