Posted on 01/03/2011 2:35:42 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
For reasons clear to no one just yet, Hawaii's new Democrat governor, Neil Abercrombie, has gone public with his desire to silence the so-called "birthers" with proof of Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth.
"Maybe I'm the only one in the country," Abercrombie told the Los Angeles Times just before Christmas, "that could look you right in the eye right now and tell you, 'I was here when that baby was born.'"
A few days later, Abercrombie clarified to Mark Niesse of the Associated Press that he didn't exactly see Obama's parents with their newborn son at the hospital, but that he "remembers seeing Obama as a child with his parents at social events."
Although the major media have questioned why Abercrombie would raise an issue that, according to the Los Angeles Times, "most people see as resolved," they take Abercrombie at his word as to what he knows about the young Obama family.
They shouldn't. Abercrombie's boasts about his relationship with the president's presumed parents, Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham, have got to unnerve the president and his close advisors. They know something the media perversely choose not to know: Abercrombie is remembering a past that never happened.
A member of the House's progressive caucus before his election as governor, Abercrombie has been talking excitedly about the relationship for years, playing John the Baptist to Obama's Jesus.
"Little Barry, that's what we called him," Abercrombie told the Chicago Tribune while "recalling his days with Obama Sr. and his future wife, Ann Dunham, at the University of Hawaii." If Obama were born on August 4, 1961, however, there could not have been many such days.
As is thoroughly documented, Ann and little Barry were in Seattle two weeks later, where she enrolled at the University of Washington. By the time she returned to Hawaii in late summer or fall 1962, Barack Sr. had left for Harvard for good.
Citing Abercrombie as source, a 2007 Hawaii TV news report claimed that Ann "became estranged from her husband, Barack Obama[,] Sr., after his departure for Harvard." I don't know about Hawaii, but in Missouri, if you flee your husband with baby in tow two weeks after his birth, that qualifies as "estrangement."
According to divorce papers filed in 1964, Barack Sr. and Ann married in Wailuku, Maui on February 2, 1961. But one has to wonder whether it was a marriage in anything but name, or whether there was a marriage at all. Obama himself writes in Dreams, "In fact, how and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I've never quite had the courage to explore."
No one attended the wedding -- not Abercrombie, not Ann's parents. In fact, no one in Barack Sr.'s clique seemed to know there was a relationship, let alone a wedding. Neil's brother Hal never saw Ann and Barack Sr. together. Another clique member, Pake Zane, who had distinct memories of Barack Sr., could not recall Ann at all. When Neil Abercrombie and Zane visited their friend in Nairobi in 1968, Barack Sr. shocked them by never once inquiring about his putative wife and 6-year-old son.
The 17-year-old Ann had met the 24 year-old Barack Sr. in Russian class at the University of Hawaii. Why they were studying Russian (in 1960, people like Lee Harvey Oswald studied Russian) is a question for another day. In Dreams, Ann provides only the sketchiest detail of their first date -- Barack Sr. came an hour late and with friends -- and nothing more.
A high school friend of Ann's claims to have received a letter or two from Ann in which she spoke about Barack Sr., and there is no reason to doubt her. But beyond this, there is no evidence of a relationship, and the only evidence for the marriage are the divorce papers, which are real and have been posted online.
One reason people marry in a county other than their own -- Maui County, for instance -- is to keep the announcement of the marriage license out of the local paper. By claiming a Maui wedding, and perhaps even attaining a Maui license, the Dunhams could have assured the baby an identity without drawing attention to the relationship.
If Obama had, in fact, been born out of wedlock, or if his father had been someone other than Barack Sr., that would not have affected Obama's eligibility for higher office, but it would have surely de-glamorized him. "Barry Dunham" does not exactly tease the imagination.
Whatever his contribution, Obama Sr. lent young Barry a name, an identity, and a romantic storyline. Obama's mother and grandparents sustained this narrative throughout Obama's childhood.
