""I chose my friends carefully.
The more politically active
black students. The foreign
students. The Chicanos.
The Marxist professors and structural feminists."
"Dreams ..."
|
|
click
here
the bumper sticker |
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School |
Events |
Note: |
This page is organized in chronological order. |
Noelani
Elementary |
Obama
began his education in Hawaii's public schools. He was enrolled in
Ms. Sakai’s kindergarten class at Noelani Elementary School in 1967.
He was only there a couple or three months before he was off to
Indonesia.
click image for large photo
The first little boy in the third row, left is "Barry Obama."
Obama’s sister Maya Soetoro-Ng confirms that the boy is Obama.
The two white girls in the same row are probably the
Nordyke twins. They were not identical twins, but they did
have the same smile. They were born the same time as Obama. I
still want to know what happened to their birth announcement.
Twins, being born to a prominent physician is news. More
specifically, I want to know what happened to the space their birth
announcement was in.
Or am I expected to believe that Vital
Statistics included Obama's name on their announcement list, and forgot
the Nordyke Twins?
Born within hours of Obama according to
Eleanor Nordyke, their names should be here:
Birth Announcement
here -- expand to
regular size to read.
The Nordyke twin girls were
born the next day(early evening 6 pmish) and the only
reason I can see for their names not appearing in the Vital Stats birth
announcements was that an entire story was devoted to them considering
their father’s position as a doctor. I never did find out how many
beds were available at the Kapiolani Maternity Home at the time nor did
I find out exactly what Doctor Nordyke’s position (he was an internist
wasn’t he?) was at the time or what residents worked at the hospital at
the time.
Here's a surprise! Hawaii's Department of Education has been unable to find his
Kindergarten records. |
Noelani Mystery |
Obama's Noelani Elementary School Kindergarten
records, oddly missing
from the the State of Hawaii Department of Education, is the first in a
series of "coincidences."
Although Obama has had a first-class
education that spanned 25 years, there is only a single document that
has ever been released, the application for entrance to the Franciscus
Assisi Primary School (next item) -- and that document was discovered by
independent investigators.
This is an important feature
because Kindergarten records for original school entry would have
contained the following:
1. Obama's REAL Birth Certificate.
2. An application with the following:
•
His Legal name. • Parents
or Legal Guardians’ names. • Date
of Birth • Place of Birth
• Vaccination Records (revealing a
timeline to the place and DOB.)
It also is important for two
additional reasons:
A. The Department of Education does not
"lose" the records of one particular student. (So, who paid whom what
sum to make this record disappear?)
B. There would have been NO
shameful low-test scores, NO embarrassing Equal Opportunity
advancements, and NO trails of fraudulent funding to hide that could
possibly "excuse" the quashing of public school Kindergarten entry
records. For the rest of his life he attended very expensive
private schools and has had his records legally sealed to deny the
public his true life story.
This is different. Hawaii
should be able to verify he attended their school since he is featured
in class photographs. State and federal tax dollars paid for his
initial year of education. Why is there no documentation?
This is the beginning of an intentionally erased life of a fraud and
conman and it reeks of complicity by officials within the State of
Hawaii’s Dept. of Health and Dept. of Education. |
Assisi
Primary |
The "An American Expat in
Southeast Asia" blog reports that Obama's
Indonesian schooling began when he was
entered into the Roman Catholic, Franciscus Assisi Primary School, in
Jakarta, Indonesia, on January 1, 1968 and sat in class 1B.
He was
registered under the name of Barry Soetoro, serial number 203.
The school registration document
identifies Barry Soetoro as an Indonesian citizen and his
religion was identified as Islam.
This registration
document, made available on Jan. 24, 2007, by the Fransiscus Assisi
school in Jakarta, Indonesia, shows the registration of Barack Obama
under the name Barry Soetoro into the Catholic school made by his
step-father, Lolo Soetoro. The document lists Barry Soetoro as a
Indonesian citizen, born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, and shows his
Muslim step-father listed the boy's religion as Islam.
If you save document, then open it in any
graphics program, you can zoom it.
The Obama Campaign claims that the "Muslim" entry references the
religion of the father, which is absurd. Every other entry on the
document relates to Obama. The attributes on the document describe
Obama, the child, not Lolo, the stepfather.
Born on August 4, 1961, Obama would have been 7 years and 5 months old.
That's late to start school. Obama will
always be 2 years older than his classmates. I have found
no information about previous schooling.
Obama may have started Kindergarten in Hawaii but was whisked off to
Indonesia as a result of his mother's second marriage. There are 5
missing years in Anna's CV between Obama Sr. abandoning the family and
her emigration to Indonesia with Lolo.
