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Obama's Lost Years
wall street journal ^ | 9.11.08 | Editorial Board

Posted on 09/11/2008 12:21:34 AM PDT by BurbankKarl

Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights.

The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing?

Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be used to judge a politician's fitness for office. We're not sure the transcripts of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush -- which showed them to be C students -- illuminated much for voters. The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class.

But Mr. Obama is a case apart. His personal story, as told by him, made possible his rise from obscurity four years ago to possibly the White House. He doesn't have a long track record in government. We mainly have him in his own words. As any autobiographer, Mr. Obama played up certain chapters in his life -- perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation -- and ignored others. What's more, as acknowledged in "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama reconstructed conversations and gave some people pseudonyms or created "composite" characters.

Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2008; columbiau; mymuslimfaith; obama; obamabiden; obamasecrets; obamatruthfile; obamuslim
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To: jerod
Sohale Siddiqi

That's an Irish Catholic name, right?

21 posted on 09/11/2008 3:47:57 AM PDT by Hardastarboard (I have Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance policies.)
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To: Nonperson

Obama is hiding his ties to radicals.

William Ayers received his Education PhD. from Columiba (1989). He had to have been there at the same time as Obama.


22 posted on 09/11/2008 3:51:55 AM PDT by SatinDoll (Desperately desiring a conservative government.)
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To: BurbankKarl

Hey Folks,

Did anyone read the entire WSJ article? Particularly paragraph 7?

“”................. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him.””WSJ, September 11, 2008

Isn’t that so very strange??????? Not 1 in 400.


23 posted on 09/11/2008 3:53:28 AM PDT by Gemsbok (Drill here, Drill now, & Pay Less!)
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To: CaspersGh0sts

William Ayers, of Weathermen terrorism fame, attended Columbia during the 1980s, earning a PhD. in Education (1989).

Obama is hiding his radical associations.


24 posted on 09/11/2008 3:56:04 AM PDT by SatinDoll (Desperately desiring a conservative government.)
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To: television is just wrong
"...the liberal press is protecting obamama."

ALL the press is protecting obama!!!

25 posted on 09/11/2008 4:19:03 AM PDT by Roccus (Someday it will all make sense............maybe.)
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To: Lancey Howard
I have always wondered what Obama did between the ages of 12 and 30.

Don't know who else will pick it up, but you're a very funny guy...

26 posted on 09/11/2008 4:22:11 AM PDT by Jim Noble (When He rolls up His sleeves, He ain't just puttin' on the Ritz)
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To: BurbankKarl
I think we can assume Obama was hanging around with Leftist radicals.

It's second nature for Leftist radicals to call humans, "pigs."

27 posted on 09/11/2008 4:22:21 AM PDT by syriacus (Calling humans "pigs" is second-nature for anti-war radicals, Black Panthers + radical Islamists.)
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To: jerod
Maybe he reacquainted himself with Islam under an assumed name... Apparently he enjoys making names up for other people, maybe he made one up for himself.

I want to know two things:

When did he start using the name "Barack Obama"?

When did he meet Mike Klonsky?

Perhaps the Occidental and Columbia records show a different name. And Klonsky is as important as Ayers, if not more so.

28 posted on 09/11/2008 4:25:57 AM PDT by Jim Noble (When He rolls up His sleeves, He ain't just puttin' on the Ritz)
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To: BurbankKarl

I think it’s a crime that in order for me to have access to nukes, my PRP package has to include details about my addresses and roomates from 20+ years ago, and habitual drug use as a teen would be PDI, but the pres gets a free pass. No moral authority...


29 posted on 09/11/2008 4:41:18 AM PDT by BamaFan
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To: Jim Noble

He spent them studying in Tibet (see: http://reluctant-messenger.com/issa.htm)


30 posted on 09/11/2008 4:42:52 AM PDT by BamaFan
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To: BurbankKarl

Obama is a phantasmic character in a “Once upon a time...” fairytale. The reader gets to fill in the blanks. Obama forgets, though, that nature hates a vacuum, and that the matter rushing in isn’t always complementary.

Obama’s blank slate is ultimately his own worse enemy. And as much as the media tries to shovel dead tree hyperbole into the gaps, it’s not building up to a pretty Prince Charming.


31 posted on 09/11/2008 4:54:15 AM PDT by sergeantdave (We are entering the Age of the Idiot)
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To: BurbankKarl

It appears that just about every top secret weapon system, strategy, and information the U.S. government develops is immediately leaked to the press.

Somehow there are seldom ANY leaks, documents, and information concerning college records, essays, birth certificates, and activities concerning a person who wants to be President, Commander in Chief of our Armed forces.

It appears that the U.S. Government should study the security systems of Columbia University and such, to learn how to safeguard assets.


32 posted on 09/11/2008 4:54:36 AM PDT by mountaineer1997
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To: BurbankKarl

I read an article that mentioned Senator Obama’s senior thesis at Columbia was about the Great North South Debate and income redistribution.


33 posted on 09/11/2008 5:11:00 AM PDT by HiFive (Columbia and Obama's thesis)
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To: Lancey Howard

Post of the day dude, post of the day.


34 posted on 09/11/2008 5:55:19 AM PDT by Excellence (Why do scoundrels like Ayers gravitate to public education when Plan A fails?)
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To: mountaineer1997

Out of 400 Columbia students contacted, NO ONE EVEN REMEMBERED OBAMA.

This according to the article.

Ain’t that strange.


35 posted on 09/11/2008 6:03:01 AM PDT by Bartholomew Roberts
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To: Bartholomew Roberts

It’s not really that strange that his classmates don’t recall him. He was a junior transfer into a private college who lived off campus, where people make most of the friends they are ever going to make in their freshman dorms and other kinds of freshman orientation, and in their lower-division seminar classes.

If he skipped a lot of class and didn’t join any campus clubs (neither of which is unusual) it’s natural that no one would have gotten to know him or remember him.


36 posted on 09/11/2008 8:43:12 AM PDT by only1percent
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To: BurbankKarl
The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class.

Actually it was 'near the bottom' of his class and besides, the guy who graduated last in his class in medical school is still called "Doctor" and people go to him if they are ill.

37 posted on 09/11/2008 9:03:37 AM PDT by Don Corleone (Leave the gun..take the cannoli)
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To: leadhead
I have always wondered what Obama did between the ages of 12 and 30.

He was teaching in the Temple and being subject to his parents,... oh no, wrong Messiah!

38 posted on 09/11/2008 9:07:21 AM PDT by Don Corleone (Leave the gun..take the cannoli)
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To: BurbankKarl

In one of his books, Nobama says that he lived in a run-down apartment with a DRUG DEALER...

FOR 2 YEARS!!!!!!

Sure shows alot of moral strangth and charachter to me. How about you?


39 posted on 09/11/2008 9:12:26 AM PDT by ridesthemiles
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To: F15Eagle

4) A tampered copy of your half-sister’s birth certificate does not prove you are constitutionally qualified to be President!!!


40 posted on 09/11/2008 9:14:24 AM PDT by ridesthemiles
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