Does it strike anyone else as kind of pathetic that the British media knows more about the man that's likely. . .unfortunately. . .about to be elected President of the United States than the American media?

Well, more than the American media lets US know, anyway.

Someone save me a good seat in re-programming class, will you?

Uh, take a real good look at a picture of Frank and a pic of Barack Sr. and then another of Barack Jr candidate for President.

Is Uncle Frank the kinda guy who would have scruples about hitting on his buddy's granddaughter?

"Uncle Frank" uh, yeah, sure.

Well, the Brits, knowing all this, still prefer Obama, so... there's no surprises there.

Meanwhile, just mentioning this guy Davis and his association with Obaaa!ma is just full.of.hate. Hate! How dare anyone quote the British media? Buncha Anglo-supremists around here.

:o)

The thing is that this was a childhood association -- one that was set up by his grandfather. Although this glues together some pieces of the puzzle, I don't think Obama's association with FMD should be put on the "bad choices" pile like Ayers. It should be on the "creepy" and "daddy issues" piles.

The bigger story is the media bias story. Why have we not had one TV documentary on "Who is Frank Marshall Davis?"

What a bunch of nice people old Barack hangs out with.

So when I went to college I was being trained to be a "good n*gger?"

Damn. How about all the other white guys?

People like Davis are so blind that it makes them stupid. Like all conspiracists, every tiny detail in the universe is another piece in the grand puzzle. A sparrow farts, and it's irrefutable proof of racism. Is he where Obama learned his infinite sense of self, his insatiable narcssissm?

It continues to amaze me how many times the National Enquirer gets stories right, and then people report on their accurate story by saying 'The National Enquirer is not credible source.'

"This isn't the Frank Marshall Davis I knew."

Well, The One did say he was different from all those other presidents on the currency. I do not recall Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, or Grant having their own pedophile racial awareness guide.

Son of a Hippie, mentored by Davis about how to be "authentic" in his racial attitudes, associates with Angry Left folks, runs as a Deocratic Socialist and wants to "spread the wealth around". Sounds like a veritable flag and apple pie candidate to me.

This story borders on being sick!!

I've known poets, authors and the like, and some of them were really weird -- my wife and I kept them at arms length. Barak Obama was at a young and impressionable age when these encounters occurred, but I was a university graduate student (UC Berkeley) when my encounters occurred. At his age Obama didn't know any better !!!

Obama's problem is that he has virtually no ability to go back and rethink his past encounters with stalinist apparachiks like Frank Marshall Davis (let's include Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn even though they claim that they have no love for stalinism -- baloney -- stalinism is written all over their faces!!!)

Obama's problem is with a fundamental quantity called the truth, something his radical mentors considered malleable at best. Obama can't come clean about his involvement with non-repentant terrorists Ayers and Dohrn. He refuses to come clean about his involvement with the leftist blackshirts who go by the name of Acorn, and he refuses to come clean about his involvement with the most corrupt political machine in America run by Chicago mayor Richard Daley.

Those who vote for Stalinbama vote out of a sense complete denial of the facts that are now coming to the surface, no thanks to the US MSM Pravda.

Nearly all of Obama's formative relations were with pathological individuals and toxic ideas.

Frank Marshall Davis eagerly indulged himself with a 13-year-old girl in his charge. He had wide-ranging sexual appetites without scruples, and describes himself as bisexual.

Is there any reason to believe he would have restrained himself from indulging in a handsome teenaged boy in his charge?

For nearly two decades the Catholic church hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of dollars on the premise that sexual predation by grown men on teenaged boys permanently damages those individuals. The media reveled. They damned the church for willful blindness and covering up.

But of course, this would be different.

When you look at a young man's 'father figures', you see his role models. You see who he really is.

Frank Marshall Davis, Jeremiah Wright, and Bill Ayers are morally unhealthy human beings. They molded Barack's character. They informed his worldview. They nurtured him on their poisonous ideologies. There's no sign that he ever rebelled, or even sought out less contemptible exemplars.

On the outside, Barack may be smooth and sonorous. On the inside, he is a toxic stew of Davis, Wright, and Ayers.

On the inside, he is a toxic stew of Davis, Wright, and Ayers.

Evidence? For many years he's led a public life and has appeared calm and decent. Many wonderful people came from broken and miserable homes, or had parents who were felons or even Nazis. It is a testament to the human spirit and the power of love that a person can transcend their environment and grow to be a splendid person. To hear you call a decent man a "toxic stew" is appalling and totally unfair. And deeply un-Christian. Shame.

richard,

Evidence?

His behavior.

