1961–1966

Hawaii

Barack Obama Jr. is born on August 4, 1961 to Stanley Ann Dunham (1942–1995). Ann Dunham (who understandably dropped her first name Stanley, given to her because her father wanted a male child) had married Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr. (1936–1982), on February 2, 1961. Obama, Sr., a pro-Soviet Marxist, was a Kenyan studying at the University of Hawaii. Dunham met him in a Russian language class in the fall of 1960, as he was starting his second year at the university and she was beginning her first. Obama, Sr., an Arab-African Muslim by birth, but an atheist by admission, already had two children with a woman in Kenya named Kezia (b. 1938). The senior Obama may or may not have been legally married to Kezia. Some have speculated that their marriage was only a tribal marriage, and therefore not legally recognized. Depending on his marital status in Kenya, Obama’s marriage to Dunham may not therefore have been legal. (Obama and Kezia eventually reunite after he separates from Ann Dunham, and Kezia bears two more of his children.) After learning of the planned wedding to Dunham, Obama, Sr.’s father writes a long, angry letter to her parents saying he “didn’t approve of the marriage” and “didn’t want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman.” [1, 3, 7, 289, 299, 324, 2287, 2292, 2293]

Barack Obama, Sr.’s Hawaiian education was sponsored partly by the Laubach Literacy Institute (LLI), which has links to the Nation of Islam, and which considers a socialist world without national borders one of its goals. A financial supporter of the LLI was Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who co-authored books with its founder, Charles Laubach. Kirk was also a friend of civil rights activist and black nationalist Malcolm X (Malcolm Little). It is possible that Malcolm X met Obama, Sr. during a 1959 visit to the Secretary General of the Kenya Federation of Labour, prominent Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, because Mboya and Obama were close friends. [408]

Obama Sr. was able to attend the University of Hawaii also through the efforts of Mboya, who visited the United States in 1959 to obtain financial support for the American education of 81 Kenyan students. Presidential candidate Obama was incorrect in relating that his father was part of the “Kennedy airlift” of Kenyan students; John F. Kennedy was not sworn in as president until January of 1961, when Obama, Sr. was already in his second year at the University of Hawaii. Obama’s “JFK helped my father” story was likely intended to attach some of the Kennedy mystique to his candidacy. [561]

Obama states he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. If that is the case, he was then both an American citizen and a British citizen at birth because his father was a citizen of the protectorate of British East Africa. Because the region had, in 1961, not yet declared its independence from Great Britain, Obama was, like his father, a British citizen under Section 32(1) of the British Nationality Act of 1948. Both Obama, Sr. and Obama, Jr. then automatically became citizens of Kenya when that independent nation was formed in 1963. Obama’s British/Kenyan citizenship automatically expired when he turned age 21, but he was born with dual citizenship and split loyalties, and thus was arguably not a natural born citizen of the United States. [219, 258, 492, 549]

Kenya Birth Allegations

Some speculate that Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. Only one of Obama’s parents was American. If Obama was born in Kenya (or any country other than the United States), he cannot legally serve as president of the United States because he is not a “natural born citizen,” even though he may have become a “naturalized citizen.” Obama’s American citizen parent, Ann Dunham, had to have been a resident of the United States for 10 years, at least five of which were over the age of 14. Dunham did not meet that requirement (of the Nationality Act of 1940, revised June 1952) until her 19th birthday in late November of 1961, almost four months after Obama was born. The law confers U.S. nationality on a child born outside the United States only under certain circumstances, including: “(7) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States, who prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years.” Thus, if Obama was born in Kenya he was not only not a natural born citizen, he was not even a citizen of the United States. [801, 2040, 2462]

A significant and understandable fuss has been made about Obama becoming the first African-American president. Obama is arguably not, however, “African-American.” His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was purportedly one-eighth African from his mother’s side (from the Luo tribe in Kenya) and his father’s ancestry is alleged to be Arabic. To the extent that is true, Obama is “Arab-African-American.” Obama is certainly not—like many black Americans—the descendant of African slaves owned by white American slave owners. There is insufficient publicly available evidence to state with certainty the percentages of Obama’s national ancestries, but if he has Arab ancestors Obama is more likely a descendant of slave owners than slaves because for centuries Arabs traditionally owned slaves and were active slave traders. The names “Barack” and “Hussein” are of Arab origin. “Barack” comes from the Arabic “baraka,” meaning “blessed,” and “baraka” means “blessing” in Kiswahili, a common language in Africa. “Hussein,” from the Arabic “Hussayn,” is a diminutive of “Hassan,” meaning “good” or “handsome;” it is a common Muslim name.  [513, 514, 2624, 2625]

Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham were granted a divorce on March 20, 1964 and therefore appear to have been legally married—although the State of Hawaii (and Ann Dunham) certainly might not have been told of the existence of Obama, Sr.’s wife Kezia in Kenya when the marriage certificate was issued in 1961. (There are no known witnesses to a Dunham-Obama marriage, nor has any marriage certificate surfaced.) During the campaign Obama’s wife, Michelle stated in an interview that Ann Dunham was “very young and very single when she had him (Barack Obama, Jr.)” In any event, Dunham was unmarried and not even age 18—or possibly just barely 18—when she became pregnant in late 1960. (Michelle Obama may have meant to say that Dunham was “very young and very single” when she became pregnant.) [4, 6, 8, 10, 324, 352, 564, 772, 2287]

Stanley Ann Dunham

Ann Dunham was, at various times, an atheist, an Adlai Stevenson liberal, a secular humanist, leftist social-activist, socialist, and student of cultural anthropology.  She was reportedly an excellent debater at school, and allegedly excelled at defending the concepts of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. [2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 324, 612, 744, 2289]

Ann Dunham was born on November 29, 1942 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas while her father was serving in the Army. The Dunham family moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma after World War II, later to Vernon, Texas, and then to El Dorado, Kansas. (They may also have lived in California.) In 1955, the Dunham family moved to the Columbia City neighborhood of Seattle, Washington where her father landed a job managing a furniture store—located down the street from the regional headquarters of the Communist Party USA. (It has been rumored that Ann Dunham’s father, Stanley Armour Dunham, purportedly a Marxist, had been suspected of espionage during World War II and that Boeing has a 1944 security file on Dunham in connection with suspected sabotage of B-17 aircraft at its Wichita plant and the theft of B-29 blueprints. Those suspicions, if true, may have prompted Dunham to leave Kansas.) [2, 408, 558, 607, 612, 743, 2289, 2290]

In Seattle, Ann Dunham attended Eckstein Middle School. The family then moved to Mercer Island in 1956 so she could attend Mercer Island High School. The Mercer Island School Board was led by John Stenhouse (a British immigrant raised in China), who, according to his testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was a member of the Communist Party USA. Dunham’s teachers included communists Jim Wichterman, whose assignments included the reading of The Communist Manifesto. The hallway between Wichterman’s class and that of another teacher, Val Foubert, whose reading assignments included Margaret Mead’s writings on homosexuality, was known as “anarchy alley.” (Foubert also had his students read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the monumental pro-individual, pro-liberty, anti-collectivist novel that, if she read, Dunham clearly did not understand and which certainly was not allowed to influence her son’s view of the world.) Dunham graduated from high school in 1960. Dunham also attended the East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue (of which communist Stenhouse was president), which was known as the “little Red church on the hill” because of its communist leanings. Obama claims his maternal grandparents were “conservative Methodists or Baptists from Kansas,” and his mother “was a Christian.” Obama also states, “I was not raised in a religious household… My mother’s own experiences… only reinforced this inherited skepticism. Her memories of the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones…” and “In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church…” Obama may have wanted the voters to believe his Kansas-born mother was just another innocent Dorothy Gayle from the Wizard of Oz (“My mother was a Christian from Kansas”) but she was anything but a traditional middle-American farm girl. [2, 408, 558, 607, 612, 743, 2289, 2290]

In 1960, Dunham emphasized her free spirit with a statement to her high school friends that, “I don’t need to date or marry to have children.” Teacher Wichterman later recalled that Dunham would question anything, asking, “What’s so good about democracy? What’s so good about capitalism? What’s wrong with communism? What’s good about communism?” Her best friend in high school, Maxine Box, said Dunham “…touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she’d read about and could argue. She was always challenging and arguing and comparing.” [408, 612, 2289]

Although Dunham hated her first name, she apparently used it for some time. Friend Susan Botkin recalls, “In those days she dealt head-on with her uncommon first name. No sense trying to hide it… ‘My name is Stanley,’ she would say. ‘My father wanted a boy, and that’s that.’ She owned the name. Only once or twice was she teased. She had a sharp tongue, a deep wit, and she could kill. We all called her Stanley.” [2289]

Dunham was apparently also a free spirit sexually. One former friend said, “She couldn’t be the girl you went steady with, but she could be the one you spent time with.” That friend was not alone in that opinion. Dunham was also known to engage in interracial relationships; friend Susan Blake said that Dunham never dated “the crew-cut white boys.” Other friends state Dunham had no boyfriends while in high school. [564, 614, 2291]

Shortly after Dunham’s high school graduation in 1960 the family abruptly left Washington and moved to Hawaii, where she reluctantly enrolled at the University of Hawaii. (She had wanted to attend the University of Washington.) Taking his daughter with him to Hawaii was perhaps Stanley Armour Dunham’s way of keeping an eye on her. He may have been reluctant to leave her behind at the University of Washington, after at least one false pregnancy scare. At the University of Hawaii in her freshman year Dunham was described as shy and reluctant to participate in classroom discussions. Out of the classroom, she was friendly with the boys, frequently flirting and repeatedly touching them. Classmates say, “When Dunham arrived in Hawaii, she was a full-fledged radical leftist…” She also stopped using her first name Stanley at that time. [558, 564, 2291]

Knowing of her sexual reputation, Obama, Sr. supposedly told Dunham, “It’s not mine” when, in December of 1960, she informed him that she was pregnant. Obama, Sr.’s classmates knew he had a wife and children in Africa, but it has to be assumed that Dunham initially did not. She may have quickly found out, however, because Dunham left Obama, Sr. within a few weeks of her son’s birth. [564, 2287]

Dunham’s acquaintances recall that they often had difficulties knowing when she was telling the truth. One remarked, “She would make you believe anything while you were face-to-face but, a few minutes after she’d leave, you’d realize what she said wasn’t very… realistic or true,” explained one. Another friend recalls joining Dunham for dinner with her parents. Dunham tells an incredible story about a car accident. Her mother, knowing the tale was fabricated, lets her finish… and then states, “That never happened.” [564]

One Obama birth theory speculates that Dunham’s parents were disturbed by the news of the pregnancy (understandably, considering the scandal an interracial couple and an unwed pregnancy would have prompted in 1961), and likely tried to persuade her to give the child up for adoption and then claim she had miscarried. There is some speculation that Dunham left Hawaii and gave birth to Obama in Washington State (or perhaps British Columbia, Canada) at a facility for unwed mothers—and then decided to keep the baby. She then would have returned to Hawaii and registered the child’s birth there, claiming the child was born at home in Honolulu. (Had Obama been born in Washington State, Dunham would have had no need to later register his birth in Hawaii, but had he been born in Canada her doing so would have been understandable.) In August 1961, Dunham visited a friend in Seattle who had to show Dunham how to change the baby’s diaper. [564, 2655]

Almost immediately after giving birth to Obama, Dunham returns to Washington State to attend the University of Washington, leaving her infant to be cared for by her mother in Hawaii. Obama, Sr. remains at the University of Hawaii. [408]

According to the University of Hawaii (UH), Ann Dunham first attended classes at UH on September 26, 1960. Dunham was also a student at UH between the spring of 1963 and summer of 1966, and sporadically at other times between 1972 and 1992. She received a BA in Mathematics in the summer of 1967, an MA in Anthropology in the fall of 1983, and a PhD in Anthropology in the summer of 1992. [408]

According to the University of Washington (UW), Dunham was enrolled at UW in the fall of 1961 (just weeks after giving birth), the spring of 1962, and the winter of 1962. The Obama campaign places Dunham only in Hawaii until she later moves to Indonesia with Lolo Soetoro, and omits any reference to her attending UW. These university dates indicate that Ann Dunham was not even living with Barack Obama, Sr., because she attended UW while he remained at UH. He spent virtually no time with his newborn son or with Dunham. She attended school in Washington while her mother, Madelyn, took care of her newborn son in Hawaii. Dunham, who had told her friends “I don’t need to date or marry to have children,” apparently also believed she didn’t even need to care for a child to have children. [408]
 
Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.

Obama, Sr. receives two fellowships, one to pursue a doctorate in economics at the New York School for Social Research in New York City, the other for Harvard. The former would have allowed him enough money to provide for his wife and child in New York; the latter would provide only enough for him. He chooses the latter, telling a friend, “How can I refuse the best education?” But Dunham had already left Obama, Sr. shortly after her son’s birth, so it was not illogical for him to choose Harvard over New York. Dunham does not attend the June 1962 graduation of Obama, Sr., and he leaves for Harvard shortly thereafter. Dunham seems not to have demanded any child support, and she receives food stamps for a time. [564, 842 p. 27; 2287]

After Harvard, Obama, Sr. returns to Kenya with fellow student Ruth Nidesand. He works briefly for the Shell Oil Company, and then obtains employment as an economist with the Kenyan Ministry of Transportation. [2287]

In 1965, Obama’s father writes an article for the East Africa Journal called “Problems Facing Our Socialism,” in which he criticizes Kenya for not being socialist enough. He writes, “Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 per cent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.” Obama, Jr. has so far suggested a maximum federal income tax rate of “only” 39.6 per cent (not counting Social Security and Medicare taxes). Obama, Sr. advocated the elimination of private farming in Kenya, the nationalization of businesses, and high taxes on the wealthy for “redistribution.” (Obama, Jr., with the eager assistance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, may very well end up attempting to nationalize America’s banks and its auto, oil, and utility industries.) [271, 1008]

In his second book (his campaign book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream) Obama clearly states that, like his father, he is also no great fan of the American system of free enterprise capitalism. He describes capitalism as “chaotic and unforgiving,” and says he has a desire to roll back the “ownership society.” [271]

Obama, Sr. marries Nidesand in Kenya in 1967. They are eventually divorced, with Nidesand claiming physical abuse. With Obama, Sr., Nidesand has a son, a half-brother of Obama, who lives in Shenzhen, China and who reportedly works in the export business; his name is Mark Ndesandjo. (Another son of Nidesand and Obama, Sr., David Ndesandjo, was killed in a motorcycle accident.) Obama, Sr. eventually has at least eight children with four women. (Two of those children are borne by his ex-wife Kezia while Obama, Sr. is still married to Nidesand.) Obama, Sr. does not see his son Barack, Jr. again until 1971, when he visits Hawaii to attend a reunion of former UH classmates. Obama, Sr. is eventually killed in 1982, at age 46, in an automobile accident. Another accident a year earlier left him with both legs amputated. Alcohol is believed to have been a factor in the final, fatal accident. (Close friend Philip Ochieng, a journalist in Kenya, states that Obama, Sr. was “excessively fond of scotch” and ended up in poverty “without a job.”) The earlier automobile accident was, according to at least one source, an apparent attempted hit-and-run assassination in retaliation for Obama having testified against the man who murdered his friend Tom Mboya in 1969. Atheist or not, Obama is given a Muslim burial. [6, 7, 11, 271, 324, 408, 562, 842 p. 22; 2039, 2287, 2682]

Obama’s Birth Certificate

In the latter stages of the presidential campaign, a myriad of rumors arise suggesting that Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. Those stories are fueled partly by reports that his father’s relatives had witnessed his birth in Kenya.

In an effort to squelch the born-in-Kenya rumors, Obama’s campaign posts an image of his Hawaiian birth certificate on the Internet; it is immediately suspected of being a forgery. The story breaks on Pamela Geller’s AtlasShrugs.com Web site (which has consistently had the most thorough coverage). The birth certificate image shows evidence of being computer-generated, and it represents the limited short form birth record document rather than the more detailed long form document (sometimes referred to as the “ribbon copy” because it is produced with ink from the typewriter’s ribbon). Obama’s legitimate long form birth certificate may possibly list a place of birth other than Hawaii, a father other than Obama, Sr., or no father at all. Of course, a newborn infant’s mother can give the hospital the name of just about anyone as the father and it will likely be recorded. (By July 2008, there were allegations that the short form birth certificate forgery had been performed by a Jay McKinnon, who describes himself as a “Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist.”) [12, 325, 494, 548, 564, 2040, 2612]

Researcher Dr. Ron Polarik performed an exhaustive examination of the various Obama birth certificate images available on the Internet and states that the document is a fake. Polarik alleges that no original paper Certification of Live Birth (COLB) corresponding to the image on the Internet exists. He states that the online document was computer-generated and not a scanned image of any authentic Obama COLB. Polarik also points out that the 2007 seal shown on Obama’s alleged 2007 COLB looks nothing like the authentic 2007 Hawaiian seal on actual documents for that year. [548]

The birth certificate provided by the Obama campaign lists the father’s race as “African,” a term that likely would not have been used for a newborn child’s race in 1961. A birth certificate in that period would probably have listed the race as “Negro” or “colored.” Those may not be politically correct terms today, but they were in widespread use in 1961. The use of the word “African” on the Obama form thus further suggests that the document provided by his campaign was a newly created fabrication, prepared by someone unfamiliar with 1961 society. [372]

The Internet site FactCheck.org states that the birth certificate provided by the Obama campaign is legitimate, but it should be noted that FactCheck.org is politically left leaning and is affiliated with the Annenberg Public Policy Center of Pennsylvania, which, in turn, is run by Obama supporters and funded by the Annenberg Foundation. (The Annenberg Foundation also funded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, from which Obama and William Ayers distributed tens of millions of dollars to predominantly leftist organizations). In defense of FactCheck.org, some point out that the Annenberg Foundation was originally funded by a wealthy Republican, the late Walter Annenberg, and therefore it could not possibly have contributed to leftist causes. That argument fails to consider the fact that wealthy benefactors often do not retain strict control over—or live long enough to control—the foundations they set up. Annenberg donated $50 million to the United Negro College Fund and supported public television, and neither of those would be considered conservative leaning. “If it’s Annenberg it must be conservative” is not a valid argument. The Ford Foundation, for example, has distributed funds in ways that clearly would not have been advocated by Henry Ford. In fact, Henry Ford II quit the Ford Foundation in disgust in 1977. The fact that Annenberg is no longer alive to influence the spending of his foundation is not irrelevant. The truth is that as time passes tax-exempt foundations frequently lurch left in their distribution of funds. (They have also been used as covers for CIA activities, precisely because of the lack of accountability in their funding and expenditures.) [302, 548, 733, 842 p. 90]

On August 13, 1961, nine days after his birth, an Obama birth notice appears in two Honolulu newspapers. The Sunday Advertiser and the Star Bulletin announcements read, “Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug 4.” The address listed in the notices is purportedly that of Ann Dunham’s parents. The place of birth is not indicated. Many argue that the newspaper birth notices prove Obama was born in Hawaii, others argue that they prove only that Obama’s mother, father, or grandparents placed the notice in the newspapers. (One individual who is familiar with Linotype machines used by newspapers in the 1960s argues that the spacing of the lines in the Obama birth notice suggests it is a forgery.) Current long-time (since before 1961) residents of nearby 6075 Kalanianaole Highway state that the residents of 6085 in 1961 were neither Obama and Dunham nor Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, but Orland and Thelma Lefforge. Regardless of where Obama was born, in late August of 1961 his mother was living in a Seattle apartment (516 13th Avenue E), ready to begin classes at the University of Washington. (The telephone book entry is “Obama Anna Mrs EA3-3348”) [362, 1902, 1908, 1909, 2655]

Some believe that Dunham and Obama, Sr. visited his homeland of Kenya at the beginning of their long summer break from the University and that Obama was born in Africa. As the summer progressed, the airlines would not have allowed a very pregnant Dunham fly all the way back to Hawaii, and Dunham therefore would have given birth in Kenya. (The airlines were more strict about such issues in 1961 than they are today.) Several of Obama’s relatives in Africa, who likely are unaware of the eligibility requirements of the U.S. presidency, state that he was born in Kenya. [197, 199, 248]

Dunham’s high school classmate Susan Blake recalls that during a 1961 visit to Seattle Dunham was excited about her husband’s plans to return to Kenya. Blake does not indicate whether Dunham was going to Kenya with her husband, but it is not illogical to believe that the newlyweds would travel together to Obama Sr.’s homeland in order for Dunham to “meet the parents,” with the trip taking place over the summer when university classes were not in session. Such a trip would also be consistent with reports that Obama’s family in Kenya was less than thrilled when they met his new wife, a white woman. The summer of 1961 is the only logical time the Kenyan family could have met Dunham, as both she and Obama, Sr. returned to the United States to attend their fall school sessions. Dunham’s trip to Kenya would not have been during the 1962 summer break because by that time Obama, Sr. had already decided to attend Harvard and leave both Dunham and her child. If Dunham traveled with Obama, Sr. to Kenya, it was in the summer of 1961. [743]

Obama’s campaign has given the names of two different Hawaiian hospitals where he was supposed to have been born (Kapiolani Medical Center and Queens Medical Center, both in Honolulu). No one has been able to confirm the birth from either hospital’s records. There is allegedly a register of the birth in the public records office, dated August 8, 1961, one week after the birth, but it purportedly does not list a place of birth. (A register of birth is not the same as a birth certificate.) [248]

Between November 20 and December 2 of 2008, 13 separate Hawaiian hospitals were contacted to determine if Obama had been born there. None of them could or would confirm it was the facility where he was born. The hospitals contacted included Queen’s Medical Center (where Obama says be was born) and Kapiolani Medical Center (where Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng says he was born). [584]

A writer for Online Journal published an article (June 9, 2008) claiming that a research team went to Mombasa, Kenya, and located a certificate of the Kenyan birth of Barack Obama, Jr. There are also rumors that certified copies of a Kenyan birth certificate, with embossed raised seals and with birth witness signatures, are now in the hands of three individuals. Those documents purportedly state that Obama was born at 7:24 p.m., on August 4, 1961, at Coast Provincial General Hospital, in Mombasa, Kenya. Government authorities in Kenya have stated that all documents regarding Obama would be “under seal.” That statement itself raises questions, because if Obama were born in Hawaii, Kenya would have no Obama birth records to seal. [248, 299, 301, 407]

Some believe that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, has done some investigating and believes Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya. The British Secret Service, MI6, according to others, allegedly has documents relating to Obama, Sr. because he was a politically active communist at a time when Kenya had not yet received its independence from Great Britain. [558, 2038]

There have been claims that Obama’s step-grandmother, Sarah Onyango Obama (Obama’s paternal grandfather’s second wife, born in 1922), told reporters that Barack Obama, Jr. was born in Kenya when her stepson came to visit—accompanied by a pregnant Ann Dunham. Sarah Obama further states that she was present in the Mombasa delivery room when Obama was born. One half-brother and one half-sister of Obama also claim he was born in Kenya. That would be consistent with a purported stop by Dunham to the state of Washington on the return trip to Hawaii, and with the possible existence of only a Hawaiian register of birth, rather than an actual Hawaiian birth certificate. The Chicago Tribune was told by Dunham’s friend Susan Blake that Dunham visited her in Seattle with the newborn infant shortly after his birth. That visit to Blake makes more sense as part of a necessary return trip from Kenya to Hawaii through Seattle than as an optional pleasure trip from Hawaii to Seattle and back to Hawaii simply to show off a newborn baby. [248, 289, 299, 324, 367, 2660]

A critical issue with regard to the Obama long form birth certificate is that Hawaiian law (Hawaii Revised Statute 338-17.8) allows the State of Hawaii to issue a certificate of live birth even if the child is born outside the state provided the parents have been legal residents of Hawaii for at least one year immediately preceding the birth. Obama, Sr. had been a resident of Hawaii for at least one year prior to August 1961. Ann Dunham graduated from Mercer Island High School in Washington in 1960. If, as of August 1961, she had been a legal resident of Hawaii for one year, it was just barely one year. Such a Hawaiian certificate of live birth does not require that the child be born in Hawaii, only that the parents be Hawaiian residents for one year. Thus, had Obama been born in Kenya (or anywhere other than Hawaii) and shortly thereafter brought to Hawaii, Dunham could nevertheless have requested a Hawaiian birth certificate for her son; that document would have been in addition to the birth certificate issued in Kenya. Such a Hawaiian certificate does not make the child a natural born citizen of the United States, it is merely a birth-recording convenience offered by the state. If Dunham expected to remain in Hawaii or any other U.S. state it would have been logical for her to want to register Obama’s birth there. (It certainly would not have been necessary for her to “think ahead” to a time when he might decide to run for president, as some have suggested.) Dunham could also have returned to Hawaii from Kenya, claimed to have given birth at home, and simply registered the birth as Hawaiian. Obama would then have both a Kenyan and a Hawaiian birth certificate; he wouldn’t be the first person to have two such documents from two different countries. [301]

The Hawaiian statute reads, in part, “Certificates for children born out of state. (a) Upon application of an adult or the legal parents of a minor child, the director of health shall issue a birth certificate for such adult or minor, provided that proof has been submitted to the director of health that the legal parents of such individual while living without the Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.” Those who argue that a Hawaiian birth certificate undeniably proves a birth was in Hawaii have to reconcile their argument with Hawaii Revised Statute 338-17.8. [301, 583]

Some suggest that the Hawaiian statute was intended to increase the number of Hawaiian citizens in order to get additional federal money. Welfare benefits were not then provided to illegal immigrants, and Hawaii was overburdened with immigrants—most in poverty and many involved in crime. The Hawaiian practice of issuing birth certificates to children born somewhere else allowed it to improperly boost the official population numbers of citizens, thus increasing the amount of welfare money it received from Washington, D.C. (In other words, the State of Hawaii may have been engaged in massive welfare fraud to obtain federal tax dollars.)

