Do you realise what you have done?

[Sticks]

Do you realise that America has elected a president whose intitials are

B O

:whistle:


Mind you as my initials spell G A S I am probably a fine one to talk :shifty:

[Jens]

Actually, BHO.

[Sticks]

What does the H stand for?

Oh well, so much for that bit of schoolyard humour :shifty:

[novaderrik]

doesn't he also have a few other middle names, as well?

[novaderrik]

What does the H stand for?

hole on to your hat: it stands for

Hussein
no joke. there is a large chunk of our society that finds this disturbing for some reason...

[Sticks]

It is just B H O

Biographic details (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama)

It just that from the saturation coverage here in the UK, I had never heard he had a middle name, and then when the two initials hit me . . .

[hhEb09'1]

At least it's not D H M O

Wait. B could stand for bi- right? And a single O...

[Jens]

Hussein
no joke. there is a large chunk of our society that finds this disturbing for some reason...

Yes, it's kind of silly that people find it strange. It's quite a common name in the Middle East. I think people find it disturbing because it happened to be used by a certain dictator who is no longer with us, as they say. It's like if people found the name "Jack" disturbing because of the Ripper.

I find myself feeling sorry for people who happen to be born with a name like "Hitler". It's just a name, and they bear no responsibility for what he did, but I think that a person with the name Hitler might find it difficult to be elected to office in many places.

BTW, "Hussein" means "good looking." Seems pretty apt in Obama's case.

[jokergirl]

There is more than one political figure in the middle east with the name Hussein, as well... I'm sure King Hussein was just as annoyed by the associations.
(and he was even earlier than a certain dictator...)

;)

[HenrikOlsen]

FaceBook had a group called "until the election my middle name is also Hussein":)

[apolloman]

whatever the name, I hope he delivers a new or strengthens the old Nasa budget/policy/vision and gets us on course for the moon !!! SOON !!!

I'm not american but feel the US' manned space program belongs to us europeans as well; I would love to be able to live through a second 1960's era and witness those heights again (however I read this morning that even if they did have a budget overhaul, it would improve the current, not so bright, outlook for the constellation program).

How about a new national effort ? Forget Iraq and Afghanistan and lets head back to Fra Mauro or Hadley !!!

[NEOWatcher]

It's like if people found the name "Jack" disturbing because of the Ripper.
But it's still not a good idea to yell a hello to him near an airliner.

[tdvance]

Do you realise that America has elected a president whose intitials are

B O

:whistle:


Mind you as my initials spell G A S I am probably a fine one to talk :shifty:

Yeah, I thought of that--he made it clear he doesn't want his middle name used, so that means he's BO, not BHO!

[Sticks]

Yeah, I thought of that--he made it clear he doesn't want his middle name used, so that means he's BO, not BHO!

Sure
(http://www.unilever.co.uk/ourbrands/personalcare/sure.asp)

[sarongsong]

...Biographic details (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama)......born in...Hawaii...Obama is the first African American to be elected President of the United States...his Kenyan father and white American mother...A linguistic dilemna? :)

[Paracelsus]

Do you realise that America has elected a president whose intitials are

B O

:whistle:


Mind you as my initials spell G A S I am probably a fine one to talk :shifty:

Mine spell P A R, so I must be good at golf. ;)

[Disinfo Agent]

Do you realise that America has elected a president whose intitials are

B O

:whistle:I thought about that every time I saw his intials, but never had the guts to bring it up (plus it seemed so childish). :silenced:

Too late to vote for someone with other initials, now! :razz:

[Donnie B.]

Seems like we always used to refer to Presidents by their 3-letter monograms: FDR, JFK, LBJ, even RMN (to some extent).

Now we're down to just the middle initial: "Dubya".

Does that mean that Obama is doomed to be known as "Aitch"?

[ravens_cry]

Well. . .Dubya's daddy was also president, so it was more clear to refer to the son as Dubya.

[HenrikOlsen]

Or Junior.

[GeorgeLeRoyTirebiter]

So, did John Quincy Adams' contemporaries refer to him as "Q"?

[jrkeller]

I'm not american but feel the US' manned space program belongs to us europeans as well


Canadians, displaced by the shutdown of the Avro Arrow project, played an important role in the early NASA space program.

[Sticks]

Does that mean that Obama is doomed to be known as "Aitch"?

Won't that confuse people

http://www.crimedramatv.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/csi-miami-horatio-caine-su.jpg

And make them think this character is the president? :whistle:

[sarongsong]

Well. . .Dubya's daddy was also president, so it was more clear to refer to the son as Dubya.Film note: Before Oliver Stone's "W.", the French "Being W (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230447/releaseinfo)".

[Ivan Viehoff]

I find myself feeling sorry for people who happen to be born with a name like "Hitler".
Very few people have ever been called precisely "Hitler", and now none will do, at least as an inherited name - unless they choose it.

Adolf's father Alois was born Schicklgruber, but took the name Hitler after his (apparent) stepfather's (possibly true father's) name Heidler; this name has many forms and spellings (his stepfather used several), and Alois took it in the apparently unique form Hitler. Everyone ever called Hitler was descended from Alois. There is also a theory that Heidler's brother, who called himself Huettler, was Alois's true father. Heidler is a common name, and the variant forms such as Heitler and Huettler can still be found.

Alois had many children, but aside from Adolf only one boy and two girls (Paula and Angela) survived infancy. Adolf himself had no children, so far as can be told. His half-brother Alois Jr emigrated to Britain and married an Irishwoman, giving birth to William Patrick Hitler. The marriage split up, and Alois returned to Germany where he had a son, Heinz Hitler, by a second wife; Heinz and Alois Jr did not survive the war. William Patrick tried living in Germany for a while under his uncle's regime, but did not like it, returned to Britain and then emigrated to the USA, where he served in the US army in the war. After the war he changed his surname to Stuart-Houston. By this time, everyone else who might have carried on the name had died (though Paula was still alive). Curiously, William Patrick gave one of his children the middle-name Adolf, even though he had apparently disowned his association to his uncle. None of Willam Patrick's four sons have any issue (perhaps they felt the weight of history), and they are now getting on a bit, and at least one has now died. Thus it appears that the paternal bloodline of Alois Hitler will soon die out.

[mahesh]

It is just B H O
Biographic details (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama)
It just that from the saturation coverage here in the UK, I had never heard he had a middle name, and then when the two initials hit me . . .

who's sayin', who's sane, Hussein?

B H O O M I : means Earth. More like, Mother Earth!

quoting wiki:
'Bhoomi' is also the source for other derived words such as Bhoomi Devi (Mother Earth), Bhoomi Deva (God of Earth)

O M : pronounced aum / Ohm is 'Cosmic Breath' in my understanding.
wiki again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum

Now that you raise the subject, Sticks, the combination of the letters seems, well, like a 'breath of fresh air',
much like President-elect Obama, himself! The interregnum should be interesting!

edit: BAUT mods, if you consider my post, trampling house rules, please delete.

[Salty]

Do you realise that America has elected a president whose intitials are

B O

:whistle:


Mind you as my initials spell G A S I am probably a fine one to talk :shifty:

Has anybody found acceptable documentation to his place of birth? The Wikkepedia bio doesn't say where he was born.

I heard some guy on the radio say he was born in Kenya. Another radio guy says that his birth records in Hawaii have been sealed.

Imagine me in baseball cap and a colloquial accent from Texas.

Anyway, I didn't dew it. Ah voted fer th' other guy.

[Cougar]

Nilisikia Obama hawezi kufahamu kiswahili. Ni nzuri. Sasa Yeye anakuwa wa hapa. Labda anaweza kusema "Jambo."

[mahesh]

Has anybody found acceptable documentation to his place of birth? The Wikkepedia bio doesn't say where he was born.
....
i heard, from the same horse, ....near the 'salty waters' in Hawai'i ! Honolulu, August 04, 1961.

Incredible. Just about eligible, to be standing for the Office.

KENYA BELEV DAET?

JAMBO!

[LotusExcelle]

My understanding (no links - sorry) is that he was born a US Citizen in Hawai'i. His father was born in Kenya, if I'm not mistaken.

