Feels Good Man: Getting Ready for the Meme Wars

It looks like the last election was settled, in part, by people who learned to create memes, little cartoons and photos designed to make a telling, irreverent political point. I thought I'd give it a shot and see if I could create some GIFs and install them here. What do you think? I think they are catching but a too busy and distracting for my tastes.

As you may know, I'm an unabashed fan of Patrick McGoohan and of his iconic The Prisoner television series. I remember watching the first episode with my father and my brothers on our black and white television set when I was about 11 years old back on June 1, 1968.

As a baby boomer, I'm still fond of McGoohan's classic line: "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!" This GIF is made up of four separate photos which appear at the slowest pace I could establish.

Below, here is a quick clip from one of my Augustine 25 logo videos. I made this using the free tools at Animoto. This GIF is a simple film clip that is repeated endlessly.

Here's a completely a political series based on the still life painting I did over the course of 2016. As much as I was distracted by the presidential election, I'm glad I still set aside time to get better at painting vases. 

If you would like to make your own GIFs for free, please check out the website I used to create these examples at https://makeagif.com/

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Augustine25

The bright moon of March 19 inspired this year’s Christmas card. We still remember how we drove around town to find a high spot to view a rare moment when the Earth, Moon and Sun were all in alignment and the Moon was at its nearest approach to the Earth in 18 years.

Moon Lit Christmas Eve by John C. Drew, Ph.D.  Acryllic on canvas December, 2011.

In a similar manner, we spent much of the year in the grasp of economic and political forces beyond our control and uplifted by some powerful figures that disrupted our thinking and introduced us to better ideas. The tidal waves began in early January when we drove up to Beverly Hills to meet Stanley Kurtz and heard him speak about his new book, Radical-In-Chief, at David Horowitz’s Wednesday Morning Club. Kurtz credited John’s report on young Obama’s ideological views for encouraging him to research Obama’s beliefs.

Online, John debated MSNBC pundits like Ezra Klein and Keith Olbermann. Locally, Mike Munzing pulled John down to Earth and into local politics to serve as his alternate on the Orange County Republican Central Committee. With Mike’s help, John shared his own story at speeches to the Republican Women’s Federated Clubs in Laguna Niguel, San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano.

Jay McDowell, a corporate-level business coach, brought order and discipline to our small business. With Jay’s guidance, we made changes including recruiting three new grant writing associates, finding a new grant researcher, and setting up new business management systems such as Foundation Search, Drop Box and QuickBooks. John’s speaking schedule took him to Anchorage, Alaska where he saw moose roaming the streets. “The moose are a nuisance and they are out to kill,” he said.

The year ended with a surprising bang as we won a number of new contracts for grant writing services. We are celebrating with jazz piano Christmas music and fresh baked cinnamon raison oatmeal cookies – even as our home is buffeted by strong winds. Although we remember 2011 as a year in which we were stirred and shaken, we are nevertheless pleased to top it off by wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Giving Up All My Secrets: Dr. Drew Interviewed by Historian David J. Garrow

I'm honored to announce I was just interviewed by Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David J. Garrow, even though I suspect that anyone who stepped foot on the Occidental College campus and met young Obama between 1979-1981 has received a similar visit. 

In my case, it was a particularly humbling experience. Right now, I feel like I endured a trip to the dentist. When I first heard from Prof. Garrow by e-mail I was not sure it was really him. I checked out some of his YouTube videos and then asked him to give me a call so I could be sure I was talking to the real guy and not some deranged Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protester.

As you may know, Garrow is the winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.  His book, Bearing the cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was probably the most comprehensive book written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

At first, I was not certain it was a good idea to speak to him or not.  I called around to some of my friends and quickly figured out that although Garrow is a liberal he does have a reputation for doing fair and accurate historical work.  In Bearing the Cross, for example, he reported on how Martin Luther King, Jr. cheated on his wife and the impact that FBI disclosures of this information impacted the last three years of King's life. 

Garrow taped his interview of me.  My understanding is that nothing I said will be published until President Obama is out of office.

Nevertheless, it is not often that you meet with a presidential historian and I was a little startled by the experience.  To start off, I was surprisingly nervous.  I almost dumped a glass of ice tea on him.  It was also surprisingly unpleasant.  I prepped for the interview by sorting through old photographs and rereading about 30 old notes and letters from the 1980-1981 era of my life.  It was a shocking reminder of the emotional immaturity of my early 20's.  I confessed to one of my friends, for example, that my ratings as an instructor in the political science department at Cornell University had improved since the last semester because I had stopped laughing out loud at the students who said stupid things. 

