Posted on 02/28/2008 4:55:05 PM PST by george76
No, in that picture Obama looks happy to be with his Dad, but the father looks distracted and posing.
You mean his grandparents didn't screw up.
I meant what I said because it is the earliest years of a child's life that has the biggest effect on how they turn out.
[...
Obama is black, and he’s white.
He’s Muslim, and he’s Christian.
He’s anything anyone wants him to be.
And maybe that means he’s nothing at all.
And if that doesn’t give the American voter
pause, what will?
...]
You’re post is so good it must be repeated.
How do you know that? If my parents were an indication of who I am, I would be an atheist, Marxist, Kucinich supporter.
I never said facts about Obama's family background should be off limits. What I object to is wild speculation about his mother's parenting skills, drug use, political philosophy, etc., and blaming the woman for everything that's wrong with him. Barack Obama is a big boy now, and can take responsibility for his own behavior.
Now that could be Kenya or America. He didn't say America. It's almost like a deliberate omission.
“If my parents were an indication of who I am, I would be an atheist, Marxist, Kucinich supporter.”
It’s clear that this is personal for you, but let’s examine your claim.
You clearly have some testimony about how you came to be other than an atheist, Marxist Kucinich supporter. Someone who wanted to understand you would start by looking at your family tree, and then learn how you broke with that past.
When we look at Obama’s mother, we see a white-bread, garden variety self-loathing on the run from her small town Willy Loman father and everything he stood for. When did Obama break with that?
I posit that his youthful drive for the Presidency is part of his attempt to integrate his American identity into his parent’s rejection of it. He will be American from the top down, on his terms, and change it to an America he believes his parents would have accepted, thereby healing the rift in his own upbringing.
So when you know his family history, there’s no mystery at all about what sort of “change” he wants, and why.
Can you imagine if a Republican was running for president and it came out that his father had bought his first wife for 14 cows???!!!Just wow!!
I suspect you are not going to reach that conclusion.
If we're thinking of the same picture of B&H, then my immediate reaction to it was that it was an obvious pose job on the part of Bill.
Admittedly I am relying on my intuition about all these pictures and I am assuming that I can reliably determine from various subtle cues what is really going on. Since I have a young child and I am always on the lookout for cues that he is not 100% happy and I quite often have had a chance to observe the effect of negative parenting, I think I have some practice here.
In our local news this past week, there is a woman on trial for the murder of her 6 year old foster child. In all the pictures of this little girl she looked happy.
Send me a link to one of these pictures (I couldn't find one), and I will tell you the difference, or admit I am wrong if I can see no difference.
A lot of people once thought Ted Bundy was a nice man, too. Intuitions about people you don't know are highly unreliable.
There are photos of Hitler hugging small children that seem perfectly happy, too.
Photos lie, just like photographers and their subjects.
for what it is worth...see post 26
Researching his roots reveal that on his father’s side, he is descended from Arab slave traders. They operated under an extended grant from Queen Victoria, who gave them the right to continue the slave trade in exchange for helping the British defeat the Madhi Army in southern Sudan and the Upper Nile region. Funny how circular is history; now the British again face the Madhi Army, albeit this time Shiite, not Sunni, as in nineteenth century Sudan.
Oops. When is Barack going to apologize for his slave stealing and trading ancestors?
Well that will never happen.
Heh, heh. I just moved off Mercer Island a few years ago. It is a “special” place to say the least. I lived five houses down from Paul Allen. It is also where Michael Medved and no small number of other famous people did, or still do, live. Back in the day it was mostly cabins and “summer homes” for people, even though it is only a quick bridge drive from Seattle, and another few miles by freeway to downtown Seattle.
It is extremely exclusive. If you don’t live there it is surprisingly likely you will be profiled by the police as you drive on it’s roads - depending on the quality of your car... ;)
Are you being sarcastic? If not, how can you tell she is a good mother from that picture?
Ironically, Obama has slave owning on both sides of his family tree. The Dunhams had slave-owning ancestors as well.
Good grief. You are reading way too much into this. Self-loathing? Willy-Loman father? You have no way of knowing that.
So, without the information about his mother, you would have voted for him otherwise?
Read the articles.
The father drifted from town to town in search of the big score in furniture sales.
Stanley Ann Dunham went from one distant, abusive man to another: this demonstrates the self-loathing, along with her sexual fetishisation of black men, attested to in Obama’s biography.
Or we could just pretend that the past is meaningless.
I wouldn’t vote for anyone whose campaign slogan was “Change” alone; but, then, I wasn’t abandoned by my father, stepfather and mother by the time I was 10.
1. By comparing it with the thousands of other scenes I have seen in real life of mothers interacting with their children.
2. By the fact the kid in the picture seems unusually happy.
3. By the way the mother is holding and looking at the boy.
I don't think a boy can be really happy and at the same time have a terrible relationship with his mother. If I were a CPS worker and I witnessed this scene it would not raise any red flags. Just the opposite, and that has nothing to do with the identity of the people in the picture.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.