Obama will complete the first 3 grades at Assisi. |
Besuki
Primary |
Obama then entered the Besuki
Primary School, a state school. He was enrolled as Barry
Soetoro, Muslim. He would attend Besuki for two years.
Iis Darmawan,
63, Obama's teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly
haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math
skills. "He wrote an essay titled, 'I
Want To Become President,'" the teacher said.
His third grade teacher, Fermina Katarina Sinaga, now 67, asked her
class to write an essay titled "My dream: What I want to be in the
future."
Obama wrote "I want to be a President,"
she said. |
Quranic
Studies |
All Indonesian students
are required to study religion at school and a young Barry Soetoro,
being a Muslim, would have been
required to study Islam daily in school.
He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his
prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the
laws of Islam.
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying
the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."
"In the Muslim school, the
teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies."
According to
Tine Hahiyary,
one of Obama's teachers and the
principal from 1971 through 1989, Barry actively took part in the
Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school. His
teacher was named Maimunah and she lived in the Puncak area, the Cianjur
Regency.
"I remembered that he had studied "mengaji" (recitation of the Quran)"
Tine said.
Our
guy in Jakarta writes: "The actual usage of the word 'mengaji' in
Indonesian and Malaysian societies means the study of learning to recite
the Quran in the Arabic language rather than the native tongue. "Mengagi"
is a word and a term that is accorded the highest value and status in
the mindset of fundamentalist societies here in Southeast Asia. To
put it quite simply, 'mengaji classes' are not something that a non
practicing or so-called moderate Muslim family would ever send their
child to. To put this in a Christian context, this is something
above and beyond simply enrolling your child in Sunday school classes."
"The fact that Obama had attended mengaji classes is well known in
Indonesia and has left many there wondering just when Obama is going to
come out of the closet." As Plato said, the images and
stories we feed our children affect them for life.
"As I've stated before, the evidence seems to quite clearly show that
both Ann Dunham and her husband Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo were in fact
devout Muslims themselves and they raised their son as such."
Obama's half-sister, Maya, recalled that the family attended the mosque
"for big communal events," and "Obama occasionally followed his
stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers."
On January 24, 2007, the Obama campaign released the following
statement, "To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was
not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United
Church of Christ in Chicago.
Then, on March 14th, 2007, the Obama Campaign
told the LA Times he wasn’t a "practicing Muslim."
But his official
website says: "Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a
Committed Christian" (dated: 11/12/2007, and still up as of
5/5/2008)
This is the basic problem with Obama -- his dissimulation
-- some would call it outright lying -- but read what his classmates
say: |
Mates |
In 2007, classmate
Rony Amiris
described young Barry as enjoying
football and playing marbles and of being a very devout Muslim. Amir said,
"Barry was previously quite religious in Islam."
"We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house.
If he was wearing a sarong he looked funny," said Rony.
Amiris now the manager of the Bank Mandiri, Jakarta,
recently said, "Barry was previously quite
religious in Islam. His birth father, Barack Hussein Obama was a
Muslim economist from Kenya. Before marrying Ann Dunham, Hussein
Obama was married to a woman from Kenya who had seven children.
All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims"
Rony extrapolates further, that Obama at one point had to change his
religion if he ever intended later to run for the office of President of
the United States because America would never elect a Muslim to the be
President of the United States.
Also in 2007, Emirsyah
Satar, CEO of Garuda Indonesia, was
quoted as saying, "He (Obama) was often in the
prayer room wearing a 'sarong', at that time."
"He was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he
changed his religion." |
Divorce |
When the Soetoros divorced,
Anna
took Obama to live with
her parents, the Dunhams, in Honolulu. Anna and Obama's half-sister, Maya,
returned to
Indonesia.
In 1972, the Dunhams enrolled
"Barry Obama" in the prestigious
Punahou School,
starting in the fifth grade. He
attended Punahou on a scholarship, and walked the five blocks
from his grandmother's apartment on Beretania to the school.
With more than 3,000 students, Punahou is the largest private school in
the country, and it sits on a lush, sprawling campus in Honolulu.
The school is elite and wealthy.
He made friends quickly
and
told his classmates that his father was an African prince, the
leader of a proud and successful people. |
Punahou |
Obama's classmate and friend, Keith "Ray"
Kakugawa,
said, "Barry's biggest struggles then were missing his parents.
His biggest struggles were his feelings of abandonment.
Obama would write, "I didn't feel [her absence] as a deprivation, but
when I think about the fact that I was separated from her, I suspect it
had more of an impact than I know."
While at Punahou School, Obama turns into a disenchanted teenage rebel,
experimenting with cocaine and
marijuana. Obama admits in "Dreams" that during high school he
frequently smoked marijuana, drank alcohol, even used cocaine
occasionally.