I also found out that presidential historians have an awkward role in informing people of the deaths of those who used to be in their social circles.  In my case, I discovered that one of the Occidental College radical leaders I knew, Gary Chapman, 58, had died of a heart attack last December.  I had mentioned Chapman as a prominent leader of the student anti-apartheid movement in Meeting Young Obama earlier this year.

Nevertheless, Garrow made it pleasant to reminisce about old friends and to learn who got married to who, who succeeded in life, and who crashed and burned in a spectacular fashion. My attitude, of course, is that I'm going to be deceased for a lot longer than I have lived and consequently I provided him with my complete honesty - flaws and all. 

At a certain point, I have decided, you can no longer feel embarrassment for the things you have done, you can only expect future generations will learn from your mistakes.  

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Dr. Drew on Meeting Young Obama - Excerpts from Speech to Capistrano Republican Women's Federated

I pulled together the highlights of the talk I gave at the Capistrano Republican Women's Federated Club on April 22, 2011.  This was the first time I ever gave this talk.  As you will see, the audience is very supportive and attentive. 

After watching myself on this video tape, I'm reminded why it is important for political leaders to view their tapes as part of their effort to improve their presentations. 

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Dr. Drew's True Confessions: The Conversion Story of a Repentant Ex-Marxist

I grew up poor and I thought it was unfair for me to be held back simply because of the mistakes of my parents. It drove me nuts, for example, to think that kids less intelligent, hard-working, and moral than me enjoyed vacations in Europe while I lived in a home with raw sewage in the backyard. I thought Marxist socialism would give young people in similar situations a more equal opportunity to enjoy the good things in life.

In retrospect, however, I didn't have anyone in my life to explain compound interest, or how to write a business plan, or how to apply computer technology to the most interesting questions. I think if my family had been part of a contemporary Christian church, then I would have had my questions answered and I would have made better decisions.

I got a track scholarship to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles. All the folks around me at Oxy seemed to think the best thing on earth that you could do with your life was to become a college professor. So I went with the program. I got a scholarship to attend graduate school where I got to study with the some of the best professors in the nation in American government and public policy.

My commitment to Marxist socialist thought, however, gradually came to an end by the summer of 1982 when I began to notice that there was a larger spiritual world which did not fit the materialistic atheist models of modern social science. It was a world of intuition, coincidence, and syncronicity which Marxism saw as only an illusion used to lubricate the workings of capitalist exploitation. I also figured out that my empathy for others was not a weakness...it was an extremely useful tool for generating guesses about how the world really worked.

As I became more spiritual I also started to have an unusual amount of success intellectually and academically. My thinking, writing, and observations knit together and I started to attract positive attention with my research on the causes and timing of welfare programs in the U.S.

In my case, I remember where I was the exact moment I realized I no longer believed in the ideals of Communism: I was walking through the basement of McGraw Hall at Cornell University in September 1983. I had just finished an argument with my radical thesis advisor. As I recall I began to believe that the problems associated with child abuse and neglect might be easily fixed through the use of European-style visiting nurse program. As best I can recall, my thesis advisor saw child abuse as a larger problem caused by the necessity to invest in the reproduction of social capital under conditions in which children were mistakenly seen as elements of private property as part of the larger cultural and legal structures which maintain the reproduction of oppressive class conflict. The solution to child abuse, in his model, would involve paying attention to much greater issues involving the distribution of power and wealth in a modern industrialized society. (Or something like that...) Whatever the details of that argument, I remember the encounter left me thinking he was ideologically blinded and alarmingly out-of-touch with reality.

In my research, I had inadvertantly discovered a bizarre failing in modern political science. I was able to show that much of what we consider our modern America - schools, parks, Boy Scout and Girl Scout programs, and aid for families with dependent children - was largely a consequence of the earlier effort to enforce child labor laws. I know this sounds completely obvious...but the social science development literature of the 1960s and 1970s had been written without any reference to the role of child labor law enforcement as a key step in the modernization process.

Based on my historical research, I disconfirmed the Marxist hypothesis that welfare programs arose out of class struggle. My research showed they arose as an unintended consequence of the completely independent prior decision to stop child labor.

