http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

As an adult Obama admitted that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/poli ... orygallery

Barack Obama: The making of a candidate

The not-so-simple story of Barack Obama's youth

The life stories, when the presidential candidate tells them, have a common theme: the quest to belong.

A boy wants to find his place in a family where he is visibly different: chubby where others are thin, dark where others are light.

A youth living in a distant land searches and finds new friends, a new language and a heartbreaking lesson about his identity in the pages of an American magazine.

A young black man struggles for acceptance at an institution of privilege, where he finds himself growing so angry and disillusioned at the world around him that he turns to alcohol and drugs.

These have been the stories told about the first two character-shaping decades of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's life, a story line largely shaped by his own best-selling memoir, political speeches and interviews.

But the reality of Obama's narrative is not that simple.
More than 40 interviews with former classmates, teachers, friends and neighbors in his childhood homes of Hawaii and Indonesia, as well as a review of public records, show the arc of Obama's personal journey took him to places and situations far removed from the experience of most Americans.

At the same time, several of his oft-recited stories may not have happened in the way he has recounted them. Some seem to make Obama look better in the retelling, others appear to exaggerate his outward struggles over issues of race, or simply skim over some of the most painful, private moments of his life.

The handful of black students who attended Punahou School in Hawaii, for instance, say they struggled mightily with issues of race and racism there. But absent from those discussions, they say, was another student then known as Barry Obama.

In his best-selling autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama describes having heated conversations about racism with another black student, "Ray." The real Ray, Keith Kakugawa, is half black and half Japanese. In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Kakugawa said he always considered himself mixed race, like so many of his friends in Hawaii, and was not an angry young black man.

He said he does recall long, soulful talks with the young Obama and that his friend confided his longing and loneliness. But those talks, Kakugawa said, were not about race. "Not even close," he said, adding that Obama was dealing with "some inner turmoil" in those days.

"But it wasn't a race thing," he said. "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]."

Then there's the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don't exist, say the magazine's own historians.

Some of these discrepancies are typical of childhood memories -- fuzzy in specifics, warped by age, shaped by writerly license. Others almost certainly illustrate how carefully the young man guarded the secret of his loneliness from even those who knew him best. And the accounts bear out much of Obama's self-portrait as someone deeply affected by his father's abandonment yet able to thrive in greatly disparate worlds.

Still, the story of his early years highlights how politics and autobiography are similar creatures: Each is shaped to serve a purpose.

In its reissue after he gave the keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004, "Dreams from My Father" joined a long tradition of political memoirs that candidates have used to introduce themselves to the American people.

From his earliest moments on the national political stage, Obama has presented himself as having two unique qualifications: a fresh political face and an ability to bridge the gap between Americans of different races, faiths and circumstances. Among his supporters, his likability and credibility have only been boosted by his stories of being an outsider trying to fight his way in.

As much as he may have felt like an outsider at times, Obama rarely seemed to show it. Throughout his youth, as depicted in his first book, he always found ways to meld into even the most uninviting of communities. He learned to adapt to unfamiliar territory. And he frequently made peace--even allies--with the very people who angered him most.

Yet even Obama has acknowledged the limits of memoir. In a new introduction to the reissued edition of "Dreams," he noted that the dangers of writing an autobiography included "the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer ... [and] selective lapses of memory."

He added: "I can't say that I've avoided all, or any, of these hazards successfully."

To get the full artical, clink on the link at the top, it is very long and very enlightening. Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_11

So did GWB and GHWB.



Having heated conversations about racism and being an angry young black man are two totally different, nonparallel things.



So you're saying that he altered a minute detail of a past experience? Could it be that he did so to better his campaign? By the gods, who would do such a thing! He's a terrorist!



At least he has a consciousness of what he's doing when he chooses to omit information. If McCain can't even remember how many houses he has, how're we supposed to expect him to remember where the nuclear codes are when we bomb Iran?

Sorry I lost you there...

It just sounds a little biased...

If this were a republican we were talking about you would be all over this.



And Obama doesn't need to remember them. He'll never bomb any country.

