Ripley’s Believe It or Not
The well known author Dinesh D’Souza published an extraordinary piece yesterday. It tells the story of his encounter with a fellow called George, the youngest of eight children, who lives in a shanty in the Huruma slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Dinesh met George last February while working on a documentary. Then, just a few days ago, he received a sad call from George, who told him that his son was in the hospital with a chest condition. He pleaded with Dinesh to send him $1000 to pay the medical bills. Dinesh spoke to the nurse to confirm the story and then agreed to wire the money.
Before I hung up I asked George, “Why are you coming to me?” He said, “I have no one else to ask.” Then he said something that astounded me, “Dinesh, you are like a brother to me.”
Good for Dinesh. But the story doesn’t end there.
George has a real life brother who just happens to be the president of the United States. . . . George’s brother is a multimillionaire and the most powerful man in the world.. . . One of Obama’s favorite phrases comes right out of the Bible: “We are our brother’s keeper.” Yet he has not contributed a penny to help his own brother.
Gosh. And it’s not as if Obama has singled out George for neglect. As Dinesh points out,
Obama also has an aunt named Hawa Auma, his father’s sister, who ekes out a living selling coal on the streets of a small village in Kenya. She says she would like to have her teeth fixed, but she cannot afford it. Obama hasn’t offered to help her either.
You can read the whole of Dinesh’s column here. I’ve long known that abstract benevolence, a specialty of liberals, was eerily compatible with practical indifference or even cruelty. (I go into some of the reasons for this in “What’s Wrong with Benevolence” in my new book The Fortunes of Permanence.) But this spectacle of callous familial neglect by, as Dinesh rightly describes him, the most powerful man in the world is something special. Forget politics. This is about simple humanity. I have to assume that Dinesh’s facts are true. No one would dare fabricate such a story. But what does it mean? For once I am speechless.
I have to assume that Dinesh’s facts are true. No one would dare fabricate such a story.
No conservative or libertarian would dare fabricate such a story. For “progressives”, though, it’s almost an every-day occurrence ….
Indeed, Obozo’s brother was probably just running a scam and the “nurse” was his daily shack-up. It does Dinesh great credit, but George will probably overdose on the money and kill himself. If he survives, he’ll probably empty the bank account it was sent from.
Indeed, it’s all in the family.
Doesn’t Dinesh ever get those “I have a billion dollars US currency for you to just pick up for me, and hold, keeping the interest, just send me your bank access code…”? Africa is a hellhole, and it’s because of the inhabitants, and their lack of western values and cultural maturity. Survival trumps culture, especially artificially introduced culture. Always.
God put a moat around the damn place. We shoulda known.
I have no way of knowing whether this is true. If it is, it illustrates the difference between real (or “Christian”) charity and Progressive (or “indirect”) charity.
Real charity would be sending George some money or, even better, bringing him (legally) to the United States and being his sponsor – helping him find a job, a house, and a better life in general. Real charity is personal.
Indirect charity means trying to fix the System so that “issues” and “problems” and “inequalities” and “contradictions” within in the System cease to affect people like George. Talk about “trickle-down fairy dust…”
Hard to figure out…if the narrative is that he is Obama Sr’s son, then all his family relationships point to his lack of character. If he is truly unrelated to Obama Sr. as some propose, then it would seem logical that he would feel no obligation to (non)family, but it is curious that he would expose himself politically. The mythos of Obama deserves more scrutiny from those that ignore its contradictions.
George, Obama’s brother, should have asked the Federal government for foreign aid, i. e., tax-payer dollars. The money would have quickly arrived.
From a Fox News article:
In 2010, George also applied for a visa to come to the United States and was refused. While George confesses that in his younger years he was a delinquent, he has never been convicted of any crime. Moreover, he has a very good reason to visit the United States: his mother Jael Otieno lives in Atlanta. So why would the U. S. embassy in Nairobi refuse a tourist visa to the brother of the president who just wants to spend time with his mother?
Why, indeed. We know Obama is not above using his influence to help other family members, so why slight George?
And keep in mind what Michelle Obama spends on a single pair of designer shoes would support George and his family for at least a year. That’s the power of the aid Obama could offer his own kin. Yet he doesn’t.
It can’t be because he’s unaware of George’s situation; he’s been to Kenya, he knows how they live. Is he just that callous, or is the answer even worse than that?
