Move That Bus! Move That Bus!

      

[I see that The Economist has noted the Great Political Lecturing Finger as well]

Yes… that would be the bus over white granny*.  If one pokes around at Chicago Trib and Chicago Sun-Times in the background stuff on Obama, the publicly told story on white granny, a linchpin of his Race Speech, gets awkward, shall I say. 

One interesting tidbit I read at ChiTrib was that the Dunhams left behind Methodism and Southern Baptist, in the 50s, to join the Unitarian church when they were living in Bellevue and on on Mercer Island, WA.  They attended at the local Unitarian church, so lefty that, in the McCarthy era (the real one), it was generally referred to as the “little red church on the hill”. 

However, this from the Honolulu Advertiser has information I had not seen on her work/professional background.  Considering that the Dems like to paint the Dunhams as all but latter day Dust Bowl out of Kansas blown by failure and near poverty ever westward, well, let’s just say that is not born out in Hawai’i.

 The white grandmother of Barack Obama blazed a trail for women in Honolulu’s banking circles in the 1960s and 1970s as her grandson grew up surrounded by racial insensitivity.

While Obama’s views on race relations in America were being shaped, his maternal grandmother — Madelyn Dunham, now 85 — received a series of promotions at Hawai’i’s top bank. And in December 1970, she was named one of the first two female vice presidents at Bank of Hawaii.

…

Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, declined last week to comment on Obama’s speech about Wright or his reference to their grandmother — or their grandmother’s attitude on race.

Dunham has repeatedly declined to comment to reporters. Dunham did want to be interviewed for this story, Soetoro-Ng said, but declined because it would be unfair to other media who have made requests.

Soetoro-Ng teaches at La Pietra-Hawai’i School for Girls. She visits her grandmother at least once a day and brings her 3-year-old daughter to Dunham’s Beretania Street apartment as often as possible, she said.

The National Journal has a listing, with little analysis, of the so-called inner circle of advisors around Obama. Some names have been around, but some less so…

*For the record, I did not like it when Harold Ford jr, a Clinton/DLC stable pol, threw his black granny under the bus and said she was white (via BAR).  LOL  Let’s be sure to be even handed…  Would not want to be called a racist… oh noo…..

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