Why do you say that like not bombing a country is a bad thing.


Jesus F*CKING Christ.

Take a look at who the terrorists are.

You must subscribe to the anti-America guilt position that American policy is bad and we should change to appease all who oppose our foreign policies, America way of life and our offensive actions abroad.

Is that the case? Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_25

I didn't mean it like that.

No. It's not such the case.

And I'm getting a little sick of the anti-Canadian shit from the States.

I don't give a F*CK where I'm from. Canada hasn't done anything to wrong you, so F*CK off.

I'm not biased, I don't give a F*CK about Canada and I'm probably going to end up living in the states because you still have Cherry Coke and Hi-C.

No. What I'm saying is in reference to what State said.

Complaining that Barack Obama won't bomb anything.

That's F*CKING terrorism.

It's also F*CKING hypocrisy.




I realize that eventually--when Middle-Eastern countries become American territories and the eventual concern of making America more powerful by over-throwing countries, gaining land and populous-- it will turn into the Commonwealth vs. The Terrorism Act of America (currently referred to as the USA PATRIOT Act.)


But whatever, not like I enjoy living with freedoms.

Let's go for a true-World War.

When everybody gets on the offensive, we all F*CKING die.


So now that the word of hate is spreading in the States to not only all Muslim people, but retaining Black people, Hispanic people and even Canadians (Peace-loving faggots. Right, shut up.) Right now, America is showing nearly equal hate to everybody. Maybe the anarchy and chaos in these following years was something that whoever did organize the 9/11 bombings (I don't even know any more.) was going for.

Congratufuckinglations.

It's sad that criticizing your government has become "anti-American guilt theory".

The US is an awesome place, that's why [most] of us live here and probably will keep living here even when we have the opportunity to move. However, that doesn't mean that every policy our government passes is 100% the best idea.

"Even" under Bush, living in the US is a privilege. Still, it's ridiculous and counterproductive to say that helping the USA win friends abroad is unpatriotic. Should the US national interest be held in the forefront? Yes, but having strong alliances with states and not being so disliked by individuals is certainly in our interest. Soon enough, our military dominance won't be enough to guarantee our safety: 9/11 may be proof that the time is already here.

Why are you assuming that because Obama is a Democrat, that I'm biased to defend him? I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. So where is this bias coming from?


This whole Democrat vs. Republican shit is getting ridiculous. The Democrats want this, the Republicans want that - who gives a shit! You can't have a good country functioning off of one political party. You have to take turns and act like big boys and girls about it. For the past 8 years, the USA has elected a Republican president. It's time to turn the tables and play the game from a different angle.

I said I didn't mean it like that... It's a fact Obama wouldn't and thats a good thing... the cain-ster probably won't either... I'm not voting because I don't like either.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=16aBNduAyQ4

Those who seek to be everything to everyone really stand for nothing and are loyal to no one. Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_17

I genuinely do not see how that applies at all, and if you believe it does, then there must be some kind of miscommunication occuring.

Anyone else having trouble understanding how that applies? Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_37

Ryan, did you watch the video?

In other words, one party cannot be all things to all people as you stated. And those who would try to be are disingenuous.

lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere

I disagree with that little proverb of yours Durnegro.


Maybe that's the few applied to American Politics, but there are still genuine people, who fight for causes.


To clear up my post, I'm not an anti-American; I'm an anti-hypocrite. If your leader is going to fight back against terrorists by invading other countries, sending bursts of attacks and have night-time bombings as a way of "neutralizing (get that defined, by the way)" the enemy and deterring (scaring - terror) others from doing it, then F*CK you.

You don't ACTUALLY fight fire with fire.

