According to David Garrow’s new book, Rising Star, Barack Obama was cheating on Michelle Obama for sure…back when he was a student at Harvard Law School.
Prior to meeting Michelle, Obama was living with Sheila Miyoshi Jager back in the in the mid-1980s in Chicago. Garrow reports that Barack allegedly proposed to her in 1986. But no marriage resulted because her parents thought she was too young. Jager is Dutch and Japanese.
Next, Obama started dating Michelle while he was a summer intern at her Chicago law firm. After the summer was over, Obama started hooking up with Sheila Miyoshi Jager when they were both back on the Harvard Law School campus.
As you can see in Garrow’s book, it looks like Obama humiliated Michelle by cheating on her with the woman who he had earlier asked to marry him at least twice. Jager and Barack saw each other on and off after Barack and Michelle got together. Garrow asserts that, at this time, Barack Obama was in “two powerful, overlapping relationships.”
Given the question above, however, it may be more accurate to say that Obama has cheated on Michelle before and that if he is cheating on her today it would not be the first time this has happened in their relationship. For more details, see
Inexplicably, I have been allowed back on Quora. I accessed it through my Facebook account and no one seems to have a problem with me any more. I'm not sure how long that will last. Nevertheless, it is interesting to me to see which answers I give seem to spark the most interests. The following exchange is clearly my most popular (upvoted) so far.
"Me at the Beach," by John Drew, Self-portrait, oil on canvas, 10' x 10'.
My Answer: I’m an ex-Democrat largely because the Democrat party stopped representing my interests as a member of the white working class. The key issues for me was affirmative action. As a young man, I grew up poor. Nevertheless, I had good grades, I completed calculus in high school and had outstanding SAT scores.
I worked hard and spent many hours in the library working to get ahead while other, wealthier students, partied and used drugs like cocaine and marijuana. My hard work paid off and I got a scholarship to study in England for a year and later got a full scholarship to attend Cornell University as a graduate student.
As I was finishing up my graduate studies and looking for teaching positions it became perfectly clear that Democrat party members did not care whether I found a job or not. They were much more intent on getting jobs for women and members of favored minorities groups. My family was half Armenian and I was the first person on my mother’s side of the family to graduate from college, much less go to graduate school.
Overtime, I became a registered Republican. This was my only choice, in large measure, as I came to realize Democrats saw white working class folks like me as the enemy. They still suggest I benefit from “white privilege” when my experience is that being white harmed my life and my career as an academic.
At every turn of my life Democrat party policies have made my journey more painful and more difficult. Due taxation policies, I pay more than other people because I have chosen to marry and stay married. Due to housing policies, I have been left with a high mortgage in an expensive housing market. Due to government set asides for minority contractors, I have lost business to companies run by favored minority groups and women. It goes on and on. The Democrats are not on my side.
I would be irrational to vote for the people who have brought down on me so much hatred and discrimination. Even worse, as a student of political economy, I know that the end result of socialism in the U.S. will not be a second Sweden. Instead, it would be a second Venezuela. It would be a place where the ruling elite enriches itself (like the Clintons and Obamas), the most productive people bail out and hide their wealth, and the people supposedly helped by socialism end up picking through the garbage looking for scraps of food.
Trust me. I’m voting Republican because I know it is in my best interest to do so. I think the whole premise of this question is wrong. John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Aside from Obamacare, I think Barack Obama is best known for his book, Dreams from My Father.
This book was extremely important to his early political career in Chicago. Over time, many people took the book literally and it became a way for people to learn about Obama in such a matter that it empowered him. Many charismatic leaders write books about themselves which end up building their own fame and charisma including George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, and John F. Kennedy.
This is part of the reason why there is so much intellectual controversy surrounding Dreams from My Father right now, particularly arguments about the extent to which it is historically accurate or is only a historical novel.
To a large extent, I think that presidential historians are coming to the conclusion that the book for which Barack Obama is best know was in large measure a carefully crafted fiction. It included a number of stories in which Barack Obama tried to exaggerate his ties to the African-American community, including claiming he dated black women, which subsequent research has found to be untrue.
According to David J. Garrow’s new book, Rising Star, it appears that Dreams from My Father overstated the closeness of Obama’s parents, understated the time he spend with Frank Marshall Davis, and minimized young Obama’s post-Columbia marijuana and cocaine usage. There are also indications that the young Obama was quite concerned about his weight since he was fat as a child.
All in all, I think that Dreams from My Father will remain as one of the most important of Obama’s legacies, especially since subsequent research has found that much of this first book was highly inaccurate even as it help to form a myth that helped Barack Obama become president.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Of course, I am an ex-political science professor who taught at Williams in the 1980s and who was a teaching assistant (TA) at Cornell. My sense is that Williams College provided a higher quality education in the sense that the courses I taught there were designed to make everything absolutely clear, creative, and easy to understand for the students. Compared to my TA experience, I did a much better job of teaching while I was at Williams College.
As I recall, I gave students examples of successful papers, provided clear directions, and picked the best possible reading materials. I was among the top teachers on campus according to the reports I received which compared my student ratings with those of the other professors. While I was at Williams College, I was at the top of my game. I completed my doctoral dissertation while I was there and won the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association.
Accordingly, the students I worked with at Cornell and at Williams College were both dealing with the same somewhat exceptional scholar and teacher. The difference is that the teaching at Williams College was much better, I mean ten times better.
That being said, I have to say that Harvard, for example, is much harder to get into than Williams College. Williams is in a God-forsaken, hostile, rural area. It is overwhelmingly cliquish and quite unfriendly to conservative or even Republican perspectives. It is the sort of place where a young Christian or conservative can quickly become socially isolated, even disdained by their fellow students. In my experience, the liberal/leftist students at Williams College seem to have a “you’re either for us or against us” attitude which leaves a lot of the students hating each other by the end of four years.
If you run afoul of the liberal establishment at Williams College you have almost no alternative social or intellectual outlets for yourself. At least at Harvard, where my niece graduated, you have a whole city around you and opportunities to get relief from ideological oppression by venturing off the campus into the larger community. This escape is not possible at Williams College and I think that undermines the quality of education you receive out there.
Of course, Cornell University is also in a God-forsaken, hostile, rural environment. Nevertheless, the college is large enough that there are a variety of students to hang out with. One of the students I worked with as a teaching assistant at Cornell was Ann Coulter. I don’t Ann Coulter would have been happy at Williams College.
So, I don’t know if that helps you much at all. I would say, without a doubt, that the teaching is better at Williams College. Nevertheless, this advantage may not make up - in an educational sense - for the restricted ideological and social life associated with the school.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I just heard that Rep. John Campbell is not going to be running for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives. I am extremely happy to hear this news. I was part of a small, but loyal group of Tea Party folks who fought awfully hard to throw Campbell out during the primary last time out. I was a big supporter of John Webb. We outworked Campbell and denied him the nomination of the local OCGOP.
It looks like I do not have any choice except to throw my hat in the ring as a candidate for this office. I think the district could use a new representatives who listens to the people and who knows what he is talking about in general when it comes to our nation's future.
My agenda will be short and sweet:
Use all the power of Congress to stop Obamacare.
Use all the power of Congress to open up opportunities for job growth and prosperity.
Leverage my take on young Obama's ideological extremism to help clarify why Obama's agenda has been so costly to our nation and remains such a threat to our future.
I expect that Campbell is leaving, in part, because he knows he would face another bruising primary and because he does not expect to exercise any more power or influence in a new, more conservative House of Representatives. He was already too liberal for the district and seemed to have little interest in doing the normal things expected of members of Congress - like being nice to his constituents.
Something tells me that all of us will be better off when he is out of this Congressional office.
Meanwhile, I suspect it will be good for our country to have Barack Obama know that his worst nightmare is now running for John Campbell's old congressional seat. I live close to one of the IRS offices that discriminated against Tea Party groups. I think it will be significant to make my formal campaign announcement in front of the local IRS building.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/
I pushed the envelope of citizen journalism a little further this week by introducing myself to Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Maraniss. According to Maraniss, his research for Barack Obama: The Story took him to Hawaii, Indonesia and Kenya. Unfortunately, he did not have the time to Google search me or review any of the five books, multiple blog posts, YouTube videos or hundreds of websites that feature my take on young Obama’s ideological extremism.
Ironically, Maraniss got awfully close to confirming the details of my 1980 Christmas break debate with young Obama, a debate that reveals just how radical Obama was as a college student. Maraniss reports young Obama was in the San Francisco area at precisely the time when I indicated I first met and debated him. Maraniss, in fact, talked at length with my college-era Marxist girlfriend – Caroline Boss - at whose home the debate took place. Maraniss goes so far as to report that Caroline was part of the composite character “Regina” in Dreams from My Father.
I managed to converse with Maraniss during his recent visit to my alma mater, Occidental College, on October 29, 2012. My wife and I arrived at Occidental’s Thorne Hall early and picked out seats near the front. I learned Maraniss sees young Obama as a largely apolitical figure generally more interested in personal growth than raw political power. In Maraniss’s view, young Obama was largely untouched by the radicalism of either my ex-girlfriend or of his Pakistani roommate, Hassan Chandoo– the older student who admitted to his youthful Marxism in David Remnick’s The Bridge. Maraniss sees no evidence that young Obama was interested in pursuing elected office. For Maraniss, Obama’s lust for power only kicks in just prior to Obama’s application to Harvard Law School. Maraniss’s portrait of young Obama, of course, is absolutely inconsistent with my face-to-face observation that young Obama was 100% committed to preparing for a Communist revolution in the United States and was actively grooming himself to play a leadership role in that highly anticipated, potentially violent conflict.
Maraniss called for questions and I stood up. Speaking into a microphone, I dropped my well-rehearsed bombshell before an audience of about 200 listeners: “Mr. Maraniss, my name is John Drew. I’m a former professor and a former Marxist.” This opening line got a laugh.
“For several years now,” I continued, “I have been very public about my time with Barack Obama at Occidental, where he and I and my girlfriend were all fellow Marxists. A number of conservative authors have asked me about this and published my account in bestselling books. You’ve interviewed my girlfriend and others in our radical circles, but not me. I’d love to talk with you. Would you be open to that? I’m not looking to sell my story or for increased name recognition. I just want to share the truth.”
