Obama Citizenship

WND: Barbara Nelson Had No First-Hand Knowledge of the President?s Birth

By Phil

According to an article by WorldNetDaily, some of the claims in a Buffalo News interview with Barbara Nelson, the President’s English teacher in Hawaii, may have been more embellishment than factual:

A New York woman quoted as saying she “remembers” the birth of Barack Obama and who was hailed as independent evidence of the president’s eligibility to occupy the Oval office has told WND that’s not exactly how things happened.

Instead, she told WND she could provide no specifics about the birth.

The interview by the Buffalo News with Barbara Nelson was cited by the Democratic Underground website under the headline “Independent Confirmation of Obama’s Birth.” …

Obama supporters jumped on the Buffalo paper’s story when Nelson said she may be the only person left “who specifically remembers his birth.”

The report said: “When Barack Hussein Obama places his hand on the Bible today to take the oath of office as 44th president of the United States, Barbara Nelson of Kenmore will undoubtedly think back to the day he was born. It was Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu.”

But Nelson told WND her knowledge of the birth came only from a physician, Dr. Rodney West, with whom she was dining, and the subject was brought up because of the mother’s novel name and the “musical” name of the son, Barack Hussein Obama. She told WND the conversation also was memorable because Obama’s mother’s name was Stanley, named after her father, and the son also was named after his father.

However, Nelson told WND today, “I don’t know in what capacity [West] knew about this particular birth.”

She said the birth and the unusual names arose in a conversation with West, a leader in the development of obstetrics services throughout Hawaii before Obama was born.

However, she said the assumption that West delivered the baby, or that she said that, were just wrong.

“Being one of the leaders in obstetrics in Hawaii, he could have had physical or informational access to all of the obstetrics [on the islands],” she told WND.

The discussion centered on the “peculiarity of a woman named Stanley,” she said.

“I just said tell me something [that has happened],” she said. “And he says Stanley had a baby, and that’s something to write home about.”

He also told her the father was the first African student at the University of Hawaii, “another interesting local thing,” Nelson told WND.

“[West] never said to me, ‘I delivered a baby,’” Nelson said.

She said she then recalled the name and circumstances 10 years later when the baby’s father, now an official in Kenya, returned to Hawaii to speak.

Nelson told WND “to those of us from Hawaii,” there aren’t any questions or issues about Obama’s birth.

“Hawaii is knee-deep in people who know the whole Obama history,” she said.

A blogger at ObamaCitizenshipFacts.org pointed out that West could not possibly have delivered Obama since, according to a Hawaiian Pearl Harbor history website, he retired in 1956, five years before Obama’s birth. “December of l956, after delivering at least 5,000 babies … he retired from the practice of medicine,” said the Pearl Harbor Survivors Project website.

“Hope this is helpful in squelching another convenient remembered memory put out there by the O-Bot crowd to try and substantiate his birth in Hawaii without showing an ‘original, long-form, birth certificate known as a CERTIFICATE of Live Birth,’ not the phony image of the ‘CERTIFICATION of Live Birth’ computer form he has been touting as proof,” the blogger wrote.

Nelson confirmed that West, who died only months ago, spent a great deal of his life in medical management, working with the major obstetrics providers in Hawaii, serving the American Medical Association in the state and directing one of the obstetrics clinics.

Nelson said she was “appalled” at being caught up in the arguments over Obama’s birth.

“All I have was a very nice, wholesome story,” she said.

The lawsuits over Obama’s eligibility, however, remain pending, and commenters on the blog site agreed they should.

“I want to know why obama is fighting to not show his birth certificate and until he does then I reserve judgement (sic) on his eligibility,” said one. …

The biggest question was why, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign stated, Obama hasn’t simply ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

The governor’s office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?

-Phil

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on January 27, 2009 (boomark / email).