[mahesh]

one fine day, in August 1961,
a baby turned up and greeted his world...



Goooooood Morning. Hawaii ya!

[Sticks]

who's sayin', who's sane, Hussein?

B H O O M I : means Earth. More like, Mother Earth!

quoting wiki:
'Bhoomi' is also the source for other derived words such as Bhoomi Devi (Mother Earth), Bhoomi Deva (God of Earth)

O M : pronounced aum / Ohm is 'Cosmic Breath' in my understanding.
wiki again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum


You make him sound lke Treebeard of Fangorn forrest :shifty:

[mahesh]

Sticks, i wasn't redefining names / essence of human nature...i know which way my beard is buttered. just playing around with those tree letters ...B H O ....and Treebeard cuts a fine figure too...

and while we are at it, i am surprised and i hope that Mr Obama's middle name / birthplace, and or eligiblity (for office) is not doubted any more.

considering he's been 'in your face' for long enough; running a Presidential campaign, no less; just been elected; then to be queried / doubted, by the (uncertain?) media, i find it laughable, that it is possibly happening in reality.

I mean it's not like a local councillor from a London borough was being elected, is it?
No less than a previously 'elected' Senator from Illinois!

[tdvance]

Very few people have ever been called precisely "Hitler", and now none will do, at least as an inherited name - unless they choose it.

Adolf's father Alois was born Schicklgruber, but took the name Hitler after his (apparent) stepfather's (possibly true father's) name Heidler; this name has many forms and spellings (his stepfather used several), and Alois took it in the apparently unique form Hitler. Everyone ever called Hitler was descended from Alois. There is also a theory that Heidler's brother, who called himself Huettler, was Alois's true father. Heidler is a common name, and the variant forms such as Heitler and Huettler can still be found.

Alois had many children, but aside from Adolf only one boy and two girls (Paula and Angela) survived infancy. Adolf himself had no children, so far as can be told. His half-brother Alois Jr emigrated to Britain and married an Irishwoman, giving birth to William Patrick Hitler. The marriage split up, and Alois returned to Germany where he had a son, Heinz Hitler, by a second wife; Heinz and Alois Jr did not survive the war. William Patrick tried living in Germany for a while under his uncle's regime, but did not like it, returned to Britain and then emigrated to the USA, where he served in the US army in the war. After the war he changed his surname to Stuart-Houston. By this time, everyone else who might have carried on the name had died (though Paula was still alive). Curiously, William Patrick gave one of his children the middle-name Adolf, even though he had apparently disowned his association to his uncle. None of Willam Patrick's four sons have any issue (perhaps they felt the weight of history), and they are now getting on a bit, and at least one has now died. Thus it appears that the paternal bloodline of Alois Hitler will soon die out.

There are other lines of "Hitler"s--my former office mate used to work with a Hitler.

[SeanF]

Or Junior.
Except that the two don't have the same middle names, no he's not technically a "Junior." :)

considering he's been 'in your face' for long enough; running a Presidential campaign, no less; just been elected; then to be queried / doubted, by the (uncertain?) media, i find it laughable, that it is possibly happening in reality.

I mean it's not like a local councillor from a London borough was being elected, is it?
No less than a previously 'elected' Senator from Illinois!
Keeping this hypothetical... :)

First, the fact that one was previously elected Senator would be irrelevant to the concern about the Presidency, since there is no Constitutional requirement that Senators be "natural born citizens," as there is for the Presidency.

Second, if someone were to issue a legal challenge to a candidate's eligibility, the courts would refuse to hear it on grounds of standing (in fact, I believe it's been tried and that's what happened). It's not illegal, after all, for a non-citizen to run, just to serve. I don't think there could be a suit until at least after the EC votes are counted, and possibly not until the person in question is actually sworn in!

