Slate Pokes Around in Obama's Books

From slate.com

"Let's start with the big picture: net worth. According to Obama's most recent public financial statements, he and his wife, Michelle, were worth between $500,000 and $2 million at the end of 2005 (excluding whatever equity they have in their $1.65 million Chicago house).

The bulk of this wealth came from $1.2 million in royalties Obama received that year for The Audacity of Hope and a previously published book (part of a $1.9 million, three-book deal). The $1.2 million figure is presumably pretax, which means that, after paying the IRS, Obama probably kept about $600,000." (more)

Barack Hussein Obama Washington

From AP via the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

"The company (Family Forest) searched the ancestors of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, dating back many centuries.

He said the Family Forest shows Dunham having a number of her ancestral pathways leading back to early colonial Virginia and New England, and some extend back for many centuries into Europe.

One of her ancestral pathways leads to one of Obama's 12th great-grandfathers, the Hon. Laurence Washington, who built Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire, England.

Over the course of five centuries, according to recorded history, he became the ancestor of Washington, Carter, Gen. George S. Patton, Gov. Adlai Stevenson and Quincy Jones, Harrison said."

The article sent Slate into a tizzy and it added it to its Obama Messiah Watch, a cache of "gratuitously adoring biographical details from newspaper, television, and magazine profiles". But in 2004, 'Family Forest' also traced the Bush and Kerry families and found out those two were distant relatives and for some reason Slate didn't find stories on that offensively fawning.
Go figure.