But does Michelle actually spend her (or our) money to buy those shoes, jackets, dinners, or trips? In the business world, vendors give such items to the people from whom they want to buy favors or to obtain advertising attention (the First Lady wore such and such a brand…). Do the Obamas use any of their own money for their ostentatious conspicuous consumption?
Since they likely aren’t purchasing those things themselves, they should have an abundance of resources left to help family.
Perhaps it is even more terrible than that. George could be a criminal, he could have treated Barack Obama very poorly when he visited Kenya, or maybe Obama knows that if he gives money to him the requests will be never-ending. Though it would seem easy enough to pay a hospital bill for so little to help out a nephew or buy his aunt some new teeth. But we know how thin-skinned Obama is and he could be really mad about George granting interviews to Dinesh D’Sousa.
In ethics, the other guy has all the rights – you give them to him and guard them for him.
It’s an unlimited obligation. Who knows under that condition what you may be called on to do.
The point of the leftist state is to remove that obligation, lest you be called on someday to do more than you’re up to. The leftist fears finding out what his limit is.
Let the state take care of such things.
Those on the right usually step up when called on.
“Why do we always have the poor? So we are not damned.”
Loving people in the abstract is a license for doing nothing personally. It’s a perfect instance of public versus private morality. Public morality is so easy. Express your concern, your outrage, your etc., and then vote for posturing power hungry politicians who express the same emotions and then you can relax in a warm bath(os) of self congratulation and moral vanity.
Does this description seem to fit the current occupant of the White House and his running mate? It’s not a coincidence. It’s the who they are and what they do. Charity begins in the taxpayer’s pocket.
BTW, the plight of Obama’s family on his father’s side has been pretty well known since 2008. That it isn’t a major story and a disqualifier for Obama being considered a nice guy is further proof of the double standard that has dominated the MSM since fifties at least. It’s also proof that Obama has a ton of character and it’s all bad.
If the brother is an active, sloppy alcoholic, as has been alleged in the press in some detail, then sending him cash is more likely to do him ill than well. And if he were running around the US, hustling for cash and drinking himself into a stupor here, we’d all be critical of Obama if we thought that he had something to do with it. The only good option I could see for Obama is if there’s some equivalent of the Betty Ford clinic in Africa, he could pay to have his brother sent there. Of course, this could only work if the brother is willing to go there and wants to be sober, factors which don’t seem to be present. (Please don’t assume I am an Obama backer or a troll; a Google search will prove otherwise.)
David – you make a good point – think “Billy Beer”! But there is something disturbing about the apparent willingness to disown his family. I think most of us have people like this in our family, yet we don’t pretend they don’t exist. And it sounds like there is more to this than just this brother. The bigger points here are, first, that he doesn’t appear to practice what he preaches – which many conservatives think is rather common behavior amongst liberals and, second, the whole Kenya connection thing is cool and all only as long as it makes Obama sort of sexy, you know? To actually have to deal with those people – yuck!
You have a point, but the complaint is not that Obama didn’t give his brother money in general, but that he didn’t help his brother with his son’s hospital bill, which he could not afford.
You’re no troll, I thought about this, too.
Dinesh’s column also seems to hint at bringing George to North America, but based on the adventures of dear Uncle Onyango, that could be terribly dangerous.
And let’s face it, President Obama’s father was a nut. An irresponsible, alcoholic idiot who squandered the opportunity of a lifetime. If my father were that screwed-up and unstable, would I be responsible for my half-siblings?
None of this is about George and his needs; it’s all about what the obamatron gets/deserves, and there is nothing our chief-narcissist-in-charge gets from his brother – not agreement, or adulation, or wealth. So for the obamatron, his brother not only ceases to matter, but ceases to exist.
Best guess here is that BHO’s indifference is due to the fact that these two impoverished Third Worlders are not his kin at all. Circumstances strongly indicate that although BHO indeed was born in Kigali, Kenya, his father was not the alcoholic goatherd of legend but the abusive Comintern pedophile John Marshal Davis of Hawaii. (A rudimentary DNA test would resolve this issue; on the record, BHO would as soon renounce Karl Marx or the Prophet Mohammed than admit to illegitimacy as the Son of Davis.)
In fact, in logic, and in law, the burden is not on plaintiffs here to prove a negative, but on Barack Hussein Obama/Davis/Soetoro et al. to provide independently verifiable proof positive of his asserted bona fides. Only dwelling himself in a post-electoral dumpster will the truth surface in response to some journalist waving a commission cheque.
It’s perfectly fine to ignore your poverty-stricken brother’s need for help with a child’s medical bills, or to leave your aunt selling charcoal on the streets with broken teeth — but for God’s sake don’t put a dog on the roof of your car!
