http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/obama’s-college-classmate-the-obama-scandal-is-at-columbia/ I am President Obama’s classmate at Columbia University, Class of ’83. I am also one of the most accurate Las Vegas oddsmakers and prognosticators. Accurate enough that I was awarded my own star on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars. And I smell something rotten in Denmark. Obama has a big skeleton in his closet. It’s his college records. Call it “gut instinct” but my gut is almost always right. Obama has a secret hidden at Columbia- and it’s a bad one that threatens to bring down his presidency. Gut instinct is how I’ve made my living for 29 years since graduating Columbia. Obama and his infamous strategist David Axelrod understand how to play political hardball, the best its ever been played. Team Obama has decided to distract America’s voters by condemning Mitt Romney for not releasing enough years of his tax returns. It’s the perfect cover. Obama knows the best defense is a bold offense. Just keep attacking Mitt and blaming him for secrecy and evasion, while accusing him of having a scandal that doesn’t exist. Then ask followers like Senator Harry Reid to chase the lead. The U.S. Senate Majority Leader appears to now be making up stories out of thin air, about tax returns he knows nothing about. It’s a cynical, brilliant and vicious strategy. Make Romney defend, so he can’t attack the real Obama scandal. This is classic Axelrod. Obama has won several elections in his career by slandering his opponents and leaking sealed documents. Not only do these insinuations and leaks ruin the credibility and reputation of Obama’s opponents, they keep them on the defensive and off Obama’s trail of sealed documents. By attacking Romney’s tax records, Obama’s socialist cabal creates a problem that doesn’t exist. Is the U.S. Senate Majority Leader making up stories out of thin air? You decide. But the reason for this baseless attack is clear- make Romney defend, so not only is he “off message” but it helps the media ignore the real Obama scandal. My answer for Romney? Call Obama’s bluff. Romney should call a press conference and issue a challenge in front of the nation. He should agree to release more of his tax returns, only if Obama unseals his college records. Simple and straight-forward. Mitt should ask “What could possibly be so embarrassing in your college records from 29 years ago, that you are afraid to let America’s voters see it? If it’s THAT bad, maybe it’s something the voters ought to see.” Suddenly the tables are turned. Now Obama is on the defensive. My bet is that Obama will never unseal his records because they contain information that could destroy his chances for re-election. Once this challenge is made public, my prediction is you’ll never hear about Mitt’s tax returns ever again. Why are the college records, of a 51-year-old President of the United States, so important to keep secret? I think I know the answer. If anyone should have questions about Obama’s record at Columbia University, it’s me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of ’83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I’d heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then- Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at Columbia has ever met him, saw him, or heard of him. But don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that Fox News randomly called 400 of our Columbia classmates and never found one who had ever met Obama. Now all of this mystery could be easily and instantly dismissed if Obama released his Columbia transcripts to the media. But even after serving as President for 3 1/2 years he refuses to unseal his college records. Shouldn’t the media be as relentless in pursuit of Obama’s records as Romney’s? Shouldn’t they be digging into Obama’s past–beyond what he has written about himself–with the same boundless enthusiasm as Mitt’s? The first question I’d ask is, if you had great grades, why would you seal your records? So let’s assume Obama got poor grades. Why not release the records? He’s President of the free world, for gosh sakes. He’s commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. Who’d care about some poor grades from three decades ago, right? So then what’s the problem? Doesn’t that make the media suspicious? Something doesn’t add up. Secondly, if he had poor grades at Occidental, how did he get admitted to an Ivy League university in the first place? And if his grades at Columbia were awful, how’d he ever get into Harvard Law School? So again those grades must have been great, right? So why spend millions to keep them sealed? Third, how did Obama pay for all these fancy schools without coming from a wealthy background? If he had student loans or scholarships, would he not have to maintain good grades? I can only think of one answer that would explain this mystery. Here’s my gut belief: Obama got a leg up by being admitted to both Occidental and Columbia as a foreign exchange student. He was raised as a young boy in Indonesia. But did his mother ever change him back to a U.S. citizen? When he returned to live with his grandparents in Hawaii or as he neared college-age preparing to apply to schools, did he ever change his citizenship back? I’m betting not. If you could unseal Obama’s Columbia University records I believe you’d find that: A) He rarely ever attended class. B) His grades were not those typical of what we understand it takes to get into Harvard Law School. C) He attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student. D) He paid little for either undergraduate college or Harvard Law School because of foreign aid and scholarships given to a poor foreign students like this kid Barry Soetoro from Indonesia. If you think I’m “fishing” then prove me wrong. Open up your records Mr. President. What are you afraid of? If it’s okay for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to go on a fishing expedition about Romney’s taxes (even though he knows absolutely nothing about them nor will release his own), then I think I can do the same thing. But as Obama’s Columbia Class of ’83 classmate, at least I have more standing to make educated guesses. It’s time for Mitt to go on the attack and call Obama’s bluff. Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian vice presidential nominee and the author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian.” He now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Campaign Committee. He is a regular guest on Fox News and hundreds of radio shows across America. He is also a gun-slinging, riverboat gambling, entrepreneur and capitalist evangelist. His web site: www.ROOTforAmerica.com
The reason that presidents usually disclose their recent tax returns, but not their 30-year-old college transcripts, is the same reason that job interviewers have for wanting your resume of recent employment, but not your 30-year-old college transcripts. One is relevant to evaluate your current experience level, and one is just something to poke jokes at.