Some have also argued that Hawaii’s status as the nation’s 50th state is questionable because the proposition voted on by its citizens only asked the question, “Should Hawaii immediately be admitted into the Union as a State?” and did not also offer the option of total independence. The legal choice should therefore have been not solely between statehood and remaining a territory of the United States, but between statehood, remaining a territory, and independence. Further, the statehood vote (on June 27, 1959) was open to any U.S. citizen who had resided in Hawaii for at least one year, including members of the military and their families—non-Hawaiians who should perhaps have had no say in the matter. The argument persists in the minds of many island residents that Hawaii has never legally been a state. [1589]

States typically have a long form (certificate of live birth) and a short form (certification of birth or certificate of birth registration) for their birth documents. The long form, or vault copy, contains the more detailed information, such as the hospital name, names of parents, date, time, infant’s weight and length, footprints, doctor’s name, mother’s signature, and signature of the doctor. (The physician’s signature is sometimes certified.) In the pre-computer era of 1961, the long form document would have been filled in by hand or with a typewriter. The short form (or “abstract”) contains limited information, and is the less desirable of the two forms when absolute proof is desired. When someone requests a copy of a birth certificate from a state (or county), the document provided is often the short form, typed or (nowadays) computer-printed at the time of the request, and based on information on computer databases; the vault copy is generally not retrieved and examined. The short form is then stamped or embossed with an official seal before being given to the person who requested it. Had Obama been born in Kenya, Ann Dunham could have returned with him to Hawaii and had his birth recorded there. The long form would state the place of birth as Kenya, while the short form might make no mention of Kenya—especially if it is a forgery. [694, 2079]

The birth document provided by the Obama campaign—whether valid or a forgery—is the short form. But having a Hawaiian certification of birth proves only that the birth was registered in Hawaii, it does not prove that the named individual was born in Hawaii. The place of birth is recorded on the vault copy document, but that is precisely the document that Obama refuses to produce. Some suggest that Obama has people preparing a forged long form birth certificate in order to quash rumors and end lawsuits. If a long form document is eventually released to the public (whether original or forged) the question of why it took so long for Obama to release it will be raised—especially since he has been paying attorneys to fight the release of documents. (Further, most observers would assume that skeptics will not be allowed to subject the document to exhaustive forensic tests.) [492, 574]

To those who argue, “That’s all nonsense, if you have a Hawaiian birth certificate you must have been born in Hawaii,” they need to account for the fact that Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng also has a Hawaiian short form certification of birth yet readily admits she was born in Indonesia in 1970. They also need to consider Chinese leader Sun Yat-Sen. Sun Yat-Sen (1866–1925) was born in China but was granted a Hawaiian registration of birth showing he was born in the Kingdom of Hawaii on November 24, 1870, four years after his actual 1866 birth in the Guangdong province of China. Sun Yat-Sen lived in Hawaii for a time, studying at the Iolani School where he mastered the English language. He eventually became a naturalized citizen of the United States and was issued a U.S. passport. Although Sun Yat-Sen had a Hawaiian birth certificate and was an American citizen, he was born in China and would therefore not have been eligible to serve as president of the United States because he was not a natural born citizen. (Sun Yat-Sen also attended Oahu College, which later became the Punahou School attended by Obama.) [783, 1987]

Only a few sources have been listed here for the many Obama birth speculations; there are far too many, and rumors and stories can readily be found on the Internet. (One can no doubt find stories suggesting that Obama’s father was a visitor from another planet.) The speculation will not end until original birth, citizenship, and school documents are released, and the likelihood of that is minimal. Various lawsuits have been filed to block Obama from running for or serving as president without his first proving he is an eligible, natural born citizen of the United States. Whether those lawsuits lead to anything remains to be seen, but if the truth damages Obama, there will certainly be continued efforts by many to keep that truth successfully hidden. (Even if Obama was born in Hawaii, an important issue may be whether he became and may still be an Indonesian citizen; his school records and passport records may hold the key to why he is keeping his past shrouded in secrecy.) [13, 258, 305, 543]

One of Obama’s Web sites, FightTheSmears.com, affirms, “When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.’s children. Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4, 1982.” This statement by the Obama campaign admits that he was a British citizen at birth and thus had dual citizenship (even if he was born in the United States) With dual citizenship and split loyalties at birth, Obama is arguably not a natural born citizen and is ineligible to serve as president of the United States. [507]

Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution states that “No person except a natural born Citizen or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The grandfather clause portion of the rule refers only to those persons who were living in the United States at the time the Constitution was ratified in 1787, and is therefore irrelevant to living Americans. Thus, for all people alive today, the Constitution requires that “No person except a natural born Citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President.” [923]

Some have argued that Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution allows Obama to serve as president. The relevant part reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This Amendment was meant to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling as unconstitutional the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which granted citizenship to former slaves. Nothing in the 14th Amendment, however, changes the requirement that a president must be a natural born citizen, rather than simply a citizen or a naturalized citizen. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria, is a naturalized citizen, but he cannot legally serve as president because he is not a natural born citizen. The 14th Amendment notwithstanding, an individual can serve as president only if he or she is a natural born citizen of the United States. (Note that the term natural born citizen appears in the U.S. Constitution only in Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5.) [509, 923]

One Internet Web site offers to pay Obama $2 million if he will produce his original long form birth certificate. The amount of the reward will be increased until “…it is so huge that the American people will begin to question why he has sealed all his background info to hide something.” Some might argue that the $2 million reward is already large enough to prompt those questions. (The reward is later increased to $25 million.) [1939, 2525]

Further complicating the Obama history and fueling rumors are the existence of photographs taken by a school friend of Ann Dunham on a Honolulu beach, allegedly in July of 1961. Dunham, who is wearing a bikini in the photographs, is decidedly not eight months pregnant. The media has not broadcast interviews with any former school friends of Dunham who remember her being pregnant. (The media has not broadcast many interviews at all of people from Dunham’s or Obama’s past.) The bikini-at-the-beach photos were more likely from July of 1960 than July of 1961. Their very existence, however, prompts some to suggest that Dunham was not even Obama’s mother and that she merely agreed to raise the illegitimate child of Malcolm X. Why she would have agreed to do that (beyond a large sum of money) is not explained by those who make the claim, although Dunham did tell high school friends “I don’t need to date or marry to have children.” The originator of the July bikini story also suggests that Dunham attended Notre Dame de Jamhour in Lebanon, because of a possible NDJ emblem seen on a Dunham school uniform in a childhood photograph. That school, however, says it did not admit female students before 1975, and there is no evidence that Dunham left the United States in her youth. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Obama’s parents were Malcolm X and Madelyn Dunham, and that Ann Dunham pretended the child was hers to protect her mother from scandal. (Malcolm X was much closer in age to Madelyn Dunham than Ann Dunham.) One Internet story even argues that the CIA has proven that Stanley Ann Dunham is not Obama’s mother through DNA tests of her parents, using saliva from drinking glasses. (That story does not explain why a drinking glass used by Stanley Armour Dunham would never have been washed after his 1992 death.) Clearly, jumping to conclusions is not only possible, it can readily be stimulated by a candidate who is less than forthcoming about his past. [408, 558, 2038, 2516]

1966–1970

Indonesia

In 1966 or 1967, Ann Dunham marries Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo (1936–1987), who she had met at the University of Hawaii. By birth, Soetoro was Malaysian, but he lived in Indonesia most of his life. Soon after his marriage to Dunham, Soetoro returns, alone, to Jakarta, Indonesia. Obama and Dunham later move to Indonesia to join Soetoro, probably in 1967. (Soetoro’s U.S. visa was purportedly revoked in 1967 due to political unrest in Indonesia.) Soetoro then adopts Obama, whose name is changed to Barry Soetoro. Elementary school records in Indonesia list Obama’s name as Barry Soetoro, his religion as Islam, and his citizenship as Indonesian. While in Jakarta, Obama attends Franciscus Primary School (1967–1969) and Besuki State Elementary School Menteng 01 (1969–1971). [6, 14, 172, 289, 324, 329, 801, 2270]

Interestingly, while in the third grade in Indonesia, Obama writes an essay saying he wants to become president. Perhaps as a foreshadowing of future questions about his status as a natural born citizen of the United States, and the constitutionally relevant issue of divided loyalties, Obama includes in his essay the remark that he is not sure of “what country” he would like to be president. In fact, he wrote, “I want to be a president” rather than, “I want to be the president,” according to his teacher, Fermina Katarina Sinaga. [842 p. 30; 2039]

Lolo Soetoro had been an official of the Director General’s office in the TNI Topography division of the Indonesian Army. He later becomes an executive with American Mobil Corporation, where he is a key liaison between the oil company and the Suharto regime. Suharto had been “installed” as the American friendly Indonesian president in 1967, after a CIA-engineered 1965–1967 coup that deposed President Sukarno—who was considered soft on communism and a threat to American oil interests. Strangely, the leftist Ann Dunham, who would have been more politically sympathetic to the deposed Sukarno, marries Soetoro, a man with ties to the bloodthirsty dictator Suharto. [615, 842 p. 29]

Obama practices Islam while in Indonesia, irregularly attending prayer services at the mosque. According to one of his Indonesian school principals, Tine Hahiyary, the young Obama studied “Mangaji” (or “Mengagi”), which involves the recitation of the Quran (or Koran). Note that Mangaji, in Indonesian schools, requires learning to recite the Quran in the Arabic language, not the student’s native tongue; non-Muslims or even moderate Muslims would not send their child to Mangaji classes. Mangaji is much more demanding than what is expected of a Christian child who attends “Sunday School.” Obama likely was taught to read and write in Arabic, to recite from the Quran, and study the laws of Islam. (In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama relates, “In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies.”) Although Obama may insist he was never a Muslim, many Indonesians wonder why Obama is hiding his Muslim past. Former classmate Emirsyah Satar (now CEO of Garuda Indonesia) states that Obama “…was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion.” [15, 251, 332, 336, 2039]

Another former Indonesian classmate, Rony Amiris, describes Obama as having enjoyed football, playing marbles, and being a very devout Muslim. Amiris states, “Barry was previously quite religious in Islam.” Classmate Emirsyah Satar relates that Obama “was often in the prayer room wearing a sarong.” Obama is frequently observed in the school’s prayer room and at the local mosque for traditional Friday prayers. (Obama’s official campaign Web site states, “Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a committed Christian. Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ.”) [332, 521, 2039]

Publicly, Obama denies he ever was a Muslim and claims he is a devout Christian. (Obama also alleges he was never in church when his pastor of 20 years, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was spewing anti-white and anti-American rhetoric in one of his many angry sermons.) Many, if not most, of the world’s Muslims feel that “Obama may not want to be counted as a Muslim, but Muslims are eager to count him as one of their own.” If Obama is seen by radical Islamists as someone who denounced the Muslim religion to become a Christian, his background can be exploited to “argue that an apostate is leading the war on terror…” which can then help terrorists “…galvanize sympathizers into action.” But many Muslims may not care that Obama professes to be Christian as long as his policies are pro-Muslim and anti-Israel. (Muslims are permitted, and even encouraged, to lie if it furthers the cause of Islam; the term for the practice is “taqiyya.”) [252, 2626]

Purportedly, Obama was legally adopted by his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, which made Obama an Indonesian citizen according to Indonesian law. Because Indonesia does not allow dual citizenship, Obama thus lost his U.S. citizenship (if he even had it) when he became an Indonesian citizen in or about 1967. At that point, Obama also ceased to be a Kenyan citizen, according to both Indonesian and Kenyan law. Indonesian law would also have required Ann Dunham to renounce her U.S. citizenship for her marriage to Lolo Soetoro to have been considered legal in that country. If, after Obama returned to Hawaii, he applied for and was granted American citizenship he would be a naturalized citizen (like California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) and not a natural born citizen, and would therefore be ineligible to serve as president of the United States. It is possible that Obama did not even bother to become a naturalized citizen of the United States and remains an Indonesian citizen even today. Appropriate federal records would be on file if Obama made application for naturalization. If they exist, they have not been made public. [258, 300, 305, 492]

Indonesia’s policy of not allowing dual citizenship must be respected by the United States in accordance with the Hague Convention of 1930. Further, Obama, as a child, was not specifically required to renounce his U.S.—that would have been an automatic result of his adoption by Lolo Soetoro. Fair or not, the consequence of Dunham’s marriage to Soetoro and Soetoro’s adoption of Obama was that he became an Indonesian citizen… regardless of whether he understood the situation at age five or six. [492]

According to Indonesian legal experts, it is extremely difficult for non-Indonesian citizens to enroll in public schools in that country. That was especially true during the 1960s, when Indonesia was a police state and Indonesian immigration officials and the police performed weekly checks on public schools to confirm citizenship compliance. This further supports the assumption that Obama was adopted by Soetoro. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, has stated that Obama was adopted by their father, Lolo Soetoro. Soetoro-Ng, who was born in Indonesia on August 15, 1970, also has a Hawaiian birth registration. It is therefore illogical to argue that Obama’s short form Hawaiian certification of birth proves he was born in the United States when his half-sister has the same document yet was born in Indonesia. [329, 801, 1810, 1988]

Indonesia today still does not allow dual citizenship. Under Indonesia law, once Obama became a naturalized citizen by virtue of adoption he could not lose that status without relinquishing his citizenship in writing, under oath. If he did that, the government of Indonesia would have those records. If he did not do so by age 21, Obama is to this day still considered an Indonesian citizen by that country. His place of birth or the nationality of his mother is irrelevant; Indonesian law takes precedence under The Master Nationality Rule of Article 4 of the Hague Convention on 1930. Upon returning to the United States from Indonesia, Obama eventually satisfied the “five-years-after-age-14” residency requirement of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, thus making him a naturalized citizen of the United States at age 19. Residing in the United States for five or more years after attaining age 14 established the intent of Obama to become a U.S. citizen under the law, which supersedes the Indonesian citizenship over which he had no control because of his age at adoption. Nevertheless, while Obama may be a U.S. citizen he is likely not a natural born citizen. [801]

Obama claims that at age 9, while still in Indonesia, he ran across an article in Life magazine about a black man who had destroyed his skin with chemicals in an attempt to make it white. “I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation,” Obama later writes. Life magazine, however, states that no such article ever appeared in its pages. The article was never in Ebony magazine either, which Obama later named as the source after he was told that Life did not run the story. [2288]

1971–1979

Hawaii and Frank Marshall Davis

In 1971, Obama is sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents, while his mother remains in Indonesia. (Dunham may have traveled with Obama to Hawaii, promptly returning to Indonesia without him, but with his half-sister, Maya Soetoro—possibly after registering her birth in Hawaii.) Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham (1918–1992), manages a furniture store, and his grandmother, Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham (1922–2008), is a bank employee. She eventually becomes bank vice-president. Salesman Stanley Dunham was “a loose wheel at times” but he could “charm the legs off a couch,” said one acquaintance. [16, 289, 324, 329, 2270, 2289]

In December of 1971, Barack Obama, Sr. returns to Hawaii to attend a party and visit with former university friends Neil Abercrombie and Pake Zane. Obama, Sr. spends minimal time with his son during that visit. A few photographs of Obama, Sr., Ann Dunham, and Obama, Jr. are taken at the airport. In later years, Abercrombie and Zane state they have no recollection of ever seeing Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Sr. together. Abercrombie later becomes Hawaii’s first district’s Congressman and member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; he works openly with the Democratic Socialists of America. [408, 562, 1362]

Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, age 86, resides in Hawaii until her death. The Obama campaign keeps her off limits, prohibiting interviews with her. (Madelyn Dunham dies on November 3, 2008, the day before the election.) [329, 515]

Dunham leaves Lolo Soetoro in 1972 (possibly due to heavy drinking and womanizing) and returns briefly to Hawaii. She lists her name as “Sutoro” in her 1992 PhD dissertation, rather than the name “Soetoro,” which appeared on her 1980 divorce decree; no explanation for the discrepancy has been uncovered. Dunham rarely sees her son after 1975, when Obama was age 14. [289, 324, 747, 2288]

Ann Dunham spends most of the rest of her life based in Indonesia, but she travels extensively, to Ghana, Thailand, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and China. Dunham takes her daughter Maya with her on a 1986 trip along China’s Silk Road. Dunham eventually returns to Hawaii before her death in 1995. [329, 614]

While in Indonesia Dunham spends time in Yogyakarta, where she studies native handicrafts. She eventually returns to the University of Hawaii to receive a 1992 PhD in anthropology, and writes her dissertation on “Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia: Surviving and Thriving Against All Odds.” Dunham’s employment includes teaching English at the American embassy in Jakarta, consulting (setting up a village credit program) for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID, also known as the International Development Agency), program officer specializing in women’s work for the Ford Foundation in Jakarta, bank consulting work in Pakistan (microfinance programs for the poor), and employment with Women’s World Banking. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is alleged to have used both the USAID and the Ford Foundation as front agencies. (One infamous employee of the International Development Agency was David Sanchez Morales, a CIA operative who many believe was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.) Whether Dunham had any CIA connections is unknown, but it is also unclear how Dunham could afford a life of globetrotting and post-graduate education without better-paying employment. Dunham was passingly fluent in Urdu (the national language of Pakistan) and several other languages, something the CIA normally finds valuable. [607, 608, 609, 610, 611, 612, 613, 614, 615, 933]

Obama, after returning to Hawaii from Indonesia and upon turning age 18, could possibly have relinquished his Indonesian citizenship and become a naturalized U.S. citizen, with the proper paperwork filed through the U.S. State Department and by swearing an oath of allegiance to the United States. Some believe that Obama did not do so, and that he never legally changed his name from Barry Soetoro (granted upon adoption) back to Barack Obama, Jr. [258, 300, 301]

If Obama did not relinquish his Indonesian citizenship and become a naturalized U.S. citizen upon his return to Hawaii, he remains an Indonesian citizen with the legal name of Barry Soetoro and has not been a U.S. citizen since being adopted by Lolo Soetoro in Indonesia in 1966 or 1967. Thus, he is ineligible to be president of the United States. (He would also have been ineligible to be a U.S. Senator.) Obama’s repeated failure to provide documentation to prove he is a U.S. citizen suggests to many that it does not exist, and he is therefore possibly perpetrating a colossal fraud on the 300 million citizens of the United States. Obama may in fact be an illegal alien… subject to arrest and deportation to Indonesia. Obama could also be subject to a massive class action fraud lawsuit on behalf of everyone who submitted donations to his presidential campaign (over $600 million) under the incorrect belief that he was legally eligible to serve as president. Arguably, Obama and key leaders of the Democrat National Committee could also be prosecuted under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). [258, 300]

In Hawaii Obama attends the elite, expensive, private Punahou School (1971–1979). The school is racially diverse and whites are not in the majority. The young and pudgy Obama is sometimes called “Barry the Butt.” In public schools in Hawaii (but perhaps not at the Punahou private school), the final day of school is traditionally known as “Kill Haole Day” (“Kill Whitey Day”), where Caucasian students are beaten up, usually in the school bathrooms. [16, 17, 324]

Because of his drug abuse, Obama’s grades are poor in his final two years of high school. Obama later writes that “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though.” (Note: by “blow” and “smack” Obama means cocaine and heroin, respectively.) His grades may also have been affected by peer pressure, because his “choom gang” friends on the basketball court and football field would likely have teased him if he had earned good grades. Obama is called “Barry O’Bomber” by his basketball teammates for his ability to make long jump shots. His jock friends are known as “choomers” (smokers), who smoke pakalolo (pot) and drink beer (alcohol could be legally purchased at age 18 in Hawaii). Obama also sang in a school chorale group. [18, 575]

Bryon Leong, a former classmate of Obama at Punahou, states that Obama “…was known as a partier, as a guy looking for a good time, but not much more,” and, “There was pot in Hawaii in the 1970s, but it wasn’t a big deal.” [332]

By his own admission, Obama’s high school grades are not exemplary. Rather than do homework he reads the works of black authors like James Baldwin (who believed that America was hopelessly irredeemable), communists Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and W.E.B. DuBois, and civil rights activist Malcolm X, who was killed in 1965. Obama wrote in Dreams From My Father, “Only Malcolm X’s autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me.” Malcolm X stated that the white race was created by an evil scientist named “Yakub,” and “history proves the white man is the devil.” He was largely responsible for the spread of Islam among blacks in the United States, and stated that Islam was the “true religion of black mankind” while “Christianity was the white man’s religion.” Malcolm X wrote, “We’re not Americans, we’re Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; that rock landed on us.” (His “Plymouth Rock” line was lifted from composer Cole Porter’s song, Anything Goes.) [20, 190, 558, 1091, 1092, 2421]

High school friend Keith Kakugawa relates later that Obama “…made everything out like it was all racial.” After Obama complains about being picked on at the basketball court because of his race, Kakugawa’s father tells Obama, “No, Barry, it’s not because you’re black, it’s because you missed two shots in a row.” Kakugawa denies Obama’s claims that they often had heated discussions about race. The talks, Kakugawa says, were not about race, “Barry’s biggest struggles then were missing his parents. His biggest struggles were his feelings of abandonment. The idea that his biggest struggle was race is bull shit.” [20, 2288]

While a teenager in Hawaii, Obama spends considerable time with Frank Marshall Davis (whose identity Obama hides by describing him only as “Frank” in his self-absorbed book, Dreams From My Father). Davis is a dope-smoking drinking pal of Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Dunham, and the two had known each other in Kansas. (Davis was born in Kansas.) Obama meets Davis shortly after arriving in Hawaii, at age 10, but was most influenced by him during his high school years. In place of his absent father, stepfather, and mother, Davis becomes Obama’s mentor. [19, 21, 389, 2656]

Frank Marshall Davis (1905–1987) is a member of the Communist Party of the USA, a poet, propagandist, “bitter opponent of capitalism,” and radical agitator. In 1948, Davis had fled Chicago (at the suggestion of his friend Paul Robeson, a prominent actor, singer, and fellow member of the communist party) after the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated his subversive anti-American activities. In Chicago Davis had worked at various newspapers (like the communist Chicago Star), as a south side community organizer, and for various communist front groups. In Hawaii Davis is kicked out of the NAACP because of his organizing activities with the Communist Party. Davis is also a bi-sexual, sex pervert, child molester (bragging of repeated sexual encounters with a 13-year-old girl), and pornographer, and is the author of the book Sex Rebel: Black under the pseudonym “Bob Greene.” Davis “…would cruise in Hawaii parks looking for couples or female tourists to have sex with. He derived sexual gratification from bondage, simulated rape and being flogged and urinated on. He boasted that ‘the number of white babes interested in at least one meeting with a Negro male has been far more than I can handle’ and wished ‘America were as civilised as, say, Scandinavia.’ I regret none of my experiences or unusual appetites; for me they are normal.” [21, 259, 261, 2291, 2656]

Obama joins Davis at his home on most evenings, shares alcohol and drugs, is tutored in socialism, and taught not to trust the white establishment. “They’ll train you so good,” Davis warns, “you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit.” Davis teaches Obama, “Black people have a reason to hate” and “You may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.” [22, 33, 261]

Davis’ Marxist-inspired poetry includes lines like, “Smash on, victory-eating Red Army!” Titles of his poems include, “Christ is a Dixie Nigger.” [261]

Davis sometimes works as a street vendor, selling hot dogs from his Chicago-style wheeled cart near his home in Waikiki. From the cart Davis also sells drugs (marijuana and cocaine), frequently accompanied by Obama and his grandfather, Stanley. Davis is probably the main source of drugs used by Obama while in high school. Davis likely also supplied his grandfather as well, and marijuana was a part of the frequent Marxist meetings held by Stanley Armour Dunham in his Honolulu apartment. [429, 2289]

It is believed that Davis was a close friend of Thomas Ayers (father of William Ayers) in Chicago, and that it was Davis who encouraged Obama to attend Columbia University in New York and hook up with William Ayers (former Weather Underground domestic terrorist, Pentagon bomber, radical, leftist, communist, and fugitive from the FBI). [33, 204, 259]

Was Frank Marshall Davis Obama’s Father?

In Davis’ autobiography he writes of his seduction of a young white girl, age 13, named “Anne.” This fuels speculation that the “Anne” in Davis’ book is Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, and that Obama may be the child of Frank Marshall Davis. Obama’s grandfather and Davis were close friends, but there is no known evidence that Obama’s father was Davis. When Ann Dunham moved to Hawaii with her parents in 1960 she was already age 17. Davis had known the Dunhams in Kansas, however, so Davis would have had contact with Ann Dunham before she moved to Hawaii. The Dunhams also lived in Seattle, where Ann Dunham attended Mercer Island High School. There is speculation that Davis had been in Seattle doing organizing work for the communist-infiltrated International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and that would have placed Davis with Dunham when she was about 13. The ILWU is linked to the Honolulu Record, the newspaper Davis worked for in Hawaii. Nude photos of a woman purported to be Ann Dunham and alleged to have been taken by Frank Marshall Davis are circulating on the Internet, but faked photos are not terribly difficult to produce using computers and can thus be the work of simple mischief-makers. (Or the photos may simply be of a young woman who resembled Dunham.) [21, 259, 260, 365, 370, 389, 2291]

The Davis-as-father speculation is listed here only to provide the reader with as much information as possible about Obama’s background; it is not meant as an endorsement of the speculation itself.

Some have noted that Frank Marshall Davis’ son, Mark Davis, bears a reasonable resemblance to candidate Obama (and what some would consider a much stronger resemblance than shared by Obama Jr. and Obama Sr.). The mother of Mark Davis, Helen Canfield, was, like Ann Dunham, a white woman. One might speculate that Obama’s father was not Barack Obama, Sr., but Frank Marshall Davis. Because Davis and Ann Dunham could certainly not have let such a relationship be known (Davis was black, married, and age 55; Dunham was white, single, and only 17; and Davis was Stanley Dunham’s close friend), Dunham may have tried to convince Obama, Sr. that he was the father-to-be. When he later learned that was not the case, he abruptly left Dunham, moved on to Harvard, and then returned to Kenya. There has been speculation that Dunham and Obama, Sr. never lived together in Hawaii; this is supported by the fact that Obama, Sr. continued to attend the University of Hawaii while Dunham attended the University of Washington during late 1961 and early 1962, before she returned to Hawaii to attend UH again. [369, 408]

If the Davis-as-father speculation is true Dunham may have continued the lie for the benefit of her son and her parents. Davis would later be eager to be Obama’s mentor if he was, in fact, Obama’s father. Obama may not even have learned the identity of his father for some time, perhaps not until after the death of his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, in 1992. It was not until after his grandfather’s death that Obama began work on his book, Dreams From My Father. At that point, he may have understood who his real father was. His book needed to include the Kenyan history in order to continue the charade for the sake of his family and his planned political career, but the “dreams” Obama needed to pursue perhaps had more to do with a continuation of Davis’ legacy than those of an unaccomplished alcoholic bureaucrat in Kenya. It is worth noting also that Obama’s reluctance—if not outright refusal—to give financial support to his poverty-stricken half-brother George Obama in a Nairobi slum or to his destitute aunt living in Boston public housing may be due to his knowing that they are not in fact related to him. This is speculation based only on circumstantial evidence; the disclosure of appropriate original documentation by Obama would resolve unanswered questions and end speculation. [369]

Was Malcolm X Obama’s Father?

There is also speculation that Obama is the son of the civil right activist Malcolm X (Malcolm Little), who was murdered in 1965, allegedly by members of the Nation of Islam. Ann Dunham graduated from high school in the Seattle area in 1960. Malcolm X formed the Nation of Islam Temple No. 67 in Seattle that same year and was a popular guest speaker at many universities, including the University of Washington. Dunham was certainly the type of person who would have been attracted to a Malcolm X speaking event. She also had a history of dating non-white students, and could have met the civil rights leader at one of his public events. It is not difficult to see that Obama resembles Malcolm X considerably more than he resembles Barack Obama Sr. and his speech patterns are also remarkably similar… but resemblance is certainly not the same as evidence. (Obama’s speaking voice is not only similar to that of Malcolm X it is also remarkably dissimilar to that of Barack Obama, Sr., who had such a deep voice that friend Neil Abercrombie remarked, “He made James Earl Jones seem like a tenor.”) Perhaps the truth will never be known without the release of original birth records or DNA testing, and the likelihood of either is close to zero. (Obama himself may not even know his real history.) However, Dunham was already in Hawaii when she became pregnant in late 1960. In order for Malcolm X to be Obama’s father, the civil rights leader had to have been in Hawaii in late 1960 or Dunham had to leave Hawaii to be with him. No evidence of either has been produced, but it is not out of the realm of possibility. [408, 524, 526, 1095, 2293, 2421]

Far-fetched or not, the Malcolm-X-as-father scenario would explain why Obama seemed to be “looked after” (both financially and otherwise) throughout his college years and his political career. Obama would later receive a letter of recommendation to attend Harvard Law School from Percy Sutton, who had been Malcolm X’s attorney. Khalid al-Mansour (aka Donald Warden) became the main financial backer for Obama. Al-Mansour has been a close associate of Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Louis Farrakhan and of Malcolm X, who was the national spokesman for NOI. It is not unreasonable to assume that if Obama was indeed the son of Malcolm X, those who were close to the civil rights leader would promise to “look after him” in any way possible, making sure he was taught in the ways of Islam and socialism, funded perhaps by Saudi and Syrian financiers. Obama’s financial and political benefactors eventually included (Syrian) Tony Rezko, Percy Sutton, Khalid al-Mansour, Muhammadian Mian Soomro, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, and William Ayers and Bernardine Rae Dohrn. A close neighbor of Obama’s in Chicago is Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Malcolm X split with the Nation of Islam partly over the issue of the illegitimate children of its leader, Elijah Muhammed. If Malcolm X then fathered his own illegitimate child (Obama) with a white woman, he certainly would have had to cover that up in order to retain his reputation of being “above the fray”—and to protect his son from the criminal record, death threats, and violence he himself had experienced. Barack Obama, Sr., who Malcolm X may have met in Kenya in 1959, then became the fall guy. Many pieces of the puzzle would fit… and the Obama birth certificate may be one of the key missing pieces. [408, 524, 526, 1095]

That the father of candidate Obama was someone other than Barack Obama, Sr. is, of course, only speculation. Right or wrong, therefore, the remainder of this timeline continues with the assumption that the father of Barack Obama, Jr. was Kenyan Barack Obama, Sr.