Did he adopt Frank Marshall Davis' worldview? Apparently so. In his memoir, he reveres the despicable 'Frank' and quotes him approvingly.

Did he adopt Bill Ayers' worldview? Yes, he did. Obama joined Ayers on the Woods Fund. Ayers made him chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Obama funded Ayers and his radical associates via the CAC. They worked together on radical education policy and squandered 160 million dollars together. Obama's first political fundraiser was hosted by Bill Ayers. He only distanced himself when it became politically necessary.

Did he adopt Jeremiah Wright's worldview? Yes, he did. According to Obama, he sought out a spiritual mentor and a church where he felt at home. He found both at Trinity. For twenty years he sat in the pew as his 'pastor' spewed anti-American, white-hating filth. Obama brought his wife and kids. The only religion he ever exposed his children to was Marxism with a thin veneer of religion. Would he have done so if he didn't agree with it?

Have you heard the adage, "You know a man by the company he keeps"? How about "Birds of a feather flock together"?

That's evidence.

"Appeared calm and decent" isn't evidence. It's weak-minded bullshit.

Shove your ignorance and pretentious fake-Christian piety back up the hole they came from.

Richard:

"Those, then, are friends to whom the same things are good and evil; and those who are, moreover, friendly or unfriendly to the same people; for in that case they must have the same wishes, and thus by wishing for each other what they wish for themselves, they show themselves each other's friends." (Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book II, Chapter)

Apply that to the people that Senator Obama has hung around with most of his adult life.

Or, you can show yourself to be a partisan lefty hack and denounce Aristotle as a racist.

Your move.

In addition to his acceptance of the worldviews of the various thugs and perverts above, you also have OBama's self-proclaimed "moral compass," the race-bating lynching advocate, anti-Semite, and Louis Farrakhan fan Father Michael Pfleger, who has been Obama's mentor of 22 years.

Among Obama's acts, you can look to his work for the corrupt ACORN as a trainer and his recent attempt to slip them more than $800,000 in money through a front group, suspected millions in illegal foreign contributions, add to that Obama's attempt to subvert the Constitution by corrupting legal scholarship in an effort to run a sophisticated con on the U.S. Supreme Court, and his morally vacant support for infanticide.

Richard asks for evidence that Obama is psychologically a "toxic stew."

What more do you require, for his to be caught in bed with a live boy or dead girl? Both?

The men he sought out as mentors is evidence of Obama's internal issues. The three men who have been constants the longest in his life have been a terrorist (Ayers, at least 21 years, perhaps as long as 27 if they met when Obama was at Columbia), a cult-leading racist (Wright 21 years), and the aforementioned Pfleger.

He chose as his spouse someone who has racial inferiority issues severe enough she tries to work through them in her thesis, but obviously failed, as she was only able to recently become proud of her country as a grown woman... and only then because of a personal benefit afforded to her husband, suggesting her pride was merely bought.

Barack Obama's mind must provide for one hell of a couch trip, and the forces that made him no doubt shaped him into an excellent cautionary tale.

But what I find particularly interesting that the same people on the left who so hate George W. Bush for being an "extremist" look at the extremism that shaped Barack Obama, and twist that in their own minds to be a good thing.

If he manages to win the White House, the various pathologies imparted into him through this lifelong mentoring of racists, terrorists, radicals, sexual deviants and various flavors of communist and socialist extremists will only sharpen in the pressure cooker of the Presidency, and he will make increasing bad decisions.

We one thought Barack Obama might be the second coming of Jimmy Carter, but that was before we began to get a better understanding of the forces that shaped him.

You might be wiling to endanger your children's future by trusting that a man with such a deviant background can overcome a lifetime of corrupting anti-American influences, but I can't.

ichard,

Evidence?

His behavior.

Did he adopt Frank Marshall Davis' worldview? Apparently so. In his memoir, he reveres the despicable 'Frank' and quotes him approvingly.

You have no evidence Obama was molested by "Frank." He was ten years old. You realize how nuts this sounds?