In his book, Obama
recalls that he had "been headed" to
the status of "junkie" or "pothead", which he describes as "the final,
fatal role of the young would-be black man". He recalls smoking
"reefer" in the backs of his friends' vans, dorm rooms and "on the beach
with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school."
Obama,
told a group of students in
New Hampshire that his drug use had caused him to "waste a lot of
time" during his high school years.
Bryon Leong, a former classmate,
remembers,
"He was known as a partier, as a guy looking for a good time, but not
much more," Mr Leong said. "There was pot in Hawaii in the 1970s,
but it wasn't a big deal."
"It wasn't like guys were smoking dope on campus and coming to school
high," said Eric Kusunoki, 57, Obama's teacher from age 15 to 18.
"If they did, it would have been pretty obvious. If he did dabble
with drugs or alcohol, I didn't see it."
Other schoolmates also remember his time at school rather differently.
He was a spoiled high-achiever, they recall.
One of his former classmates, Alan Lum, said: "Hawaii is such a melting
pot that it didn't occur to me when we were growing up that he might
have problems about being one of the few African-Americans at the
school. Us kids didn't see color. He was easy-going and well-liked."
"He was a basketball player and always had a ball in his hand
wherever he was," Wysard recalled.
At school, Obama was surrounded by the
island's richest and most accomplished students. America Online
founder Steve Case, actress Kelly Preston and former Dallas Cowboys
lineman Mark Tuinei, who died in 1999, attended the school around that
time. Pro golf sensation Michelle Wie, 17, is a student there now
(2006).
While a student in the late 1970s, Barack Obama carved his name in the
pavement outside the cafeteria of Punahou School.
Kinda interesting, eh, King Obama?
In his 1979 yearbook pictures, the B-minus student wears a 1970s-style wide-collared shirt
and sports jacket, his hair in a neatly trimmed afro that covers the
tops of his ears.
He added a photo of himself playing basketball, and a shot entitled
"Still Life" that includes numerous items. Among them are a
trophy, telephone, turntable and beer bottle.
(Click here to
see larger photo)
A package of "Zig-Zag"
rolling papers and a matchbook are prominently displayed in front, and
in a brief caption he thanked the "Choom Gang" and others "for all the
good times."
The "Choom Gang" is a
reference to "chooming," the Hawaiian slang for smoking marijuana. |
Basketball |
This
file photo provided by The Oahuan, the yearbook of Punahou
School, shows Barack Obama posing with his 1979 state basketball
championship team for Punahou School.
Identified as Barry Obama, he is in the back row, last player on the
right. Others identified in the yearbook are:
front row: Greg
Ramos, manager; Chris McLachlin, head coach; Dan Moore, manager.
Second row: Matt Hiu, Alan Lum, Tom Topolinski, Darin Mauerer, Dan
Hale, John Kamana.
Third row: Darryl Gabriel, Boy Eldredge, Greg
Orme, Larry Tavares, Jason Oshima.
|
Magazine |
Barack Obama, then known as "Barry," sits with the Ka Wai Ola
literary magazine staff in the 1979 Punahou School yearbook. (NY Times
account
here)
|
Registers
For
Draft |
Pajamas Media
obtained official confirmation from the Selective Service System via
email that Barack Obama did indeed register for the Selective Service as
required by law.
Barack Hussein Obama registered at a post office in Hawaii. The
effective registration date was September 4, 1980.
His registration number is 61-1125539-1.
Daniel Amon
Public Affairs Specialist
However,
Debbie Schussle
wants to know if President-elect Barack Hussein Obama committed a
federal crime in September of this year?
Did he never actually
register and, instead, did friends of his in the Chicago federal records
center, which maintains the official copy of his alleged Selective
Service registration commit the crime for him?
It's either one or the other, as indicated by the release of Barack
Obama's official Selective Service registration for the draft. A friend
of mine, who is a retired federal agent, spent almost a year trying to
obtain this document through a Freedom of Information Act request, and,
after much stonewalling, finally received it and released it to me.
But the release of Obama's draft registration and an accompanying
document, posted below, raises more questions than it answers. And it
shows many signs of fraud, not to mention putting the lie to Obama's
claim that he registered for the draft in June 1979, before it was
required by law.
Check out
THIS documentation. |
Occidental |
Barack Obama began his undergraduate education at Occidental
College, in California. Occidental is a 1,825-student liberal arts
college in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles and isn't shy
about claiming Obama as an alumnus for his two years there (1979-81) on
full scholarship.
The Boston Globe did a large
piece on his Occidental years. |
Occidental |
Obama
writes in "Dreams," that he saw his mentor, the communist Frank
Marshall Davis, only a few days before he left for Occidental College,
and that Davis seemed as radical as ever.
Davis called college, "An advanced degree in compromise" and warned
Obama not to forget his "people" and not to "start believing what they
tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that
shit."
