LiLSpeedy's Blog

5 Wacky Myths about Obama

by Tom Murse

Updated March 18, 2017

 

If you believe everything you read in your email inbox, Barack Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya who is ineligible to serve as U.S. president and he even charters private jets at taxpayer expense so the family dog Bo can go on vacation in luxury.

And then there is the truth.

No other modern president, it seems, has been the subject of so many outrageous and malicious fabrications.

The myths about Obama live on through the years, mostly in chain emails forwarded endlessly across the Internet, despite being debunked over and over again.

Here is a look at five of the silliest myths about Obama:

1. Obama is Muslim.

False. He is a Christian. Obama was baptized at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988. And he has spoken and written often about his faith in Christ.

"Rich, poor, sinner, saved, you needed to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away - because you were human," he wrote in his memoir, "The Audacity of Hope."

"... Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth," Obama wrote.

And yet nearly one in five Americans - 18 percent - believe Obama is a Muslim, according to an August 2010 survey conducted by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

They are wrong.

2. Obama Nixes National Day of Prayer

Numerous widely circulated emails claim President Barack Obama refused to recognize the National Day of Prayer after taking office in January of 2009.

"Oh Our wonderful president is at it again .... he has cancelled the national day of prayer that is held at the white house every year .... sure glad I wasn't fooled into voting for him!" one email begins.

That's false.

Obama issued proclamations setting the National Day of Prayer in both 2009 and 2010.

"We are blessed to live in a Nation that counts freedom of conscience and free exercise of religion among its most fundamental principles, thereby ensuring that all people of goodwill may hold and practice their beliefs according to the dictates of their consciences," Obama's April 2010 proclamation read.

"Prayer has been a sustaining way for many Americans of diverse faiths to express their most cherished beliefs, and thus we have long deemed it fitting and proper to publicly recognize the importance of prayer on this day across the Nation.

3."Obama Uses Taxpayer Money to Fund Abortions

Critics claim that the health care reform law of 2010, or Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, includes provisions that make up the broadest expansion of legalized abortion since Roe v. Wade.

"The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million in federal tax funds, which we've discovered will pay for insurance plans that cover any legal abortion," Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said in a widely circulated statement in July 2010.

Wrong again.

The Pennsylvania Insurance Department, responding to claims that federal money would fund abortions, issued a stern rebuttal to anti-abortion groups.

"Pennsylvania will - and has always intended to - comply with the federal ban on abortion funding in the coverage provided through our federally funded high risk pool," the Insurance Department said in a statement.

In fact, Obama signed an executive order banning the use of federal money to pay for abortion in the health care reform law on March 24, 2010.

If the state and federal governments stick to their words, it does not appear taxpayer money will pay any part of abortions in Pennsylvania or any other state.

4. Obama Was Born in Kenya

Numerous conspiracy theories claim that Obama was born in Kenya and not Hawaii, and that because he was not born here he was not eligible to serve as president. The silly rumors grew so loud, however, that Obama released a copy of his certificate of live birth during the presidential campaign in 2007.

"Smears claiming Barack Obama doesn't have a birth certificate aren't actually about that piece of paper - they're about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen," the campaign said.

"The truth is, Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in 1961, a native citizen of the United States of America."

The documents prove he was born in Hawaii. Though some believe the records are phony.

5. Obama Charters Plane for the Family Dog

Uh, no.

PolitiFact.com, a service of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, managed to track down the source of this ridiculous myth to a vaguely worded newspaper article in Maine about the first family's vacation in the summer of 2010.

The article, about the Obamas visiting Acadia National Park, reported: "Arriving in a small jet before the Obamas was the first dog, Bo, a Portuguese water dog given as a present by the late U.S. Sen Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and the president's personal aide Reggie Love, who chatted with Baldacci.

Some folks, eager to jump on the president, mistakenly believed that meant the dog got its own personal jet. Yeah, really.

"As the rest of us toil on the unemployment line, as millions of Americans find their retirement accounts dwindling, their hours at work cut, and their pay scale trimmed, King Barack and Queen Michelle are flying their little doggie, Bo, on his own special jet airplane for his own little vacation adventure," one blogger wrote.

The truth?

The Obamas and their staffer traveled in two small planes because the runway where they landed was too short to accommodate Air Force One.

So one plane carried the family. The other carried the Bo the dog - and lots of other people.

The dog did not have its own private jet.

 

 

The violent white supremacists that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, are real, actual Nazis, as Godwin himself—an attorney who served as the first staff counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation—is quick to admit. But this is the US, not Germany. It’s the 21st century, and Adolf Hitler is dead. So what does it mean to be an American Nazi in 2017 - 18?