Maraniss’s response was curt. “Of course,” he said, “ I’m open to talk with anyone.” He shut up and immediately moved on to the next question. Nevertheless, I could see I was on his mind since Maraniss mentioned me by name two more times during his question and answer session. The good news is that he was nice enough to assert that he was not sure of my motivations. The bad news is that he seemed quite certain that everyone else who repeats, or depends, on my testimony -- including Jack Cashill, Paul Kengor, Stanley Kurtz and the editors of American Thinker -- is largely motivated by intractable racism.
While we failed to record video of the question and answer session, Tricia did capture my face-to-face encounter with Maraniss later on. See, http://youtu.be/r4sYJFguGpo
Crouched by the book table, I asked: “How did you find out Caroline was Regina?”
“Didn’t hear it from the president,” he said.
Maraniss seemed to be a bit of a perfectionist when it came to signing our dog-eared copy of Barack Obama: The Story. He graciously wrote: “To John and Tricia, All the Best, David Maraniss.”
I asked: “Do you want to stay in touch?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll give you my e-mail address.”
I asked: “Did you know I existed?”
“After the book came out,” he said.
While I do not know yet if I have a new friend in the field of elite journalism, I think the fact that Maraniss says he never knew about my debate with young Obama until after his book came out indicates that there is something broken in America culture. Apparently, I live in a country where ordinary citizens need to write, research, record -- and perhaps even stage --the news, a country where informants need to go out of their way to share the truth to the preeminent gatekeepers of the mainstream media.
TRANSCRIPT
John Drew: It’s Drew…John and…John and Tricia Drew. How did you find out Caroline was Regina?
David Maraniss: Didn’t hear it from the president. John and Tricia?
John Drew: John and Tricia.
Tricia Drew: T-R-I-C-I-A.
John Drew: I was shocked when I read that…because I…I knew it was…
Tricia Drew: Thank you, sir.
John Drew: Do you want to stay in touch?
David Maraniss: Yeah, I’ll give you my e-mail address.
John Drew: I’m…I’ve written about six articles in American Thinker…Breitbart. Did you know I existed?
David Maraniss: After the book came out… American Thinker…Jack Cashill are not my favorite people. But, I…
Tricia Drew: Thank you, we’ll appreciate that time.
David Maraniss: What you’re talking about and what he’s talking about are two very different things. You’re talking about your relationship which is, for you know, is fact based--as far as you’re concerned. They’re talking about conspiracy theories which there’s just…you know…there’s no factual way to prove these things.
John Drew: If you read my article, you’ll see I actually was…I think was the first person to confront his faith in a Communist revolution in the U.S. …I swear as God is my witness…I think I changed his opinion…I’d place his political interest closer to Occidental.
David Maraniss: Thank you.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I could not help but notice that Donald Trump is offering to donate $5 million to one of Obama’s favorite charities if only Obama releases a range of sensitive documents including his undergraduate transcript from Occidental College. I wish Trump would just give the money to me. After all, I believe I have the personal experience and training needed to verify the gist of Trump’s concerns: I can confirm that Obama is an affirmative action president.
I observed that the young Obama had the IQ of an average white college student when I first met him over Christmas break in 1980. Obama was then a sophomore at Oxy and I was a graduate of Oxy who was paying my dues as a political science graduate student at Cornell. I met young Obama when I was in Portolla Valley, CA, reconnecting with my college-era Marxist sweetheart, Caroline Boss. By then, Boss had shared two classes with young Obama, an international relations course taught by Larry Caldwell and Carlos Egan and a political theory class taught by Roger Boesche. Ironically, I taught alongside both Egan and Boesche while I was an assistant professor in the political science department at Williams College.
Boss knew young Obama well enough to let me know that he was “one of us” meaning that he shared our radical point of view and all the class warfare angst associated with it. For the life of me, however, I do not remember her saying anything to the effect that young Obama was one of the brightest students at Oxy--much less a genius.
The bad news, for Trump and others, is that I do not believe Obama’s transcripts would tell us anything about either his nationality or scholarship status. Mine do not. My nationality is not indicated and I do not see any field on the transcript where it would be noted by school officials. I should add that I got to Oxy on a track scholarship. (I ran a 4:23 mile in high school.) However, I see no mention of my athletic prowess or that scholarship on my undergraduate transcript. Reviewing my own transcript, I can report that I earned straight A’s my freshman year. These transcripts also show my SAT scores. I am sure Obama’s transcripts would show his SAT scores too. This would be useful information, in part, because we can estimate a person’s IQ from their SAT scores.
If Trump is reading this piece, I can report that I have gotten good at guessing someone’s IQ. I suspect that anyone who – like me – has made a living as a college professor, a college admissions counselor, or a management consultant gets good at this task. In my case, I also have the experience of growing up with a younger brother who has a genius level IQ and the rocket science resume to back it up.
