AAC Blog
As I write this piece, we’re in the midst of a (biodiesel) road trip to Washington, D.C., towing behind us an unwieldy piece of history: a solar panel off the roof of the Carter White House. It’s decades old, though it still makes hot water just fine. In a sense, we’re traveling backward—which in another sense is what I think we’re going to have to do for a while in the U.S. climate movement.
Are you one of those people who pour the milk down the drain on the expiration date?
Expiration dates on food products can protect consumer health, but those dates are really more about quality than safety, and if not properly understood, they can also encourage consumers to discard food that is perfectly safe to eat.
A recent poll of more than 2,000 adults showed that most of us discard food we believe is unsafe to eat, which is a good thing, of course, but it is important that we understand what food expiration dates mean before we dump our food -- and our money -- down the drain or into the garbage. On average, in the U.S. we waste about 14% of the food we buy each year. The average American family of four throws out around $600 worth of groceries every year.
Which five foods are most often feared as being unsafe after the printed date? According to ShelfLifeAdvice.com, we are most wary of milk, cottage cheese, mayonnaise, yogurt, and eggs, and the site offers these helpful explanations:
•Milk: If properly refrigerated, milk will remain safe, nutritious, and tasty for about a week after the sell-by date and will probably be safe to drink longer than that, though there’s a decline in nutritional value and taste.
•Cottage cheese: Pasteurized cottage cheese lasts for 10-14 days after the date on the carton.
•Mayonnaise: Unopened, refrigerated Kraft mayonnaise can be kept for 30 days after its expiration date or 3-4 months after opening, the company told ShelfLifeAdvice.
•Yogurt: Yogurt will remain good 7-10 days after its sell-by date.
•Eggs: Properly refrigerated eggs should last at least 3-5 weeks after the sell-by date, according to Professor Joe Regenstein, a food scientist at Cornell University. Note: Use of either a sell-by or expiration (EXP) date is not federally required, but may be state required, as defined by the egg laws in the state where the eggs are marketed.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/08/26/elaine-marshall-senate-candidate-in-north-carolina-calls-for-alan-simpsons-firing/
Thursday August 26, 2010 | Firedoglake
By: David Dayen
Today’s the day of Democrats calling for firings, I guess. On top of Tom Perriello wanting Tim Geithner to step down, Elaine Marshall, the Senate candidate who is close to even in polls against Republican incumbent Richard Burr in North Carolina, announced in a speech today that Alan Simpson should resign as co-chair of the deficit commission.
“Alan Simpson’s remarks were disrespectful to women and to social security recipients. He should resign or the President should fire him,” Marshall said, speaking at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte.
“The fact that he thinks this way shows that he can’t do his job with an open mind. We should be doing everything in our power to strengthen and protect Social Security, not attacking the recipients who depend on it.”
Simpson sent a series of derisive emails to critics, not only filled with name-calling and attacks but reflecting a staggeringly ignorant view of Social Security. He apologized for the name-calling, but most of the groups calling for his resignation didn’t let up. As Marshall says, the emails show that Simpson “can’t do his job with an open mind.” This has been true for a long time now, as Simpson has an unbroken 30-year record of advocating benefit cuts. He shouldn’t come within 1,000 feet of any decision over retirement security, given his predisposition.
That Marshall would make this statement in the midst of trying to win a Senate race in a Southern state shows how Simpson really crossed the line here, damaging not just his reputation but the credibility of the cat food commission entirely.
For the record, FDL has a petition out escalating the dispute and calling for the President to disband the commission altogether.—
By BOB HERBERT
Published: August 27, 2010
America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?
Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric.
Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”
Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”
Washington was on edge on the morning of Aug. 28, 1963. The day was sunny and very warm and Negroes, as we were called in those days, were coming into town by the tens of thousands. The sale of liquor was banned. Troops stood by to restore order if matters got out of control. President John F. Kennedy waited anxiously in the White House to see how the day would unfold.
It unfolded splendidly. The crowd for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” grew to some 250,000. Nearly a quarter of the marchers were white. They gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they were enthralled by the singing of Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez. The march was all about inclusion and the day seemed to swell with an extraordinary sense of camaraderie and good feeling.
