Rebuttal 1
Obama cries poverty during his early years Fox News April 15
Barack Obama, under attack for his “condescending” remarks about small-town America, told Pennsylvania voters on Tuesday that it’s just “silly” to call someone who was raised by a single mother and who was on food stamps an elitist.Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have assailed Obama for saying that small-town voters are clinging to guns and religion because they are frustrated with Washington. Clinton, who has repeatedly broached the issue with voters, launched an ad in Pennsylvania Tuesday featuring five residents criticizing Obama’s remarks.
Asked about the flak he’s been taking, Obama said the charges make little sense to him.
“I am amused about this notion of elitist, given that when you’re raised by a single mom, when you’re on food stamps for a while when you were growing up, you went to school on scholarship….” he said, also talking about his wife Michelle’s money troubles.
“So when somebody makes that argument, particularly given that I spent my entire life working with workers, low-income communities to try to make people’s lives a little bit better, then that’s when you know we’re in political silly season,” he told a veterans forum in Washington, Pa.
“Hopefully it’ll come to an end fairly soon and we can start focusing on the issues that the people of Pennsylvania and the American people care about.”
Source
by Jeff Gold
If Mr. Obama is going to tell the tall tale of having grown up, or at any point having been poor- voters are entitled to knowing the truth:Obama at no point grew up poor in any economic or commonly understood sense of the term.
He may have been born to two flaky college students, so there were inconsistencies in the amount of attention he received at various points in his life, but both these students hailed from the top of the social ladder, and their son would only climb higher - never lower.
For most of his life, Obama’s status can be characterized as ELITE.
While Hillary Clinton did indeed enjoy a privileged upbringing, she has never said otherwise, and in fact ended her Texas debate speech with an admission that she wants all Americans to have the same privileges she grew up with. This is an ambitious, and I dare say sincerely noble, goal. I would be the last to object to a world, in which everyone can have the best education, best parenting, best public services, and the best protection from corporate, social, or individual abuse.
Unlike Clinton, Obama is flat-out lying and misleading the American people into believing he is a self-made rags to riches story, of utmost modesty and pristine moral character. Not only has Obama never encountered any “no” to even the slightest caprice, which is reflected in his brat-like arrogance, his economic history is that of a spoiled boy pampered on a tropical island!
For Obama to speak of hardship, poverty, privilege and opportunity, is stunningly amoral!
At the lowest points in his life, 90% of American’s did not know the opportunities Obama knew.
At its peaks, 99 % of American’s did not know the privileges little Barry was born into!
***
1) Obama’s biological father’s side: Barack Obama Sr was the son of the Chief of a prominent Luo tribe in Kenya. His father controlled all tribal land and held power over all tribal members. The stories of a poor goat farmer, are absolute fabrications. Obama’s biological father would not only enter Harvard as the son of a privileged Luo, upon his return to Kenya Sr. became a senior economist in the country’s Government. He died the bitter death of an abusive alcoholic, but still the Big Man in his Tribe and entourage. [source]
From ages 0 to 2, Obama was growing up in a family of two inexperienced but economically secure, College Students.
2) From 2-6 he was with his rich grandparents.
3) From 6 - 10, with his well-off stepfather employed by Exxon Oil in Jakarta, living in elite conditions and neighborhoods designated for foreigners. [Chang]
4) From age 10 to College Days, Obama lives the Tropical Life with two well off grandparents. One rich, the other idle.
5) The grandparents who raised Obama: On Obama’s mother’s side, the income was upper upper upper. Since it was they, not Ann, that sponsored most of Obama’s education right through Occidental College, it is their income, and not the perennially absent-student mother, that impacted Obama’s status.
It was Stanley Armour Dunham and Madelyn Dunham that made sure since the day of his birth that Barry wouldn’t ever know want, poverty, or hardship.
Even before moving to Hawaii, Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was a Vice-President of a local Seattle bank. While her husband, Stanley Dunham managed a local furniture store, the couple Obama portrays as “typical white people” from Kansas who survived the Great Depression, actually lived in a gentrified suburb called Mercer Island, which has remained gentrified till this day .
