The Crossbow

In recent days, there has been a lot of Internet attention given to a Detroit rock-shock-jock radio interview with Peter Ogego, the ambassador of Kenya.  (Instead of listening to the entire 19-minute rambling segment, click this link for my 3:18 edited version.)  Two days after the American presidential election, the "Mike in the Morning" rock-radio team decided to have some fun by calling the Embassy of Kenya to "congratulate" that African country on "becoming the 51^st state" via the election of US Senator Barack Obama to become our next president.  The receptionist transferred the radio ruffians directly to the ambassador, and that led to the opening of a political Pandora's box.

Toward the end of the interview, co-host Marc Fellhauer asked this question, apparently intending it as a joke, "One more quick question:  President-elect Obama's birthplace over in Kenya, is that going to be a national spot to go visit, where he was born?"  The announcers were not expecting Ambassador Ogego to reply, "It's already an attraction. His paternal grandmother is still alive."

To clarify that the ambassador really meant what he had just said, Fellhauer altered and restated the question.  "His birthplace, they'll put up a marker there?"  The ambassador replied, "It would depend on the government. It's already well known."

The ambassador of Kenya said that the birthplace — in Kenya — of United States President-elect Barack Hussein Obama II is already a well-known attraction!  If that same statement had been made by John Doe the hotel clerk (the disc jockeys also called a hotel in Kenya), then that would be inconclusive.  But, as the official representative of a sovereign government, every public statement that an ambassador makes is the official position of that government.  Therefore, the government of Kenya has now officially stated that Senator Obama was born in Kenya; and, he has stated that said fact is "already well known" in Kenya.

Because the Constitution of the United States requires that the president be "a natural-born citizen", and because the official position of the government of Kenya is that Senator Barack Obama was born in Kenya, the ambassador's interview instantly nullified Obama's chances of becoming president.  Well ... sort of.

In order for Obama to become disqualified for the presidency, Democratic Party electors would need to turn their backs upon party loyalty, which greatly resembles African tribal loyalty, and take an action for the greater good of America as a whole.  Imagine that.

For a moment, I need to flash back a few months.

Although much of my writing focuses upon politics, I also write about Christian topics.  Perhaps nowhere else do my writings contain so much energy as where politics and religion intersect.  (My first talk-radio program was called "PR-Squared", for that very reason.)  And, perhaps nowhere else do politics and religion intersect with more power than where the topic surrounds Senator and President-elect Barack Hussein Obama II, and his role in End Times prophecy.  (For the specific details, read my book, Tribulation:  2008.  Hint:  It's not what you first think, but that would be close.)

As a result of my study of the Bible and of its application in modern politics, earlier this year I researched the meaning of Obama's last name.  At that time, most other writers were fixated upon his middle name, and clamoring about that fact that it is Arabic.  Although that is important, I find more prophetic significance in his family name.  This is especially true because "last" names are a relatively new concept in Kenya.  (The professor of linguistics that explained this to me had thirteen names, but he used the English two-name convention in his public life.)  As one part of that research, I made several phone calls to the Embassy of Kenya.  And, during those phone calls, a staff member of the Embassy of Kenya plainly lied to me.

The person that lied to me was a woman, and she would only identify herself to me as "Trudy".  The woman that lied to me was not the receptionist; it was someone else to whom the receptionist connected me.  Thus, the liar was a woman in some position of authority at the Embassy of Kenya.  There is only one woman listed on this roster of Kenyan embassy staff members.  I do not know if Felicina W. Ndwiga goes by the nickname "Trudy", but perhaps someone in the Kenyan news media will pick up this story and run farther with it.  Keep that name "Trudy" in the back of your mind, as it will appear again shortly.

What was the lie?  I had asked "Trudy" if there was anyone on the embassy staff that speaks Dho-Luo.  That is the language of the Luo tribe of western Kenya.  That is the tribe from which Barack Obama's paternal ancestry comes.  I wanted to get an official translation of the word "Obama" from someone at the embassy.  (But, I never got far enough to tell anyone that.  All I told "Trudy" was that I wanted to get the translation of a specific word; but, not which word.)  The first time that I called, Trudy told me that there was a person on staff that speaks Dho-Luo, but that he was not available.  I asked when he might be available.  She said to call back after lunch.  I did.  She said that he was not there.  I called back an hour later.  This time, the same Trudy told me that no one on the embassy staff speaks that language.  But, as it turns out, Ambassador Ogego himself is a native Dho-Luo speaker.  Surely, an embassy staff official would know which languages the ambassador can speak, and which one is his native language.  This was no mere mistake, especially given that I had three different telephone conversations with "Trudy".

