Lee Kuan Yew's visit to Obama brought his notorious ASS LUCK to Democrats

Every politician who met up with LKY got some of his notorious Ass Luck spilled over to their political fates, Bush & Blair & Thaksin & Abdullah & Najib & Japanese PM etc all fucked up badly after meeting with LKY. Now it is Obama's turn!

How predictably!

Immediately proven!

Democrats leaders & Obama got their very first and very clear sign of political defeat after they all met with LKY in his visit to USA this week, for only very 1st time.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20...Ec2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDcmFjZXNnaXZlZGVt



Dems, incumbents get wake-up call
Politico


Republican Christie captures NJ governor's seat Play Video AP – Republican Christie captures NJ governor's seat

* Election Day '09: Obama Support Not Enough In NJ Play Video Video:Election Day '09: Obama Support Not Enough In NJ CBS 2 New York
* GOP takes governor's race in Virginia Play Video Video:GOP takes governor's race in Virginia AP
* Independents Jump Ship on Obama Play Video Barack Obama Video:Independents Jump Ship on Obama ABC News

New Jersey Governor Corzine concedes defeat to GOP candidate Christie at his election headquarters in East Brunswick Reuters – New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine (C) (D-NJ) concedes defeat to GOP candidate Chris Christie at his election …
John F. Harris, Jonathan Martin John F. Harris, Jonathan Martin – Wed Nov 4, 3:31 am ET

RICHMOND, Va. — Eager to drain the 2009 elections of drama and import, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs claimed Tuesday night that President Barack Obama was “not watching returns.”

You can be sure that he is studying them closely now: The off-year elections were, in two big races, an unmistakable rebuke of Democrats, reshuffling Obama’s political circumstances in ways likely to have severe near-term consequences for his policy agenda and larger governing strategy.

Independents took flight from Democrats. They suffered humiliating gubernatorial losses in traditionally Democratic New Jersey, where Obama lent his prestige in a pair of eleventh-hour campaign rallies Sunday, and in Virginia, which had been trending leftward and just last year was held up as an example of how Obama was redrawing the political map in his favor.

Tuesday night’s trends were emphatically not in Obama’s favor. Among those paying closest attention are dozens of Democrats who won formerly Republican congressional districts in 2006 and 2008 and are up for reelection in 2010. Many of these pickups that powered the Democrats’ recapture of Congress came in Southern and border states, or in the Ohio River Valley, where political conditions are similar to those in Virginia.

Obama now faces a much tougher challenge persuading these mostly moderate Democrats to put themselves further at risk by backing such liberal priorities as expanding government’s role in heath care or limiting greenhouse gases.

It was a consolation prize — cherished by national Democrats urgently looking for some good news — that Democrat Bill Owens won a special election for the 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York.

What’s more, there is an argument that these off-year elections may not have produced an ideological or partisan verdict so much as revealed a deeply aggrieved electorate — ready to rough up incumbents of all varieties.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who previously had been perceived as a highly popular independent, barely fended off a listless and badly outspent Democratic challenge from City Comptroller William Thompson Jr.

The results in the New York House race — in a remote, historically Republican bastion — came after a bitter intramural fight among Republicans in which Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and his backers effectively ran GOP establishment pick Dede Scozzafava out of the race.

“I think all incumbents need to be on full alert,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told POLITICO in a telephone interview.

The election campaigns were followed swiftly by post-game campaigns to shape perceptions of the results. The Democratic line, from the White House on down, is to plunge into nuance — making the case that the big 2009 contests were effectively local races waged by two weak candidates in incumbent Jon Corzine in New Jersey, beaten by Republican Chris Christie, and state Sen. Creigh Deeds in Virginia, who was clubbed like a harp seal in his 17-percentage-point loss to GOP nominee Bob McDonnell.

It is true enough that both Democratic candidates had severe limitations — Deeds was a notably unprepossessing candidate compared with the polished McDonnell, and Corzine was deeply unpopular and at the helm of a state suffering through difficult economic times. Neither race should be viewed as strictly a referendum on Obama. But if there is a danger in overinterpreting off-year elections, it is also a mistake to underinterpret.

Particularly in Virginia, the rout of three Democrats running for three separate statewide offices, as well as the loss of several legislative seats, sent an unambiguous message. The independent voters who helped Obama in 2008 become the first Democratic presidential candidate in 44 years to carry the Old Dominion have swung wildly in a different direction. The swing from Obama's win last year to McDonnell's Tuesday: 23 points.

