posted on April 21, 2008 07:19:00 PM new
I was reading about his family,no one points out his mother seems to have poor judgment in men!
First hubby is already married in Africa when they met in Hawaii.
Second hubby is into alcohol and women and a failing liver.
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on April 22, 2008 05:26:57 AM new
Not all,but we are all to old and cynical to just read what magazines,blogs,newsclip,relatves try to tell us.
BTW,prof,I recall your opinion is swayed by Obama making a speech.
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posted on May 5, 2008 07:42:43 AM new
"But wait what about Obama's father ABANDONING his wife and child ....Nah that doesnt matter to you leftists."
If Obama's father were running for President, it would matter. But since he is not (in fact he is deceased) why should it matter one iota what Obama's father did? Why do some people focus on the most ridiculous things in order to disparage Obama? He does not wear a flag pin--neither does 99% of the population, I would bet. He is Muslim---obviously, he is not Muslim, but if he were, so what! Would you say John Doe would not make a good president because he is Jewish? Catholic? or any other religious affiliation? Of course not--at least not in public. Stop with the picayune barbs and concentrate on facts, policies and character.
posted on May 5, 2008 06:59:56 PM new
Think deeper-Obama wrote a book on songs of his father.
But his father left him when he was 2 years old to pursue graduate study on the East coast,never send them a dime,never call or ask about Obama until Obama was 21 years old.
He stayed in Hawaii for one month ,lets assume he spent some time with his son.
Then he returned to Kenya with a woman he met on the East Coast,to deal with his wife and kids in Kenyan village and fathered more children.
He is a drunk and lost his legs in a car accident ,driving while he was drunk.
It is true,his father is not running for US president,dead man cant run anywhere,but the fact the son has such fond memory of a father he knows very little about,that he even wrote a book about him says something about Obama.
My question is with a childhood background like Obama,is he strong enough to be in the White House?
Not to mention much has been said about his experience which seems rather vague (just like his fond memory of a forgotten father)
All I see so far is a very well organised campaign,well funded and well connected propping up a rookie who has been propped up to pop star status,they even have girls screaming when he appeared.
Reminds me of Jim Brown,Elvis,Beatles and Tina Turner.
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on May 5, 2008 08:22:42 PM new
The book is titled Dreams From My Father. Obama did not know his father, spent 1 month with him in Hawaii and received a few letters from him in the 21 years before Obama Sr's death. I would say that is a good thing, since the father was brilliant but troubled (alcoholism among other things.) He was raised primarily by his middle class Grandparents. Why would you question his strength and blame it on his childhood? He apparently was strong enough to go to Harvard, become a lawyer, a member of the state legislature and a presidential candidate. He was raised without a father, like millions of children, but apparently had enough guidance and support from his family and enough character to become quite successful and a pillar in his community.
"It is true,his father is not running for US president,dead man cant run anywhere,but the fact the son has such fond memory of a father he knows very little about,that he even wrote a book about him says something about Obama" Really? What does it say about him? Not knowing his father throughout his childhood, he became a mythic figure to young Obama--a very common occurrence. When he became an adult,he learned about his father's foibles and became more realistic about his memory.
What you wrote in your post sounds like an Enquirer gossip column.
[ edited by coach81938 on May 5, 2008 08:29 PM ]
[ edited by coach81938 on May 5, 2008 08:30 PM ]
posted on May 5, 2008 09:32:49 PM newWhat you wrote in your post sounds like an Enquirer gossip column
Hence, my question.
All bear and hwa have is personal attacks based on hearsay, forwarded emails and the nonsense published by pulp newspapers. It shows the depth of their desperation. Just think how much fun you're gonna have bear when there is a democrat in the White House! Your email "friends" will forward you all kinds of drivel you can post here and god knows where else, and you'll never have to stress so much as one teeny tiny brain cell thinking about whether any of it's true or not. You are in for at least 4 years of BLISS old buddy. I'm jealous
posted on May 6, 2008 04:59:19 AM new
You are right,none of us know the man personally and all we know is what we observe,hear and read and we draw our own conclusion.
You are entitled to yours and I am entitled to mine.
posted on May 6, 2008 06:40:03 AM new
It is my hope that people will base their decisions on facts, policies, competence and the character of a candidate, not gossip and outrageous claims. In this age of 24 hour news cycles and the internet, some people hear or read something once and it becomes part of history to them.