I ended up teaching at Williams College in MA, the nation's top rated liberal arts college. I won an award from the American Political Science Association for my thesis. It is now published in book form.

Today, I'm married. I'm proud that I attend a Baptist Church that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. I have my own management consulting business. Right at this moment, I'm struggling to get up to speed on this new social networking technology...and I'm excited that it provides a way to get around the mainstream media.
 
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Left Wing Blogger Now Asking Who is John Drew? Dr. Drew's Responses

Last year, I was surprised - and somewhat honored - to see that Anna Stoddard the blogger at "Oh, For Goodness Sake" put together a biography on me. The article is here

http://ohforgoodnesssake.com/?p=7349

I thought this forum was a good place to republish a public response to the issues raised by the article by Stoddard, an elderly retiree from New York now living in Mexico. For my immediate, same day, reaction to Stoddard's error-filled article see my story at Patriot Action Net.

The first thing to say is that I was Ann Coulter's T.A. which means I was responsible for grading her papers, grading her exams, and leading her small group discussion sections. I was actually working for her American government professor, Theodore J. Lowi. So, I was actually Lowi's teaching assistant and Coulter was one of my very first students. I think she can also communicate how she saw me evolve from being a young radical extremist into a being a moderate, non-Marxist social scientist. Poor Anna Stoddard, writing in Oh, For Goodness Sake, cannot seem to figure this out and never modified the text even as I brought this issue to her attention almost immediately after she first wrote her article.

(Literally, I called this error to her attention on the same day she wrote this awful smear job, but she did not even acknowledge this bizarre error until 9/19/2011.)

Second, I really was never rejected for tenure as Ms. Stoddard indicates in Oh, For Goodness Sake. The situation was worse than that. The folks at Williams took me off the tenure track in 1989 and really did not even let me compete for tenure. Their story is that my research was sub-par. The irony, of course, is that a month or so later I won the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association for the best doctoral dissertation in the nation in my field. My story is that they were hostile to me because I was a man, Armenian-American, conservative and quite vocal in my complaints against affirmative action and those who doubted the wisdom of welfare reform.

The larger issue raised by Anna Stoddard in Oh, For Goodness Sake is my relationship with Obama. In truth, I only met Obama a handful of times. What is missing, however, is that Obama and I were part of an intense cultural sub-group due to our connections at Occidental College. My knowledge of him was built, in part, through my prior knowledge of Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, Caroline Boss, and others  - the young people who were active in campus politics driven by the Democrat Socialist Alliance at Occidental College. I took my status as a Marxist revolutionary thinker very seriously...and so did he. It not a small deal to live your life anticipating the Marxist revolution was coming down the road. The intensitiy of Obama's commitment to Marxism is why my girlfriend could refer to him as "one of us."

As she writes in Oh, For Goodness Sake, Stoddard also misses that I knew the Marxist professors Obama talks about in Dreams of My Father and I was dating the various structural feminists too. I knew the same foreign students and anti-apartheid activists.

By all accounts, my wife and I are taking grave risks because of my willingness to discuss Obama's early Marxist socialist ideology. If Anna Stoddard and her "Oh, For Goodness Sake" blog is the best that liberal Democrats can do to discredit my story, then I think I can stand up to anything thrown at me by http://www.attackwatch.com/  Seriously, we are okay. We have seen no threats against us. Why?  I think most Republicans already believed Obama was a Marxist and most Democrats do not think it is a bad thing in the first place.

Nevertheless, I'm still frustrated and puzzled by why I could not get this story into the media sooner. If it were not for Newsmax, Breitbart TV and talk radio, then I'm not sure it ever would have gotten to the general public.  Nevertheless, I learned in politics that it is important to respond immediately when you are under attack by an untruthful, error-prone person like Anna Stoddard writing in Oh, For Goodness Sake.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Even Republicans Rejected Info About Obama's Past

Young Obama in 1981 during
his first year at Columbia University.

What would you do if you knew the top Democrat running for president was lying about his past?

That is the question I was faced with in 2008. I had met the young Barack Obama while he was a sophomore at Occidental College, and I knew that his commitment to socialism was deep, genuine and long-standing.

