COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Obama Slings a Tale.


Democratic Slinging Machine.

Well it seems as if Hillary is not the only Democratic candidate to spin a yarn. Obama has made some adjustments to his history. The Camelot connection to the white folks in Massachusetts is not quite the case:

Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father

By Michael Dobbs WASHINGTON POST
Sunday, March 30, 2008; Page A01


Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.

The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Caroline Kennedy endorsed his candidacy in January, Newsweek commentator Jonathan Alter reported that she had been struck by the extraordinary way in which "history replays itself" and by how "two generations of two families -- separated by distance, culture and wealth -- can intersect in strange and wonderful ways."

It is a touching story -- but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified.

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton acknowledged yesterday that the senator from Illinois had erred in crediting the Kennedy family with a role in his father's arrival in the United States. He said the Kennedy involvement in the Kenya student program apparently "started 48 years ago, not 49 years ago as Obama has mistakenly suggested in the past."

The real story of Barack Obama Sr.'s arrival in the United States and the subsequent Kennedy involvement in the airlifts of African students sheds light on the highly competitive presidential election of 1960 and Africa's struggle to free itself from colonialism, as well as the huge strides made by the Obama family, which has gone in two generations from herding goats in the hills of western Kenya to the doors of the White House.

In his speech commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the Selma civil rights march, Sen. Obama linked his father's arrival in the United States with the turmoil of the civil rights movement. Although the airlift occurred before John F. Kennedy became president, Obama said that "folks in the White House" around President Kennedy were looking for ways to counter charges of hypocrisy and "win hearts and minds all across the world" at a time when America was "battling communism."

"So the Kennedys decided 'we're going to do an airlift,' " Obama continued. " 'We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.' This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great-great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves. . . . So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born."

A more accurate version of the story would begin not with the Kennedys but with a Kenyan nationalist leader named Tom Mboya, who traveled to the United States in 1959 and 1960 to persuade thousands of Americans to support his efforts to educate a new African elite. Mboya did not approach the Kennedys for financial support until Obama Sr. was already studying in Hawaii.
(More here)


58 comments:

  1. Manure spreader at work pulled by a Case.
    ------
    The pressures of responsibility grew greater for Adams almost by the hour. As head of the new Board of War, meeting every morning and evening, he was acutely aware of Washington's distress at New York. Dispatch riders from the general's headquarters brought repeated warnings that arms, lead, flints, medicines, and entrenching tools were all urgently needed. At Boston the troops were "almost mutinous in want of pay." In Canada, where the remnants of an American army were still holding out, the situation was gravely compunded by the ravages of smallpox.

    On June 15, the provincial legislature of New Jersey had ordered the arrest of its royal governor, William Franklin, the estranged, illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin...." from 'John Adams'

    :O A Bastard Tory.

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  2. Obama wears a teflon coat, the likes of which are few, far between.

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  3. McCain, whatever you think of the guy, does have a great story. He's got this advantage, he doesn't have to spread shit around.

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  4. I can't get over Hillary. Time, time and again, makes stuff up. Finally, getting called on some of it. She's behind Obama in the latest democratic national poll by around 10%.

    I still say, it shouldn't be thought unreasonable to subject the candidates for the highest office in the country to a battery of lie detector tests!

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  5. Way back in the 60's, I had a friend in HS, father a contractor, that built a little spreader out of plywood, a little bit of steel, 2 pulleys, and a quarter horse electric motor.
    Went down to the sewer farm, picked up the sludge, and spread it on his lawn!
    ...really ahead of his time.

    Now if only he would have had the family drinking filtered liquid effluent, he'd still be current today.

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  6. "Obama's Selma speech offers a very confused chronology of both the Kenya student program and the civil rights movement. Relating the story of how his parents met, Obama said: "There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Junior was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama."

    After bloggers pointed out that the Selma bridge protest occurred four years after Obama's birth, a spokesman explained that the senator was referring to the civil rights movement in general, rather than any one event."
    ---

    "This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama. "
    ---
    Pure Bullshit, spread by an overly active oral cavity, powered by an outrageously outsized sense of self-importance.
    PUNK

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  7. I was surprised to see WaPo, but upon reading it, they let him off, for all PRACTICAL purposes, by focusing on the Kennedy angle, and leaving THE BIG LIE, until deep into the second page, where few of the fewer still that read such stuff, will ever deign to tread.
    ---
    Keep it quiet, boys, get'r done.