Take the one about Barack Obama being Muslim. A poll yesterday showed that 7% of those polled still think he is a Muslim, even though the facts have been published over and over. Same with the flag pin (can you imagine basing your vote on that?) Same with the Pledge of Allegiance. Same with swearing in with the Koran.
posted on May 6, 2008 08:55:28 AM new
It does not matter what and where you read about a presidential candidate,it has to go through your own thought processing before an opinion is formed.
Tina Turner has nice legs and can sure sing and dance well,we dont need National Enquirer to tell us.
Spinach is good for us,thats what parents tell their children,but not many of us are fans of 'spinach' even though we know it is good food.
His father is not a genius,but then if you read somewhere he is,then God Bless you !
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on May 6, 2008 10:46:17 AM new
A few weeks ago I was at Barnes and Noble and saw a magazine with a front page cover of Obama and his mother.
Obama was a babe and his mother was holding him by the rail,something struck me odd as the face of Obama is the face of an adult and the head is too big for the body and the picture seems to be cut and pasted together that Obama was really too old to be held in such position and too far away from the mother.
Inside there is a lenthy article about his mother and how she met Obama senior and why she cannot follow him back to Kenya (he is already married with kids),and she married an Indonesian man and went to live in Indonesia.
She finally returned home to Hawaii with Obama and how she completed a doctorate and travelled around the world doing good deeds.
I dont remember the name of the magazine ,it is not Business Week or Newsweek,the article is meant to shed light on the better side of the Obama clan-his mother,his father and his maternal grandparents.
So it is up to us how to interpret what is presented to us and draw our conclusion,it is not National Enquirer and it is not meant to degrade him or his parents,it tried very hard to show how wonderful his parents are.
If you go to the library,you can find the copy,it is not that old.
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on May 6, 2008 10:46:51 AM new
"So everyone agrees:
Saying someone is unqualified and will accomplish nothing based on having no experience and doing nothing is "bad".
Mindless Zen like praise and swooning based on the ability to read a speech writer's text without stammering is "good".
If you came to this conclusion from reading this thread, you need to brush up on your reading skills.
"His father is not a genius,but then if you read somewhere he is,then God Bless you !"
His father went to Harvard so I assume that he was not dumb intellectually. Never called him a genius. The fact that his life was a train wreck shows that intelligence is not everything. However, my point is Obama had next to no contact with his father and aside from the fact that he grew up without a father, Obama Sr. had little influence on his son.
posted on May 6, 2008 11:08:06 AM newA few weeks ago I was at Barnes and Noble and saw a magazine with a front page cover of Obama and his mother. Obama was a babe and his mother was holding him by the rail,something struck me odd as the face of Obama is the face of an adult and the head is too big for the body and the picture seems to be cut and pasted together that Obama was really too old to be held in such position and too far away from the mother.
Is this the one you mean, hwahwa? If so, his face looks like a kid to me and his head is smaller than his Mom's - he doesn't look too old to be held like that and he doesn't look far away from his mother.
posted on May 6, 2008 12:30:59 PM new
yes,thats the one,okay,I will correct my previous statement,his head is proportinal to his body and the mother and son distance is just right.
As for people attending Harvard,plenty of people who messed up on Wall Street went to Harvard,some are PHD in rocket science!
If going to HARVARD impresses you,GOD BLESS YOU ONE MORE TIME !
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on May 6, 2008 01:35:34 PM newHowever, my point is Obama had next to no contact with his father and aside from the fact that he grew up without a father, Obama Sr. had little influence on his son.
Just goes to show all those neo-cons that a child needs to be raised by both a mother and father, otherwise you will be a US Senator running for President of the United States.
"She Who Must Not Be Named is gone. Banished far, far away with her minions to the outer realms where she can't hurt anyone ever again - the profe
posted on May 6, 2008 01:40:25 PM newIs this the one you mean, hwahwa? If so, his face looks like a kid to me and his head is smaller than his Mom's - he doesn't look too old to be held like that and he doesn't look far away from his mother.
I wouldn't really say his mother is holding him. Young Obama-Wan Kenobi is sitting on the fence and his mom is just really propping him up.
"She Who Must Not Be Named is gone. Banished far, far away with her minions to the outer realms where she can't hurt anyone ever again - the profe
[ edited by logansdad on May 6, 2008 01:44 PM ]
posted on May 6, 2008 02:37:50 PM new
Well,I wish all your Obama fans well that your hero get into the White House and his opponents burn in Hell!
