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McCarthy: Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia?
National Review ^ | 10/07/08 | Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on 10/07/2008 2:20:38 PM PDT by vrwc54

The years he won’t discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about.

Barack Obama does not want to talk about Columbia. Not even to his good friends at the New York Times, who’ve so reliably helped him bleach away his past — a past neck-deep in the hard Left radicalism he has gussied up but never abandoned.

Why? I suspect it is because Columbia would shred his thin post-partisan camouflage.

You might think the Times would be more curious. After all, the Democrats’ presidential nominee has already lied to the Gray Lady about the origins of his relationship with Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Back in May, in a cheery profile of Obama’s early Chicago days, the Times claimed (emphasis is mine):

Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

Now look, anyone who gave five seconds of thought to that passage smelled a rat. Ayers and Dohrn are passionate radical activists who lived as fugitives for a decade. There’s no way they held a political coming-out party for someone who was unknown to them. Obviously, they already knew him well enough by then to feel very comfortable. They might have been sympathetic to a relative stranger, but sponsoring such a gathering in one’s living room is a strong endorsement.

And now, even the Times now knows it’s been had.

(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: ayers; columbia; obama; obamalostyears
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To: vrwc54

Wayne Root, the once or maybe still Vice Presidential nominee of the Libertarian party on Bob Barr’s ticket, was a classmate of Obama’s at Columbia. He doesn’t remember him and could find no classmates who could either...


41 posted on 10/07/2008 3:27:56 PM PDT by penowa
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To: vrwc54
his good friends at the New York Times, who’ve so reliably helped him bleach away his past


42 posted on 10/07/2008 3:32:41 PM PDT by T. Buzzard Trueblood (Odinga is the new Ayers.)
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To: shalom aleichem
"... Columbia and the hiatus between then and starting Harvard ..."

Is that not the time period he was a "Community Organizer" in Chi Town?

43 posted on 10/07/2008 3:34:31 PM PDT by Red_Devil 232 (VietVet - USMC All Ready On The Right? All Ready On The Left? All Ready On The Firing Line!)
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To: Maine Mariner

My brother attended Columbia from 1981 to 1985 and he was and is a very social guy with a large circle of alumni friends and he and no one he knows remembers Obama. No one had a class with him, saw him working on campus in a library or dining hall, or recalls him in any way. Very, very strange.


44 posted on 10/07/2008 3:35:00 PM PDT by Oratam
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To: Always Independent

If they funneled it through as some sort of “scholarship” it would not be taxable. Dr. Corsi’s book suggests a wealthy Muslim may have not only helped him get admitted to these selective schools but also paid for them. Of course you need access to the schools’ records, and with all the trouble Diamond and Kurtz have had with the University of Illinois at Chicago with “public records” it may take forever.


45 posted on 10/07/2008 3:36:22 PM PDT by shalom aleichem
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To: Red_Devil 232

Well not supposedly because remember? he turned down all those big Wall Street lawfirm offers (heh) to go to Chi-town and be a community organizer after he graduated Harvard law school.


46 posted on 10/07/2008 3:39:21 PM PDT by shalom aleichem
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To: surely_you_jest
I am sure he attended Columbia. The University confirms it. He was there for only two years after transferring from Occidental. Occidential had an exchange program with Columbia, which I understand allowed students to transfer there.

Obama was known to some at Columbia, if you believe this May 2008 account, which may have been made up to provide some normalcy to Obama.

Personally, I think Obama has always felt like a stranger in America, which is why most of his friends in college were foreigners. He identified more with them than native born Americans. He had Pakistani roommates at Occidental and Columbia. I suspect that Obama was into drugs and radical causes. There is the very real possibility that he met Ayers at Columbia. It could be the reason why Obama headed to Chicago. No one knows why he went there.

47 posted on 10/07/2008 3:43:27 PM PDT by kabar (.)
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To: Chief Engineer
Through a lot of research I found the name of a William Araiza (on a TX Columbia Alumni list) who in one writing mentioned he attended a poli-sci seminar with Obama and in another writing claimed it was a class. Haven’t figured out which William Araiza it is from Googling though.

Most likely he's the Professor at Brooklyn College Law School or Loyola Law School in Los Angeles (same guy I assume, though at different times).

I hope you're not hanging too much on this "class vs. seminar" thing.

While there may be a technical difference, anybody who's not a snob says "class" rather than "seminar."

48 posted on 10/07/2008 3:43:57 PM PDT by x
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To: shalom aleichem

Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project ... Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988.


49 posted on 10/07/2008 3:47:57 PM PDT by Red_Devil 232 (VietVet - USMC All Ready On The Right? All Ready On The Left? All Ready On The Firing Line!)
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To: anglian

Being an attorney, knowing how much it costs to get thru school, i keep coming back to the question, how did this essentially penniless yahoo ever pay for all that high priced education? I think he learned early and often on how to scam us taxpayers to pay his way, all under the guise of taking care of the poor. When will the poor ever learn that they are nothing more than a stepping stone in the path of these jackals.


