The strange silence of Barack Obama’s grandmother

Andy Martin’s investigative team digs for the truth. Is Obama using his ill grandmother as a beard to conceal his true concern: a release of the original copy of his 1961 birth certificate?

The Obama investigation in Hawai’i, Part Two Obama’s Hawai’i Years: The truth finally revealed Obama’s tortured family life and secrets ANDY MARTIN Executive Editor ContrarianCommentary.com

PART TWO: OBAMA’S FAMILY AND WHAT IT TELLS US ABOUT HIM (THE DOG THAT DOESN’T BARK)

HIS GRANDMOTHER’S STRANGE SILENCE IS THE KEY TO UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY OF BARACK OBAMA

(HONOLULU, HI)(October 21, 2008) Where his white grandmother is concerned, Barack Obama talks the talk but he does not walk the walk. The presence of our investigative team in Honolulu, the first media investigation of Obama’s Hawai’i heritage in the entire presidential campaign, triggered panic attacks in Obama’s organization. Obama has suspended his campaign and plans to arrive in Hawai’i Thursday in a desperate attempt to blunt the thrust of our reporting.

We have called all of this rigmarole a “High Noon”-style Hollywood drama with good reason. By some strange karma, after our team landed in Honolulu to investigate Obama, he decided to make an emergency trip to the island, as if grasping one final time to control the inner pain and secrets that have defined his life.

With all due respect to the senator, while his grandmother may be ill, the claim that he is returning to Hawaii and suspending his campaign on that basis is a ruse to cover the more serious question of how he is trying to deal with the issues we have uncovered.

In this three-part series we strip away the media halo to expose who Barack Obama really is, and who he is not (Part One has been postponed to October 27th).

When we board the airliner for the mainland, the secrets that Barack Obama and his family have maintained for almost a half a century will be no more. The truth will have finally been brought to the surface.

Granny Dunham, Madelyn Dunham, Obama’s white grandmother, was the key to triggering our search for the secret truths.

Ironically, my role as an investigator will also prove to have been transformed into that of a liberator. Barack Obama will be “free at last.”

My book, Obama: The Man Behind the Mask, closes at pp. 415-417 with criticism of Obama’s false claim that he comes from a family of “strong values.” Rather than a strong family, Obama comes from a dysfunctional family that has scarred his existence to this day. The key to understanding this dysfunction is Obama’s grandmother.

When Newsmax.com and I focused attention on Obama’s “imprisoned white grandmother” in 2007, Obama unleashed his tax-exempt attack dogs to smear both me and Newsmax. One of my readers recently suggested that when it comes to bombing runs, “The flack is heaviest over the target.” That has been the case with reporting about Obama’s last white relative. Obama has defended Festung Obama with every device at his disposal.

In this column I try to explain the peculiarities of the Obama-Dunham family in terms that anyone and everyone can understand: family photos, meetings, exchanges. The day-to-day existence of loving relationships, and the significance of their absence.

This is not a happy column. One of my readers today said she “hated” Obama. I responded I had no hatred for Obama. I certainly have no hatred for the tens of millions of Americans who will be disappointed by the revelation of Obama’s charade. Still, the truth must be known so that people can make an informed, if ultimately unfortunate and probably emotional, decision on whom they want as a leader.

Obama’s grandmother has lived in the same apartment for approximately forty years. Last summer at the Saddleback Forum, she was described by her grandson as a “very grounded, common-sense, no-fuss, no-frills kind of person.” Indeed she is. Obama told David Letterman that his grandmother was as “sharp as a tack.” Ouch.

Obama’s grandmother still calls him “Barry.” With good reason she has never accepted the African mumbo-jumbo that Obama adopted as a teenager, when he transformed himself from Barry into Barack. Grandmother still knows him by his real name. There is no pretense in her. It must be unnerving to the “Big Man” to be called by his little name.

But now the strange part. The peculiar part is made even more so by the fact that in a one-in-a-million happenstance, our long-planned investigation in Hawai’i coincided with and may have been triggered by Obama’s sudden and seemingly desperate return to his home town to staunch the impact of our inquiries.

The result of Obama’s sudden change of plans: His picture hugging his grandmother appeared on the front page of both local newspapers today (October 21st).

