The right side of the blogosphere is investigating Senator Obama’s frequent claims that he and his mother, Ann Dunham, collected food stamps and that he had trials and tribulations that don’t allow him to be an elitist. Amongst the additional examples, he had to scrape ice off his car and he had to pay back student loans because he never had a trust fund. So as you can see, his suffering was pretty extensive. (Looking for my sarcasm emoticon!)

Anyway Sweetness & Light has a pretty comprehensive look into the food stamp issue that was started by one of their readers. Here is the gist:

1) Obama has claimed his mother was on foodstamps and that she was collecting them while he was going to a prestigious private schools circa 1974-1977 (before that time she lived in Indonesia and after that time she returned).
2) During this time his grandmother, who was the Vice President of the Bank Of Hawaii, was actually raising him.
3) During this period of time, Dunham worked toward receiving her masters degree.
4) The point is, Obama’s story seems to suggest he was living in some kind of impoverished state but in actuality he was in Hawaii, at a prestigious school and during the period of time if his mother was receiving food stamps she was doing so while getting a masters degree and having her parents help raise her son.

So in short, the story doesn’t necessarily add up on several levels. Sweetness & Light suggests obama’s mother is a “welfare queen”, I wouldn’t go that far but if she was recieving food stamps while her son was being raised by a Vice President of a bank, attending a private school with assistance and she was getting a masters degree, well that is hardly similar to the people walking around city streets suffering in America today. Also, this is Hawaii.

I am sure there will be more coming out on this and will undoubtedly play into the “elitist trying to relate to the common man” vision of Obama being pushed by the right.