Side note:  Some scoffers have tried to claim that the Detroit shock-jocks made up the whole thing, and that they made a phone call to a team of character actors.  That claim falls apart on its face, because I got the same voice-mail recording that one can hear in the audio file on their Web site.  And, there is another independent confirming factor.

Fast-forward from my phone calls last summer to the present.  The telephone interview with the Detroit shock-jocks is gaining attention.  People are beginning to realize that this was an official pronouncement of the government of Kenya.  People are beginning to realize the implication of that pronouncement with regard to the outcome of our American presidential election.  Ambassador Ogego's words could have torpedoed Obama's chances of becoming president.

Now comes the back-pedaling.  WorldNetDaily (one of several publications for whom I have written) has picked up the Detroit angle of the story.  A staff writer contacted the Embassy of Kenya to confirm the story.  An embassy staffer told WND that Ambassador Ogego's words were taken out of context and that Senator Obama was not born in Kenya.  That article appeared on the morning of Wed, 26 November.

That same morning, I was scheduled for a brief guest appearance on the G. Gordon Liddy talk-radio program.  The guest host was Joseph Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily.  (Mister Liddy was on Thanksgiving vacation.)  The topic was the Ogego radio interview.  Farah has kept the WND spotlight focused upon Obama's questionable eligibility.  To prepare for my interview, I checked for the latest news on the topic, and found the above-linked WND article.  The embassy staffer that issued the denials to WND was none other than "Trudy".  Immediately, I thought back to my own conversation with "Trudy", and knew that she must be the resident spin-doctor for the Embassy of Kenya.

Seeking independent confirmation for what I already knew in my gut, I made a phone call to Kenya.  I chatted with a newsman with many years of experience in following Kenyan politics.  (For his safety, I shall not identify him further.)  The conversation started out as a yes-or-no question:  Does Ambassador Ogego speak Dho-Luo?  The answer, of course, was "yes".  Dho-Luo is his native language.  Ambassador Ogego is also fluent in English and Swahili.  (Many people wrongly believe that Swahili is a "native" African language.  It is not.  It is a synthetic language, which is blended to help people of many African tribes and countries communicate.  Swahili is to the African continent what Esperanto is to the merchant seamen of Europe.)

Given that the ambassador is fluent in three languages, and given that he spent several years as a consultant in Canada before his assignment to the United States, it seems nearly impossible that he got linguistically "ambushed" by the Detroit radio team.  It seems much more plausible that, in a moment of great ethnic (and Socialist) pride, the ambassador was totally candid.  If the ambassador was ambushed in any way, it was not into the weeds of being "out of context".  Instead, it was that he was ambushed into the daylight of telling the whole truth.  (To totally rule out the idea that Ambassador Ogego was "ambushed" by the English language, read his fluent comments in this interview with The Washington Diplomat.  Then listen to his fluent description of the elder Obama at 1:57 of the edited Detroit clip.)

Lest anyone think that I'm merely grabbing at straws with regard to Ogego, consider the ambassador's background.  He grew up in the same village (Siaiya) as the senator's father (Barack Hussein Obama I).  He is from the Luo tribe.  (The Luo Union tried for many years to implement Socialist policies in the Kenyan government.)  He served for several years as the personal assistant to Odinga Odinga, the father of Prime Minister Raila Odinga.  The elder Odinga was a key member, along with the elder Obama, of the Socialist-connected Luo Union — an ethnic-based political association that was banned in 1980, along with all other tribal-based political organizations.  Despite that ban, which was part of an attempt to modernize the country, corruption and tribal politics are still very much a part of the Kenyan political landscape.  Tribal politics are so endemic that, when the younger Obama was elected to the US Senate in 2004, Kenyan Luos fully expected that Obama would order roads and airports to be built in Nyanza Province!  Of course, they also expected it to be done with American taxpayer money.  (Note that this actual African Socialist article on the younger Obama's roots has been blanked-out.  Socialist strategy apparently overcame Socialist pride, so the article was spiked ... but not completely.)  Ambassador Ogego was intimately familiar with the Odinga and Obama families.  The ambassador knew that he was speaking about Senator Obama, and not the senator's late father, when he said that the senator's "paternal grandmother is still alive" at the senator's birthplace.  Again, this was no mere mistake.  Ogego knew exactly what he was saying and about whom he was saying it.

