Obama at Columbia: the “lost” years in more ways than one
Now that Reid has escalated the attacks on Romney for not releasing a decade of his past tax returns, the issue of Obama’s secrecy about his Columbia years has resurfaced. The cry is: “Want Mitt to release his tax returns? Then release the Columbia transcripts!”
But I digress.
There is no requirement that a candidate publish a college transcript, of course. But in Obama’s case, since a great deal of his reputation during the 2008 campaign rested on the assumption that he’d been a brilliant student, his failure to do so seems a bit odd.
Let me go on record here as saying that I really don’t care all that much what Obama’s grades were in college, except as a way to shock some of his followers if in fact they turn out to have been be bad. The larger issues are, as speculated in this piece by libertarian Wayne Allyn Root: did Obama enroll as a foreign student? How was his education financed? Were his grades of the sort that would ordinarily lead to entree to a school such as Harvard Law? And another matter, one that would not appear on any transcript but which is of interest nevertheless: did Obama have any friends at Columbia, and if not, why not?
Some of these question were asked before, in a WSJ editorial from September of 2008 [emphasis mine]:
What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him.…He got a degree in political science without honors. “For about two years there, I was just painfully alone and really not focused on anything, except maybe thinking a lot,” he told his biographer David Mendell.
“Two years” would have been the total amount of time Obama attended Columbia, by the way, since he had transferred there for his junior year.
The situation is especially curious because at Occidental, the college where Obama spent his freshman and sophomore years, he did have friends. But at Columbia, just as he describes above, he seems to have had almost no contact with his fellow students. Even his roommate was not a Columbia student—or a student at all, for that matter. He was Sohale Siddiqi, a Pakistani employed as a waiter and boutique salesman, given to drugging and partying. Obama had met Siddiqi through Obama’s Pakistani friends at Occidental.
Siddiqui later described Obama (and himself) in similar terms to what Obama told Mendell:
We were both very lost. We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay.
Perhaps at least part of the reason for this was that Obama was a transfer student; after all, it’s not so easy to make new friends in a large school after transferring junior year—as I know from personal experience, since I did the same thing. But although I never made tons of friends when I transferred to a large school in my junior year, I certainly made some, and if called open to name them I could come up with quite a few.
The MSM’s lack of curiosity on the matter (of Obama’s transcripts, that is, not mine) is striking. It shouldn’t be all that difficult to do some investigative reporting on this, if the will to do so existed. But right now it remains a fringe cause, hammered home by people such as Root, but mostly ignored or ridiculed.
Should Romney press the issue? I’m not at all sure it would have the desired effect. It might be more likely to make him look like a birther, who have been widely discredited and labeled tinfoil outliers. Perhaps best to leave this to others, and to make sure someone keeps digging to find the truth.
It may be that the truth is exactly what Obama says it is: that he was a troubled loner at the time. And it may be that his grades were indifferent, which really wouldn’t change any votes at this point. The real smoking gun would be some more unusual facts, such as foreign student status for Obama, or other funding irregularities. Another red flag (pun intended) would be if the subject matter of most of his courses would reveal him to have been a young leftist-in-training.
Maybe instead of, “Want Mitt to release his tax returns? Then release the Columbia transcripts!”. it should be, “Want Mitt to release his tax returns? Then release the Fast and Furious documents!”
For someone to spend FOUR MILLION DOLLARS to HIDE his college records and transcripts send my fraud alarms going. Did he, a poor boy go to Columbia and Harvard on scholarship? Did he go as a FOREIGN student? Remember his press agent calling him a Kenyan born citizen in his press release? LOTS OF MYSTERY.
And let’s hold Obama’s feet to the fire to fess up and prove HIS innocence as the Dems are doing to Romney. Romney does not have to reveal 10 years of his taxes either. And let us ask Reid to show us how he became a multimillionaire on a $192,000 salary, to become one of the richest members of the senate.
And tactically, it’s brilliant to have Obama and his minions being hounded and on the defense for three months. Hoist them on their own petard.
If I am correct, the $4 million was an estimate of the amount Obama and the DNC have paid attorneys from several different law firms to date to prepare legal briefs and to fly around the country to fight off dozens of attempts by citizens in several states to have courts–including the U.S. Supreme Court–require Obama to produce a copy of his original, long form birth certificate, and other documents to prove that he is a “natural born citizen” and, therefore, legitimately President; all suits stopped dead before they started, on the ridiculous, supposedly “legal” grounds that not one U.S. citizen or voter so far has had the legal “standing” to require any State or Federal court to proceed any further to an order for production of documents or an investigation of them.