I can report to Trump that the young Obama came across as an average white guy. This, of course, is exactly what he was. Obama had a white mother and grew up nurtured by his white grandparents. Based on my exposure to young Obama, I estimate that his grades were in the middle B’s and that his IQ was slightly above average for a college student. Personally, I am not surprised by his recent comments on the Jay Leno show to the effect that he was not particularly good at math--“Malia is now a freshman in high school. I’m pretty lost.” I suspect that Obama has been pretty lost for a long time since he does not report taking any college or graduate school classes that might have demanded skill in math, science or economics.
In conclusion, I should add that I have had the opportunity witness a number of former presidents speaking to live audiences. I feel confident making some comparisons. For example, I do not think Obama is blessed with a higher IQ than Carter or Clinton. Obama is not smarter than either George H.W. Bush or his son George W. Bush. Of all of these former presidents, including Reagan, the only one who startled me with his intelligence was Clinton who I saw during a recent business trip to Little Rock, Arkansas. All in all, I think it is reasonable to assert that the only reason Obama is now president is that so many people mistook him to be a genuine African-American, the sort of person who deserved an affirmative action boost to get ahead.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I thought it would be helpful to list my take on the California state-wide ballot measures. These were very confusing and took time to sort through. In general, I am proceeding along the lines that less is more and that it is probably a good idea to have fewer new laws than more new laws. (I am borrowing a lot of this information from the Orange County Register, even though I am saying "No" more frequently than they suggest...)
Proposition 30 - NO
Tax Hike: It is a silly idea to raise taxes right now. It is a better idea to cut the pay of government employees and trim back our bloated California government.
Proposition 31 - NO
2-Year Budget: Just creates a new layer of local government.
Proposition 32 - YES
Union Funds: This is the most important measure on the ballot and the only one I feel really strongly about voting yes on. It would prohibit union contributions to state and local candidates. It would also impose a ban on automatic paycheck deductions for political purposes by unions. Public employee unions are killing us and this is one of the few ways for us to fight back.
Proposition 33 - NO
Insurance: I just do not understand how this helps consumers and I think it is probably better for the legislature to figure this one out.
Proposition 34 - NO
Death Penalty: If you vote yes on this one, then California would no longer have a death penalty. I think we are all better off when these bad guys are no longer alive. At the very least, it keeps liberals from the future from freeing these people to hurt still more innocent victims.
Proposition 35 - NO
Sex Trafficking: Looks like it just adds more complexity to the existing law. As I said, I am in the mood of seeing government do less and less.
Proposition 36 - NO
Three Strikes Law: This would weaken the state's 18 year-old three strikes law. Frankly, I do not think there should be any crime at all. I do not understand how it helps us to allow these folks to roam free, terrorizing their law abiding neighbors. If you cannot avoid harming other people - in big or minor ways - then I do not want you on the streets.
Proposition 37 - NO
Food Labeling: This looks like an issue that would be better handled by the marketplace. If you do not want to eat genetically modified food, then I think there are providers out there to meet your needs.
Proposition 38 - NO
Tax Hike: Again, just another trick to raise revenue to pay the inflated, unfair salaries of unionized government employees.
Proposition 39 - NO
Tax Hike: This would eliminate the option for companies with headquarters out of state to choose the least-burden some formula for paying their California taxes. Just looks like more anti-business hate from the state.
Proposition 40 - YES
Redistricting: I just do not see any major advantages coming out of changing the existing rules or districts. This looks like more unnecessary instability. A "No" vote would reject the new state senate districts drawn by the Citizens Redistricting Committee.
My simple advice is to only vote YES on 32 and pretty much ignore everything else.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/
I watched Mitt Romney dominate the presidential debate immediately after viewing the time travel movie, Looper. If I had access to time travel, I would use it now to leverage my role as the only person on Earth willing to testify that young Obama was a genuine Marxist socialist in 1980. Energized by Romney’s performance, I am asking myself what can I do - right now - to forestall a real life enactment of the future imagined by Rian Johnson, writer and director of Looper. After all, Johnson’s vision looked so bleak that my wife’s reaction was to say: “Looks like Obama won.”
If I had the advantage of time travel, I would go full on Bruce Willis right now. I would go to 2008 and introduce myself to the television studios of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
I believe public knowledge of my face-to-face confrontation with young Obama’s ideological extremism in 1980 would have helped prevent Obama’s election in 2008. My account of Obama’s anticipation of a Communist revolution would have alerted voters to the reality that Obama was not a bipartisan politician, but rather a long-standing advocate of class warfare and other hateful ideas promoted earlier by the likes of Frank Marshall Davis. My story would have highlighted the real Obama, the Obama who asserted, as he did at a at a Martin Luther King Day speech at the University of Chicago in 2002, “that rich people are all for non-violence” simply because “they want to make sure people don’t take their stuff.”
I would share with the people of 2008 that Obama is stuck in the ideological past. He is a partisan extremist who cannot imagine doing what Clinton did to save the American economy or uplift the black urban underclass. Obama is the sort of ideological purist who would never pivot to the middle. I would tell the people of 2008 that Obama’s lack of bipartisan skill would blow a perfectly good deal with House Speaker John Boehner for reducing the federal deficit. Instead of cutting the deficit in half, I would tell them Obama will increase the deficit more than all the presidents before him. I would alert the people of 2008 to the fact that Obama would be eager to weaken the previously rock solid work requirements of welfare reform. I would repeat a key line from the movie: “Trust me, I’m from the future.”