Hey, Mitt may have put his dog on the roof of his car, but Barack had his dog on the roof of his mouth. (credit: Mark Levin)
I like to point out that the line, “Am I my brothers keeper?” was said as a question by Cain after he’d slain Able. It wouldn’t be my go to quote from the bible.
This the real and true Obamcare.
Profess the wrong beliefs and you can go f yourself. Forget about that surgery.
george hasn’t licked the boots with sufficient spittle.
It’s as simple as that.
Given that his half brother grew up on a different continent, and they probably only met once or twice, I would cut BHO some slack…
BUT…
He can’t then go around talking about ‘fair share’, and ‘you didn’t build that’. If he really believes ‘you didn’t build that’, then the vastly different outcomes between Barack and George should even more be attributed to assistance from others.
One thing positive for George – he probably sleeps with better-looking women than Michelle Obama..
Maybe the RNC should invite George to speak at the convention…
So, can we get Dinesh to help us start a George Obama Brother’s Keeper Charity Fund? All it would take is a dollar or two from a few thousand Americans to make a story out of it.
Read Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals.” Obama is just one in a long line of lefty, anti-religious intellectuals who profess to love humanit but treat actual people, especially those who depend on them, abominably.
Actually, Obama isn’t as bad as a lot of them, he seems to treat his daughters well (maybe because Michelle is really the boss and brooks no argument, but still…)
I echo what #3 (Bear) said: It exposes the real likelihood that the neglect is explained because the Obamas are not his people, only a cover story. His father may well be Frank Marshall Davis, a notorious lifelong communist organizer, and close friend of Bam’s grandfather. The evolutions and contortions Bam’s people have gone through to avoid revealing his original birth certificate were likely to conceal this fact, that he has no Kenyan blood at all. A new book is coming out now that painstakingly details this.
A writer at American Thinker believes the “published birth certificate”, which many claim is a forgery beyond any doubt, indicates that obama’s mother left obama sr’s name and information off the birth certificte.
That information is added in the forgery, of course, since obama sr is inextriably involved in the ludicrous myth of obama’s rise from the improbable love of two people from different worlds.
It’s the best theory I’ve heard, since I find it improbable that an 18 year-old mother would fly thousands of miles from Hawaii to have a baby in a foreign country. If you accept that, there isn’t much on a birth certificate that anybody would have a problem with…but missing information about the father would qualify, only because the Liar in Chief has made such a big deal about his “heritage”.
The other theory that makes sense to me is that the birth certificate is just one element of a more complex cover-up, possibly established to hide the college records which could prove that obmama claimed foreign born status to get into one or more schools. To blur the importance of those records, they sealed EVERYTHING, including the potentially false flag birth certificate. The breadth of the cover-up, so says the theory, makes it much more difficult for a researcher to discover the real show-stopper revelation. This theory works no matter what the problem is. It doesn’t have to be the college records. It could, for example, be something in the Con Man’s records during his State Legislature period (the records of which are also sealed). But Breitbart’s discovery of the author’s biorgraphy claiming a Kenyan birth makes the College records a likey prospect to be the smoking gun revelation.
Dang, and the wife-unit is pi$$ing out money to support my outlaws. At this point I think I’mna supporting, at least partially, 3 households besides my own. It’s no f’n wonder I can’t afford a new set of golf clubs. Where’s *MY* Obama Bucks? Oh crap, I’m a whiteboy with a job that pays his taxes. Never mind.
I’n as appalled by this indifference as any, but my impression of Obama’s family is that he has many of these cousins, half brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. I do believe Obama has a callous disregard of the suffering his policies are causing, but I can understand his not wanting to encourage a multitude of relatives soliciting his help.
Let’s not forget. To the collectivist, the individual is nothing, the collective is everything. To individually help his brother, Obama would be committing an act he regards as useless and meaningless.
What does it mean?
- It means that George can’t vote, so he is of no consequence.
- It means that liberals are poor contributors to charity; they must be coerced into caritas through the force of law.
- It means that the President is a self-centered prig.
- It means that liberals are impressed with their abstractions, and ignorant of the real world applications.
But mostly, it means that it never occurred to President Obama – or to any of his aides! – to help George.