The climax, of course, was Dr. King’s transcendent “I Have a Dream” speech. Jerald Podair, a professor of American studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, has called Aug. 28, 1963, “the most important single day in civil rights history.” This is the historical legacy that Glenn Beck, a small man with a mean message, has chosen to tread upon with his cynical rally on Saturday at that very same Lincoln Memorial.
Beck is a provocateur who likes to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation. He seems oblivious to the real danger of his execrable behavior. He famously described President Obama as a man “who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
He is an integral part of the vicious effort by the Tea Party and other elements of the right wing to portray Mr. Obama as somehow alien, a strange figure who is separate and apart from — outside of — ordinary American life. As the watchdog group Media Matters for America has noted, Beck said of the president, “He chose to use the name, Barack, for a reason, to identify not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify, with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?”
Facts and reality mean nothing to Beck. And there is no road too low for him to slither upon. The Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that in a twist on the civil rights movement, Beck said on the air that he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.”
He makes you want to take a shower.
In Beck’s view, President Obama is driven by a desire to settle “old racial scores” and his ultimate goal is “reparations” for black Americans. Abe Lincoln and Dr. King could only look on aghast at this clown.
Beck has been advertising his rally as nonpolitical, but its main speaker is Sarah Palin. She had her own low moment recently as a racial provocateur, publicly voicing her support for Laura Schlessinger, radio’s “Dr. Laura,” who went out of her way to humiliate a black caller by continuously using the n-word to make a point, even after the caller had made it clear that she was offended.
Palin’s advice to Schlessinger: “Don’t retreat — reload.”
There is a great deal of hatred and bigotry in this country, but it does not define the country. The daily experience of most Americans is not a bitter experience and for all of our problems we are in a much better place on these matters than we were a half century ago.
But I worry about the potential for violence that grows out of unrestrained, hostile bombast. We’ve seen it so often. A little more than two weeks after the 1963 March on Washington, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan and four young black girls were killed. And three months after the march, Jack Kennedy was assassinated.
My sincere advice to Beck, Palin and their followers is chill, baby, chill.
By FRANK RICH
Published: August 28, 2010
ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.
There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.
Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate’s unchecked anger and the Obama White House’s unfocused political strategy, they might.
All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled “Invisible Hands” in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.
Only the fat cats change — not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government “handouts” to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly). Even the sources of their fortunes remain fairly constant. Koch Industries began with oil in the 1930s and now also spews an array of industrial products, from Dixie cups to Lycra, not unlike DuPont’s portfolio of paint and plastics. Sometimes the biological DNA persists as well. The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.” That rant could be delivered as is at any Tea Party rally today.
Last week the Kochs were shoved unwillingly into the spotlight by the most comprehensive journalistic portrait of them yet, written by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. Her article caused a stir among those in Manhattan’s liberal elite who didn’t know that David Koch, widely celebrated for his cultural philanthropy, is not merely another rich conservative Republican but the founder of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which, as Mayer writes with some understatement, “has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception.” To New Yorkers who associate the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet, it’s startling to learn that the Texas branch of that foundation’s political arm, known simply as Americans for Prosperity, gave its Blogger of the Year Award to an activist who had called President Obama “cokehead in chief.”
The other major sponsor of the Tea Party movement is Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, which, like Americans for Prosperity, is promoting events in Washington this weekend. Under its original name, Citizens for a Sound Economy, FreedomWorks received $12 million of its own from Koch family foundations. Using tax records, Mayer found that Koch-controlled foundations gave out $196 million from 1998 to 2008, much of it to conservative causes and institutions. That figure doesn’t include $50 million in Koch Industries lobbying and $4.8 million in campaign contributions by its political action committee, putting it first among energy company peers like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Since tax law permits anonymous personal donations to nonprofit political groups, these figures may understate the case. The Kochs surely match the in-kind donations the Tea Party receives in free promotion 24/7 from Murdoch’s Fox News, where both Beck and Palin are on the payroll.
The New Yorker article stirred up the right, too. Some of Mayer’s blogging detractors unwittingly upheld the premise of her article (titled “Covert Operations”) by conceding that they have been Koch grantees. None of them found any factual errors in her 10,000 words. Many of them tried to change the subject to George Soros, the billionaire backer of liberal causes. But Soros is a publicity hound who is transparent about where he shovels his money. And like many liberals — selflessly or foolishly, depending on your point of view — he supports causes that are unrelated to his business interests and that, if anything, raise his taxes.