But I agree that I hope it doesn't actually happen. :)

[mahesh]

Thanks Sean...for the clarifcation / explanations. much obliged. Since i have not much to do with US elections, except observe from outside the loop, i could not have put it across so succinctly.

i recall a similar uninformed media coverage over in Britain, early 2007, jan or feb...when 'Senator Obama' from Kenya (dumbed-down, lazy press) was a rage and the hoohaa, that he was running for president. i did a double take then.
that there has to be a mistake somewhere. can't be / won't be elected, if born in Kenya.
and also that the former Mr Universe could never be president either. i didn't think much of this after that time.
..this is playing up...have to log-in again..
and subsequently forgot about the kenya-born-thingie, originally attached to his name. until just now. but i mean this was in the UK press. why are the US media pundits, whathaveyou, being so unreal?

[KaiYeves]

It could be worse. His parents could have given him Kimberly or Audrey or some other female middle name.

[grant hutchison]

Seems like we always used to refer to Presidents by their 3-letter monograms: FDR, JFK, LBJ, even RMN (to some extent).HST. Which might have created some confusion, nowadays. :)

BTW: Is it an error to place a stop after the "S" (as in, "Harry S. Truman"), given that the letter was his whole middle name, rather than an abbreviation? Or was his middle name actually "S."?

Grant Hutchison

[mike alexander]

Truman had no extended middle name. S is all it takes, no period. Or stop, for that matter.

[mike alexander]

Has anybody found acceptable documentation to his place of birth? The Wikkepedia bio doesn't say where he was born.

I heard some guy on the radio say he was born in Kenya. Another radio guy says that his birth records in Hawaii have been sealed.

Imagine me in baseball cap and a colloquial accent from Texas.

Anyway, I didn't dew it. Ah voted fer th' other guy.

Check here (http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn227/Polarik/BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg) for an image of Obama's birth certificate.

[kleindoofy]

... I heard some guy on the radio say he was born in Kenya. ...
This only once again confirms my love of well informed journalists and my great despair at the ubiquitious void of same:

US Constitution, Article. II. Section 1

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

If Obama had been born in Kenya, he never would have been a candidate.

John McCain was born August 29th, 1936 at Coco Solo Air Base in the Panama Canal Zone. Although that is outside the US, the US Code Title 8 Section 1403 states:

Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.

And in the same regard and for many purposes, US military bases abroad are considered to be US territory for military personell, from the US point of view.

Before McCain officially recieved the Republican nomination, the matter was settled. Sorry, I don't have a quote.

[grant hutchison]

Truman had no extended middle name. S is all it takes, no period. Or stop, for that matter.Thanks, that's what I figured. But I began to wonder if I'd got it wrong when I found so many references on US websites to "Harry S. Truman". I figured the people responsible for the aircraft carrier named after him would know the correct style, and the stop appears on their patches (http://images.military.com/ImageLibrary/CVN75_TRUMAN_INSIG.JPG), website (http://www.truman.navy.mil/) and some (but not all) of their postal stamps (http://www.navalcovermuseum.org/uscs/postmarkmailer/ships/HARRY_S_TRUMAN_CVN_75.html). Hence my question.

Grant Hutchison

[TrAI]

Do you realise that America has elected a president whose intitials are

B O

:whistle:


Mind you as my initials spell G A S I am probably a fine one to talk :shifty:

Hmmm... *Looks up at the thread subject*

Do you realise what you have done?"

I can't really see what I have done that have anything to do whith this...:confused:

[sarongsong]

...The Wikkepedia bio doesn't say where he was born...Sure it does:...Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii...
wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama)

[grant hutchison]

Truman had no extended middle name. S is all it takes, no period. Or stop, for that matter.Ah-ha! This (http://www.trumanlibrary.org/speriod.htm) page from the Harry S. Truman Library's website seems likely to be a reasonably authoritative summary of the situation.

Grant Hutchison

[mahesh]

Truman had no extended middle name. S is all it takes, no period. Or stop, for that matter.Ah-ha! This page from the Harry S. Truman Library's website seems likely to be a reasonably authoritative summary of the situation.
...much like B J in M*A*S*H*!

[Jens]

Nilisikia Obama hawezi kufahamu kiswahili. Ni nzuri. Sasa Yeye anakuwa wa hapa. Labda anaweza kusema "Jambo."