Exit polls showed Republican McDonnell won 63 percent of independent voters. Likewise in Democratic-trending Northern Virginia, the Republican carried the three largest suburban counties of Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William — all counties Obama won handily last year.

In New Jersey, likewise, Christie won 58 percent of independents.

“This is a shot across the bow to the moderates and Blue Dog Democrats as they decide votes on health care” and other issues, said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine — who as current Virginia governor had previously won plaudits for making his state more competitive for his party — saw his reputation scuffed. But he cautioned against drawing national trends, saying opinion polls show Obama still winning majority support among independents nationally.

"These two races each had their own spin," Kaine told POLITICO.

Notably, one of Virginia’s most prominent Democrats, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder — the nation’s first elected African-American governor — sided more with Cantor.

“It’s a wake-up call for Democrats across the country,” said Wilder, who did not endorse Deeds.

He said independents are worried about what they see as careless spending by Obama and his Democratic allies in Washington, and he advised Obama to reorganize his White House to rely less on campaign operatives and focus more on governing.

Mississippi Gov. and Republican Governors Association Chairman Haley Barbour compared Tuesday’s results with 1993, when Republicans also won Virginia and New Jersey, saying the party’s success would spur more GOP candidates to run next year.

“It served as a springboard for the 1994 elections,” Barbour told POLITICO, alluding to the precursor to the GOP’s capture of the congressional majority. “We elected 73 Republican freshmen in the House of Representatives. More than half of them made the decision to run for Congress after the November 1993 election.”

Further, Barbour said, the wins Tuesday would boost the spirits of a party that has been deeply demoralized since not long after Bush’s 2004 reelection.

“It energizes and excites our volunteers, our organization people and our donors,” he said.

Christie ran in heavily Democratic New Jersey, faced an engaged and popular president, was badly outspent by the self-funding Corzine — who ran a barrage of negative ads, some suggesting the former prosecutor was too fat to lead — and also fended off a former Republican running as a third-party candidate who gave anti-Corzine voters an alternative to the GOP nominee.

Yet Christie still defeated Corzine by 4 percentage points — the largest victory by a New Jersey Republican in nearly a quarter-century.

Christie’s margin marked a 20-point swing from Obama’s performance.

The New Jersey race was especially painful for the White House, which, sensing a loss in Virginia, sought to prop up Corzine in the campaign's final weeks.

The president came to the state for get-out-the-vote rallies on the Sunday before the election, where he called Corzine his “partner” in an effort to fire up the Democratic base.

“We will not lose this election if all of you are as committed as you were last year,” Obama told a heavily black crowd in Newark.

Obama also appeared in an ad for Corzine aimed at Hispanic voters and recorded robocalls for the governor.

But if Democrats were disappointed in New Jersey, Republicans were elated by Virginia.

The landslide of McDonnell, a former state attorney general, appears to offer the GOP a model for victory in swing states. A graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University who made his name in the state Legislature as a social conservative, McDonnell downplayed social issues in the campaign and focused intently on winning back the Virginia suburbs that fueled the Democratic resurgence in recent years.

"He focused heavily on the issues that are on voter’s minds: jobs, transportation, taxes and spending,” said Barbour.

Democrats took solace in the Owens victory in New York’s North Country, where they picked up a GOP seat previously held by John McHugh, now the Army secretary. Republicans seemed to lock up the seat on Saturday when their struggling nominee, Scozzafava, dropped out, giving the Conservative Party nominee, Hoffman, a one-on-one race in a historically Republican district.

But Scozzafava endorsed Owens on Sunday, and some of her moderate supporters from her state Assembly district appear to have followed suit and delivered their votes to the Democrat.

Van Hollen held up their success in New York as indicative of what could happen in the future when the conservative and moderate wings of the GOP clash.

“The Republican Party spent close to a million dollars to lose a seat they had held since the Civil War, and in the process launched a civil war of their own,” he said.

Former Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, an outspoken moderate who is often frustrated by his party’s rightward tilt, said the message of the Christie and McDonnell wins — and the Hoffman loss — is that his party should own the center on economic issues.

But he said the lesson for Democrats is even more urgent.

“Any Democrat from a border or Southern or even a rural district has got to take a deep breath and look for some ways to get some distance from from Obama,” Davis said.