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  8. Think the MSM will ask for any documentation at all of the great-great-great owning slaves?
    ...don't bet on it, not when they let him throw his living grandmother under the Bus w/barely a whimper.
    Old hag only supported the whole damned enterprise.
    (well that plus welfare and food stamps for hippymom & Co.)

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  9. Ms Hernandez must have written this especially for 'Rat and Trish!
    YOUR MOM IS RIGHT, TRISH!
    ---
    This conflict cannot be sloughed off as simply another generation of ethnic group competition in the United States (like the familiar rivalries between Irish, Italians and Jews in the early part of the last century).

    Rather, as the violence grows, the "diasporic" origins of the anti-black sentiment —

    the entrenched anti-black prejudice among Latinos that exists not just in the United States but across the Americas —

    will need to be directly confronted.
    "

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  10. ...now if the LA Times would do a piece on their prejudice against the rest of us, I'd pay for a subscription!

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  11. Why Barack Hussein Obama's Middle Name Matters

    ...This doesn't mean we are safe.
    We lost 3,000 people in a Muslim raid in 2001.

    Yet, our military wasn't overpowered. The twin towers weren't knocked down by jet bombers launched from Islamic aircraft carriers. (In fact, the 44 countries of the Muslim world don't have a single carrier amongst them. We have 12, each one larger than any other country's biggest flattop).

    No, we lost 3,000 lives because we let 19 terrorists into our country and let them roam around as they pleased.

    George W. Bush had campaigned in 2000 against the profiling of Muslims by airport security. His Transportation Department was running a program in 2001 to crack down on the "disparate impact" of security procedures on air travelers with Arab names.

    Michael Tuohey was the veteran U.S. Air ticket agent at the Portland, Maine airport who checked in head terrorist Mohammed Atta and his companion Abdulaziz Alomari on the morning of September 11, 2001, on the first leg of their trip that ended with Atta piloting a hijacked jet into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. In 2005, Tuohey recounted:

    “’I thought they looked like two Arab terrorists but then I berated myself for the stereotype and did nothing.’”
    David Hench of the Portland Press Herald reported:

    "It wasn't just Atta's demeanor that caught Tuohey's attention.’
    When I looked at their tickets, they had first-class, one-way tickets - $2,500 tickets.
    Very unusual,' he said.
    'I guess they're not coming back.
    Maybe this is the end of their trip.'"

    [Ticket Agent Haunted by Brush with 9/11 Hijackers, March 6, 2005]
    It was.

    Here's the FBI's list of the names of the 19 terrorists:

    “Mohamed Atta, Khalid Al-Midhar, Majed Moqed, Nawaq Alhamzi, Salem Alhamzi, Hani Hanjour, Satam Al Suqami, Waleed M. Alshehri, Wail Alshehri, Abdulaziz Alomari, Marwan Al-Shehhi, Fayez Ahmed, Ahmed Alghamdi, Hamza Alghamdi, Mohald Alshehri, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Ahmed Alnami, and Ziad Jarrahi.”
    Notice a pattern?

    In retaliation for 9/11, America immediately did a sensible thing—overthrow the government of Afghanistan for hosting Al Qaeda.

    But then, upon further reflection, we did something that made no sense: invade and occupy Iraq, a country that had nothing whatever to do with 9/11.

    When the last legless old Iraq War veteran dies early in the 22nd Century and we can finally total up the cost of our Mesopotamian misadventure, it will add up to vast sums—five trillion dollars is the latest guesstimate of Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz. That would be $65,000 per American family of four.

    And yet there is a logic of sorts to the Bush-McCain invade-the-world thinking. If we continue to invite-the-world, if we won't defend our legal borders, we'll have to militarily push our effective borders out to the ends of the earth.