Lacking the option of time travel, I still think my story helps explain why it was fairly easy for Mitt Romney to defeat Barack Obama in a formal debate. I can report that young Obama was no genius. I saw signs of that young Obama last week when Romney pointed out that in 25 years in business he had never seen a special tax break for corporations who send jobs overseas. Obama - without his teleprompter and entourage of liberal sycophants – is apparently incapable of reacting forcefully to a verbal punch from a true business and political heavyweight.
Temperamentally, I remember young Obama treated my more accurate understanding of world history with an abrupt, even demagogic hostility. I distinctly remember young Obama’s dismissive, arrogant attitude even as I was presenting him with compelling evidence that Marxist theory was dead wrong at predicting the path of European social and economic events. I remember schooling young Obama so thoroughly in just one evening myself that he left my girlfriend’s house agreeing with my more moderate neo-Marxist perspective.
Culturally, I can report that when I debated young Obama in 1980 he talked like a white guy. I did not see a trace of the phony accent that highlighted Obama’s shocking comments regarding the redistribution of the wealth to a conference of black ministers at Hampton University in Virginia in 2007. In fact, the young Obama I met in 1980 talked like a wealthy, privileged white guy. It never occurred to me to think of young Obama as African-American. After all, the African-American students at Occidental College were largely uninvolved in radical campus politics. They were more likely to be active in the Gospel choir than the Democrat Socialist Alliance. Instead, young Obama seemed more like a foreign prince visiting in the United States.
While I cannot enjoy the benefits of time travel, I do live within six hours of Las Vegas, NV. I suspect my Bruce Willis moment will come when I share my story of debating young Marxist Obama with swing voters in the nearby Silver State. My wife and I have signed up to spend a weekend in Las Vegas walking precincts for the Romney/Ryan campaign. We will enjoy some meals, hotel accommodations, a night on the town and an opportunity to impact this historic election. I have my tagline ready: “Trust me, I’m from the past.”
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/
The photo I find to be most historically significant is the one that shows details from of the anti-apartheid rally of February 18, 1981, the rally that debuted Obama’s famous first skit in Obama’s Dreams from My Father. In contrast to Obama’s story, the banner above the event proclaims the somewhat more complex cause of “Affirmative Action & Divestiture NOW.” The photo features many of the real life figures who would become composite characters in Obama’s autobiography. These include my white ex-girlfriend, Caroline Boss, the radical student leader who improbably lent her grandmother’s name - and much of her scintillating personality - to the big-boned, black “Regina” character.
For the record, I view these photos from the perspective of an accident victim looking at a long ago car wreck. Caroline and I had parted ways just weeks before this rally. As I recall, the split was painful enough to cause us to temporarily adopt the roles of imaginary divorce lawyers, lawyers who combed through our conflicting feelings and amicably laid out the details of what became our eventual, imperfect separation.
For many years, young Obama was simply a footnote in my own intellectual autobiography. He was an early witness to the process in which I abandoned my expectation of a Communist revolution, dropped my old Occidental College friends, and eventually became a Republican business owner. In contrast, Obama held tight to his Occidental College friends and their causes.
“Decades later,” Margot Mifflin writes in response to these photos, “Obama would spur a new generation of students into political action, forging a connection between sixties radicals and media-savvy millennials.” Mifflin, of course, is only telling part of the story. She leaves out the part where at least one of Obama’s friends was not so pleased by the impact of affirmative action and never quite forgot what it was like to sacrifice everything he had for scholarly achievement only to learn, at the end of the process: “Sorry, you’re white.”
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
As I said, whenever I am asked what I first thought about Barack Obama I tell the truth: I thought he was gay. Apparently, my take on young Obama's metrosexual appearance was worthy of being attacked last week on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC.
Maddow is apparently seeking to make me look like some kind of a nut simply because I have been honest about my first impression of young Obama. She and I both have Ph.D.'s in political science. I would think that she would give me some credit for being an honest and truthful person. I would also like to point out that David Maraniss, in his new book Barack Obama: The Story, verified that both young Obama and young Chandoo were in the San Francisco area at exactly then I indicated they were up there visiting with me and my ex-girlfriend.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I was honored to appear on Romney Radio last week. I was interviewed by Clint Cox and his friends. I was billed as "...a former Marxist who knew the young radical Barack Obama and many of his closest friends at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA in the early 1980s."
"Dr. Drew's college era girlfriend," they pointed out, "was so close to young Obama that she became part of the composite character Regina in Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father. Dr. Drew is among a handful of people in the world who not only knew the young Obama but are willing to go on the record about what they knew of his ideology." For the radio interivew, click below:
I would also like to point out that David Maraniss, in his new book Barack Obama: The Story, verified that both young Obama and young Chandoo were in the San Francisco area at exactly then I indicated they were up there visiting with me and my ex-girlfriend.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
The most striking feeling I have after watching Obama's speech on television tonight is that I expect the folks who voted for this guy in 2008 now realize that he simply was not up to the job of being a successful president.