*not obama/mccain related

a war on terror is an "internal war," because you can't clearly define who is or might be a terrorist. the war in iraq is defined by location, and we know who the iraqi people are. the war on terror has no definition. all of you could be terrorists. the war on terror is intended to create and inspire fear among us, so we are up in arms over higher security and fewer rights in order to feel safe. it is intended to create greater control over people; just as the credit system does.

don't you think it's odd that the government wants to spend $700 billion to "bail out" US banks? have you heard the details of this plan? no, because there are no details. they want to spend $700 billion for this bail out, and the details of the plan fit on 3 pages. 3 PAGES!! i could create a bail out plan only for myself and it would take almost 3 pages.

so basically, the government wants to own our banks, which own our houses, cars, etc. because everyone is in debt. where do you think the government is going to get this money? perhaps from the federal reserve? (this is where the government gets all of its loans) for those who don't know, the federal reserve is NOT a government agency; it's a private bank. so the federal reserve would own almost all of americans' debt. talk about power.

i suggest everyone pay very close attention to what's happening right now.

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist - The Movie: Federal Reserve (Part 1 of 5)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dmPchuXIXQ


Zeitgeist - The Movie: Federal Reserve (Part 2 of 5)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBZne09G ... re=related


Zeitgeist - The Movie: Federal Reserve (Part 3 of 5)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjUrib_G ... re=related


Zeitgeist - The Movie: Federal Reserve (Part 4 of 5)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BVNN1wq ... re=related


Zeitgeist - The Movie- Federal Reserve (Part 5 of 5)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSBU0rtt ... re=related

exactly durango. this is the biggest and most blantant attempt they have made to acheive their goal. i'm really praying and crossing my fingers that the politicians actually do their job and stop this from happening. at least it seems like they are trying.

I watched Zeitgeist a while back; it had some interesting points, but the part about the fed was pretty misleading...did either of ya'll actually check those claims?

All of part one appears to be true from everything I researched here. See for yourself. Which part was misleading? Might make it easier for me to research... Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_19

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Woodrow_Wilson

Historians will all agree a particular event that sticks out as leading to the Revolutionary War was King George III's attempt to outlaw the interest free, independent currency being used by the Colonies, thereby forcing them to accept a paper bill issued by the Central Bank of England, at interest. This is the entire argument against the Central Banking System. It charges the government interest to borrow money from the bank in order to finance the need for a currency.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

The refusal of King George to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jac ... ional_Bank

The Second Bank of the United States was authorized for a twenty year period during James Madison's tenure in 1816. As President, Jackson worked to rescind the bank's federal charter. In Jackson's veto message (written by George Bancroft), the bank needed to be abolished because:
• It concentrated the nation's financial strength in a single institution.
• It exposed the government to control by foreign interests.
• It served mainly to make the rich richer.
• It exercised too much control over members of Congress.
• It favored northeastern states over southern and western states.
Following Jefferson, Jackson supported an "agricultural republic" and felt the Bank improved the fortunes of an "elite circle" of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs at the expense of farmers and laborers. After a titanic struggle, Jackson succeeded in destroying the Bank by vetoing its 1832 re-charter by Congress and by withdrawing U.S. funds in 1833.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank

A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is the entity responsible for the monetary policy of a country or of a group of member states. Its primary responsibility is to maintain the stability of the national currency and money supply, but more active duties include controlling subsidized-loan interest rates, and acting as a "bailout" lender of last resort to the banking sector during times of financial crisis (private banks often being integral to the national financial system). It may also have supervisory powers, to ensure that banks and other financial institutions do not behave recklessly or fraudulently.
Most richer countries today have an "independent" central bank, that is, one which operates under rules designed to prevent political interference. Examples include the European Central Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve. Some central banks are publicly owned, and others are privately owned. In practice, there is little difference between public and private ownership, since in the latter case almost all profits of the bank are paid to the government either as a tax or a transfer to the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve

The Federal Reserve System (also the Federal Reserve; informally The Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. Created in 1913 by the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, it is a quasi-public (government entity with private components) banking system[1] composed of (1) the presidentially appointed Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C.; (2) the Federal Open Market Committee; (3) 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation acting as fiscal agents for the U.S. Treasury, each with its own nine-member board of directors; (4) numerous private U.S. member banks, which subscribe to required amounts of non-transferable stock in their regional Federal Reserve Banks; and (5) various advisory councils. As of February 1, 2006, Ben Bernanke serves as the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

We may say with truth and meaning that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.


