click image for large photo

The first little boy in the third row, left is "Barry Obama."  Obama’s sister Maya Soetoro-Ng confirms that the boy is Obama.

The two white girls in the same row are probably the Nordyke twins.  They were not identical twins, but they did have the same smile.  They were born the same time as Obama.  I still want to know what happened to their birth announcement.  Twins, being born to a prominent physician is news.  More specifically, I want to know what happened to the space their birth announcement was in.

Or am I expected to believe that Vital Statistics included Obama's name on their announcement list, and forgot the Nordyke Twins?

Born within hours of Obama according to Eleanor Nordyke, their names should be here:

Birth Announcement here -- expand to regular size to read.

The Nordyke twin girls were born the next day(early evening 6 pmish) and the only reason I can see for their names not appearing in the Vital Stats birth announcements was that an entire story was devoted to them considering their father’s position as a doctor.  I never did find out how many beds were available at the Kapiolani Maternity Home at the time nor did I find out exactly what Doctor Nordyke’s position (he was an internist wasn’t he?) was at the time or what residents worked at the hospital at the time.

The "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" blog reports that Obama's Indonesian schooling began when he was entered into the Roman Catholic, Franciscus Assisi Primary School, in Jakarta, Indonesia, on January 1, 1968 and sat in class 1B.  His teacher has been identified as Fermina Katarina Sinaga.

He was registered under the name of Barry Soetoro, serial number 203.  The school registration document identifies Barry Soetoro as an Indonesian citizen and his religion was identified as Islam.
 

This registration document, made available on Jan. 24, 2007, by the Fransiscus Assisi school in Jakarta, Indonesia, shows the registration of Barack Obama under the name Barry Soetoro into the Catholic school made by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro.  The document lists Barry Soetoro as a Indonesian citizen, born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, and shows his Muslim step-father listed the boy's religion as Islam.

If you save document, then open it in any graphics program, you can zoom it.

The Obama Campaign claims that the "Muslim" entry references the religion of the father, which is absurd.  Every other entry on the document relates to Obama.  The attributes on the document describe Obama, the child, not Lolo, the stepfather.

Obama then entered the Besuki Primary School, a state school.  He was enrolled as Barry Soetoro, Muslim.  He would attend Besuki for two years.

In 2007, classmate Rony Amiris described young Barry as enjoying football and playing marbles and of being a very devout Muslim.  Amir said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam."

"We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house.  If he was wearing a sarong he looked funny," said Rony.

Amiris now the manager of the Bank Mandiri, Jakarta, recently said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam.  His birth father, Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim economist from Kenya.  Before marrying Ann Dunham, Hussein Obama was married to a woman from Kenya who had seven children.  All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims"

Rony extrapolates further, that Obama at one point had to change his religion if he ever intended later to run for the office of President of the United States because America would never elect a Muslim to the be President of the United States.

Also in 2007, Emirsyah Satar, CEO of Garuda Indonesia, was quoted as saying, "He (Obama) was often in the prayer room wearing a 'sarong', at that time."

"He was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion."

The above item is as I posted it in the summer of 2008.  In February, 2010, Obama's life story took another mysterious twist.  Although every single account of Obama's life puts him in Indonesia in 1969, the above photo was taken in Hawaii -- while Obama was in the 3rd grade!

In late 1971, Anna took Obama to live with her parents, the Dunhams, in Honolulu.  Anna and Obama's half-sister, Maya, returned to Indonesia.  Madelyn Dunham’s co-workers did not know she was a grandmother until Barry  showed up there in the 70’s.

The Dunhams enrolled "Barry Obama" in the prestigious Punahou School, starting in the fifth grade.  He attended Punahou on a scholarship, and walked the five blocks from his grandmother's apartment on Beretania to the school.

With more than 3,000 students, Punahou is the largest private school in the country, and it sits on a lush, sprawling campus in Honolulu.  The school is elite and wealthy.

Grandpa was the driving force behind Barry being accepted at Punahou and he took Barry to Punahou for the entrance exams in 1971 and he also accompanied Barry to Punahou on his first day of classes in 1972.

Barry made friends quickly and told his classmates that his father was an African prince, the leader of a proud and successful people.

Obama's classmate and friend, Keith "Ray" Kakugawa, said, "Barry's biggest struggles then were missing his parents.  His biggest struggles were his feelings of abandonment.

Obama would write, "I didn't feel [her absence] as a deprivation, but when I think about the fact that I was separated from her, I suspect it had more of an impact than I know."

While at Punahou School, Obama turns into a disenchanted teenage rebel, experimenting with cocaine and marijuana.  Obama admits in "Dreams" that during high school he frequently smoked marijuana, drank alcohol, even used cocaine occasionally.

In his book, Obama recalls that he had "been headed" to the status of "junkie" or "pothead", which he describes as "the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man".  He recalls smoking "reefer" in the backs of his friends' vans, dorm rooms and "on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school."

Obama, told a group of students in New Hampshire that his drug use had caused him to "waste a lot of time" during his high school years.

Bryon Leong, a former classmate, remembers, "He was known as a partier, as a guy looking for a good time, but not much more," Mr Leong said.  "There was pot in Hawaii in the 1970s, but it wasn't a big deal."

"It wasn't like guys were smoking dope on campus and coming to school high," said Eric Kusunoki, 57, Obama's teacher from age 15 to 18.  "If they did, it would have been pretty obvious.  If he did dabble with drugs or alcohol, I didn't see it."

Other schoolmates also remember his time at school rather differently.  He was a spoiled high-achiever, they recall.