This is hardly true of the Kochs. When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. He hasn’t changed. As Mayer details, Koch-supported lobbyists, foundations and political operatives are at the center of climate-science denial — a cause that forestalls threats to Koch Industries’ vast fossil fuel business. While Koch foundations donate to cancer hospitals like Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, Koch Industries has been lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying another product important to its bottom line, formaldehyde, as a “known carcinogen” in humans (which it is).
Tea Partiers may share the Kochs’ detestation of taxes, big government and Obama. But there’s a difference between mainstream conservatism and a fringe agenda that tilts completely toward big business, whether on Wall Street or in the Gulf of Mexico, while dismantling fundamental government safety nets designed to protect the unemployed, public health, workplace safety and the subsistence of the elderly.
Yet inexorably the Koch agenda is morphing into the G.O.P. agenda, as articulated by current Republican members of Congress, including the putative next speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Tea Party Senate candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and the new kid on the block, Alaska’s anti-Medicaid, anti-unemployment insurance Palin protégé, Joe Miller. Their program opposes a federal deficit, but has no objection to running up trillions in red ink in tax cuts to corporations and the superrich; apologizes to corporate malefactors like BP and derides money put in escrow for oil spill victims as a “slush fund”; opposes the extension of unemployment benefits; and calls for a freeze on federal regulations in an era when abuses in the oil, financial, mining, pharmaceutical and even egg industries (among others) have been outrageous.
The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests. And surely Murdoch is snickering at those protesting the “ground zero mosque.” Last week on “Fox and Friends,” the Bush administration flacks Dan Senor and Dana Perino attacked a supposedly terrorism-tainted Saudi prince whose foundation might contribute to the Islamic center. But as “The Daily Show” keeps pointing out, these Fox bloviators never acknowledge that the evil prince they’re bashing, Walid bin Talal, is not only the biggest non-Murdoch shareholder in Fox News’s parent company (he owns 7 percent of News Corporation) and the recipient of Murdoch mammoth investments in Saudi Arabia but also the subject of lionization elsewhere on Fox.
No less a Murdoch factotum than Neil Cavuto slobbered over bin Talal in a Fox Business Channel interview as recently as January, with nary a question about his supposed terrorist ties. Instead, bin Talal praised Obama’s stance on terrorism and even endorsed the Democrats’ goal of universal health insurance. Do any of the Fox-watching protestors at the “ground zero mosque” know that Fox’s profits are flowing to a Obama-sympathizing Saudi billionaire in bed with Murdoch? As Jon Stewart summed it up, the protestors who want “to cut off funding to the ‘terror mosque’ ” are aiding that funding by watching Fox and enhancing bin Talal’s News Corp. holdings.
When wolves of Murdoch’s ingenuity and the Kochs’ stealth have been at the door of our democracy in the past, Democrats have fought back fiercely. Franklin Roosevelt’s triumphant 1936 re-election campaign pummeled the Liberty League as a Republican ally eager to “squeeze the worker dry in his old age and cast him like an orange rind into the refuse pail.” When John Kennedy’s patriotism was assailed by Birchers calling for impeachment, he gave a major speech denouncing their “crusades of suspicion.”
And Obama? So far, sadly, this question answers itself.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1307137/Supporters-dismissed-rape-accusations-WikiLeaks-founder-Julian-Assange--women-involved-tell-different-story.html
29th August 2010 | Daily Mail [UK]
It is a story as intriguing and confusing as a Stieg Larsson blockbuster: celebrated internet whistleblower becomes embroiled in a complex sex scandal involving two women, not long after he had masterminded one of the biggest intelligence leaks of all time - against the U.S.
That the action takes place in Sweden, Larsson’s home country, and that the protagonist is the flag-waver for freedom of information Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, provides added piquancy.
Assange, 39, was attending a seminar in Stockholm earlier this month when he found himself facing charges of rape and sexual molestation - charges that were then, amid much confusion, withdrawn and which he strenuously denies.
What does not seem to be in dispute is that he had sex with the two women within four days.
The scandal made headlines around the world, forcing the usually strident campaigner to go to ground in Stockholm, claiming it was a smear campaign, possibly initiated by the CIA or the Pentagon.