I agree and have pointed out that Obama' past just "doesn't add up", even before he was elected president. He almost seems like a fabrication of a candidate.
Wayne Allyn Root has never had a real job, and failed at pretty much everything he ever attempted. It's clear he's blowing smoke here to distract his tiny contingent of extremist fans from noticing what a blowhard nothing he really is. His one brief but notable moment in the limelight was as a stand-in for Bill Clinton impersonator Darrell Hammond in SNL skit rehearsals.
so attack the messenger tactic is used by maris61, as expected. Root was Obama's classmate at a tiny school - a school small enough where you'd know everyone. He says he never knew Obama. He's not alone. I also think Root is being tongue in cheek with his article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122108881386721289.html Obama's Lost Years Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights. The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing? Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be used to judge a politician's fitness for office. We're not sure the transcripts of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush -- which showed them to be C students -- illuminated much for voters. The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class. But Mr. Obama is a case apart. His personal story, as told by him, made possible his rise from obscurity four years ago to possibly the White House. He doesn't have a long track record in government. We mainly have him in his own words. As any autobiographer, Mr. Obama played up certain chapters in his life -- perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation -- and ignored others. What's more, as acknowledged in "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama reconstructed conversations and gave some people pseudonyms or created "composite" characters. Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past. Earlier this year, the AP tracked down Mr. Obama's New York-era roommate, "Sadik," in Seattle after the campaign refused to reveal his name. Sohale Siddiqi, his real name, confirmed Mr. Obama's account that he turned serious in New York and "stopped getting high." "We were both very lost," Mr. Siddiqi said. "We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay." For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view. Such caginess is grist for speculation. Some think his transcript, if released, would reveal Mr. Obama as a mediocre student who benefited from racial preference. Yet he later graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, so he knows how to get good grades. Others speculate about ties to the Black Students Organization, though students active then don't seem to remember him. And on the far reaches of the Web can be found conspiracies about former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who became the candidate's "guru and controller" while at Columbia in the early 1980s. Mr. Brzezinski laughs, and tells us he doesn't "remember meeting him." What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him. He had transferred from Occidental College in California after his sophomore year because, he told the Boston Globe in 1990, "I was concerned with urban issues and I wanted to be around more black folks in big cities." He got a degree in political science without honors. "For about two years there, I was just painfully alone and really not focused on anything, except maybe thinking a lot," he told his biographer David Mendell. Put that way, his time at Columbia sounds unremarkable. Maybe that's what most pains a young memoirist and an ambitious politician who strains to make his life anything but unremarkable.
I agree with one thing: Romney really does need to release his tax records to make this go away. Kind of makes you wonder why he doesn't do it.
In the middle of New York City, Columbia University has 27, 606 students. The Law School has 1267 students. Per Wikipedia.
Oh, well, obviously, if a random classmate who happens to be a sworn political opponent says so it MUST be true! No one would post a false rumor on the internet, would they? Damn. I wonder what some of the people with whom I jousted politically in college would say about me.
They would say you've lived your life like a good little hen, never venturing out of the coop into the larger world of causes beyond feminism, and opposing men who aggressively fight the good fight because you don't like conflict.
Yeah Columbia being a "small" school is about as logical a statement as using using Heisenberg Principle to describe consumer behavior. Don't try too hard. I went to a school with a 2400 undergraduate enrollment, was extremely involved with campus activities, and didn't even know everyone in my business school class.
What relevance is it that this guy didn't know of Obama, but knew everyone else, or that 400 others don't remember him when the conclusion Root is getting to is not that he wasn't a student there, but that he was a foreign exchange student? Seems like he starts it off as if to say Obama never went to school there(nobody knew him), but then goes to he is a foreigner.
If "THE OBAMA SCANDAL IS AT COLUMBIA", then I'd have to say "THERE SURE ISN'T MUCH OF AN OBAMA SCANDAL". But I'm GLAD to SEE that YEGA1979 is BACK! barfo
The reason the Romney campaign isn't going after this, demanding his transcripts, etc., is that it accomplishes what the Obama campaign wants - scrutiny on anything but his actual record and policies.