I first listened to his speech on the radio in my office. It did not sound quite so bad to me in that environment. Maybe I was not really paying attention. On television, however, his speech was clearly a disappointment. On that stage, Obama looked small...like a little ant in a suit. He looked grey and ashen. It looked to me like his eyes were tearing up for about 15 minutes of his speech. All in all, he did not have the usual energy I associate with his standard stump speech, certainly not the energy of his famous 2004 speech.
I also noticed, when I watch the speech on television, that the camera brought to my attention that Obama's face was twitching with stress. Finally, he seemed to be droning on in the same, boring pace - not much vocal variety or spontaneity in this presentation.
The most chilling moment for me? Obama's assertion that Al Queda is more dangerous that Russia. What, after all, is Obama going to be more flexible about after the election?
The most bizarre? Praising the guy who won the lottery, but then went back to his factory job.
The reference to Lincoln? It made me feel Obama is overwhelmed, frightened and incompetent in his job.
My advice? Send all the illegal aliens and their children home and I will be just fine with our existing roads and bridges.
All in all, there was a surprising lack of facts and details in his speech. It was as if he made no effort at all to persuade me to vote for him. Instead, he offered a silly idea that the economic crisis was worse than we expected and that we should endure more and more pain until he figures out how to turn things around.
Ironically, this poor performance comes to us on the heels of a couple of stories which call vivid attention to Obama's short-comings as a leader. The first is Bob Woodward's new book, "The Price of Politics," which goes on sale Sept. 11, 2012. It shows how Obama underestimated Boehner and pressed him for additional tax increases after Boehner thought a deal had been made. Obama's insistence of pushing Boehner further ended up breaking the whole deal apart.
(There is, by the way, a great story in Woodward's book: The bored Pelosi put Obama on mute while he was delivering an empty pep talk to her while she was doing the real work of hammering out the stimulus package.)
Further evidence of dysfunction showed up in a report by Jodi Kantor who sees in Obama some of the same perfectionistic dysfunction which made Jimmy Carter such a poor president. Her behind-the-scenes report shows Obama majoring in the minor things with a misplaced confidence in his own greatness and skill. Meanwhile, Obama's arrogance is thoughtfully considered by Thomas Sowell who remarks that Obama is "...seldom right, but never in doubt." (This, of course, is consistent with my own take on the young Obama who thought he - as a sophomore - had a stronger take on the possibility of Communist revolution in the U.S. than I did as a graduate student at Cornell.)
He also seems to be underestimating my intelligence once again. Obama seeks to suggest that Romney is inexperienced in foreign policy when it is perfectly clear that Obama himself had little experience in foreign policy when he was first elected president. Obama offers us a path for the future and does not address the natural questions of whether or not that path is working out for us now. He argues "everyone plays by the same rules" and yet supports affirmative action policies that make it harder than ever for young white boys and girls to succeed.
The internal contradictions are just mind-numbing. The vacuousness of Obama's lazy thinking was on full display tonight. He tries to score points when he makes fun of Republicans who seem to offer tax cuts as the inappropriate solution to having a cold, but then undercuts his own argument by reminding us that he has made tax cuts. He praises entrepreneurs, but takes away from their success by demanding that they become better citizens. He praises government and then talks about the need to reform it more - something he has neglected to do in situations like junkets in Las Vegas or Solyndra. He asserts that the Republicans are vague about their plans for the future, but then only offers vague ideas himself.
I suspect at this point in his political career Obama expected to be teaching us the value of socialism and wealth redistribution. Instead, he is suffering from the failure of his own collectivist ideas. It frightens me to imagine what Obama will be doing to our country when he no longer fears the verdict of the American people regarding his foreign policies or Supreme Court appointments. Give our reduced family income and abnormally high unemployment I think Clint Eastwood is right: We need to get a new president - a smart one who knows how to create economic prosperity.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
As an ex-Marxist I am somewhat hypersensitive to the conversion stories of other ex-Marxists. 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, an argument which left me thinking he was ideologically blinded and alarmingly out-of-touch with reality.
For previous generations, such moments of clarity often occurred in the wake of a violent, oppressive event. As Whittaker Chambers describes it in Witness, that moment arrived with an unheeded cry in the Moscow night. As David Horowitz describes it in Radical Son, that moment arrived with the recognition that the Black Panthers had murdered an accountant he had placed with them. For Barack Obama, however, that moment never arrives.
My visceral reaction to Obama’s lack of a conversion story was the topic of an interview I did with a film crew I met last week. I am grateful they took their time to get my face-to-face report on young Obama’s faith in a coming Communist revolution.
As I understand it, the producers will eventually add this footage into a larger documentary called “Simply America” which is “…a journey across our country to give a voice to the American conservative.”
I am still embarrassed for having once wanted the USSR to win the Cold War - even though I last thought this way over 30 years ago. I have a conversion story which explains how I dropped my faith in Communist ideals and how that decision changed my friendships, my mentors and my career goals.