With those words ringing in his head, Obama entered Occidental
College in California in 1979, where his
freshman
roommate was Imad Husain, a Pakistani, who's now a Boston banker.
Also, as a freshman, he quickly became friends with Mohammed Hasan
Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, two wealthy Pakistanis.
Obama had an international circle of friends -- "a real eclectic sort of
group," says Vinai Thummalapally, who himself came from Hyderabad,
India, and who lived with Obama the summer of 1980.
In his first memoir, "Dreams," Obama
included a
description of black student life at
Occidental College in Los Angeles.
"There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it
came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying
close together, traveling in packs," he wrote. "It remained
necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the
black masses, to strike out and name names."
He added: "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends
carefully. The more politically active black students. The
foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and
structural feminists."
Obama said he and other blacks were careful not to second-guess their
own racial identity in front of whites.
"To admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to
general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the
first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred," he
wrote.
Obama
joined the
Students for Economic Democracy (SED), a radical socialist "cousin"
organization to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), of which the
Weather Underground was an off-shoot. As a matter of
fact, Obama's first public speech was at an event sponsored by the
Students for Economic Democracy. This fringe group was chaired by
the radical Tom Hayden in the late 70's and early '80's.
You are know by your friends and associates -- and Obama's are the
hard-core leftists. |
Occidental |
At Occidental College,
Obama plays basketball and continues taking drugs. He becomes
friends with Pakistani Muslims Mohammed Hasan Chandoo (perhaps spelled
Chandio) and Wahid Hamid, and Indian Vinai Thummalapally. At
Occidental College Obama indulges in alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine.
He becomes interested in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
While at Occidental Obama is mentored by an openly gay professor,
Lawrence Goldyn, who has a strong influence on Obama’s acceptance of
gays. Fellow student Thummalapally lives with Obama in the summer
of 1980. Obama’s freshman year roommate at Occidental is Imad
Husain, a Pakistani.
Safely away from his grandparents Obama
starts smoking cigarettes while at Occidental College, as many as 10 per
day, and continues the habit until an attempt to quit in February of
2007. On the campaign trail in 2008, however, reporters with a keen
sense of smell recognize that Obama was still sneaking occasional
cigarettes. (Obama’s refusal to release his medical records may arguably
relate to his 25-year smoking habit.)
Obama’s friends at
Occidental tend to be the more politically active blacks, foreign
students, Chicanos, Marxist professors, structural feminists, and
punk-rock performance poets. Obama is rebuked on one occasion for
calling another black student, who wasn’t "black enough," an "Uncle
Tom." One female student criticizes Obama with the remark, "You always
think it’s about you."
At Occidental, Obama meets a professor of
politics who is a CIA expert on the Soviet Union and an associate of
Zbigniew Brzezinski (who would later be the National Security Advisor to
Jimmy Carter). |
Occidental |
On the basis of two poems Barack Obama wrote and published as an
undergraduate, Ian McMillan in The Guardian opines that the Democratic
nominee for president had obviously read the Beat poets and writers like
Gary Snyder and Charles Bukowski, who knew that the simple words are the
best ones, as long as you place them carefully on the page.
Here is "Pop," written when Obama was 19. |
Road
Trip |
At a
fundraiser in San Francisco on April 7th 2008, Barack Obama waxed eloquently on the
need of foreign policy experience to be Commander in Chief, saying:
"You do that in eighty countries -- you don't know those eighty
countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for
four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in
Africa -- knowing the leaders is not important -- what I know is the
people..."
... and out of the blue, came this statement:
"I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college -- I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. .
. ."
In 1981, after visiting his mother and sister Maya in Indonesia, Obama
went to Pakistan for about three weeks, In 1981, as a student,
Obama visited Larkana for a partridge hunting session. He traveled with Wahid Hamid and
staying in Karachi with Mohammed Hasan Chandio's [sic] family in Karachi and visiting Hyderabad as well.
Obama also made friends with Chairman of Senate, Muhammadmian Soomro,
who said that in Pakistan he [Obama]
came to know about Sunni and Shia sects.
According to the
report of Larry Rohter of April 10, 2008, in The New York Times, the
Obama campaign staff, when questioned about the revelation of Obama's
1981 trip to Karachi, stated: "Mr. Obama visited Pakistan in 1981, on
the way back from Indonesia, where his mother and half-sister, Maya
Soetoro-Ng, were living. He spent 'about three weeks' there, Mr.
Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, said, staying in Karachi with the
family of a college friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, but also traveling
to Hyderabad, in India." That information is significant for two
reasons. First and foremost is the fact that Mohammed Hasan
Chandoo is a radical Muslim who with his relatives operate a website
that is anti-Semitic and anti-American and supports radical Islamic
politics.
