What do we really know about Obama?

From Larry Liddell - the Clarcksdale Press Register:

You should see the things that cross my desk every day.

It ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, truth to fiction, serious to comic and everything in between.

The other day, you might remember the top ranking members of the Republican Party verbally assaulted Democratic front-runner Barack Obama as well as his wife and mother.

Now, I do not agree with attacking the family of political candidates. It’s one thing for a person to run for office and that person is fair game. But, a person’s family should be off limits. It could be that a member of one’s family doesn’t even want the person running to run for office.

Then, across my desk came a missile that is pretty revealing about Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who Obama referred to the other day as “the dominant figure in my formative years.”

Now, folks, ever since he began running for the U.S. presidency, he has characterized his mother as a “conservative girl from Kansas,” but as hard as I try, I can’t find anything conservative about her. It seems that she was actually a radical leftist and cultural Marxist.

She allegedly lived in the Seattle area as a teenager and, instead of being conservative Methodists or Baptists, his mother’s parents were members of a left-wing Unitarian Church in Bellevue, Washington, that was nicknamed “The Little Red Church” because of its Communist leanings.

In an interview, Barack Obama referred to his mother as “the dominant figure in my formative years. The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics.”

Remember the Mercer Island High School his mother attended?

Well, it seems it was allegedly a hotbed for pro-Marxist radical teachers. And Ann Dunham was a leading student at the school, where two of her professors, Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman, were both Frankfurt School-style Marxists who taught a critical theory curriculum that included rejection of societal norms, attacks on Christianity and the traditional family with assigned readings by Karl Marx.

Dunham died in 1995, when Barack was 34.

Now, Barack Obama wants to become president, so he blasts President Bush and Republican presidential nominee John McCain for launching “exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world.”

No, Obama, the stuff that has divided our country and alienates us from the world is the exact stuff that your mother believed during your formative years.

Marxism and Communism. These two political philosophies will divide any Christian-based, Democratic nation every time.

I will leave you good people with two things to worry about: (1) what political philosophy does Barack Obama believe in, and (2) who is financially backing Barack’s run for the Presidency?

He’s been running for a year now and we still don’t know much more about the guy than when he first announced. Think about it. - Read in full.

Excerpted from the Chicago Tribune - March 2007:

In his best-selling book, "Dreams From My Father" and in campaign speeches, Obama frequently describes the story of his mother... as a tale of the Heartland. She's the white woman from the flatlands of Kansas and the only daughter of parents who grew up in the "dab-smack, landlocked center of the country," in towns "too small to warrant boldface on a roadmap."

Implicit in that portrayal is this message: If you have any lingering questions or doubts about the Hawaiian-born presidential candidate with a funny name, just remember that Mom hails from America's good earth. That's the log cabin story, or his version of Bill Clinton's "Man from Hope."

That presentation, though, glosses over Stanley Ann Dunham's formative years, spent not on the Great Plains but more than 1,800 miles away on a small island in the Pacific Northwest....

Stanley Ann's family moved to Seattle in 1955.

...Consistent with the 1950s, there were undercurrents of turmoil. In 1955, the chairman of the Mercer Island school board, John Stenhouse, testified before the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee that he had been a member of the Communist Party.

At Mercer High School, two teachers -- Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman -- generated regular parental thunderstorms by teaching their students to challenge societal norms and question all manner of authority. Foubert, who died recently, taught English. His texts were cutting edge: "Atlas Shrugged," "The Organization Man," "The Hidden Persuaders," "1984" and the acerbic writings of H.L. Mencken.

Wichterman taught philosophy. The hallway between the two classes was known as "anarchy alley," and students pondered the challenging notions of Wichterman's teachings, including such philosophers as Sartre and Kierkegaard. He also touched the societal third rail of the 1950s: He questioned the existence of God. And he didn't stop there.

"I had them read 'The Communist Manifesto,' and the parents went nuts," said Wichterman, .."The kids started questioning things that their folks thought shouldn't be questioned -- religion, politics, parental authority," said John Hunt, a classmate. "And a lot of parents didn't like that, and they tried to get them [Wichterman and Foubert] fired."

The Dunhams did not join the uproar. Madelyn and Stanley [Stanley Ann's father] shed their Methodist and Baptist upbringing and began attending Sunday services at the East Shore Unitarian Church in nearby Bellevue.

"In the 1950s, this was sometimes known as 'the little Red church on the hill,' " said Peter Luton, the church's senior minister, referring to the effects of McCarthyism. Skepticism, the kind that Stanley embraced and passed on to his daughter, was welcomed here.

For Stanley Ann, the teachings of Foubert and Wichterman provided an intellectual stimulant and an affirmation that there indeed was an interesting life beyond high school dances, football games and all-night slumber party chatter.... - Read in full.