Ray Parish, Chairman of U of I Stop the Draft Campaign, Addressing StudentsDate:Feb. 6, 1980
Posted on 02/19/2010 5:44:47 PM PST by Smokeyblue
I was Barack Obama ’83’s roommate at Columbia College in fall 1981. I met him in 1979, when we were freshmen at Occidental College (Oxy) in Los Angeles and our dorm rooms were directly opposite each other.
I came to college as a middle-class guy from Bethesda, Md., where I’d lived from fifth grade through high school. At Oxy, we attended some of the same social events and had late-night philosophical discussions related to our college reading or to current affairs. We attended rallies on campus where we were urged to “draft beer, not people,” and discussed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, apartheid in South Africa, the hostages in Iran and the Contras in Latin America. The crowd we hung out with included men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics and international students. Barack listened carefully to all points of view and he was funny, smart, thoughtful and well-liked. It was easy to sit down with him and have a fun conversation.
We both transferred from Oxy to Columbia in fall 1981. Barack had found an apartment on West 109th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus, and suggested that I room with him. Our sublet was a third-story walk-up in a so-so neighborhood; the unit next door was burned out and vacant. The doorbell didn’t work; to be let in when I first arrived I had to yell up to Barack from the street. It was a railroad apartment: From the kitchen, you walked into Barack’s room, then my room, and lastly the living room. We didn’t have a television or computers. In that apartment we hosted a number of visitors, mostly friends from Oxy who stayed overnight when they were passing through town. Barack was very generous to these visitors. As a host and roommate, he sometimes did the shopping and cooked
(Excerpt) Read more at college.columbia.edu ...
Fuggedabout The Very Reverend Manning. If Obama ain't paying him, he ought to be.
But why is it so hard to get people to understand this simple set of facts?
Obama, by concealing records has "hinted" that we check on his birth certificate, passport data, school records, etc. What he hs done is to distract from the real issue.
He certainly has "distracted" a fair number of FReepers who ought to know better.
I’m exactly the same age and remember the anti-draft stuff. Registration had just been resumed and that evil militarist Ronald Reagan had been elected.
Well, if you were there and know first hand...I stand corrected!
Ray Parish, Chairman of U of I Stop the Draft Campaign, Addressing StudentsDate:Feb. 6, 1980
yikes...I missed that ...too funny if true.
Could be.
But mandatory draft registration was reintroduced in 1980, though the draft itself wasn't, so this could be a reference to that.
On the whole, 80s radicalism was pretty feeble and inauthentic. It was almost a 60s reenactor movement, copying what had come before, rather than starting anything new.
Smokey, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was not at Columbia COLLEGE, he registed at the Columbia University School of General Studies, took some courses, (no one knows what) and was granted a degree by Columbia College, which is the way it worked. This roomie guy is offering a sanitized “G” rated version of Obama’s time in NYC. I want to know if he was connectd with the Black Panther stickups! Not if he was showering at they Y.
Fuggedabout The Very Reverend Manning. If Obama ain’t paying him, he ought to be.
“. . .80s radicalism was pretty feeble and inauthentic.”
So was a lot of 60’s radicalism. I went to college in 1969. I remember guys discussing the chicks they were going to pick up at the sit-in. I remember the “leaders” of the movement working on their tans by the pool during the spring after Kent State—going to class was optional that spring.
But now, they run our country. They can make $200,000 a year, impose all their stupid radical ideas on less enlightened people, call themselves public servants, and have sex with whatever they want and demand that everyone else celebrate.
But, they’re the ones amongst the boomers who calculated best. They understood early on that we were NOT a meritocracy but a crony capitalist state heading toward fascism. They were the first ones on the bandwagon and have done the best for themselves and their children.
Unless God counts somewhere in the equation. They they, like many of us, are in deep, deep trouble.
Nope. He took courses through General Studies, and was granted his Baccalaureate from the College. That much even they admit. No one knows what courses, which instructors, and what grades, except Columbia University.
Of course, I am eminently correctable upon presentation of a transcript.
Something about he Dominicans next door?
People, including myself, found it hard to accept that senior legislators would assiduously avoid the Article II issue. Having spent some years in the military I was sure some experienced officer, having seen men die, and seen the tortured families of the men who don't return, would raise the question. After all, fewer and fewer legislators have military experience.
Then there is the the well-funded, and with our dollars, campaign to besmirch the motives or concerns of those who take an active roll. Perhaps you too have read some of the dozens of legal briefs leading up to the campaign discussion natural born citizenship, but remarkably avoiding the very court cases in which the definition is cited and stated.
It took me some time and much reading to have no doubt that the definition we know was very much the mainstream, and exactly what our founders intended. I even came across data counting the legal citations of the time and which not only confirmed that Vattel was familiar to the legal community, Vattel was the most cited legal reference between 1789 and 1820.
What seems clear is that those in authority are not willing to protect the Constitution. Perhaps they feel that its authority has been so weakened that acting on what amounts to a jeering rebuke of our founders, Obama told everyone, “I was born a subject of the British Commonwealth.” He knew he wouldn't be challenged.
I have asked myself if McCain was a partner. McCain has received Soros funds. That is a matter of public record. Did McCain have such a feeling of entitlement that he cooperated with the Obama camp? McCain is very familiar with his issues, unfair though they may be to someone who has been a POW. The law firm defending McCain in one of the legal challenges of his ineligibility, Kendall & Ellis, had a senior partner on Obama’s campaign committee, and sponsored a Chicago Kent Law Review article challenging Article II, and of course, never referencing chief justices Marshall or Waite, or The Venus, or Happersett.
I have also begun to wonder if the GOP is avoiding the issue because they anticipate large gains in both houses with Obama in office. It is probably wishful thinking, but if and when the Constitution is observed, no act by Obama is law. Meanwhile, our legislators are, in my view, playing strategic games with our Consititution. Could decision makers have so little faith in our courts, including the Supreme Court (with its idiotic decision on CO2) that they will spring ineligibility when it will erase the most damage?
Whatever the case it is in our interest that people like you, rsxid, and some other very knowledgeable FR contributors to calmly explain what the law is, and perhaps to explain why our founders chose that precept of natural law, that parents shape the child, to help keep us free.
Think you can talk Barry into actually releasing his transcript and graduation letter? That is, if you went to Columbia, either...
There are several dorms on the Columbia campus. It has been many years since I attended graduate school there, but two come to mind - John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, both dorms named after former students.
At the time, in the late 60s, Columbia College was for full time male students, Barnard was for full time female students and the school of General Studies was for those who wanted to attend Columbia on a part time basis as well as full time. It made a big difference whether one attended Columbia College as opposed to GS. Those attending CC looked down their noses at those attending GS. Plus, it was much easier to gain entrance to GS.
CdM, what you said was true up until my graduation year of 1982. After that, Columbia went co-ed. While I was there, I saw many attempts by the students to revive the “feel” of the campus in the 60’s, including pro-union, pro-communist, anti-war, anti-nuke rallies.
City police were not allowed on campus because of the head-busting that took place when radicals took over the campus in ‘68 to protest the construction of a gym in Morningside Park that would not allow the neighborhood kids to use it. I know one of the people who took over the campus and gave me the radical’s tour right before I started going there.
Oh, and I lived in John Jay for two years - 7th floor and 9th floor. When I was there, there was a pub in the basement.
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