More Theories About Obama's Birth Certificate

More Theories About Obama's Birth Certificate

John T. Reed thinks that Obama's birth certificate might be withheld because the name is embarrassing:

[P]erhaps because his first name was Barry and/or there was no Hussein middle name. Both Obama senior and junior went by the name Barry in the U.S. Obama, Jr. apparently started using Barack either to use affirmative action to get into Occidental and Columbia or to get street cred as a black guy in the South Side of Chicago when he moved there to start his political career. Hussein would also contribute to black street cred. Obama has admitted using the name Barry until adulthood when he started calling himself Barack. The implication has always been that Barack was his birth certificate name. Revelation that his birth certificate name was “Barry” would reveal that his claiming to be named Barack is simply false and apparently chosen with no basis whatsoever for affirmative action purposes and electoral politics advantage.

I'm hard pressed to see how "Barry" to "Barack" would help from an affirmative action standpoint: race is what matters, not having a foreign sounding name. But I can see another reason why he might have restyled himself as "Barack Hussein Obama." You know the song, "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off"? Vulgar. But at least when I was in college (and I'm just a bit older than Obama), having an exotic name, background, and appearance was at least as useful as tequila with spoiled rich white college girls--and I wouldn't be surprised if the same strategy worked with spoiled rich black college girls.

One of my readers also points to a possible explanation for Hawaiian newspaper birth announcements of Obama's birth that doesn't require extraordinarily long range planning. Anyone in 1961 who seriously thought that a black kid was going to grow up to be President would need their head examined--unless, of course, they also arranged for all the social change of the period as well. That's long range planning and organization that belongs in a paranoid novel, not the real world.

I lived in Texas for some years. Remember the 1986 amnesty bill? If a Mexican illegal could prove that he had lived in the US for 5 years, then he would be granted amnesty and quick citizenship.

Well, there was a brisk trade in "documents" that would enable an illegal who'd lived here less than five years to "prove" that he had lived/worked here more than five years. They all got citizenship.

Also, if an American citizen Mexican-American was in Mexico when his child was born, he'd call the states and have someone put a birth announcement in the paper. Then later find a cooperative midwife to "swear" that is was a home birth and get a birth certificate issued.

The same holds true for American expatriates.

Anne Dunham was part of the expat community and had access to the collective knowledge of the expat community. She would want her son to have American citizenship (if he was born in Kenya) -- would know enough to call home and have a couple birth announcements published. She could worry about the birth certificate later. But maybe "later" never came....

There are women who cross into the U.S. from Mexico to have "anchor babies." I would think that even in 1961, it would be obvious that being born in the U.S. would have benefits over being born in Kenya. Admittedly, Obama's mother was only a teenager--but a very smart teenager, who later went to get a Ph.D.