Barack Obama: Red Diaper Baby

[thedrifter]

October 30, 2008
Barack Obama: Red Diaper Baby
By Andrew Walden

By now most of the American public has heard about unrepentant Weatherman terror bomber Bill Ayers, who discovered the pen is mightier than the sword and so worked with Barack Obama to steer $150 million to their radical cronies via the Annenberg Challenge.

In March and April TV viewers were treated to a solid month of "God damn America" from Obama's pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.

Are these simply isolated incidences of Obama using poor judgment in choosing his allies?

No. Barack Obama is a "red diaper baby" who has spent his formative years -- literally from the moment of his birth -- interacting with members and sympathizers of the Communist Party, USA. His mother Stanley Ann Dunham has been described by former classmates as a "fellow traveler." His grandfather Stanley Armour Dunham arranged Obama's mentorship by Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

Key details about Ann Dunham come from interviews in The Chicago Tribune, March 27, 2007 and the Seattle Times, April 8, 2008.

Done bouncing around Kansas, California and Texas in the years after World War Two, Stanley and Madelyn in 1955 picked up and relocated 2,000 miles from Texas to Seattle. The next year they relocated to Mercer Island specifically so their daughter, Obama's future mother, Stanley Ann Dunham could attend Mercer Island high school.

What was special about Mercer Island High School? The Chicago Tribune explains:

"In 1955, the chairman of the Mercer Island school board, John Stenhouse, testified before the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee that he had been a member of the Communist Party."

After intense debate, Stenhouse decided not to resign from the school board according to an April 11, 1955 account in Time Magazine. While others demanded Stenhouse's resignation, the Dunhams gravitated towards his school.

Stenhouse's leftism found an echo on the faculty. The Seattle Times explains:

Dunham gravitated toward an intellectual clique. According to former classmate Chip Wall, she caught foreign films at Seattle's only art-house theater, the Ridgemont, and trekked to University District coffee shops like the Encore to talk about jazz, the value of learning from other cultures and the "very dull Eisenhower-ness of our parents."

"We were critiquing America in those days in the same way we are today: The press is dumbed down, education is dumbed down, people don't know anything about geography or the rest of the world," said Wall, who later taught at Mercer Island High and is now retired in Seattle.

"She was not a standard-issue girl. You don't start out life as a girl with a name like Stanley without some sense you are not ordinary.

Eisenhower helped re-shape the political geography of Europe. The parents of the late 1950s are those we now call "The Greatest Generation." But years later Ann Dunham's ignorance and arrogance found an echo in Obama's book "Dreams From my Father" (p 47). Obama describes himself in Indonesia as:

"...extremely well mannered when compared to other American children. She (Ann Dunham) had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad."

Obama describes his mother arguing with her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. Soetoro had become an Indonesian oil company manager and wanted Ann to accompany him to various social functions with American oil company personnel. Ann refused arguing, "Those are not my people." (p 47)

As with Obama, his mother's generation of these pseudo-intellectual leftist high schoolers found a way to think of themselves as superior. How? By surrounding themselves with co-thinkers. The Seattle Times continues:

One respite was found in a wing of Mercer Island High called "anarchy alley." Jim Wichterman taught a wide-open philosophy course that included Karl Marx. Next door, Val Foubert taught a rigorous dose of literature, including Margaret Mead's writings on homosexuality.

Those classes prompted what Wichterman, now 80 and retired in Ellensburg, called "mothers' marches" of parents outraged at the curriculum.

Dunham thrived in the environment, Wichterman said.

"As much as a high-school student can, she'd question anything: What's so good about democracy? What's so good about capitalism? What's wrong with communism? What's good about communism?" Wichterman said. "She had what I call an inquiring mind."

She also showed her politics, wearing a campaign button for Adlai Stevenson. And despite flirting with atheism, she went to services at East Shore Unitarian church, a left-leaning congregation in Bellevue.