1979–1981

Occidental College and the Pakistan Visit

Obama moves to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College, where he plays basketball and continues taking drugs. He becomes friends with Pakistani Muslims Mohammed Hassan Chandoo (perhaps spelled Chando or Chandio) and Wahid Hamid, and Indian Vinai Thummalapally. At Occidental, Obama indulges in alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. He becomes interested in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and is mentored by an openly gay professor, Lawrence Goldyn, who has a strong influence on Obama’s acceptance of gays. Fellow student Thummalapally lives with Obama in the summer of 1980. Obama’s freshman year roommate at Occidental is Imad Husain, a Pakistani. [20, 28, 188, 189, 191, 245, 332]

Safely away from his grandparents, Obama starts smoking cigarettes while at college and continues the habit until an attempt to quit in February of 2007. On the campaign trail in 2008, however, reporters with a keen sense of smell recognize that Obama is still sneaking occasional cigarettes. (Obama’s refusal to release his medical records may relate to his 25-year smoking habit and use of drugs.) [842 p. 50]

Obama’s friends at Occidental are the more politically active blacks, foreign students, Chicanos, Marxist professors, feminists, and punk-rock performance poets. Obama is rebuked on one occasion for calling another black student, who “wasn’t black enough,” an “Uncle Tom.” One female student criticizes Obama with the remark, “You always think it’s about you” [187, 192]

While at Occidental, Obama joins the Students for Economic Democracy (SED). SED is a branch of the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), a group that was founded by radical, anti-American, Marxist activist Tom Hayden (former husband of actress and Viet Cong supporter Jane Fonda), who was also active with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). William Ayers’ subsequent radical group, the Weather Underground, was comprised of many former SDS members. (In 1969 the Weather Underground, then called simply “Weatherman,” declared “war on Amerikka.” In 1970, Ayers explained the philosophy of the movement, “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home; kill your parents; that’s where it’s really at.” Ayers dedicated his book, Prairie Fire, to Sirhan Sirhan—Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin—and others he considers political prisoners.) Obama’s first known public speech takes place at an Occidental College event sponsored by the SED. [259, 332, 432, 454, 2271]

An FBI informant who had infiltrated Ayers’ Weather Underground witnessed a meeting at which the group discussed a future communist takeover of America in which some 25 million “diehard capitalists” would need to be killed. The members discussed a future in which Cuba, North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union would establish “re-education centers” in the Southwestern United States. [373]

Obama may have made a 1980 trip to Kenya to visit his father. During that trip, he may also have visited Pakistan, and Indonesia (to visit his mother). It is likely, however, that the reports of a 1980 trip are mistaken, and Obama’s only such trip was in 1981. [194, 195, 196]

On November 5, 1980, Ann Dunham is granted a divorce from Lolo Soetoro. The divorce decree states, “The parties have 1 child(ren) below age 18 and 1 child(ren) above 18.” This further suggests that Obama was adopted by Lolo Soetoro. (Dunham’s attorney in the divorce, Gilardy H. William, Jr., later becomes the Hawaii attorney for the Democrat National Committee.) The divorce decree lists the names as Stanley Ann Soetoro and Lolo Soetoro. [719, 746]

During his college years, Obama maintains limited contact with his father, through correspondence, until his death in 1982. [271]

Probably in late 1980, Obama decides to stop using the name Barry Soetoro and returns to the name Barack Obama, Jr. Whether that was done legally through the courts is not known. [194]

Obama is disappointed in a grade he receives from political science Professor Roger Boesche, and complains he is being graded “on a different curve” because of his race. [20]

In 1981, Obama visits his mother and half-sister in Indonesia, and then continues to Karachi, Pakistan and Hyderabad, Pakistan, with his friends Mohammed Hassan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, and finally to Kenya to visit his father’s family. (Most accounts suggest Obama visited Hyderabad, India, but he perhaps visited the city of the same name in Pakistan, a few hours drive from Karachi.) [23, 25, 26, 194, 195, 196, 245, 549]

The Defend Our Freedoms Foundation notes that “Many young fundamentalist Muslim ‘scholars’ have traveled to Hyderabad to witness what they believed was stolen from Islam by India’s Hindu majority. Karachi is favored by young radical Muslims because Pakistan was the first former British colony that abandoned English common law for Islamic law following the coup d’etat of General Mohammed Zia, who overthrew the democratically elected government of Ali Bhutto in the late 1970s. …Obama admitted that he traveled to Karachi while under military rule of madman and dictator General Zia.” [2014]

Indonesian passports expire every five years. If Obama became a citizen of Indonesia through adoption by Lolo Soetoro in 1966 and was then issued a passport, he may have renewed it a third time by 1981. Obama turned age 18 in 1979. If he renewed his Indonesian passport at any point after his 18th birthday, Obama would have officially lost U.S. citizenship—if he even still had it—according to 8 USC Sections 1481(a)(2) and 101(a)(1), because of “…taking an oath or making allegiance or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state… after having attained the age of 18.” [549]

Obama stays with the family of Hassan Chandoo while in Karachi. Another of Obama’s hosts, in Jacobabad, Pakistan, is Muhammadian Mian Soomro, Obama’s senior by 11 years, son of a Pakistani politician (Ahmadmian Soomro, the deputy speaker of the West Pakistan Assembly) and himself a politician, who later becomes interim president of Pakistan when Pervez Musharraf resigns in August of 2008. Soomro states that “someone” personally requested that his father “watch over” Barack Obama, but Soomro will not name that individual—who allegedly is an American, possibly with CIA ties, now living in South America. [24, 615, 617]

Who financed Obama’s costly, multinational 1981 trip is unknown. There are also allegations that Obama may have visited several close gay friends on the journey. [842 p. 46]

Note that a trip to Pakistan in 1981 was generally not possible for Americans, except for those who were on official government business, because it was on the list of dangerous nations banned by the State Department for U.S. travelers. Pakistan was also under martial law at that time. It is likely that Obama entered Pakistan on an Indonesian passport—but he would have had that document only if he was an Indonesian citizen. If he was still an Indonesian citizen, he was no longer an American citizen. Pakistan, being almost one hundred per cent Muslim, would have welcomed foreign Muslim visitors in 1981. The U.S. State Department would not have known Obama was in Pakistan had he traveled on an Indonesian (or a Kenyan) passport. [549]

Obama’s Pakistani host, Soomro, worked for several major banks including the Bank of America, which owned the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). BCCI has been involved in money laundering, bribery, terrorist support, tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; its nickname is the “Bank of Crooks and Criminals International.” American intelligence used BCCI for funneling money to the mujahadeen to assist in its fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. [617]

Obama’s school records from Occidental College have been kept secret. That may simply be to hide poor grades or an embarrassing list of non-challenging classes he took, or to cover up some affirmative action/quota assistance he received. But it is also possible that those records list Obama as a foreign student from Indonesia, rather than an American student. Being classified as a foreign student may have allowed Obama to tap into government education grants. (Some claim that California records show evidence of an educational grant to a foreign exchange student named “Soetoro” from Indonesia, but it appears that student was someone named “Soetoro Moestabjab.”) The records may also indicate that Obama actively applied for affirmative action treatment and support. If Obama accepted foreign student education grants at Occidental College because he was a foreign student, then he is not a natural born citizen and is ineligible to serve as president of the United States. If, however, Obama was born in Hawaii  but used his Indonesian adoption papers and Jakarta school records to make it appear as though he was a foreign student in order to obtain foreign student grant money, then he was committing fraud to obtain government funds. Either scenario would be a reason for Obama to want his school records kept secret. [259, 380, 1182, 2533]

While at Occidental College Obama studies the works of Frantz Fanon, a critic of Europe and, even more so, of the United States. The origins of some of Obama’s anti-American attitudes can perhaps be found in Fanon. [842 pp. 47–49]

1981–1984

Columbia University

Obama leaves California and Occidental College and heads to New York City in 1981. He arrives in August, late one evening, and is not able to get into an apartment he was offered by a friend of a friend, at 339 East 94th Street. Although he had just returned from an expensive trip to Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Kenya, Obama does not have the money for a hotel room and he allegedly spends his first night in New York in an alley on West 109th Street. [1807, 2271]

Obama enrolls at Columbia University, where he attends socialist conferences “for inspiration.” His roommate is Pakistani Muslim Sohale Siddiqi. Siddiqi is a drug user, but Obama purportedly stops using drugs while at Columbia. From his apartment window, Obama says he watched “white people from the better neighborhoods” bring their dogs to defecate on his street. Living at 520 West 123rd Street is William Ayers. Ayers attends Bank Street College of Education (for a Master’s Degree in early childhood education), which is located within walking distance of Columbia University. Ayers also attended the Teachers College of Columbia University. Obama’s English professor at Columbia is Edward Said, a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, political activist. (Said was called the “professor of terror” by the magazine Commentary. Both Ayers and Obama remain friends of Edward Said. In 1998, Obama and his wife attend a banquet at which Said is the keynote speaker. Obama is seated next to Said at the well-attended dinner.) [26, 27, 206, 297, 332, 334, 335, 387, 1006, 2218, 2271]

Obama meets Zbigniew Brzezinski while at Columbia. Brzezinski, a CIA expert on the Soviet Union, teaches International Relations and is the head of the Institute for Communist Affairs at Columbia. (Obama is one of only eight students chosen to study Sovietology under Brzezinski.) Obama is heavily influenced by Brzezinski—who, as National Security Advisor for President Jimmy Carter, was instrumental in encouraging America’s betrayal of the Shah of Iran (which then led to the Islamist revolution in 1979, the takeover of Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini, the 444-day American hostage debacle, and the eventual rise of the Islamofascist regime’s nuclear weapon-seeking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). Brzezinski also served as director of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his book, Between Two Ages, Brzezinski wrote, “National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept,” and “Marxism represents a further vital, and creative stage in the maturing of man’s universal visions.” [615, 616, 618, 842 p. 53; 1661, 2327, 2330]

Obama studies political science and international relations. His thesis is purportedly on Soviet nuclear disarmament. (Obama refuses to release copies of his thesis, likely because it is either poorly written or anti-American in tone. He will not make public any of his Columbia records.) Obama graduates without honors in June of 1983, with a degree in political science. [29, 264]

At both Occidental College in California and at Columbia University in New York, Obama’s roommates are foreign Muslims. That may be indicative of something significant; it would be worth knowing if the students themselves chose roommates or had them assigned to them. Whether chosen or assigned, the pairings may have been due to Muslim backgrounds, foreign backgrounds, or foreign citizenship. Obama’s hidden college records may reveal that information.

While attending Columbia, Obama lives off campus near William Ayers. It is likely that Obama first met Ayers during those years, 1981–1983. There is speculation that Frank Marshall Davis arranged for Obama to meet William Ayers in New York; their having met was not a chance event. Ayers then possibly suggested that Obama return to Chicago with him. Years later, Obama and Ayers are again neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. (His long-time association with Ayers leads some to refer to Obama as the “Fresh Prince of Bill Ayers.”) [259]

Looking for evidence of Obama’s past, Fox News contacted 400 Columbia students from that period but none remembered Obama. Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a political science major at Columbia who also graduated in 1983. In 2008 Root says of Obama, “I don’t know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me.  I don’t have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever! Nobody recalls him. I’m not exaggerating, I’m not kidding.” Root adds that he was also, like Obama, “Class of ’83 political science, pre-law” and says, “You don’t get more exact than that. Never met him in my life, don’t know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, 20th reunion, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! Who was he, and five years ago, nobody even knew who he was… the guy who writes the class notes, who’s kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him. Is that not strange? It’s very strange…” Obama’s photograph does not appear in the school’s yearbook, and Obama consistently declines requests to talk about his years at Columbia, provide school records, or provide the name of any former classmates or friends while at Columbia. [332, 346, 1182]

While attending Columbia, Obama regularly attends Marxist-socialist conferences at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in Manhattan. [332, 337]

Obama writes an anti-war article for Columbia University’s magazine, Sundial. “Breaking the War Mentality” contains grammatical errors, atrocious punctuation, bad spelling, and contradictory statements. Even the best English teachers would be hard-pressed to diagram this distorted and confused sentence from Obama’s article: “When Peter Tosh sings that ‘everybody’s asking for peace, but nobody’s asking for justice,’ one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control ensues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself.” In the article Obama bemoans the fact that the military’s introduction of additional Pershing II and Cruise Missiles will “cut down (the) warning time for the Soviets to less than ten minutes,” suggesting that Obama apparently prefers a U.S. policy that gives the Soviets as much advance warning as possible in order to provide them with a better chance of defeating the United States. [990]

After graduation from Columbia, Obama joins the New York Public Interest Research Group, an organization founded by Ralph Nader. Obama becomes an organizer at Harlem’s City College, working with student volunteers on recycling programs. [31]

Obama works briefly for Business International Corporation in New York, a small newsletter publishing and advisory firm that prints articles relating to global business and which assists American companies operating overseas. Obama later embellishes his job description, saying he was hired as a research assistant by a “consulting house to multinational corporations” where he had his own private secretary and dealt with Japanese financiers and German bond traders. His former co-workers say Obama’s accounts of his job are grossly inflated and that he wore jeans, shared cubicles with others in a dumpy office, had no secretary, and mostly rewrote articles for newsletters. Employees referred to the environment as “high school with ash trays.” Obama remarks later in life that the job exposed him to the “coldness of capitalism.”  (The company has reportedly been used by the CIA as a “front operation.”) [30, 31, 32, 1038, 2218, 2327]

In 1983, Obama falls in love with a white woman but ends the relationship after he realizes he will have to adapt to her white world, rather than the other way around. [357]

1985–1988

Chicago and “Community Organizing”

Obama moves to Chicago and hangs out with black militants and leftists. Obama works as a community organizer and activist for the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), an organization founded by Marxist and radical agitator Saul “the Red” Alinsky. Its national activities have included a Citizens USA project to obtain citizenship for over one million illegal aliens. (Coincidentally, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s senior honors thesis at Wellesley College, There is Only the Fight, is about Alinsky. In 1968, Alinsky offered Clinton a job, which she declined.) [33, 45, 46, 192, 229]

Obama also works with the Alinsky group Developing Communities Project (DCP), as well as ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and Project Vote, both Alinsky-network creations. Obama’s duties include organizing residents of the Altgeld Gardens housing project on Chicago’s south side. ACORN is an offshoot of what had been the National Welfare Rights League (NWRL), a militant 1960s group that staged protests in welfare offices and, often successfully, demanded increased government benefits with threats of violence. ACORN was founded by William Ayers’ SDS associate, Wade Rathke, and is currently the largest and most powerful leftist organization in the United States (not counting the Democrat Party and the mainstream media). Among other tasks, ACORN trains people on how to collect welfare benefits and other government aid. Strategies include encouraging welfare applicants to be aggressive, loud, and obnoxious—not enough to get arrested but enough to overwhelm and annoy the welfare worker into approving benefits just to get the individual (qualified or not) out of the office. The revolutionary handbook for all these activities is Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals, which Obama uses to train other radicals. [45, 324, 227, 322]

Obama’s Altgeld Gardens work involves forcing a cleanup of asbestos. Obama’s mentor during his time on the project is Hazel Johnson, who argues that she, not Obama, discovered the asbestos problem and led the efforts to resolve it. According to Johnson, Obama exaggerated his role in the project in his book, Dreams From My Father. [345]

Alinsky’s training manual for radical activists, Rules for Radicals, states that community organizers (called “poverty pimps” by some critics) are primarily agitators, who must “Fan the resentments of the people of a community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression—he must search out controversy and issues… An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontentment [sic]… He knows that values are relative… Truth to him is relative and changing.” [315]

Alinsky’s work also influenced the creation of the “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” named after Columbia University professors Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their strategy involves taking action to force deliberate failure in society to foster change toward socialism, by overloading the bureaucracy with impossible demands and lawsuits, holding officials to the extreme letter of the law, etc. The Cloward-Piven method is intended to push society into economic collapse, forcing a fear and resentment of capitalism and making it easier to usher in socialism. The Cloward-Piven strategy is one of the tactics frequently used by community activists and organizers (e.g., storming welfare offices and violently demanding immediate action) to impose intentional strains on the system, and to force the hiring of more government workers than necessary to deal with their ever-increasing demands. Obama may have met and been personally influenced by Cloward and Piven while he attended Columbia. [259, 327, 1281]

While at IAF, Obama reports to Gerald Kellman (whose identity Obama attempts to hide in his book, Dreams from My Father). Kellman is a follower of Alinsky, whose Rules for Radicals was widely read by 1960s youths, such as members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Weather Underground, and the students who rioted at the 1968 Democrat Convention in Chicago. (Obama’s line about “the world as it is and the world as it should be,” which his future wife swooned over and which she repeats twice in her speech to the Democrat National Convention, comes from Chapter 2 of Alinsky’s book.) [20, 33, 352]

Obama is hired with $25,000 Kellman receives from the Woods Fund. Obama will later serve on the Woods Fund board, along with Weather Underground fugitive from justice William Ayers. [33, 204]

The Woods Fund was founded by a wealthy family that owned a coal business, Sahara Coal (run by Frank Woods, Jr.). Sahara Coal was a major supplier of coal to Commonwealth Edison. The CEO of Commonwealth Edison was Thomas Ayers, father of William Ayers. (By 1990, George Kelm controlled the Woods Fund; he moved its activities to the left. Kelm, who died in 1998, was a lawyer and philanthropist who raised money to obtain the Picasso sculpture for Chicago’s Daley Plaza.) [346, 1282, 1283]

Gerald Kellman later relates that Obama’s job “largely consisted of interviewing community members and creating a narrative out of their experiences, the problems the community faced.” Kellman also noted, “It is clear that the benefit of those years to Mr. Obama dwarfs what he accomplished… On issues, we made very little progress, nothing that would change poverty on the South Side of Chicago.” According to his boss Obama was a failure as a community organizer, despite being a “master of agitation.” Obama is less a community organizer than a community agitator, teaching people how to demand more welfare benefits and other government handouts. But like many poverty pimps, Obama is able to parlay his experience into something fashionable for his politically correct resume, even if he did little to help those he had led on crusades. [35, 47, 190, 842 pp. 8, 64, 88]

Obama also works on voter registration drives during this period and encounters leftist political groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist International (SI). Obama is likely to have met Carl Davidson during this period. Davidson, who traveled to Cuba during the Vietnam War to sabotage the U.S. war effort, is a former member of the SDS, and later is a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)—that organized the 2002 Chicago rally where Obama announced his public opposition to the looming Iraq War. [34, 1282]

Obama learns from the Alinsky crowd the method for getting people to support radical change they would ordinarily not be willing to accept. “They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future.” Thus, just as it has been the unstated theme of most Democrat presidential campaigns over the last 40 years, so it later becomes Obama’s: “Everything is terrible and headed in the wrong direction, your lives are in shambles, greedy capitalism is at fault, and you need to trust a bigger government and my plans to solve all your problems. Business is your enemy and government is your friend. Just trust me to deliver hope and change.” [192]

For three years, Obama is the director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), part of the Gamaliel Foundation, another Alinsky-like group that uses “in your face” tactics and threats against banks to obtain more loans to people in poor neighborhoods. Gamaliel’s co-founder and executive director is Gregory Galluzzo, who served as a trainer and mentor during Obama’s community activist days in Chicago. [227, 228, 337]

In 1987 or 1988, Obama joins the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), currently the wealthiest black congregation in Chicago. (Some accounts say Obama joined TUCC as late as 1992.) Its pastor is Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a fiery orator who preaches Marxism, Black Liberation Theology (a Marxist version of Christianity that worships a white-hating black Jesus, and whose founder, James Cone, stated, “If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer and we had better kill him”), gives controversial sermons, supports communists in Cuba and Nicaragua, and who later says America deserved the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and that America intentionally spread the AIDS virus to remain wealthy at the expense of poor Africans. Joining TUCC requires swearing an oath of belief in its black liberation theology. (Obama later attempts to distance himself from Wright’s outrageous remarks, which arguably are not unusual outbursts but expressions of standard Black Liberation Theology—which one may assume is why Obama joined the church in the first place.) [33, 268, 324, 336, 688, 745]

Although TUCC is a Christian church, it also has Muslim members. When a TUCC member was asked, “If I am Muslim and believe in prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him and I also believe in Jesus, peace be upon him, do I have to give up my Islamic faith to be a member in your church?” the individual replied, “No. We have many Muslim members in our church.” Nationwide, many Muslim men attend Christian churches and marry Christian women in order to infiltrate society, and Islam conveniently condones lying when its aim is to perpetrate Islam. Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim imam who has managed to avoid deportation and is currently promoting Islam in the United States, says that “every method and path is acceptable, (including) lying to people.” Muslims even have a word for intentional deception to promote Islam, “taqiyya.” [1799, 2039, 2314]

Obama considers Wright to be his “moral compass,” “sounding board,” and “confidant.” Obama is more likely an agnostic than a Christian or perhaps even an atheist, like his mother and father (or a “mystic” like his future avid supporter, Oprah Winfrey), but joins TUCC for “street cred,” possibly to satisfy his wife, and to end the criticism he receives from people in the community for his lack of religion. Obama alleges that he was baptized at TUCC but no one has been able to obtain a record of the event. Obama was not raised as a Christian if, as he claims, he was not baptized until joining TUCC. Obama would have been baptized while still an infant or child If his mother or grandparents had in fact raised him as a Christian. He claims he has been a Christian for the last 20 years—which prompts the question, “What was he before that?” [202, 239, 271, 336, 564]

For what it calls a “commitment to truth, education, and leadership,” Obama’s church publication, Trumpet Newsmagazine, gives a “lifetime achievement award” to Louis Farrakhan, leader of the decidedly non-Christian Nation of Islam (NOI) and a virulent anti-Semite whose quotes include, “Hitler was a very great man,” “Judaism is a gutter religion,” and “white people are potential humans, they haven’t evolved yet.” Obama alleges that his church is “fairly conventional,” and claims that he “wasn’t in church” when Wright made his more inflammatory statements. (Some reports have suggested that Obama had not attended church regularly in the five years leading up to election day of 2008.) [36, 37, 38, 39, 825]

Reverend Wright, along with Louis Farrakhan, visits Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Obama’s church presents Louis Farrakhan with its Empowerment Award. References to that award are removed from the church’s Web site in 2008 after Obama’s relationships with Wright and Farrakhan are questioned. [315]

Lolo Soetoro, Obama’s stepfather, dies of a liver ailment in 1987. [560]

An unpopular strike by the Chicago public school teachers in 1987 leads to a Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which is connected to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. William Ayers is active in the school reform effort through the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABCs. ABCs is an alliance of various activist and reform groups, which includes Chicago United, a business group headed by Thomas Ayers, and the Developing Communities Project, which is headed by Obama. Clearly, even if Obama had not met William Ayers while attending Columbia University he would have known Ayers through the coordinated work of the ABCs and the Developing Communities Project. [1282]

In the spring of 1988, Obama visits his family in Kenya. Greeting Obama at the airport, his aunt Zeituni (his father’s sister) tells him, “Welcome home.” She then tells Obama’s half-sister, Auma, “Make sure he doesn’t get lost again.”  [40, 329, 2186]

It is believed that Obama visited his mother, Ann Dunham, in Pakistan some time between 1987 and 1992. [329]

1988–1991

Harvard Law School

In the fall of 1988, Obama begins his studies at Harvard Law School (HLS). Helping Obama gain acceptance at Harvard is a letter of recommendation from civil rights activist and Malcolm X attorney Percy Sutton. Asking Sutton to write the letter is Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, a radical Muslim and vitriolic anti-Semite, mentor of Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, close associate of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and friend of Obama. (Al-Mansour “longs for the day when Islam takes over the world” and alleges in his 1995 book, The Lost Books of Africa Rediscovered, that the United States is plotting genocide against black Americans. Mansour has called for a national “bloodbath” of white Americans, said that black “killing and mutilating” of whites and Jews is part of God’s plan, and told blacks that whatever they do to whites, “…they deserve it, God wants you to do it and that’s when you cut out the nose, cut out the ears, take flesh out of their body, don’t worry because God wants you to do it.”) Al-Mansour is believed to have been the main financial backer and planner for Obama for as long as 25 years, and is the principal financial advisor to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal—nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah (the world’s 19th wealthiest person, worth $29.5 billion, who donated $20 million to Harvard to fund Islamic studies). It is unclear why a wealthy financial advisor to one of the world’s richest men would have an interest in promoting and funding the education of the young Obama, whose grades at Occidental College had been less than stellar because he was more interested in drugs than studying. [41, 43, 380, 381, 382, 408, 558, 2668, 2669]

It has been suggested that it was William Ayers who persuaded Khalid al-Mansour to raise funds for Obama’s Harvard tuition. Ayers associated with al-Mansour when he was still known as Donald Warden. Warden was a lawyer and advisor to the Black Panther Party, whose offices were next door to his. At a marina in San Francisco where they once hid from the FBI, Ayers, Warden, Dohrn, and others had planned the overthrow of the United States. (To avoid arrest, Ayers used a variety of phony names, including Michael Charles Rafferty, Jr., Jules Michael Taylor, Anthony J. Lee, and Hank Anderson. Bernardine Rae Dohrn (not Bernadine) also went by the names Lorraine Anne Jellins, Sharon Louise Naylor (or Taylor), Christine Louise Douglas, and Karen Louise DeBelius. Ayers and Dohrn turned themselves in to authorities in Chicago in 1980. Ayers miraculously avoided conviction. Dohrn served seven months in prison for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating an October 20, 1981 robbery, which killed one Brinks guard and two police officers. [259, 380, 2271]

A Harvard letter of recommendation for Obama is also written by John McKnight, who serves on the Gamaliel Foundation’s Board of Directors as well as the board of National People’s Action (NPA), yet another Alinsky-inspired activist group. The NPA consists of thugs and agitators who, when picketing the homes of business and government leaders to demand more welfare benefits and government handouts sing: “Who’s on your hit list, NPA? Who’s on your hit list of today? Take no prisoners, take no names. Kick ’em in the ass when they play their games.” [230, 267]

It is unclear how, academically, Obama gets into Harvard Law School. HLS has exceptionally high admissions standards, with applicant LSAT scores expected in the 98 to 99 range, and a grade point average of 3.8 or higher. It is assumed that if Obama had such scores and grades his campaign would be bragging about them. It has not, and will not release any of his school records. One assumption is that Obama simply had connections, such as Khalid al-Mansour, who both paved and paid his way. Percy Sutton states that al-Mansour had been “raising money” for Obama. Obama denies knowing al-Mansour, but al-Mansour, in an interview with Newsmax reporter Kenneth Timmerman, admits he had spoken with Obama and told him he would keep a “low profile” during the campaign in order to avoid embarrassing the candidate. [56, 264, 315]

It is also unclear how Obama paid for his education, especially his years at Harvard Law School. (Occidental College and Columbia are also far from being easily affordable.) He did not have high-paying steady jobs and he took several extensive and expensive trips overseas. (Obama does not mention his Pakistan trip(s) in his books.) He and his wife later say they needed many years to pay off student loans, but those loans are not recorded on the financial disclosure statements Obama was required to submit when he became a Senator.

Attorney Percy Sutton tells reporters in 2008, “I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him. The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour.” Gifts from al-Mansour may have funded Obama’s years at Harvard. In April of 2008, however, Obama’s wife Michelle states that Obama had “just paid off his loan debt” for his Harvard Law School education. But that statement is not consistent with a review of Obama’s financial disclosure statements, which go back to 2000 and which did not list any outstanding college loans. As a candidate for the U.S. Senate Obama was required, in 2004, to file a financial disclosure form detailing his assets, income, consulting contracts, and liabilities. Obama listed zero for liabilities in 2004 and in all subsequent U.S. Senate financial disclosure forms. (Obama had mortgage liabilities, even if he had no other debt.) [211]

If Obama’s school loans had been paid off much earlier, then his wife’s statement that he “had just paid off his loan debt” was a lie—a pandering lie intended, no doubt, to make the Obamas appear to be “just another struggling middle class family.” If the loans had in fact just been paid off, then the candidate lied on his financial disclosure forms, which could subject him to impeachment from the Senate. Another possibility is that candidate Obama and his wife are both lying and the school loans were gifts from Khalid al-Mansour that were expected to be paid back with future political favors (such as promoting a Palestinian state at the expense of Israel). If Obama’s tuition and expenses were financed by others without any expectation of direct reimbursement, they were not loans but gifts that should have been listed on his income tax filings. Obama’s failure to do so would mean he violated income tax regulations and is subject to additional taxes, interest, and penalties—and perhaps criminal fraud charges.