His supporters pointed out that the allegations came just a few weeks after WikiLeaks became embroiled in a dispute with the Pentagon over its publication of classified war documents, which the U.S. says endangers the lives of its soldiers and their Afghan allies.
The website plans to release more documents.
Sources in Sweden take a different view - they insist it was Assange’s louche behaviour and his chauvinistic attitude that led to the charges.
One of the women claimed in a Swedish newspaper: ‘The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl lies with a man who has a twisted attitude to women and a problem taking no for an answer.’
Adding to the confusion was the seemingly speedy decision by the Swedish police and prosecution service to charge Assange and issue a warrant for his arrest, even before formal statements had been taken from the women, only to have the rape charge dropped 24 hours later.
The sexual molestation charge was then reduced to one that is punishable by little more than a slap on the wrist.
As ever when such cases are mired in conflicting claims, the truth can take a long time to surface.
But The Mail on Sunday has managed to obtain copies of the women’s police statements, which are made available to the media in Sweden.
August 23, 2010 | Huffington Post
We started this great nation with values that did not exist anywhere else in the world. We have stumbled, we have made mistakes and we have faltered along the way, however we live another day with the hopes of perfecting our union. Yet here we are once again, at a defining moment that will test the strength of our freedoms and our commitment to our founding principles.
It is said in the yogic scripture that in or order to really change the mind of another person, you must first learn to love them. However, I must admit for me it can be a very frustrating process. There are many members of the more conservative sector of our society who are incredibly intelligent, compassionate and loving, but like some of my liberal friends, they suffer from delusion once someone challenges them with an opposing position.
What journalists like Michelle Malkin, Andrew Breitbert and countless other conservatives have made their money on, is the ability to distract their audiences from the real issue, by focusing on the most insignificant portion of the opposing argument. This is exactly what they did when I spoke on Larry King last week about the Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, Park51, as they harped on a ten-second mistake I made from a twenty minute interview that was designed to promote love, compassion and the respect for our very First Amendment of the American Constitution. Michelle Malkin wants to give me, as she referred to it, a "Def History Lesson," on the subject of the hole that has existed directly across the street, outside my window since September 11, 2001. Well Ms. Malkin, here is a Def History Lesson, Part II, for all of the people who seem to be somewhat blinded by the deep hole inside their hearts, which many of my friends would call hatred.
After all of our previous mistakes caused by some Christians that were perceived by some Muslims as the cause of the 9/11 attacks, when the smoked cleared, we were in the greatest position this nation has been in since World War II to promote world peace. However, to my dismay as well as countless others, the exact opposite occurred. George W. Bush, our 43rd President, supposedly had a vision from God (I would assume his Christian God) to go on a "crusade," which history has now proven was laden with countless mistakes which helped create a cycle of negativity that erased all of the outpouring of love and sympathy that the world had showered upon our nation.
There was no question we needed a change, and in 2008 we got one. Our next Christian president, Barack Obama, vowed to make friends with like minded people around the world, despite their color or religion. The world applauded us and was willing to give us a second chance. He took advantage of that opportunity by reaching out to the Muslim world, beginning with his beautiful speech in Cairo, Egypt. As a leader he tried to represent the collective, which said we are after terrorists and not the beautiful faith of Islam.
President Obama was taking this country on the right path; back to one that respected the First Amendment, and most recently made a clear statement that the American ideal of religious freedom cannot be questioned. But when the bombs came from the Right Wing media and public opinion turned, I saw many Democrats, including Sen. Reid, former Gov. Dean and even Gov. Paterson turn political and become sheep to the growing American trend of Islamophobia. There is absolutely no reason to support negotiating a move for the community center located in Lower Manhattan, except for a FEAR OF MUSLIMS. If you really know the victims and their families were not attacked by Muslims then why (except for Islamophobia) support the misguided anger towards them? This country is masking its fear of Muslims with this groundless debate over a religious community center. They have prayed closer to Ground Zero, in a smaller mosque for forty years, before the twin towers were even erected and not one person in this country took notice. It seems that it might be easier for Ms. Malkin and her friends to just kick all of the Muslims out of the country. And why not follow it up with the Jews and then maybe they can send black people back to the Africa, too?