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on May 6, 2008 02:37:50 PM new
"If going to HARVARD impresses you,GOD BLESS YOU ONE MORE TIME !"
Did I say it impressed me? I said you have to be bright to go to Harvard. Do you dispute that? I also said being bright does not guarantee you won't screw up your life.
And thanks for the blessing
posted on May 6, 2008 02:39:43 PM new
"Just goes to show all those neo-cons that a child needs to be raised by both a mother and father, otherwise you will be a US Senator running for President of the United States." LOL Dad
posted on May 6, 2008 03:29:30 PM new
I count my blessings that I was raised by both parents !
Read this-
drunk and a bigot - what the US Presidental hopeful HASN'T said about his father...
Last updated at 22:52pm on 27.01.07
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Top: US senator Barack Obama could be America's first black president. Below: His flawed father, Barack Obama Senior
It is a classic story of the American dream made real: an impoverished Kenyan goatherd rising to become a brilliant Harvard-educated economist.
On the way he fights racial prejudice at home and corruption at work, survives the heartbreak of a broken relationship and, despite it all, leads the fight to rid Africa of its colonial legacy.
This extraordinary story is told by US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama as he recalls the life of the man who inspired him to political success - his father.
Mr Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, is flying off the shelves of US book stores, exciting and astonishing readers in equal measure. It is a bestseller, and no wonder - because the story just gets better and better.
Mr Obama is already Democratic Senator for Illinois. Now he is in the running to be the first black President in the country's history.
"My story is part of the larger American story," he declared in the electrifying speech that won him his Senate seat just two years ago. "In no other country on Earth is my story even possible."
Many believe Mr Obama is a serious threat to Hillary Clinton's hopes of becoming the Democrats' choice for their next Presidential candidate - and his lovingly written account of the debt he owes his father, also called Barack Obama, will do no harm at all to his Presidential hopes.
Indeed, by offering up a conveniently potted account of his personal history in this way, he might even have made a pre-emptive strike on those sure to pose the awkward questions that inevitably face a serious contender for the White House.
Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all Mr Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth.
We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses.
And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Mr Obama's own relatives and family friends.
Charismatic and with movie-star looks, Barack Obama Jnr has managed to steal some of Hillary Clinton's most influential supporters in the two weeks since he entered the US Presidential race.
The 45-year-old lawyer depicts himself as a fresh voice for voters tired of the divisive rhetoric and self-serving ambition of established politicians on each side of the Democrat-Republican divide.
His campaign to become the first black President is inspired, he says, by his love of the country that allowed his father to triumph against astonishing odds.
Barack Obama Snr started life with the advantage of being able to read and write, but he also felt a profound sense of injustice. His father was a cook for British settlers in Kenya, who demeaningly called him their 'personal boy'.
Grandfather Obama sent his son to a missionary school but after completing his education, the youth could find little work except goatherding in his remote village of Nyangoma Kogela, in the roadless hills of Western Kenya.
At 18, he married a girl called Kezia. But Obama Snr was more interested in politics and economics than his family and his political leanings had been brought to the notice of leaders of the Kenyan Independence movement.
He was put forward for an American-sponsored scholarship in economics, with the idea being that he would eventually use his Western-honed skills in the new Kenya. At the age of 23 he headed for university in Hawaii, leaving behind the pregnant Kezia and their baby son.
Relatives say he was already a slick womaniser and, once in Honolulu, he promptly persuaded a fellow student called Ann - a naive 18-year-old white girl - to marry him. Barack Jnr was born in August, 1961.
Two years later, Obama Snr was on the move again. He was accepted at Harvard, and left his little boy and wife behind when he moved to the exclusive east coast university.
At the time, Ann explained to their son that his father had gone because his meagre stipend would not support the family if they lived together. But finance was the least of her worries.
Mr Obama Jnr claims that racism on both sides of the family destroyed the marriage between his mother and father.
In his book, he says that Ann's mother, who went by the nickname Tut, did not want a black son-in-law, and Obama Snr's father 'didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman'.
In fact Ann divorced her husband after she discovered his bigamous double life. She remarried and moved to Indonesia with young Barack and her new husband, an oil company manager.