Obama is selected as one of 40 editors of the Harvard Law Review (HLR), but he apparently writes only one article for the publication. In it, he argues against placing any limits on abortion, with the remarkable statement that abortions would “…prevent increasing numbers of children born into lives of pain and despair.” (In other words, “Their lives will be miserable anyway, so why not just abort them now?”) His fellow editors elect Obama president of the HLR, partly in sympathetic response to the demands of Professor Derrick Bell that a black woman be appointed to the law faculty—a racist and sexist demand which Obama fully supported. [55, 56, 385, 2622]

Derrick Bell is a proponent of “critical race theory,” which argues that the centuries-old underpinnings of law in the United States should be replaced by a new system of justice that takes into account past inequities like slavery. Bell argues that the law should treat people not just as individuals; it should also have different rules for different groups. Because of the injustices of slavery and past discrimination, for example, a convicted black crack cocaine dealer should be treated less harshly in his sentencing than a white drug dealer. Bell is among a growing group of leftists who are willing to discard American laws and traditions simply because they were the achievements of “old white men,” and whose goals are symbolized by the chanting of Jesse Jackson at a 1987 Stanford demonstration: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture’s got to go!” [2622, 2623]

While attending Harvard Obama is already planning his political career. Former Harvard classmate Christine Spurell recalls, “It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics.” He was perhaps being groomed for a political career by Khalid al-Mansour and others. [332]

One of Obama’s professors at Harvard is Lawrence Tribe, a favorite of media liberals. (Tribe later argues Al Gore’s case before the Florida Supreme Court after the November 2000 election). Another Harvard professor and friend of Obama is Charles Ogletree, who is the faculty advisor to the Black Law Students Association. Ogletree is an advocate of slavery reparations (who will later become an Obama advisor). [842 pp. 67–68; 936, 1085]

While on a break from class at Harvard, Obama spends eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. [47]
 
Sidley Austen and Michelle LaVaughan Robinson

In 1989, Obama works at the Sidley Austin LLP Law Firm, as a summer associate from Harvard Law School, where he meets future wife Michelle LaVaughan Robinson. Robinson is his mentor at the law firm. Also working at the firm (from 1984 to 1988) is Bernardine Dohrn, former Weather Underground radical, terrorist bomber, fugitive from the FBI (having achieved “most wanted list” status), and wife of fellow radical William Ayers. Although Dohrn works for the Sidley law firm, her criminal record prevents her from being admitted to the Illinois bar. (A former SDS associate of Dohrn and William Ayers is University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, best known for calling the workers who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks “little Eichmanns.”) [50, 55, 324, 824 p. 144; 1544]

Obama’s summer job at Sidley Austin is likely arranged by William Ayers and his father, Tom Ayers (1975–1986 CEO of Commonwealth Edison). Sidley is chief counsel to Commonwealth Edison, and senior Sidney partner Howard Trienans serves on the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University, along with Tom Ayers and Sidley partner Newton Minow—famous for having called television a “vast wasteland” while he was head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President Kennedy. When later asked why FBI fugitive and ex-convict Dohrn was hired by Sidley, Trienans replied, “We sometimes hire friends.” (In this case, the friend was someone FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had called “the most dangerous woman in America” and who called herself “a revolutionary Communist.” Obama and his wife nevertheless chose to accept Dohrn as a friend.) [259, 842 pp. 91–92, 116; 2271]

Paul Schmitz, who worked with Michelle Robinson at Sidley, later recalls that she was “very deliberate in her thinking.” Because of her tough edge, she would be called on for difficult tasks like firing people. (Schmitz is currently CEO of Public Allies, a position also once held by Michelle Robinson.) The Guardian writes, “Her smile is doled out sparingly, a privilege to be earned, rather than an icebreaker or an entreaty.” Employees she fired no doubt did not get the smile. [1085, 2214]

In 1990, Obama serves as a summer associate at the law firm Hopkins and Sutter in Chicago. [357]

Tony “the Fixer” Rezko

In 1990, Obama turns down a job offer from Antoin “Tony” Rezko’s low-income housing development company. This may have been one of Obama’s first contacts with Tony “the fixer” Rezko. Rezko, born in Aleppo, Syria, maintains varied contacts with Obama until he is convicted and jailed in 2008. It is not known for certain how Obama first connected with Rezko. Ayers, Obama, and Rezko have all dealt with the Broadway Bank in Chicago, run by the mob-tied Giannoulias family, and it may have been Ayers or a Giannoulias family member who brought Obama’s name to the attention of Rezko. That first Obama-Rezko contact may have been initiated by David Brint, a Rezko partner (along with Daniel Mahru). Rezko is alleged to have had ties with the Syrian Mukhabarat, or Shu’bat al-Mukhabarat al-’Askariyya (the Syrian Department of Military Intelligence). [48, 245, 558, 664, 1278]

1991–1992

ACORN, Slum Housing, and “Dreams”

In 1991, Obama receives his law degree from Harvard Law School. He returns to Chicago, where he is named the Illinois head of Project Vote” (an affiliate of ACORN, a group now infamous for its involvement in voter registration fraud) to help increase the number of black voters. Project Vote is required to remain non-partisan to retain its tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) organization under the Internal Revenue Code (IRS code), but it adds an estimated 125,000 new voters in Illinois in 1992, mostly Democrats, to help an inordinately unqualified Carol Moseley Braun win a U.S. Senate seat. [45, 55, 240, 283]

In 1991, Michelle Robinson is hired by Valerie Jarrett to work as a mayoral assistant at a generous salary of $60,000 per year. (Jarrett is later rumored to be first choice for chief of staff in an Obama Administration.) Jarrett was born in Iran in 1956, to American parents, while her father was working there on the staff of the Nemazee Hospital. It is said that Obama makes few major decisions without referring to Jarrett. After Jarrett interviews Robinson, Obama joins them for dinner—where Robinson tells her, “My fiancé wants to know who is going to be looking out for me and making sure that I thrive.” The dinner meeting with Jarrett introduces Obama to the inner circle of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Chicago politics. Michelle Robinson is already familiar with the Chicago “machine.” Her father is a precinct captain and is employed by the city’s incredibly corrupt water department. (The owners of a surprising number of buildings in Chicago never pay any water bills or property taxes. With a wink and a nod, and bribes to the right city officials, the buildings are eventually put up for sale for payment of unpaid bills. They are then re-purchased by the same owner, under a new company’s name. The process is repeated ad infinitum. While the bills go unpaid, the city does not bother shutting off the water service. Many buildings in the city do not even have water meters. Employees of the Water Department who are not corrupt have likely witnessed some of its corruption.) [245, 246, 352, 664, 1278, 1363]

Soon after Michelle Robinson is hired as a mayoral assistant, Jarrett is transferred from the Chicago Transit Authority’s Citizen Advisory Committee to run a new Department of Planning and Development. Michelle Robinson follows Jarrett, serving as a “troubleshooter.” [1278]

Valerie Jarrett is the daughter-in-law of the late Vernon Jarrett. Vernon Jarrett was a friend of Frank Marshall Davis, with whom he worked at the Chicago Defender, a leftist newspaper that advocated the radicalism of the Communist Party. Vernon Jarrett later became the Chicago Tribune’s first black syndicated columnist and was a strong supporter of Chicago’s black mayor Harold Washington, who had defeated the Daley machine’s candidate with the help of Chicago’s Communist Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. (Jarrett later moved to the Chicago Sun-Times and eventually became a member of its editorial board.) Valerie Jarrett is CEO of Habitat Company, a company that managed Grove Parc Plaza, a 504-unit housing project in Chicago that fell into disrepair and is famous for its atrocious living conditions, such as collapsed roofs, unrepaired fire damage, rodent infestations, and backed up sewage. (Another even larger of Chicago’s subsidized housing complexes managed by Jarrett’s company was seized by the federal government in 2006 after widespread problems were identified.) While Jarrett was CEO of Habitat, she also served as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s planning commissioner. Daley also names Michelle Obama to the Chicago Landmark Commission. [478, 479, 480, 545, 664, 832, 1660]

On December 17, 1991, Obama is admitted to the Illinois Bar, enabling him to practice law. He lies at least three times on his application, failing to disclose that he had previously used other names (“Barry Soetoro,” and perhaps “Barry Dunham”), neglecting to disclose his record of drug use, and failing to disclose his approximate $400 in outstanding parking fines. [345]

One of Obama’s tasks at ACORN, where he works with Madeline Talbott, is teaching community activists how to use “direct action” and be more forceful in demanding change. The “in your face” style preached by Obama is used by activists to stage sit-ins and demonstrations at banks to garner publicity and support for more bank loans for (sometimes unqualified) poor people. (ACORN stages a two-day sit-in at the House Banking Committee room in1991.) ACORN tactics include picketing at the homes of bank executives and calling them racists for not lending to the poor. Among the banks targeted by Talbott and Obama is Chicago’s Bell Federal Savings (which no longer exists). The Chicago Tribune, in September of 1992, refers to the ACORN agenda as “affirmative action lending.” (The federal government later pushes banks to lower lending standards even more in an effort to help more people become homeowners. Critics refer to those mortgages as “Ninja” loans, for “No Income, No Job, or Assets,” or “liar’s loans,” because the bank takes the applicant’s word for his stated income, assets, and job stability without substantial verification. Fannie Mae buys up more and more of those risky loans to keep the process going.) [225, 227, 491, 836]

In October of 1992, Obama marries Michelle LaVaughan Robinson. The ceremony is performed by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. [329]

Obama plans his first book, Dreams From My Father. Using literary agent Jane Dystel, he receives a $125,000 advance from publisher Simon and Shuster’s Poseidon Press imprint but fails to write the book (which is supposed to be about race relations, not an autobiography). Obama uses some of the cash advance to travel with his wife to Bali, in Indonesia, to gain the “peace and quite” to write, but he produces no manuscript. The contract is canceled by the publisher, and Obama is asked to return part of the advance payment he received. (The amount Obama was made to return is not known.) Obama returns to Chicago and signs a new contract (with Times Book, a Random House Division) for $40,000, and finally delivers a completed manuscript. It is believed by some that Dreams From My Father was at least partly ghost-written by Obama’s close friend, William Ayers, based on the similarities of Ayers’ writing style and the style of the Obama book, the fact that Obama’s only previous public writings were atrocious poetry he had written in college and one article in the Harvard Law Review promoting abortion, and Obama’s frequent difficulties speaking coherently when not reading from a script or off a teleprompter. Some also argue that the later audio version of Dreams From My Father, recorded by Obama, comes across as unnatural, as though the words are not entirely his. (In January of 2009, an anti-war article written by Obama in 1983 is discovered. Its many errors and poor writing quality lend credence to the argument that Obama had considerable help with Dreams From My Father.) [57, 58, 224, 250, 812]

It is unclear how Obama managed to obtain an unbelievable $125,000 advance for his book, when he had no writing experience and the publisher certainly had no guarantee of high-volume book sales of an autobiography written by a 31-year-old no one had ever heard of. The $40,000 advance from the second publisher is also remarkable, especially if it was aware of the previous unfulfilled $125,000 contract. (It must be assumed that Obama and his agent neglected to provide that information.) An advance of $5,000–$10,000 for an unknown is not uncommon today, and would have been more than generous in 1992. It may be that Obama’s Harvard “benefactor” also worked his magic in publishing circles. (Dreams From My Father sells only a few thousand copies when first published in 1995 and the publisher loses money on the printing.) [1275, 1276]

In 1992, Obama helps found Public Allies, a voluntary public service organization (modeled after Alinsky’s AIF) that recruits youths to perform public service—while they are indoctrinated in socialist ideology. Obama’s wife Michelle becomes the group’s Executive Director in 1993. The program is the model for candidate Obama’s Universal Voluntary Public Service program, which he stealthily promotes as an expansion of Kennedy’s Peace Corps. Hillary Clinton hosted a reception for Public Allies at the White House Rose Garden in 1993; thus, it appears Michelle Obama may have met Hillary Clinton years earlier than most would have believed. [51, 52, 461, 2347]

Obama is hired by Miner, Banhill and Galland, a law firm which specializes in negotiating government contracts to develop low-income housing, and which deals with Tony Rezko’s firm Rezar. Obama’s specific duties at the law firm are not known. (He refuses to provide a list of his clients.) Obama is also a law lecturer at the University of Chicago during these years, but is believed to have never published even a single work of legal scholarship. (No Obama documents appear in the HeinOnline database of law journals.) Obama likely remained on the payroll of the Miner law firm until his 2004 Senate campaign, although his law license became inactive in 2002. He works only during the summers after 1996. It is believed that Obama never tried a case in court; he instead worked on teams with other lawyers to draw up briefs and contracts. (Arguably, Obama never tried a case because he is perhaps unable to think on his feet… as is required in a trial setting. There is no teleprompter between the lawyer and the jury, and attorneys need skills beyond reading or memorizing stump speeches, sound bites, and talking points.) [42, 53, 245, 324, 345, 420, 2500, 2501]

There is some dispute over whether Obama is a lecturer, senior lecturer, or constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. It appears he was a lecturer (1992–1996) and senior lecturer (1996–2004), an adjunct or part-time appointment. Although constitutional law was the subject he allegedly taught, he was not a full law professor. Obama appears never to have published any law articles, reviews, opinions, or scholarly writings that are expected of faculty members. Obama was not a tenured professor and shied away from friendships with others on the staff—except for Cass Sunstein, who later becomes an advisor and who believes animals should be allowed to file lawsuits. (Strangely, the alleged constitutional law professor Obama does not seek a spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he later becomes a U.S. Senator.) [819, 1311, 2500, 2501, 2510]

The law firm’s Judson Miner had been a classmate of Bernardine Dohrn at the University of Chicago Law School in the late 1960s, when both were involved in anti-war activity. Miner had also been counsel to Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, and former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun had worked briefly at the firm. Mr. Allison Davis, co-founder of the firm, later became a wealthy Chicago land developer, with ties to Tony Rezko and Valerie Jarrett. [345]

Allison Davis has 51 per cent ownership in several Chicago real estate development businesses. Because he is black, his ownership allows him to take advantage of laws favoring minority ownership. Davis is, however, a multimillionaire with no need for special minority treatment, and is thus merely taking advantage of rules meant to help disadvantaged others. As a state senator, Obama steers millions in state development money to firms owned by Rezko and Davis. Some of the housing developments built by Davis are managed by a company owned by his son, Cullen Davis. Robert Vanecko—a nephew of Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley—owns 49 per cent of DV Urban Realty Partners, a pension investment company, and Davis owns 51 per cent. Allison Davis has donated more than $400,000 to dozens of political campaigns; top beneficiaries include Obama, Daley, and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Vanecko, along with the Mayor’s son Patrick, held hidden ownership in Municipal Sewer Services, which performed work for the City of Chicago. DV Urban Realty, which received $68 million from five city pension funds, is under investigation. [664, 842 p. 133; 1998]

Judson Miner later says of Obama’s work at his law firm, “The ‘game of law’ irritated (Obama) more than fascinated him. There are people who just like the game. Barack didn’t like the game.” Former Miner partner Allison Davis states that Obama “…spent a lot of time working on his book (Dreams From My Father).  Some of my partners weren’t happy with that, Barack sitting there with his keyboard on his lap and his feet up on the desk writing the book.” [1607]

1993 – 1996

The Foundations and William Ayers

In 1993, Obama is placed on the board of the Woods Fund by William Ayers. In his first year on the board, Obama votes to approve a $1 million payment to the Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners, a partnership run by Allison Davis. Davis is the founder of the law firm where Obama works (Miner, Banhill and Galland). [259, 297, 664]

During 1993, Obama also runs leadership-training sessions on the subject of “power” for ACORN leaders (and continues to do so until at least 2003). Obama also helps train the staff of high-ranking ACORN leader Madeline Talbott, who promotes intimidating and often-illegal direct action protest techniques; Obama is a “fellow traveler.” (Talbott is arrested in 1997 for leading an aggressive protest at the Chicago City Council.) [283, 836]

Obama buys a townhouse in Chicago’s Hyde Park for $277,500 with a loan provided by Broadway Bank. Obama’s down payment is $110,000 (arguably a substantial amount for someone who, according to Michelle Obama, was still saddled with substantial education loans until shortly before his presidential campaign). The bank, owned by the politically connected Giannoulias family, is alleged to have long-standing mob ties, as well as connections with Tony Rezko and William Ayers. Obama gets a sweetheart deal on the townhouse, ostensibly in exchange for future favors. (Obama later endorses Alexi Giannoulias when he runs for Illinois State Treasurer, even though the chairman of Illinois’ Democrat Party and Speaker of the Illinois House, Michael Madigan, refuses to do be associated with him.) [281, 291, 329, 1278]

Obama purchases the townhouse in 1993, but various names are listed as the owner and the payer of the property tax while Obama lives there. The Warranty Deed changes from the name of the prior owner, Stephen Anderson, to Obama, in 1993, but the release of the Anderson mortgage is not recorded until 1998, at which point it is sent to Obama’s former law firm. There may be reasonable explanations for the various names and events, or Cook County, Illinois bookkeeping may be less than perfect, but the oddities—not all of which are listed here—may also be the result of a complicated real estate deal arranged for Obama. [291]

Sometime in 1993, Michelle Obama’s law license is suspended. The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) reports her malpractice insurance status as “No malpractice report required as attorney is on court ordered inactive status.” The ARDC is an agency of the Supreme Court of Illinois (not the Illinois Bar) which investigates attorney malpractice complaints. The inactive status is court ordered—it is not the result of a voluntary request by Michelle Obama (who had failed to pass the bar on her first attempt). The reason for the court’s suspension of the license has not been made public. [677, 738, 739, 1087, 1096]

In 1994, Obama represents ACORN and a client suing Citibank for denying mortgages to blacks (Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank). The lawsuit is an attempt to force the bank to give subprime loans to customers it thinks are poor credit risks. [225, 263, 497, 531, 1252]

While serving as director of the Joyce Foundation board (1994–2001), Obama distributes millions of dollars to gun control organizations like the Council Against Handguns and the Violence Policy Center. (Between 1994 and 2001, the Joyce Foundation gives $18.6 million to about 80 anti-gun and anti-Second Amendment projects, including $1.5 million to the Violence Policy Center.) The Joyce Foundation is closely linked to the Soros Open Society Institute, which advocates a worldwide ban on civilian firearm ownership. [346, 444, 834, 1282]

The syllabus for a class Obama teaches in the spring of 1994, “Current Issues in Racism and the Law,” covers the topics, “Discussion of Reconstruction and Jim Crow,” “Discussion of Black Response,” and “Discussion of Civil Rights/Backlash.” Student discussion topics suggested by Obama include, “The All-Black, All-Male School,” “Interracial Adoptions,” “Racial Gerrymandering,” “Race and the Criminal Justice System,” “Racial Bias in the Media,” “Welfare Policy and Reproductive Freedom,” “Affirmative Action,” and “Reparations.” (For the slavery reparations discussion, Obama poses such sample questions as, “Do such proposals have any realistic chance of working their way through the political system?” and “Would there be any legal impediments to such a broadly-conceived reparations policy?”) Required reading assigned by Obama includes works by Derrick Bell, his critical race theory professor at Harvard. If most of the classes taught by Obama are in a similar vein (another of his classes was called “Race, Racism, and the Law”), he should be considered a teacher of race and the law, rather than a professor of constitutional law. His choice of subject matter suggests that the issue of race affects every aspect of his life. [2620, 2621, 2622, 2623]

In the fall of 1994, Obama’s mother becomes ill with ovarian cancer. It is believed that Obama does not visit her. [324]

In 1995 Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father, is published. It sells only a few thousand copies and is remaindered. (A “remaindered” book is one that sells so poorly that the publisher discounts its price dramatically just to rid its warehouse of the unsold copies.) Critics call Obama’s book “overwrought” and “self-indulgent.” An autobiography by someone not even 35 years old, Dreams From My Father is essentially a book by someone obsessed with himself, and about his confused mental state, desires, yearnings, and race. This is not altogether surprising inasmuch as Obama was abandoned by his father, his stepfather, and his mother. A family friend remarked that Obama 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.” (Feelings of inferiority promoted by abandonment can cause shame and an unstable self-image, which prompts some individuals to conceal their feelings by hiding them, wearing an emotional mask, and creating an artificial image. The image then becomes that of others, and the individual becomes a “blank slate” upon which others project themselves. Obama even writes in his second book, The Audacity of Hope, that he serves “as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” Some argue that these traits of narcissistic personality disorder describe Obama, as well as Bill Clinton. Being all things to all people, however, generally works better on the campaign trail than in the Oval Office.) Dreams From My Father is published again with some changes in 2004, after Obama becomes famous, and it then earns him a fortune. Obama dumps his original literary agent, Jane Dystel (despite her having negotiated for him unbelievable advances of $125,000 and $40,000), replacing her with Washington lawyer Robert Barnett. Dystel was reportedly and justifiably furious. [57, 58, 842 p. 23; 1100, 1154, 1276]

A 1995 article in the Chicago Reader describes how Obama had rejected the “…unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation.” [264]

On August 9, 1995, Obama gives a radio interview with Bill Thompson’s Eye on Books to push his recently published Dreams From My Father. When asked by host Thompson, “What was the most difficult part of the book to write,” Obama responds, “You know, I tell the story—just to take one of the clearest examples—of my grandmother, who loves me dearly and has made all kinds of sacrifices on my behalf, ex¬pressing at one point when I was a teenager her fear of black men on the streets. To discuss that honestly, and to discuss how that felt, to discuss how my grandmother felt, and then to be able to arrive at some sort of peace with that, some greater understanding and some forgiveness, I think was probably the most difficult part of writing it.” Talking about a trip he made to Africa, Obama makes the ridiculous claim that blacks in America, like Africans, face political suppression. “And the truth of the matter is that many of the problems that Africa faces, whether it’s poverty, or political suppression, or ethnic conflict, is [sic] just as prominent there, and can’t all be blamed on the effects of colonialism. What it can be blamed on is some of the common factors that affect Bosnia or Los Angeles or all kinds of places on this earth, and that is the tendency for one group to try to suppress another group in the interest of power or greed or resources or what have you.” Obama’s response to a question about the future of race relations in America clearly demonstrates his resentment toward white Americans. He states, “I think that whether you are a white executive living out in the suburbs, who doesn’t want to pay taxes to inner-city children for them to go to school, or you’re an inner-city child who doesn’t want to take responsibility for keeping your street safe and clean, both of those groups have to take some responsibility if we’re going to get beyond the kinds of divisions that we face right now.” (Note the way Obama cleverly condemns the white suburbanite by equating him with someone in the city who ignores litter and crime. In doing so, he is trying to get the listener to subconsciously assign blame and responsibility for inner-city problems to tax-paying white suburbanites—who are responsible for neither its litter nor its crime, and who are already shouldering the educational expenses of heir own children. Obama is a master of the use of such “linking phrases.”) [2255]

Obama sues the State of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to get the state to comply with the federal Motor Voter Law, which Republican Governor Jim Edgar correctly argued would invite voter fraud, partly because government officers registering new voters are “under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship.” ACORN has been prominent in the fight against photo I.D. for voting and other means of voter identification. ACORN specifically sought out Obama to represent them in the lawsuit; the case was not simply assigned to him by a law firm. [54, 240, 255, 284]

Obama and several other attorneys represent black voters and aldermen to force the City of Chicago to redraw its ward boundaries. An appeals court states the ward map violates the federal Voting Rights Act. Attorneys for both sides draw a new map, including a district that favors an Obama State Senate run. [1281]

Urged by Obama, the Woods Fund gives more money to ACORN and other community activist groups. The Woods Fund publicly lies about its ideology, allowing it to obtain donations more easily from many who are not aware of its radical inclinations. Obama’s own committee report even brags that its claim to be “…non-ideological has enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government ‘establishments’ without undue risk of being criticized of partisanship.” During Obama’s tenure with the Woods Fund, and under his direction, the organization gives money to the Gamaliel Foundation and more than $200,000 to ACORN. [232, 297, 835]

William Ayers (who may have met Obama as early as 1981) selects Obama as chairman (1995–2000) of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge on Excellence in Education (CAC), an educational reform program that proves to be remarkably wasteful and unsuccessful. (A 2003 audit states, “There were no statistically significant differences between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain.”) Ayers and Obama approve grants of $175,000 and $482,662 to groups founded by Ayers and run by former communist party leader Mike Klonsky. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, run by Klonsky, receives over $1 million from the CAC. (Obama may have worked with the CAC as early as 1993.) The Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation give $761,000 to the “Leadership for Quality Education” (LQE) organization, run by John Ayers (William Ayers’ brother). Obama is also on the board of LQE. [59, 60, 61, 155, 156, 201, 204, 428, 1282]

For several years (at least until 1999 or 2000), the offices of the CAC are at 115 South Sangamon in Chicago. The Small Schools Workshop (Mike Klonsky is co-director and his wife Susan Klonsky, another former SDS member, is an employee) is also located at 115 South Sangamon. Both organizations are on the third floor. [366, 1282]

Obama approves so many grants with CAC money that the Chicago Reader refers to Obama as a philanthropist. Obama’s time with the CAC is arguably his only executive experience. While with the CAC, Obama and Ayers distribute amounts totaling as much as $100 million, and achieve essentially none of the group’s stated educational goals. The selection of Obama, a 33-year-old junior lawyer at a small law firm, as chairman of the educational reform group CAC is strange inasmuch as the board also includes several older and experienced university presidents. One of them, Stanley O. Ikenberry of the University of Illinois, later remarks, “It was unusual, here you had a person trained in the law chairing a board on school reform.” [65, 297, 428]

Into Politics

In 1995, Obama’s political career starts with a fundraiser at the home of William Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers and Dohrn are former 1960s radicals and former Weather Underground militants, who disappeared in 1970 after their bomb—designed to kill U.S. Army officers at Fort Dix, New Jersey—accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse on March 6, killing three of their co-revolutionaries. Ayers and Dohrn eventually turn themselves in to authorities in 1980, but because of improper FBI surveillance, Ayers and Dohrn are not prosecuted for their alleged involvement in at least 25 bombings. [60, 66, 67, 71, 2271]

Ayers and Dohrn (who has met with communists in Cuba and Viet Cong representatives in Budapest) are alleged to have been occasional baby-sitters for the Obama children. The North Vietnamese have presented both Ayers and Dohrn with rings made with metal from an American plane shot down in North Vietnam. Obama lies when he says that the 1995 fundraiser is the first time he met William Ayers. [68, 69, 70, 71, 259]

Ayers and Dohrn are the adoptive parents of Chesa Boudin, whose parents, David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, are serving three consecutive 25 year prison terms for felony murder, having killed three Brinks guards in a 1981 robbery to get cash to fund their Weather Underground, SDS, Black Liberation Army, and Black Panther Party activities. (Dohrn, who was Boudin’s best friend, may have been the forger who produced fake I.D.s for Weatherman radicals to enable them to rent getaway cars under false names.) Chesa Boudin was named a Rhodes Scholar through the help of Dennis Hutchinson, a professor at the University of Chicago where Ayers and Obama taught. (It may be interesting to see if a President Obama grants commutations or pardons to Boudin and Gilbert.) Both William Ayers and Chesa Boudin serve on an education advisory board of Venezuelan socialist President Hugo Chavez. [205, 1347, 2271]

Valerie Jarrett is Obama’s campaign finance chairman for his Illinois State Senate run. Helping Obama’s campaign are Tony Rezko, Rita Rezko, Allison Davis, and William Daley (brother of the mayor). David Axelrod is Obama’s top campaign strategist. On July 31, 1995, Obama’s campaign receives a $1,000 donation from Rezko Foods. [1278]

In October of 1995, Obama attends the male-only Million Man March organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. [284, 286]

Obama successfully seeks the endorsement of the New Party (NP), a Marxist third party in Chicago, for his 1996 state senate run. The endorsement of the New Party requires that the candidate “…sign a contract with the NP. The contract mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.” Obama receives the endorsement with an in-person appearance with the NP; it is not an unsolicited endorsement. After his victory in the election, the NP states “Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, encouraged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration.” (Democrat candidates need to cater to the New Party or risk New Party candidates running against them in the primaries. The New Party essentially blackmails Democrat into taking far-left positions—if they do not already have those positions.) [72, 243, 253, 431, 1280]

The platform of Obama’s New Party’s includes: full employment, a shorter work week, a guaranteed minimum income for all adults, a universal “social wage,” full public financing of all elections, universal voter registration, more progressive taxes, reductions in military spending, and the nationalization of the banking system. The New Party has worked with ACORN on a number of issues. (Race activist Al Sharpton once considered seeking a New Party endorsement for a U.S. Senate run.) [1281]

A February 12, 1996 Chicago Sun-Times article with the headline “Candidate Not What He Seems, Foes Insist” quotes Northwestern University professor of political science Adolph Reed, Jr., who calls Obama a politician with “impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neo-liberal politics.” Obama is called a tool of forces outside the black community by Robert T. Starks, chairman of the Task Force for Black Political Empowerment. [2463]

Obama also receives the support of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Obama was then an associate of the DSA’s Chicago branch. The members of the New Party, the DSA, and ACORN are largely interchangeable. Obama is a panelist for a discussion, “Employment and Survival in Urban America,” sponsored by the DSA on February 25, 1996. The DSA is associated with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is its most prominent member. After an expose of the DSA in 1999, it scrubs its Web site of connections to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and removes a number of inflammatory postings (including song lyrics about “shootin’ that Wall Street throng.”) [239, 243, 253, 432, 1282]

The Marxist New Party refers to Obama as one of its own party members in an October, 1996 “Running to Win: The Key Races” announcement, that reads, “Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).” Clearly, Obama was a member of the New Party. [244, 422]

The Progressive Populist magazine runs an editorial that states, “New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.” The New Party’s parent organization is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The New Party’s short-term objective is to move the Democrat Party far to the left, helping establish the conditions for an eventual Marxist party. (It is difficult to argue that Obama joined the New Party not because he believed in its socialist philosophies but only to gain votes—because he had no opposition on the ballot. He could have completely ignored the New Party and still won the election.) [253]

Obama’s state senate run also receives the support of Dr. Quentin Young, a neighbor and a long-time advocate of a socialized health care system. Young is believed to be a member of the Communist Party of the USA, and had been active in Chicago socialist circles since the 1930s. In 1992, Young received from the Chicago Democratic Socialists its highest honor, the (Eugene) Debs Award. While in the Illinois State Senate, Obama supports Young’s single-payer health care program and introduces several bills in failed attempts to get it established statewide. [73, 74]

On November 7, 1995, Obama’s mother dies of ovarian cancer. Her body is cremated and there is no funeral. Involved with his State Senate campaign, Obama, who rarely saw his mother after 1975—although she did attend his high school graduation in Hawaii in 1979—is not with her in her final days. Obama did not attend a memorial service for Dunham held at the University of Hawaii, but reportedly helped scatter her ashes in the ocean. Some might argue that Obama’s refusal to see his mother toward the end of her life was his payback for her having abandoned him. There has also been at least one report suggesting that before she became ill Dunham was considering adopting a child from South Korea who had a black American father. If that story is true, Obama would certainly have been distraught to learn that the mother who had repeatedly abandoned him was suddenly eager to accept a stranger as a child. [324, 560, 2288, 2655]

Although Ann Dunham died of cancer in Hawaii in 1995, researchers have not been able to identify the hospital where she was treated. There are unconfirmed reports that Dunham’s Social Security Number is purportedly still active and being used by a “Kelly Ann Dunham” or “Anna Soetoro.” That charge certainly warrants investigation because the odds against the Social Security Administration reissuing Stanley Ann Dunham’s number to someone with either of those names are astronomical. The first three digits of Dunham’s number, 535, are used only for SSNs assigned in the state of Washington, even further limiting the odds of reissuing her number to another Dunham or Soetoro in that state alone. (Some go so far as to argue that Ann Dunham is still alive and has been a CIA employee for decades; they do not explain why she needs to be in hiding.) [674, 675, 676]

Ann Dunham’s mother, Madelyn Dunham, purportedly worked as a volunteer in the probate department of the Oahu Circuit Court. She would have had access to the Social Security Numbers of deceased individuals, which could have been given to Ann Dunham or Obama to falsify records. While attending Harvard Law School, Obama is said to have fraudulently used a Social Security Number belonging to a deceased resident of Connecticut who was born about 1890. [1182]

1996–1997

The Illinois State Senate

In September of 1996, as a candidate for the Illinois State Senate, Obama completes a candidate questionnaire. In the document Obama states he supports increasing the personal exemption “as part of a shift to higher income tax,” supports increasing Illinois income taxes to reduce local property taxes, supports public campaign financing, favors adding sexual orientation to the (Illinois) Human Rights Act, opposes mandatory AIDS testing for insurance or employment, favors “comparable worth” programs, supports the right of public employees (including police and fire department employees) to strike, supports a single-payer state-run health plan for Illinois, supports Medicaid funding of abortions, supports parental abortion notification only for the very young (age 12–13) but opposes all other abortion restrictions, supports cost-of-living adjustments for public aid recipients, supports “workfare” (but only if coupled with free training, child care, and health care), opposes restrictions on welfare benefits for teen mothers, opposes restrictions on benefits for women on welfare who have additional children, favors repealing the six-month limit on general assistance benefits, supports energy assistance for the poor, supports more tax money for the Chicago Transit Authority, opposes electronic eavesdropping, opposes capital punishment, opposes mandatory sentencing guidelines, opposes the manufacture, sale, and possession of all handguns, and supports banning assault weapons.

