Posted on 06/09/2013 9:01:51 AM PDT by ScaniaBoy
My life has crossed paths with President Obama on multiple occasions. According to Obama, we were Columbia University classmates, both Pre Law and Political Science majors in the Class of 83. I also ran against Obama in 2008 on the Libertarian Party Presidential ticket. What are the odds?
But something about the Obama at Columbia story has always bothered me. Earlier in the week right here at The Blaze I wrote about having just returned from New York, where I attended my 30th Columbia University reunion. I celebrated with my esteemed classmates. Everyone except Barack Obama. As usual- he wasnt there. Not a trace. Not a video greeting. Not a letter. I could not find any classmates who knew him.
I called Obama the Ghost of Columbia University. I pointed out (as Ive said in the media for many years now) that Obama may have been registered at Columbia, may have graduated from Columbia, but he was rarely (if ever) seen for the two years in-between. Its a strange, mysterious and frightening story.
Is he the real-life Manchurian Candidate? What explains Obama having just enough skeletal proof that he was there (one photo, one roommate, one professor, one friend) but never seen in a class, never on anyones radar screen, almost invisible. A total 2-year blackout. Its like a story straight out of a novel about the CIA or KGB. He graduated Columbia, but its almost as if he never went there.
To make matters more mysterious, Obamas college records are sealed. Hes had plenty of opportunities to authorize the release, to clear the air. He has never chosen to do so. But why? What has he got to hide? Funny enough Obama has never had a problem ripping open the sealed records of his political opponents. Every step of his career Obama has beaten his opponents by having sealed documents just happen to be publicly exposed by anonymous sources. But not Obama. His records are always unavailable (and never leaked). Obama always seems to have powerful forces on his side.
Did he attend Columbia as a foreign student? That was the educated guess I made in my appearance on Hannity on Fox News a year ago. The only photo of Obama from his Columbia days was in his off-campus apartment with a roommate described by USA Today as a Pakistani national, pot smoker, and cocaine abuser. If youre a foreign student, you live in housing off-campus with other foreign students.
That would also explain how he transferred to Columbia. Transferring into an Ivy League school is all but impossible. I did a little digging and found out only 3 transfer students in all of America were accepted into Columbia in the past academic year. Three students out of 315 million Americans. Yet those who knew Obama at Occidental called him a pot smoker and partier who rarely attended class. Youre telling me that a poor student, with that record, at an average college, was accepted for transfer into prestigious Columbia University? Only if he was an exotic Indonesian foreign student transferring into a college that desperately wanted to claim an ethnically and globally diverse student body.
Still that might explain how Obama got into Columbia. But where was he for those two years? My gut instincts say something is wrong with the Obama at Columbia story. Very wrong. Rancid.
But until now, I was the only one publicly voicing my suspicions. That just changed in a big way. Meet Professor Henry Graff, perhaps the most legendary and honored professor ever at Columbia University. He was THE American History and Diplomatic History professor at Columbia for 46 years. And he is more emphatic than yours truly that there are no Obama footprints at Columbia.
I was put on Professor Graffs trail by another Columbia classmate, skeptical about Obamas story. He told me that Professor Graff had been the speaker for the Class of 53 last weekend at Columbia. My friend was watching Graff answer questions from the crowd when he was asked about Obama at Columbia. Graff said, I have my doubts he ever went here.
I did some digging and located Graffs home phone number. I called him yesterday. Now retired, he was delighted to hear from me. He agreed to go on the record about Obama. Unlike Obama, Professor Graff clearly remembered me. He was thrilled to hear from his former student. I was in several of Graffs classes and he remembered me like it was yesterday. He sounded great- like he hasnt lost any of his trademark sharpness in 30 years since we last met.
I was honored to learn that this legendary historian has been following my political career for many years. But he had no such cheery things to say about the President. Graff said, I taught at Columbia for 46 years. I taught every significant American politician that ever studied at Columbia. I know them all. Im proud of them all. Between American History and Diplomatic History, one way or another, they all had to come through my classes. Not Obama. I never had a student with that name in any of my classes. I never met him, never saw him, never heard of him.
Even more importantly, Professor Graff knew the other history and political science professors. None of the other Columbia professors knew him either said Graff.
Graff concluded our interview by saying, Im very upset by the whole story. I am angry when I hear Obama called the first President of the United States from Columbia University. I dont consider him a Columbia student. I have no idea what he did on the Columbia campus. No one knows him.
There is something wrong with Obamas story- I know that. Many of my classmates at last weekends 30th reunion knew that. Now the most beloved Professor ever at Columbia joins us in publicly questioning the story. Obama is either the ghost of Columbia, or the perfect Manchurian candidate. But something smells rotten at Columbia.
