Obama tourism isn’t limited to Kenya

Several companies are offering Obama tours as reported by WhyGo Hawaii. And yes, the tours include: the “Kapiolani Medical Center (place of Obama’s birth).”

However, in a place that is already a major tourist destination like Oahu, there has been a veritable onslaught of Obama based tourism.

There are now several different operators offering up tours of Obama’s Hawaii—from the places he most recently stayed during his 11-day vacation to the islands in January to the ice cream shop he worked in as a teenager….

Michelle Obama was quoted saying, “You can’t really understand Barack until you understand Hawaii” and for those looking to better understand Hawaii and the President can check out these various Obama tours in Hawaii.

And they name the hospital where President Obama was born!

Unlike any other web site in Kenya, this one breaks the code of silence and defies top secret government gag orders to name the hospital where President Barack Obama was born, and it was not the Coast General Hospital in Mombasa. Here’s what they say:

Obama was born at Kapi’olan Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii to Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Senior. His father was a Luo from Nyang’oma, Kogelo Nyanza province in Kenya. His parents met in 1960 while attending the University of Hawaii in Manoa, where his father was a foreign student….

In our efforts to introduce the world to the original home of the worlds most powerful President, we have designed a 7 Days six nights safari to the most preferred destinations in Kenya while combining the safari with a visit to Kogelo – the home of Barack Obama’s father to see for yourself the original roots of the world’s President number one.

The safari will take you to Lake Nakuru, recently re- branded as birdwatchers paradise then visit Africa’s largest fresh water Lake Victoria from where you will visit Kogelo for two nights. You shall wind up your safari by touring Masai Mara, that was recently crowned the seventh wonder of the world.

Sometimes I really love this hobby.

They are living in denial. In America they are equated to lunatics, but their push to drop anything credible to force President Obama out of office includes forgery in the land of Obama’s father.

The group — the birthers — are the fringe “lunatics” who insist Obama is not a natural-born citizen — a US constitutional requirement for the presidency.

… the birth certificate purporting Mr Obama was born in Kenya differs with genuine certificates issued in the early 1960s, the Nation can reveal.

Certificates issued during the colonial period were marked “Colony and Protectorate of Kenya”. Today’s have the logo of the Government of Kenya, with a seal.

The Daily Nation: Obama enemies’ bid to stain the audacity of hope

Fringe foes of Barack Obama are again turning to Kenya in what appears to be increasingly desperate attempts to discredit the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.

The latest lines of attacks include a lawsuit charging that Senator Obama was born in Kenya and is thus disqualified from seeking the presidency on the grounds that he is not a US citizen.

The Standard: Say what may, Obama is Kogelo’s son ruling the greatest nation on earth

Following my article last week on whether Barack Obama deserved to get the Nobel Peace Prize, my inbox was inundated with emails from American readers seeking to know whether I have proof that Obama was really born in Kenya.

If he was born in Kenya, they theorise, he is therefore not entitled to claim American citizenship and the presidency of the United States.

I could not help laughing at those emails, most displaying a naivetÈ and lack of understanding of this sentence from last week’s article: “It seems Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America (via a sleepy village in Kenya called Nyang’oma K’Ogelo) can do no wrong.”

To all the skeptics out there, here is one inescapable fact. There was a Barack Hussein Obama born in Kenya. He is the father of your president. He was a black man from black Africa. The name and the person Barack Hussein Obama Sr, came from a sleepy village in Kenya called Nyang’oma Kogelo.

And here is another inescapable truth: the fact that Barack Hussein Obama Jr was born in Hawaii …

The Nation: Kogelo big attraction for land buyers and business owners

According to the general manager of Mombasa based tourist firm, Kenya Easy Safaris, Mr Jones Skipper, since Mr Obama was elected US president, he, Mr Skipper had received numerous inquiries from tourists who want to visit Nyang’oma Kogelo.

“Right now I have two tourists from Poland who want to go to Kogelo and see where Mr Obama’s father was born,” he said.

The area is likely to attract more tourists to the western Kenya tourism circuit because of the association of the village to the American president-elect.

“Because of Mr Obama’s world-wide popularity, he can easily make Nyang’oma Kogelo a major tourist destination,” Mr Skipper said.

Hmmm, I wonder if the Kenyan Ambassador to the US had been reading that…

I wanted to put these results in perspective with my own Obama Conspiracy Theories poll. This poll was made of 10 people randomly selected from my workplace on June 30, 2010. I think all the respondents were college graduates.

Asked the open ended question: “in which state was President George W. Bush born,” only 20% believed the official story that he was born in Connecticut! A full 50% picked Texas. New York and New Hampshire were other states mentioned.

It looks like to me we’ve been asking for the wrong birth certificate.

I have a more interesting challenge

Let’s go back to Apuzzo’s “Catalog of doubts.” I would suggest that either the Catalog is a smear, pure and simple–full of intentionally misleading statements, lies and prejudicial verbal trickery, or it is a sincerely presented collection of what is believed to be trustworthy information, contextually accurate, and fairly interpreted. Let’s assume for the rest of this discussion that the latter is the case.

Since Mr. Apuzzo raised the issue of birthplace, let’s focus there. I want to work from two items in the Catalog, the statement of “Kweli Shuhubia” (1) and the statement of the Kenyan ambassador to the US  in a radio interview (3). (The quotation marks are because Shuhubia is not the fellow’s real name.)

Taking the pseudonymous Shuhubia as a source of “trustworthy information” we look at the statement from him that was filed in the Berg v. Obama lawsuit (Page 3): “I left Kisumu City and traveled to Mombosa, Kenya. I interviewed personnel at the hospital in which Senator Obama was born in Kenya.” So, based on our starting assumption, attorney Mario Apuzzo believes this to be trustworthy information (there’s no issue of context or interpretation in this straightforward statement), and he trusts that President Obama was born in a hospital in the city of Mombosa, Kenya. (I don’t know why Shuhubia spelled it that way.)

The second item is the Ambassador’s comment to radio station WRIF, quoted by Mr. Apuzzo (not an exact quote but assumed to be “contextually accurate”): ““President-Elect Obama” was born in Kenya and that his birth place was already a “well-known” attraction;”

One may logically combine these Catalog items to say:

President Obama was born in a Mombosa, Kenya hospital, and his birthplace there is a well-known attraction.

Now, here is the challenge. I can show two Honolulu newspapers that for whatever reason make the assertion that Barack Obama was born in what is now called the Kapi’olani Medical Center there in Honolulu, Hawaii. I challenge Mr. Apuzzo to find two Kenyan  newspapers that name the hospital where President Obama was born in Kenya or describe the “well known” attraction at that hospital. (They don’t even have to agree as to which hospital.)

Rather than asking for someone to dig back almost 50 years for irrelevant trivia, let’s see if Mr. Apuzzo can find some modern reporting about what in his own words is a “well-known attraction” in Kenya.

Here are my two Hawaiian newspaper articles:

• The Honolulu Advertiser¹
• The Star Bulletin

As a starter, here are some Kenyan news web sites:

• The Daily Nation
• The  Standard
• AllAfrica.com
• Afrol News

# Aug. 4, 1961: Obama is born at the old Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital, now called Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children, to a white University of Hawai’i student from Kansas named Stanley Ann Dunham and a black UH economics student from Kenya named Barack H. Obama.