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  12. George W. Bush had campaigned in 2000 against the profiling of Muslims by airport security. His Transportation Department was running a program in 2001 to crack down on the "disparate impact" of security procedures on air travelers with Arab names.
    ---
    Isn't that special, oh so compassionate, and, well, good for that Arab vote and money that's gonna fuel the
    PERMANENT GOP MAJORITY!
    Dickhead.

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  13. I never lived in a more race based society than while in Panama, doug.

    I'd never deny that the Latinos were biased against the darker skinned amongst us, in the Americas.

    Nor would I deny or defend the ethnic cleansing of areas of LA.

    But I'll also not deny the course the politicos, Republican and Democrat have set the US upon, either.
    I'll not deny that the internal borders of America are pourous, to non-existant. From a practical perspective, both economic and physically.

    Neither of the current crop of politicos are going to change that. Provide some lip service, perhaps, but not build a 60 seat coalition in the Senate to revamp the Trade Treaties or build a secure fence along the frontier.

    There also is no 60 seat bloc that will "regularize" the existing 20 million foreigners illegally in residence within the US.
    Nor are there 60 votes to remove those without papers from the country, or even make life for them difficult, so they'd leave on their own.

    So the status que will continue, the worse of all options.

    A reality I deplore, but do not deny. That I can explain why this is occurring, as part of a covert operation that makes Charlie Wilson's look like that of a first grader.

    So deeply rooted in the ruling culture, of both countries, that the process is part of establishment thinking, not even part of the debate, which occurs only on the margins of the issue, on tactics, not strategy.

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  14. Hope your wrong.
    Wife just finished Charlie's book:
    The
    "WOT"
    would not exist, if not for all the setups we provided them.
    crap.

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  15. "There also is no 60 seat bloc that will "regularize" the existing 20 million foreigners illegally in residence within the US."
    ---
    Even after the devastation the GOP is headed for in the next election?

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  16. As to affronting the "anti-Black" culture of the Latinos, we must look to the white biased culture of the US, first.

    The Texas Insurrection, against Santa Anna's government was raced based. Slavery not being legal in the Mexican Republic, but was part of the US expats cultural heritage.

    Recall that Jim Bowie did not free his personal slave, until the end was upon them, at the Alamo. Or so the myth persists.

    So the US lags the Latins, from a legal perspective, in race relations. Culturally it has taken the US many years to overcome racial inequities, or even change the discriminating laws of Jim Crow.

    The Latins may have to be led to enlightenment, as your quote suggests. This will be done through engagement and example, not by isolating them south of an red line, on a map.
    A line that does not even exist, on the ground, at east of Narco, AZ.

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  17. The bad news: it seems awfully unlikely that Obama will do the simple, practical thing to protect America from terrorism—make it a lot harder for people with names like, oh, say, "Hussein" to come to America.
    Of course, John McCain won't do it either. His friends in the media would be shocked. It would be far more pleasant on the Straight Talk Express if he merely launched a war with Iran.

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  18. Yeah, because there are some Dems that believe in the status que.
    In liberalizing the ability of foreigner immmigration.

    Obama may speak of Nafta, but will not be able to change Nafta. Just on the margins, perhaps.
    Billary needed GOP support to pass Nafta, but there was a solid Dem base of politicos in favor of it. Still is.

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  19. The Free Traders can buy the 40 votes, already have.

    Just look at the proposal to grant regulatory authority to the Federal Reserve.

    Putting the foxes in charge of the hen house. Expanding their writ from external security to internal, as well.

    Let the feasting begin.

    Not even a mention on most of the News
    But of real signifigance to the country, the economy and the future of the US Republic.

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  20. Culturally, we did most of it, until liberal polices encouraged everyone to go backwards in their life choices for the last 40 years.

    I don't see our anti American Institutions and pop culture doing anything to mend things
    "through engagement and example,
    ...we ENCOURAGE folks to hate us.
    ...we deserve it, don'tcha know.

    So if you're right, I'm confident we're Fucked.

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  21. But let's talk about Rev Wright, it's so much easier.

    And of less import

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  22. (answering this:
    "So the US lags the Latins, from a legal perspective, in race relations. Culturally it has taken the US many years to overcome racial inequities, or even change the discriminating laws of Jim Crow.")