Barack Obama repeated this story in his memoir Dreams from My Father, and to good effect. When Obama hooked up with campaign guru David Axelrod in his 2004 race for the U.S. Senate, his story crystallized into a marketing strategy. In the retelling, little Barry is always two years old when Barack Sr. reluctantly leaves wife and son for Harvard. This is a lie.
Guided by Axelrod, Obama held off in his breakthrough keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention for all of 46 words -- including "Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much" -- before sharing his story with the world.
At the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver, Obama leaped into the story in the very first sentence. "Four years ago," he began, "I stood before you and told you my story -- of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to."
In between the two convention speeches, the story of Obama's birth was told more often than that of anyone's since Jesus. No one, of course, told it as convincingly as Obama himself, especially in his game-saving Philadelphia speech, immodestly titled "A More Perfect Union."
In this speech, delivered to negate the baleful impact of the Jeremiah Wright videos, Obama attributed his faith in the American people to his "own American story." He reminded those few registered voters who might somehow have forgotten that "I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas." Although the proto-hippie Ann spent her formative teen years in Seattle, the storyline always places her in Kansas.
Obama and his operatives would invest enormous political capital in what sympathetic biographer David Remnick calls his "signature appeal: the use of the details of his own life as a reflection of a kind of multicultural ideal." From the beginning, they worked hard to protect the investment and did what they had to do to keep the storytellers in line.
Abercrombie may not have gotten the memo. Although the president was likely born in the United States, he may not have been born in Hawaii, he may not have been born in August 1961, he may not have been the son of Barack Sr., or he may have simply been listed as "white" on his birth certificate.
The truth is that the storied little family never lived together. Any fact that blew the storyline could have derailed Obama's candidacy before it got going. Expect the Abercrombie fuss to just sort of fade away.
UW claims the 08/19/61 date on the WND transcript is a mistake based on a data entry typo and should be 09/19/61, see http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/08/22/confirmed-stanley-ann-dunham-began-studies-in-september-1961-not-august/
If Obama was born on 4 August and Stanley shows up in Seattle in “late August” according to the Susan Blake interview, as a mom so new she doesn’t know how to diaper the baby, it makes more sense that the start of her two classes was then three or four weeks away.
I’m sorry if I have added to the re-thrashing of an point already made and corrected as of August last year to which no new data seems to have arisen since.
I also confirmed that the summer session ended August 17th 1961, fwtw.
You can’t be serious.
I don’t know anything about you, but I doubt you’ve ever given birth or tried to manage a newborn, particularly in an era of extended hospital stays, formula and bottles, and cloth diapers.
Socializing, not to mention traveling, with a newborn in 1961 was not like today and not as easy as you would imply.
Stanley Ann Dunham wasn’t taking her baby to social events in Hawaii when he was a newborn, then showing up in Washington State just for the heck of it when he was a few weeks old. The very suggestion is laughable — unless, of course, she was under some duress that required travel. She was likely already in the Seattle vicinity or, as has been postulated, trying to get back to the states after giving birth elsewhere.
I’m old enough to remember 1961 quite well. You simply do not know what you’re talking about. No offense intended, just the truth.
LOL. You birthers are so funny. You find it laughable that a woman would take a newborn to a party (which many women do, and also did back in the 60's). Yet at the same time, you find it completely believable that an American woman would travel not from Hawaii to Seattle, but Hawaii to KENYA, a journey that likely to take several days, in her 7 or 8th month of pregnancy, just to give birth in 3rd world conditions. Then, to top it all off, you want to believe she flew back with her newborn, again not a mere 5 hour flight from Hawaii to Seattle, but a multi day journey from KENYA to Seattle.
And you're telling ME I can't be serious? LOL.
That's believable, and consistent with the fact that Fall quarter here begins in late September.
So the time line looks something like this. Stanely Ann gives birth in Hawaii on August 4. She was young, and there is no evidence or indication that there were any complications with the birth, so she probably was home with her baby on August 5 or 6.
