November 09, 2008
Fifty things you might not know about Barack Obama
John Swaine in The Telegraph:
• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball
• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili
• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini
• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father
• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali
• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream
• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars
• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia
• He can speak Spanish
• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead
• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea
• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't
• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia
• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 11:34 PM | Permalink
Comments
Anyone who collects Spiderman comics is A-OK with me!
Posted by: beajerry | Nov 10, 2008 9:12:44 AM
Hmmm, only a 200 pound bench press?
Yes, I can actually beat him at something!!! :-)
Posted by: ollie | Nov 10, 2008 10:32:15 AM
Now THAT'S a man I want to have a beer with. (But he'll have to go out for a smoke on his own.)
Posted by: instafaggot | Nov 10, 2008 10:51:21 AM
He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia
I'm half surprised the Republicans didn't run attack ads and push polls about this. They could've made him the new Michael Vick
Posted by: D | Nov 10, 2008 10:54:13 AM
These nuggets of trivia are all fine and dandy for the superficial Oprah crowd, but where does Obama stand on the issues? What's his voting record? What are his major accomplishment, besides writing 2 popular books? Maybe Obama's true believers can fill in the blanks?
Posted by: Wade Nichols | Nov 10, 2008 11:40:14 PM
Wade, your use of the phrase "true believers" makes me doubt your sincerity in asking for Obama's voting record. But in case you really do care, and for anyone else who actually does, hilzoy at Obsidian Wings did an exhaustive summary last winter of both Obama's and Clinton's legislative histories. (I think she did one later for McCain, but I don't have time to search for it right now.) Here's one of the links, the others are all near that same date:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/02/solutions-adden.html
As for where Obama stands on issues, many so-called "blanks" were filled in with a lot of information on this obscure website:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
Posted by: JanieM | Nov 11, 2008 8:57:53 AM
JanieM -- you're ba-aack! People who wonder what Obama's substantive accomplishments might be have to want to find the truth about them, apparent as it is in plain sight, noted in plain English chez hilzoy and elsewhere. This is a good way to hide something. The spectacle of Rudy Giuliani at the RNC chuckling contemptuously at Obama, spinning his resume with derision, is all the proof you need that the strongly motivated will always find refuge from the factual. Hey, I know how they feel -- I SO do not wish to hear it that I am taken aback when a conservative says something intelligent -- some regularly do -- that I want to have misheard it if I don't outright disbelieve that they said it. Fortunately, I understand this problem to be mine, not theirs; they have Other Problems.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 11, 2008 10:03:29 AM
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