Say the courts, no plaintiff has been able to pass the initial test of having to prove that he has actually suffered any “direct or substantial injury or be likely to” because Obama might not be a natural born citizen and, thus, a usurper (see http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/standing) .
Translation–no judge or court in the land–including the U.S. Supreme Court–wants to be the one to ignite what anyone with half a brain can foresee would be the biggest, most controversial and destructive, and likely most violent “Constitutional Crisis” in U.S. history, so, they have all punted.
Romney should use a surrogate, the way the current president uses Harry Ried and the press. Somebody should dig hard and make noise while doing it.
The closer they appear to be getting, the more you’ll hear the opposing stand-ins claim that the past is off-limits. This won’t make them shut up, but it will draw the hypocrisy into sharp relief.
Well, given he is a collectivist, and is connected, i doubt he was ever the james dean loner lost boy type. He learned from someone what they don’t teach in school, but did he do it then?
so regardless of who we get, someone is going to have to deal with some interesting behaviors. the kind of behaviors that are quite difficult to fight when you have no real punch.
Mr Charisma is all focused on getting a position, but not having the qualities needed for being in the position. the proverbial dog who caught the car.
A paper tiger comes to mind…
Here is a recent article on Obama’s time at Occidental, just before he transferred to Columbia (http://pjmedia.com/blog/barack-obamas-marxist-ghosts-of-christmas-past/3/).
What Romney could say is he would like to know how many courses Obama took in economics, accounting, and business given that Obama is so ignorant of such things.
“The MSM’s lack of curiosity on the matter (of Obama’s transcripts, . . . ) is striking.”
. . . as is the MSM’s inordinate curiosity concerning, ohhh, George W. Bush’s supposed A.W.O.L. weekend when in the service;
. . . as is the MSM’s inordinate curiosity concerning Sarah Palin’s e-mails (or just about anything involving Sarah Palin);
. . . as is the MSM’s inordinate curiostity concerning Mitt Romney’s middle school and high school years;
. . . as is . . . ohhhhhh, ferget it.
I had an employer try to dig further into some of my grades in undergrad. Two years of unfocused effort, I would say. It was difficult to explain and I regret those two years now.
Obama’s two years at Columbia do not have much bearing except as an effective “tu quoque” move by Romney. We still don’t know Obama at all, or at least the public doesn’t. He’s a shell. Every move he’s making as President now is merely for political effect. His ads are a complete reconstruction of his identity.
But turnabout is fair play. I like the quid pro quo the article presents. “Sure, I’ll show my tax returns. I’m a rich man and I earned it. How much did you make after being a mediocre student your whole life simply by ingratiating yourself to Leftists?”
I can’t believe America elected such a stooge because he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. I suppose the Left felt exactly the same way about GWB, except they had so little cause for their feelings.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/liars_damned_liars_and_harry_reid.html
Excerpt:
I want to know how Barack Obama got into Columbia University for undergraduate school. I want to see his application. Did he seek extra consideration, as did Elizabeth Warren in applying for her academic opportunities, by claiming to be a member of a demographic group favored by affirmative action?
He got a degree in political science without honors.
A golden retriever could get an honors degree in political science.
Translation–no judge or court in the land–including the U.S. Supreme Court–wants to be the one to ignite what anyone with half a brain can foresee would be the biggest, most controversial and destructive, and likely most violent “Constitutional Crisis” in U.S. history, so, they have all punted.
Exactly. The man is a Red flunky. The Reds selected a dull, malleable weakling, marketed the bejesus out of him, and told him if he just read what they put on the teleprompter then he could golf and vacation all he liked. They did their best to sanitize his early years, and with the complicity of the MSM, have managed to keep the lid on.
That’s what I’ve always suspected. Grades aside, it would be very revealing if it turned out that he took a lot of radical economics and racial grievance-type courses.
If I had a nasty, suspicious mind, I would suggest that Mr. Sohale Siddiqi, the Pakistani employed as a waiter and boutique salesman, given to drugging and partying, served not only as Mr. Obama’s roommate–
–but also as his controller.
The ISI, the Pakistani secret police, would have made sure of that.
If I had a nasty, suspicious mind, that is.
I agree that the grades don’t mean much except as to the way they compare with Romney’s. We know what Romney’s grades are. Why not Obama’s? What’s he ashamed of?
What’s of more interest is how he got accepted at Columbia and how he paid for it. His passage from what he described as drugger and a slacker into a top-notch student who was welcomed at Columbia and then Harvard Law sounds just too good to be true. Why doesn’t he tell us how he transformed himself? Drug users and slackers might be inspired.