The Chicago Tribune found more than ‘flirtation' in comments from Dunham's friends:

"She touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she'd read about and could argue," said Maxine Box, who was Dunham's best friend in high school. "She was always challenging and arguing and comparing. She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn't.

"If you were concerned about something going wrong in the world, Stanley would know about it first," said Chip Wall, who described her as "a fellow traveler...."

The Chicago Tribune mentions a description of the Dunham's chosen church as "The Little Red Church on the Hill". According to its own website, East Shore Unitarian Church got that name because of, "Well-publicized debates and forums on such controversial subjects as the admission of ‘Red China' to the United Nations...." The fact that John Stenhouse once served as church president might also have contributed to the "red" label.

In a 2006 speech, Obama explained: "I was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly many in the audience were. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I."

In describing his grandparents as Baptist and Methodist, Obama was contradicting himself. Describing his grandfather in Dreams (p17), Obama wrote: "In his only skirmish into organized religion, he would enroll the family in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation...."

Like grandfather, like grandson: Barack Obama would make his "only skirmish into organized religion", joining Chicago's Trinity United Church, inspired by anti-American church leader, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He held tightly to Trinity until it endangered his presidential campaign. Then he quit. This is the sole basis of Obama's description of himself as a "Christian."

Barack Obama writes: "The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."

Atheism is not the only echo of his mother and grandparents. There is the arrogance, also. Just as Ann Dunham looked down on "dull Eisenhowerness", Obama April 6 infamously described his view of rural blue collar Americans while speaking to an audience of wealthy San Francisco donors:

"It's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Ann Dunham could not stand the dumbed-down people who "don't know anything about geography or the rest of the world." But she had a very different idea about black Americans. As Obama explains:

"Every black man was Thurgood Marshall or Sidney Poitier; every black woman Fannie Lou Hammer or Lena Horne. To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear." (Dreams p 51)

Starting in the 1930s the Communist Party promoted opportunities for ‘inter-racial' relationships among its members. The Communists could monopolize their social ties due to the intense social pressures created by the Democrats' system of Jim Crow segregation. The social stigma against what segregationists such as Tennessee Senator Al Gore Sr. called ‘miscegenation' helped keep people in the orbit of the CPUSA. As future Obama mentor Frank Marshall Davis would explain in his 1968 book "Sex Rebel: Black", CPUSA recruitment burgeoned in part due to the sexual opportunities the Communists created.

"With the Soviet Union and the United States allies in the world struggle against the Axis, it was quite respectable to join and work with many groups later labeled Communist. Black and white mingled openly; for the first time many snow broads and spade studs could meet without fear or stigma and they made the most of this opportunity." (p 115)

The Seattle Times describes Ann Dunham's attitude towards dating at all-white Mercer Island High School:

Dunham hadn't had a boyfriend in high school, according to Maxine Box, her best friend at the time. So Box and others were stunned when Dunham wrote them to say she'd married the University of Hawaii's first African student, a Kenyan named Barack Obama.

This is echoed in The Chicago Tribune:

While her girlfriends, including Box, regularly baby-sat, Stanley Ann showed no interest. "She felt she didn't need to date or marry or have children," Box recalled. "It wasn't a put-down, it wasn't hurtful. That's just who she was."

Things suddenly changed when Ann graduated in 1960 and the Dunhams moved to Hawaii. Young Ann quickly fell in love with and married Barack Obama Sr, a socialist from Kenya who she met in a University of Hawaii Russian language class -- and soon gave birth to Barack Jr. Seattle's leftist milieu of coffeehouse political debates in Hawaii evolved into long sessions at UH Manoa with other leftist students listening to jazz, drinking beer and debating politics and world affairs. Along with Dunham and Obama Sr were future Hawaii congressman Neil Abercrombie and others who would become leaders of the Hawaii Democratic Party.