Sorry, my Swahili's almost non-existent. Could you translate? I think yeye means "he", doesn't it? Otherwise, the only words I can make out are the kiswahili, the jambo, and (I think) kusema ("say"?).

[PraedSt]

Sorry, my Swahili's almost non-existent. Could you translate? I think yeye means "he", doesn't it? Otherwise, the only words I can make out are the kiswahili, the jambo, and (I think) kusema ("say"?).

Nevertheless, 'almost' is very impressive. :)

[Delvo]

that there has to be a mistake somewhere. can't be / won't be elected, if born in Kenya.According to what I picked up the last time I heard this being discussed by people who knew more law than I do, being a natural born citizen of the USA doesn't require being born here, although that is by far the most common and most well-known method of becoming one. You're also a natural born citizen if your parents were citizens at the time of your birth, regardless of location, and if your mother has been one for at least five years at the time of your birth, regardless of your father's citizenship. (She can even renounce that citizenship, wait a while, reclaim it, and still have natural American citizen babies five years later.) If Obama was born in Kenya, which has not been disproven, then the next questions are his parents' citizenship stati and when they got that way, which seems not to be known to the public yet.

The birth certificate that was published didn't come from Obama's office and wasn't the real thing, but there's nothing anywhere stating a requirement to produce it. Although he's required to be a natural citizen and filing the paperwork for candidacy includes signing an affadavit that he is one, he's not required to prove that he is one. (If signing a false affadavit is a crime, then presumption of innocence might even apply, placing the burden of proof on those claiming he's guilty to prove that.) And in cases in which birth happened in another country, it might be too much to expect or demand that anyone find proof of such things, because the government of the USA can not do anything about the reliability of other countries' records.

In other words, legality is weird.

[hhEb09'1]

Check here (http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn227/Polarik/BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg) for an image of Obama's birth certificate.Thank G**dness it's not Times New Roman :) But the word "laser" at the bottom probably means it was a recently minted certified copy, not one that was produced at the time of birth, right?

But it is interesting that race is listed as "African" in 1961.
The birth certificate that was published didn't come from Obama's office and wasn't the real thing, but there's nothing anywhere stating a requirement to produce it. Nevermind. :)

[Salty]

I thank all of you, for your replies. (pouring more salt on my radio ear)

[Salty]

Sure it does:

Then, what did I read, which did not say that?
How should you know, if I don't?

Oh, well, thanks, sarongsong, for bringing that to my attention.

[Ivan Viehoff]

Ah-ha! This (http://www.trumanlibrary.org/speriod.htm) page from the Harry S. Truman Library's website seems likely to be a reasonably authoritative summary of the situation.
That link says
"Several widely recognized style manuals provide guidance in favor of using the period. According to The Chicago Manual of Style all initials given with a name should "for convenience and consistency" be followed by a period even if they are not abbreviations of names."

I wonder what they would make of people like U Thant, the former head of the United Nations. In fact U is not a name: it is an honorific, of some similarity to the obligate Sir placed before some British names for people of a certain status.*

Or Norwegian people with the name Å (meaning river, and also the name of some villages). This is normally a surname, but perhaps could occur as an intermediate name, for example the former Norwegian prime minister was Gro Harlem Brundtland.

I once discovered that a longstanding colleague of mine had the middle initial V, which he never normally used when writing his name; for example it was not on his business card. The British are rather less likely to parade, or even to have, middle initials than Americans. So we had a Friday afternoon office drinks competition to guess what it stood for. Best suggestions were that (1) it doesn't stand for anything (as in "the fifth"), and (2) that it stands for "von" - remarkably, his surname, Sandbach, although indubitably English (the name of a town in Cheshire), is perfectly good German (meaning sand+brook).

*In general Burmese names are not separable into parts anway: U Than Shwe (the present dictator) is not U Than, nor U Shwe, he is U ThanShwe. U Thant in fact had only one name, Thant: there are not many of those in world these days. A hark back to mediaeval times when Leonardo da Vinci was Leonardo from Vinci; and like him U Thant would normally have had his home town appended to his name, hence Pantanaw U Thant. Thant is pronounced a bit like Thang, the final t in anglicisation of Burmese indicates "creaky tone".