When the couple suddenly took off for Hawaii, it wasn’t to escape poverty, but for Madelyn to pursue her banking career. In Hawaii she found her chance to became a pioneer in the American banking world. While her grandson was only nine and living in Jakarta’s walled compounds, she became the first female Vice President of the Bank of Hawaii. [source]
The bank was the top bank in the islands in terms of assets in the 1960s and 70s, making her ascent especially notable. [AP]
When Barry rejoined Madelyn a year later, he had behind him four years of elite schooling in Indonesia (attending the country’s elite Catholic school and elite Public Schools for sons and daughters of dignitaries), and he would go on to study in one of elite America’s best high-schools, and eventually, our country’s most elite Universities.
With absolutely no material wants whatsoever, and zero hardship, a grandmother who was a top executive in America’s banking world, a grandfather with extra time on his hands while running a local furniture store, Obama’s self-obsessed mother had the luxury of pursuing her PhD with anthropological studies of Indonesia, while her parents bankrolled her son’s $7,000 tuition in Hawaii’s best private college preparatory school!Historically one of America’s most ethnically diverse but economically homogeneous schools, today’s tuition in Punahao runs $16,675 a year per student. If billionaire alumni like Steve Case (AOL) and Pierre Omidyar (Ebay co-founder) don’t impress you, maybe a more comprehensive read of alumni is worth it, if only to drive home the message that anyone going to Punahao -because his grandparents could pay for it- should not lie about a modest background.
Having graduated Punahao, Obama went to Occidental -not cheap by any means- , then on to Columbia, and then Harvard. None of these schools are attended by average or middle class Americans. The income distribution for all three is skewed towards the top 10 % percent of the social ladder.
During his college years, nothing indicates any kind of full-time employment activity typical of middle-class or lower-income youth needed to sustain their education. In fact, while no details on his livelihood are available for this period, it is absolutely clear that were Obama ever to find himself in need, his grandparents would have taken care of him. Speculating that significant portions of his income, including for his marijuana and cocain habit, may have come from his unwitting grandparents, is legitimate.6) Obama may not have paid for Harvard out of his own pocket, or his grandparents’ pocket, preferring to take out loans. If his Dreams From My Father (which Gregory went to pains to introduce our readers to, in post after post) Obama makes his racial animosity towards whites, a fait accompli during his college years.
One interesting question about Obama’s admission to Harvard, is not only whether he benefited from Affirmative Action (which as is well known, benefits mostly upper class blacks, with negligible impact on lower-class), but also from his father’s alumni status? Clearly, Obama did not make it to Harvard as a kid struggling against the odds. If anything, he eventually made it into Harvard as a result of schooling in our country’s top preparatory college institution after years of being thoroughly spoiled by his well-off grandparents.
From age 0 to graduation from Harvard, regardless of whatever anecdotes of deprivation Obama comes up with, the reality of his privileged social and income status is indisputable. We are talking a minimum upper 10 % of our country’s social structure, and most certainly higher. A review of his grandparents income, along with his work activity in Occidental, and Columbia, would clarify whether it is top 7, 5, or even 3 percent.
7) Obama likes to brag that once out of Harvard, he received a less than $1000 a month salary as a community organizer. He neglects to mention that this lasted very briefly, and he was in a solid middle-class income in less than three months.His comportment as community organizer as early as 1990 already bore marks of elitism and arrogance. He was a Harvard Grad - and he wore it like a flag pin. Obama was top top, through and though [salon]
Already in the early nineties Obama was working for a top Chicago law firm and had ties with a millionaire developer- definitely not the story of a typical poor, or middle class American.
Again, shortly after graduating Harvard, Obama found himself living in a gated lake-front condominium at Hyde Park, his neighbors some of the city’s most influential movers and shakers. Anyone familiar with the neighbourhood, will tell you that Obama’s accommodations were not the Chicago Middle Class Average, and especially not representative of the average for African-Americans. By any measure, Obama was living an upper-middle class/upper income life. Maybe not spectacularly upper upper, but again, not at all poor, modest, or middle class. Remember, he was just getting started. After college, none of the candidates in the running, were living in Villas or Governor’s mansions.