Honolulu had just two years earlier been shaken by the Honolulu Seven Trial of Longshoremen's Union leaders and other Communist Party members ending with convictions overturned by a 1958 Supreme Court decision. But just as with John Stenhouse and Mercer Island, this didn't scare the Dunhams -- it attracted them. Upon arriving in Honolulu, they became fast friends with Frank Marshall Davis who had been a columnist for the ILWU's communist-line Honolulu Record newspaper. Davis had at one point chaired the Honolulu Seven defense committee. Davis' editor had been one of the Honolulu Seven defendants -- Koji Ariyoshi. The largest shareholder in the Record was Ed Rohrbough. Ariyoshi's memoir "From Kona to Yenan" describes how he and Rohrbough worked as US military intelligence officers hand in hand with Mao Zedong in Yenan, China during WW2. During and after the war they helped steer US policy toward the Red Chinese and against the Nationalists.

In Davis' memoir, "Livin the Blues" (p321), Davis describes the numerous highly successful people among Hawaii's very small black population and lists the positions they have risen in their various professions. He then complains:

"These and similar jobs and elective positions were obtained solely on merit. There are not enough souls here to wield political or economic power. There is no ghetto, hence no potential Black Power."

On page 323 Davis continues:

Hawaii is not for those who can be happy only in Soul City. This is no place for those who can identify only with Afro-America. "Little Harlem" is only a couple of blocks of bars, barbershops, and a soul food restaurant or two. When I arrived, the local establishment was trying to shunt black servicemen, gamblers, pimps, dope peddlers, and prostitutes into this area....

Because Smith Street was the closest Hawaii had to a black ghetto, it became a focus of work for the Communist Party in Hawaii. When attempting to lead a hostile CPUSA takeover of the NAACP in the late 1940s, Davis pointed to Smith Street as an example of segregation in Hawaii. And just as Davis described joining the CPUSA in "Sex Rebel: Black", he also described interracial group sex and voyeurism in the back room of a Smith Street bar he called the "Green Goose". (p278-80)

Obama describes Davis as playing a very intimate role in his life from age 9 to 18. When Barack returned to Honolulu from Indonesia in 1970, grandpa almost immediately took Barack to meet Davis. Davis was to serve as a father figure to the young Obama for much of his youth and adolescence. In light of the Communists' bizarre focus on Smith Street, Obama's description of meeting Davis for the first time at age 9 or 10 in 1970 or 1971 takes on new meaning:
...by the time I met Frank he must have been pushing eighty, with a big dewlapped face and an ill-kempt gray Afro that made him look like an old, shaggy-maned lion. He would read us his poetry whenever we stopped by his house, sharing whiskey with gramps out of an emptied jelly jar. As the night wore on, the two of them would solicit my help in composing dirty limericks. Eventually, the conservation would turn to laments about women.

"They'll drive you to drink, boy," Frank would tell me soberly. "And if you let ‘em, they'll drive you into your grave."

I was intrigued by the old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes. The visits to his house always left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable, though, as if I were witnessing some complicated, unspoken transaction between the two men, a transaction I couldn't fully understand....

Then Obama immediately segues into a description of Smith Street:

....The same thing I felt whenever Gramps took me downtown to one of his favorite bars, in Honolulu's red light district.

"Don't tell your grandmother," he would say with a wink, and we'd walk past hard-faced, soft-bodied streetwalkers into a small, dark bar with a jukebox and a couple of pool tables. Nobody seemed to mind that Gramps was the only white man in the place, or that I was the only eleven- or twelve-year-old. Some of the men leaning across the bar would wave at us, and the bartender, a big, light-skinned woman with bare, fleshy arms, would bring a Scotch for gramps and a Coke for me. If nobody else was playing at the tables, Gramps would spot me a few balls and teach me the game, but usually I would sit at the bar, my legs dangling from the high stool, blowing bubbles into my drink and looking at the pornographic art on the walls-the phosphorescent women on animal skins, the Disney characters in compromising positions....

...Our presence there felt forced, and by the time I had reached junior high school I had learned to beg off from Gramps's invitations, knowing that whatever it was I was after, whatever it was that I needed, would have to come from some other source.

