Posted on 09/11/2008 12:21:34 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights.
The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing?
Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be used to judge a politician's fitness for office. We're not sure the transcripts of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush -- which showed them to be C students -- illuminated much for voters. The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class.
But Mr. Obama is a case apart. His personal story, as told by him, made possible his rise from obscurity four years ago to possibly the White House. He doesn't have a long track record in government. We mainly have him in his own words. As any autobiographer, Mr. Obama played up certain chapters in his life -- perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation -- and ignored others. What's more, as acknowledged in "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama reconstructed conversations and gave some people pseudonyms or created "composite" characters.
Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
God knows the 'real' journalists are doing any digging.
We must demand to see all the transcripts of both Obama and Biden.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The USA's largest Marxist organisation, Democratic Socialists of America has consistently supported Barack Obama-particularly through its influential Chicago branch.New ZealBut as Ronald Reagan famously said of the Ku Klux Klan "just because they support me, that doesn't mean I support them."
While Obama has mixed with DSA members for many years, socially and politically, he has only occasionally been publicly identified with DSA sponsored events.
Obama makes an apparent, if obscure reference to DSA in his 1995 autobiography "Dreams From My Father".
Discussing his time studying political science at New York's Columbia University, in the early 80s, Obama reveals that he"went to socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyne.”
"Cooper Union" is the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a privately funded college in Downtown Manhattan.
For many years, from the early '80s until 2004, Cooper Union was the usual venue of the annual Socialist Scholars Conference-almost certainly what Obama was referring to.
I’m still somewhat amused by the way people tend to gravitate towards the school someone attended or the grades earned there when talking about politicians. If school is but the earliest preparation for the real tests that lie ahead, why so much emphasis, particularly from liberals? Granted, it can be a very formative process and one that I see as crucial in many ways to personal and professional development (over and over again you see successful results).
But still, what’s this nonsense about castigating Palin for attending Northern Idaho and Idaho? I’ve seen it posted earlier, but it’s a bit like benching Brett Favre because he went to Southern Miss or Jerry Rice for going to Mississippi Valley State. COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT given their accomplishments afterwards.
Speaking as someone who attended and graduated from a top 10 university in this country and who later attended a state college, if I had to do it over, I’d go state U the whole way. An education is but what you make of it and to which ends you apply it. God gave us all talents. It’s for us to develop them.
I just look at how much I changed from a cluelessly idealistic kid who voted for Al Gore in 2000 to a poster on FreeRepublic at this day and age. Maturity, success, and life happen.
Sure, go over the Columbia years. But Obama’s later dealings interest me far more.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Fox News had a special the other day where they covered the candidates and their histories. In the part about Obama they said that NONE of his classmates from Columbia (I think) remembered him. If that’s true, that is just weird beyond words.
They also said there were lots of holes in his places of residence around that time (some were off-campus apartments while he attended Columbia), where all he’d been able to supply over the years were street names but no street numbers.
I know next to nothing about Obama.
What LITTLE I DO KNOW, they are desperately covering up.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I have always wondered what Obama did between the ages of 12 and 30.
Oh just the usual. Walking on water, parting water, “community organizing”. According to team obama.
Don't all Messiah's have "hidden years"?
Media? Jack Diamond and Stanley Kurtz? Has either been on Larry King or interiewed by Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson or even Katie, Chris or Keith? I might have missed a Fox News appearance. . .
no the liberal press is protecting obamama.
he really believes he is something special?
Maybe he reacquainted himself with Islam under an assumed name... Apparently he enjoys making names up for other people, maybe he made one up for himself.
I used to know a kid something like Barry O when I was younger, he could have written books like Barry, not that he ever did. He was intelligent and always had a great story to tell you... mostly because he was a pathological liar.
What a great story to run on the same day that the NY Slimes runs a "In Search of Sarah Palin" story.
That's an Irish Catholic name, right?
Obama is hiding his ties to radicals.
William Ayers received his Education PhD. from Columiba (1989). He had to have been there at the same time as Obama.
Hey Folks,
Did anyone read the entire WSJ article? Particularly paragraph 7?
“”................. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him.””WSJ, September 11, 2008
Isn’t that so very strange??????? Not 1 in 400.
William Ayers, of Weathermen terrorism fame, attended Columbia during the 1980s, earning a PhD. in Education (1989).
Obama is hiding his radical associations.
ALL the press is protecting obama!!!
Don't know who else will pick it up, but you're a very funny guy...
It's second nature for Leftist radicals to call humans, "pigs."
I want to know two things:
When did he start using the name "Barack Obama"?
When did he meet Mike Klonsky?
Perhaps the Occidental and Columbia records show a different name. And Klonsky is as important as Ayers, if not more so.
I think it’s a crime that in order for me to have access to nukes, my PRP package has to include details about my addresses and roomates from 20+ years ago, and habitual drug use as a teen would be PDI, but the pres gets a free pass. No moral authority...
He spent them studying in Tibet (see: http://reluctant-messenger.com/issa.htm)
Obama is a phantasmic character in a “Once upon a time...” fairytale. The reader gets to fill in the blanks. Obama forgets, though, that nature hates a vacuum, and that the matter rushing in isn’t always complementary.
Obama’s blank slate is ultimately his own worse enemy. And as much as the media tries to shovel dead tree hyperbole into the gaps, it’s not building up to a pretty Prince Charming.
It appears that just about every top secret weapon system, strategy, and information the U.S. government develops is immediately leaked to the press.
Somehow there are seldom ANY leaks, documents, and information concerning college records, essays, birth certificates, and activities concerning a person who wants to be President, Commander in Chief of our Armed forces.
It appears that the U.S. Government should study the security systems of Columbia University and such, to learn how to safeguard assets.
I read an article that mentioned Senator Obama’s senior thesis at Columbia was about the Great North South Debate and income redistribution.
Post of the day dude, post of the day.
Out of 400 Columbia students contacted, NO ONE EVEN REMEMBERED OBAMA.
This according to the article.
Ain’t that strange.
It’s not really that strange that his classmates don’t recall him. He was a junior transfer into a private college who lived off campus, where people make most of the friends they are ever going to make in their freshman dorms and other kinds of freshman orientation, and in their lower-division seminar classes.
If he skipped a lot of class and didn’t join any campus clubs (neither of which is unusual) it’s natural that no one would have gotten to know him or remember him.
Actually it was 'near the bottom' of his class and besides, the guy who graduated last in his class in medical school is still called "Doctor" and people go to him if they are ill.
He was teaching in the Temple and being subject to his parents,... oh no, wrong Messiah!
In one of his books, Nobama says that he lived in a run-down apartment with a DRUG DEALER...
FOR 2 YEARS!!!!!!
Sure shows alot of moral strangth and charachter to me. How about you?
4) A tampered copy of your half-sister’s birth certificate does not prove you are constitutionally qualified to be President!!!
I read Obama Nation and Corsi summarized his two books....I dont remember reading that. There must be something hidden in there...and I still can’t believe all those records are “missing”
Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past.
***I haven’t read this article, but it looks like it might be the sort of thing y’all are interested in.
obumpa
Ping.
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