9) Already in the early nineties Obama had three incomes: from part-time lecturing in one of the country’s more generous universities, to part time work as attorney (more like paralegal, as Juanita rightfully puts it), to State Senator, and supposed community work (still unclear on that), living in a lake-front condo.All of which puts Obama is in the top 10 % of our country’s social
structure.
***
The Michelle Robinson Obama story is actually different from her husband’s. But again, she can not make any logical claim towards poverty or lack of opportunity.
Only the contrary.
Like Obama, she did not attend an average middle class university, but graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School. Unlike Obama, this seems to had less to do with her parent’s privilege, although it would have been less likely without her father’s significantly above average income.
Michelle grew up in a supremely middle-class neighborhood and house, but her father already earned 25 % more than a high-school teacher at the time. Considering that high-school teachers have on average earned 20% above the national median, another 25 % above this means that the Robinsons’ household would have found itself anywhere from 35th to 25th income percentile for the nation. [source]
With this kind of salary, Michelle’s mother could stay home and devote all her energy to her two children if she chose to, which is the choice she made.
This payed off big when Michelle won entrance to one of Chicago’s best magnet schools. At age 13, she was taking college level courses. Today, largely thanks to the opportunities America gives to hard-working honest folk like her father, Michelle is a successful lawyer with a fat check, sitting on the boards of a Food Company, member of Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Vice President for Community and External Affairs at University of Chicago Hospitals.
She is noted for her crass materialist orientation, preferring glamor and expensive glitz to anything contemplative or spiritual, and her racially filtered understanding of American society.
Her only argument for having known poverty, consist of not being able to buy a BMW straight out of Priceton/Harvard because of college loans.
With such a low-bar for poverty, any number of middle class children whose parents refuse to pay for their tuition to top schools, will call themselves poor.
***
For either Michelle or Barack Obama to call themselves poor or suffering middle-class hardship at any point during their lives, is simply misleading.
Nor can Obama make the claim that he, rather than Clinton, is more in touch with the Middle Class due to his economic history. This is patently false, as he had never moved out of the top 10 % income bracket at any point in his life! Its equivalent to the pot calling the kettle black.
If anything, Obama’s history shows a supreme pride and arrogance in not having been born poor, and having been privileged. Chosing between a man who pretends to have known hardship so he can compensate for his arrogance with the middle-class, and a woman who honestly admits knowing privilege and makes it her goal the middle-class gets to know it too, is a no-brainer.
As for Michelle Obama, If not for Jeremiah Wright’s attacks on the “middle-class” as an all-white concept, Michelle Obama could reasonably portray herself as someone who does indeed hail from the upper middle-class.
But she is being unreasonable in calling herself poor and talking about hardship, especially when falsely using the pronoun “we” when speaking of Barack as somehow sharing in this heritage
.
Rebuttal 2
Source Britain's Daily Mail
Mrs Obama distorts reality to act as champion of the masses
Mrs O: The truth about Michelle Obama's 'working class' credentials
By SHARON CHURCHER - Last updated at 22:32pm on 23rd February 2008
The dress, a purple shift, is almost ludicrously simple. The pearls around her neck are fakes, each one the size of a gobstopper, and deliberately so.
It is clear that the woman gazing out from the cover of Newsweek magazine has a message for anyone caring to glance at the news stand.
Yes, Michelle Obama is a glamorous lawyer with a big salary, a bigger house and a husband with one hand on the Presidency, but never forget that this is also the little black girl from Chicago who overcame the odds to change the face of American politics.
Michelle Obama now discovered money is nice.
Her impact on the race for the Democratic nomination has been enormous, and never more so than in the past few days, when victories in Hawaii and Wisconsin have seemed to give her husband near unstoppable momentum.
If Barack's gifted oratory has won the hearts of sophisticated young urbanites, it is Michelle who has delivered the crucial female vote and the support of the working classes, including the blacks and Hispanics who had once been solidly for Hillary Clinton.