In essence, when the young Obama returned from Indonesia, Gramps set about teaching him the CPUSA version of what it meant to be black. That is why Obama was introduced to Davis and that is why gramps took him to Smith Street until Obama finally stopped accepting the initiations.

This also explains Gramps' reaction when Madelyn Dunham is hassled by a black panhandler while waiting for a bus. Instead of agreeing to give his wife a ride to work, Gramps is consumed by the fear that Madelyn, (or Toot, as Obama calls her) is a racist. Gramps reports this to Obama who then goes to talk to Davis in an effort to sort it all out. (Dreams p 87-91) For Obama, the incident was so shattering that he found himself talking about it on the campaign stump several times in March, 2008 and calling his grandmother "a typical white person."

Dunham had been the Bank of Hawaii's first female vice president. The Honolulu Advertiser reported, "In March, several Bank of Hawaii co-workers told The Advertiser they were stunned by Obama's words and had never heard Dunham make comments about anyone's ethnicity."

CPUSA archivist Gerald Horne explains the mold into which young Barack was cast by his mother, grandparents, and Frank Marshall Davis:

"In his best selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father', the author (Obama) speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as "Frank" as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation ...."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

October 30, 2008
Dreams from Frank Marshall Davis
By Paul Kengor

As more and more audio and video emerge on Barack Obama's desire to redistribute wealth, not to mention his views on the housing crisis that has torpedoed the U.S. economy, I keep returning to two columns I've read by Frank Marshall Davis, the communist journalist-agitator who mentored Obama in Hawaii. While much attention has been paid to Obama's relationship with communist-terrorist Bill Ayers -- and rightly so -- much less attention has been devoted to Davis. That's a mistake, since Obama was influenced more by Davis than Ayers.

Davis, who is now deceased, was an African American from the Midwest who had worked as a columnist for the Chicago Star, the communist newspaper of Chicago, a city that had one of the largest CPUSA affiliates, and, in fact, hosted the September 1919 convention that launched the American Communist Party. Though Davis always tried to conceal any communist associations -- ironically, Obama supporters have picked up that torch -- there's no question that Davis was a communist, as is immediately evident upon reading his columns, examining his background, or consulting with people in the party (to this day) who confirm he was a communist. The fact that he was at least a lower case "c" "communist" is obvious. It takes a little more digging to find evidence of his membership in CPUSA -- but not much. Among the sources that reveal his membership are Davis himself, notably in a letter he wrote to a friend, published posthumously by his biographer, Professor John Edgar Tidwell. "I have recently joined the Communist party," wrote Davis.

In 1948, Davis just happened to arrive in Hawaii the same time that leaders of the Communist Party in Hawaii -- realizing the limits of national party organs like the Daily Worker and People's Daily World -- established their own weekly newspaper, the Honolulu Record. In 1949, Davis began writing a regular column for the Record, titled, "Frankly Speaking." This was a key form of agitation work that Davis would do for the party in Hawaii for decades.

A young Barack Obama knew Davis in the latter 1970s, introduced by his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who, in many ways, saw eye-to-eye with Davis, and saw in Davis a potential role model and father-figure to his grandson. Dunham and Davis were close friends.

Though proud of Davis, and very affectionate toward him, Obama sought to obfuscate the identity of Davis in his book, Dreams from My Father, where he strangely referred to him only as "Frank," conspicuously avoiding his full name. Politically, Obama needed to make Davis anonymous, whereas, personally, he could not avoid acknowledging in his memoirs a man who meant so much to him.

I've connected these dots through my Cold War research, which is grounded in primary sources like the Soviet Comintern Archives on CPUSA, FBI files, recently released CPUSA documents at Tamiment Library, and much more. This has brought me into contact with various communist characters and fellow travelers who have molded or worked with Barack Obama, from Davis to Bill Ayers to Saul Alinsky.

So, that's all background on Davis's identity and how Obama knew him.