One of his former classmates, Alan Lum, said: "Hawaii is such a melting pot that it didn't occur to me when we were growing up that he might have problems about being one of the few African-Americans at the school. Us kids didn't see color. He was easy-going and well-liked."

1972

"He was a basketball player and always had a ball in his hand wherever he was," Wysard recalled.
 

At school, Obama was surrounded by the island's richest and most accomplished students.  America Online founder Steve Case, actress Kelly Preston and former Dallas Cowboys lineman Mark Tuinei, who died in 1999, attended the school around that time.  Pro golf sensation Michelle Wie, 17, is a student there now (2006).

While a student in the late 1970s, Barack Obama carved his name in the pavement outside the cafeteria of Punahou School. 

Kinda interesting, eh, King Obama?

And, did you know Punahou School, has a statue of their most PRIZED student bronzed in a court yard on the school campus?  And who is this "pillar of academic and character success"?  Why, it's Ho Chi Minh.

In his 1979 yearbook pictures, the B-minus student wears a 1970s-style wide-collared shirt and sports jacket, his hair in a neatly trimmed afro that covers the tops of his ears.

He added a photo of himself playing basketball, and a shot entitled "Still Life" that includes numerous items.  Among them are a trophy, telephone, turntable and beer bottle.
 

(Click here to see larger photo)

A package of "Zig-Zag" rolling papers and a matchbook are prominently displayed in front, and in a brief caption he thanked the "Choom Gang" and others "for all the good times."
 

Barack Obama began his undergraduate education at Occidental College, in California.  Occidental is a 1,825-student liberal arts college in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles and isn't shy about claiming Obama as an alumnus for his two years there (1979-81) on full scholarship.

The Boston Globe did a large piece on his Occidental years.

I wonder which face Obama wore to Pakistan -- his Christian face? -- or his Muslim face?

Update:  Hamid nor Chandoo have each contributed the maximum $2,300 to Obama's campaign, and records indicate each has joined an Asian-American council that supports his run for president.  Both also are listed on Obama's campaign Web site as being among his top fundraisers, each bringing in between $100,000 and $200,000 in contributions from their networks of friends.  Both also attended Obama's wedding in 1992, according to published reports and other friends.

Obama moved into an apartment with fellow Occidental College transfer Phil Boerner in the fall of 1981.   It was located at #3E, 142 W. 109th St., between Amsterdam and Columbus.  Boerner, who remained Obama's friend throughout his college years, describes the apartment as a third story walkup with a railroad layout and a missing doorbell.  It had a walkthrough layout, and Boerner had to walk through Obama's room to get to his own.  The heating frequently failed, one of the reasons Obama wound up spending so much time in Butler Library.  At other times, the two roommates read their books under blankets.

After their first semester, Obama tried to find a better apartment for himself and his friend, but was only able to locate a studio.  He eventually moved into a walkup at #6A, 339 E. 94th St., in Yorkville, where he would "chat with his Puerto Rican neighbors about...the sound of gunfire at night".

Obama graduated from Columbia College in 1983, and after spending a year in New York, moved to Chicago.

Wayne Allyn Root says, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me.  I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia.  Ever! ... Nobody recalls him.  I'm not exaggerating, I'm not kidding. 

Questioner: Were you the exact same class?

Root: Class of '83 political science, pre-law Columbia University.  You don't get more exact than that.  Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him.  At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, 20th reunion, who was asked to be the speaker of the class?  Me.  No one ever heard of Barack!  Who was he, and five years ago, nobody even knew who he was... the guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him.  Is that not strange?  It's very strange...

When asked about his undergraduate training at Columbia University, The New Times states that Obama "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."

Many of his classmates don't remember Obama.  He's not in the yearbook.  Columbia couldn't find a picture of him at school.

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."

Even though Obama’s Columbia grades fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard, Obama began Harvard Law School in 1988.

On February 6th, 1990, Obama became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.  The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

He managed to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review without ever publishing a SINGLE piece of signed, written work -- not one!

Update:  Obama did do interviews and Politico claims that an unsigned -- and previously unattributed -- 1990 article was produced by Obama and offers a glimpse at hi's views on abortion policy and the law during his student days, and provides a rare addition to his body of work.

The six-page summary, tucked into the third volume of the year's Harvard Law Review, considers the charged, if peripheral, question of whether fetuses should be able to file lawsuits against their mothers. Obama's answer: No.

I sent Politico an email asking how they knew the document was produced by Obama, since it is "unsigned -- and previously unattributed."  They never responded.

Obama’s timing, however, was better than his writing. In the same spring 1990 term that he would stand for the presidency, the Harvard Law School found itself embroiled in an explosive racial brouhaha.

Black firebrand law professor Derrick Bell was demanding that the Harvard Law School appoint a black woman to the law faculty.

This protest would culminate in vigils and protests by the racially sensitive student body, in the course of which Obama would compare the increasingly absurd Bell to Rosa Parks.

Feeling the pressure, HLR editors wanted to elect their first African American president.  Obama had an advantage.  Spared the legacy of slavery and segregation, and having grown up in a white household, he lacked the hard edge of many of his black colleagues.

"Obama cast himself as an eager listener," the New York Times reported, "sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once."

In February 1990, after an ideologically charged all day affair, Obama’s fellow editors elected him president from among 19 candidates.  As it happened, Obama prevailed only after the HLR’s small conservative faction threw him its support.

18 of the original 40 of Barack Obama's classmates gathered around in the schoolyard against a backdrop on the roof that read "Good Luck Barry".