I had been a leader of the Marxist students at Occidental College myself starting in 1976 when I founded the precursor of the Democrat Socialist Alliance on campus. The young Obama I knew was a Marxist socialist who would have been quite comfortable with Communist party members like his Hawaii mentor Frank Marshall Davis, retired domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers, or active socialist politicians like Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer.

The Obama I knew was nothing like the life-long, pragmatic centrist that he was pretending to be in the 2008 presidential campaign. When I talked politics with the young Obama, he expressed a profound commitment to bringing about a socialist economic system in the U.S. – completely divorced from the profit motive – which would occur, in his lifetime, through a potentially violent, Communist-style revolution. In this context, I saw my report on young Obama as a key piece of evidence suggesting a profound continuity in his belief system.

Although I was surprised by Barack Obama’s insistence on his mainstream ideological credentials, I was shocked that my attempts to spread the news about young Obama’s Marxism failed to gain any media traction during the 2008 presidential campaign with reporters, activists, or campaign staffs.

Once I saw the significance of my face-to-face observations on the young Obama, I went out of my way to get my story on record with the Orange County Register. I tried to contact, among others, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, the folks behind the Swift Boat ads, and the McCain campaign.

I thought I would get a phone call back from Fox News - someone, somewhere – and I still do not understand why no one seemed to catch on to the urgency of the situation. I understand I did not have audio tape of young Obama. I did not have any photos or home movies. Nevertheless, I was extremely active in the leftist politics and counter cultural milieu of Occidental College in the 1970s.

As a younger man, I had earned a Ph.D. in political science from Cornell which, I would think, gave me some credibility in measuring young Obama’s ideological convictions. I quickly saw other people who had known the young Obama were featured in various news articles. It seemed to me I should have been just another interview for any journalist, producer or campaign consultant interested in checking out my story and testing it against the facts.

In frustration, I was also posting what I knew on The Caucus Blog site at the New York Times. My expectation was someone from the Times would call me and follow-up on the leads I was sending out. Here is a sample of what I was doing in October 2008 to get the word out about Obama’s Marxist ideology.
I even thought of scheduling my own press conference on the campus of Occidental College through their campus Republican club. Internally, I was conflicted by the urgency of what I knew and the sense it was best for the story to break out in a manner supportive of the McCain campaign.

What shocked me about my experience in the summer of 2008 is that I thought my background as a Williams College political science professor, as a small business owner, and as a visible presence in the Orange County community would allow my message to immediately go to the very top of the McCain campaign. I thought my story would be welcomed by Fox News.

Since then, things have slowly gotten better. My story on the young Marxist Obama has appeared in Michael Savage’s Trickle-Up Poverty, Paul Kengor’s Dupes, Stanley Kurtz’s Radical-In-Chief and Jack Cashill’s Deconstructing Obama.

Nevertheless, I think there is something broken in our media and campaign system. I do not think most independents or conservatives understand, or fully appreciate, the tremendous advantages the left derives from having the mainstream media serve as the fully paid, completely sympathetic, Dan Rather-level opposition research team of the Democrat party. It is a system that methodically ignores damaging information about flawed candidates like Sen. John Edwards and Rep. Anthony Weiner while routinely elevating minor errors among Republicans to the status of Watergate investigations.

If Republicans are going to win in 2012, I think they need to make some changes so that they are friendlier to the whistle-blowers bringing them bad news about the Obama administration. Personally, I would like to see Republicans create new ways to collect negative news stories on liberals by 1) including web pages requesting opposition research from leakers, 2) establishing guidelines for leakers that help them give campaign decision makers the confidence to pursue appropriate leads, and 3) instituting feedback mechanisms so leakers have some minimal assurance that they have been heard by top campaign managers and that their information has been discarded for technical or strategic reasons and not simply because it was overlooked by a careless staff member.

I think recognition of this problem should be the first step in taking systematic action to prevent flawed Democrat candidates from winning office. In the meantime, I predict we will see more examples of media failure as the left dominates the muckraking journalism profession while the right seems too dependent on a small handful of seemingly obscure, over-worked journalists and – as my case illustrates – unconnected and often baffled citizen activists.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Cruel Ironies: Muslims in Indonesia Say Build Your Church Somewhere Else

I was on Twitter figuring out how to translate my tweets into Indonesian when I got into a "conversation" with two people who from Indonesia. In their view, I was all wrong about Muslims. They thought I would benefit by visiting Indonesia to see how peaceful the Muslims were toward their Christian neighbors.