Since the birth went smoothly and she was very young, she likely recovered from it quickly, which makes it plausible that she took her newborn to a party or two within the next couple weeks.
Then she has a falling out with her husband, something not uncommon for teen moms. Maybe he told her at this time that he was a bigamist. Or maybe they just found they couldn 't get along in a stressful situation. These things happen all the time.
Whatever the cause, the falling out causes her to want to get away from her husband in the last weeks of August. What better place to run to then Seattle, where she has a support system in the form of friends made during her high school years? Sure, taking a newborn on 5 hour flight is no picnic, but certainly doable for an young 18 year-old mother with plenty of energy.
Actually, in my experience, young babies under 3 months are easier to travel with than older infants or toddlers. My wife an I took our daughter on a long flight when she was two months, and she pretty much slept the whole time. Friends confirm that this is pretty common.
Once in Seattle, she finds an apartment in Capitol Hill, which was a downscale, mixed-race neighborhood at the time, and starts taking classes at UW extension.
Given that her parents were solidly middle class, and state university tuition was super cheap in those days, all of the above was affordable.
Certainly, it all looks a lot more plausible than a Kenyan birth story. Why do you find the latter more plausible?
No, curiosity, I don’t think that at all. You are putting words in my mouth, and your screenname is a joke. You exibit no true curiosity at all.
I’m dealing with facts.
The first is that we have no record whatsoever of Stanley Ann Dunham for the first seven months of 1961, until she turned up in Washington State in mid to late August. Nobody knows where she was or even if she was pregnant.
There is no reason to think she traveled that summer at all. She may well have been in Seattle or nearby the entire time. Air transportation was extremely expensive, and her dad was a deadbeat, and she apparently had to income, and Obama Sr. didn’t either. Unless someone else was footing the bill, I don’t know how she could have afforded travel of any kind.
And traveling with a newborn — or even going to social events with one — in 1961 was a far greater endeavor than it is these days when we have pre-packaged formula and disposable diapers. I know. Been there.
Not to mention medical issues for the mother, assuming she was indeed his bio mom, which we don’t know, either, because there is no record.
So don’t tell me what I believe, because at this point I don’t know any more than anyone else. It’s all speculation.
And that is troublesome indeed when speaking of the putative leader of the free world.
You should be ashamed of being so closed-minded, even if it pays well.
So youre not curious why Obie won’t release his long form, school records or answer where he got his SS card etc.? What is more plausible he is hiding something or he is playing games? He let a career Army officer go to jail because he wouldn’t release his long form, what kind of President/ CIC is that? Playing games, methinks not.
The lib trio, Barry, Nazi Polosi and Abercommie in Hawaii at the same time, hmmmm!!!
What’s that ALL about, sipping tea, hello???
Just a frequently trolling, look at his about page, says all!!!
I find nothing beyond possibility in this matter, no story line yet stands out as “plausible”, it is a battle between implausible stories!
The lack of witnesses today and witness reports, printed announcements, official records from 1961 to the marriage — the wedding — of Senior to Stanley Ann cast major doubts that there was an make actual marriage.
The two Hawaiian friends of Senior took a trip to visit him in Kenya a few years later. While speaking of their visit and communication With Senior there was no mention of Stanley Ann nor of Junior, only of another wife in Nairobi. That also speaks against an actual marriage.
What speaks for a marriage? A 1964 divorce decree, with the receipt of service to Senior, signed and hand dated in American date format. The modern recollections of friends in Seattle of 1961 letters that Stanley Ann had written them saying she had married the Kenyan. Obama’s own “auto” biographies. I say “auto” because the first one seems a blend of the life histories of William Ayers, the ghostwriter, and Obama.
Photos of Senior in Hawaii in 1961 ALSO speak against a marriage, as photos of the couple in social settings are not to be found, as far as I know. There are a few photos of Stanley Ann, Senior and Junior, but those seem staged, perhaps even edited.