Now, what about those columns I mentioned earlier? Obama's recent remarks on wealth redistribution made me think of two Davis columns in particular, both for the Honolulu Record:

The first was Davis's January 26, 1950 piece, "Free Enterprise or Socialism?" Davis hoped that America and its economy were at a turning point, as if a kind of perfect storm was brewing that could at last allow him and his comrades to realize their dreams of a socialist America. They would need to trash the current free-enterprise system and argue for a change to something else. Of course, they could not fully disclose themselves, their beliefs, and their intentions, although any thinking observer could easily read between the lines. The key was to gain the support of the people who didn't know any difference.

Davis began his article by asserting, "Before too long, our nation will have to decide whether we shall have free enterprise or socialism." He pointed to actions in Congress, where he quoted the then-chairman of the Congressional committee on small business, who, according to Davis, warned that "at the present rate, either the giant corporations will control all our markets, the greatest share of our wealth, and eventually, our government, or the government will be forced to intervene with some form of direct regulation of business."

Davis did not like "big business" and the rapacious, "tentacled" rich men who ran it. "For instance," wrote Davis, "Alfred Sloan of General Motors announced that his gigantic company made a profit last year of $600,000,000, more than any other corporation in history. Over the years, General Motors has swallowed up or knocked out car manufacturer after car manufacturer so that today less than a handful of competitors remain. Free enterprise, eh?"

"Monopolies" like GM had to be controlled by the government, said Davis. If not, the likes of GM would control the government. "Obviously, a business that can show a profit ... of $600,000,000 is in a position to control government," wrote Davis. "When we remember that the directors and major stockholders of one industry also shape the policies of banks and other huge corporations, it is easy to see that the tentacles of Big Business control just about everything they think they need to insure continued profits." Davis claimed that, "The control of our wealth and government by the giant corporations ... [was] accomplished fact."

Davis believed that it was such free enterprise run amok, allegedly un-regulated and un-checked by the federal government, that had caused the Great Depression: "For many years now we have been living under the virtual dictatorship of Big Business which all but drove us to ruin in 1929."

Davis was grateful for the grand intervention of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who he believed had saved the day: "By curbing the excesses of the giant corporations that had led to the economic crisis, Roosevelt was able to save the system from complete collapse."

Even then, FDR, in Davis's eyes, had not done enough: "And yet the moneyed men who were bailed out by the New Deal program were our late president's [FDR's] biggest enemies. They have refused to see that in order to preserve their hides, they had to hand out a few drops of gravy to the common man."

Toeing the Stalinist line, as he always did without deviation, Davis then blamed American capitalism for starting World War II. That had been the party line issued by Stalin in his February 1946 Bolshoi Theatre speech. It was a ridiculous, outrageous lie, one that infuriated Democrats and Republicans alike. Nonetheless, the lie became marching orders for Davis and other comrades at party organs around the world. It was their duty to follow that party line, and they happily saluted the red flag. In his column, Davis zeroed in on the true bad guys of World War II: "This bolstering of a sick economy ended at the outset of World War II. Multi-billion-dollar expenditures for the means of killing fellow humans brought added profits and Big Business emerged stronger than ever before in history after V-J Day."

And now, in January 1950, things were especially grim under President Harry Truman, who Davis particularly despised, given that the Democratic president was, at the time, publicly condemning, countering, and seeking to contain Stalin. Moscow had told the good comrades to take special aim at the "fascist," "Hitlerian" Harry Truman, and Davis did precisely that, unceasingly demonizing this icon of the Democratic Party. For the hard left, the current American president had to be bludgeoned beyond recognition; the left did so with great success, as Truman would eventually leave office the most unpopular president in the history of American polling -- until a man named George W. Bush.

There was a conspiracy, suggested Davis, between Truman and even larger monopolies "fattened" by recent mergers. Wrote Davis: "With this added weight to throw around, and a president [Truman] willing to do their bidding after the death of Roosevelt, our giant corporations have had things pretty much their own way. Government policy is fixed in Wall Street and transmitted through the corporation executives who have been appointed by Truman to high federal office. OPA was killed, the Marshall Plan launched and the nation placed on the brink of war economy -- so that such firms as General Motors could make $600,000,000 profit while unemployment skyrocketed."

