“My point being you (at the time) only studied Russian for the point of defeating the USSR or entreating it.
Which was it for Obama’s parents?”
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaPolitics.htm
Excerpt:
In his book, Obama writes about “a poet named Frank,” who visited his family in Hawaii, read poetry, and was full of “hard-earned knowledge” and advice. Who was Frank? Obama only says that he had “some modest notoriety once,” was “a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes during his years in Chicago...” but was now “pushing eighty.” He writes about “Frank and his old Black Power dashiki self” giving him advice before he left for Occidental College in 1979 at the age of 18.
Is it possible that Obama did not know who Davis was when he wrote his book? That’s not plausible, since Obama refers to him as a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes and says he saw a book of his black poetry.
Professor Gerald Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston, noted that Davis, who moved to Honolulu from Kansas in 1948 “at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson,” came into contact with Barack Obama and his family and became the young man’s mentor, influencing Obama’s sense of identity and career moves. Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.
As Horne describes it, Davis, who wrote the memoir, “Living the Blues,” had “befriended” a “Euro-American family” that had “migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago.”
Frank is Frank Marshall Davis a known communist and much more:
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/
Whoa!
http://blog.barofintegrity.us/2008/02/26/obama-mentor-identified-as-communist.aspx
Excerpt:
1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What’s more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several Communist front organizations.
Interest. Frank Davis was born in Arkansas City, Kansas. I wonder if he knew the Dunham family from Kansas?
Go to the link, a must read.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/what_barack_obama_learned_from.html
What Barack Obama Leared from the Communist Party
(snip)
“...in Hawaii was an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP (Communist Party) — if not a member — and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend (and Communist Party member) Paul Robeson.
(snip)
Excerpt:
Family Ties
Obama’s grandparents, Stanley Armour Dunham and his wife Madelyn are another piece of the puzzle. Key details come from interviews in The Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times.
Done bouncing around Kansas, California and Texas in the years after World War Two, Stanley and Madelyn in 1955 picked up and relocated 2,000 miles from Texas to Seattle. The next year they relocated to Mercer Island specifically so their daughter, Obama’s future mother, Stanley Ann Dunham could attend Mercer Island high school.
One year earlier, Mercer Island schools had distinguished themselves in a way which might have caused others to avoid them. The Chicago Tribune explains,
“In 1955, the chairman of the Mercer Island school board, John Stenhouse, testified before the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee that he had been a member of the Communist Party.”
After intense debate, Stenhouse decided not to resign from the school board according to an April 11, 1955 account in Time Magazine.
Stenhouse was not the only leftist connected to the school. The Seattle Times explains:
One respite (from Americans Stanley Ann Dunham looked down on) was found in a wing of Mercer Island High called “anarchy alley.” Jim Wichterman taught a wide-open philosophy course that included Karl Marx. Next door, Val Foubert taught a rigorous dose of literature, including Margaret Mead’s writings on homosexuality.
Those classes prompted what Wichterman, now 80 and retired in Ellensburg, called “mothers’ marches” of parents outraged at the curriculum.
Dunham thrived in the environment, Wichterman said.
“As much as a high-school student can, she’d question anything: What’s so good about democracy? What’s so good about capitalism? What’s wrong with communism? What’s good about communism?” Wichterman said. “She had what I call an inquiring mind.”
She also showed her politics, wearing a campaign button for Adlai Stevenson. And despite flirting with atheism, she went to services at East Shore Unitarian church, a left-leaning congregation in Bellevue.
The Chicago Tribune mentions a description of the Dunham’s chosen church as “The Little Red Church on the Hill”. According to its own website, East Shore Unitarian Church got that name because of, “Well-publicized debates and forums on such controversial subjects as the admission of ‘Red China’ to the United Nations....” The fact that Mercer Island’s John Stenhouse, according to his 2000 obituary, once served as church president might also have contributed to the “red” label.
Obama often says his mother’s “parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists....” At best, Obama was twisting the facts. Describing his grandfather in Dreams (p17), Obama writes:
“In his only skirmish into organized religion, he would enroll the family in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation....”
Over thirty years later, Barack Obama would make his “only skirmish into organized religion”, joining Chicago’s Trinity United Church, inspired by anti-American church leader, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.