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  23. Yeah,
    Plus Wright's an accomplished entertainer.
    Like the Chimp.

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  24. (now I've forgotten the latest picture of the Chimp in Chief, but it was classic)

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  25. I'm right, doug.

    So are you.

    Battle against the tide, or float your boat. The decision as to what is in your posterities best interest is yours to make.

    Go with the flow, or row upstream.

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  26. Looking for the picture, I found this:
    ---
    Larry Craig looks begnign in comparison:
    Bush Intercontinental crew finds fetus in jet toilet

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  27. Al-Bob, Al-Doug, and Kevin Jame'll be rowin upstream til the last, I think!
    What the Hell!
    Remember the Alamo!

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  28. Did you see this, 'Rat?

    ...that 3 minute video of Wright describing his momma's techniques?

    I even got my wife to laugh, is spite of her natural tendency to consider all my taste in humor 2nd Grade Material.

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  29. 40 years, brings US back to the time of that other Texan President, LBJ.

    His "War on Poverty" the keystone to the economic trials and tribulations of the current generation of dysfunctional family formation within the communities affected.

    The Federals destroying the keystone of development, the father present family, with cash payments for dysfunction.

    Dysfunction is what they got, by design.

    Keep 'em down on the farm, barefoot, pregnent and votin' Dem.
    Until Barack took the keys to their chains, liberating them from the Plantation overseers.

    The Dems that won the White House since that time ...
    Southern boys that knew how to work 'em, right.
    The GOP, winning with cowboys and imperial rights to succession.

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  30. Like Sowell says:
    Just when problems are starting to get solved, Govt steps in and makes it worse.

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  31. "The Federals destroying the keystone of development, the father present family, with cash payments for dysfunction."
    ---
    The libs and elites have 50 arguments against that.
    All Bogus.

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  32. The BonerLib brought down the GOP.

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  33. CHICAGO (AP) — Barack Obama's controversial former pastor got a big round of applause last night during a surprise appearance before a congregation in
    Chicago.
    The Reverend Jeremiah Wright showed up for an event to celebrate poet Maya Angelou's birthday at Saint Sabina Roman Catholic Church.
    Video shows the surprised audience giving him a standing ovation.
    The pastor of Saint Sabina says he invited Wright because Wright is a fan of Angelou's.
    Wright gave the benediction, followed by more applause, ...


    Oh so brotherly, those Catholics, of Chicago.
    The smiling Wright accepted an invitation to give the benediction at the Roman Catholic church ...

    Afterward, he went into an office off the pulpit to greet audience members.

    Pfleger told the CBS station he invited Wright because ...
    "... I wanted him to see the love of people for him," Pfleger said. "And so when I asked him about coming, he said he'd be honored to come and it was a blessing for us to have him here."


    Real video from the Roman Catholic Church.
    Roman Catholic Priest praising Rev. Wright, hugging him in solidarity, and brotherhood.

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  34. That link doesn't work, 'Rat!
    ...paste the url, please.

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  35. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  36. Here we go, check it out



    http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/256.0/popup/index.php?cl=7167084

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  37. Praise the Lord!
    ...Wright's material is a lot more entertaining.

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  38. Indeed, it is.
    One is Rev. Wright preaching
    Other is adulation of him, in a Roman Catholic Church.

    He knows his audience, well.
    Faithful Chrisitians, down home on the Plantation.

    Change from within.

    We'll see just who owns the Democrats Plantation, the Urban Blacks of the north, or one of the Southern good ole boys, Billary.

    There is more than a good case to be made for Al Gore to ride to the rescue, in Denver.
    Being a Uniter
    And from Tennessee.

    Rested, tan and ready...
    For a 120 day sprint.
    Leave McCain trailing in the dust, limping along, losing both the "Right" and the "Middle", to either staying at home or voting for Al Gore.

    Right from the beginning.

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  39. He and Obama, his VP candidate.
    Building his resume
    Waiting his turn.

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  40. When dad was still around, he made a deal with the city to spread sludge from the city treatment plant on our place for a couple of years. Worked great. Alas, the city then found some way to sell the stuff to some folks in Spokane, I think.

    Think the future, think sewage!
    --------
    Jeremiah's daddy was a Lutheran.