Obama is elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996. He takes the seat long held by Democrat State Senator Alice Palmer (also an official of the U.S. Peace Council, an affiliate of the Soviet front group World Peace Council), who agrees to let Obama run for her state seat only if she loses her bid for U.S. Congress. By a wide margin Palmer then loses the Congressional election (a special election held in November of 1995, with Jesse Jackson, Jr, and Emil Jones finishing ahead of her), but Obama reneges on his agreement and works with lawyers to get Palmer and three other opponents (Mark Ewell, Gha-is Askia, and Ulmer Lynch) removed from the primary ballot on technicalities, in order to insure an opponent-free victory. On January 2, 1996, a group of Obama operatives descends on the offices of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners to challenge, one by one, all the signatures on the nominating petitions of all of Obama’s challengers. They do not stop until Obama is the sole name on the ballot. [75,269]

The Congressional seat Alice Palmer attempted to win had been held by disgraced Congressman Mel (“I won the Lotto”) Reynolds, who was sentenced to seven years in jail for having sex with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer. His resignation prompted the special election in November 1995. (Reynolds’ sentence was later commuted by Bill Clinton, perhaps because of a special affinity for elected officials who have sex with young campaign workers. After leaving prison in early 2001, Reynolds is hired by Reverend James Meeks to work at his Salem Baptist Church in Chicago. Reynolds also works with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH organization as a youth counselor—an arguably unlikely position for someone who served prison time for sex with a minor.) Palmer was popular among the district’s voters, but her fate was sealed when Jesse Jackson Jr. also decided to run for the seat. This explains some of the animosity between Obama and Jesse Jackson. Had Jackson’s son not entered the Congressional race Alice Palmer would have won and Obama would not have had to resort to signature challenges to get the popular incumbent Palmer off the State Senate ballot. The main animosity, of course, is that Obama could win the presidency, which Jackson failed to win because he was considered too radical when Obama is exponentially more radical than Jackson ever was. [269, 1361, 1470, 1471]

With the Palmer petition signature challenges, Obama follows the practice preached by his campaign consultant and “guru of petitions” Ronald Davis, as well as Chicago political machine operative David Axelrod: don’t try to beat your opponents, remove them from the playing field entirely. Obama’s reliance on petition challenges runs counter to his self-made image of a reformer and crusader for voter’s rights. (Alice Palmer will later campaign for Hillary Clinton in 2008.) One of Obama’s primary opponents is Gha-is Askia, who says of Obama, “Why say you’re for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates? He (Obama) talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?” (The answer, of course, is that Obama would not have won the election without eliminating his opposition.) [75, 329]

Timuel Black, a mutual friend, tries unsuccessfully to mend the rift between Obama and Palmer. Black is a long-time socialist who associated with communists and Trotskyists in the 1930s, allegedly joined the Communist Party of the USA, was active in the Progressive Party, was president of the local chapter of the communist Negro American Labor Council, and was involved with the annual Chicago Debs Day Dinners, an awards celebration for Illinois socialists. [74]

Obama’s campaign is alleged to have received financial assistance from the politically connected Giannoulias family, possibly in exchange for future favors. (Obama will later support and endorse the young, inexperienced Alexi Giannoulias in his run for Illinois State Treasurer.) [281]

Obama also benefited from a process called “fusion,” where a candidate would appear on the primary ballot for more than one party. Obama’s name appeared on the ballot twice, both as a Democrat and as the candidate for the New Party. He thus drew the votes of traditional Democrats, but voters who were socialist understood that Obama was “one of them” and voted for him as the New Party candidate. Obama’s final vote tally would be the total of his Democrat votes and his New Party votes. (The Supreme Court eventually ruled the fusion practice unconstitutional—but not until after Obama had become an Illinois State Senator.) [1281]
 
More Rezko, More Ayers

In January and February of 1997, renters of several Chicago slum tenements owned by Tony “the fixer” Rezko go without heat for five weeks. (The City of Chicago sued Rezko’s real estate development company, Rezmar, at least a dozen times during 1996–1997 to get heat turned on in its apartment buildings.) Rezko doesn’t come up with the money to turn on the heat, but manages to contribute $1,000 to Obama’s Illinois State Senate political campaign; Obama then seeks state funds for even more Rezko housing developments. The Syrian-born Rezko can afford to travel widely in the Middle East, yet at one time has as many as 11 run-down and foreclosed properties in Obama’s State Senate District. Obama continues to have associations with Rezko and other corrupt housing developers in Chicago. Obama gets state money for them and, in exchange, they contribute to his campaigns. Obama thus becomes, indirectly, one of the biggest slumlords in Chicago. [76, 238, 408, 664]

In 1997, Obama and William Ayers appear together as speakers on several occasions; at the University of Chicago their topic is, “Should a child ever be called a ‘super predator?’” The announcement of their November joint appearance states, “Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system.” [71, 83, 237]

Obama endorses William Ayers’ book on juvenile justice, praising it with an article in the Chicago Tribune in which he calls it a “searing and timely account of the juvenile court system.” Michelle Obama (who at the time is the University of Chicago’s dean of student services and director of the school’s Community Service Center) hosts a panel discussion of the book in which both Obama and Ayers participate. (In 2008, seeking to distance the candidate from Ayers, the campaign lies, claiming Obama did not “write a blurb for his book.”) [77, 84, 279, 333, 2448]

Ayers mentions Obama in his book where he writes, “Our neighbors include Muhammad Ali, former mayor Eugene Sawyer, poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander, and writer Barack Obama. Minister Louis Farrakhan lives a block from our home and adds, we think, a unique dimension to the idea of ‘safe neighborhood watch’: the Fruit of Islam, his security force, has an eye on things twenty-four-hours a day.” In April of 2008, when Obama’s relationship with Ayers is brought up in a primary debate, Obama lies, saying he doesn’t know him well and that he is only “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” (Obama repeatedly votes for and introduces anti-gun legislation, while certainly knowing that the average Chicago resident does not also enjoy the 24 x 7 security of Louis Farrakhan’s “Fruit of Islam” bodyguards.) [78, 279, 297, 333]

Obama introduces Illinois Senate Resolution 110, declaring November 1, 1997 Islamic Community Day. [347]

1998–1999

Still More Rezko and ACORN

In March 1998, Obama delivers the eulogy at the funeral of Saul Mendelsen, a leader of Chicago’s far left and a socialist community organizer and activist. [79]

At a June 14, 1998 State of the Cities Forum, Obama is asked about the 1996 welfare reform bill and how it can be reversed. (The 1996 legislation gave states fixed amounts of federal money to spend on welfare, rather than continuing to give them additional money based on how many people were on the welfare rolls—which had given states no incentive to reduce the welfare population.) Obama answers, “I was not a… huge supporter of the federal plan that was signed in 1996. Having said that, I do think that there is a potential political opportunity that arose out of welfare reform and that is to desegregate the welfare population, meaning the undeserving poor, black folks in cities, from the working poor, deserving white rural as well as suburban. Now you’ve got just a bunch of folks who are struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder. And that means that at least from my perspective the political strategy and the political coalition to put together… is to think about where are the areas where you are not just helping welfare people, you know folks on welfare, but how are you helping folks who are not currently making enough money in the economy to support a family and pay a mortgage and send their kids to school.” Obama is here accusing those who passed welfare reform of racism. He believes the welfare reform bill passed in 1996 was anti-black, and that supporters of the bill considered “black folks in cities” undeserving of welfare while the poor working whites in rural or even suburban areas were considered deserving. Obama’s “political strategy” is to get poor blacks and poor whites working together to demand benefits… a strategy no doubt inspired by Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. (Obama argues that welfare reform does not work. In fact, it does. In the years following the passage of the welfare reform bill the number of black children living in poverty drops dramatically—reaching record lows—because welfare reform prompts their mothers to get jobs. But in 2009 Congress votes to restore the old system, rewarding the states with more money as they sign up additional people for welfare benefits.) [2260]

On July 4, 1998 Obama’s daughter Malia Ann is born. Some wonder whether she was named in honor of one of the daughters of Malcolm X, Malika Shabazz, or after Malcolm X himself, whose tombstone is inscribed with “Hajj Malik.” Malik means “king” in Arabic, while Malikah means “queen.” (Malcolm X became a Sunni Muslim and after a pilgrimage to Mecca, he called himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz; his children use the surname Shabazz.) [527,2421]

In October 1998, Obama writes a letter supporting plans for low-income senior citizen housing. The project’s site, a large empty space owned by the city of Chicago, is sold to Obama’s friend Tony Rezko, and Obama’s former law firm boss, Allison Davis, for one dollar. The project, Cottage View Terrace, eventually consumes $14.6 million in taxpayer dollars, with a substantial amount going to Rezko and Davis as development fees. Still more taxpayer funds are later given to Rezko for additional housing projects, despite the fact that many of his prior projects had fallen into disrepair. (In 2007 and 2008 Obama says he “never did any favors” for Rezko; persuading the city to sell Rezko a large plot of land for only one dollar is apparently not considered a favor by Obama.) Obama’s former boss, Davis, donates more than $400,000 to dozens of political campaigns, including those of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and Obama. [80]

 In November of 1998, Obama is re-elected to the Illinois State Senate. Obama attends a speech given by Columbia University Professor Edward Said, who calls for a non-violent campaign “against settlements, against Israeli apartheid.” [387]

In 1999, Obama casts the only vote against Illinois Senate Bill 485, which would make felons convicted of sexual abuse crimes serve their full sentences without getting credit for time served in the county jail. Obama votes against a bill that specifically allows homeowners the right to use a gun in self-defense during a home invasion. The Illinois Governor vetoes the bill; Obama votes to uphold the veto. Obama proposes increasing Illinois firearm and ammunition excise taxes from 11 to 66 per cent. (A $55 tax on a $500 rifle would increase to $330.) The tax would be changed from a legitimate wildlife preservation fee to a gun-punishing penalty. [93, 315, 444]

Obama continues to serve (until 2002) with William Ayers on the board of the Woods Fund. Grants from the fund are given out to Reverend James T. Meeks (a fiery, anti-white and anti-Semitic Chicago preacher, in the style of Obama’s reverend Jeremiah Wright), and Father Michael Pfleger, who once stated, “America is the greatest sin against God.”  Pfleger is perhaps best known for encouraging his parishioners to buy time from prostitutes as a way of inviting the women to counseling and job training. Obama also joins the anti-Semite Pfleger (who has been called “the white Jeremiah Wright”) in an ACORN demonstration protesting payday loans. [81, 227, 284, 842 p. 110]

The Woods Fund also gives money to ACORN, which registers voters in poor black neighborhoods—a convenient way to garner additional support for Obama. Arguably, these actions by Obama and ACORN are illegal. As an allegedly independent, apolitical, tax-exempt, non-profit group, ACORN cannot legally “pimp for Obama,” but that is essentially what it does in registering voters while at the same time drumming up support for the candidate who is financing its operations. Its tax-exempt status is thus violated by ACORN. [227, 284]

Obama addresses a 1999 fundraiser for the Deheisha refugee camp in Israel’s occupied West Bank. Obama’s anti-Semite Palestinian friend, Ali Abunimah, introduces him to the audience. Abunimah serves on the board of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), an anti-Israel group. [974]

On September 30, 1999, the New York Times reports that Fannie Mae is easing credit requirements on loans it will purchase from banks and mortgage lenders. The Times notes “Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.” It continues, “In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates— anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.” Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines brags that “Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,” but argues that “…there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.” The Times article states that by moving into this new (subprime) area of lending, Fannie Mae is “taking in significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn.” The Times quotes Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, who warns, “If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out.”  (Fannie Mae CEO Raines later becomes an Obama economic advisor.) [1320]

On November 6, 1999, Obama allegedly shares crack cocaine and homosexual activities in the back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair. The activities, according to Sinclair, continue the next day at a Comfort Suites motel in Gurnee, Illinois. (Sinclair makes these allegations in late 2007, when he states that he also had telephone conversations about the 1999 activities with the gay choir director of Obama’s church, Donald Young—who was then murdered on December 23, 2007.) [1242]

In November 1999, the Senate voted 90–8 and the House voted 362–57 to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed banks to underwrite and trade mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and mortgage-backed securities. The bill was signed into law by Bill Clinton, after which subprime loans ballooned from 5 per cent of all mortgages to 30 per cent, by 2008. (Some argue that the legislation contributed to the financial crisis of 2008; others say that it kept some banks from failing.) [2683]

2000–2001

The Election Obama Lost

Obama enters the 2000 Illinois primary for U.S. Congress. In a television interview during the campaign, he cites as a qualification his experience with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the educational reform project on which he worked with William Ayers. (The project ended up wasting over $100 million, without accomplishing any of its stated goals.) [60, 204]

To help finance his run for Congress, Obama secures a $20,000 personal loan. The Chicago scuttlebutt is that Obama’s 2000 campaign for Congress is also funded by what some call the “Hyde Park mafia,” a group of University of Chicago leftists, and that there is a master plan to “push him up the political ladder.” [86, 332]

Obama’s tone in the campaign comes off as condescending to many (“I gave up a career with a high-priced law firm to run for public office!”) and he loses the primary to opponent Bobby Rush—who defeats him by 30 per cent. Rush says of his elitist opponent, “Barack Obama went to Harvard and became an educated fool. Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it.”  Obama, realizing he cannot win a fair fight with Rush, then works with Democrat consultant John Corrigan to get the district’s borders redrawn (gerrymandered) to favor his political goals. They are able to establish a new district which is still heavily black but which also includes liberal North Shore whites, who would be more inclined to vote for Obama than Rush (a former member of the radical Black Panthers). The demographics of the new district makes sense to Obama acquaintance Adolph Green, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, who later calls Obama a “vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him.” [87, 88, 193, 842 pp. 93, 219; 1600]

Obama’s dislike for the Clintons may have originated at this time. Obama had been executive director of Project Vote in 1992, which helped elect the outrageously unqualified candidate Carol Moseley Braun to the U.S. Senate. (The Chicago Tribune editorial board interviewed Moseley Braun and later described the discussion. “We were asking her fairly obvious questions. Things you’d expect a candidate for Senate to be familiar with. She was dumbfounded the entire time. She just sat there…  Then she’d fumble around with some half-baked answer. It was very awkward for all of us.”) From Obama’s perspective, he had also helped Clinton get elected president. When Clinton endorsed Bobby Rush for the Congressional seat that Obama wanted in 2000, he likely felt betrayed. [842 p. 93; 1253]

Having lost the Congressional primary to Bobby Rush, Obama returns to drumming up support for his re-election to the Illinois State Senate. Campaign volunteer Kenny B. Smith donates $550 to Obama’s Illinois State Senate campaign, and in 2001 Obama steers $100,000 in state tax dollars to a newly-formed Smith organization to build a gazebo, “parrot sanctuary,” and “walk of fame” in a blighted Chicago neighborhood. (By 2008 only the gazebo had been built, the neighborhood was still blighted, and there was no sign of the rest of the $100,000.) [89]

Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro, fails to pay taxes due the State of New York and is served with a tax lien dating back to 1996 totaling $6,837.99 with penalties and interest. [1184]

More Votes and Guilt by Association

In 2000 Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative and backer who justifies Palestinian terrorism as contributing to “political enlightenment,” hosts a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, Lebanon in the 1970s, and frequently spoke to reporters on behalf of terrorist Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). From 1976 to 1982 Khalidi was reportedly director of the Palestinian press agency, Wikalat-al-Anba al-Filastinija (WAFA), which was operating in exile from Beirut with the PLO. In the 1990s, Khalidi advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. (He is currently a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. Khalidi also taught at the University of Chicago, lived near the Obamas in Hyde Park, and has been their friend and frequent dinner companion.) [384, 387, 395, 416, 521]

Obama attends the 2000 Democrat National Convention in Los Angeles, where his credit card is rejected when he attempts to rent a car. Obama and his wife Michelle declare income of $240,505 for 2000. [1278]

Obama reported income from speaking fees on his 2000 and 2002 federal income tax returns. Because it is illegal for state legislators in Illinois to accept fees for speeches, Obama was in violation of Illinois law in both those years. [394]

In April 2001, President George W. Bush submits his 2002 budget proposal with the warning that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a “potential problem” because financial troubles in either one of them could “cause strong repercussions in financial markets.” [2317]

Obama’s daughter Natasha (Sasha) is born on June 10, 2001. [2318]

In 2001, Obama votes against Illinois House Bill 1812, a law designed to toughen penalties for crimes committed in furtherance of organized gang activities. He also votes against a bill that would allow people who receive protective orders (such as domestic violence victims) to carry firearms. When the bill fails, Obama remarks, “…authorizing potential victims to carry firearms would potentially lead to a more dangerous rather than less dangerous situation. It was a bad idea and I’m glad it failed.” [92, 444]

While Obama serves on the board of the Woods Fund, it approves (in 2001) a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network (AAAN). A second grant, for $35,000, is approved in 2002. President of the AAAN is Mona Khalidi, wife of Rashid Khalidi, the anti-Semitic professor Obama had met while at Columbia University. Khalidi, former spokesman for Yasser Arafat, strong critic of Israel, and supporter of Palestinian terrorism, later holds fundraisers for candidate Obama. AAAN calls the founding of Israel a “catastrophe,” supports liberal immigration reform in the United States, and encourages giving drivers licenses to illegal aliens. [85, 395]

Serving on the board of the AAAN is Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American, anti-Semite, co-founder of ElectronicIntifada.net, and long-time friend of Obama. Abunimah refers to Jews as malicious liars and suggests they lied about the Holocaust, writing, “if Zionists could lie about their present and ongoing torment of my (Palestinian) people, usurpation of my homeland and arrogation of my rights, and they do it rather obscenely, couldn’t they likewise lie, equally obscenely, about the holocaust, an event that took place over half a century ago?” [335]

Other groups receiving money from the Woods Fund include the voter-registration group ACORN (which has been highly criticized for thousands of questionable and illegal voter registrations), Bernardine Dohrn’s Children and Family Justice Center, and Trinity United Church of Christ (Obama’s church, home of Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright). The Woods Fund gives Obama’s church $6,000 in 2001—after which Wright purchases a new Porsche. [62, 63, 64, 82, 842 p. 97]

In a 2001 radio interview with Chicago station WBEZ-FM, Obama discusses the forced redistribution of wealth from whites to blacks. Obama remarks, “…and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and, and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And, uh, in some ways we still suffer from that.” He continued, “I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way.” (Obama is thus not opposed to the redistribution of wealth; he merely feels that the courts should not be the institution forcing it.) “You can craft theoretical justifications for it legally,” he adds, without elaborating on why or how it should be legal to take money from someone who earned it to give directly to someone who didn’t. (After Fox News broadcasts the interview in October of 2008, the Obama campaign, not wanting the voters to know what the candidate had in mind for their futures, cries foul, charging Fox with creating a “fake news controversy.”) [383, 386, 396]

In August of 2001, William Ayers is photographed trampling on the American Flag for a cover article in the Chicago Magazine titled “No Regrets.” The magazine is very popular in Chicago and is prominently displayed on newsstands throughout the city; Obama would have had a difficult time not seeing the magazine cover. [279]

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks Obama writes, in a “blame America” op-ed piece in the Hyde Park Herald that the essence of the tragedy “derives from the fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others,” that the terrorist attackers “lacked empathy,” and their attitude “…grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.” (Obama believes the terrorists could not “imagine” the “suffering of others”—but that suffering was exactly what they wanted to accomplish.) [90]

At least six of the 19 terrorists involved in the attacks of September 11 are illegally registered to vote in the United States, partly because of ACORN’s activities in spreading “motor voter” laws. [240]

In a September 11, 2001 article in the New York Times, William Ayers is quoted as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs… I feel we didn’t do enough.” At the time Ayers makes that statement he and Obama are serving together on the Board of the Woods Fund. [279]

In 2001, Obama introduces Senate Bill 750, the Halal Food Act, which requires the Illinois Department of Agriculture to conduct inspections to insure that all food labeled Halal is prepared according to Islamic law. [348]

Obama obtains $75,000 in state funds for a charity called Forum, Incorporated, to help churches and community groups obtain Internet access. Five Forum employees, including one who had filed bankruptcy, had each donated $1,000 to Obama’s state senate campaign. After the Illinois Attorney General files a suit against the charity on unrelated kickback scheme charges, Obama quietly returns the $5,000. [842 p. 207]

During 2001, Obama is given a legal services contract with a business owned by Robert Blackwell. The legal services Obama performed for Blackwell are unknown, and Obama does not fully disclose his relationship with Blackwell as required by Illinois legislator ethics rules. (In 2004 Obama writes a letter on Illinois State Senate stationery recommending a grant for another Blackwell company involved in tourism. The next day Blackwell donates $1,000 to Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign.) [1314]

Obama and his wife Michelle declare income of $272,759 for 2001. [1278]

2002–2003

Controversial and “Present” Votes

Obama opposes a bill that defines as a person a fully born baby who survives an abortion. Obama argues that defining “…a pre-viable fetus” that survives an abortion as a “person” or “child would essentially bar abortions, because the Equal Protection Clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute.” (Obama is thus arguing, “We can’t call it a person because then we can’t kill it.”) Testifying in favor of the law is an Illinois nurse, Jill Stanek, who had witnessed infants being left to die by abortionists, and who later writes, “Obama articulately worried that legislation protecting live aborted babies might infringe on women’s rights or abortionists’ rights. Obama’s clinical discourse, his lack of mercy, shocked me.” In a state senate hearing Obama also argues it would be a burden to require that surviving babies be treated because, in his view, “…essentially adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.” (Obama doesn’t wish anything to interfere with the killing of the child.) Although a “pre-viable fetus” that survives an abortion is not considered a “person” by Obama, he has yet to provide a reasonable or legally acceptable name for those living, breathing, kicking, and crying viable “non-persons.” [346, 412, 2262]

Obama votes against the similar Induced Infant Liability Act, a law meant to protect the lives of babies who “inadvertently” survive attempted abortions and then need medical attention to survive. Obama’s is the only vote against the state bill, and a similar bill later passes unanimously in the U.S. Senate. Obama’s vote is consistent with the Alinsky philosophy (in Rules for Radicals) that “…all values are relative in a world of political relativity.” Obama also votes against an Illinois bill banning state funding of late term abortions. [91, 272]

Obama is the only Illinois State Senator to vote against a bill prohibiting early release for sexual predators. Obama also votes to make a criminal out of a homeowner who uses a gun in his own defense in his own home. Obama refuses to vote for a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would increase penalties for drug traffickers. Obama votes against making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang. Obama votes against a bill that imposes the death penalty on gang members who murder first responders (paramedics, firemen, police officers). [346]

Ayers and Obama appear together at the University of Illinois for a discussion called, “Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?” [94]

During the course of his Illinois State Senate career, Obama votes “present” at least 130 times. A present vote is a way to avoid responsibility on a controversial issue if something goes wrong; it is usually an effort by a cowardly politician to avoid being pinned down on issues that might later be used against him by an opponent in a campaign. (By voting present, no matter what the issue, the candidate can later truthfully say he did not vote for the bill, or he can say he did not vote against the bill—depending on what works to his advantage at that moment.) Obama’s is the sole present vote on a bill to allow victims of sexual crimes to petition judges to seal court records to protect their privacy. All other state senators vote in favor of the bill. (Obama apparently believes that if a woman is raped she is not entitled to privacy, although he uses a right to privacy as his argument in support of unrestricted abortions.) [95, 96, 328]

Obama votes for a bill in the Illinois Senate that would ban most hunting rifles, shotguns, and target rifles. The bill would also authorize the Illinois State Police to raid homes and forcibly confiscate banned guns. Obama also votes for a bill that would shut down all Illinois firearm-manufacturing businesses (Springfield Armory, Armalite, Rock River Arms, and Les Baer). Obama votes for a bill (S 2579) prohibiting Illinois citizens from purchasing more than one gun per month. [326, 445]

Obama votes for a bill that bans most single-shot and double-barreled shotguns as “semi-automatic assault weapons” (even though they are not), along with hundreds of models of rifles and handguns. (Had the bill had passed, Illinois residents would have had 90 days to turn in their guns or face felony charges.) [444]

During his Illinois Senate career Obama votes four times against legislation that would allow a homeowner to use a firearm in defense of his home and family. To avoid criticism of his anti-gun agenda, Obama enlists an organization known as the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA) to distribute literature stating that he is “pro-Second Amendment.” On its surface, the AHSA supports hunting, but it also supports strict gun controls on non-hunters. The AHSA is known to be a sham organization set up solely to endorse leftists who need political cover for their anti-gun leanings. [326, 353]

As a State Senator Obama opposes legislation prohibiting the sale of pornography near churches and elementary schools, and supports allowing criminals to sue their victims if the victim injures the criminal while defending himself or his property. [1281]

Against the War… But With Some Cover

Obama speaks at an anti-war demonstration on October 2, 2002, in front of a crowd of approximately 2,000 people at Chicago’s Federal Plaza. The event, sponsored by the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), is organized by Marilyn Katz, former SDS activist, Chicago public relations consultant, and long-time friend of Obama’s political guru David Axelrod. (Katz’s Vietnam War protest activities included throwing nails in the street to stop police cars.) There are no known recordings of Obama’s speech, thus giving him the opportunity to recreate his words to his liking at any time. Before the event, Obama talks with Axelrod about the “political ramifications” of the speech because he is looking ahead to his Senate run in 2004. The speech turns out to be only mildly critical of the likely war. While Obama remarks that a war in Iraq could lead to “an occupation of undetermined length with undetermined costs,” he also emphasizes that military intervention is sometimes necessary. The speech is clearly not anti-war enough for the crowd, but it gives him the opportunity to say he was against the war from the beginning if it turned sour, while providing some cover if it proceeded successfully. (The text of Obama’s 2002 anti-war speech no longer appears on official Obama Web sites.) [34, 837, 842 pp. 224–226; 1282]

Inflating the Resume

In November of 2002, Obama is re-elected to Illinois State Senate (with no opponent on the ballot) and Democrats take control of the Illinois Senate. Essentially a non-productive water carrier for Chicago’s Mayor Daley during his previous years in the State Senate, Obama persuades Senate President Emil Jones to steer bills his way in 2003 so he can make a name for himself to help his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate. Democrat colleagues in the Illinois State Senate are intensely critical of Obama’s legislative tactics in taking credit for bills he had virtually nothing to do with. State Senator Ricky Hendon says, “No one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the half-back who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.” Hendon is the original sponsor of Illinois’ racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation. Jones takes the bills away from Hendon so that Obama can put his name on them. (Once in the U.S. Senate, Obama repays Jones with tens of millions of dollars in federal spending for his district, which Jones glibly refers to as “steak” rather than “pork.”) [98, 99, 239, 292]

Obama and his wife Michelle declare income of $259,294 for 2002. [1278]

During his four terms in the Illinois State Senate, Obama works, on average, less than two days per week. He has virtually no accomplishments during his first six years, and then gets 26 bills passed in his final year—with the help of senate President Emil Jones, who has Obama’s name placed on bills as their author even though many of them were written by other state legislators. The Illinois State Archives never receives a request from Obama to archive any records in his possession, suggesting it was his intention to personally retain details of his work and not make records public. [346]

By late 2003, with a slew of Jones-fed legislation under his belt and some “substance” for him to run on, Obama starts working on his plans to enter the 2004 U.S. Senate race. Aiding him is political pro David Axelrod, who has camera crews following almost all of Obama’s public appearances even before his election to the U.S. Senate. (Axelrod eventually uses the footage for a five-minute Internet video linked to Obama’s announcement that he is running for president.) [245, 1314]

Anti-Israel and Pro-Abortion

In 2003, Obama attends a dinner held in honor of Rashid Khalidi, former PLO operative, harsh critic of Israel, and advocate of Palestinian rights. Obama, who has consistently denied a close relationship with Khalidi (even though the Obamas have dined more than once at the home of Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and used them as occasional baby-sitters), praises Khalidi during the decidedly anti-Semitic event. William Ayers also attends the dinner, and both Ayers and Obama sign Khalidi’s guest book. The event is a going away party for Khalidi, who is leaving Chicago and moving to New York. The dinner is sponsored by the Arab American Action Network, to which Obama had funneled cash several times while serving on the board of the Woods Fund. One speaker at the dinner remarks that if Palestinians cannot secure a return of their land, Israel “will never see a day of peace.” [384, 387, 395, 418, 419]

