Your numbering seems off (looks like it goes from 5 to 1 then from 5 to 1 again).

And 5 and 5 total ten; it was an intentional abuse of the "Top 10" format, but if it is too distracting or confusing, I'll change the title.

Huh. I'm reading "Dreams From My Father" and he goes back and forth between referring to himself as "Barry" and referring to himself as "Barack" when reporting conversations people are having with him. I took it as an informal/formal nickname thing. He never says it was an out-and-out assertion, and the book takes place after his college years.

Goldwater is not the "Father of *Modern* Rightwingedness". He is the responsible for bringing conservatives back from the dead in the sixties, and is the father of external policy neoconservatism (peaking with Reagan in the 80s). So, you may say he was the father of modern rightwingedness 20 years ago.

But "modern rightwingedness" (meaning 90s-today) is more about the intertwining with the religious right and social conservatism than neocon foreign policy (gays are the new "them" in "us against them"). As hawkish as he may be, just read the "Libertarian views" paragraph on his wiki entry, and you'll see he doesn't belong in the same bucket as the bush-cheney-falwell-o'reilly "right-wing".

Wendell - I gathered that 5 and 5 is ten, but it definitely plays as "I wrote two separate lists and attached them to one another without changing the numbering"

Good point qvant...
I changed it to "Spiritual Father of the Reaganistas" to be more accurate while remaining snarky...

And dis, I have changed the wording introducing each of the two lists of five that should make it much clearer...

"I have assembled ten good examples of why “Barry” was and is not a good name for Obama. First, five who were prominent when he made the change:"

"If the Barry-named role models were bad in 1980, here are five more who have emerged in the years since that have clearly shown Obama’s abandonment of the name to be one of his best decisions:"

Ah, I read it after your change and was too busy laughing to find any faults.