Yankee, about "the extremism that shaped Barack Obama" - all I ask is, what are you talking about? How do you know this is what shaped him? How do you know about other, nourishing and loving people he knew who might have shaped him? It is all conjecture, what you want to believe, but there is no proof. It is scary and also dangerous, to build up such strong hatred against a man all based on association, when you have no idea how closely he was even associated with these people and what the effect of that association was. He's been in the public eye for four years (and actually far longer). How has he managed to hide even the faintest trace of this horrible toxic stew? Do you believe once he's sworn it it will pop out like in Alien? With all due respect, that is plain looney. You can find associations and experience in everyone's life and come up with reasons why anyone would be unfit for power. But it's not based on any reality except that of your own making. In other words, it's pure, unadulterated nonsense.

richard,

How deep in denial would you like to remain? Barack Obama's life has been defined by serial associations with anti-American left-wing extremists. I certainly hope that the freshman Senator has had nourishing and loving people and his life, but that does not in any way excuse the fact that Barack Obama chose as his mentors the most extreme elements of the American left. He has not hidden "even the faintest trace"--obviously, we're talking about it now, and in some detail, and his supporters are doing their level best to suppress discussion of these troubling extremes that make up his record.

Granted, you and your fellow apologists have done all you can to make that discussion nearly impossible by chanting "racist!" anytime anyone has had the temerity to point out these proven and problematic associations, but that attempt to stifle debate doesn't make his extremist views and choice of mentors any less real.

Nothing is "popping out," instead, it's been trickling out over the past year, story by story, as a handful of reporters with intellectual integrity have sought to vet the candidate that most of the media would rather anoint than explore.

You do make one valid point that you can come up with reasons that anyone would be unfit for command if you try hard enough, but the fact of the matter is that extremism of association and deed are the constant in Barack Obama's life, and normal American views and associations are far fewer and farther between, and tainted.

I can understand how someone such as yourself may so swept up in the celebrity of Obama and the firsts he represents that you would will upon him suitability if you could, but the simple fact of the matter is that Barack Obama has a lifetime of associations with extremists, some of which are dubious legally and morally, and lacks any measurable leadership experience or any record of being able to work substantively on matters that require bi-partisanship.

You've spent considerable energy trying to minimize Barack Obama's decades of associations with racists, terrorists, radicals, and a child rapist, but you haven't done anything to examine or explain those associations.

Perhaps, sir, it is time you stop for a moment and try to understand why you can't bring yourself to face what made Obama head-on.

Like many Obama supporters, I suspect you'd rather minimize his problematic associations and positions than explore them, because if you look too closely, you'll find out that you can in no way support him, either.

richard,

There's plenty of evidence of long-term toxic associations. Perhaps you could point to an instance where he refused or rebelled or rose above those associations.

He prospered within one of the most corrupt political machines in the United States. Did he ever denounce or protest the corruption? Perhaps you could ask criminal slumlord and close Obama associate Tony Rezko. Rezko helped Obama buy property, and Obama directed millions in state funds to Rezko. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Perhaps you can point to the moment when an indignant Obama confronted his racist pastor?

Or a moment when he told his ACORN friends, 'Vote fraud just isn't right.'

Or the time when he said to Bill Ayers, 'I won't have anything to do with a man who engaged in acts of terror against my country.'

Or when he turned to Bernadine Dohrn and said, 'How on earth could you celebrate the Tate-Lobianco murders?'

Here's a lesson in common sense. You know a man by the company he keeps. Show me an example where Barack Obama demonstrated that he wasn't like the people he has chosen as his friends.

Lyly, you've really drunk the Kool Aid. How do you know what Obama said to Wright or to Acorn? All innuendo, all smoke - and where there's smoke, surely there's fire. McCain spent some of his impressionable years holed up in the Hanoi Hilton surrounded by communists. Maybe that rubbed off on him, too, and makes him unfit for office. But only a deranged fool would ever say something like that, because McCain has proved he's a decent man (until recently), a caring man and a rational man. We must form our judgments on what IS, on what a man actually does and says and stands for, and not on what our inner demons whisper to us.

richard,

I didn't think my point was so difficult to understand. We know for a fact that Obama has chosen these associations for his entire adult life. He only ditched them when they conflicted with his self-interest.

Can you try real hard and think of a way in which Obama's chosen friends and mentors are different from McCain's wartime captors?

Come on, think. Really, really hard.

I'm reading Dreams From My Father, and I am a Democrat.

And let me tell you, "Frank" is not glamourized, and his thinking is thinking Obama grows to reject over time.

We see many sides of people over time, but never all of them. In one important anecdote, Frank talks about the distance between his friend, Barack's white grandfather, and himself, suggesting that there are elements to his personality that Frank hid from him.

In terms of plausibility, let's sit down for a second and consider this: Obama's judgment, being questioned her, would be that of a boy, who was being brought around by his Grandfather to different places. What kind of ludicrous notion is it for a kid like Barack Obama to determine the future effect on his political campaign nearly forty years hence?

The Republicans are demanding superhuman powers of foresight and precognition here. And why not? Why bother to play a fair game if winning is what matters most?