Right on target!
For the record, I didn't post the Snopes article. I was merely replying to Signalman, who had posted the link to it in # 33 (with the comment "for what it's worth").
The Cashill WND article I linked to was a partial rebuttal to the Snopes article.
Thank you
Let’s hope some British Newspaper can look into this and do a full expose ... we need to know the truth.
That will make it a proxy war against Obama from foreign leaders.
You have a good imagination on this, PJ, but we need all the optimism we can get.
BTW, Prof. Graf is a good person to have to support the proposition that Obama never attended Columbia. He is considered a renowned authority in American history, who I believe specializes in the presidents. Plus "liberal" credentials, I'd assume.
Big Media was studiously ignoring these people, giving them the cold shoulder, in 2008.
I’m shocked!
That is wrong and I resent the besmirching of my honesty. I cannot prove my assertion because I do not save the offending posts. Prove yours.
Restored the snot and boogers post. Apologize for the alleged uneven moderating. I plead guilty as charged. We have many moderators and we do not require them all to be perfectly standard MacDonald’s cutouts. Some mods are going to let more posts slide than others and that’s just the way it goes. And apologize for don-o’s abuse reports becoming an issue. I do not believe he is a liar. Can we let this blow over now? FR is a rough and tumble place and occasionally there will be bruises, but I hate to see folks taking any of this off the wall stuff seriously. Please try to direct most fire at the enemy.
Thanks!
I understand about the human element.
Good to go
Brietbart.com found the 1983 Columbia University Graduation Day Program which lists “Barack Hussein Obama” as a graduate.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/102860164/columbia-program-1983
(See page seven)
Two obvious questions concerning the authenticity of that posted Graduation Day program:
(1) Why is Obama's name out of alphabetical order in the listing of the graduates?
(2) If Breitbart.com actually found the program, why wouldn't they post the image on one of their own web sites, rather than scribd.com?
Perhaps the graduation program was posted by the same fraudster who did the bogus Hawaii long form birth certificate.
"BOOGER !"
Obama's name isn't out of alphabetical order, it comes after the names that start with O' and before William Oei. Alphabetizing systems often put all the O' names before O names without an apostrophe.
The Graduation Day Program entries are alphabetical by last name but still with the first name listed first.
Here’s a link to the original Brietbart.com article:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/18/The-Vetting-Exclusive-First-Obama-Columbia-Record-Released
I have been an avid reader for more years than I'd like to say, own a library of somewhere between 500 and 1,000 books, almost all of which are indexed alphabetically, and, quite frankly, have never seen an index in which the O' names precede all the other Os by rule. So I wouldn't characterize that alphabetizing convention as common or "often."
Now it turns out that the O' first alphabetizing convention which seems to pertain to the Graduation Program does not pertain to the Breitbart document (wherever it came from, which is not explained by the author) which lists "Obama" as the very first among all the graduates with surname beginning with "O". So what you have here, seemingly, is two different alphabetizings of the same list by the same University. How strange!
The obvious question, in view of the the other evidence, including the new Prof. Graf statement, is this: Was the Obama name added to the list of graduates ex post facto? Or, if not, how could he have been awarded a degree without any of his classmates or professors in his major discipline having any recollection of him on campus?
Cut sheet print job; limited quantity; short time to edit; ?; ?; ? ~ that's actually a good question but it's the wrong one to ask since we aren't doing a piece on the 'history of the 80s' ~ a better question to ask is why no one who ever graduated from Columbia when 'bama was s'posed'ta'be there remembers him ~
If Barack Obama’s name was added to the list of graduates, it was done many years ago because there was an article written about him becoming President of Volume at the Harvard Law Review in the “Columbia College Today” alumni Magazine in Fall, 1990.
http://i1226.photobucket.com/albums/ee410/whatever4PJ/TFB/ObamaFall1990a.jpg
And there is the March 10, 1983 issue of the “Sundial,” the Columbia student newspaper that contained an article written by Obama entitled “Breaking the War Mentality.”
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM116_obamaessay.html
There are 12 schools, named Columbia College, maybe Obama graduated from one of those.
Well, I don't want to get into an argument about who's read more books. I know I've seen it before. Perhaps my impression of how common it is is influenced by the fact that Microsoft Word's alphabetizing function does it that way.
So what you have here, seemingly, is two different alphabetizings of the same list by the same University. How strange!
The Brietbart document is obviously a computer printout. So what you might have is no more than two different computer programs, each with its own alphabetization scheme.
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