On 48th Birthday, Obama Has Cupcakes, Mountain Named After Him

Thursday, August 6, 2009
Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor Washington, D.C. (AHN) - President Barack Obama marked his 48th birthday on Tuesday with a full plate of meetings at the White House, and a luncheon with Democrats that also served as a final powwow on a healthcare reform bill before lawmakers take a month-long recess. In between, the President blew candles along with veteran White House journalist Helen Thomas, who turned 89 that day, and had a mountain in the Caribbeans named after him.
The nation's fifth youngest commander-in-chief, Obama on his first birthday at the White House made a surprise visit to the James Brady Briefing Room with a plate of cupcakes and singing "Happy Birthday" for Thomas. He was joined by an excited press corps that could not help but greet and ask him mid-song about his own birthday.
The President sat beside Thomas, a strident critic of former President George W. Bush who has covered the White House since John F. Kennedy, and asked her to make a wish and blow out the candle on one cupcake. Asked what he wished for his birthday, Obama answered, "Helen wished for world peace, no prejudice. But she and I also had a common birthday wish -- she said she wishes for a real healthcare reform bill."
Around the same time in the Caribbean Sea, Prime Minister W. Baldwin Spencer followed through with a pledge last year and named Antigua and Barbuda's highest peak "Mount Obama."
The President also got a call from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who along with birthday wishes re-affirmed his commitment to complete negotiations about reducing nuclear stockpiles and replacing a Cold War era treaty that is set to expire this year.
Obama was born on Aug. 4, 1961 in Hawaii, a fact that in recent weeks conspiracy theorists -- now dubbed the "birthers" -- have cast in doubt.
The allegation that the 44th president, the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas, was born in Kenya has been dismissed by some conservatives and even the President's sternest critic on healthcare, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), as "foolishness" and "nonsense."
Nonetheless, a bill has been introduced in the House by Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) seeking to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require that a presidential campaign committee include with its statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate.
The land of Obama's birth had been the focus of many rumors during an often racially-charged campaign last year that had comments like "terrorist fist jab" describing a moment he had affectionately shared onstage with his wife. The Obama campaign had posted the candidate's birth certificate online to quell the rumors.
Last week, the director of the Hawaii Department of Health, issued a statement that seemed plainly desperate in its request for closure: "I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino.... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii'i State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii'i and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago."