Several weeks later, Obama left Wright's church--and, according to Edward Klein's new biography, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, allegedly attempted to persuade Wright not to "do any more public speaking until after the November [2008] election" (51).

Obama has been known frequently to fictionalize aspects of his own life. During his 2008 campaign, for instance, Obama claimed that his dying mother had fought with insurance companies over coverage for her cancer treatments.

That turned out to be untrue, but Obama has repeated the story--which even the Washington Post called "misleading"--in a campaign video for the 2012 election.

The Acton & Dystel biography could also reflect how Obama was seen by his associates, or transitions in his own identity. He is said, for instance, to have cultivated an "international" identity until well into his adulthood, according to Maraniss.

Regardless of the reason for Obama's odd biography, the Acton & Dystel booklet raises new questions as part of ongoing efforts to understand Barack Obama--who, despite four years in office remains a mystery to many Americans, thanks to the mainstream media.

The federal government paid at least $439 million in employee bonuses last year, down $43 million since new austerity restrictions were announced.

The largest merit awards went to senior executives in Washington and air traffic controllers, an Asbury Park Press investigation found. The highest award, $62,895, went to 16 employees from agriculture to NASA.

The $439 million in bonuses may be a staggering amount — enough to buy the former New Jersey Nets, valued at about $357 million by Forbes magazine — but it represents just 0.4 percent of the $105 billion in salaries for most of the government’s civilian employees. In 2010, at least $482 million was paid in bonuses, according to federal data.

“This is the same president that criticized the banks for distributing bonuses when they were under — some of them involuntarily — government support,” said Grant Cardone, of Los Angeles, a regular commentator for Fox Business News. “Federal employees are already overpaid and coddled with pensions and a variety of benefits.... How many roads

The suggestion is that the Iranian authorities identified Fashi as someone who was in illicit contact with the West on the basis of the document. He was arrested days after the publication of the document by WikiLeaks in December of 2010 and charged with carrying out the January 2010 assassination of nuclear scientist Masoud Ali-Mohammadi on behalf of the Mossad.

The British report Wednesday quotes a UK academic, Birmingham University professor Scott Lucas, speculating that the diplomatic cable may have been a critical piece of evidence or simply a pretext on which to arrest Fashi. “It could have been used as a pretext against him; to set him up as a person who could take the fall for the assassination,” Lucas said.

“The majority of [insurance companies’] loss [as a result of Obamacare’s repeal] — $880 billion — would be from the 16 million Americans expected to purchase coverage on the individual market. Two-thirds of that revenue would be in the form of federal subsidies, for low- and middle-income Americans to purchase coverage. The rest would come from individuals, responsible for whatever part of the premium subsidies do not cover.”

The Post adds, “Another $220 billion would be lost from [Obamacare’s] Medicaid expansion, where states have often turned to insurers to manage the entitlement program.”

This report simply helps confirm what has long been apparent: President Obama may like to villainize health insurers, but his signature legislation would require Americans to buy insurers’ product under penalty of law and would subsidize the purchase of that product with truckloads of taxpayer dollars.

In that vein, the Post concludes by quoting Bloomberg Government health care analyst Matt Barry, who says, “It kind of makes you scratch your head a bit to wonder why insurers initially opposed [Obamacare]. But maybe after it passed, they finally ran the numbers and realized what was at stake.”