In contrast, President Obama has never expressed remorse for the Marxist revolutionary views he defended during his sophomore year at Occidental College. He has never shared the conversion story that highlights the exact moment when he realized he disagreed with his sophomore year Marxist roommate, Hasan Chandoo.
“If Barack Obama has a story about how he stopped being a Marxist socialist,” I told the film crew, “I’d like to hear it.”
Later, I pointed out that “We never hear where he (Obama) turns to Caroline Boss or Hasan Chandoo and says: ‘Look. You’re wrong. It’s crazy. Communism would actually make us worse off - not better off.’”
“We never hear the story where he confronts Bill Ayers or Alice Palmer or Rev. Wright and tells them ‘Look. You guys are wrong.’”
I am still ashamed of the dangerous, alien and un-American views I once shared with Barack Obama. Nevertheless, I am happy to share my conversion story. Eventually, I expect swing voters will want to hear Obama’s conversion story too – if it exists. For now, however, the details of Obama’s conversion story seem as scarce as Mitt Romney’s tax returns.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I have been waiting to get my story out in a professional quality video. Here is the first successful effort from the folks at Simply America. They spent about three hours working with me and produce about five minutes of the best stuff on their new mini documentary. As I review this tape, I am reminded that Barack Obasma has never shared his conversion story, the story that explains how he stopped being a Marxist socialist.
My conversion story is already out there. As such, I am happy to do whatever it takes to keep this series of documentary films rolling along. You can help too by donating $20 at the Simply America website.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I was pleased to run across the bit of tape where Rush Limbaugh called public attention to my story about dating the real Marxist Regina for two years and my additional comments regarding young Obama's ideological extremism.
As far as I can tell, Rush was genuinely pleased by this bit of news even though he was not surprised to learn young Obama held to Marxist socialist beliefs. I was startled at the calls and e-mails I got after Rush mentioned my story on the air. This went out to about 20 million listeners.
Apparently, Rush had read through, or scanned, my recent article in American Thinker on how my white college era girlfriend, Caroline Boss, became the black Regina in Obama's Dreams from My Father. Here's the actual transcript right off of Rush's website.
RUSH: There's also a guy out now, John Drew, I forget where this is. I've got somewhere in the stack. Apparently this guy dated one of the composite women in Obama's book. The woman named Regina, this guy dated her for two years. And according to this guy, Regina was not black. She wasn't from the south side of Chicago. She was white. They were all left-wing radicals. They spent their summers in San Francisco. Obama, at Occidental College, was a Marxist. This is this guy's writing. We finally found a friend of Obama's from back then. Now, this is not gonna get a wide berth, but it's out there. I don't care about the labels, communist this, we don't even need 'em. Obama is now telling us who he is. And I must admit, there's a bit of rejoicing going on with me, El Rushbo.
This, my friends, is something that I've been confident in knowing since Obama was a Senator. It's not hard. Like I said, you don't even need a high school diploma. All you have to do is understand who modern liberals are and what they are, what they want to do. After that it's easy. The hardest part is admitting that there are people like that amongst us in positions of power with so many friends. But it ought not be. The more people that could come to grips with that, the farther along we would be.
Of course, what Rush may not have realized is that I have been trying to get my story to his attention for about four years now - ever since I first realized that I had valuable insight into the real Barack Obama. Ironically, I discovered that my take on young Obama's ideological extremism was also a topic of discussion on the Sean Hannity radio program featuring Paul Kengor and his new book, The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/
I was startled today by a large number of phone calls and e-mails alerting me to the fact that my story about the real, white Regina was mentioned on the Rush Limbaugh radio program this morning.
Apparently, Rush had read through, or scanned, my recent article on how my white college era girlfriend, Caroline Boss, became the black Regina in Obama's Dreams from My Father. Here's the actual transcript right off of Rush's website.
RUSH: There's also a guy out now, John Drew, I forget where this is. I've got somewhere in the stack. Apparently this guy dated one of the composite women in Obama's book. The woman named Regina, this guy dated her for two years. And according to this guy, Regina was not black. She wasn't from the south side of Chicago. She was white. They were all left-wing radicals. They spent their summers in San Francisco. Obama, at Occidental College, was a Marxist. This is this guy's writing. We finally found a friend of Obama's from back then. Now, this is not gonna get a wide berth, but it's out there. I don't care about the labels, communist this, we don't even need 'em. Obama is now telling us who he is. And I must admit, there's a bit of rejoicing going on with me, El Rushbo. This, my friends, is something that I've been confident in knowing since Obama was a Senator. It's not hard. Like I said, you don't even need a high school diploma. All you have to do is understand who modern liberals are and what they are, what they want to do. After that it's easy. The hardest part is admitting that there are people like that amongst us in positions of power with so many friends. But it ought not be. The more people that could come to grips with that, the farther along we would be.
Of course, what Rush may not have realized is that I have been trying to get my story to his attention for about four years now - ever since I first realized that I had valuable insight into the real Barack Obama. Ironically, I discovered that my take on young Obama's ideological extremism was also a topic of discussion on the Sean Hannity radio program featuring Paul Kengor and his new book, The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor. The day before, Kengor cited my take on young Obama extremism on The Blaze TV - see my story featured at 12:20.