50 posted on 10/07/2008 3:59:58 PM PDT by eaglesiniowa ((Hope is not a course of action))
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To: Illinois Rep

During my research I found the following story about a fellow co-worker who worked with Obama at BIC. (Don’t mind the “lovefest but you might want to save the article somewhere as such articles have been disappearing at an alarming rate!) I had a difficult time finding this article again as it wasn’t even in Google cache!

http://www.vendio.com/mesg/read.html?num=28&thread=322671


51 posted on 10/07/2008 4:00:11 PM PDT by Chief Engineer
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To: x

The original mention of William Araiza was found from a Texas thread of Columbia alumni which is why I couldn’t with veracity say that the William Araiza you mention is the same as the one in Texas.


52 posted on 10/07/2008 4:05:21 PM PDT by Chief Engineer
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To: livius
The fact that Obama will not release any part of his college record is thought to reflect the fact that he did not go to Columbia University, but Columbia College, which was an affiliated program but virtually an external degree program, aimed at people who already had some college but didn’t have the grades or preparatory courses to get into Columbia University.

Interesting theory.

53 posted on 10/07/2008 4:10:23 PM PDT by conservative cat ("In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman. " -MT)
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To: PhilDragoo; LibertyRocks; backhoe; Grampa Dave; Mike Darancette; MeekOneGOP; devolve; potlatch; ...

Thanks for the ping.


54 posted on 10/07/2008 8:52:44 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Grandaughters!)
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To: Beckwith; PJ-Comix; Ernest_at_the_Beach; LucyT; Fred Nerks; Calpernia; Grampa Dave
Obama was a Community Organizer in New York?


55 posted on 10/07/2008 10:16:48 PM PDT by PhilDragoo (Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
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To: kabar

It is really sad that people here on FR / in the blogosphere are having to do things like that, while we know everything there is to know (not much) about Todd Palin’s 20+ year old DUI.


56 posted on 10/08/2008 3:09:17 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Obama: Carter's only chance to avoid going down in history as the worst U.S. president ever.)
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To: x; vrwc54
>>But if Obama had been close to Ayers at Columbia wouldn't more people have remembered him as "that radical guy"?

Let's review Obama's own words about that time, from Dreams from My Father:

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.
So where are the fallacies again?
57 posted on 10/08/2008 3:17:08 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Obama: Carter's only chance to avoid going down in history as the worst U.S. president ever.)
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To: PhilDragoo
Obama was a community organizer in New York.

According to a questionnaire that Obama filled out during his 1995 state senatorial campaign, this is a true statement.

In the "Biographical sketch" section is this statement:

"...five years working as community organizer, first in Harlem, then in Chicago."

Questiannaire

In "Dreams...," Obama wrote he spent his time at the Marxist-Socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn.

He also said he was somewhat involved with the Black Students Organization and participated in anti-apartheid activities.

No wonder not one of 400 students interviewed by Fox remembers him at Columbia, and there are no pictures of Obama in the yearbook.
58 posted on 10/08/2008 4:03:01 AM PDT by Beckwith ('Typical White Person')
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To: rockinqsranch

>>>Wondering cynically where the warehouse is containing all those copies of the books that were purchased specifically to cause that rating.

bump

bump

The “publishing business” is a great source of untraceable cash through volumes of bulk sales.


59 posted on 10/08/2008 5:43:55 AM PDT by Calpernia (Hunters Rangers - Raising the Bar of Integrity http://www.barofintegrity.us)
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To: FreedomPoster
So where are the fallacies again?

McCarthy writes:

Yes, Ayers is blunter than Obama. As he so delicately told the Times, America makes him “want to puke.” The smoother Obama is content to say our society needs fundamental “change.” But what they’re talking about is not materially different.

But "change" doesn't necessarily mean "fundamental change." Most politicians who promise "change" rarely bring anything very sweeping. And saying you are for "change" isn't the same thing as saying that America makes you "want to puke." That's just a cheap shot.

The other problem is that the Eighties were a very different time from the Sixties. Kids who read Foucault and Derrida and Said, even kids who protested nuclear power or apartheid, weren't quite the same as the (literal) bombthrowers of fifteen or twenty years before.

McCarthy may be right about Obama and Ayers, and Obama's associations make one question his fitness for the presidency, but most of those "Marxist professors" in the Eighties were more concerned about getting tenure than making revolution, so it's not easy to know just what to make of Obama's comments in his memoir.

60 posted on 10/08/2008 2:46:27 PM PDT by x
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