And there have been claims by Kenyan officials, American and African reporters, and perhaps informal setting statements reported of Michelle Obama, Obama’s Kenyan “aunt” and maybe Obama himself, that make claims of his being born in Africa either directly or by reasonable inference in context.
The short length of the supposed marriage weights to its non-existence, as does Stanley Ann’s late August 1961 appearance in Seattle while Senior remained studying and partying in Hawaii. The photos from that period testify as to his charms on women, which also weighs against a marriage.
Where are the photos of a pregnant wife? Aren’t alpha-males like Senior proud in their ability to procreate? Where is a new father’s pride in showing and telling. Silence. Nothing chirps.
When exactly DID Stanley Ann arrive on the west coast, either in Seattle US, or Vancouver Canada? Where’s the evidence of her being in Hawaii anytime during the summer or spring of 1961? As far as I know, nothing.
To be most judicious to the evidences and statements (none under oath) we have on the matter of Obama’s birth and first few months of life: We do not know where Obama was born. We do not know if his mom was really married, or just inventive of being so. We do not know where Stanley Ann was in the spring and summer of 1961.
The determination of the facts of those circumstances simply cannot be honestly said to be able to make. It’s not even because of unknowns, it is because the knowns do not make enough sense to give any theory adequate credit.
Great summary of all that we do NOT know!
You wrote:
“...The two Hawaiian friends of Senior took a trip to visit him in Kenya a few years later. While speaking of their visit and communication With Senior there was no mention of Stanley Ann nor of Junior, only of another wife in Nairobi. That also speaks against an actual marriage...”
Did you know that the ‘two Hawaiian friends’ were NEIL ABERCROMBIE AND HIS BUDDY PAK ZANE?
“...Years later, Abercrombie and another grad school friend looked up their old pal during a trip through Africa.
“At that point, the senior Obama was a bitter man, according to the congressman, feeling that he had been denied due opportunities to influence the running of his country. “He was drinking too much; his frustration was apparent,” Abercrombie said. To Abercrombie’s surprise, Obama never asked about his ex-wife or his son...”
Originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune, link no longer works, found exerpt here:
http://prorev.com/2007/05/why-obama-is-called-black.html
The fate of the world hangs on finding out what a doe-eyed, willful, rebellious and intelligent 18 year old girl did fifty years ago.
thanks for the link, this is an image of the record I think they are referring to, where the number '8' has been explained to be a '9' - I remain unconvinced -
If we are to take the commencement date as September 19, that's still six days before the September 25 commencement date as per their own calendar. Are they trying to make a Right out of two Wrongs?
I see it more as...a question of WHO WAS ANNA OBAMA. Remember, the Seattle episode, the baby-sitting story, the U of WA transcript ALL appeared after the discovery of a listing for ANNA OBAMA in the Seattle Polk directory.
One of my theories is that Abercrombie, backed by the House DSA cabal led by Pelosi, was threatening to blackmail Obama with the BC. Pelosi may have been in HI to back up Abercrombie's threat on Obama.
The DSA Marxists are livid that Obama has doubled down on the Afghanistan War spending billions they want for wealth redistribution. Obama does have sole authority as CIC over the Afghanistan War. Maybe Abercrombie and Pelosi are pressuring Obama to stick to Biden's firm, major July 2011 draw-down from Afghanistan, or else the long form or vital records will be released.
Your theory would explain why Obama looked so thin in the ‘shave ice’ photos. The one where you saw his arm holding the cone looked like the arm of a famine victim. Drudge said something about Obama skipping meals. If Pelosi and Ambercombie are pressuring him, O might get too nervous to eat, and may be substituting drugs. HI is his home turf, after all, and he did visit an ‘old friend’. Maybe he got what he needed, so to speak.
The article below has a little different take on that!
However, I don’t think it’s co-incident that these three stooges are on the Islands at the same time!!
Of course you would not expect the Dung Head Media finding this a bit strange!!!
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2010/08/neil-abercrombie-is-socialist-dsaer.html
With his so called double “social” life in the closet, no surprise his medical records are sealed!!!
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