In response, I did what I used to do as a conservative American government professor face-to-face with out of touch liberal colleagues: I confronted them with powerful counter evidence. In this little YouTube video the Muslims in Indonesia do not appear to be very friendly to their Christian neighbors. The irony, of course, is that President Obama grew up in Indonesia and he is fond of suggesting that Islamic adherents in that country are not as vicious or as extreme as the people we are fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This YouTube video features a Muslim woman from Indonesia saying that she lives in a Muslim dominant neighborhood and that the Christians should just build their church somewhere else.

As an Armenian-American, I know from family experience how dangerous it is to be a Christian in a Muslim dominant country. My grandmother lost her mother and many of her relatives to the Armenian Genocide. As such, I recommend this YouTube video as a chilling and ironic reminder that Muslims - even the ones in Lolo Soetoro's home country - are inspired by a text which facilitates the abuse and mistreatment on non-Muslims. We would be unwise not to pay attention to the mistreatment of Christians at the hands of Muslims all over the world.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Young Obama as a Charismatic Marxist Socialist: Augustine 25 Appears on Breitbart TV's "The B-Cast" Show

I was recently interviewed by the folks at Breitbart TV's "The B-Cast" on the topic of young Barack Obama's commitment to Marxist ideology.

Today, I found the embed code for the first part of that interview so you can see it yourself and - I expect - install it on your own blog site for your own readers and viewers. I'm trying to get this story into the mainstream media. My best idea, for now, is to ask for your assistance in alerting print, radio and television reporters/pundits to my story.

In retrospect, I wish I had been more concise. I'm not ready for prime time. My dream is someone will edit this down to a 2-3 minute piece - legally - that can be easily retransmitted on the Internet. Nevertheless, I'm grateful I got an opportunity to share what I know about the "red diaper" ideology of young Barack Obama.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Going Viral: A Political Scientist Experiences the Power of You Tube

As you may know, my fifteen minutes of fame kicked in this week. Award-winning journalist, Ronald Kessler ran a story in Newsmax about me and my observations of the young Barack Obama's radical socialist perspective during his days at Occidental College in Los Angeles. One of the interesting things about this experience has been tracking how the information leaked out and which, if any, channels of communication worked the best.



One of my biggest surprises was the role that YouTube played in getting this message out. Ironically, the biggest impact - so far - has been the interview I did with Breitbart TV's "The B-Cast."

http://www.breitbart.tv/the-b-cast-interview-was-obama-a-committed-marxist-in-college/

What is most curious to me, however, is that I came to the attention of the B-Cast staff through contacts who knew me from You Tube. Part of the problem is that I never got many hits on the You Tube videos I did in the past, so I assumed that it wasn't a well-regarded channel of information, at least for conservatives. I'm rethinking that assumption right now. At any rate, please subscribe to my You Tube channel. Now that I know people are looking at it, I'll take it more seriously and use it as a tool for getting around the mainstream media.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Reviewing a Close Call: Obama Administration Discovers Islamic Terrorism

One of the most annoying things about Janet Napolitano was her belief that guys like me are among the top security threats to our nation because of our conservative views, Constitutional perspective, and commitment to various "single issue" causes. Now, however, it looks like the predictions that Obama's approach to terrorism would make us safer have all been proven wrong.

In this regard, I think it is entirely fair, and important, to point out that the recent terrorist attacks during the first year of the Obama administration can all be traced to its overly optimistic trust of devout Muslims. This is the common theme that runs through accounts of the Ft. Hood shooter, the panty bomber and the CIA base attack. As far as I can tell, participants in the Obama administration are so committed to their politically correct point of view that they don't understand that religious books have real world consequences.

Unfortunately for the Democrat party, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - the 23-year-old Nigerian panty bomber - was brought to the attention of the Obama administration by British authorities prior to his attack.

This fact alone undermines the theory that Obama's genius and superior governing skills would keep us safe.

For me, increased national security starts with a proper understanding of the nature of the threat we face from radical Islam. The thesis of Dore Gold's excellent book - Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism - is that Wahabi Islam has always been a dangerous religious movement - even to other Islamic adherents. The violence of Wahabi Islamic thought predates the establishment of Israel.

