I personally think if you wish, you should be allowed to call a politician anything you want short of racial slurs, a socialist/facists (both groups which deny Obama is one of them), and Hitler. I'm okay with someone calling Obama an idiot. Certainly nicer than what he is usually called.
You can go right ahead and call Obama an idiot, Palin 'stupid', and any other politician whatever other name that you want anywhere else...except here. Drama and bashing arguments have been started in political threads over less. The rules are there for a reason.
I'd imagine living standards of Hawaii were not as high back then as they were now, and you are citing the times when he lived with his grandparents. From what I understand, his mother had quite a hard time raising him by herself (although I'd imagine that she did have some help from her family).
No you are citing the times he lived with his grandparent's. He lived with his mother before that and she didn't have that much money being a single woman and mother at that time. Plus Hawaii wasn't that high end during the time he lived their so he was poor for a time and I was giving the depression era as an example.
Quoted:
QUOTE
1) Obama’s biological father’s side: Barack Obama Sr was the son of the Chief of a prominent Luo tribe in Kenya. His father controlled all tribal land and held power over all tribal members. The stories of a poor goat farmer, are absolute fabrications. Obama’s biological father would not only enter Harvard as the son of a privileged Luo, upon his return to Kenya Sr. became a senior economist in the country’s Government. He died the bitter death of an abusive alcoholic, but still the Big Man in his Tribe and entourage. [source]
From ages 0 to 2, Obama was growing up in a family of two inexperienced but economically secure, College Students.
2) From 2-6 he was with his rich grandparents.
3) From 6 - 10, with his well-off stepfather employed by Exxon Oil in Jakarta, living in elite conditions and neighborhoods designated for foreigners.
4) From age 10 to College Days, Obama lives the Tropical Life with two well off grandparents. One rich, the other idle.
5) The grandparents who raised Obama: On Obama’s mother’s side, the income was upper upper upper. Since it was they, not Ann, that sponsored most of Obama’s education right through Occidental College, it is their income, and not the perennially absent-student mother, that impacted Obama’s status.
It was Stanley Armour Dunham and Madelyn Dunham that made sure since the day of his birth that Barry wouldn’t ever know want, poverty, or hardship.
Even before moving to Hawaii, Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was a Vice-President of a local Seattle bank. While her husband, Stanley Dunham managed a local furniture store, the couple Obama portrays as “typical white people” from Kansas who survived the Great Depression, actually lived in a gentrified suburb called Mercer Island, which has remained gentrified till this day .
When the couple suddenly took off for Hawaii, it wasn’t to escape poverty, but for Madelyn to pursue her banking career. In Hawaii she found her chance to became a pioneer in the American banking world. While her grandson was only nine and living in Jakarta’s walled compounds, she became the first female Vice President of the Bank of Hawaii. [source]
The bank was the top bank in the islands in terms of assets in the 1960s and 70s, making her ascent especially notable. [AP]
When Barry rejoined Madelyn a year later, he had behind him four years of elite schooling in Indonesia (attending the country’s elite Catholic school and elite Public Schools for sons and daughters of dignitaries), and he would go on to study in one of elite America’s best high-schools, and eventually, our country’s most elite Universities.
With absolutely no material wants whatsoever, and zero hardship, a grandmother who was a top executive in America’s banking world, a grandfather with extra time on his hands while running a local furniture store, Obama’s self-obsessed mother had the luxury of pursuing her PhD with anthropological studies of Indonesia, while her parents bankrolled her son’s $7,000 tuition in Hawaii’s best private college preparatory school!
Historically one of America’s most ethnically diverse but economically homogeneous schools, today’s tuition in Punahao runs $16,675 a year per student. If billionaire alumni like Steve Case (AOL) and Pierre Omidyar (Ebay co-founder) don’t impress you, maybe a more comprehensive read of alumni is worth it, if only to drive home the message that anyone going to Punahao -because his grandparents could pay for it- should not lie about a modest background.
Having graduated Punahao, Obama went to Occidental -not cheap by any means- , then on to Columbia, and then Harvard. None of these schools are attended by average or middle class Americans. The income distribution for all three is skewed towards the top 10 % percent of the social ladder.
During his college years, nothing indicates any kind of full-time employment activity typical of middle-class or lower-income youth needed to sustain their education. In fact, while no details on his livelihood are available for this period, it is absolutely clear that were Obama ever to find himself in need, his grandparents would have taken care of him. Speculating that significant portions of his income, including for his marijuana and cocain habit, may have come from his unwitting grandparents, is legitimate.
6) Obama may not have paid for Harvard out of his own pocket, or his grandparents’ pocket, preferring to take out loans. If his Dreams From My Father (which Gregory went to pains to introduce our readers to, in post after post) Obama makes his racial animosity towards whites, a fait accompli during his college years.
One interesting question about Obama’s admission to Harvard, is not only whether he benefited from Affirmative Action (which as is well known, benefits mostly upper class blacks, with negligible impact on lower-class), but also from his father’s alumni status? Clearly, Obama did not make it to Harvard as a kid struggling against the odds. If anything, he eventually made it into Harvard as a result of schooling in our country’s top preparatory college institution after years of being thoroughly spoiled by his well-off grandparents.
From age 0 to graduation from Harvard, regardless of whatever anecdotes of deprivation Obama comes up with, the reality of his privileged social and income status is indisputable. We are talking a minimum upper 10 % of our country’s social structure, and most certainly higher. A review of his grandparents income, along with his work activity in Occidental, and Columbia, would clarify whether it is top 7, 5, or even 3 percent.
7) Obama likes to brag that once out of Harvard, he received a less than $1000 a month salary as a community organizer. He neglects to mention that this lasted very briefly, and he was in a solid middle-class income in less than three months.
His comportment as community organizer as early as 1990 already bore marks of elitism and arrogance. He was a Harvard Grad - and he wore it like a flag pin. Obama was top top, through and though
Already in the early nineties Obama was working for a top Chicago law firm and had ties with a millionaire developer- definitely not the story of a typical poor, or middle class American.
8) Again, shortly after graduating Harvard, Obama found himself living in a gated lake-front condominium at Hyde Park, his neighbors some of the city’s most influential movers and shakers. Anyone familiar with the neighbourhood, will tell you that Obama’s accommodations were not the Chicago Middle Class Average, and especially not representative of the average for African-Americans. By any measure, Obama was living an upper-middle class/upper income life. Maybe not spectacularly upper upper, but again, not at all poor, modest, or middle class. Remember, he was just getting started. After college, none of the candidates in the running, were living in Villas or Governor’s mansions.
9) Already in the early nineties Obama had three incomes: from part-time lecturing in one of the country’s more generous universities, to part time work as attorney (more like paralegal, as Juanita rightfully puts it), to State Senator, and supposed community work (still unclear on that), living in a lake-front condo.
All of which puts Obama is in the top 10 % of our country’s social
structure.
So again I state, Obama did
not grow up 'poor'.