Employers want to know this type of thing. It gives them insight into the character and abilities of their prospective employees. Obama was employed by the voters without proper vetting. We’re now paying the price. It’s time to insist on a proper vetting. And that’s exactly the way I would couch it if I were Romney. Romney should say, “I’m willing to be thoroughly vetted if the same standards are used to vet my opponent.”
In the meantime it’s time for Romney to use surrogates to ask embarrasing questions of Obama. Why is he ashamed of his college record? Why did he try to palm himself off as a Kenyan when he was trying to sell his books? Why won’t he release his medical records? Why hasn’t he forced Congress to pass a budget as required by the Constitution? And on and on. The more the better.
This and the Vidal article underneath seem like a drudge pairing.
two birds of a feather…
“It may be that the truth is exactly what Obama says it is”, observes Neo.
But the man is an inveterate liar. There is damning evidence in his past records without a doubt.
He is the freaking POTUS and we have no rights to info? This is, and has been, utter public/media insanity. He has highjacked the country and we who allow this deserve what is coming from Baraq the Malevolent.
I think that Romney should do as Obama is clearly doing. Have Palin or Christie or some other Republican celeb come out and make the fuss. S/He wouldn’t be able to promise Romney’s tax returns as an exchange, but the subject itself would be hard to criticize by those who claim they should be released. (hello, Reid, Pelosi, and MSM.)
Millions spent on attorneys to hide bad grades?
I don’t think so.
I know, I can only infer, as the Dems say they are doing accusing Romney of sins because he won’t give them another 10 years of tax returns.
But gosh, it seems kind of unseemly that someone would strive SO hard to hide what should be fairly worthless info. The Dems would vote for him even if he had straight D minuses. They don’t care as long as he follows the Collectivist Leninist agenda. (Or, what I truly believe to be Cloward-Piven on a nationwide scale).
No, it just seem fairly logical there is something much deeper and darker there (oh, wait, that sounds outright racist, right?!). MUCH deeper and more destructive.
Wolla= punting may not be the metaphor for passivity in the face of a constitutional crisis initiated by fraud.
The ISI controller thesis above is most facinating.
Grades aside, it would be very revealing if it turned out that he took a lot of radical economics and racial grievance-type courses.
Oops.
Should have read: “The latter is pretty much a given.
I doubt, however, that Obama ever darkened the door of an economics lecture theater.”
Establisment Republicans have accepted a rigged game. Tea Party hasn’t, but the Establishment has.
For instance, take the forged long birth certificate form which Obama submitted. Sheriff Joe exposed that but what help did he get from the go along to get along beltway Republicans.
And this is what Romney is dealing with: knowing that he cannot depend on the Establishment to back him up. He has Establishment voices telling him to capitulate and to provide his tax returns. Romney knows he must have both the Establishment and the Tea Party’s support, perhaps even enthusiastic support. Now you tell me how that is possible given the disgust the Tea Party has for the go along to get along politician.
Romney is skiing between the poles of outrage and interest, between principle and beltway brainwashed, between cut and pork. It necessarily makes for a seemingly schizoprhenic campaign. But, the thing is, like an Olympic skier, all he needs do is navigate the course and damn the time because his only competitor has fallen down and is not even in the race!
If I had a nasty, suspicious mind, I would suggest that Mr. Sohale Siddiqi, the Pakistani employed as a waiter and boutique salesman, given to drugging and partying, served not only as Mr. Obama’s roommate—
—but also as his controller.
I’d assumed he was a fellow druggie, and that he and the Messiah went to Karachi (“hey, where ya goin’ for spring break? Karachi? Oh. We’re going to Ft. Lauderdale.”) as drug mules. That would explain the bizarre choice of destination (most people would avoid Karachi like the plague, mainly because they don’t want to catch … uh … the plague) and how a couple of tapped out college students financed a trip to such an exotic locale.
But controller also works, as does a more … uh … intimate relationship, with Siddiqi being the Muslim zealot. The tough part is reconciling such Muslim activism with his obvious Red proclivities. You’d think one would largely preclude the other.
In any case, it’s pretty clear there was something up. I mean traveling with your roommate to Karachi is not exactly like driving to your roomie’s house for Thanksgiving, is it?
The Dems would vote for him even if he had straight D minuses.
Yes, but part of his appeal to independents is all the leftist chorus singing that Barry is the brightest President ever, and a documented appalling academic performance would undercut that pitch. Jay Leno alone would have a field day with it.
