A Brief History

On May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that US Navy SEAL’s had raided the lair of Osama bin Laden, master terrorist, and killed him, finally achieving some justice for the victims of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. The Bush administration had failed to find bin Laden despite tough talk and grandiose threats, yet former vice president Dick Cheney among others has opined that President Obama is soft on terrorism. Here is a list of ridiculous statements about Barack Obama that are either untrue or in terribly poor taste.

10. Obama’s mother’s first name is Stanley.



Yes, this one is true, but it is still ridiculous! Her full name was Stanley Ann Dunham. (No word if she was called Stosh for short.)

9. Obama wants the government to take over health care.



The Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, was passed by congress as a compromise, incorporating many of the suggestions and demands of Republican lawmakers. The main point of the act was to get the several million uninsured people in this country to buy affordable insurance so that the rest of us would not have to foot the bill when they ended up in the hospital. Totally unlike the universal “socialized” medicine in Europe and Canada, Obamacare does not affect the vast majority of Americans and is actually a huge disappointment to liberals that wanted government health care.

8. Obama is a Communist, Obama is a Nazi.



These two statements are almost too stupid to be worth noting, but you do hear them, especially the communist/socialist line. Much to the displeasure of liberal democrats, President Obama has proven to be far less liberal than the progressive wing of the Democratic party had hoped he would be.

7. Obama is soft on terrorism.



Osama bin Laden does not agree with this ridiculous statement. As of 2012, Obama had authorized 6 times the amount of drone strikes in Pakistan alone over George W. Bush, and has been criticized by liberals for his lavish use of drones in that country, as well as Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Obama also did not hesitate to authorize the killing of Somali pirates that had hijacked a ship with Americans in the crew.

6. Obama gave free money to the banks via “the stimulus.”



The massive bailout known as The Stimulus was passed before Barack Obama became president and was signed by then President George W. Bush. How this particular myth persists is amazing.

5. Obama is going to take your guns.



He may well want to, but with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and over half of the senate averse to stricter gun control it just cannot happen. The incredible increase in sales of guns and ammunition starting from the time Obama was running for president to the present is absolutely amazing. (By the way, despite the enormous increase in the amount of private ownership of guns and the proliferation of concealed carry permits, gun violence is actually down, not up.)

4. Obama was born in Kenya.



Despite showing his birth certificate, both the one issued to his mother and the one kept in Honolulu’s archives, people still believe Obama was not born in Hawaii. An alleged Kenyan birth certificate surfaced that showed he was born in that country was quickly proven to be a forgery, especially since at the time of his birth Kenya was not an independent country yet! The idea that somehow Obama’s parents knew he would run for president (think of how things were in 1960) and put a false birth notice in the Honolulu newspaper is preposterous beyond description.

3. Obama is a Muslim.



Because of his name (Barack Hussein Obama) and the fact that he lived for 4 years in Indonesia, the myth that Obama is Islamic has persisted. Flat out lies about him attending Islamic classes in Indonesia (madrassa Islamic school) of course fanned the flames. Claiming to be a Christian, Obama was raised without religion with his father an ardent atheist and his mother and step father taking no part of religion and looking down on the institution. Even his maternal grandparents were non-religious. While running for president in 2008, Obama showed complete ignorance of what sort of sermons went on in the Christian church he supposedly attended. Not only is Barack Obama not a Muslim, it is questionable if he adheres to any religion.

2. Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize.



Not all ridiculous things said about President Obama are negative. In this case, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize before he even had a chance to conduct any peaceful actions, seemingly in anticipation of what was assumed would be big steps toward peace on Earth. (The panel that votes on the prize denies this.) Little did the peace-niks know President Obama would greatly escalate the use of drones to attack unsuspecting targets including in countries we are not at war with and increasing the “surge” in Iraq by sending an additional 20,000 US troops to fight there. Obama also sent US warplanes on airstrikes against Libyan government forces in 2011, intervening in the Libyan Civil War.

1. Barack the Magic Negro.



We have no way of knowing if President Obama has any magical powers, although it is true that he is half African-American (ie. Negro). A song by this title was made for the Rush Limbaugh Show and was sent out on CD by a candidate for Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The incredibly poor taste and low class demonstrated by this song (to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon) is remarkable when you consider that a man vying for the top political position of one of the 2 major political parties of the United States unashamedly saw fit to promulgate such insensitive and inflammatory music.

Question for students (and subscribers): What would you include in this list? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.

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Historical Evidence

For more information, please see…

Obama, Barack and Mitt Romney. Misconceptions About Candidates. Speechworks, 2012.