Accordingly, it is extremely important for the Obama administration to adjust its risk profiles to take this into accout. Pretending that Islamic terrorism is the product of loneliness or mental illness or discrimination is going to get a lot more Americans killed. The recent uptick in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil shows the Obama administration needs to go back to whatever was working so well during the last six years of the Bush administration.

The news, of course, is not all bad. The practical elements of the Obama administration are already tightening up procedures regarding travellers from Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria, which are considered “state sponsors of terrorism” as well as citizens from Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen. These travellers will be subject to specialized intensive physical scrutiny.

Once again, conservatives are winning the battle of ideas. This is the same "profiling" program that I've argued for for years. I don't think all those searches of me and my luggage this year while I was visiting Northern California or Pennsylvania or Tennessee were making us any safer.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Our Anti-Marxist Mood: The Tea Party Movement at the Beginning of 2010

I've been taking some pride in the intellectual influence of the Tea Party Movement. I feel like I was sort of on the ground floor of it myself when I posted my first blog "Visualizing a One Term Obama Administration" at www.resistnet.com back on January 19, 2009.

http://www.resistnet.com/profiles/blogs/visualizing-a-oneterm-obama

I remember feeling so overwhelmed by the popularity of the Obama administration and anxious to do anything possible - within the law - to take our country back.

In my case, my alarm was fueled by my personal experience of knowing that the young Barack Obama was already a convinced Marxist at the beginning of his sophomore year at Occidental College. Since I had seen the evidence of his early Marxism face-to-face, I knew that it was wrong of him to hide and deny this fact to the general public during the Presidential campaign.

At the very least, I thought that if he was no longer a Marxist, then he owed the American people a description of the intellectual thought process which lead him away from that belief system.

In truth, his later associations with Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright demonstrated that he really hadn't outgrown his early Marxist beliefs. The fact that he appointed both Van Jones and Anita Dunn - as Glenn Beck properly reported - demonstrate that his Marxist faith is still alive and well today.

As a political scientist, I feel safe in suggesting that the Tea Party Movement arose as a response to the extreme Marxist socialist agenda of the early Obama administration.

Today, I think conservatives are winning the battle of ideas again. I feel safer this year knowing that Democrats were pushed back in NJ and VA and that a Congressman from Alabama defected to our side over the health care reform issue. I'm also grateful that the new social media - Twitter, Facebook, Ning - allowed so many of us to bypass the mainstream media and to take positive action under difficult circumstances.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Augustine 25 Remembers: Face to Face with the Young Barack Obama

As you may know, the girls at Occidental College liked to dress up young men and take their pictures. There are some famous pictures of the young Barack Obama while he was at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA floating on the internet. Posted above, I have the rough equivalent from my own spell at this small liberal arts college. Personally, I was one of the founders of the anti-apartheid group that Obama mentions in his book, Dreams of My Father.

From what Obama writes, I guess I had the unusual opportunity to meet the young Barack Obama at a turning point in his life. According to his book, Dreams of My Father, Obama got one of the early signs of his interest (and ability) in public speaking during his participation in an anti-apartheid rally at Occidental College in Los Angeles in the fall of 1980.

I had graduated from Occidental College in 1979.

I met him later that same year in late December 1980. At the time, I was in my second year of graduate school at Cornell. I was visiting a girlfriend who was still attending Occidental College who introduced me to him and his friend Hassan.

My most vivid memory of my time visiting with Obama was the way he strongly argued a rather simple-minded version of Marxist theory. I remember he was passionate about his point of view. As I remember, he was articulating the same Marxist theory taught by various professors at Occidental College. Based on my more detailed studies at Cornell, I remember I made a strong argument that his Marxist ideas were not in line with contemporary reality - particularly the practical experience of Western Europe.

What is significant to me now, in retrospect, was the way he conceded to my argument. At the time, I remember that this was an early victory in my life...the ability to make a powerful, fact-based argument that changed minds. In retrospect, I don't know if he was just trying to restore peace...my gut feeling is that I persuaded him - at the very least - that his education at Occidental College was not really up-to-date or terribly valuable.

Ironically, he ended up leaving Occidental College and transfering to Columbia University in 1981.