The Los Angeles Times has a videotape of the Khalidi dinner but refuses to make it public. It is assumed the tape’s contents are damaging to Obama, likely because the event includes anti-Semitic sentiments and Obama heaping praise on Khalidi. Further, appearing as entertainment at the Khalidi dinner is a children’s dance group, the Sanabel AlQuds Dabka troupe. The Milwaukee-based Muslim children’s dance group typically performs the “debka,” a Middle-Eastern dance. The group’s performances have been known to include simulated beheadings with fake swords, and stomping on American, Israeli, and British flags. It has been alleged that, in his speech at the Khalidi dinner, Obama states “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine,” and there has been “genocide against the Palestinian people by (the) Israelis.” [438, 439, 440]

Obama tells the AFL-CIO in 2003 “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program… and that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.” Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama denies that he seeks a total government takeover of the nation’s health care system, despite proposing legislation for just such a system while in the Illinois State Senate. [74, 404]

In 2003, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act again comes up in the Illinois Senate. Obama, chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee Obama, shelves the bill and prevents it from even being brought to the Senate floor for a vote. Obama’s Health and Human Services Committee is known for its “kiss of death” treatment of any legislation that is not leftist. Although specialty license plate legislation (for example, license plates to honor veterans or to support other causes) is normally directed to the Transportation Committee, legislation supporting Choose Life and Choose Adoption license plates is instead directed to Obama’s committee—where he refuses to allow a vote. Obama states he is “not in favor of a (license) plate benefiting adoption,” even though he says on the campaign trail that he “favors adoption as a means to reduce abortion.” [412, 413]

Reverend Scott and Janet Willis, whose six children were killed in a tragic accident (involving Ricardo Guzman, an immigrant truck driver from Mexico who could barely speak English and who had obtained his commercial drivers license through bribery), drive three hours to the state capital in Springfield to testify in favor of a Choose Life license plate. Proceeds from the specialty license plate would be used to help fund adoption expenses. Echoing pro-abortion groups, Obama calls the issue “contentious.” The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) calls it “aggressive propaganda,” and the vice-president of the Illinois National Organization for Women (NOW) calls it “a violation of free speech.” Reporters fill the hearing room, eager to record the expected emotional Willis testimony. Obama instead calls only his friendly witnesses, completely ignoring Scott and Janet Willis, and then abruptly adjourns the hearing. Obama reconvenes the hearing the next day (after the reporters have returned to Chicago), listens to brief testimony from the Reverend and Mrs. Willis, and then has his Democrat-controlled committee kill the legislation. [412, 413, 414, 2627, 2628]

In the fall of 2003, the Bush administration pushes Congress to establish a new oversight agency to regulate and supervise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) fights the request, saying “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in a crisis,” and “The more people in my judgment exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see; I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and (can) withstand the [sic] some of the disaster scenarios, and even if there were a problem the federal government (would) bail them out, but the more pressure there is there then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.” The oversight legislation is blocked by Democrats. [2317]

Obama and his wife Michelle declare income of $238,327 for 2003. [1278]

2004

Loose Ends and Toward Washington

Obama pushes legislation in the Illinois Senate (SB 1332) to reduce the number of members of the Health Facilities Planning Board from 15 to 9, and (with the help of Tony Rezko, Stuart Levine, and Governor Rod Blogojevich) gets three of his campaign contributors appointed to the Board. One of the doctors on the board, Robert Weinstein, is later convicted, along with Stuart Levine, of embezzling millions from charities and a medical school. FBI agents record Rezko telling Levine that he influences the board. Michael Malek, one of those appointed to the board, donates $10,000 to Obama on June 3, 2003, and $25,000 to Governor Rod Blagojevich on July 25, 2003. Appointee Fortunee Massuda gives $25,000 to the governor and $2,000 to Obama. Dr. Imad Almanaseer gives $3,000 to Obama. [207, 209, 346]

During 2004, Obama illegally uses state funds for a political mailing. [97]

In 2004, Obama enters the Democrat primary for U.S. Senate. During the campaign in February, Michelle Obama sends a fund-raising letter with “alarming news” that “right-wing politicians” had passed a law preventing partial-birth abortions, which she refers to as “a legitimate medical procedure.” She asks supporters to pay $150 to attend a luncheon for her candidate husband, to help him fight against “cynical ploy(s)” to stop late-term abortions. [412]

There are 15 candidates in the primary, and Obama’s most formidable is wealthy executive Blair Hull. Obama’s campaign manager is David Axelrod, the long-time political pro in Chicago (whose frequent job had been defending Mayor Daley from charges of corruption). Hull leads in the polls, but four weeks before the primary an operative (probably Axelrod) leaks to the Chicago Tribune information that Hull’s divorce documents reveal a request for a protection order from Hull’s wife. A wife-beating assumption (whether true or not) sinks Hull, and Obama wins the primary with 52 per cent of the vote and the help of Chicago’s large black population. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Obama team had “worked aggressively behind the scenes” to push the Hull divorce story. [100, 842 p. 242; 1314]

By 2004, Obama and ACORN are old friends. Over the years Obama receives campaign support and voter registration help from ACORN. In exchange, Obama helps obtain funding for ACORN via the Woods Fund, Joyce Foundation, and the Illinois legislature, and he introduces or supports ACORN-friendly legislation (like job-killing minimum wage increases, preventing the construction of new Wal-Mart stores in poor neighborhoods that need the jobs, forcing banks to lend more to unqualified poor people and donate to voter turnout drives, fighting welfare reform and workfare rules, and imposing punitive “exit fees” for businesses that dare to relocate outside the city of Chicago). [243]

In 2004, Obama says he is “…consistently on record and will continue to be on record as opposing concealed (weapons) carry (laws),” and would back “federal legislation that would ban (all) citizens from carrying weapons, except for law enforcement.” He also votes, in March, to allow prosecution of citizens who use guns for self-defense in their own homes (SB 2165). [444, 445]

The Chicago Communist Party endorses Obama for the U.S. Senate. He also receives volunteer support from the Young Communist League. [101]

On April 3, 2004, Iraqi-born billionaire Nadhmi Auchi attends a dinner party held in his honor at the home of Tony Rezko. Obama and his wife are guests, and Obama toasts Auchi. Auchi later says he never met Obama, and Obama says he “can’t recall” attending the event. (In 2005, Auchi loans Rezko $3.5 million, three few weeks before Rezko’s wife, Rita, pays full price for an empty lot adjacent to a mansion that Obama buys on the same day.) [296, 651, 842, p. 199]

In an April 5 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama claims he is a Christian but states Christians “may presume a set of doctrines… I don’t necessarily subscribe to,” and strangely and egocentrically defines sin as “Being out of alignment with my values.” (Most Christians believe in their doctrines, rather than simply subscribe to them, and few would define sin as does Obama.) To the question, “Who’s Jesus to you?” Obama has said, “Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher. Moreover, he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh…” That unusual answer is remarkably acceptable to Muslims. [2589, 2590, 2591, 2592]

In June of 2004, billionaire and former Nazi collaborator George Soros (who bankrolls leftist candidates and organizations like the radical Web site MoveOn.org) hosts a fundraiser in New York for Obama’s Senate campaign. Soros chips in $60,000. (George Soros was born in Hungary in 1930 and is a billionaire hedge fund manager and currency trader. He has donated millions of dollars to MoveOn.org, which brags that it owns the Democrat Party, “Now It’s Our Party: We Bought It, We Own It, And We’re Going To Take It Back.” Soros earned $2.9 billion in 2008 betting against the U.S. economy. The fortune he made trading currencies led Time magazine to call him the “Man Who Broke the Bank of England.” Soros is believed by some to be intentionally working to destroy economies in order to precipitate a move to world socialism. Soros has donated tens of millions of dollars to Democrat political campaigns and socialist causes.) [239, 2528]

Between June 26 and July 1 of 2004, Michelle Obama joins a Women’s Event panel discussion at a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference held at Trinity United Church of Christ. Those in attendance include Louis Farrakhan and his wife, Khadijah, and Mrs. Jamell Meeks (wife of Reverend James Meeks). Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby speak at the conference, but at different events than Michelle Obama. Allegations later surface that Michelle Obama’s talk developed into a rant against the evils of America and how whites are to blame for Africa’s problems. The more the crowd reacted, the more rabid she became in her comments. Some claim that her repeated denunciations of “whitey” were recorded. If such comments were made and a recording exists, it has not been made public. The recording (purportedly on DVD and briefly sold via the Church Web site) allegedly reveals Michelle Obama saying, “Once again, the white man keeps us down, what’s up with Whitey, why’d he attack Iraq? Why’d he let Katrina happen? Why’d he leave millions of children behind? This is the legacy the white man gives us.” When asked about the incident, candidate Obama refused to deny that his wife made the remarks and instead criticized the reporter for asking the question, saying, “Frankly, my hope is people don’t play this game. It is a destructive aspect of our politics.” Obama’s tap-dancing suggests to some that the story is true, and arms have been twisted (or money has exchanged hands) to keep the recordings from being made public. [843, 844, 842 pp. 304–307; 2213]

The Speech

On July 27, 2004, Obama gives the keynote address at the Democrat National Convention that nominates John Kerry for president. This is a clear signal that the powers in control have bigger plans for the mediocre Chicago machine politician. Although Obama’s speech is mundane, boilerplate, and unoriginal, he impresses the crowd with his delivery. The television commentators do their best to persuade those who were unimpressed that it was impressive. (The speech reminds some of the remark by Austrian writer and journalist Karl Kraus, who wrote, “The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he”) According to Obama, immediately before the speech his wife warns him, “Just don’t screw it up, buddy!” [1989, 1990, 2215]

U.S. Senate Campaign

With support for the Iraq War strong in mid-2004, Obama softens his stance and says, “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” The statement is made almost two years after Obama’s 2002 ant-war speech in Chicago. [842, p. 255]

On July 28, 2004, Obama tells a crowd in Boston that the United States has an “absolute obligation” to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success. “The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster,” he then says at a Christian Science Monitor luncheon. “It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.” Over time, as the media pounds on President Bush and support for the war declines, Obama changes his tune to match the tone of the impatient voters. [346]

Obama’s Republican opponent in the fall campaign for the U.S. Senate is Jack Ryan, a handsome, articulate, and wealthy investment broker with three Ivy League degrees. The press (with the prodding of Axelrod and the Obama camp) works to get Ryan’s court-sealed divorce documents and child custody records unsealed (Ryan’s ex-wife is actress Jeri Lynn Ryan), and their titillating contents cause an embarrassed Ryan to withdraw from the race in June. In public Obama makes statements such as, “I don’t think it’s an appropriate topic for debate”—knowing that behind the scenes his team is working feverishly to smear the popular Ryan. The Republicans field a last-minute replacement, former United Nations Ambassador and Assistant Secretary of State Alan Keyes. Keyes is a black, anti-abortion, fiery speaker who is ridiculed by the press and thus never taken seriously. (The ultra-conservative Keyes does not help his case by saying things like “Jesus Christ himself would not vote for Barack Obama.”) Obama wins easily. [102, 103, 359, 842 p. 243]

During the 2004 debates with Obama, Keyes charges in an off-the-air remark that Obama is not a natural born citizen. Obama responds not by saying he is a natural born citizen, but by saying it does not matter because he is not running for president. Attempts have been made to find a video recording of the incident, which purportedly had been on YouTube.com but was removed once its significance was understood. [1418]

In 2004, the Code Pink anti-war group delivers $600,000 in cash and supplies to Iraq—not to American soldiers, but to the terrorists who are fighting them in Fallujah. Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink, later donates $2,300 to the Obama presidential campaign. (Evans later says in a June 2008 interview that Osama bin Laden had a “valid argument” for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.) [104, 355]

London resident but Iraqi born billionaire Nadhmi Auchi flies to Chicago in a private jet and meets at the Four Seasons Hotel with Tony Rezko, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and Obama. At this point, both Blagojevich and Obama are aware that Rezko is already under investigation for illegal activities involving kickbacks for political favors; they meet with Rezko and Auchi anyway. [249]

During his 2004 Senate campaign one of Obama’s advisors is Charles Ogletree, a professor who is one of the leading advocates of slavery reparations. (It is believed that Ogletree remains an advisor to Obama through the 2008 presidential campaign as well.) [842 p. 68; 936]

In a television interview with WBBM-TV in Chicago, Obama states, “I think that the Second Amendment means something. I think that if the government were to confiscate everybody’s guns unilaterally that I think that would be subject to constitutional challenge.” Obama does not define the “something” the Second Amendment means. He does not argue against confiscating guns, he merely states that someone would challenge the action in court. [2053, 2054]

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown hosts a fundraiser for Obama at the Waterfront restaurant. Obama tells Brown he would appreciate it if he does not have to have his picture taken with the mayor, Gavin Newsom—presumably to avoid an association with Newsom’s support of gay marriages. Newsom is outraged by the insult and Obama’s cowardice. [842 p. 261; 851]

In November of 2004—before he is even sworn in as a U.S. Senator—Obama has “toe in the water” conversations with close associates about running for president in 2008. Publicly, however, Obama says, “I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I’m the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois.” [210, 239, 351]

On another occasion, Obama tells reporters, “I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years… I am a believer in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job, and I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. There may be some who are comfortable with doing that, but I’m not one of those people.”  (Obama’s statement is a lie; by the end of his campaign for the Senate, he already has workers visiting Iowa to develop contacts for its 2008 presidential caucus. [881, 1278]

On November 22, 2004, Obama is interviewed by Randi Rhodes. Discussing the federal budget process, Obama says, “When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what’s in them and nobody has read ‘em, it gets rushed through without any clear deliberations or debate then these kinds of things happen.” [2259]

A Los Angeles paralegal, Joe Anthony, starts an unofficial fan page for Obama on MySpace.com. Anthony devotes thousands of hours maintaining the page, and by the time Obama announces his candidacy for president it has over 160,000 “friends.” [1317]

In 2004, Rashad Khalidi publishes a book called Resurrecting Empire. In the book’s acknowledgments Khalidi thanks William Ayers for his assistance, further establishing links between Khalidi, Ayers, and Obama. [983]

Obama signs a three-book deal with Crown Publishing Group covering The Audacity of Hope, a future non-fiction book, and a children’s book. The contract is for seven figures (probably $1.9 million), and is signed before Obama is sworn in as U. S. Senator—to keep him from falling under various disclosure and income reporting rules that apply to members of Congress. [1276]

Obama and his wife Michelle declare income of $207,647 for 2004. [1278]

2005

In the United States Senate

In January of 2005, Obama is sworn in as the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois. Obama is also sworn in as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. At the ceremony for Obama, Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, refers to the caucus as “our family” and “the conscience of Fannie Mae.” (The far-left Democrats push the most for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up risky subprime mortgages from banks to encourage their approval.) [1281]

Early in 2005, the mass media adopts its long-term “suck up to and cover up for Obama” posture, with Time magazine naming Obama one of “The World’s Most Influential People.” (MSNBC’s Chris Matthews will later say of Obama, “He seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.” A starry-eyed Oprah Winfrey will gush that Obama’s “tongue (is) dipped in the unvarnished truth,” and author Deepak Chopra will predict that an Obama Presidency will “represent a quantum leap in American consciousness.”) [239, 351, 358]

Obama buys more than $50,000 worth of stock in two companies whose major investors include his biggest political donors. One of the companies is developing a drug to treat avian flu (H5N1). Just two weeks after buying shares in the company, Obama pushes for federal spending to battle the disease. The fear of the disease is hyped way out of proportion by politicians and the media, with frequent scare stories not backed up by facts. (Worldwide since 2003 fewer than 300 people have died from the avian flu, which does not spread easily from human to human. In a typical year, more than 35,000 Americans die from common flu viruses.) Not long after Obama buys stock in AVI Biopharma it receives a $28 million federal contract. A few days after the announcement of the contract, the company’s stock shoots up and Obama sells his shares… at a 73 per cent profit. Obama also buys stock in a satellite communications business backed by four friends and donors who had raised $150,000 for him. A spokesman makes the remarkable statement that Obama “did not know” he had invested in either company. [351, 842 p. 254; 2577]

Obama hires the son of one of his campaign donors, Joseph Aramanda, for a coveted summer job as an intern in his Washington, D.C. Senate offices. Campaign donations were funneled to Obama through Aramanda as part of a kickback scheme involving a $50 million deal with Glencoe Capital. Obama’s part in the various deals was to grant favors when he was chairman of the Illinois Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. [664]

On February 17, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan tells the House Financial Services Committee that by “…enabling these institutions (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to increase in size… we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.” [2317]

On March 3, 2005, Obama votes against a bill that would cap credit card interest at 30 per cent. He later defends his vote, arguing that the bill’s language did not “meet his standards” and set the interest limit too high; but he does not offer any amendments to the bill to make it acceptable to him. (Obama frequently uses “the bill wasn’t up to my high standards” argument when defending his votes.) [842 pp. 262–263; 852]

On April 6, 2005, Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan tells the Senate Banking Committee, “If we fail to strengthen GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) regulation, we increase the possibility of insolvency and crisis.” [2317]

The Mansion Purchase

In June 2005, Obama purchases a mansion in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood for $1.65 million ($300,000 less than the asking price), with the help of friend, fundraiser, and political “fixer” Tony Rezko. (The original signed contract was dated January 23, 2005.) Although Obama’s eventual down payment is $330,000, his initial earnest money is an astoundingly low $1,000—when one per cent of the purchase price ($16,500) would typically be expected. Tony Rezko’s wife Rita, who earns $37,000 per year in a position with Cook County government, purchases the empty lot adjacent to the Obama house for the full price of $625,000, with a down payment of $125,000. Both the house and the empty lot were owned by Fredric Wondisford and Sally Radovick. Obama’s 5.625 per cent mortgage is for $1.32 million, through the Northern Trust Bank, and he pays no origination fee or discount points. At the time of the purchase, it is already widely known that Rezko is under investigation by federal authorities, but Obama deals with him anyway. (Three weeks before the purchase, $3.5 million is loaned to Rezko by Nadhmi Auchi, a wealthy Iraqi who lives in England; Rezko is eventually convicted in 2008 of receiving kickbacks for political favors.) Rita Rezko then sells a 10-foot strip of the empty lot to Obama, for $104,500. The transaction leaves Rezko with an unusable empty lot with no street access—that cost her over $500,000. Rezko later asks Obama to help Auchi obtain a visa to travel in the United States in 2005. The State Department refuses, partly because Auchi, a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and former high-ranking official in his Oil Ministry, had been found guilty of corruption charges in France. [105, 106, 249, 329, 1278, 1346]

The Syrian-born Rezko’s money ties to Iraq may go back decades, and to Saddam Hussein. Just as Rezko is Obama’s main moneyman, Nadhmi Auchi is apparently Rezko’s main moneyman. Auchi dealt with Hussein as early as 1959 in a failed assassination attempt on Iraq’s Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim. [249, 2664]

It is unclear how the Obamas qualified for their enormous mortgage. Their reported income for 2004 was $207,647, which is clearly insufficient for a mortgage of $1.32 million that (assuming a then typical 6 per cent interest rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage) would require payments in excess of almost $8,000 per month (not counting $1,500 or more per month for property taxes). The monthly mortgage payment would have been more than 50 per cent of the Obama’s gross income, and his 2005 U. S. Senate salary of $162,100 would not have been enough to support mortgage approval. Further, Obama still had substantial student loans to pay off—if Michelle Obama’s claims during the 2008 campaign season are to be believed. Obama later earns considerable royalties from the re-publication of his book, Dreams From My Father, but anticipated earnings would normally not be counted toward mortgage qualification if following prudent banking practices. [211, 1278, 1279]

Bank employees had inflated the appraised value of the vacant lot by 25 per cent as part of the deal for Obama. Obama bought the house at a discount, but the sellers lost little because Rita Rezko overpaid for the adjacent vacant lot. The empty lot was appraised at less than $500,000 by bank employee Kenneth J. Connor, but his appraisal was later replaced with a more generous appraisal of $625,000 in order to finalize the deal for Rezko and Obama. Connor was then fired by the bank for complaining about its appraisal practices. (The FBI interviews Connor in late 2008 for information regarding the Rezko-Obama house purchase deal.) [696]

The Board of Directors of Northern Trust Bank includes Susan Crown, a relative of billionaires Lester Crown and James Crown, who have ownership in many companies (including defense contractor General Dynamics Corporation) and are substantial Obama campaign contributors. The Crown family also runs the Maytag appliance company. Obama had collected campaign donations from Maytag workers and pledged to them that he would keep their jobs in Galesburg, Illinois. Obama later accepted campaign contributions from Lester Crown, who then shipped the Maytag jobs to Mexico. The Crown family also sits on the board of energy company Exelon. (Exelon was formerly Commonwealth Edison, whose CEO was Thomas Ayers, and Ayers purportedly served on the General Dynamics board with Lester Crown.) [842 p. 227–228; 2328]

Rita Rezko borrowed the money for the empty lot from the Mutual Bank of Harvey, which is run by Rezko pal Amrish Mahajan. Mahajan’s wife, Anita, has been charged with fraudulently receiving $2 million in Illinois taxpayer dollars for drug tests never performed by her company, K. K. Bio-Science, which had a no-bid contract with the state. (As of March 2009, Mahajan is still awaiting trial.) Her company’s computers “disappeared” right before investigators arrived to take them away for evidence. Patti Blagojevich, wife of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, is a real estate agent whose dealings with both Tony Rezko and the Mutual Bank of Harvey are under scrutiny by federal investigators. (Amrish Mahajan, a major fundraiser of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, resigned from the bank in February of 2009. Federal banking regulators said that Mutual Bank of Harvey had “unsafe and unsound banking practices and had violated laws or regulations.”) [530, 1456]

Further investigation of the Obama mansion real estate deal shows that the empty lot was only temporarily deeded to Rita Rezko. According to Cook County land records, the empty lot was later deeded to Obama’s Northern Trust Company Land Trust Number 10209 on January 11, 2006 and recorded on February 16, 2006 (document number 0604733162). The vacant lot therefore appears to be legally owned by (deeded to) Obama, even though a Rezko limited liability corporation (“5050 S. Greenwood LLC”) holds its outstanding mortgage. The implied scenario is that the Obamas wanted the house (and perhaps the adjacent lot as well) but could not afford it. The sellers did not want to separate the house from the lot, sell only the house, and be left with an empty lot. A deal was therefore arranged by which the sale would be divided into two parts, with Rezko’s wife overpaying for the empty lot and Obama underpaying for the house, helping Obama qualify for the mortgage. Rezko then deeded the empty lot to Obama a few months later. The Obama campaign later stated that Rita Rezko sold the empty lot to one of Tony Rezko’s attorneys, Michael Sreenam, but Cook County property records do not support that statement. (It may be interesting to see what happens should Rezko, who is currently in jail for fraud, fail to keep up with the monthly mortgage payments on the lot.) [1182]

Living within a few blocks of Obama’s mansion (which boasts a wine cellar containing over one thousand bottles, and bookcases made of Honduran mahogany) are Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers, and Toni Preckwinkle. Preckwinkle is Chicago’s 4th Ward Alderwoman [329, 842 pp.109, 127]

More Wheeling and Dealing

In April of 2005, while Aiham Alsammarae is Iraq’s Minister of Electricity, a $50 million contract is negotiated with a company called Companion Security to train Iraqi security guards in Illinois. Companion Security is run by Daniel T. Frawley and a Tony Rezko/Daniel Mahru partnership. In May a Panamanian company, Fintrade Services, lends money to Rezko. On Fintrade’s board of directors is Ibtisam Auchi, wife of Nadhmi Auchi. Another of Nadhmi Auchi’s companies helps finance a power plant in Iraq, working with Rezko and Aiham Alsamarrae. Alsamarrae is a Chicago resident with dual (U.S. and Iraqi) citizenship. He was accused of graft with Iraqi construction projects and imprisoned for four months in Iraq in a $2 billion corruption case. Obama is thus a critic of the War in Iraq at the same time he is receiving political favors and contributions from Rezko, who is in turn dealing with Iraqis and kickback schemes. [249, 351]

In 2005, Virginia officials reject an astounding 83 per cent of ACORN’s Project Vote new voter registrations as fraudulent, yet Obama continues to push for federal grants for ACORN. [204]

In the U.S. States Senate Obama votes against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act. The law would prevent minors from being taken across state lines to have an abortion without the consent of their parents. [97, 108]

Although he publicly rails against “big oil,” Obama votes for an energy bill including billions of dollars in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. [109]

Obama votes for a bill (S 397) classifying most rifle ammunition larger than .22 caliber as “armor piercing ammunition” and prohibiting its manufacture for civilian use. The bill fails to pass. [444, 445]

On June 25, 2005, Michelle Obama is named a “non-executive director” of the board of TreeHouse Foods, a supplier of Wal-Mart. Her annual salary is $51,200 (boosted to $101,083 in 2006), and she is given 7,500 TreeHouse stock options, worth approximately $72,375. She has no experience in the retail industry or private sector which would justify giving her the appointment—but she is married to a U.S. Senator. [677, 842 p. 109]

In July of 2005, Obama votes to allow extensive lawsuits designed to bankrupt the firearms industry (SB 397). That same month he also votes to re-authorize the Patriot Act, and against implementing the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). [97, 445, 842 p. 256]

In September 2005, in support of ACORN policies, Obama sponsors a resolution rejecting a requirement to show a photo I.D. in order to vote. [97]

Suggesting he cares less about the letter of the law and more about the status of the litigants, Obama argues against the confirmation of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, saying that the role of the justice is to favor the weak over the strong; “I hope he will recognize who the weak are and who the strong are in our society.” Obama is alleged to be a Constitutional lawyer, but legal scholars—and educated Americans—would argue that the role of a Supreme Court Justice is to interpret the law and rule on whether it complies with the U.S. Constitution—not to arbitrarily decide in favor of the “weak.” (As columnist and author Walter Williams points out, the job of a Supreme Court Justice is to act as a referee and should not allow empathy to influence decisions. One would not want a referee in the Super Bowl to intentionally rule in favor of the Arizona Cardinals because the Pittsburgh Steelers have already won six titles. By Obama’s logic, the umpires should rule in favor of the Chicago Cubs simply because they have not won a World Series since 1908.) [344, 445, 2677]

In November, Obama votes to prevent oil leasing in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), and votes no on a bill that would extend the Bush capital gains and dividends tax cuts. [97]

In December, Obama votes against a $40 billion reduction in overall federal spending, and against extending the Patriot Act’s wiretap provisions. [97]

During both 2004 and 2005 the FBI takes note of repeated visits by Obama and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to the offices of Rezmar Corporation, a joint business venture of Daniel Mahru and Tony Rezko. [207]

Obama’s reported income in 2005 is about $1.7 million, more than twice the income of President Bush, yet they donate similar dollar amounts to charity. [1655, 2215]

2006

The Audacity of Obama

Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope, is published. The book’s title is inspired by a sermon given by Obama’s controversial pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. [137]

Obama pushes for a $1 million earmark for the University of Chicago Hospitals. His wife, Michelle, is promoted to Vice-President of Community and External Affairs for the hospitals, and her salary jumps from $121,900 to $316,962. Her main responsibilities, in promoting an Urban Health Initiative, are to act as a “bouncer”—to encourage the poor, uninsured area residents to go to neighborhood clinics rather than diminish hospital profits by using the hospital emergency rooms. Assisting her with the public relations of the policy is David Axelrod. An executive vice-president of the University of Chicago Hospitals is Eric Whitaker; Obama had previously arranged for Whitaker to be hired as the head of the Illinois Department of Public Health, at a salary of $150,000. Obama later says of the $1 million he obtained for his wife’s employer, “I don’t think that I was obligated to recuse myself from anything related to the university… but you could make a good argument that this is something that slipped through our cracks, through our screening system.” (By using the word “our,” Obama attempts to place the blame for the action on others, as though he could vote for an earmark that he added to a bill without realizing he did it.) [110, 111, 112, 664, 1945]

The Board of Trustees of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium raises $250,000 for Obama’s campaign. Obama then obtains a $3 million earmark for the planetarium. (A $300,000 amount had been sought by the Trustees to upgrade a projector system.) [113]

Obama votes against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a man with sterling academic and legal credentials. [97]

On February 6, Obama wins a Grammy Award in the “best spoken word album” category for the audio book version of Dreams From My Father.  (A line-by-line comparison with the print version shows that the audio version recorded by Obama omits some text that many people might call controversial; that was likely done to prevent campaign ads from using those recorded words against him.) [2216]

In February of 2006, anti-military Congressman Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) votes against suspending aid to Hamas. His is the only vote against the bill. Abercrombie, an Obama supporter from Hawaii, had been a friend of Obama’s father and mother at the University of Hawaii and, like Obama, is linked to the socialist New Party. He is also, like most socialist members of Congress, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. [388, 1362]

In February 2006, Obama votes against a bill calling for the retention of the Bush capital gains and dividends tax cuts. [97]