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  41. Vote in Zimbabwe going according to national standards, riot police out, votes impounded.

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  42. RUFUS thought I was just slingin' shit with my tale about the GIANT PALOUSE EARTHWORM, so he won't believe me about

    ICE WORMS in the North Cascades, either.

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  43. FLASH--

    Tony said...
    Whoops - Rev. Wright's Dad was pastor of Grace BAPTIST Church for 42, not LUTHERAN and 62 years as I mentioned in my post. Sorry for the bad data. I still consider my post much more accurate and honest than "The Speech" by Obama.

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  44. These divergent outcomes are not accidents. Culture does matter. Race doesn't.

    Barbados and Haiti. Interesting article.

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  45. At the height of concern on college campi for the Vietnam Draft, the brother of a girl I knew joined the Coast Guard, and lived out his term in Barbados!

    Piss Poor Luck, I tell you!

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  46. Here in Michigan's sixth district, where I live, Fred Upton, a Republican, keeps getting elected because he seems to be responsive to the needs of his district. He or his office has responded to each of my queries.

    Upton has come through for local issues, such as the new ethanol plant and stopping the dumping of toxins into Lake Michigan. He's promoted the local nuclear plant and had done a good job for communications legislation.

    His attention to liberal issues, such as the immigration status of Ibrahim Parlak, medical insurance for children, environmental protection and so on, have made him a likeable "moderate" Republican to many Democratic voters.


    The Anti-voter

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  47. Obama's tutu a Hawaii banking female pioneer
    Sam Slom was a Bank of Hawaii economist at the time and was married to a Korean-Chinese woman. Slom remembers looking at housing ads that openly expressed racial preferences.

    The landlords' ads read, "'No haoles,' or 'AJAs (Americans of Japanese ancestry) Only,' or 'No Japanese,'" Slom said.

    "That's the way it was," said Slom, who is now a Republican state senator representing Kahala and Hawai'i Kai.
    "Did people talk about race?
    We had local jokes ... like that 'pake' (Chinese) guy or the 'yobo' (Korean) who did this or that.
    I certainly got my share of haole jokes.
    But I never heard Madelyn say anything disparaging about people of African ancestry or Asian ancestry or anybody's ancestry."

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  48. "Most of Dunham's close friends who knew her best are now dead, Soetoro-Ng said.

    But several current and former Bank of Hawaii executives — some of whom were mentored by Dunham and knew her after she retired — said they were stunned by Obama's comments about his grandmother.

    "I was real surprised that he indicated that," said Dennis Ching, who was a 23-year-old management trainee under Dunham beginning in 1966. "I never heard her say anything like that. I never heard her say anything negative about anything. And she never swore."

    Bank of Hawaii — or Bankoh as it's known locally — was the No. 1 bank in the Islands in the late 1960s and early 1970s in terms of assets.

    So Dunham's rapid ascension as one of the two highest female executives in 1970 was especially notable.

    "It was a very big deal — oh my gosh," Ching said.

    Ching succeeded Dunham as head of the bank's escrow department when she retired in 1986. He is now president of Honolulu-based Integrity Escrow and Title.

    While then-No. 2 First Hawaiian Bank was considered the "local" bank for ethnic minorities at the time, Ching and others said Bankoh was "the haole bank."
    "

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  49. Speaking of things Hawaiian, Aloha Airlines is gone. GO! Airlines, doing some real rate cutting, did them in. Still going to carry freight. Aloha Airlines--can't remember when there wasn't Aloha Airlines.

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  50. Mile High Building Planned Think they can build it with their own engineers?

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  51. She repeated her commitment to campaigning through the remaining 10 contests and her belief that she can capture the nomination, despite the steadily growing number of superdelegates backing Obama.

    “I don’t keep track of that,” she told a Pittsburgh station. “I feel very good about where my campaign is.”

    Clinton played down a report in Monday’s Wall Street Journal that North Carolina’s Democratic House member are about to endorse Obama. “I think what’s important is what the people believe,” she said, noting that Sen. Edward Kennedy endorsed Obama ahead of the Massachusetts primary but she easily won the state.


    Denying Voters a Say

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