Michelle's pitch is far from sophisticated, playing heavily on her humble beginnings and traditional values: "I was raised in a working-class family on the south Side of Chicago. That's how I identify myself, a working-class girl," she has told the voters, time after time.
It helps that she cuts a fine figure on the stump, tall and slender with a hair 'flip' reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy. And it does no harm that, while Barack, 46, comes from mixed Kenyan and white parentage, Michelle, 44, is authentically African-American, giving the Obamas an unmatched breadth of appeal.
Last week it seemed the mask had slipped when, speaking unscripted for once, a sharper, less emollient Michelle emerged. 'For the first time in my adult life I feel really proud of my country,' she said, an apparent lack of patriotism immediately seized on by her Republican opponents.
Yet even they have failed to scrutinise her seemingly remarkable story, or question how her homely rhetoric, full of jokes about Barack's domestic failings, squares with the reality.
When The Mail on Sunday went back to the gritty district of Chicago where Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was raised, we found a rather different picture from the one so single-mindedly promoted by Camp Obama.
Instead of the one-room tenement that now appears in most accounts of her upbringing, we found a well-kept neighbourhood of red-brick Arts and Craft-style houses which have long been home to respectable black families.
Hardly humble: Michelle's childhood home in Chicago
"Michelle was from a middle-class family," confirmed one of her long-time friends, Angela Acree.
"She came from a regular family. They had a nice home. It wasn't a mansion, but it was just fine. It was a decent neighbourhood."
The Robinsons grew up on the upper floor of a house built in the Twenties. Number 7436 South Euclid Avenue - a classical reference to the Greek mathematician which found an appropriate echo in Michelle's subsequent respect for traditional learning - even has a small garden, shaded by a large elm tree, and an ornate stone bench.
The South Side of Chicago has long had its share of gang-infested housing 'projects' but with the University of Chicago hospital close by, there were plenty of white professionals in the area as well as hard-working families in the Robinsons' own image.
No one could pretend they were rich and it is true that her father, Frasier Robinson, spent some time as a maintenance worker for Chicago's Department of Water Management.
However, he was a good deal more than the labourer that many seem to imagine.
Indeed, according to family friends, Michelle's father was a volunteer organiser for the city's Democratic Party, a by-word for machine politics in America, and his loyalty was rewarded with a well-paid engineering job at Chicago's water plant. Even before overtime, he earned $42,686 - 25 per cent more than High School teachers at the time.
Michelle's mother stayed at home and devoted her energies to her and her older brother Craig. Marian Robinson nurtured great ambitions for both her children, along with the traditional values which are now serving Michelle so well.
Television was all but banned in favour of homework, debates about the issues of the day and improving games of chess.
Bright and determined, Michelle was awarded a place at one of Chicago's first 'magnet' schools, which offered special programmes for gifted children. By the time she was 13, she was taking a college-level biology course.
Even as a child, she was not to be underestimated, says Craig, now 45, who works as the head basketball coach at high-flying Brown University. There was no doubt who was in charge.
"We had this game where we set up two rooms and played 'Office'," he recalled. "She was the secretary, and I was the boss. But she did everything. It was her game, and I kind of had nothing to do. My sister is a poor sport. She didn't like to lose."
She rarely did. Michelle beat huge competition to win a place studying sociology at Princeton, one of America's most venerable and expensive universities.
Once she had arrived amid the fauxgothic precincts, however, she found herself surrounded by spoilt white students from wealthy families. She, in contrast, was obliged to take out loans to pay her way and this rankled, as she revealed in a 1985 thesis.
The document, now locked away by the university until after the election in November, betrays an angry, campaigning brand of politics which in no way fits with the mild-mannered advocate of common sense now winning hearts and minds from coast to coast.
On the campaign trail: Barack Obama and his supportive wife Michelle at a campaign rally
"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before," she wrote. "I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus, as if I don't really belong."
One solution, she continued, was to "utilise all of my present and future resources to benefit (the black) community first and foremost".
There was something of this same angry Michelle that inadvertently slipped out last week - although it will take far more than a minor hiccup like that to block Obama's sensational progress to the nomination.