All in all, I'm particularly grateful to everyone who worked behind the scenes to assist me with writing the article that eventually came to Rush's attention this morning. For a short YouTube video including my take on young Obama's ideological extremism, please click here.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/
I have been thinking that if Obama had a son, he would tell him to pretend to be born in Kenya too.
All in all, it is really strange to read the dysfunctional liberal group think in the mainstream media when it comes to the news that Obama's book agent promoted him by saying he was born in Kenya. It is unthinkable that this copy was not run by Obama for approval. That’s not how that book agent business works.
We know, as a matter of fact, that liberals like Elizabeth Warren lie about their ethnic status to get ahead in the world of academic affirmative action. It is not surprising that Obama did the same by touting his supposed Kenyan birthplace. This latest story is a great confirmation about a long-standing pattern in Obama’s life – lying about his past.
For the record, Obama lied about the closeness of his relationship with Bill Ayers. He lied about listening to Rev. Wright’s extremist, anti-white hate speech. Obama lied about his political views at Occidental College hiding the fact that he was an out and out Marxist-Leninist when I met him in 1980. Obama lied in Dreams about seeing an article about a black man who had bleached his own skin. Obama lied in Dreams about his “composite” girlfriend, Geneveive Cook. He lied about her background, her ties to Indonesia, her Australian heritage – even the color of her eyes. Obama lied about Cook breaking into tears because she could never be black.
Obama is a serial liar. He hid his intense relationship with convicted felon Anthony Rezko until FBI surveillance revealed the full extent of this relationship. Obama does not have the integrity needed to succeed as president. Those who justify his lying about his Kenyan birth are defending a man who is not worthy of their time and attention.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
As you may know, I have been walking precincts today in support of U.S. Senate candidate Orly Taitz and U.S. congressional candidate John Webb. I've done this in Massachusetts and California in the past. I may be getting too old for it now.
The first thing I noticed is how dangerous it is to walk unfamiliar streets. The initial day out, I was walking with my friend Dave Duringer who is a great gun rights trust attorney and an insightful observer of conservative politics. I almost tripped and fell three times. Dave kept me from falling head first down a steep flight of three steps outside a home in Mission Viejo. He kindly blamed my glasses and eye sight. I know I'm just out of practice and talking too much.
After about three hours of it, we quit and joined the rest of our Tea Party team for lunch and cold water. It was only when I got home I realized I was suffering from symptoms of heat exhaustion.
The second thing I noticed is one of the most consistent finding in political science. Most voters are not as up-to-speed on politics and political news as those of us who make it our business to study politics.
As far as I can tell, no one we met during these walks had ever heard of John C. Drew, Ph.D. or even knew about my report on meeting the young Marxist socialist extremist Barack Obama. It is extremely easy to over-estimate how well people know you or recognize your name. Building name identification, in any area, takes time and money. The situation, in my case, is so bad that I once introduced myself to a person who did not realize I had delivered a speech - with him in the audience - a month earlier. As they say, people need to hear a message about eight times before it finally sinks in. It is humbling to realize the truth of this observation applies to me just like everyone else.
More comically, I have been introduced to others as John Drew and then mobbed with affection when I was reintroduced as Augustine25. (I'm not joking.)
On the positive side, I had forgotten how charming and friendly 95% of the people are when you ring their doorbell and ask for their vote.
Tricia and I went out walking precincts yesterday and today. (I think Dave has given up on me.) I'm a sort of nervous, nerdy type, but people listened to my spiel and offered us water and encouragement. I was startled by how many people thanked me for running for office. Tricia, of course, is a natural campaigner. As a young girl she used to visit gay bars in Laguna Beach to distribute Christian literature. She is cheerful, upbeat, and never forgets to ask for the homeowner's voter.
Campaign flyer for Orly
Taitz, John Webb, John Drew
and Dave Duringer.
It was also encouraging to see how people maintain their homes. The Republicans we visited have lovingly assembled wonderful gardens with fountains and scuptures. As a group, we Republicans love our cars, trucks and RVs. We skipped the independent voters and Democrats. I think campaigns do that because they do not want timid volunteers turned off by angry, hostile Democrats who slam the door in your face simply because you are a Christian - something that happened to Dave, but not me.
I'm thinking now that we are wrong to only go after Republican households. Right now the Republican brand is damaged in CA and we are probably leaving many Tea Party types without literature and contact simply because they are not registered Republicans. My recommendation is to target neighborhoods with Republican majority voters...but to visit every house. We need to be building our new anti-Marxist anti-Obama party. Visiting only Republicans may turn out our people, but it doesn't build the party or let folks on the fence know we need them and that we are listening to their concerns.
Finally, I had forgotten how much I fear dogs. When I was campaigning for the state assembly in MA, I remember I stopped at a farm house and was immediately surrounded by a pack of five barking dogs. I was approaching each suburban landscape as if a similar feeding frenzy might erupt once again.
I can see why it would be smart for Tea Party constitutional conservatives to raise money and do targetted direct mail. I'm willing to give my life to build a new Republican party, but I only have one life to give.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