The Honolulu Advertiser also used a picture of Obama and his grandmother that was 25 years old. The 25 year-old snapshot was provided to the media by Obama himself. He has nothing more current of the two of them together.

Obama professes absolute love and devotion to his “Toot,” but the two have apparently not taken a picture together in a quarter of a century. That’s a very bizarre presidential photo album.

I accept that Mrs. Dunham is in bad health. My own mother is 91, and I know that with age comes infirmity. I also recognize that osteoporosis is a serious illness among the elderly, and especially among elderly women. But I am not aware that osteoporosis has ever been a pretext to live life as a recluse and to decline to participate in the ebb and flow of routine family activity such as picture-taking. What about the great-granddaughters? Do they have any pictures with their great-grandmother? None have surfaced.

Why has Madelyn Dunham not appeared in a photograph with her grandson for a quarter century?

There is a mutual anger and hostility and frustration between them. Almost all of us have similar difficulties in our lives. We may love, but still be estranged from a parent or sibling. We may have deep devotion to a relative, but still disapprove of their lifestyle or choices.

Obama’s family has been torn apart by the lies they could not confront and the truths they could not accept.

Granny Dunham is the keeper of the family secrets. And she does not approve of those secrets. That is why there has been a chasm between Obama and the first two women in his life, his mother and his grandmother. They nurtured him and, in his eyes, they also devastated him. They made him a strong young man, and then they sapped his psyche.

Obama has constructed an elaborate facade, a Maginot Line of emotional defenses, a “Mask,” to cover his sense of helplessness and powerlessness. His “cool” demeanor is a function of an attempt to insulate himself from his own emotions, confusion and sense of inadequacy, instead of being a demonstration of genuine self-confidence.

From the two women who nurtured Barack Obama, and in his eyes, ultimately betrayed him, we turn to the current family situation.

Obama has two daughters. He has a wife. Does he ever. But when he went to visit his grandmother a few months ago, he went alone. Has anyone ever heard of a family where the great-granddaughters do not visit their great-grandmother? And are not full of excitement at doing so?

Osteo may be a painful illness but it is not a totally disabling one. Obama’s own campaign advertisement shows his grandmother’s voice is strong. Why wouldn’t Barack want to bring his daughters to visit their great-grandmother? Race, perhaps?

Other than the single published visitation, there is no evidence that the Obama family spent any significant time with their grandmother/great grandmother. Does Michelle not want her daughters to know their true heritage? Is she still militant inside, while maintaining her own mask of friendliness on the outside?

Once again, we see in Barack Obama the pattern of a dysfunctional family tearing itself apart by struggles over identity and continuity, all of which now extend into the second generation.

Obama claims his grandmother is sufficiently ill to suspend his campaign. Are his daughters joining him in Honolulu if their great-grandma is so ill? Surely a gravely ill relative would be a basis to miss a day or two of school.

The issue of his grandmother’s osteoporosis has been used by Obama as a pretext for Madelyn Dunham’s reclusiveness over the decades. But even someone suffering from Osteo can maintain a normal life. The Kennedy Family exhibited Rose Kennedy well into her nineties, long after she was restricted to a wheelchair. Why is Obama’s grandmother so unwilling to be photographed or appear in public with her grandson? Illness? Nonsense.

I always return, as anyone with a normal family would, to the absence of any photograph between the pair during the past quarter century. That is a very strange state of affairs. Barack Obama is running for president of the United States and the local newspapers in his home town are using high school and college graduation pictures to depict him with his last surviving Hawai’i relative. Yes, there is both love and estrangement between Obama and his grandmother.

What is the basis of this chasm? Why did I find this silence so significant that it triggered a deeper investigation?

Here are my conclusions. When Obama learned the secret truths about his life he was devastated. I am still not sure whether he learned them from his mother or his grandmother. But the shock of the secret truths stunned him. He is still, today, in a state of shock, a state of permanent denial, a state of complete shut down and inability to deal with the truth. “Cool” covers pain.

Obama’s shock at the revelation of his family secrets triggered anger. That anger is still there today. The anger was there when he dealt with the loss of his mother. The anger does not manifest itself in physical terms, but rather in deep emotional estrangement and insularity from those closest to him who he feels betrayed him.