Go to chandoo.com , the home page of the Chandoo brothers, with a links
to the Chandoo brothers favorite sites. Not only are the sites
anti-American and anti-Semitic, they are anti-women, with several vulgar
references to the distasteful Shia Muslim practice of "muttah," a short
term marriage whereby poor Pakistani and Indian Muslims often "pimp"
their own daughters to Middle-East tourists for a few rupees.
I wonder which face Obama wore to Pakistan
-- his Christian face? --
or his Muslim face?
Update:
Hamid nor Chandoo have each
contributed the maximum $2,300 to Obama's campaign, and records
indicate each has joined an Asian-American council that supports his run
for president. Both also are listed on Obama's campaign Web site
as being among his top fundraisers, each bringing in between $100,000
and $200,000 in contributions from their networks of friends. Both
also attended Obama's wedding in 1992, according to published reports
and other friends. |
Columbia |
In 1981, in search
of a community to belong to,
he
transfers to that prestigious university on the edge of Harlem --
Columbia, where
he majors in political science with a specialization in international relations.
He also swapped drugs for Marxism.
Obama says he was somewhat
involved with the Black Students Organization and participated in
anti-apartheid activities. "Mostly, my years at Columbia were an
intense period of study," he says. "When I transferred, I decided
to buckle down and get serious. I spent a lot of time in the
library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk."
Obama says it is difficult to separate his college experience at
Columbia from the urban experience of living in New York City, and his
memoir offers little about his time on campus
When Obama arrived in New York, he already knew Sohale "Hal" Siddiqi, a
drug addicted illegal alien from Pakistan, who was a friend of Chandoo's
and Hamid's from Karachi, who had visited them at Occidental College.
He had come to New York from London two years earlier and found his
caustic wit and unabashed desire to make money perfectly pitched to the
city’s mood. He had overstayed his tourist visa and now made a
living in New York’s high-turnover, illegal immigrant workforce, waiting
on tables.
In 1982, Siddiqi and Obama got an apartment at a sixth-floor
walk-up on East 94th Street.
In "The Book,"
Siddiqi is identified only as "Sadik" -- a short, well-built Pakistani"
who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. There's
a chapter in Obama's book that features this guy and Obama conversing --
every other word is "whitey" -- whitey this and whitey that --
damned whitey. The were roomies for a while. Siddiqi
confirmed Obama's account that he turned serious in New York and
"stopped getting high."
Watching Sadik's drugging obviously got Obama's
attention.
"I stopped getting high. I
ran 3 miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in
years I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of
daily reflections and very bad poetry,"
he wrote in "Dreams."
He went to the Marxist-Socialist conferences at
Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn and started
lecturing his relatives until they worried he'd become "one of
those freaks you see on the streets around here."
The Obama campaign
declined to discuss Obama's time at Columbia and his friendships in
general. It won't, for example, release his transcript or name his
friends. It did, however, list five locations where Obama lived
during his four years here: three on Manhattan's Upper West Side and two
in Brooklyn -- one in Park Slope, the other in Brooklyn Heights.
His memoir mentions two others on Manhattan's Upper East Side. |
Cloward Piven
|
Obama studied the Cloward-Piven Strategy of Manufactured Crisis in
Political Science classes at Columbia University.
The
Cloward-Piven Strategy is to overcommit government, growing it past
the point of sustainability by
causing crises. This, while developing an organized
proletariat of dependent classes and applying them to
disrupt society and revolt against American freedoms. All, to
ring in the new "egalitarian" (neo-Marxist)
state. That would be a big "change." |
The
Thesis |
The latest report on Obama's
missing thesis comes from MSNBC. Written his senior year at
Columbia University, Obama's thesis was about Soviet nuclear
disarmament. It's only natural to wonder what the budding
socialist turned presidential candidate thought of nuclear proliferation
in the early 1980s.
"We do not have a copy of the course paper you requested and neither
does Columbia University," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt
told NBC News.
The Obama campaign has been less than forthcoming with details.
"Spokesman Ben LaBolt wouldn’t even say whether Sen. Obama threw out his
copy or lost it." At an earlier date, an aide actually told the
New Republic the junior senator couldn't recall what he had written
about, but as that editor notes, "who doesn't remember their senior
thesis?" To get the inside scoop, MSNBC contacted the former
professor who taught Obama's senior seminar and who recalls the content
of the paper better than Obama himself.
What MSNBC doesn't report is that Baron, or at least a Michael Baron who
also happens to run an electronics company in Florida, has given $1,250
to Obama. Maybe if the Obama campaign would release the thesis and
Obama's college transcript like a normal presidential campaign, we could
all decide for ourselves whether Obama deserves an A. |
By Barack Obama |
In early 2009, an
article
written by Obama, Breaking the War Mentality, was
discovered.