[grant hutchison]

That link says
"Several widely recognized style manuals provide guidance in favor of using the period. According to The Chicago Manual of Style all initials given with a name should "for convenience and consistency" be followed by a period even if they are not abbreviations of names."It's certainly difficult to know how something can be an "initial" when it's not the first letter of something longer. :)
Here in the UK, editors prefer to whittle away as many abbreviation stops as they can manage, so "Harry S Truman" would usually raise no eyebrows.

Grant Hutchison

[tdvance]

Check here (http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn227/Polarik/BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg) for an image of Obama's birth certificate.



Ah, but it's not valid because the serial number was marked out, an "alteration" :)

Ok, seriously, I think one of his grandmothers said she remembered him being born in Kenya, but other family said she remembered wrong--that's probably where the story came from.

Wait--I thought it was sealed.

[tdvance]

...much like B J in M*A*S*H*!

I thought it stood for Bea Jay (his parents' names). Of course, he'd not want that to be known, that he was a Bea!

[NEOWatcher]

I thought it stood for Bea Jay (his parents' names). Of course, he'd not want that to be known, that he was a Bea!
Yes, that's what it stands for, but I don't think the second part of that statement was ever mentioned. I remember it being up to the audience that the letters representing the name were the initials representing the parent's names.

[kleindoofy]

... Ok, seriously, I think one of his grandmothers said she remembered him being born in Kenya, ...
Let's look at this from the pragmatic angle: if there had been even the slightest chance that BO might not have been eligible for the presidency, the Republican campaign machine would have been all over it and they certainly wouldn't have been satisfied with what his grandma thought she remembered or what other people thought.

And consider this: in 1963 a young white woman arrives in Hawaii on a plane from Kenya (with about 4-5 stops in between) with a two year old black baby on her arm amd says "he's mine, his name is Barak Obama, he's an American."

Sure. There'd be about a mile's worth of city documents on it.

[mugaliens]

The scuttlebut was that his mother, pregnant with him, tried to board an airplane so that he could be born in Hawaii, but as she was refused boarding, he was born in Kenya, then flown to Hawaii where his birth papers were later faked.

I don't know if all the people who went to Kenya came up empty handed, or if whatever they found was simply hushed up. My thought is the first, as there are plenty of right-winged papers out there who would have reported it endlessly if there had been any substance to it.

[novaderrik]

Ah, but it's not valid because the serial number was marked out, an "alteration" :)

Ok, seriously, I think one of his grandmothers said she remembered him being born in Kenya, but other family said she remembered wrong--that's probably where the story came from.

Wait--I thought it was sealed.
conspiracy theories exist about things besides the moon landings and 2012.
there are people out there that think that Barack Obama has been groomed for president since he was a teenager, with a whole back story fabricated to cover his illegitimacy for the office of President. it is also a part of most of these conspiracies that both major parties are wholly owned and operated divisions of the same agency that runs not only the USA- but the whole world. they own the media, as well, so the TRUTH about Barack Hussein Obama will never be allowed to be known.
of course, there are a few people out on the interweb that know the TRUTH and somehow haven't wound up dead for telling it- but of course, the global organization that runs everything plays them off as nutjob conspiracy theorists that only other nutjobs believe.
i know some of these people personally, and yes, they tend to think the moon landings and most of the space program was either faked or a part of something bigger that "they" don't want us to know. these tend to be people that don't really follow the news, but one of them gets his news from the most extreme right wing places.

personally, i think there is so much misinfo out there about this guy because he is an unknown quantity to most people- half from Kansas, half from Kenya. raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. Muslim father, Christian mother. plus, you know, being from Chicago means he has to be hooked in with the Mafia somehow... no one knows where his allegiances lie- and because of that, most people just won't acknowledge that maybe- just maybe- he is an American before everything else and totally epitomizes the American Dream.
and i say this as someone that disagrees with him on pretty much every policy position he has ever taken, and i don't think he is the most qualified person for the job. but he's what we've got, and i hope for the best.