Another possibility is that he followed a fairly toxic curriculum, but your point obtains there too – Dems would still vote for him – whereas mine does not (he could always say he has outgrown leftist politics, and that would satisfy independents. Hell, in “his” sundry autobiographies he’s already said he sought out Marxist professors, and that didn’t budge the needle with independents.)
So it’s probably either truly miserable performance, and/or claiming foreign student status.
I went to law school at the University of Missouri – Columbia. Ergo, I went to Columbia.
I have a friend from Harvard, Nebraska, a real village, who I visited once. Ergo, I went to Harvard.
I flew over Indonesia on my way from Vietnam to Australia on R and R, therefore, I was in Indonesia.
I once saw George Harrison in the Haight Asbury district of San Francisco in the summer of 1967, ergo I am a Beatle.
I am a Kenyan-born, communist, liar, anti-American hater, ergo I am Obama.
I am a man, Socrates was a man, ergo I am Socrates. (a la Woody Allen)
Bein’ a democrat ain’t hard a’tall.
” Another red flag (pun intended) would be if the subject matter of most of his courses would reveal him to have been a young leftist-in-training.”
I’ve always thought that WHAT he took as a student would be more damning than what his grades were.
I sit here and shake my head in disbelief that we have let this puzzle of a man become president.
We MUST keep fighting to fire this lying son-of-a-bitch.
I do not believe that Obama has released any medical records either, just a statement by a doctor that he was in good health. One possible theory (FWIW) is that Obama has hidden both his college transcripts and his medical records because they show something embarrassing, like chronic depression during his college years that had an adverse effect on his academic performance. Woops, another Eagleton screwup.
I’m not so concerned about his college transcripts. I doubt that anyone is, really. However, his records from Junior High School are another thing. I have heard from several sources that the young Obama was quite the hellion. In fact, it is alleged that Obama, when he was around 13 years old, set of an M-80 in a neighbor’s mailbox. I dare you to say, with a straight face, that that isn’t domestic terrorism! It was directed at a federal target, no less! Furthermore, the neighbor was an elderly woman, so we already have not only a war on women but a war on the elderly. Why is all of this being swept under the rug?
In the spirit of “where’s Waldo,” I invite very close attention to the picture of Obama and his “roommate” Siddiqi in the article I have linked to above.
Book(11:22pm): YES, absolutely. Let a tough, feisty, adept, bright-as-hell, verbally nimble Repub politician do the Attack Dog unleashed on His Infantile Majesty. Hmmmmm…Gawd, wouldn’t Gov.Christy be lovely to watch armed with verbal nukes?!
I doubt that anyone is, really. However, his records from Junior High School are another thing.
You laugh, but the MSM has already done essentially this to Mitt Romney.
I look for them next to report that a team of (leftist, of course) psychiatrists find that his kindergarten fingerpaintings bespeak troubling and deep-seated psychopathology.
You heard it here first.
I doubt that Obama would have considered it necessary to hide the courses he took. Most political science majors would be taking a fair amount of courses with a leftist/Marxist orientation. So what else is new? I doubt Obama took any economics or math courses, judging by the innumerate and ignorant statements he has made in those areas. If he did take any math or economics courses in college, he has forgotten everything he learned in them.
Bad grades? So what? He can simply say that he made up for things by going cum laude at Harvard Law.
There must be something bigger that he is trying to hide, such as getting admitted to Columbia as a foreign student. I doubt getting treated for depression would be something he would be concerned to hide.
I suspect that Obama made contact with Bill Ayers during his time at Columbia. Both were living in the same area during much of that time, and both were involved in anti-Apartheid protests.
All this may be considered trivial, considering the clusterf#$5 Obama has performed on the economy and foreign policy. Perhaps. That such questions come up show the deep amount of mistrust that a substantial part of the country has towards Obama, a mistrust that Obama has shown is more than justified by his less than candid “autobiography.”
Here are some statements of some people who remembered Obama at Columbia.
http://www.thefogbow.com/special-reports/people-remember-president-obama/friends-2/#Columbia
I’m not sure that finding out Obama’s deep dark school secrets will really matter to enough people. Seems to me most voters just care about themselves in the near future. Obama’s character and philosophical/political bent are pretty obvious, but those seem not to matter either.
Or, put another way, if we’re banking on his records being a set of facts we can use to discredit the guy, I don’t think that there’s enough there to convince anyone who cares about such silly things as facts, because there are enough of those already to show him for the steaming mess he is.
Gringo: that link you gave is interesting in that it solidifies my impression of Obama at Columbia. I certainly have always thought he went there and in fact graduated, so of course there are people who are going to recollect him. The point is that no one appears to have known him well or been close to him, and there are remarkably few people who remember him at all, whether they be students or professors. It is really quite extraordinary.