It's crap, for the most part. You'll have to
read it and decide for yourself. |
Obama Meets Ayers? |
Obama and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers were at college --
within a quarter mile of each other -- for two years in 1982 and 1983.
When Obama was at Columbia, Ayers
was at Bank Street College (BSC), where he received an M.A. in Early
Childhood Education -- 371 yards down the street.
BSC has no student housing, everyone lives off Campus. Columbia
DOES have housing and encourages students to live on campus.
However, Fox News interviewed 400 former students from his graduating
class and no-one remembers him!
Presumably Obama lived off campus also.
Obama and Ayers had mutual friends. One was
Edward Said, the left-wing Columbia superstar was just recently out
of hiding. It is inconceivable, given their concentric politics,
that they did not know each other.
Obama won't release his transcripts (actually he won't reveal any
documentation from his past). Was it because it would reveal his
ties to Ayers, a class in common (BSC has collaborations with Columbia),
or maybe a common street address? |
Who? |
Obama graduated from
Columbia College in 1983, and after spending a year in New York, moved to Chicago.
Wayne Allyn Root says, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that
knows him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever
knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever! ... Nobody recalls him.
I'm not exaggerating, I'm not kidding.
Questioner: Were you the exact same class?
Root: Class of '83 political science, pre-law Columbia University.
You don't get more exact than that. Never met him in my life,
don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th
reunion five years ago, 20th reunion, who was asked to be the speaker of
the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! Who was
he, and five years ago, nobody even knew who he was... the guy who
writes the class notes, who's kind of the, as we say in New York, the
macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever
met him. Is that not strange? It's very strange...
When asked about his undergraduate training at Columbia University, The
New Times states that Obama "declined repeated requests to talk about
his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a
single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Many of his classmates don't remember Obama. He's not in the
yearbook. Columbia couldn't find a picture of him at school.
What can be
said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at
Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some
400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him. He had
transferred from Occidental College in California after his sophomore
year because, he told the Boston Globe in 1990, "I was concerned with
urban issues and I wanted to be around more black folks in big cities." |
Harvard
Law |
Even though Obama’s
Columbia grades fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the
affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard, Obama began Harvard Law
School in 1988.
Friends say he did not
want anyone to assume they knew his mind and because of that, even those
close to him did not always know exactly where he stood.
"He then and now is
very hard to pin down," said Kenneth Mack, a
classmate and now a professor at the law school, referring to the
senator’s on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand style.
Mack added, "Obama stood out from the beginning. He seemed more
mature. Everyone understood he was a liberal. He didn't hide
that."
All the yearbooks for the year Obama graduated
have been yanked from Harvard’s library. |
Harvard
Law
Benefactor |
How
exactly did Barack Obama pay for his Harvard Law School education?
The way the Obama campaign has answered the question was simply hard
work and student loans, even though Obama’s financial disclosures found
no trace of any outstanding college loans, going back to 2000.
Michelle Obama contradicted this claim by saying that the couple had
"only just" paid off their student loans after receiving book royalties
paid out in 2005 and 2006.
But new questions have been raised about Obama’s student loans and
Obama’s ties to a radical Muslim activist who reportedly was raising
money for Obama’s Harvard studies during the years 1988 to 1991.
The allegations first surfaced in late March, when former Manhattan
Borough president Percy Sutton told a New York cable channel that a
former business partner who was "raising money" for Obama had approached
him in 1988 to help Obama get into Harvard Law School.
In this video
interview, Sutton says he first heard of Obama about twenty years ago
from Khalid Al-Mansour, who Sutton described as advisor to "one of the
world’s richest men," Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Prince Alwaleed catapulted to fame in the United States after the
September 11 attacks, when New York mayor Rudy Guiliani refused his $10
million check to help rebuild Manhattan, because the Saudi prince hinted
publicly that America’s pro-Israel policies were to blame for the
attacks.
Sutton knew
Al-Mansour well, since the two men had been business partners and
served on several corporate boards together.
As Sutton remembered, Al-Mansour was raising money for Obama’s education
and seeking recommendations for him to attend Harvard Law School.
"I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him,"
Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter. "The friend’s name is
Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas."
Apparently, al-Mansour
serves on the Board of, among others, Saudi African Bank and was
responsible for the Africa investment activities of Kingdom Holdings,
Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal's investment company. |
Harvard
Law
Review |
On February 6th, 1990, Obama became the first
African-American president of the
Harvard Law Review. The job is considered the
highest student position at Harvard Law School.
He manages to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review without ever
publishing a SINGLE piece of signed, written work -- not one!
Update: Politico
claims
that an unsigned -- and previously unattributed -- 1990 article was
produced by Obama and offers a glimpse at hi's views on abortion policy and the
law during his student days, and provides a rare addition to his body of
work.