The day after "Trudy" told WorldNetDaily that the ambassador's words were "taken out of context", the ambassador told the same WND writer that he was 'misquoted'.  It cannot be both.  Either the quote was accurate, or it was not.  A misquote cannot simultaneously be out of context, because a misquote involves the wrong words.  "Out of context" means to impart the wrong meaning to the right words.  Given that it is an audio recording of a live radio broadcast, it would be difficult to have the wrong words.  Given the ambassador's fluent command of English, it would be difficult to take the right words out of context.  The only other option is that the ambassador is quite ashamed of having been caught telling the truth, and he is now trying to get out of it.  But, as the old saying goes, one cannot unring a bell.

Notably, the same person at the Embassy of Kenya lied to WND's Chelsea Schilling and to me.  Those lies all hinged upon the purported linguistic weakness of a man fluent in three languages and with many years of foreign service.  Also notably, those lies by an official of a foreign government were to protect US Senator Barack Hussein Obama II from his own past.  And, that protection appears aimed at influencing the American electoral process into choosing a president that is disqualified by our Constitution.  This scenario reads like a role-reversed script from the 1960s TV series Mission: Impossible, with some faraway country using trickery to change the course of American history, instead of the Americans being the agents of "change".  Ironic humor aside, the bottom line is that both an embassy staffer and the ambassador himself lied to researchers trying to get at the truth about Barack Obama's background.

Unfortunately, lies by political officials seem to be par for the course in any modern country.  Still, some lies have more effect than others.  Even in the jaded and lie-saturated environment of modern foreign relations, attempting to influence the outcome of another country's presidential election is considered a "biggie" by most definitions.  Will our current president and his State Department take the actions of Kenya seriously?  Don't hold your breath.

Regardless of what the current administration does, there are three government entities that can take action.  One is the Electoral College, which is scheduled to convene on the 15^th of December.  The second is the Supreme Court of the United States, which has set a "discovery conference" for the 1^st of December and a "certiorari conference" for the 5^th of December.  The discovery conference (with Justice Souter) is set to review Senator Obama's actual birth certificate (versus the forgery that was posted on his presidential campaign Web site).  The certiorari conference (with Justice Thomas) is set to decide whether the Supreme Court will hear the appeal arising from a New Jersey case that was dismissed.  That case, like more than a dozen others, sought to block Obama from the presidency because of his refusal to prove that he is a natural-born citizen.

If the members of the Electoral College take their duty seriously — by moving beyond party loyalties, and putting the good of our nation first — then they are the final check in the "checks and balances" of the presidential election process.  Keep in mind that the electors pledged to Barack Obama come from the ranks of Democratic Party activists.  If that party has so far shirked its Constitutional duty by ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room, then what expectation do we have that those electors will have a sudden attack of conscience on the 15^th of December?  (Perhaps the Democrats agree with the rant of Republican President George W. Bush, who declared three years ago that our Constitution is, "... just a God-d---ed piece of paper!")

Enter the third option:  the lawsuit filed by presidential candidate Alan Keyes in the California Supreme Court.  The lawsuit by Keyes seeks to avert a crisis by getting the court to issue an order that the California meeting of the Electoral College may not cast any votes in favor of Barack Obama until his Constitutional eligibility has been confirmed.  Why California?  First, that state has the largest affiliate of the new America's Independent Party, which had nominated Keyes for president.  (When the state-level American Independent Party switched its affiliation from the Constitution Party to the national AIP, the latter instantly became the third-largest party in America.)  Second, that state also has the largest number of Electoral College votes (55).  If the Keyes lawsuit succeeds, and if similar lawsuits were to succeed in only four other states (New York, Michigan, Florida, and Illinois), then courtroom action could block Obama's path to the White House.  (For all those pseudo-conservative pundits that parroted the 'Keyes doesn't have a chance' mantra, what are you doing to stop Obama?)

Although I'm not a lawyer, I have spent more time in courtrooms and law libraries than the average citizen.  In my opinion, the fact that two officials of a foreign government have been caught in a pattern of lies that appears designed to protect Obama from questions about his eligibility is a serious case of political "blowback".  The fact that an ambassador publicly stated that Obama's birthplace in Kenya is "already well known" should be prima facie evidence in any courtroom.  When coupled with the lies told to spin Kenya away from that statement, it rises to a level that I believe would convince most jurors — and, hopefully, most members of the Electoral College — that Obama is not eligible to become president.

And that, dear readers, is why it matters who told what lies to whom.