does this sound strangely similar/

Frank Marshall Davis (December 31, 1905, Arkansas City, Kansas; July 26, 1987, Honolulu, Hawaii) was an American journalist, poet and political and labor movement activist. In 1950 he was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for comments he made in columns written for the newspaper Honolulu Record, as well as other activities that the HUAC alleged were connected to the Communist Party USA.[1]
In Obama's first book he refers to "Frank" as a mentor, almost a father figure when he was growing up in Honolulu.
Obama admits in his autobiography entitled Dreams from My Father, that his grandfather on his mother's side, Stanley Dunham, was a close friend of father Frank.

Frank and Stanley played cards together and they would often drag young Obama with them to the red light district:

There was one exception, a poet named Frank who lived in a dilapidated house in a run-down section of Waikiki. He had enjoyed some modest notoriety once, was a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes during his years in Chicago—Gramps once showed me some of his work anthologized in a book of black poetry. But by the time I met Frank he must have been pushing eighty, with a big, dewlapped face and an ill-kempt gray Afro that made him look like an old, shaggy-maned lion. He would read us his poetry whenever we stopped by his house, sharing whiskey with Gramps out of an emptied jelly jar. As the night wore on, the two of them would solicit my help in composing dirty limericks. Eventually the conversation would turn to laments about women. (Obama, Dreams from My Father, pp. 76-77).

Just how much of Davis rubbed off on Obama's Psyche we will never know. But this story of the attitude Davis had for the free enterprise system, or should I call it animus, is strangely similar to the way Obama is going about dismantling the free enterprise system in the name of CHANGE!


First there was Davis's January 26, 1950 piece, "Free Enterprise or Socialism?" Davis hoped that America and its economy were at a turning point, as if a kind of perfect storm was brewing that could at last allow him and his comrades to realize their dreams of a socialist America. They would need to trash the current free-enterprise system and argue for a change to something else. Of course, they could not fully disclose themselves, their beliefs, and their intentions, although any thinking observer could easily read between the lines. The key was to gain the support of the people who didn't know any difference.


Davis began his article by asserting, "Before too long, our nation will have to decide whether we shall have free enterprise or socialism." He pointed to actions in Congress, where he quoted the then-chairman of the Congressional committee on small business, who, according to Davis, warned that "at the present rate, either the giant corporations will control all our markets, the greatest share of our wealth, and eventually, our government, or the government will be forced to intervene with some form of direct regulation of business."


Davis did not like "big business" and the rapacious, "tentacled" rich men who ran it. "For instance," wrote Davis, "Alfred Sloan of General Motors announced that his gigantic company made a profit last year of $600,000,000, more than any other corporation in history. Over the years, General Motors has swallowed up or knocked out car manufacturer after car manufacturer so that today less than a handful of competitors remain. Free enterprise, eh?"


"Monopolies" like GM had to be controlled by the government, said Davis. If not, the likes of GM would control the government. "Obviously, a business that can show a profit ... of $600,000,000 is in a position to control government," wrote Davis. "When we remember that the directors and major stockholders of one industry also shape the policies of banks and other huge corporations, it is easy to see that the tentacles of Big Business control just about everything they think they need to insure continued profits." Davis claimed that, "The control of our wealth and government by the giant corporations ... [was] accomplished fact."


Davis believed that it was such free enterprise run amok, allegedly un-regulated and un-checked by the federal government, that had caused the Great Depression: "For many years now we have been living under the virtual dictatorship of Big Business which all but drove us to ruin in 1929."


Davis was grateful for the grand intervention of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who he believed had saved the day: "By curbing the excesses of the giant corporations that had led to the economic crisis, Roosevelt was able to save the system from complete collapse."


Even then, FDR, in Davis's eyes, had not done enough: "And yet the moneyed men who were bailed out by the New Deal program were our late president's [FDR's] biggest enemies. They have refused to see that in order to preserve their hides, they had to hand out a few drops of gravy to the common man."


Toeing the Stalinist line, as he always did without deviation, Davis then blamed American capitalism for starting World War II. That had been the party line issued by Stalin in his February 1946 Bolshoi Theatre speech. It was a ridiculous, outrageous lie, one that infuriated Democrats and Republicans alike. Nonetheless, the lie became marching orders for Davis and other comrades at party organs around the world. It was their duty to follow that party line, and they happily saluted the red flag. In his column, Davis zeroed in on the true bad guys of World War II: "This bolstering of a sick economy ended at the outset of World War II. Multi-billion-dollar expenditures for the means of killing fellow humans brought added profits and Big Business emerged stronger than ever before in history after V-J Day."


And now, in January 1950, things were especially grim under President Harry Truman, who Davis particularly despised, given that the Democratic president was, at the time, publicly condemning, countering, and seeking to contain Stalin. Moscow had told the good comrades to take special aim at the "fascist," "Hitlerian" Harry Truman, and Davis did precisely that, unceasingly demonizing this icon of the Democratic Party. For the hard left, the current American president had to be bludgeoned beyond recognition; the left did so with great success, as Truman would eventually leave office the most unpopular president in the history of American polling -- until a man named George W. Bush.


There was a conspiracy, suggested Davis, between Truman and even larger monopolies "fattened" by recent mergers. Wrote Davis: "With this added weight to throw around, and a president [Truman] willing to do their bidding after the death of Roosevelt, our giant corporations have had things pretty much their own way. Government policy is fixed in Wall Street and transmitted through the corporation executives who have been appointed by Truman to high federal office. OPA was killed, the Marshall Plan launched and the nation placed on the brink of war economy -- so that such firms as General Motors could make $600,000,000 profit while unemployment skyrocketed."


Davis, for the record, hated the Marshall Plan as much as he hated Truman and Wall Street. That was because Moscow hated the Marshall Plan, which was intended first and foremost to keep Western Europe from falling to communism.


What's worse, said Davis, was that America was busy simultaneously giving a bad name to socialism. Many Americans, especially conservatives, recklessly tossed around the "S word." "At the same time we have manufactured a national horror of socialism," wrote Davis. "Meanwhile, the dictatorship of the monopolies is driving us down the road to ruin." Alas, we could expect "still rising unemployment and a mounting depression."


"[T]he time draws nearer," advised Davis, "when we will have to decide to oust the monopolies and restore a competing system of free enterprise, or let the government own and operate our major industries."


I will let you guess which solution Davis preferred.


Comrade Davis put it more bluntly a few weeks later in his March 2, 1950 column, approvingly quoting Woodrow Wilson: "The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States." In that column, Davis was most concerned with the inability of poor Americans to purchase "a decent home."


For Davis, the only hope was a huge, emboldened federal government that could save Americans from the capitalists, that could rein in fat-cat corporations, that could slap down Wall Street and its excesses, that could spread the wealth, and that could ensure that the poor could buy a home.


To bolster his case, Davis went back to the height of the Great Depression, borrowing a 1935 quote (allegedly) from the governor of Pennsylvania: "I warn you that our civilization is in danger if we heed the deceptive cries of special privilege, if we permit our men of great wealth to send us on a wild goose chase after so-called radicals while they continue to plunder the people .... We are constantly told of the evils of Socialism and Communism. The label is applied to every man, woman and child who dares to say a word which does not have the approval of Wall Street."

Is this the way our current president is taking our Republic?
source:Yahoo.com