The six-page summary, tucked into the third volume of the year's Harvard
Law Review, considers the charged, if peripheral, question of whether
fetuses should be able to file lawsuits against their mothers. Obama's
answer: No.
I sent Politico an email asking how they knew the document was produced
by Obama, since it is "unsigned -- and previously unattributed."
They never responded.
Obama’s
timing, however, was better than his writing. In the same spring
1990 term that he would stand for the presidency, the Harvard
Law School found itself embroiled in an explosive racial brouhaha.
Black firebrand law professor Derrick Bell was demanding that the
Harvard Law School appoint a black woman to the law faculty.
This protest would culminate in vigils and protests by the racially
sensitive student body, in the course of which Obama would compare the
increasingly absurd Bell to Rosa Parks.
Feeling the pressure, HLR editors wanted to elect their first African
American president. Obama had an advantage. Spared the
legacy of slavery and segregation, and having grown up in a white
household, he lacked the hard edge of many of his black colleagues.
"Obama cast himself as an eager listener," the New York Times reported,
"sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with
all of them at once."
In February 1990, after an ideologically charged all day affair, Obama’s
fellow editors elected him president from among 19 candidates. As
it happened, Obama prevailed only after the HLR’s small conservative
faction threw him its support.
Obama was
elected after a meeting of the review's 80 editors that convened
Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.
Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the
president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic
rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney
General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and
Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M.
Nixon.
Curiously, once elected, Obama contributed not one signed word to the
HLR or any other law journal. As Matthew Franck has pointed out in
National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law
journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review
anywhere at any time. "After his appointment, the NY Times carried
a story in February 1990, which included a few quotes
from Obama:
"The fact that I've been elected shows a lot of progress," Mr. Obama
said today in an interview. "It's encouraging." "But it's
important that stories like mine aren't used to say that everything is
O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me,
there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal
talent who don't get a chance," he said, alluding to poverty or growing
up in a drug environment...
On his goals in his new post, Mr.
Obama said: "I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority
perspective. I'm fairly opinionated about this.
But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first
among equals." Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on
making the review a "forum for debate," bringing in new writers and
pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.
Unlike most editors, and likely all its
presidents, Obama was not a writer. During his tenure at Harvard, he
wrote only one heavily edited, unsigned note.
In this note for the third volume of the 1990 HLR, he argued against any
limits on abortion, citing the government’s interest in "preventing
increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and
despair." Well, the new system, disputed when it began, was meant to
help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.
And, it worked!
In other words, Obama was the first affirmative
action President of the Harvard Law Revue. |
Einstein
and the
Law |
In a page-one footnote of what may be the zaniest-titled
article ever
published by the Harvard Law Review: "The Curvature of Constitutional
Space: What Lawyers Can Learn From Modern Physics," authored by noted
legal scholar Laurence Tribe.
The 39-page densely argued treatise argues that constitutional
jurisprudence should be updated in a similar way that Einstein's theory
of relativity replaced Newtonian mechanics, a view that would release
judges from the original intent of the Founders of America.
Published in 1989, with help of the much younger and politically greener
Mr. Obama, the long-ago article could indicate his views on the
Constitution, which, if he is elected, could come into play in such
matters as his choice of nominees to the Supreme Court.
If Mr. Obama captures the White House, he might not curve space but may
settle for setting aside a high-altitude seat on the Supreme Court for
his former teacher, Mr. Tribe, who is the Carl M. Loeb University
Professor at Harvard. |
The
Plan |
Abner Mikva, a five-term
congressman from Illinois who was at that time Chief Judge of the United
States Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit, tried to recruit Obama as
a clerk, a position considered a stepping stone to clerking on the
Supreme Court, but Obama turned him down.
"He could have gone to the most opulent of law firms," David Axelrod, a
longtime friend who is now Obama’s media adviser,
said. "After Harvard, Obama could have
done anything he wanted."
The Carl M. Loeb Professor at Harvard University, Laurence H. Tribe,
taught Obama and employed him as a research assistant. He
remembers him as a "brilliant, personable, and obviously unique" person.
Tribe said that Obama’s theoretical perspective on applying modern
physics to law was "very impressive."
"He is obviously a serious intellectual as well as a fantastic
campaigner who can reach across boundaries," Tribe said. "He will
make an extraordinarily fine president."
David B. Wilkins , the Kirkland and Ellis professor of law, said he
advised Obama to become a Supreme Court Clerk. "Obama recognized
the honor in pursuing that post," Wilkins said, but quickly added that
he wasn’t interested.
"He said that he wanted to write a book about his life and his father,
go back to Chicago, get back into the community, and run for office
there. He knew exactly what he wanted and went about getting it
done," Wilkins said.