There are neo-Nazi organizations in the US, including the National Socialist Movement (formerly the American Nazi Party). But you don’t have to be a member to qualify as a modern-day Nazi. In fact, white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, and white nationalists are all effectively Nazis, regardless of whether or not they choose to go by that name, according to Federico Finchelstein, a professor of history at the New School for Social Research whose work focuses on the relationship between populism and fascism. That’s because all of these groups exhibit the fundamental traits of Nazism—chiefly racism, anti-Semitism, and the glorification of political violence.

“In colloquial terms there is a tendency to identify a type of far right [politics] with fascism and Nazism,” says Finchelstein. “But when we are seeing those marching in Virginia, including the terrorist associated with them, these are Nazis, or neo-Nazis, as they base their thinking in the resuscitation of a failing doctrine.”

The first goal of neo-Nazis is to push the agenda of white supremacy, says Finchelstein. This agenda is closely linked to their idealization of America’s horrific past.

“Their self-declared goal is to return to an America that they identify with, one that is racist,” says Finchelstein. Just as Hitler’s propaganda relied heavily upon nostalgia for German’s pastoral landscapes and small villages, and Benito Mussolini idealized the Roman empire, American Nazis look to the US before the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

American Nazis also want violence. In Charlottesville, observers noted that it was nearly impossible to distinguish militia members from law enforcement. Neo-Nazis view the possession and display of weapons as deeply patriotic. Though paramilitary force is intrinsic to fascism, in the US, guns and ammunition can be portrayed and defended as an expression of constitutional rights.

Their end game is that of all Nazi-fascist movements: To destroy democracy and impose a regime based on racism, discrimination, and xenophobia. That said, white supremacists may participate in the democratic process whenever it’s convenient to their goal—just as Nazis did in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, where dictators were first voted into office.

To achieve that goal, Nazis need a leader who can give the movement real political power. They do not yet have one. Former KKK leader David Duke and white supremacist Richard Spencer are prominent in the racist movement, but neither has enough political credentials to lend power to the fascist cause.

Many Nazis support Trump. However, Finchelstein characterizes Trump not as a Nazi himself but as “an authoritarian, xenophobic leader elected with neo-Nazi support.”

Trump’s slowness to condemn white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as his comment that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville march, suggests that—remarkably for an American president—he does not want to alienate these groups. But he has not gone so far as to explicitly align himself with them. And the Nazis seem to think that while he has some desirable traits as a leader, he is ultimately too soft. As one of the white supremacist told Vice in an interview, what they might want is “somebody like Donald Trump, but who does not give his daughter to a Jew,” someone “a lot more racist than Donald Trump.”

People — Dave Quinn

news now The Associated Press

 

The people say Trump questioned why the U.S. would want to admit more people from "<snip>hole countries." They say Trump said the U.S. should allow more immigrants from places like Norway.

Adolf Hitler was a proponent of the concept of the Aryan race and Aryanism. He viewed the Nordic racial subtype as being at the top of the racial hierarchy within the Aryan race. He also said he would make Germany great again. Sound familiar.

Many of the ideas expressed by Trump is taken from the Nazi play book of Adolf Hitler. He viewed the people of the Nordic race as superior to other races. Hitler tried to eliminate non-German people by mass extermination, bka, the Holocaust. Whereas, Trump is doing the same thing using the immigration system. The statement that Trump used against a mass of people is the real Trump. Trump is a 71 years old bigot with Aryan values. Trump's attempt to make America White Again will fail. It has zero probability.

news now The Associated Press — By JILL COLVIN - Associated Press

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 6 Jan 2014

We are experiencing the coldest weather in more than two decades-most people never remember anything like this. GLOBAL WARMING anyone?                                                                                               3:19 PM - 6 Jan 2014

President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday that "we could use a little bit of that good old global warming" in response to the bitter cold hitting the East Coast this week, but seems to confuse weather with climate.

Trump in an attempt to be funny and sarcastic about Climate Change made a complete AZZ of himself by not knowing the difference between Climate and Weather. As you can see from the 6 Jan 2014 tweet, this was not the first time that he made an asinine tweet about global warming. So that others will not be ignorant of weather and climate, as a retired teacher, with a master’s degree in Mathematics and Science, I am going to supply you with a very easy to understand definition of both.

What is weather: the state of the atmosphere with respect to heat or cold, wetness or dryness, calm or storm, clearness or cloudiness. Look at your i-phone, smart phone, whatever and press or swipe weather. Weather is the condition of the atmosphere NOW. Ex. Decatur—sunny, 28degrees, north wind 6mph

What is climate: the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation. climatologist: a scientist who studies climate (= general or long-term weather conditions).

 

 

                 IGNORANCE IS BLISS