Sarah P. Herlihy, an associate of the Chicago law firm of Kirkland and Ellis LLP, writes a document called, “Amending the Natural Born Citizen Requirement: Globalization as the Impetus and the Obstacle,” in which she argues for eliminating the natural born citizen requirement of the U.S. Constitution—which she calls the “stupidest provision” in the document because the rule “discriminates” against naturalized citizens. (Amazingly, Herlihy does not understand that was precisely what the framers of the Constitution intended, just as their constitutional requirement that a president must be at least 35 years old was intended to “discriminate” against 12-year-olds.) The employees of Kirkland and Ellis (which does not specialize in constitutional law) later contribute $87,722 to the Obama campaign, and Bruce I. Ettleson, a partner in the law firm, is a member of Obama’s campaign finance committee. [581, 582, 588, 598]

In March, Obama tells a crowd, “I’ve been very blessed. Keynote speaker at the Democratic convention; the cover of Newsweek; my book made the best-seller list; I just won a Grammy for reading it on tape. Really, what else is there to do? Well, I guess I could pass a law or something.” At this point, it is clear that Obama has his eye on the White House, even though he has made no public pronouncement and has accomplished nothing to suggest he is qualified to serve as president. [842 p. 247]

Illinois’ Cook County Board President John Stroger becomes ill during the 2006 primary election campaign. Chicago Democrats keep his illness a secret until the deadline for candidate filings passes, and then manage to place the name of his son, Todd Stroger, on the ballot. Despite his total lack of experience and history as a corrupt, machine-style ward boss, Obama supports the young Stroger, calling him a “good, progressive Democrat.” (Progressive Democrat is generally code for socialist.) More qualified Democrats are outraged, especially those who support reform of the corrupt and reckless Cook County Board. As predicted by many, Stroger proves to be a disaster. (In early 2009, it is reported that Stroger failed to report at least $733,000 in political donations, and is fined $27,000 by the Illinois State Board of Elections.) [119, 1578]

On April 6 a group of Senators (including John McCain and Edward Kennedy) completes work on an immigration bill and heads to a news conference. Catching them in a hallway, Obama asks, “Hey, guys, can I come along?” At the microphones, Obama then proceeds to congratulate a list of Senators—including himself—saying “I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman… who’ve actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out.” Senate staffers are outraged because they know Obama was never among the group that arrived at 7 a.m. to work on the legislation. Senator Arlen Specter comments that when a Senator is running for president, “embellishment of legislative records may be an inevitability.” [1607]

In April of 2006, Companion Security (run by Daniel T. Frawley, Tony Rezko, and Daniel Mahru) works with Governor Rod Blagojevich to lease an Illinois military facility for training Iraqi security guards. In August of 2006, Frawley works with Obama’s Senate staff to complete the deal. [249]

Obama is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe, but never convenes the committee for a meeting. [114]

On May 5, 2006, John McCain and 19 other Republican Senators send a letter to the Senate Majority Leader urging the passage of Senate Bill S190, which is intended to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and which could possibly have reduced the likelihood of the economic crisis in 2008). Obama does not sign the letter of support. McCain’s letter states that it is “…vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac …operate in a safe and sound manner. More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event that either …should fail.” [278, 2317]

On May 25, Senator McCain addresses the Senate and states, “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac… and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market… (they) need to be reformed without delay.” Led by Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CN), all Democrat Senators on the Senate Banking Committee vote against the proposed regulatory bill; all Republicans vote for the bill. Without sufficient support, the bill never makes it to the Senate floor for a full vote. (When Fannie Mae later needs a taxpayer bailout, Dodd and his Democrats cohorts blame a “lack of regulation.”) [278, 2317]

In a June speech about religion, Obama states, “The dangers of sectarianism are greater than ever. Whatever we once were we are no longer a Christian nation, at least not just… we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers; and even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the USA, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would it be James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” (Obama is offering a “false dilemma” here, because there is no need for anyone to choose between only two interpretations of Christianity. Obama criticizes his opponents for offering “false choices” but he routinely uses the manipulative debate technique. Further, it is still proper to call the United States a “Christian nation” because the majority of its citizens are in fact Christians. Indonesia is a Muslim nation despite the small percentage of its citizens that do not follow Islam. Obama’s statement is meant to “score points” with Muslims.) Obama also states, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values. In a pluralistic society we have no choice. Politics involves compromise… the art of what’s possible. Religion doesn’t allow for compromise; it’s the art of the impossible.” [2209, 2686]

Obama votes in favor of establishing a foreign guest worker program and giving the guest workers a “path to citizenship.” He votes in favor of allowing illegal immigrants to participate in the Social Security program. [97]

Obama votes against a resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution authorizing Congress to prohibit the desecration of the American flag, against a ban on same-sex marriages, and against repealing the estate (death) tax. [97, 432]

In the summer of 2006, homes in Obama’s Chicago neighborhood are reassessed for property tax purposes. Houses surrounding Obama’s are reassessed for, on average, 28 per cent more. Obama’s house is assessed at only six per cent more. [329]

The federal government shuts down an Islamic charity called KindHearts because of its fund-raising for terrorist groups, including Hamas. The chairman of the organization, Hatem El-Hady, then directs his fund-raising efforts to helping Obama. [115]

Obama proposes legislation prohibiting gun stores from operating within five miles of a school or a park. Inasmuch as most communities have schools and parks scattered widely throughout their areas, the legislation would effectively ban gun stores unless they re-locate far from population centers. [339]

Obama visits Kenya in 2006 to give support to Raila Odinga, a Muslim socialist candidate for president who has ties to both al-Qaeda and Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, was educated in communist East Germany, and who hopes to get Shari’ah Muslim law established. Odinga is a cousin of Obama; Odinga’s mother is the sister of Obama’s father. (Odinga named his first son Fidel after Fidel Castro.) During his Kenya visit, Obama makes a speech to university students in Nairobi. In the speech, Obama criticizes the existing pro-American Kenyan government, rallies the students against it, and talks of the need for change. Obama’s actions are logically seen as an endorsement of Odinga, the existing Kenyan president’s opponent. By making his speech, supporting Odinga, and standing beside Odinga at rallies, Obama violates the stated conditions of his Official Government Visa: “to nurture relations between the (African) Continent and the United States.” The Kenyan government lodges an official protest of Obama’s passport abuse and misconduct, and Obama’s actions are denounced by the U.S. State Department as being in direct opposition to U. S. National Security. After Odinga loses the election, his Muslim followers burn Christian women and children alive in a church where they had sought refuge. More than 1,500 people are ultimately killed in riots, and Odinga is reluctantly given the position of prime minister to placate his radical supporters and stop further bloodshed. [126, 127, 207, 208, 271, 293, 294, 313, 329, 452, 1449]

In support of Odinga, Obama raises approximately $950,000. The cash for Odinga comes from private meetings in 2006 arranged for Odinga by Mark Lippert, a foreign policy advisor on Obama’s staff. Odinga visits Obama during three separate trips to Washington in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Odinga promises his supporters in Kenya that he will “re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shari’ah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared religion.” In early 2006, Lippert had been sent by Obama to Kenya, at taxpayer expense, on a “fact-finding” mission, and to do advance work for Obama’s later visit. [313]

Odinga made the following pledges to his supporters: re-write the constitution of Kenya to recognize Muslim Shari’ah law for Muslim regions; facilitate the establishment of a Shari’ah court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters; order every primary school to conduct daily Madrassa classes; impose a total ban on open-air Christian gospel crusades; outlaw gospel programs on KBC radio; impose a total ban on the consumption of alcoholic beverages; and impose an immediate ban on women’s public dressing styles that are considered immoral and offensive to the Muslim faith. [329]

In August of 2006, Obama votes against making the temporary Bush estate (death) tax cuts permanent. In September, Obama votes to give Habeas Corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees. [97]

On September 20, 2006, in a startling coincidence of similar names, Kelly J. McCrum Robinson (wife of Michelle Obama’s brother Craig Robinson) sells her Chicago condominium to a person named “Osama Barakat” for $376,500. The property is located at 1525 S. Sangamon, Unit 707. The Cook County property parcel number is 17-20-232-050-1168. Listed as creditor on the real estate transaction is Burlew Plumbing and Heating of New Jersey. Burlew purportedly owns Magic Touch Construction Company, located at 59 West Front Street in Keyport, New Jersey. Located at that same address is Magic Touch Plumbing and Heating. On September 11, 2001, Sakher “Rocky” Hammad drove from New York City to Memphis, Tennessee. Hammad was later arrested by the FBI in connection with an illegal driver’s license scheme. In Hammad’s wallet was found a security pass giving him access to the World Trade Center on September 5, 2001, and a business card for Magic Plumbing and Heating. Hammad stated he was a plumber, and had worked with his cousin on the WTC sprinkler systems. New York authorities have no record of a plumber’s license for either Hammad or his cousin. Hammad’s mother lives in Jordan or Gaza. (Some have theorized that the World Trade Centers towers collapsed because their sprinkler systems were not functioning properly.) [1186, 1187, 1188, 1189, 1190, 2028]

On October 22, 2006, Obama publicly states he is considering a run for the presidency—at age 45 and after only a year and a half as a Senator. [1314]

Alexi Giannoulias runs for Illinois State Treasurer in 2006 and receives a strong endorsement from Obama, who states Giannoulias is “…one of the most outstanding young men I could ever hope to meet”—despite the candidate’s youth (he is 29), total lack of experience, mob connections, and his family bank’s (Broadway Bank) financing of a Chicago crime figure. Ten years earlier the Giannoulias family had been rumored to have helped Obama with campaign financing, and provided an alleged sweetheart deal mortgage for his Chicago townhouse (Obama’s residence before Tony Rezko helped him buy his Hyde Park mansion). [116, 117, 281]

Giannoulias is the moneyman for Michael “Jaws” Giorango, a Chicago thug with convictions for bookmaking and promoting prostitution. Giannoulias is so tainted by mob connections that the powerful Illinois Speaker of the House and State Democrat Party Chairman Michael Madigan refused to endorse Giannoulias for State Treasurer. Thus, even the Democrat Party does not endorse Democrat Giannoulias in the November election. Despite the hands-off attitude of all prominent Democrats in Illinois, Obama (who plays basketball with Giannoulias at the exclusive East Bank Club in Chicago) endorses him anyway. Obama uses Giannoulias’ Broadway Bank for his personal business and his Senate campaign fund. Giannoulias wins the election, and he and his family donate more than $10,000 to Obama’s campaign. [318, 319, 842 pp. 206–207]

Obama campaigns in Vermont for socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, who calls rookie Senator Obama “one of the great leaders of the United States Senate,” even though he has been there less than two years and has done little but write another book about himself. By the 2008 presidential election, Obama’s voting record is farther left than that of socialist Sanders. [118]

In an article in the Jakarta Post of November 29, 2006, Julia Suryakusuma, a long-time friend of Obama’s mother and an outspoken feminist writer, states that Obama could run for president of Indonesia. It is assumed Suryakusuma means that Obama retains his Indonesian citizenship. (Indonesia does not allow dual citizenship and Obama cannot be an American citizen if he has not relinquished his Indonesian citizenship.) [120]

In a 2006 speech, Obama says his mother’s parents were Baptists and Methodists, but in his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama wrote that, “In his only skirmish into organized religion, he (Obama’s grandfather Stanley Armour Dunham) would enroll the family in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation.” Obama refers to himself as a “lifelong” Christian, but his only Christian church affiliation appears to have been with Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. (Some critics might take exception to TUCC being called a Christian church, considering its black liberation theology—a Marxist version of Christianity that worships a white-hating black Jesus—and the fact that it accepts Muslim members.) [744]

In December of 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) gives Obama a 100 per cent rating for his anti-religious stances on church-state separation. [97]

In a December 22, 2006 e-mail, Obama personally informs Kenyan Raila Odinga that “all our correspondence (should be) handled by Mr. Mark Lippert,” and says that using Lippert as their common contact would be for his (Obama’s) “…own security now and in the future.” [313, 1017]

Obama’s income in 2006 is $991,296. The total includes $273,618 for Michelle Obama from the University of Chicago Hospitals, and $506,618 in advances and royalties from Obama’s books. [1046]

Obama donates $22,500 to Trinity United Church of Christ in 2006. In that year Obama earned more than three times the income of President Bush, yet Bush donated a larger amount than Obama to charity. Obama’s charitable donations were 5.8 per cent of his income. (Senator Joe Biden donated an astoundingly low 0.15 per cent, despite being in the top one per cent of all income earners in the nation.) [842 p. 97; 1655]

2007

The Campaign Begins

On January 16, 2007, after only two years in the U.S. Senate, Obama officially announces his candidacy for U.S. president. Obama’s main campaign strategist continues to be David Axelrod (the “Karl Rove” of the Obama campaign). Obama’s theme of “hope and change” allows him to avoid specific commitments and skirt the issue of how programs would be paid for. “Hope” being an inclusive word, the candidate does not have to talk about the details of his plans, he merely has to suggest that he is the “hope” the voters have been waiting for, and they will fill in the details in their own minds. “Change” works to attract voters disillusioned with President Bush and the Iraq War and who feel that any non-Republican alternative is an improvement. Two weeks before he launches his presidential campaign, Obama pays $375–$400 for two decades worth of unpaid parking tickets received while at Harvard Law School; he manages to avoid the late fees and penalties that would be imposed on an average citizen. [121, 353, 356, 1314]

In addition to paying old parking fines, Obama also relinquishes his law license in early 2007 to avoid the possibility of punishment for lying on his Illinois bar application. Obama’s application failed to disclose the fact that he had used different names in the past (Barry Soetoro, and perhaps Barry Dunham), had used drugs, and had unpaid parking tickets of approximately $400. A complaint against Obama was filed on March 13, 2007, but because he had just relinquished his license, he escaped an investigation and possible punishment (such as disbarment). [1096]

Arguably (and putting his inflated ego aside), Obama may have decided to run for president, rather than attempting first to be the vice-president of the more likely candidate, Hillary Clinton, partly because he knew he would never make it through the VP vetting process. There essentially is no presidential vetting process, especially if the media gives the candidate a pass on investigating his past or challenging his political philosophies.

The unpopularity of President Bush is also a significant factor in Obama’s decision to run because the odds of the Democrat candidate beating the Republican candidate are high in 2008, regardless of who the eventual two candidates are. Thus, the real race lies in the Democrat primaries, not the November election, and the odds in the primaries tend to favor the most liberal candidate because the most active party members are leftists. Obama knows he is the most liberal candidate in history, but he is also aware that 2008 may offer his best chance at the presidency because of the “Bush baggage” weighing down the Republican opponent. While he campaigns in the Democrat primary, Obama hopes the media will work against the strongest conservative candidates in the Republican primaries to help insure a weak opponent in the November election. (The media eagerly does what it can to get McCain—the least conservative of the Republican primary candidates—nominated.)

At the time of his candidacy announcement Obama has been present for work in the Senate a total of only 143 days. Obama’s announcement includes this statement, “I know that I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” (Obama’s remark is essentially lifted from John Edwards, who said when he announced his own candidacy in 2003, “I haven’t spent much of my life in politics… but I’ve spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change it.”) [349, 351, 353, 1595]

On January 24, the Obama Exploratory Committee releases the statement, “To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the (Trinity) United Church of Christ in Chicago.” On March 14, that statement is clarified, as follows: “Obama was never a practicing Muslim.” Obama’s Web site eventually includes this statement: “Obama Has Never Been A Muslim.” [353]

In early 2007, Obama states in a filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that he would work out an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public campaign financing. On an FEC questionnaire, Obama states, “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” (It later becomes clear that Obama never had any plans to honor that commitment.) [433]

In February, Obama votes for a bill raising the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour, making it more difficult for unskilled minority youths to be hired. [97]

New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof interviews Obama and writes, “Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated… Mr. Obama described the Muslim call to prayer as ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.’” The interview is later deleted from the New York Times Web pages. (Interestingly, although Obama says he was never a Muslim and never practiced the religion, he is able to recite from memory the “Adhan,” something he learned in a school in Indonesia more than 30 years earlier.) [122, 353]

Robert Wolf, CEO of the American branch of the Swiss banking giant UBS, collects more than $370,000 in campaign contributions for Obama. UBS lies to the government and conceals the identities of over 19,000 clients in order to help them avoid paying U.S. income taxes. [123, 448, 1286]

In 2007, the Obama campaign receives $32,000 from companies affiliated with Robert Blackwell. While an Illinois State Senator, Obama had received $112,000 from Blackwell in monthly $8,000 retainers, funneled through the law firm at which he had previously worked. Obama had persuaded the Illinois legislature to award $320,000 in state grants to Blackwell’s company, Killerspin, a company that promotes table tennis (ping-pong), sells equipment and apparel, and promotes tournaments. (It is unclear why Obama and his fellow legislators thought Illinois taxpayers should be forced to spend $320,000 on ping-pong.) Blackwell, in turn, raises between $100,000 and $200,000 for Obama’s campaign. The University of Chicago Medical Center, with Michelle Obama’s encouragement, had granted a $650,000 contract to another Blackwell company, Blackwell Consulting, for upgrading the center’s intranet. [207, 352, 1314]

On March 4, 2007, Obama appears at the Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church in Selma, Alabama, and incorrectly states that it was the Selma civil rights march that brought together his parents, Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Sr. (Obama was born in 1961, four years before the 1965 Selma march.) Obama also incorrectly states that his father was able to attend school in the United States because of the “Kennedy airlift” to help African students. (Obama’s father attended the University of Hawaii even before Kennedy had been elected.) These incorrect statements by Obama were likely meant to give him street cred in the civil rights movement and to associate him with the Kennedy mystique. [564]

In March 2007, Obama votes against repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), and against raising the death tax exemption to $5 million. [97]

In March, Obama endorses Chicago’s controversial Alderwoman Dorothy “the Hat” Tillman for re-election, even though she is being investigated for using city resources to hire her family and reward campaign donors. Tillman, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, routinely neglects to provide services for her constituents—her ward includes the largest concentration of weed and vermin-infested vacant lots in Chicago—while maintaining “an iron grip on every nickel that rolls into the 3rd Ward and has pulled in the backing of virtually every black big shot in the city.” Obama owes Tillman support in her tough primary campaign as re-payment for her support when he ran against Blair Hull in the 2004 Democrat primary for the U.S. Senate. Tillman loses the election. (In December of 2006 Tillman is arrested for criminal trespassing in her native Alabama, and spends two hours in jail before being bailed out. Charges are later dropped.) [1314, 1315, 1316]

Joe Anthony’s work maintaining the Obama MySpace.com page increases steadily. He asks the Obama campaign for remuneration for his thousands of hours of work, and for the tens of thousands of valuable supporter e-mail addresses he has collected. The Obama campaign laughably tells Anthony it “doesn’t have any money,” and forcibly takes control of the site with the help of the MySpace.com owners. Anthony alleges he was bullied by the Obama campaign, while Obama’s staffers allege that Anthony was simply trying to shake them down for money. In either event, Obama ends up with valuable e-mail addresses he would not have had without Anthony’s efforts. [1316, 1317]

To the Des Moines Register Obama makes the outrageous statement that “…nobody’s suffering more than the Palestinian people.” [387, 419]

Obama, a member or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, arrives late or leaves early for its meetings on May 17, 2005, September 28, 2005, April 26, 2006, May 18, 2006, July 13, 2006, September 13, 2006, September 19, 2006, January 17, 2007, January 23, 2007, and February 8, 2007. [421]

To raise money for her husband’s campaign, Obama’s wife charges $500 to have a photo taken with her. [124]

Obama gets Marshall Ganz to help train organizers and volunteers for his presidential campaign. Employees and volunteers go through several days of intense training sessions, called “Camp Obama.” The sessions are led by Ganz and Mike Kruglik (one of Obama’s past fellow community activists, who may be the “Marty Kaufman” in Obama’s Dreams From My Father). Ganz, Kruglik, and Obama all have long associations with ACORN and Alinsky-style activism and agitation methods. [284, 287, 842, p. 63]

Five ACORN employees are convicted in Washington State in “the worst case of election fraud” in the state’s history. Despite repeated charges of voter registration fraud and misuse of funds, Obama continues to support ACORN and repeatedly works to obtain federal funds for the organization. [240]

Obama works to prevent Hans von Spakovsky, an official in the Justice Department, from being named to the Federal Election Commission because von Spakovsky had supported a Georgia photo I.D. law. Like his ACORN supporters, Obama opposes voter I.D. laws. ACORN also opposes welfare reform and the strengthening of U.S. border security. [255]

In an April, 2007 speech, Obama, paraphrasing a line from Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals, says, “We don’t care about the world as it is we imagine the world as it might be.” [353]

In April 2007, Obama endorses the idea of “comparable worth pay” by supporting a bill sponsored by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. Under a comparable worth scheme, the federal government would define the value of every job in the United States, and then force employers to follow those rules. (A kindergarten teacher, for example, might be considered “worth” 82.7 per cent of a truck driver, while a truck driver might be considered to be “worth” 56.6 per cent of an electrical engineer.) The alleged (and absurd) logic of the plan is that it would “eliminate wage discrimination.” In practice, it would lead to substantially increased costs for all businesses, and introduce lawsuits into every aspect of wages and salary determinations. Asking for a raise would not mean meeting with your boss, but lobbying in Washington. Pay would be based not on what you know, but whom you know. (Those who draft the legislation and administer the pay rules would no doubt make sure they are “worth” the most.) [354]

In April 2007, chief campaign strategist David Axelrod meets with Obama in Obama’s Senate office. Congressional ethics rules prohibit the use of federal office space for political and campaign activity. [356]

On April 30, 2007, in an interview with the New York Times, Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, says, “My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.” [353, 2039]

In an April primary debate, NBC’s Brian Williams asks Obama what his military stance would be if two American cities were simultaneously struck by terrorist attacks. Obama’s response is, “Well, the first thing we’d have to do is make sure that we’ve got an effective emergency response, something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans. And I think that we have to review how we operate in the event of not only a natural disaster, but also a terrorist attack.” (Obama fails to state what his military response would be to a two-city terrorist attack, which was the focus of the question. It is unlikely that Obama’s answer made al-Qaeda leaders nervous.) [1921]

Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, Sarah Obama, tells the New York Times, “I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith.” (In early 2008, when the issue of candidate Obama’s religion is in the news, Sarah Obama tells USA Today that she too is a Christian, in an attempt to damper the “Obama is a Muslim” rumors.) [329, 2416]

In May of 2007, Obama votes for a bill requiring that “global warming” be factored into all federal project plans. [97]

On May 8, Obama criticizes U.S. automakers for not making more hybrid vehicles, like those manufactured by Honda and Toyota. At the time, Obama drives a Chrysler 300C with a large, gas guzzling, Hemi V-8 engine. [353]

Obama says, “ten thousand people died” in a Kansas tornado. The death toll was 12. [842 p. 362; 854]

On May 24, 2007, Obama votes to cut off all funding of military efforts in Afghanistan, but on the campaign trail Obama says more American troops need to be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan. [125]

On May 24, Facebook.com unveils a new platform, which allows independent developers to create applications that easily plug into the Facebook.com pages of users. The Obama campaign had been given access to the development process (along with Microsoft, the Washington Post, Digg.com, and others). The Obama campaign—but not the McCain campaign—was thus able to unveil new applications just hours after being introduced publicly. Chris Hughes, one of Facebook.com’s founders, had been working full-time for the Obama campaign since early 2007. Some argue that Facebook.com and Hughes made an illegal, in-kind donation to the Obama campaign. [1318]

Despite having been against the Iraq war since its inception, Obama does not cast a vote against funding the war until May of 2007. [2510]

In June of 2007, Obama votes against a resolution that declares English the official language of the United States. [97]

Despite a long history of corruption in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (Teamsters Union), Obama tells the union he will end its federal oversight if he is elected. The oversight was a result of the long history of corruption in that union; in exchange for votes, Obama is willing to remove that supervision and look the other way while the union commits additional crimes. Obama, not surprisingly, receives substantial campaign donations from the Teamsters Union. Obama also promises to support legislation allowing unions to avoid secret ballots in organizing campaigns, and legislation making it illegal for employers to hire new workers to replace striking employees. Such rules would effectively allow unions to blackmail employers, causing businesses to raise prices on goods and services and forcing companies to flee overseas or go out of business. [128, 256]

Obama states he would meet, with no pre-conditions, the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. [353]

On July 18, ABC News reports that Obama told Planned Parenthood sex education for kindergartners is “the right thing to do.” [337]

On July 22, Obama’s church bulletin publishes a Hamas document that defends terrorism, denounces Israel, and equates the Hamas charter (which calls for the murder of all Jews) with the American Declaration of Independence. Obama claims he was never in church when his spiritual mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, delivered his fiery, anti-white, anti-American sermons; Obama apparently also never reads and denounces his church bulletins… or he agrees with their contents. [2589]

On July 25, Obama tells media bigwigs and corporate CEOs in a meeting at the Time-Warner Center in Manhattan, “One thing I’m very confident about is my judgment in foreign policy is, I believe, better than any other candidate in this race, Republican or Democrat.” [353]

Obama tells friend Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian activist in Chicago, that he cannot talk more about the “Palestinian cause” because his primary campaign has “constrained” what he can say. Abunimah tells the far-left radio talk show Democracy Now! he has known Obama for many years and “when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time.”  Abunimah responds to Obama’s sudden about-face and soft support of Israel during the campaign by remarking, “He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.” [130, 223, 335]

Obama receives advisory support from Zbigniew Bzrezinski (Obama’s Chief Foreign Policy Advisor and former President Jimmy Carter’s inept National Security Advisor); Samantha Power (senior foreign policy advisor); General Merrill A. McPeak (senior military advisor, who believes the United States drove Iran to hate Israel); Joseph Cirincione (Obama’s advisor on nuclear threats, who denies the known fact that North Korea assisted Syria in the development of a plutonium plant); Daniel Kurtzer (Middle East advisor, who has received criticism for pushing Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights); and Robert O. Malley. All are known for their anti-Israel views. [356, 1583]

The globalist Brzezinski’s book, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, describes the future he is looking forward to helping create. He writes, “The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, (who are) unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by authorities.” He then states, “Today we are again witnessing the emergence of transnational elites… ties cut across national boundaries… it is likely that before long the social elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist in spirit and outlook… The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty… Further progress will require greater American sacrifices. More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken, with some consequent risk to the present relatively favorable American position.” This was written by Obama’s Chief Foreign Policy Advisor, who may be expected to encourage Obama to pursue those stated goals. (Apparently to cover all bases, Brzezinski’s son Mark works for the Obama campaign, his son Ian works for the McCain campaign, and his daughter Mika works for MSNBC.) [2045]

Robert O. Malley’s father, Simon Malley, was an Egyptian-born journalist, member of the Egyptian Communist Party, close friend of Yasser Arafat, anti-Semite and anti-American. Malley had been expelled from France in 1980 for, according to government officials, “political activities which do not correspond with, and even run contrary to, French interests in certain countries…” and some articles written by Malley that were “genuine appeals to murder foreign chiefs of state.” Robert Malley served as Clinton’s Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs (1998–2000). (In May of 2008, Obama removes Malley from his list of official advisors after it is reported that he had met with the terrorist group Hamas, but he continues to rely on his advice and support.) [453]

Also advising Obama are Richard Clark (foreign policy advisor, who has said that if captured, Osama bin Laden should be allowed to appeal his case in U.S. courts); Wesley Clark (the “perfumed prince” who commanded the Fort Hood military forces at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in which 76 people—including 23 children—were killed); Richard Danzig (national security advisor, who said the U.S. war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh); Sam Graham-Felsen (Obama’s official blogger, who has written for a socialist magazine); Austan Goolsbee (chief economic advisor who, in 2007, wrote a defense of sub-prime mortgage loans); Penny Pritzker (financial chairperson, and former head of Chicago’s Superior Bank FSB, which eventually failed because many of its assets were invested in sub-prime mortgages while Pritzker cooked the books long enough for her to make millions, resulting in RICO charges and $450 million in penalties); and Susan Rice (a known anti-Semite and senior foreign policy advisor who, as assistant secretary of state under Bill Clinton, and with the aforementioned Richard Clark, persuaded Clinton not to accept Sudan’s offer to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States). [356, 360, 831, 1282, 2467, 2505]

Obama economic advisor Goolsbee wrote in 2006, “Future increases in tax rates potentially threaten to significantly reduce the value of your retirement savings and may even mean that you should not save in 401(k) accounts at all.” (Goolsbee was perhaps looking ahead to working with Obama and a Democrat majority in Congress, because it is reported in October of 2008 that “House Democrats are looking at eliminating most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks for 401(k) investors.” That would allow capital gains to be taxed every year, instead of deferring taxes to retirement.) [378, 379]

On September 17, at a gathering in Indianola, Iowa, Obama is photographed during the playing of the National Anthem. He  holds his hands together below his waist, while primary opponents Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton respectfully hold their right hands over their hearts. [353]

Obama pledges a “full withdrawal” of American troops from Iraq. [1314]

Obama again agrees to use public financing for his campaign. He makes that promise several more times, but eventually disregards it totally—which enables him to collect significant contributions from Goldman Sachs, UBS bank, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and other financial giants. Refusing public financing also allows Obama to collect almost unlimited amounts of donations via the Internet, much of which is essentially impossible to trace (such as illegal foreign donations or contributions using electronic gift cards). Obama campaign records show a substantial number of questionable entries, such as $19,500 in 786 separate donations from a person named “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, New York.” His employer is listed as “Loving” and his occupation as “You.” It is virtually impossible to trace donations submitted over the Internet with such phony information, which enables Obama to take in illegal contributions from overseas donors. Even if the Federal Election Commission questions the entries, it is also impossible to order them returned. In June, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi said in a speech, “All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency…” (Qaddafi is mistaken or lying; foreign contributions to American presidential candidates are illegal.) [353, 2045, 2513]