Jonathan Martin reported from East Brunswick, N.J.

When Obama come to SGP next week he is surely set to bring back even more bad lucks with him after meeting with more rotten PAPPIES here. Very SUAY!

Look at the funny photo of Obama:

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Barac...//s:/afp/20091104/pl_afp/uspoliticsvotewhouse

Read what White House argued:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091104/pl_afp/uspoliticsvotewhouse


White House says poll defeats not about Obama
AFP


White House says poll defeats not about Obama AFP/File – US President Barack Obama, seen here on November 2. The White House on Wednesday downplayed the significance …
56 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The White House on Wednesday downplayed the significance of Democratic defeats in two key state elections, saying they were fought on local issues unrelated to President Barack Obama.

Losses to the Republicans in governor races in New Jersey and Virginia were about "very local issues that did not involve the president," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Immediately once Obama & Democrats start to get bad lucks, more of their political enemies jumped into the ring and pick fight against them! This is HP's ex CEO very pretty & sexy huh?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/ap_on_bi_ge/us_california_senate_race


Former HP CEO Fiorina announces bid for US Senate

By JULIET WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writer Juliet Williams, Associated Press Writer – 24 mins ago

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Carly Fiorina said Wednesday she is running for the U.S. Senate seat held by liberal stalwart Barbara Boxer of California.

Fiorina ended months of speculation with an announcement in an opinion piece in the Orange County Register. She was expected to make a formal announcement later in the day in Garden Grove.

Her entry into the race could present Boxer with her most formidable re-election challenge, but Fiorina first would have to survive a Republican primary against state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who has worked feverishly over the past year to court GOP voters.

"For many years I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn't think my vote mattered because I didn't have a direct line of sight from my vote to a result. I realize that thinking was wrong," Fiorina wrote in her opinion piece.

"I now understand, in a very real way, that the decisions made by the Senate impact every family and every business, of any size, in America. This is what motivates me to run for the U.S. Senate," she wrote.

Fiorina echoed standard Republican complaints that the government taxes, spends and regulates too much.

"Let's put every government budget and every government bill on the Internet for every citizen to see," she wrote.

"Tax, spend and borrow is not a governing philosophy; it's a cycle of dependency and it is one that must be broken," Fiorina wrote. "Washington must show the discipline to cut spending and create policies that encourage and empower businesses to put people back to work."

Fiorina, who recently completed breast cancer treatment, also called for health care reform — but not in the form of a national health system.

She instead suggested expanding community clinic access and putting stricter restrictions on medical malpractice lawsuits.

The 55-year-old former Silicon Valley executive served as economic adviser to John McCain's failed presidential bid last year, a position that elevated her national profile. Before that, she had a public falling out with HP board members, who fired her in 2005 after she pushed through the company's acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. in a deal that caused job losses and reduced HP's value. The company has since rebounded, but opinions differ over how much credit Fiorina deserves for that.

On the way out, Fiorina received a $21 million severance package — a cash cushion that has made Boxer's team nervous.

Even before her announcement, Boxer used the threat of a Fiorina candidacy to boost her own fundraising, collecting $1.6 million in the last quarter and reporting $6.3 million in the bank last month.

"If Fiorina decides to fund the campaign with her own personal wealth, this could be the most expensive Boxer campaign yet," said Rose Kapolczynski, a spokeswoman for Boxer's campaign. "We could be looking at a $30 million or $35 million campaign. ... She could do a lot to remake her image with that and do a lot to distort the Boxer record."

Boxer, 68, is in her third term in the Senate and easily won re-election in 1998 and 2004. She has long been a target of conservatives — they pounced earlier this year when she chastised a brigadier general who called her "ma'am" during a congressional hearing — but has yet to face a serious re-election challenge.

Until now, Boxer's only announced opposition was DeVore. A military officer and businessman from Irvine, he has been aggressively campaigning on a shoestring budget for months, styling himself as the only true conservative in the race.

He is appealing to the party's base as the true candidate of limited government, lower taxes and conservative fiscal stewardship.

"American voters want bold colors. They don't want pale pastels," he said.

Fiorina would be the fifth Silicon Valley executive to compete in a statewide race in California next year. All three GOP gubernatorial candidates — former eBay Inc. CEO Meg Whitman, state insurance commissioner and high tech entrepreneur Steve Poizner, and former congressman Tom Campbell — have ties to the Valley.