Plus, the site misidentifies one of them, Siddiqi, as a classmate. He was not. He was not only not a classmate at Columbia, he was not a student at all. In addition, the only other person who seems to have known him best in those years, Phil Boerner, was a friend from Occidental rather than Columbia. Boerner transferred with Obama from Occidental to Columbia, and therefore became a “friend at Columbia,” but that’s not the way they met.
Compare the list of people at the site who knew Obama at Oxy with the list of people who knew him at Columbia. It’s clear to me that Obama had a much more normal degree of social interaction and friendship at Oxy than at Columbia, where he kept an extraordinarily low profile. It’s also clear that he was not an outstanding student at Columbia, so that raises the question of how he got into Harvard.
Having seen, first hand, how this “white, guilt-stricken academics” mechanism works, I can well imagine Obama–playing the race card, or, more likely, having this card played for him by the aforesaid white, guilt-stricken academics–sailing through Columbia and Harvard without him having to do much in the way of showing up, or having to produce much in the way of actual work or scholarship.
Would not Harvard Law School have a copy of his Columbia grades as part of his law school application?
Also, what were his law school grades? And, how did he become president of the Harvard Law Review without ever having anything published by the law review?
Don Janousek, did you write “What color is your parachute?” 🙂
I suspect that Obama made contact with Bill Ayers during his time at Columbia.
I take that as a given also. The question is whether Ayers played a role in Obama’s going to Columbia in the first place. He certainly played a role in his going to Chicago; that cannot be a coincidence.
Simplest hypothesis: Obama was moving up through a Red farm system. (Occidental has long “enjoyed” a reputation as a hard left college, so that fits the pattern as well.)
I don’t see what the big deal is here. All this stuff might have been relevant four years ago when when people were trying to figure out what kind of guy Obama was and how he would do as president.
But now we know. We’ve had three and a half years of direct observation.
The only thing getting his transcripts might do (this is assuming they look bad) is give conservatives a talking point whenever a liberal starts going on about how smart the guy is. It won’t change anyone’s opinion.
It won’t change anyone’s opinion.
No, but it further insight into the provenance of this clown might give us a better idea of what will happen next.
Occam –
No, it won’t. As I said above, he’s been president for three and a half years. We don’t need decades old college transcripts to tell us how the man will handle another term.
Not just another term, Baltimoron, but how he might handle defeat.
The question is whether he is his own man, in which case analyzing him is worthwhile, or is he not, in which case we need to figure out who’s calling the shots (*cough* Soros *cough*), in which case we need to analyze him.
If Barky’s not his own man, figuring him out is as pointless as figuring out the psyche of a Shakespearean actor. The question is, who’s writing the script?
I read through quite a bit of Gringo’s link. The people all seem to be telling of the facade Obama presented to them. Even if he had handlers, I’m not sure that Obama wouldn’t have considered himself in control of them. This all probably goes back to his totally dysfunctional upbringing. At some point, he retreated into the world of theories and ideas and became convinced that he understood the world better than anyone else. This also gave him the advantage of not having to be coherent, or as he would call it, being pragmatic.
He flashes that “smile” all the time, but has anyone ever detected any warmth in his eyes? Does anyone believe that he really cares about the poor, or does he just use them to convince himself of his own superiority?
I’ve always presumed he was born in the USA, for the simple reason that there is purported to be a newspaper notice from HI announcing his birth. There is, literally, no conceivable reason to place such a notice falsely into the papers, unless you believe it’s important to establish “native” birth.
And I am aware of only one occupation where “native” birth is a critical factor… The Presidency.
And given the parental and grandparental attitudes, the notion that the racial attitudes would shift sufficiently in the course of only 50 years to allow The One to get elected is highly improbable. They would never have believed it, much less prepared ahead of time for it.
No, my own suspicion, which seems entirely in following with the mothers’ attitude, is that the long form — and only the long form, lists “Father: Unknown”. That would be substantially embarrassing and still not require a ridiculous leap of reasoning to justify it getting withheld.
As for the newspaper notice of Obama’s birth–no need to presume clairvoyance on the part of Obama’s American family members, or some deep laid plan for him to one day become President.
It seems very rational to me that his mother and grandparents might have wanted to claim U.S. birth for a child, with all of the benefits it brings–comparable, I would imagine, to the benefits of being a “Roman Citizen” vs. being a non-citizen, a barbarian, in the Ancient world–as opposed to being a citizen of dirt poor, violence-wracked Kenya.
“I am really brilliant.”
“Can I see your college transcripts that prove your brilliance?”
“No.”