Obama Snr was forced to return to Kenya, where he fathered two more children by Kezia. He was eventually hired as a top civil servant in the fledgling government of Jomo Kenyatta - and married yet again.
Now prosperous with a flashy car and good salary, his third wife was an American-born teacher called Ruth, whom he had met at Harvard while still legally married to both Kezia and Ann, and who followed him to Africa.
A relative of Mr Obama says: "We told him[Barack] how his father would still go to Kezia and it was during these visits that she became pregnant with two more children. He also had two children with Ruth."
It is alleged that Ruth finally left him after he repeatedly flew into whisky-fuelled rages, beating her brutally.
Friends say drinking blighted his life - he lost both his legs while driving under the influence and also lost his job.
However, this was no bar to his womanising: he sired a son, his eighth child, by yet another woman and continued to come home drunk.
He was about to marry her when he finally died in yet another drunken crash when Obama was 21.
Mr Obama's 40-year-old cousin Said Hussein Obama told The Mail on Sunday: "Clearly, Barack has been very deeply affected by what he has learned about his father, who was my father's older brother.
"You have to remember that his father was an African and in Africa, polygamy is part of life.
"We have assured Barack that his father was a loving person but at times it must be difficult for him to reconcile this with his father's drinking and simultaneous marriages."
Said adds: "His father was a human being and as such you can't say that he was 100 per cent perfect.
"My cousin found it difficult when he came here to learn of his half-brothers and sisters born to four different mothers.
"But just as Africans find the Western world strange so Americans coming here will find Africa strange."
Far from being an inspiration, the father whom Mr Obama was coming to know seemed like a total stranger.
In his book, he attempts to put the best face on it. His father, he writes, lost his civil service job after campaigning against corrupt African politicians who had 'taken the place of the white colonials'.
One of Obama Snr's former drinking partners, Kenyan writer Philip Ochieng Ochieng says, however, that his friend's downfall was his weak character.
"Although charming, generous and extraordinarily clever, Obama Snr was also imperious, cruel and given to boasting about his brain and his wealth," he said.
"He was excessively fond of Scotch. He had fallen into the habit of going home drunk every night. His boasting proved his undoing and left him without a job, plunged him into prolonged poverty and dangerously wounded his ego."
Ochieng recalls how, after sitting up all night drinking Black Label whisky at Nairobi's famous Stanley Hotel, Obama Snr would fly into rages if Ruth asked where he had been.
Ochieng remonstrated with his friend, saying: "You bring a woman from far away and you reduce her to pulp. That is not our way."
But it was to no avail. Ruth sued for divorce after her husband administered brutal beatings.
In fact he was a menace to life, said Ochieng. "He had many extremely serious accidents. Both his legs had to be amputated. They were replaced with crude false limbs made from iron.
"He was just like Mr Toad [from Wind In The Willows], very arrogant on the road, especially when he had whisky inside. I was not surprised when I learned how he died."
Ruth refused to comment on the abuse charges when we tracked her down to the Kenyan school where she now works.
She said: "I was married to Barack's father for seven years so, yes, you could say Barack is my stepson.
"Barack's father was a very difficult man. Although I was married to him the longest of any of his wives he wasn't an easy person to be around."
Mr Obama has acknowledged that his father grappled with a drinking problem. But with a gift for words that makes Mrs Clinton's utterances seem stiff and stale, he has turned it into another component of the myth.
Drink, he says, like drugs, are one of "the traps that seem laid in a black man's soul".
Mr Obama claims that he, too, has been racially abused, even during his campaign for the White House.
His mother, Ann, decided that he should get an American education and sent him back from Indonesia to Hawaii, where he was admitted to a £7,000-a-year prep school, Punahau Academy, and lived with his maternal grandparents.
And while there, says Mr Obama, he was tortured by fellow pupils - who let out monkey hoots - and turned into a disenchanted teenage rebel, experimenting with cocaine and marijuana.
Even his grandparents were troubled by dark skin, he says in his book, recalling how once his grandmother complained about being pestered by a beggar.
"You know why she's so scared?" he recalls his grandfather saying. "She told me the fella was black."
Mr Obama says his soaring 'dream' of a better America grew out of his 'hurt and pain'.
Friends, however, remember his time at school rather differently. He was a spoiled high-achiever, they recall, who seemed as fond of his grandparents as they were of him.
He affectionately signed a school photo of himself to them, using their pet names, Tut and Gramps.