I conclude with this story. Recently the organization of which I am the Chairman of, the Foundation For Ethnic Understanding, held a twinning program where we had European Imams and Rabbis visit the United States and hold meetings at the White House, New York City Hall and the United Nations. At the UN in my speech, I mentioned a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, when Krishna tells Arjuna whether he knows him by the name Krishna or not, it isunimportant, as all he needs to do is follow cetain principles and he will come to him.
When I got off the stage the Imam from Geneva gave me his prayer beads, told me that he loved the verse from the yogic scripture and reminded me that the same sentiment about God loving all people, from all faiths, exists in the Quran.
Now that we have politicized Park51 and the world is watching, there can be no wavering of our support of the First Amendment and, in turn, the proposed community center. Build it.—
Can Democrats unseat the Senate’s most vulnerable Republican?
Seyward Darby
August 21, 2010 | 12:00 am
By Beltway standards, Richard Burr’s first term in the Senate has been a pretty successful one. Elected in 2004 after serving ten years in the House, Burr was one of the “Magnificent Seven,” a slate of new conservative senators. A mere four years later, the North Carolina lawmaker was mentioned as a possible running mate for John McCain. And, last year, he took on a key leadership role (chief deputy whip).
Because he’s such a blank slate, Burr can find himself uniquely susceptible to attack, particularly on populist grounds. Recently, for instance, he voted against extending unemployment benefits, saying it would be a disincentive for people to look for jobs and unnecessarily balloon the deficit.
But, as of June, North Carolina’s unemployment rate was 10 percent, half a point higher than the national average. Many of Burr’s constituents pounced, accusing him of being out of touch with North Carolina voters.
by Juan Cole
Evangelist (and hateful bigot) Franklin Graham said this weekend that President Obama was ‘born a Muslim’ because, he said, Islam is transmitted through the father just as Judaism is transmitted through the mother.
‘ So here is what the academic literature has to say about Islamic law on this issue (Rudolph Peters and Gert J. J. De Vries
Die Welt des Islams, New Series, Vol. 17, Issue 1/4 (1976 – 1977), pp. 1-25 ):“Not only the act of apostasy is subject to certain conditions in order to be legally valid, but also with regard to the perpetrator (murtadd) specific qualifications have been laid down. He can perform a legally effective act of riddah [apostasy] only out of free will (ikhtiyar) at an adult age (bulugh), being compos mentis (`aqil [of sound mind]), and, as emphasized by the Malikite school, after his unambiguous and explicit adoption of Islam.” [- p. 3][P. 2, n. 3: "It is equally stated that this Islam needs to be evident in both qawl [speech] and `amal [deed]; a person who embraced the faith by merely pronouncing the shahadah [profession of faith] would not be considered qulified to perform a legally valid act of apostasy– Cf. Mawwaq in the margin of Hattab, Mawahib al-Jalil, VI, pp. 279-80]”Barack Obama never accepted or practiced Islam as an adult (which would be age 15 in Islamic law) and therefore according to classical Islamic jurisprudence cannot be an apostate. Peters and DeVries are Arabists and are among the foremost scholars on Islamic law, unlike Luttwak, who does not have the slightest idea what he is talking about.’
President Obama’s own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars with the world’s most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960s post-coup Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation. Dunham met and married Lolo Soetoro, Obama’s stepfather, at the East-West Center in 1965. Soetoro was recalled to Indonesia in 1965 to serve as a senior army officer and assist General Suharto and the CIA in the bloody overthrow of President Sukarno.
Barack Obama, Sr., who met Dunham in 1959 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, had been part of what was described as an airlift of 280 East African students to the United States to attend various colleges — merely “aided” by a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, according to a September 12, 1960, Reuters report from London. The airlift was a CIA operation to train and indoctrinate future agents of influence in Africa, which was becoming a battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union and China for influence among newly-independent and soon-to-be independent countries on the continent.
<>The airlift was condemned by the deputy leader of the opposition Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) as favoring certain tribes — the majority Kikuyus and minority Luos — over other tribes to favor the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), whose leader was Tom Mboya, the Kenyan nationalist and labor leader who selected Obama, Sr. for a scholarship at the University of Hawaii. Obama, Sr., who was already married with an infant son and pregnant wife in Kenya, married Dunham on Maui on February 2, 1961 and was also the university’s first African student. Dunham was three month’s pregnant with Barack Obama, Jr. at the time of her marriage to Obama, Sr.
