Indonesian Students Protest Before Obama’s Pilgramage Home

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta’s parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to this predominantly Muslim country.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama’s head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Such demonstrations of hostility toward Obama are rare in Indonesia, where he enjoys widespread popularity because he spend part of his childhood in Jakarta while his mother was married to his Indonesian stepfather.

http://www.weaselzippers.net/blog/2010/03/indonesians-protest-obamas-planned-visit-throw-shoes-at-large-pictures-of-his-head.html

Obama’s Paternal Family Descends on Washington DC

     Madelyn “Toot” Dunham died just before her grandson was elected the President of the United States, and Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, died 13 years prior. So the two major influences of his early life are unable to be a part of the festivities and celebrations of the Inauguration of the 44th President.

     The media, however, has made us fully aware that Obama’s stepgrandmother, Sara, is enroute from his father’s native Kenya. Britain’s The Sun newspaper has run a story that Obama’s stepmother, Kezia Obama, wh was married to Barack Obama Sr. after he left Obama and his mother, will attend the Inauguration. Given the royal treatment at London’s Heathrow airport, Kezia left for Washington DC on January 16th. After she returns to Great Britain, Kezia Obama will apply for British citizenship, having lived there for seven years.

Obama's Stepmother Kezia Obama

     Since Obama’s Aunt Zeituni is an illegal alien in the United States, one can assume that she’ll be a “no-show”.

From Kenya to Hawaii:
http://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2009/01/16/obama-relatives/

Geithner’s Confirmation marred by Tax Problems; Geithner Appointment another “Thank You” to Obama Family Associate

     The Secretary of the Treasury designate hit a road bump in his confirmation hearings yesterday, casuing a postponement until AFTER the Inauguration, some embarrassing backtracking, and some questions about the person who will oversee the Director of every taxpayer’s nemesis, the IRS.

     With a story line eerily similar to several Clinton appointments in 1992, it was revealed during the hearings that Timothy Geithner had a household employee who was said to have been an illegal immigrant. As it was explained, the employee in question had immigrations expire, and it took several months for the paperwork to be corrected. (Counter that with Obama’s Aunt Zeituni who has stayed in the US illegally for more than three years, and who attended Obama’s Senate swearing-in in 2006).

     Of greater concern was Mr. Geithner’s failure to pay self-employment taxes during the four year period he worked as an independent contractor with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This issue was known to the Obama transition team, and the matter had been resolved completely by the time that his appointment was announced. Geithner, stating his embarrassment, stated that it was a simple mistake. However, if confirmed as the Secretary of the Treasury, Geithner will be over the IRS, and it simply does not bode well for this type of glairng problem.

     While Geithner and the Obama team feel that they have not lost any of the Democratic vote support, but the Republicans are questioning the simplistic nature of it all. However, leading Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee have said that the present economic problems may in fact work to Geithner’s benefit. Geithner has been viewed as a positive choice by the Republicans because he has been actively involved in the Treasury Department’s TARP development in his role of the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    On a different note, there seems to be a tie between the Geithner family and the Obama family that goes back more than 20 years ago. Apparently, Timothy Geithner’s father, Peter Giethner, is the Director of the Ford Foundation’s Asian program, a role he has been involved in for years. In the 1980′s, Peter Geithner oversaw Ford Foundation’s microfinance programs in the Indonesia region. These programs were being developed by Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro…… Barack Obama’s mother! It certainly is a very small world, or was Obama reaching back to make a special thank you to someone who worked with his mother.

     I said in a prior post that a book in tribute to his mother, and the work she did, would have to be a better story than the “Dreams” of his alcoholic deadbeat father who had abandoned him and his mother (and his other wives and the cackle of children he fathered).