The caption says: "Thanks... for all the good times." He worked on the school's literary magazine and wore a white suit, of the style popular with New York writers at the time.
One of his former classmates, Alan Lum, said: "Hawaii is such a melting pot that it didn't occur to me when we were growing up that he might have problems about being one of the few African-Americans at the school. Us kids didn't see colour. He was easy-going and well-liked."
Lon Wysard, who also attended the academy, said the budding politician was in fact idolised for his keen sportsmanship.
"He was the star basketball player and always had a ball in his hand wherever he was," Wysard recalled.
Mr Obama was later admitted to read politics and international relations at New York's prestigious Columbia University where, his book claims, "no matter how many times the administration tried to paint them over, the walls remained scratched with blunt correspondence (about) niggers."
But one of his classmates, Joe Zwicker, 45, now a lawyer in Boston, said yesterday: "That surprises me. Columbia was a pretty tolerant place. There were African American students in my classes and I never saw any evidence of racism at all."
Family members and acquaintances believe that the real cloud over Mr Obama's life has been the discovery that his father was far from the romantic figure that his mother tried to portray.
A family friend said: "He is haunted by his father's failures. He grew up thinking of his father as a brilliant intellectual and pioneer of African independence only to learn that in Western terms he was basically a drunken lecher."
This ugly truth, say friends, has made Mr Obama ruthlessly determined to use every weapon that he has to succeed, including the glossily edited version of his father's story.
"At the end of the day Barack wants the story to help his political cause, so perhaps he couldn't afford to be too honest," said Ochieng.
Significantly, it was only four years after his father's death that Mr Obama travelled to his father's ancestral Kenyan village. There he learned the full story of his father's life and met some of his relatives.
One of his half-sisters, Auma, is now a council worker in southern England, but some of his other relatives are still living in huts in the village, without plumbing or electricity, farming a few scrawny goats and chicken and growing fruit and maize.
They speak the tribal Luo language and depend on handouts from family members who have emigrated to the UK and the United States for their few luxuries, notably the transistor radios that they use to follow Mr Obama's rocketing political fortunes.
He has positioned himself as a devout Christian (having found God, he says, after years as an atheist) and in a new book The Audacity Of Hope, timed to coincide with his campaign, he concentrates on his manifesto for 'reclaiming the American dream'.
This tome contains one telling paragraph, in a section in which he fumbles to try to justify his abrupt leap into the national political arena: he is, he says, chronically 'restless'.
"Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady."
Additional reporting: Rob Crilly in Nairobi and Gill Pringle in Honolulu.
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Should we judge Obama based upon the sins of his father? There seems to be a double-standard when it comes to Obama. Unlike the other candidates, for some reason he is forced to prove and justify his existence on a continual basis. His life has been dissected to the point of minutiae. I am sure if someone wanted to deflect the focus elsewhere and begin to give equal press to the other candidates, we could find skeletons in their closets as well.
Really, should we condemn Obama for speaking favourable about his father? It appears to me that his father like most human beings was a complex individual with many negative qualities as well as some positive attributes. Also, to define him by Western views rather than in the context of the customs of his native country I think is irresponsible. I see nothing wrong with the way Obama portrayed his father. It is perfectly normal for Obama to want to speak favourable about the man; he is after all, his father. Are we now supposed to take the info from this article and somehow conclude that because of his father’s indiscretions he would not make a good president? I think it is foolish and ignorant to even make that suggestion. Stop making Obama answer for the sins of others!
- Ada, Phoenix, AZ
How Obama Sr spent his life doesn't matter to me; what matters actually is who Barrack Obama Jr. is. Does he have the potential to lead America better than the past Presidents? I think Obama needs to be allowed to prove himself. Getting to the White House is a race and at the end of every race the miles will be counted... Let the polls disqualify Barrack!
- Kiki Sunday, Lagos, Nigeria
Reading this gave me a moment to reflect on all of our past presidents or should I say from kennedy til now...they were all in some way flawed by their upbringing///and then there is Mrs Clinton, she is really a piece of work for a shrink.
- Robert, Roanoke, Virginia usa
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[ edited by hwahwa on May 6, 2008 03:38 PM ]
posted on May 6, 2008 05:04:05 PM new
Ada from Arizona very eloquently expressed what I have been trying to say in this thread. The article itself is muckraking IMHO.
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