Yep. Within a couple weeks of Obamacare passing when I brought up that certain expensive medical devices might not be available anymore… a lefty that had starting yelling matches with me before it passed (because she supported it because she cared so much) waived off my statement off as a trivial detail. If ‘the science’ didn’t support using them… we won’t use them. Of course; the problem with her argument is that where to draw lines over such things are moral… not scientific. Plus; the degree of disregard is compounded by the fact that she works in the medical field I used the devices from as an example… and knows perfectly well they work wonders for people.
A little digression… Basically the government will not allow you to buy / have expensive medical items they don’t approve of. To open up insurance money for things they want… For the majority… Great idea except for the whole putting politicians in charge of what happens to the sick… when there are so few compared to the healthy. There are reasons we were founded as a constitutional republic and not a democracy… think about it….
Does Obama giving his half-brother $1,000 advance worldwide Socialism and Communism? If not, then Obama, like all Leftists, Liberals, Democrats, Greens, Labor, etc… isn’t interested. Period Dot!
Well look at the bright side. If George dies from his condition what a great advertisement for universal health care!
Why not complain to “Rev.” Jeremiah Wright, The Kenyan’s acknowledged “spiritual mentor?” Wright and Obama are equally disgusting human beings: greedy, lying, selfish frauds. D’Souza’s story makes this crystal clear. Normal people don’t act this way. The Head Rat in the White House is not anyone’s definition of “normal.”
Funny how leftists are so “generous” and “compassionate” with other peoples money, but completely callous when it comes to their own. I love it when some leftist gives me one of those “what would Jesus do” lectures, and I reply that Jesus wanted his followers to be generaous with their own money, not money they get from others, and if Jesus was a leftist like them he would have called for a welfare program from Rome. They usually get incoherant after that.
Seems to be typical Obama behavior. Remember the African school he promised to help? Apparently Obama doesn’t.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-taxpayer-to-african-relatives-school
You’re speechless. But BH Obama is not.
Perhaps there is good reason that Obama does not respond to the “brother’s” and “aunt’s” plights:
1. he would have to spend his own money, and not, as his practice personally and politically, other peoples’ money. Were he inclined to “help” these disadvantaged, dispossessed relatives he would undoubtedly find a way as is his wont to use other people’s money.
Any reports of his “remission” for personal charity to “relatives” would confirm, he being pre-eminent “liberal” charity statistics that liberals charitable donations are meagre compared with those of conservative/religious “others”.
2 Publicly aligning himself with needful relatives, brother and aunt in Kenya -undoubtedly unreported by legacy media unless to display compassion credentials – might feed the ravening beast “bush beaters” call “birthers”. Fed a bite with the latest revelation that Obama’s “autobiography” written before becoming candidate for President claims his birth in Kenya. NB, AUTO-biography.
Those who want a thorough examination of his provenance provoked by his Sealing personal documents from US citizens to whom in principle and law
he is required to answer. Those who think this Sealing of personal documents using Executive Order, thus secreting information/knowledge citizens have the RIGHT to know about the pre-eminent representative of America/Americans. The
Sealing of personal documents from public review sets precedent damaging the
integrity of the nation in its structure as a Country of Law.
Like it or not the clause in the fundamental law of the nation, the Constitution that defines eligibility requirements for representatives of
We The People it is ONLY the President who must be a natural born citizen.
THAT CLAUSE has NEVER been formally, officially under procedures laid down in the Constitution been amended. It MUST therefore still be the law of the land notwithstanding it’s having been written some time ago.
Why then immunity from examination for compliance with this LAWFUL clause for BH Obama?
t ONLY the President to “be a natural born citizen” has Never been fomally, i.e. legally/constitutionally, amended. It must then still apply. Why the immunity from that clause for Obama?
The President knows that “George” is not really a relative. Obama’s true father is Frank Marshall Davis. Almost everyone knows that at this point, including “George.”
Obama only recently contributed $5,000 to HIS OWN CAMPAIGN! He is cheap and dishonest.
Claiming Obama Sr as his father was quite expedient when applying for college. Serves him right to a little “unexpected” blowback.
Liberals are gross. As a nurse I have come up with many liberal clients and the parents of liberals. One a big party liberal who ran campaigns and had talk show would blow in to visit his mother in a long term facility. She would beg him to get her out of there. He would give her 5 minutes and then blow out. (She could have been home with the minimal of help.) Later on the radio pushing for compassion. Another big party operative whose mom was dying. She asked me how I showed my mom I cared. I did not have the heart to tell her my kids and I took my mom into my home and cared for her til death. Her daughter never visited her and she was alone even in death. I really think liberals are uncaring and knowing that they lack that quality try to legislate it.