In September of 2007, Orlando Jones is found dead of allegedly self-inflicted gun wounds. Jones, the subject of an FBI corruption inquiry, had left his position in Cook County government to create a lobbying firm with Obama’s pal Tony Rezko. [842 p. 192]

On September 20, Obama submits a letter to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hearing encouraging diversity in the media and the promotion of localism. One month later Obama sends another letter to the FCC Chairman, emphasizing that the Commission has failed in that regard. The FCC localism rule can be used to remove a radio station’s broadcast license, putting it off the air and out of business. The liberal organization Center for American Progress (CAP) issues a report in 2007 concluding there are too many conservatives on the radio and calls on the FCC to use the localism rule accordingly. The CEO of CAP is John Podesta, former Clinton staffer and the eventual head of Obama’s White House transition team. (Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, once successfully lobbied the FCC to use the localism rule to take away the broadcast license of a station it felt was not covering the civil rights movement fairly.) [520]

The Senate votes 72–25 to condemn MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” ad in the New York Times. Hillary Clinton votes against the resolution. Obama does not vote. [2515]

In October of 2007, Obama co-sponsors legislation, the Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2007, which makes it easier for homeowners to protect themselves from losing their homes. The bill also intentionally shields ACORN and other middleman groups from being charged with violations of the Truth in Lending Act in connection with obtaining mortgages for clients. [310]

The New York Times, on October 30, 2007, reports, “Obama has declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcripts or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years…” [2218]

Obama promises Planned Parenthood the first law he will sign if elected president will be the Freedom of Choice Act. The legislation would overturn virtually all state pro-life laws, including prohibitions against partial-birth abortions and parental notification requirements for minors seeking abortions. [132, 133]

On November 1, Obama says, “We’ve got to make sure that people who have more money help the people who have less money.” The Federal Reserve Board injects $41 billion into the money supply for banks to borrow at a low rate. [353, 1238]

On November 2, Obama tells a Manning, South Carolina crowd, “I’m not just asking you to take a chance on me. I’m also asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.” (On June 3, 2006, Massachusetts candidate for Governor Deval Patrick had told a crowd, “I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me. I’m asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.” On more than one occasion, Obama has plagiarized Patrick’s statements.) [842, p. 315]

In a speech to ACORN members, Obama brags that when he “…ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it.” (In 2008, when critics connect Obama to ACORN and Project Vote, Obama disavows having worked for or with the groups.) [283]

In a November 9, 2007 interview on Iowa Public Television’s Iowa Press, Obama declares that Americans will have to change their habits because of global warming. He advocates price increases to encourage people to use less electricity and gas, and states, “I think it is important for us to send some price signals to change behavior. You know, if electricity goes up, people start becoming more mindful of their electricity bill.” Obama is suggesting that the government artificially force energy prices higher in order to force changes in consumer behavior. [447]

On December 1, 2007, Obama speaks to the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum, at a gathering held exclusively for community organizers and members of the Gamaliel Foundation and ACORN. Obama tells the group that even before he is sworn in as president, “During the transition (period) we’re gonna [sic] be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda,” and assures them that they will be actively involved in the first 100 days of his administration. [280]

Obama avoids casting a Senate vote on a November 2007 resolution that declares the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an elite part of the Iranian military, a terrorist organization. [351]

Oprah Winfrey campaigns with Obama in Iowa and South Carolina in December. [1314]

On the primary campaign trail in Iowa, Obama boasts that he passed a bill requiring nuclear plants to promptly report radioactive leaks. The bill, which would have affected energy company Exelon, had never been passed, and each time the bill went through Obama’s staff its language was weakened. Exelon executives and employees have donated at least $227,000 to Obama campaigns since 2003. (Exelon was formerly known as Commonwealth Edison, and its CEO was Thomas Ayers, father of Obama friend William Ayers.) [842 p. 258]

While campaigning in corn-rich Iowa, Obama says he supports corn-based ethanol—even though it takes seven barrels of oil to produce eight barrels of ethanol, and food prices would rise drastically if corn were to be used extensively as a fuel. [842 p. 259]

On December 23, 2007, Donald Young, a friend of Obama and the gay choir director of Obama’s Chicago church, is murdered, gangland style. Young “knew more,” according to Larry Sinclair, a man who claims he shared crack cocaine and homosexual activities with Obama in the back of a Chicago cab in 1999, and again in a hotel in Gurnee, Illinois. The media has chosen not to interview the cab driver, whose name, according to Sinclair, is either Paramjit Singh Multani or Jagir P. Multani. (Sinclair publicly admits to having a 20-year-old arrest record for crimes involving forgery and passing bad checks.) One other gay member of Obama’s church, Larry Bland, is also murdered within a few weeks of Young. Young’s mother and several of his friends have purportedly suggested that Obama had a relationship with the murdered man. A third man, Nate Spencer, dies of an illness, although some have suggested he was also murdered. (It has been suggested that Obama’s campaign guru David Axelrod, through his businesses AKP&D Message and Media or ASK Public Strategies, paid the formerly pornographic Web site whitehouse.com $750,000 to discredit Sinclair.) [134, 135, 136, 392, 393, 409, 842 pp. 143, 352–353, 358; 1242, 2278, 2475]

During the Christmas service at Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright says, “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a process that is controlled by rich white men. Hillary can never know that, Hillary ain’t ever been called a nigger!” (Wright makes the statement during a Christmas service.) Obama contends he never heard such remarks from Wright or he would have condemned them. Apparently the allegedly church-going Obama (who records show was in Chicago at Christmas in 2007) failed to catch that part of Wright’s sermon. Whether Obama’s children were in church to hear Wright’s remarks is unknown. Note that Obama does not believe in giving Christmas presents to his children. (Some might argue that his lack of Christmas gift giving is support for the argument that Obama is a “closet” Muslim, although it may simply mean he believes Christmas has become too commercial and gifts are not reflective of the Christian significance of the day.) [357, 361]

2008

“Hope and Change”

Obama is one of the Illinois politicians cited in the indictment of his long-time friend and fundraiser, Tony Rezko, for having received political contributions from Rezko’s kickback funds. Obama allegedly returns between $85,000 and $250,000 in political contributions received from Rezko. [138, 139, 207]

ACORN feverishly registers new Democrat voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and other states to boost Obama’s chances of winning the primaries and the general election. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio alone, ACORN registers more than 75,000 new voters. Fraud is certainly involved, inasmuch as the voter rolls in that county already exceed the number of adult residents living there by 200,000. ACORN’s Project Vote activity has a tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code, which prohibits its involvement in partisan political activity, but its workers consistently violate those laws when they pass out Obama literature and advocate his candidacy as they register new voters. [54, 240]

According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, Obama requests $860 million in earmarks during 2007 and 2008. They include $1 million for his wife Michelle’s employer, $62 million for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, $8 million for Human Genome Expression, $4.8 million for a Light Emitting Diode Healing Program, $2 million for a Soybean Disease Biotechnology Center, and money for projects linked to campaign donors. [140]

In January, Obama confirms that he supports drivers licenses for illegal immigrants (which his campaign refers to as “undocumented people”) and will take up immigration reform during his first year in office. [341]

On January 17, in a recorded interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama explains his expensive cap-and-trade tax to address global warming. With regard to using coal for power plants Obama states, “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” (Obama does not repeat that remark when campaigning in coal-producing states like Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Colorado.) Roughly one-half of the nation’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, which would either be bankrupted or would have to charge much higher rates based on Obama’s statement that he “…would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.” [442, 443, 450]

Obama goes on to say, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket… even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas… you name it… whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations. That will cost money… they will pass that money on to the consumers.” [455]

Obama tells American Morning host John Roberts that high taxes are in the best interest of the American economy. [353, 1620]

In January of 2008, Michelle Obama says, “…sometimes it’s easier to hold on to your own stereotypes and misconceptions. It makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America.” [352]

Before the start of the January 28 State of the Union Address by President Bush, Obama rudely and abruptly turns around to avoid acknowledging Hillary Clinton as she approaches to shake the hand of Senator Edward Kennedy. [2050]

With a straight face, Obama tells a Dartmouth College audience that his job “…is to be so persuasive… that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack.” (Obama’s frequent use of speech hypnosis tricks gets the better of him with that statement, and it is widely ridiculed.) [1121, 2048]

On January 30, 2008, Obama reiterates his support for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. [353]

In February, the Obama campaign reluctantly releases copies of his wife Michelle’s 1985 Princeton thesis on racial divisions, entitled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” (It had originally planned to keep it concealed at least until after the election. Luckily for Obama, few people choose read the document and endure its spelling errors, improper grammar, poorly constructed sentences, and nonsensical arguments.) In the introduction to her angry paper, Michelle LaVaughan Robinson writes, “I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feels like a visitor on campus; as if I really didn’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich [sic] I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.” She then unknowingly proceeds to convince the reader that everyone looks at her as “Black first and a student second” precisely because that is how she presents herself. She writes, “It is possible that Black individuals either chose to or felt pressured to come together with other Blacks on campus because of the belief that Blacks must join in solidarity to combat a White oppressor.” Her thesis states, “By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation [sic] of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to [sic] their plight.” Critics who have read the thesis say it is the “most sophomoric, non-scholarly piece of drivel ever,” and claim it exposes a “lack of academic rigor” at Princeton. [352, 597, 842 p. 121; 2589]

Michelle Obama has stated that her SAT scores were not good enough to get her into Princeton but she was admitted with a scholarship—suggesting racial quotas greased the skids for her. Once at Princeton, she learns that the students are more interested in studying and preparing for their careers than the feelings of a quota student who believes she is a victim of racial prejudice. Her thesis is thus much ado about nothing; it is essentially (like her husband’s autobiography) about herself and her “feelings.” [842 pp. 115, 124]

On February 10, Obama wins a Grammy Award in the “best spoken word album” category for the audio book version of The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. [2217]

Lauren Collins, a reporter for the Guardian’s Observer, attends a February service at Trinity United Church of Christ. After the service, she approaches Reverend Wright to talk about Michelle Obama. Wright says, “She’s from the ’hood,” and then Collins is quickly told by Wright’s handlers that interviews with him are forbidden. When asked by Collins about the controversial Wright, Michelle Obama responds, “You know, your pastor is like your grandfather, right? There are plenty of things he (Wright) says that I don’t agree with, that Barack doesn’t agree with…  So, you know, you make choices, and you sort of… you can’t disown yourself from your family because they’ve got things wrong. You try to be a part of expanding the conversation.” One can, of course, certainly stop attending a church when “they’ve got things wrong,” although one cannot change one’s genealogy. (Candidate Obama also uses the “can’t disown your own grandfather” analogy, which suggests he and his wife knew the issue would come up often and that would be their standard response.) [2215]

On February 18, Michelle Obama says at a rally in Milwaukee, “…for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country” The comment draws severe criticism and allegations that she is un-American—or at least unappreciative of the wealth and privilege she has been able to accumulate as a citizen of a country for which she has obvious contempt. (She repeats the same comment later in the day in Madison, Wisconsin.) [352, 2215]

In February, a photo is released that shows a Cuban flag, adorned with the picture of communist murderer Ernesto “Che” Guevara, hanging on the wall of Obama’s Houston campaign office. Obama fans who admire Guevara are likely not aware that, besides being a violent thug who executed political prisoners, he was a racist who wrote, “The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent… We’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the Cuban revolution. By which I mean: NOTHING!” [353, 2052]

The controversial anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, praises Obama as the “new messiah.” [471,558,559]

In February, Obama denies that Austan Goolsbee, one of his economic advisors, told the Canadian government during his visit there that the candidate does not mean what he says publicly about opting out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and that his criticism of NAFTA was just campaign rhetoric. The Canadian government confirms that the statement was in fact made. (During the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, to garner union support, Obama pledges to renegotiate NAFTA.) [353, 1688]

Obama names Penny Pritzker his national finance chairperson. Pritzker is the former chairperson of the board of the Superior Bank, which went out of business because of irresponsible mortgage practices in the 1990s. Obama names Martin Nesbitt treasurer for his presidential campaign. Nesbitt, a close friend of Obama (with whom he often plays basketball), is also vice-president of the Pritzker Realty Group, and is the chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). Nesbitt, who is also a friend of Valerie Jarrett, contributed at least $10,000 to Obama campaigns, and the Pritzker name appears frequently in lists of Obama contributors. (Fundraising for Obama by Nesbitt and Pritzker was instrumental in his winning his U.S. Senate seat in 2004.) Nesbitt’s wife, Anita Blanchard, is an obstetrician who delivered Michelle Obama’s two children. [353, 664, 1185]

Obama defends his association with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn with the statement, “The notion that…me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago… somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense.” Dohrn once publicly praised Charles Manson and his followers for killing actress Sharon Tate. Dohrn’s words were, “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!” In 2007 (which is considerably more recent than 40 years ago) Ayers describes the United States as an “…incipient fascist country,” and talks about overthrowing capitalism, while Dohrn, at a reunion of the radical group Students for a Democratic Society, says that “…living in America constitutes living in the belly of the beast” and “the heart of the monster”—but those statements of Obama’s friends are not supposed to reflect on him or his values. Nor, apparently, does it bother Obama that Dohrn served prison time for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating a Brink’s robbery in which three people were killed. Obama may as well have said, “The notion that my being friends with someone who was on the FBI’s most wanted list and went to prison reflects on me should be disregarded… otherwise I might not be elected president.” (Obama and Charles Ogletree, a friend and close advisor who has long supported slavery reparations, should try to understand that many Americans feel “The notion that my great-great-great-great-great-grandparents engaged in the detestable act of slavery 250 years ago somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense.”) [141, 142, 143, 2271]

When further criticized for his friendship with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the Obama campaign issues a lengthy document trivializing their actions as 1960s radicals and defending them as “respectable fixtures of the mainstream in Chicago.” In a September 11, 2001 New York Times interview, Ayers says of his bombing history, “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.” In a memoir published by Ayers after 9/11, he wrote that America is “not a just and fair and decent place… it makes me want to puke.” The cover of Ayers’ book is a photograph of him trampling on an American flag. [143, 144]

Accountable America, an organization that supports Obama, sends threatening letters to nearly 10,000 citizens who frequently contribute to Republican causes, warning them of potential legal problems if they finance conservative groups. [145, 146, 338]

Obama supports a Democrat housing bill that provides $200 million to community groups—including ACORN—for homeowner foreclosure counseling. ACORN, in turn, pledges to spend $35 million to register new Democrat voters in 2008. [147, 148, 149]

When Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s controversial, anti-American sermons are revealed to the public by the media, Obama says he knows nothing about such remarks and adds a “dog ate my homework” statement, “I wasn’t in church that day.” [239]

Before the Ohio primary in 2008, Obama’s campaign gives ACORN $832,598, allegedly for get-out-the-vote activities. The money is paid to ACORN through Citizens Consulting, Incorporated (CCI), which ACORN uses for distributing funds. Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN, also exercises control over CCI. At the same time Obama gives ACORN almost one million in cash, it is dealing with the IRS over liens of almost one million. [240, 1971]

In February, Obama votes against raising the death tax exemption from $1 million to $5 million. [97]

On February 26, during a primary debate in Cleveland, Obama states he will work with John McCain to ensure they both use public financing. (The Obama campaign never does so. In his 1996 candidate questionnaire, when running for the Illinois State Senate, Obama had responded “Yes” to the question, “Do you support public financing of election campaigns?”) [433]

On February 28, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduces Senate Bill 2678, the Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act. The bill is intended to allow McCain to be considered natural born citizens eligible to serve as president. (An argument can be made that he is not a natural born citizen because he was born in Panama to a military family stationed there.) The bill is co-sponsored by Obama and Senators Hillary Clinton, Robert Menendez, and Tom Coburn, but does not pass. [820]

On February 29, Michelle Obama visits a daycare center in Zanesville, Ohio, where she complains about how difficult it is to survive financially in America because she has to spend $10,000 on “piano and dance and sports supplements” and “summer programs and so on and so forth,” for her daughters. She typically tells her audiences, “I don’t care where I am, the first question is ‘How are you managing it all? How are you holding up?’” The remark is meant to get the crowd to feel sorry for her and to believe she is enduring a great hardship, as though she is doing them a favor by consenting to speak to them. (“Wow! She took time from her busy schedule to visit us regular folks in little old Zanesville!”) She also tells the crowd—in complete disregard for the truth about the lucrative careers she and her husband have had—“Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Become social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry, then your salaries respond.” (The Obama couple’s “move out of the money-making industry” resulted in a 2006 reported income of $991,296. The total included $273,618 from Michelle Obama’s income from the University of Chicago Hospitals.) [110, 111, 352, 842 pp. 125,128; 1046]

On March 1, Obama tells an Ohio gathering “America is at its best when it’s not fearful. I mean, if you think about our history, our most shameful times have been when we were afraid.” [1221]

The government of Columbia raids a camp in Ecuador run by the leftist narco-terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Columbia, or FARC). Items confiscated include several laptop computers that contain thousands of documents, spreadsheets, multimedia files, Web pages, images, written documents, and e-mail addresses. Obama’s name appears on more than one document on the confiscated laptop. In one document, FARC leader Raul Reyes (who is killed in the raid) relates that he met “two gringos” who assured him “the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support ‘Plan Columbia’ nor will he sign the TLC (Free Trade Agreement).” The identities of the “two gringos” are unknown and it is unclear who might have authorized them to speak to FARC terrorists on Obama’s behalf. Information on the laptop also suggests that FARC is receiving aid from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. (FARC’s tentacles spread worldwide. Reyes’ son, Ariel Robespierre Diva, visited Berlin in 2005 to try to persuade Germany’s Party of Democratic Socialism—the successor to the East German Communist Party—to remove FARC from the list of terrorist organizations.) During the campaign, Obama says little about Columbia other than to criticize President Bush’s good relations with President Alvaro Uribe, a U.S. ally. (FARC has been holding three American hostages.) [1614, 1615, 1616]

In March 2008, Obama says of his controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” Obama’s remark is calculated to allow him to turn any criticism of his association with Wright into a racist attack. [150]

In San Antonio on March 3, several Chicago reporters ask Obama about his connections with Tony Rezko. Obama avoids the questions, saying, “These requests, I think, could just go on forever. At some point, what we need to try to do is respond to what’s pertinent.” (Politicians generally use that “It’s time to move on” response when they want to avoid an issue, in the hope that it will go away. The technique often works because the less capable reporters meekly comply; they fear being shut out by the candidate if they press too hard. That is, they care more about their careers than pursuing the story.) [249]

Obama’s foreign policy advisor, Samantha Powers, resigns from the campaign after calling Hillary Clinton a “monster.” Powers nevertheless expects a top position in an Obama Administration, despite having publicly discussed the possibility of invading Israel to help create a Palestinian state. [233, 234, 235, 236]

In the March 11 issue of the New Yorker, Michelle Obama, with a seemingly endless supply of racial hatred, criticizes the United States as a mean country. “We’re a divided country; we’re a country that is just downright mean. (We are) guided by fear… We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day. Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime.” [842 p. 121]

One of Obama’s supporters is billionaire James S. Crown. Crown is a member of Obama’s National Finance Committee, and serves on the board of General Dynamics. In 2006, Obama had secured federal funds for General Dynamics’ High-Explosive Technology Program for the Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle, an inadequate machine ridiculed by soldiers as an “Exploding Coffin.” [830, 842 p. 274]

On March 13, former Congresswoman and 1984 vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro steps down from her fundraising post in Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign after intense media criticism for her comment to the Daily Breeze (Torrance, California) newspaper that Obama was benefiting from being black. “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman—of any color—he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” In defending her politically incorrect but accurate comment, Ferraro judiciously recognized that her own prior national-ticket candidacy was because of her gender, with the admission that “In 1984, if my name were Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been chosen as the vice-president (nominee).” With the help of the media, Obama thus has the advantage of no one else being permitted to bring up the topic of race—while he is free to use it at any time. [1173]

On March 16, J. P. Morgan Chase acquires Bear Stearns for $2 per share. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is at 11,972.25. [1238]

Obama makes the remarkable comment, “All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn.” (In other words, “If anyone has ever said anything that is offensive, I am against what he said.”) [353]

On March 18, Obama delivers what is billed as an “important race speech” in Philadelphia in response to questions raised about his association with his controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Instead of criticizing Wright and suggesting that he, Obama, was wrong to associate with the hate-filled, racist minister, Obama condescendingly blames the American people for their inveterate racism. He turns what could have been a sincere apology into an accusation. With the help of an uncritical and supportive media, Obama gets away with it. [842 pp. 112–113]

In March, Obama votes to continue allowing federal funds to be distributed to declared “sanctuary cities” (cities which support hiding illegal aliens from immigration authorities and which interfere with deportation attempts). He also votes for a bill increasing taxes on those who earn more than $1 million per year, and votes against allowing a reduction in the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). [97]

According to the State Department, Obama’s federal passport file is improperly viewed at least three times, at least once by someone sympathetic to his campaign. (A few weeks later, a police officer involved with the investigation of the illegal passport access is found shot to death in his automobile in Washington, D.C.) [158, 2438, 2439]

On April 1, Obama visits Tama Manufacturing in Allentown, Pennsylvania. After some gratuitous flirting with a female employee, Obama praises the company as a success story, saying, “I’m glad to see we still have a good company here with a good owner looking after his workers.” Obama is unaware that Tama workers make $10.50 per hour and had recently been on a 15-week strike. [842 p. 331]

Obama, wooing blue-collar votes in Pennsylvania, goes to a bowling alley. His score is an almost unbelievable 37. This prompts some critics to ask, “If he bowls like a fag, does that mean he is one?”  [842 p. 404; 856]

The Democrats’ increase in the federal cigarette tax, from $0.39 to $1.01 per pack, goes into effect. In New York City, the cost of a pack of cigarettes tops $9.00 (which includes over $5.00 in state and local taxes). [2413]

Obama remarks in an April 6 speech in San Francisco that because of lost jobs the residents of small-town America “…get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or (become) anti-immigrant.” His imprudent comment, full of patronizing condescension and contempt, draws severe criticism from gun-owners and churchgoers. [273, 315, 1609]

During that same speech, Obama mentions his 1981 trip to Pakistan in an effort to “shore up” his foreign policy credentials, saying, “I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.” Obama’s press secretary Bill Burton later confirms the trip, which immediately prompts questions from those who wonder how Obama could have gotten into Pakistan during a period of martial law when Americans, Christians, Jews, and most non-Muslims were prohibited from entering that nation. [1609]

On April 10, Obama says he favors repealing Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” practice for gays serving in the military. [337]

Michelle Obama addresses a Pennsylvania crowd where the rally is staffed by volunteers from Carnegie Mellon student organizations. Obama’s staffers make a special effort to control the seating of people who will appear on camera behind Mrs. Obama. Witnesses hear one coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” [352, 842 p. 321]

In a primary debate on April 17 Obama makes the statement, “I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can’t constrain the exercise of that right.” (As an Illinois State Senator, Obama voted four times against legislation that would allow citizens to use firearms to defend their homes and families.) [337]

On April 18, Citigroup reveals an additional $12 billion in sub-prime losses. Its $40 billion total loss exceeds those of all other banks. The DJIA is at 12,849.36. [1238]

Under political pressure, Obama, in May of 2008, half-heartedly disowns Reverend Jeremiah Wright and (at least temporarily) quits his controversial church. [151]

Reverend Wright responds to Obama’s newfound criticism by saying, “He had to distance himself, because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American.” Wright tells the media that friends had written to him and said, “We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected.” Wright then added, “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.” [446]

A birth certificate purported to be Obama’s is alleged to be that of his younger half-sister, Maya Kassandra Soetoro (b. 1970), which was altered to make it look like the candidate’s. Although Maya Soetoro was born in Indonesia, her mother later had her birth registered in Hawaii. [153, 289]

Having failed to get Senate Bill 2678 passed, on April 10 Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduces Senate Resolution 511 to “recognize that John Sidney McCain is a natural born citizen.” The resolution is intended to clarify that McCain is eligible to be president even though he was born in Panama. Because McCain’s parents were both Americans and he was born in Panama while his military father was stationed there, existing law arguably already covers McCain and he is eligible to serve as president. McCaskill’s resolution is therefore unnecessary and serves no purpose, but an effort is made by McCaskill and Obama to change the resolution’s language to provide a “blanket cover” for other foreign-born candidates without military backgrounds—in an attempt to enable Obama to be eligible to serve as president should it be discovered that he was not born in Hawaii. McCaskill and Obama have the following language inserted, “Whereas previous presidential candidates were born outside of the United States of America and were understood to be eligible to be President…” They unsuccessfully attempt to remove the following language, “…and Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936.” The only reasonable explanation for the resolution and the proposed changes to make it more generic and less McCain-specific is to cover Obama if he is not a natural born citizen. (McCaskill’s personal motives in sponsoring the resolution may relate to her being mentioned as a possible vice-president for Obama, to whom she gave early support.) [301, 303, 2647]

At an April 17 campaign appearance in Raleigh, North Carolina, Obama crudely and childishly “gives Hillary Clinton the finger” by scratching his face with his middle finger while mentioning her by name. [842 p. 332; 853, 2049]

On April 18, police Lieutenant Quarles Harris, Jr. is found shot to death in his car in Washington, D.C. Harris had been cooperating with federal investigators in connection with the 2008 illegal access of passport information related to Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. (A year later, there are still no arrests in connection with the murder/assassination.) [2438]

Hillary Clinton beats Obama in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary 55 to 45 points. Obama is harmed partly by the over-saturation of his ads (he outspends Clinton by a margin of two-to-one or more), and partly by voters who had simply tired of seeing and hearing him and listening to his condescending tone. Obama is also harmed some by his homophobic refusal to grant interviews with gay publications. The Philadelphia Gay News had featured an interview with Clinton, with the headline, “Clinton Talks, Obama Walks.” [842 p. 332]

It is reported that the Obama campaign’s official blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, has participated in labor riots in France, written articles for a socialist magazine, and hung in his dorm room a communist flag he had purchased on a trip to Russia. [1244]

In the few weeks following his defeat in Pennsylvania, Obama loses enthusiasm. He puts forward no new proposals, repeats his standard stump speech, and appears stale and tired. One British journalist notes that Obama is an “Adulation addict: he needed the adoration of the mob as his emotional fuel.” He was not getting it after the Pennsylvania loss. Most of Obama’s primary wins were early; he was ahead of Clinton in delegate count as a result, but she was winning the later primaries. [842 p. 335]

On April 27, Obama tells Fox News host Chris Wallace, “I have promised that I would sit down with John McCain and talk about can we preserve a public (financing) system.” Obama never fulfills that promise. [433]

On April 29, Obama states, “I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination.” [337]

Obama promises, “I will make ending the genocide in Darfur a priority from day one.” [1680]

In a primary debate statement that reveals Obama’s hatred of capitalism, Obama tells ABC’s Charlie Gibson, “I would look at raising the capital-gains tax for purposes of fairness”—even though raising that tax would ultimately result in shrinking federal revenues. Gibson correctly points out that a higher capital gains tax typically means less tax revenue for the federal government, but Obama remarks that he would raise it anyway (simply to punish people who make money through the capitalist system). [265, 295]

The Guardian asks Michelle Obama if she was offended by Bill Clinton’s January remark that her husband’s perception of the war in Iraq is a “fairy tale.” She responds, “No… I want to rip his eyes out!”  After a glance from an aide, she adds, “Kidding… see, this is what gets me into trouble.” [2214, 2215]

In May, the New York Times reports that Obama quietly dumped his anti-Israel advisor Robert O. Malley after the media learned he had regular contacts with the Iran-financed terrorist group Hamas.

Nevada issues an arrest warrant for Tony Rezko for having written at least $450,000 in bad checks to Caesar’s Palace and Bally’s. Rezko also allegedly owes $331,000 to the Bellagio casino. The checks are from Rezko’s account at Broadway Bank, which is run by the mob-connected Giannoulias family. The checks date back to 2006, when the bank’s vice-president, Obama-endorsed Alexi Giannoulias, was running for Illinois State Treasurer. [319]

Upon winning the North Carolina primary Obama remarks, “I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.” President Roosevelt never spoke with Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Emperor Hirohito, or Hideki Tojo. Nor did President Truman speak with them or with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. (President Kennedy did meet with Soviet Premier Khrushchev in 1961, and was considered by him a lightweight who could be intimidated and blackmailed.) [2511]

Sometime in May 2008, Obama meets with Hassam Qazwini, a pro-Iranian lobbyist and head of the Islamic Center of America. [1973]

To a gathering in Oregon, Obama talks about the need to lead by example with regard to global warming, and remarks that “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 per cent of the world’s resources with just 4 per cent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say, ‘You just go ahead, we’ll be fine.’”  Obama’s statement suggests that Americans must drastically reduce their standard of living, rather than encourage residents of other nations to improve theirs. Obama’s method of accomplishing that reduced standard of living will likely be a “global-warming tax” or “carbon tax”—which would cause utility bills to skyrocket. [481, 2685]

While in Oregon, Obama states he has campaigned in “57 states.” Obama critics immediately argue that his remark was a Freudian slip and he was subconsciously thinking of the 57 Islamic member