I can identify with those "intellectuals" who report that Obama is easy to talk to and seems to take advice well. I think I was one of the first to see this behavior in action...at least according to the timeline presented about his intellectual development in Dreams of My Father.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Kanye West Doesn't Care About White People: How Liberal Ideology Facilitated His Abuse of Taylor Swift

As pundits like Maureen Dowd speculate about whether or not opposition to Obama's health care reform plan is motivated by racism, I find myself much more concerned about a scene on television where a black adult harms a young white person. Specifically, I'm thinking about how Kayne West treated the 19 year-old Taylor Swift when she received a Video Music Award (VMA).

As far as I'm concerned, Kayne West emotionally abused and attacked that poor girl by spoiling a once-in-a-lifetime moment of victory that was supposed to be hers alone. In West's twisted ideological point of view...his behavior was justified by his own "hurt" according to his statement later of the Jay Leno Show.

Sadly, the ideology of the Democrat party opens the door to the dehumanization and mistreatment of young white people. The assertion that honest criticism of Obama is racist simply feeds into the dysfunctional ideology which facilitates attacks on the most vulnerable members of the white population - weak, defenseless young people - as a way of articulating the larger "hurt" caused by racist social structures.

Part of the reason for the mistreatment of young people like Taylor Swift is that liberal ideology teaches us that all white people are racists and that our social system is stacked in favor of white children. Folks like Kanye West are not properly labeled as "abusers" simply because their actions are seen with in the revolutionary context of "hurt" blacks fighting systemic white oppression.

I define racism as hatred of another race. By this definition, black people can be considered racists when they fall into this behavior. Sadly, racism - by my definition - appears to be quite active in the news today.

I also spent time watching the video of the young white teen being attacked by four black teens on YouTube earlier this morning. I've been watching a little BET too. I also reviewed the most recent FBI crime statistics to verify that black on white crime is far higher than white on black crime. In my view, the vilification of the white community in liberal ideology is a major contributing factor to black on white crime...and to the tolerance of affirmative action programs - including programs similar to those which are now illegal in CA.

One of the patterns I'm noticing is an alarming tendency for leaders in the black community to minimize the pain and suffering of the victims of black on black and black on white crime...and to treat black criminal behavior as a normal and acceptable rite of passage for a young black man. There is also virtually no appreciation for the damage that affirmative action does to young white people.

The problem with this cultural meme is that it promotes a profound lack of empathy for other people, the sort of lack of empathy that Kanye West showed toward 19-year-old Taylor Swift.

I think that one of the keys for creating a better and more prosperous world is for those of us who have empathy for others to speak out and fight harder against the people who set poor examples for America's youth. Paying more attention to the victims of juvenile crime might be an important place to start. It is also important to define racism in a way that makes sense and calls attention to the fact that people of all races can be, and are, true racists...the sort of racists who are abusive and dangerous to other people.

In my own life, I've been face-to-face with the insensitive people who thought it was a smart idea to harm me and my career simply because I was Armenian-American and not the member of a politically powerful racial/ethnic category. I even had people who told me to my face that the way I was mistreated by affirmative action was good for me because it taught me how it felt to be the victim of discrimination. I've been told to just "shut up" and get over the mistreatment I experienced in the mid-1990s...even though the way I was treated is now illegal in the state of California.

Unfortunately, we live in a sick world where the villains in the Harry Potter movies are blonds and vicious attacks on real people are tolerated...simply because the white victims are seen as deserving their mistreatment and fate. As far as I'm concerned, those who suggest that opposition to Obama's policies is rooted in white racism are partners in Kayne West's abuse of Taylor Swift. Like him, they are guilty of stepping on kittens and they deserve to be boycotted and shunned... In a larger sense, however, we have a solemn responsibility to address the vicious ideology which facilitates the abuse of others for the achievement of so-called "lofty" goals.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

How Low Can He Go? Rasmussen Reports Shows Steep Drop in Obama Job Approval Ratings

I trust Rasmussen Reports because they look at likely voters, the registered voters most likely to actually make a difference by turning out for elections. Moreover, Rasmussen has demonstrated an uncanny degree of accuracy in predicting the exact results of Presidential elections. Accordingly, I think Barack Obama and his administration have just gotten the clearest possible warning from the American people that the administration is going in the wrong direction.



For example, in today's Rasmussen survey, Obama reached the lowest point of his presidency - an overwhelmingly negative -14 on Rasmussen's "approval index." Rasmussen constructs this approval index by subtracting the 27 percent who now "strongly approve" of Obama's performance from the 41 percent who "strongly disapprove."