Obama’s grandmother has responded in her own Midwestern way for the past quarter century. She has not appeared in public with her grandson. She is a phantom. The lack of any appearance is an ultimate form of denial and rejection. Who among us would want to endure a parent or grandparent who refused to appear in a family photograph? Madelyn Dunham was approximately sixty years old when she was last photographed. She certainly showed no signs of the immobility then that Obama attributes to her today. Twenty-five years is a long time between family pictures. The absence is telling, devastating, a state of permanent standoff and denial, a modern indication of significance comparable to Sherlock Holmes’ dog that didn’t bark.

I want to stress that we are still investigating, still digging, still searching for every scrap of evidence we can find. But we are absolutely convinced we have found the larger truth that has defined Barack Obama’s adult life. We have found why Obama can manifest such . an extreme degree of ambivalence, expressing pride and affection for his grandmother on one hand, and casual disinterest on the other. We have found the secret truths about Barack Obama.

...Obama comes from a dysfunctional family ... Everything about this guy is dysfunctional. His birth; his upbringing; his school years; his wife; his acquaintances; his contacts; his "work"; his time as a state senator; and so on, and even his choice for Vice President. Is a dysfunctional president what you need and want America??? Especially accompanied by a dysfunctional Congress???
Sounds like we are headed off the Cliff like lemmings
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63 posted on 10/22/2008 11:18:05 AM PDT by TenthAmendmentChampion (Lord please bless our nation with John McCain as president and Sarah Palin as Vice President! Amen.)

From your link:

“Box last saw her friend in 1961, when she visited Seattle on her way from Honolulu to Massachusetts, where her then-husband was attending Harvard.”

I asked Chief Engineer, who has a wealth of information, about that statement. He sent me this link that states Ann Dunham lived in Seattle and went to UW in 1961-1962. The Myth of Barack Obama's Early Life

Thank you, Chief Engineer, for once again answering my question.

Journalist David Mendell had one tightly controlled 30 minute interview with Madelyn Dunham in 2004 after Jr appeared at the Dem Convention. Contrary to Andy Martin’s claim the entire family visited Grandma Dunham the Tuesday after their arrival in Hawaii. The local papers provided a schedule daily while Jr and family were on the island and reported a visit by the family from 6:50 to 7:15 pm. Jr carried a gift basket of fruit and the eldest daughter carried in some books on tape! Martin should have known this if he was any type of investigator! Monday afternoon “The Honolulu Advertiser” even had a picture of the visit I mentioned.

There was an interview the Grandmother did where she said a couple of things that Obama did not like, but sorry I don’t remember exactly what it was so I am not even going to try to quote it. But it made me wonder about truth of some things.

All that has been found of that interview is very small tidbits including:”I don’t trust foreigners...” and commenting on Obama Sr.”He was straaaaaaaaange” with an emphasis on the a. I searched for an entire day and that is all I could find and I wasn’t going to increase the money in David Mendell’s pockets buying his book! Mendell was allowed to interview Madelyn Dunham in a “tightly controlled 30 minute interviewin 2004.”

That was it. How did you ever find that? I do have one theory about Obama. I wonder if he is the product of a rape. I know there is all the information on his father etc., but we are talking 1960’s. White women did not be with black men, period. Even in the most “sophisticated” areas of the country. I mean the signs in storefront windows reading “whites only” had barely come down. Treating that relationship as if it happened today is very misleading.

They can print a million words about nothing, or they can print a few words and simply provide us with evidence backing the non-citizen claim if that is the case.

Do it or not, we want a result, not a study of how people looked.

I spent a lot of time googling for Madelyn Dunham interviews and found the info on a Saturday, I wanted confirmation so spent Sunday at it as well only to get “scooped” by another Freeper with the info I had found the day before.
I don’t think there was any rape. Think of a 17 year old girl who had never dated but liked foreign films arriving in Hawaii which looked down upon haoles. She goes to class and hears a black man speaking in an Oxford english accent and is smitten. Then Jack Kennedy appears running for President and wins so how does she celebrate his victory but with the very proper british speaking black man.

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