Chris Kelly, chief privacy officer for the popular social networking Web site Facebook, has announced an exploratory bid for the Democratic nomination for attorney general.

___

Associated Press Writer Tom Verdin contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104...jA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNueWNtYXlvcmJydWk-


NYC mayor bruised by surprisingly close victory
AP


New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg greets supporters after his election win in New York Reuters – New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg greets supporters after his election win in New York, November …
By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer Sara Kugler, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 53 mins ago

NEW YORK – Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg heads toward a third term bruised by a surprisingly close re-election battle that exposed lingering anger over his reversal on term limits and his prodigious campaign spending.

In the days leading up to the election, Bloomberg was expected to secure an easy victory, perhaps by double digits. But he won by just five percentage points — an advantage of less than 51,000 votes out of just over a million cast.

The mayor called it a "hard-fought victory in a very difficult year," and promised that New Yorkers "ain't seen nothing yet" from him.

"I'm committed to working twice as hard in the next four years as I did in the past eight," Bloomberg said.

Facing an underdog Democratic opponent who had little money and no name recognition, Bloomberg still waged the most expensive self-financed political campaign in U.S. history.

But city Comptroller William Thompson Jr. hammered the mayor relentlessly on term limits, saying Bloomberg went back on his word when he orchestrated a change to a term-limits law that voters had upheld by referendum twice in the 1990s.

Thompson also blasted Bloomberg as an out-of-touch elitist who abandoned the middle class. But Thompson gave voters few other reasons to support him.

Some voters expressed their discontent in the voting booth, even though they did not believe Bloomberg could lose.

Pedro Fuertes said he voted for Bloomberg in 2005 but abandoned him this year. A vote for Thompson, he said, sent a message to the mayor.

"He will know how people feel," Fuertes said.

Bloomberg is only the fourth New York mayor ever to win re-election twice. But the close race and the simmering voter resentment this year have energized the political opposition in City Hall, and Democrats suggested that Bloomberg's third term could be his most difficult.

"There will be moments where I'm going to have to be very aggressive in speaking up for people who aren't being heard," said Democrat Bill de Blasio, who won the job of City Hall ombudsman Tuesday.

Before this campaign, Bloomberg was mostly known as a nonpartisan, pragmatic philanthropist who turned the city around after the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

"He may be remembered as one of the greatest mayors in New York history," the New York Times said when endorsing him in 2005.

But then the mayor reversed his long-held support for term limits and persuaded the City Council to change the law.

The richest man in New York and founder of the financial information company Bloomberg LP, Bloomberg said his economic expertise was crucial to steering the city through the recession.

He then went on to pour millions of his personal fortune — estimated at $17.5 billion — into his campaign. He had spent nearly $90 million by Oct. 29 and could top $100 million when all the bills are paid.

"I didn't like the idea that King Mike thinks he can buy anything he wants, including my vote," said Democrat Kevin Anterline, a 56-year-old university employee who voted for Thompson.

Thompson, who will probably end up spending one-tenth as much as Bloomberg, gave the mayor a scare by running up huge margins in black and Hispanic neighborhoods, winning by a 3-to-1 margin in some election districts.

"This campaign was about defying conventional wisdom. ... this campaign was about standing strong, standing tall and never backing down in the face of a formidable challenge," Thompson said after conceding defeat.

He beat the mayor handily in predominantly black neighborhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Jamaica in Queens. He won Harlem and East Harlem easily, along with other heavily Hispanic districts in upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

By contrast, Bloomberg won easily on Staten Island, which has a much larger white population. He also fared better in Manhattan, particularly on the Upper East Side, where he lives.

Turnout was slightly lower than both campaigns had predicted — about 1.1 million New Yorkers cast votes out of nearly 4.5 million people registered.

Bloomberg's margin of victory was far smaller than the nearly 20-point blowout he pulled off in 2005, and only slightly larger than the three-point win he managed in 2001 as a politically untested businessman.

Bloomberg was a Republican but left the party in 2007 to explore a presidential bid, which he eventually abandoned. For his third mayoral campaign, he ran again on the GOP and Independence Party lines.

While Bloomberg had a huge financial advantage and consistently high approval ratings, his campaign still faced obstacles.