Obama works hard to dispel the image of having sought his superstar
status. "It's not about me, it's about you," he likes to tell his
crowds. But according to those who know him, he has been talking about
the presidency for more than a decade. "It was clear to me from the day
I met him that he was thinking about politics,"
says Harvard Law School classmate Christine Spurell.
The one thread, that remains consistent, throughout Obama's life, is his
teacher's, mentor's and friend's recollection of Obama's single-minded
pursuit of high political office. |
Juris
Doctor |
Obama
graduates from Harvard Law School in
1991. He received his Juris Doctor law degree,
magna cum laude. |
Law Review |
|
The
Loans |
Michelle Obama
tells of the collection calls they used to get from the "loan debt
people". Mrs. Obama clearly implies that the family's hardship was
caused merely by living in this hellhole that is America, usually right
after she mentions their onerous student loans.
However, the Obamas have thus far refused to validate these stories of
loan collection, despite requests from Chicago papers, or the source of
the debt. Obama's personal loan of $20,000 to his failed
Congressional race seems like a very likely culprit for any loan
collection calls they might have received. Thus, the Obamas should
provide the financial records that validate their claims about bill
collector calls, if they exist, and be honest about the source of the
debt. Certainly, the loan itself gives lie to the Obamas' stories
about their financial hardship due to their being "just regular people";
regular people don't loan themselves large sums of money for rash and
obviously doomed congressional races.
The most trivial, and yet in many ways the most revealing, of the Obama
campaign distortions involves their incessant invocation of their school
loan burdens. Yet the Chicago Tribune has asked them to produce
evidence of their school loans and they've not yet complied. Tellingly,
they made too much money since 2000 for their loan interest to be
deducted, so they can't even prove that they finally paid off the loans
in 2003, as they constantly claim.
Obama received a full scholarship to Occidental, which he rejected after
two years in favor of Columbia. Did he get a similar deal at
Columbia? What grants and loans did the Obamas receive while at
Harvard?
Again, these may seem like trivial amounts. However, the Obamas
have consistently presented their life story as a rags to riches tale in
which they triumphed over the odds just like ordinary people. But
they've offered no proof. Given Obama's career reliance on
patronage and kingmakers, the reality may be very different from their
touching campaign anecdotes. |
The
Rabbi |
The AP reported that attorney
Judson Miner called Harvard to offer a job to a graduating student named
Barack Obama and didn’t expect to be showered with gratitude.
Still, he wasn’t expecting the reception he got. "You can leave
your name and take a number," the woman who answered the phone at the
Harvard Law Review said breezily. "You’re No. 647."
That was 1991 and even then Obama was a hot commodity. As the
first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama had his pick of
top law firms. He chose Miner’s Chicago civil rights firm, where
he represented community organizers, discrimination victims and black
voters trying to force a redrawing of city ward boundaries. |
Besuki
Redux |
"Good Luck, Barry!" the shout gave birth to Indonesia's
Obama
Fan Club established by the childhood friends and alumni of the
Democrat party's presidential candidate. (Photo at link)
The shout of support was given by 18 childhood friends of Barack Obama
from when he went to school at SDN 01 Menteng (Besuki Primary School),
Indonesia on Saturday, March 1st, 2008, at 2:30pm.
18 of the original 40 of Barack Obama's classmates gathered around in
the schoolyard against a backdrop on the roof that read "Good Luck
Barry". |
Alma Matters |
Obama’s alma maters -- from his high school to his graduate school
-- are
planning to claim a small piece of the president-elect at gatherings
throughout the inaugural week.
Punahou School alum Steve Case,
founder of America Online, will host a brunch for about 250 people,
Saint Chu said, many of whom will be making the trek from Hawaii.
Occidental College’s gathering on January 19th will host about 250
people, including alum and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll.
"The reaction has been terrific," said Jim Jacobs, Occidental’s
director of alumni relations, saying their 250 reservations are "more
than we ever anticipated" for the free celebration.
More than
1,000 Harvard Law School grads have paid $100 per ticket to attend a
Sunday, Jan. 18th brunch at the historic Willard Intercontinental Hotel,
once a common place to spot President Abraham Lincoln. It will be
hosted by the school’s dean and recently-tapped U.S. Solicitor General,
Elena Kagan.
Only Columbia is not hosting a big party for their
presidential grad.
What's
the story with Columbia? What was Obama up to in the years between
Occidental and Business International Corp? He gets back from
Pakistan and disappears. Why is it that nobody -- absolutely
nobody -- remembers Obama at Columbia College? Columbia College of
Columbia University is a small school. Current enrollment is
4,100.
BMOC
Wayne Allyn Root says, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that
knows him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever
knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever! ... Nobody recalls him.
I'm not exaggerating, I'm not kidding. |
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