I think these negative approval numbers are a little unfair to President Obama since they include people who disagree with Obama on policy issues and others who agree with the President and are upset that he is not winning the battle on health care or other prized liberal issues. In a larger sense, however, low approval numbers undermine a President's credibility and political influence. These numbers indicate that it will be easier for Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans to claim that the President is making mistakes and that they should not follow his direction - particularly when he leads us towards his beloved Marxist socialist utopia.


John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Sen. Reid Now in Hot Water Over Health Care Reform

It’s kind of fun to watch the Democrat party self-destruct over its insistence on sticking us with a public option, an option that would pave the way to single payer. The good news for the vast majority of us who vehemently oppose single-payer is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now trailing a top Republican challenger by 11 points according to a new poll.



The Mason-Dixon Polling and Research survey of 400 registered voters shows GOP candidate Danny Tarkanian leading Reid by 49 percent to 38 percent in Nevada.

Sen. Reid, of course, has been among the most vocal in stressing that he would push through single-payer no matter how little support it had in the Senate among Republicans…even if it means violating long-held Senate norms and procedures. I sincerely hope his friends in the Senate realize that this ruthless politician is in a precarious position.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Rasmussen Reports: Increasing Power of Opponents of Obama's Health Care Reform

Rasmussen Reports indicate that Obama's health care reform program is still dropping in the polls. This, of course, is one of the reasons he wanted to push it through before the August recess. Rasmussen also indicates that opposition to single-payer medical care (socialized medicine) - which Obama supported quite publicly in the past - runs at 57% to 32%. To me, the larger question is why does Obama keep pushing a project that is so unpopular with the American people? This can't do anything but undermine his influence and reduce his power overall.

Part of the answer, according to Rasmussen, is that Democrats strongly approve of single-payer. Democrats support single-payer at the rate of 62%. In contrast, Republicans reject single-payer at a rate of 87%, while those not affiliated with either party reject single payer by a 63-22% margin. The lesson here, I think, is that single-payer is a terrific "wedge" issue.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Xtranormal Movie: How Our Celebrity President Relies on Drinking to Solve Problems

Augustine 25 is the pseudonym of an award-winning political scientist.

Turning Around a Struggling Administration: Free Advice for POTUS from A25OTUS

I just read in the NYT that the Obama administration is holding a special review and strategy session this weekend. According to the NYT, a White House aide said 22 officials with Cabinet rank will meet with administration advisers at Blair House this weekend. They will use this time to take stock of what the administration has accomplished and plan for the future.

I've been watching Obama's steeply dropping Presidential approval ratings...so I think I understand why this July 31 - August 1 working weekend is so important. As a management consultant, I know that there is only one real reason for organizational failure - the behavior of the leader at the very top of the organization.

I've had the unique experience of being an award-winning political scientist, a successful management consultant, and an early advisor to the young BHO. In that spirit, I would make the following recommendations to him for turning around his struggling presidency:

1. Quit your substance abuse. You can't perform as President and also damage your brain with alcohol, tobacco or other drugs ATOD.

2. Pick the brains of those who predicted the failure of the stimulus package...these are the economists and social scientists who really understand how a modern economy functions, prospers and produces jobs. (Give Steve Forbes a call.)

3. Remember that the most successful Presidents of the past have done what has helped them stay high in the polls. This is one of the unique blessings of the American political system. If the President is doing well in the polls, then he is usually making wise decisions that benefit the nation.

I don't expect BHO to ever read this post. Nevertheless, this would be my sincere advice based on what I know about him and the larger patterns of U.S. politics.

Augustine 25 is the pseudonym of an award-winning political scientist.

The Gates of Unpopularity: Obama Dropping in Job Approval Numbers

There is plenty of good news in the paper today. Rasmussen Reports, for example, now shows a majority of likely voters disapprove of President Obama's performance. They indicated that 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve, while fifty percent (50%) disapprove.

Rasmussen Reports have a tendency to make Obama look relatively less popular because they are based on a sample of likely voters.

Other firms that are more popular with the mainstream media base their approval ratings on samples of all adults. As Rasmussen indicates: "President Obama's numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters." The reason? The younger voters who are among the most ardent supporters of Obama are actually less likely to show up and vote in mid-term and later presidential elections.

Augustine 25 is the pseudonym of an award-winning political scientist.