The mayor, who has close ties to Wall Street and development, was running for re-election at a time when finance and real estate were falling apart and those relationships were not necessarily seen as positives.

New York City also leans heavily to the left, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by a ratio of 5-to-1.

This is the headline of British Daily Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...65074/Barack-Obama-so-much-for-superhero.html

Barack Obama: so much for superhero

As the anniversary of his victory looms, the troubles are mounting for a president who promised so much. Toby Harnden reports.


By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 6:56AM GMT 30 Oct 2009

Comments 81 | Comment on this article
Reuters so much for superhero Much to ponder: President Obama at the White House this week
Much to ponder: President Obama at the White House this week Photo: Reuters

What a difference a year makes. On a balmy Tuesday evening in November just under a dozen long months ago, Barack Hussein Obama's unlikely journey to the presidency reached its heady conclusion. Americans had shown, he proclaimed, that they could "put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day".

The then Illinois senator told the enraptured crowd, and a world that watched in awe at what the United States had achieved, that "all things are possible", that "our union can be perfected" and it was time for the "partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long to be cast aside".

This Tuesday, Democrats face almost certain defeat in the governor's race in Virginia – the key Southern state that helped deliver Mr Obama victory – and a desperately close call in New Jersey, where the Democratic governor is in deep trouble in what should be a safe seat.

Although the White House was buoyed by the release of gross domestic product figures yesterday showing that the US had climbed out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, little else is going right for Mr Obama.

His popularity ratings have slumped to an anaemic average of 51 per cent. He has spent a full 60 days thus far considering a request from General Stanley McChrystal, Nato commander in Afghanistan, for another 44,000 troops to stave off defeat.

There are increasing signs that Mr Obama is deeply discomfited by the war that he had declared in his election campaign to be a "war of necessity". Amid grave concern at the Pentagon about the cost of delaying decision making so long, it emerged yesterday that Mr Obama had asked for a detailed province-by-province study of Afghanistan.

Senior military officers fear he is second-guessing and undermining Gen McChrystal, whom he has met only twice. The indications are that a decision on troop levels might not come until mid-November. In the two months that Mr Obama has "dithered" – a word that is increasingly used across the political spectrum – over the McChrystal request, 96 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan.

In Congress, Mr Obama's health care plan – which the White House had said it wanted to be finalised by August – is in deep trouble. Senate Democratic leaders have defied him by backing a liberal bill that establishes a government-run insurance option – something that the sole Republican who has supported reform has said she cannot countenance.

This week Mr Obama is front and centre in both states where governorships are up for grabs. He campaigned in Hampton Roads, Virginia, even though Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate, has been seen by some at the White House to have distanced himself from Mr Obama and his policies.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Mr Obama dispatched his pollster Joel Benenson to take charge of a campaign that was seen to be in disarray. On Sunday, the president himself will headline two events for Governor Jon Corzine, an unpopular former Goldman Sachs executive.

But on the campaign trail Mr Obama is striking some false notes. The president labelled Chris Christie, Mr Corzine's Republican opponent, as "slick" – the one thing he is. And last month, the Corzine campaign – presumably with Mr Benenson's blessing – produced a television advertisement that depicted Mr Christie manoeuvring his ample girth out of a car and accusing him of "throwing his weight around".

It is unclear how this fits with Mr Obama's oft-repeated pledges to bring a "new tone" to Washington, reach out to Republicans and work to end partisanship and incivility.

To coincide with the anniversary of Mr Obama's election, a new book by his campaign manager, David Plouffe, is being published. Parts of the excerpts released by Time magazine yesterday read like a jarring parody.

Mr Plouffe records that Mr Obama "handled everything with brilliance", was "the pillar of reassurance" and that an important speech "received rave reviews from political commentators and spawned hundreds of positive editorials".

It was back in February that Hillary Clinton, then Mr Obama's implacable foe and now his Secretary of State, mocked his kumbaya message that everything could change if Americans only had the vision to elect him to the White House. "I could just stand up here and say 'Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified'," she told supporters at a rally in Providence, Rhode Island. "The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect. Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions at how hard this is going to be."

At the time, many dismissed this as the bitterness of a Democratic front-runner who was heading towards a painful defeat. But Mrs Clinton's words have taken on a prophetic tinge.

Many of Mr Obama's actions have demonstrably failed to live up to his campaign rhetoric. He promised to knock heads together to achieve health-care reform and shine a light on the legislative process by televising live meetings to discuss policy. Instead, bills have been stitched together behind closed doors.