Disputed
• I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

o This is cited as from a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) in Flight to Financial Freedom - Fasten Your Finances (2007) by Nathan A. Martin, and earlier appears in How to Take Advantage of the People Who Are Trying to Take Advantage of You (2006) by Joseph Stephen Breese Morse, p. 51. It appears to be a concoction of some actual statements by Jefferson, and others that may not be. It has not yet been found to appear earlier in precisely this form.


http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Banking

• "Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits." - Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920's, the second richest man in Britain

http://www.answers.com/topic/j-p-morgan

Financial Rescue of the Government
In 1893 America experienced a major economic downturn which, in conjunction with questionable monetary policies (resulting from pressure from the silver inflationists), put an impossible burden on the U.S. Treasury's gold reserve. President Grover Cleveland's attempts to replenish the gold reserve were ineffective. In 1895 Morgan played the role of central banker, sold government bonds for gold (half obtained abroad through his foreign affiliates), and guaranteed to protect the gold reserve. Though Morgan was charged with profiting exorbitantly and taking advantage of the dire straits of the government, he never revealed the precise amount of his profits, so the validity of such allegations is impossible to assess. His syndicate succeeded temporarily in its objectives; public and private ends harmonized at a price which was probably not excessive, considering the service rendered to the nation.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/ ... of-19.html

http://www.geocities.com/cliff_shack/ndcc3.html

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/banking-bailout.php

The mother of all insider trades was pulled off in 1815, when London financier Nathan Rothschild led British investors to believe that the Duke of Wellington had lost to Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. In a matter of hours, British government bond prices plummeted. Rothschild, who had advance information, then swiftly bought up the entire market in government bonds, acquiring a dominant holding in England’s debt for pennies on the pound. Over the course of the nineteenth century, N. M. Rothschild would become the biggest bank in the world, and the five brothers would come to control most of the foreign-loan business of Europe. “Let me issue and control a nation’s money,” Rothschild boasted in 1838, “and I care not who writes its laws.”
In the United States a century later, John Pierpont Morgan again used rumor and innuendo to create a panic that would change the course of history. The panic of 1907 was triggered by rumors that two major banks were about to become insolvent. Later evidence pointed to the House of Morgan as the source of the rumors. The public, believing the rumors, proceeded to make them come true by staging a run on the banks. Morgan then nobly stepped in to avert the panic by importing $100 million in gold from his European sources. The public thus became convinced that the country needed a central banking system to stop future panics, overcoming strong congressional opposition to any bill allowing the nation’s money to be issued by a private central bank controlled by Wall Street; and the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913. Morgan created the conditions for the Act’s passage, but it was Paul Warburg who pulled it off. An immigrant from Germany, Warburg was a partner of Kuhn, Loeb, the Rothschilds’ main American banking operation since the Civil War. Elisha Garrison, an agent of Brown Brothers bankers, wrote in his 1931 book Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve Law that “Paul Warburg is the man who got the Federal Reserve Act together after the Aldrich Plan aroused such nationwide resentment and opposition. The mastermind of both plans was Baron Alfred Rothschild of London.” Morgan, too, is now widely believed to have been Rothschild’s agent in the United States. 1


http://www.dailypaul.com/node/42940


Outrageous - Taxpayers Bail Out Bear Stearns; JP Morgan Buys for $2 / Share

http://www.undergroundpolitics.com/inde ... heory.html

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl= ... &start=50#

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Money

The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. By adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Woodrow_Wilson


"I am a most unhappy man..."
Does anyone know if this quote is legit? (yes it is)
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

-Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/fedreser ... ec05.shtml

http://www.usavsus.info/USA-McFadden.html

The Federal Reserve system is not a "private bank", which is the central tenet of the theory he puts forward in those videos.

The fed's authority comes directly from congress, who could in theory revoke that authority at any time.

The president appoints the board of the fed, and the senate confirms them.

The only "independent" part of the fed is that they don't need explicit congressional support to raise/decrease the interest rates by manipulating the money supply.

Any profit that comes in to the fed goes, in fact, directly into the US government treasury. The "owners" of the fed don't make any more/less money based on such gains.