Davis, for the record, hated the Marshall Plan as much as he hated Truman and Wall Street. That was because Moscow hated the Marshall Plan, which was intended first and foremost to keep Western Europe from falling to communism.

What's worse, said Davis, was that America was busy simultaneously giving a bad name to socialism. Many Americans, especially conservatives, recklessly tossed around the "S word." "At the same time we have manufactured a national horror of socialism," wrote Davis. "Meanwhile, the dictatorship of the monopolies is driving us down the road to ruin." Alas, we could expect "still rising unemployment and a mounting depression."

"[T]he time draws nearer," advised Davis, "when we will have to decide to oust the monopolies and restore a competing system of free enterprise, or let the government own and operate our major industries."

I will let you guess which solution Davis preferred.

Comrade Davis put it more bluntly a few weeks later in his March 2, 1950 column, approvingly quoting Woodrow Wilson: "The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States." In that column, Davis was most concerned with the inability of poor Americans to purchase "a decent home."

For Davis, the only hope was a huge, emboldened federal government that could save Americans from the capitalists, that could rein in fat-cat corporations, that could slap down Wall Street and its excesses, that could spread the wealth, and that could ensure that the poor could buy a home.

To bolster his case, Davis went back to the height of the Great Depression, borrowing a 1935 quote (allegedly) from the governor of Pennsylvania: "I warn you that our civilization is in danger if we heed the deceptive cries of special privilege, if we permit our men of great wealth to send us on a wild goose chase after so-called radicals while they continue to plunder the people .... We are constantly told of the evils of Socialism and Communism. The label is applied to every man, woman and child who dares to say a word which does not have the approval of Wall Street."

Do not look to the conservatives for help, said Davis. The conservatives were racists: "If I were conservative, that would mean automatically that I think we have gone too far in trying to break the yoke of color bondage and that I am in favor of greater discrimination ... not less."

Davis warned that some fear-mongers would try to silence the likes of him by branding him a socialist, or a "Red engaged in subversive operations," or "an agent of Moscow." "But I, personally, have no intention of being silenced by a label," wrote a stoic Davis. "I do not intend to be frightened into submission to the status quo."

What I've shared from these two columns is only a sample of what Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama's self-acknowledged mentor, wrote for decades. This was his thinking. Coincidentally, Davis's form of agitation would have been at home right now with the current housing and economic crisis in America. He would have been in his element, thriving -- on autopilot.

It is amazing, though not surprising, that today's Democrats will help cover for Frank Marshall Davis, given that Davis despised their party and constantly worked to undermine its heroes throughout the Cold War. Modern Democrats are oblivious to the nuances of the early Cold War and still don't appreciate the communist threat of their day, including the fact that the communists viewed them as idiots to be duped; the communists were not their friends. Still, liberals will dutifully protect the likes of Frank Marshall Davis so as to elect Barack Obama, the current Democratic nominee -- as Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy roll over in their graves.

To what degree are Obama's comments on the economy and taxes influenced by the communist-socialist ideas of Davis? No doubt, the question is fair, given that we only know of the Obama-Davis relationship because of Barack Obama himself, who opened the door in his memoirs. I could never have written this piece if Obama hadn't acknowledged Davis. Obama was mentored by Davis in his late teens, before heading off to college, where, as Obama wrote in Dreams From My Father, he hung out with the "Marxist professors" and attended "socialist conferences."

And yet, not a single one of our nation's leading journalists has asked any such questions. They are far more interested in Sarah Palin's wardrobe and Joe the Plumber's license. The New York Times is busy with bigger issues, like Cindy McCain's history of murder and mayhem.

It is truly, truly amazing to behold. For modern journalists, truth is second to their politics.

Paul Kengor is author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperPerennial, 2007) and professor of political science at Grove City College. His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).

Ellie