This week he signed a $680 billion National Defence Authorisation Act that was loaded by Congress with equipment the Pentagon didn't need. He is poised to sign a defence appropriations bill that currently has 778 "earmarks" or pet projects from Senators and 1,080 from members of the House of Representatives. On the stump, Mr Obama had railed against earmarks and promised to scrutinise bills "line by line" to eliminate them.

Beyond Washington, Mr Obama's June speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was almost universally well received. But the Israeli-Palestinian peace process remains stalled and Mr Obama's "new era of engagement" with Iran and Russia is showing precious little in terms of concrete results or even the prospect of them.

In recent days, the White House has been preoccupied not with the war in Afghanistan or even the battle on Capitol Hill to produce a health-care bill. Instead, it has been engaged in a war with Fox News, the Right-leaning cable channel owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Mr Obama continues to blame George W Bush, his predecessor, for whatever might be going wrong in America.

Appearing on CNN, Valerie Jarrett, a long-time close confidante of Mr Obama and a senior White House aide, stated that in taking on Fox News the administration was speaking "truth to power" – an indication of the mindset that the election campaign is still on.

She praised Mr Obama's "thoughtful and deliberate" consideration of the Afghanistan troop request, adding: "Before he puts our men and women in harm's way, he wants to make absolutely sure, not just of the number of troops, but that there's an overall strategy for success."

But there are already 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan caught in limbo.

Perhaps the most dangerous sign for Mr Obama is that the media – whose adoring coverage helped propel him to victory – are growing tired of the Obama Superhero theme. It has been pointedly noted this week that he has played as much golf already as Mr Bush did in his eight years in the White House.

Details have emerged of big Democratic donors being richly rewarded with birthday trips to the Oval Office, golf outings and special White House briefings. These are long-established practices in Washington but Mr Obama solemnly promised to end them.

The White House is pleading for patience, arguing that change sometimes doesn't come quickly or easily. Unfortunately for Mr Obama, Americans tend to expect instant results. If Mr Obama doesn't deliver soon, they are liable to write him off as – to use the Texan phrase – all hat and no cattle.

Obama's half brother spilling beans about abusive father in PRC

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104...jA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDb2JhbWFzaGFsZmJy


Obama's half brother recalls their abusive father
AP


In this Friday, Jan. 16, 2009 photo, Mark Ndesandjo, the intensely private AP – In this Friday, Jan. 16, 2009 photo, Mark Ndesandjo, the intensely private half-brother of President-elect …

Video:Obama's half brother writes about abusive father AP

By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer William Foreman, Associated Press Writer – Wed Nov 4, 8:53 am ET

GUANGZHOU, China – President Barack Obama's half brother has broken his media silence to discuss his new novel — the semi-autobiographical story of an abusive parent patterned on their late father, the mostly absent figure Obama wrote about in his own memoir.

In his first interview, Mark Ndesandjo told The Associated Press that he wrote "Nairobi to Shenzhen" in part to raise awareness of domestic violence.

"My father beat my mother and my father beat me, and you don't do that," said Ndesandjo, whose mother, Ruth Nidesand, was Barack Obama Sr.'s third wife. "It's something which I think affected me for a long time, and it's something that I've just recently come to terms with."

Like his novel's main character, Ndesandjo had an American mother who is Jewish and who divorced his Kenyan father. The novel, which goes on sale Wednesday by the self-publishing company Aventine Press, is one of several books in the works by relatives of the president.

President Obama's parents separated two years after he was born in Hawaii in 1961. The senior Obama, a Kenyan exchange student, divorced the president's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, in 1964 and had at least six other children in his native Kenya.

For the past seven years, Ndesandjo has been living in the booming southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, and has refused all interview requests until now.

Ndesandjo, who said he attended Obama's inauguration as a family guest, declined to discuss his earliest memories of the president or describe their relationship over the years. However, he said he plans to meet his brother in Beijing when the president makes his first visit to China on Nov. 15-18.

"My plan is to introduce my wife to him. She is his biggest fan," he said.

Shortly after divorcing the president's mother, Obama Sr. met Nidesand while studying as a graduate student at Harvard University. Nidesand returned with Obama Sr. to his native Kenya in 1965, where Mark and his brother David were born and grew up. David later died in a motorcycle accident.