There are those who, in any case, suggest that her ideological roots have always remained rather shallow and that, for the most part of her life, politics have been overshadowed by the straightforward business of 'getting on'.
Even at university, Michelle was well aware that there was more to life than politics, admitting in that same thesis that a 'high-paying position' could prove more attractive than a life of placards and late-night meetings.
It was little surprise to those who knew her at the time that it was commerce not campaigning that claimed her when she graduated with a law degree from Harvard, taking a post with Sidley Austin, an eminent Chicago law firm. Her specialist area was not human rights or family law, but the lucrative detail of copyright and trademark cases.
An acquaintance of Obama's family compares her with another political wife, another lawyer as it happens, with a keen interest in making money.
"Michelle is very much like Cherie Blair. She is a middle-class girl who has discovered that money is nice and doesn't see that as a contradiction with having radical beliefs," he said.
Chicago's veteran political consultant and pundit Joe Novak agrees, saying: "She [Michelle] is now motivated more by personal gain than by social consciousness.
"She saw her opportunities, and she took them."
The rewards have been significant. Despite the image she projects on the Newsweek cover, Michelle owns an impressive collection of diamond jewellery, designer outfits and £400-a-pair Jimmy Choo shoes.
When she is wooing working-class voters, however, she favours austere black skirts and white blouses. "Our lives are so close to normal, if there is such a thing when you're running for president," she declared during a campaign stop in Delaware, shortly before her husband's latest victories were announced.
"When I'm off the road, I'm going to Target [a U.S. chain store] to get the toilet paper."
She did not bother to mention, however, that the paper, like the rest of the family shopping, is taken to an £825,000 three-storey red-brick Georgian revival mansion, set amid beautifully manicured lawns in one of Chicago's most affluent districts.
Even the house became a source of controversy when it emerged that the wife of a Chicago slum landlord, Tony Rezko, helped them buy land to enlarge its grounds.
Renowned for leaving tenants of one of his squalid buildings without heat in the city's brutal winter, Rezko now is facing federal corruption charges.
More contentious still was Michelle's appointment as the £150,000-a-year vice-president of external affairs at the University of Chicago hospital in 2005.
It came only two months after Barack was sworn in as a U.S. senator, and was attacked by critics as a blatant attempt, critics claim, by the hospital's hierarchy to curry favour with her husband, in an era when some politicians want to rein in the vast profits of America's medical system.
They questioned why the wife of a committed Democrat would work for a hospital that has been accused of ruthless greed.
Michelle's image was further tarnished in May 2006, when it was revealed that the centre - despite earning some £50million a year - had refused to treat a man who could not afford to pay his bill. He died.
All of which has led some political veterans to accuse Michelle of the very lack of compassion and moral scruples that her husband has lambasted in his Republican rivals for the White House.
Unlike Hillary Clinton, they point out, neither Obama has endorsed far-reaching healthcare reforms.
Michelle also is under attack for joining the board of a food company where she allegedly took part in a 2005 decision to close a pickle and relish plant in La Junta, Colorado, putting 150 mostly Hispanic labourers out of work.
The small town was devastated.
"It totally amazed me when they closed it," said La Junta Mayor
Don Rizzuto, who had believed that Michelle and her husband were "the champions of the little guy".
In their most recently publicised tax returns, for 2005, the Obamas earned $1600000.
This included royalties from the senator's autobiography Dreams From My Father, and his £82,600 Senate salary.
Under a three-book deal which he subsequently-signed, he stands to earn at least £1million.
To Joe Novak, this only goes to prove that Michelle is distorting reality when she attempts to depict herself as a champion of the masses.
"For the past year (she and Barack) have jetted around the country with Oprah Winfrey and Robert De Niro, enjoying penthouse parties and living the high life," he said.
Perhaps, when she contrasts her current red-carpet lifestyle with the unassuming world of South Euclid Avenue, she genuinely may think that her childhood was impoverished. And the one thing that is certain about the incredible Mrs O is that she never intends to have to live that way again.
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