In Kenya, Obama Sr. also had four children with his first wife, Kezia, some of them while he was still married to Nidesand. Nidesand and Obama Sr. eventually divorced amid allegations of domestic abuse. Nidesand returned to the United States and later married a man whose surname Mark Ndesandjo took.

Obama Sr. died in an automobile accident in 1982 at age 46.

President Obama saw his father only once after his parents' divorce, when he was 10 years old. In a best-selling memoir, "Dreams from My Father," Obama wrote about his fatherless upbringing and search for identity.

In it, Obama described a visit to Kenya to meet his half siblings and learn more about his father. While painting his father as abusive, he called Obama Sr. a gifted but erratic alcoholic who never lived up to his intellectual promise or his family responsibilities.

Obama, in his book, also quotes Ndesandjo criticizing their father, saying, "I knew that he was a drunk and showed no concern for his wife and children. That was enough."

Ndesandjo, who is an American citizen, spent most of his childhood in Kenya before moving to the U.S. to go to college and work in telecommunications and marketing. He has a bachelor's degree from Brown University in physics and a master's degree in the same subject from Stanford University. He also earned an MBA from Emory University in Atlanta, he said.

"I see myself in many ways as a person who has many places, has feet in many places," he said.

Intensely private, Ndesandjo declined to answer several questions about himself. He even refused to give his age, saying only that "I'm younger than Barack."

With a trim, athletic physique, he has a strong resemblance to his taller brother in Washington. His left ear is pierced, and he wore a black crew neck shirt under a dark jacket to the interview last week.

Ndesandjo moved to China after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when his job was cut in the rocky U.S. economy. He taught English, immersed himself in the study of Chinese culture and volunteered as a piano teacher at an orphanage.

He now speaks Mandarin and said he earns a living as a consultant in strategic marketing, though he would not elaborate on his business.

Ndesandjo said the White House was aware of the book project. A White House spokesman declined to comment on Ndesandjo's interview or to discuss President Obama's relationship with his half brother.

The author said 15 percent of the book's proceeds would be donated to charities for children.

Closely patterned on Ndesandjo's own life, the novel depicts David, an American who leaves the U.S. corporate world after the 9/11 attacks to create a new life in China. He falls in love with a Chinese dance instructor and develops a bond with an orphan who is a gifted pianist battling a serious illness.

In the book, David also writes letters to his American mother asking for details about her failed marriage to his late abusive Kenyan father.

In one passage, Ndesandjo writes, "David easily remembered the hulking man whose breath reeked of cheap Pilsner beer who had often beaten his mother. He had long searched for good memories of his father but had found none."

Ndesandjo said such passages were drawn from his own experience.

"I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds," he said in the interview, tears welling in his eyes. "I could hear thuds and screams, and my father's voice and my mother shouting. I remember one night when she ran out into the street and she didn't know where to go."

Ndesandjo said his mother often called Obama Sr. "a brilliant man but a social failure."

The novel never mentions other wives David's father might have had. Nor does it include a half brother who would become the first black U.S. president.

On Wednesday, a week after speaking to the AP, Ndesandjo said at a book-launching news conference that his brother's election victory, among other recent events, helped "peel away the hardness" that he developed emotionally during his difficult childhood.

"I became proud of being an Obama," he said.

Since the election, he said the extra attention has changed his life, but he has coped by focusing on things that are important to him: music, writing, calligraphy and teaching piano to disadvantaged children.

"The simple things sort of help pull you through," he said.

Ndesandjo told the AP he didn't want to touch on any political themes in the book. "I think my brother's team is doing an extraordinary job and I really don't want to cause him additional heartburn," he said.

Besides the inauguration, he said he last visited his brother in Austin, Texas, before a debate last year with then-Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"He came up to me, and we hugged. I gave him a gift, a gift of calligraphy," Ndesandjo told the AP. "I was just thinking of how happy I was and how proud and how much I loved him."

"It was a very powerful experience."

Another of the president's half brothers, George Obama, 27, of Huruma, Kenya, has penned a memoir that will be published by Simon and Schuster in January 2010.

Other Obama relatives working on books include a half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, daughter of Obama's mother and her second husband, Lolo Soetoro; and Craig Robinson, first lady Michelle Obama's brother.

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Associated Press Writer Beth Fouhy in Washington and Tom Maliti in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.