The Saga of Barack Hussein Obama

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

One of the more popular bumper stickers in red state Arizona outlines a particular political philosophy: “REPUBLICAN: Because Not Everyone Can Be On Welfare.” We don’t see any of these on the streets: “DEMOCRAT: Because Everyone Except Republicans Need To Eat Every Day.” I’m borrowing a phrase from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s main adviser Harry Hopkins, who used it while testifying to a Congressional committee during the first years of the Great Depression. FDR had put in a bill requesting millions of dollars to be used to feed those who were unemployed, at that time about 25 percent of the total work force. A Republican senator made the comment that such an action would not serve the country well “over the long run.” Hopkins replied: “Senator, people don’t eat in the long run, they eat every day.”

Since retiring I have become a political news junkie and news story clipper, filing “stuff” away until I have a place to use it. My favorite political writer is still Molly Ivins, the Texas writer, now deceased, who labeled George W. Bush “Shrub,” perhaps the most accurate truth-in-labeling ever used on a product. There is a big difference between a bush and a shrub.

Molly insisted that she had discovered the best description of how a political writer works in a Natural History magazine article about the diet of the muriqui monkey. She reported that anyone who has ever chased a politician around trying to get a usable quote will be stunned by the extraordinary accuracy of this scientific account of monkey diet research. The biochemical analysis of the leaves or fruit from each plant species after the monkeys have eaten is not simple, but it is relatively easy from a scientific point. However, individual monkeys have to be observed eating specific plants. Then collecting fecal examples from designated monkeys is much more difficult.

It’s a Tough Job to Pick Up Political Crap Every Day

The challenge is to get almost underneath the targeted individuals at the moment of defecation so that the greenish brown dung can be spotted and identified before it hits the ground. The scientist doing the collecting added: “Occasionally the feces land neatly in my glove, but more often they splatter uselessly in the tangled vegetation–or fall alongside another monkey’s feces, so I cannot tell whose is whose. Though the monkeys defecate often and, in the case of adults, abundantly each time, getting a clean sample sometimes mean tailing one muriqui for up to six hours without pause.” I don’t think her description of how the job of a political writer is similar to the scientific dung catcher needs elaboration. The politicians are constantly unloading but very little of it is worth saving.

To Tea Party Members, American Patriots, and Christian Fundamentalists: “The Times They Are A’Changin’ “

To give you some idea of how times are changing, a little story buried on page 17 of the Republican Arizona Republic reveals that the CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association sent an e-mail to public figures and politicians in the Nashville area comparing first lady Michelle Obama to a chimpanzee. With the e-mail, Walt Baker sent a photo of Mrs. Obama caught in an awkward moment with lips pursed–and another picture of a chimp with lips pursed with head in a similar position. He compared her to Tarzan’s faithful Cheeta in the text. He said he meant the whole thing as “political humor.” Sure.

But what amazed me, Baker actually apologized later to the Nashville City Council and others for sending the e-mail and the pictures. After receiving the apology, the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau said it would drop its contract with Baker’s firm. Bigots die hard. Here is a person in the mainstream of Nashville business interests who has just had a valuable lesson in race relations in the 21stcentury. Here is another valuable statistic to improve his race relationships. There will be more babies born to minorities than to whites in the United States in 2011. Perhaps Baker is an older man who will not live through the next generation. There was a picture in USA TODAY last week of Republican national representatives filing into the House chambers to do battle with the Democrats. They were all white, wore dark suits, dress shirts, and stylish ties. They don’t look much like America anymore. The Republicans have not had an “African lion” lyin’ for them in the Senate or House since 2003–-and have had only three in total since 1935! No wonder they are anxious about “their” country.

The Republicans even objected to the presidency of “Slick Wille” Clinton, often called the “first black president.” The very bigoted North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who used race as a prime motivator in his campaigns, once told Clinton if he visited North Carolina “He’d better bring a bodyguard.” Toni Morrison, the black 77-year-old winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature, has a better idea than most about the election of the black-white Obama. When asked whether there would ever be a time when race wouldn’t matter in this country, she responded: “Well, as long as it’s useful, as long as it’s profitable, as long as it’s used to maintain power by nefarious people, no.” It’s a very sobering thought.

In the 2008 presidential election Barack Obama defeated John McCain 66,882,230 to 58,343,671. The vote proved that we were losing some of the animosity among races within the U.S. But we are far from colorblind. An overwhelming 88 percent of whites in Alabama voted for McCain, far exceeding the vote George Bush received in 2004. That held true in the other Southern states with a strong minority of blacks. Racial bias is still very strong in the Old Confederacy. Obama is half black so he is called the first black president. Actually, under the code of the South, he would be black if he had just one drop of Negro blood.

How Was Obama’s Rookie Year?

There isn’t much doubt in the judgment of a strong majority of historians that George W. Bush is probably the worst president of the modern era. He left a tangled, muddled mess, both foreign and domestic. I have read almost everything Studs Terkel has ever written because he is the finest chronicler of the last eighty years. Before he died he wrote a paragraph about Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and our present Big Recession. It’s short but graphic:

“I was 17 when the Great Depression started. Hoover was still president. People had been living high off the hog. And then, boom, comes the Crash. It was so sudden. Guys jumped out of windows. They didn’t know what to do. The wise men ran around and then they cried out after Roosevelt for the government to help them out. Regulation. They asked for it. They cried for it. The wise men were lost, just as they are today. The free market fell on its fanny. We learned nothing. It’s exactly the same today. The Great Depression? Don’t blame yourself. Take part in the community. The big boys are not that bright.”

So how has Obama done in his rookie year? The Bush not-so-bright-boys were great at getting elected but were lousy in governing. It will take at least a decade to turn the Bush Titanic around so it sails in safe seas.

When Wall Street Joined the Tea Party

When Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts not only did Tea Partiers dance and cheer and furiously wave their “African witch doctor” signs, but so did the big health insurance companies, the huge pharmaceutical cartel, the poor boys from Wall Street, and most of the hospital CEOs and the wealthy medical specialists. Strange bedfellows, trying to screw each other! Stocks were surging on the market because Obamacare was going to be hit by a death panel!

Jim Cramer of the show “Mad Money” was screaming: “No reform equals no change equals larger profits for those with hospital, drug, and other medical investments!” Well, Wall Street was wrong. The Tea Partiers were wrong. The black guy really pissed them off when he kept taking the “Do Not Resuscitate” out of Sarah Palin’s hand-signs. Perhaps few have noticed lately, but Obama is half white. But—-he was born in Kenya! Actually Obama has had a lot of fun with the Republican “birthers.” He got a huge laugh at the Al Smith charity banquet in New York when he revealed his real background: “Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor El to save the planet Earth.” He’s a very fast learner—even on his black side—and has demonstrated an uncanny ability to talk in sentences and paragraphs—and to think while doing it. We haven’t had that for eight years.

His black side, however, has spurred an interest in name-calling I have not seen since teaching high school. So far he has spurred Tea Partiers and Republicans to new, sometimes even close to imaginative heights in name-calling. So far, these have been used extensively, but I would expect growth in this field during his first administration: fascist/communist/ Joker//witch doctor/racist/liberal/extremist/leftist/socialist/Anti-Christ/anarchist/Nazi-in-league-with-Satan/nigger/traitor/African liar/new world order guy/ Hitler/anti-gun/baby killer, and some others that can’t be printed in a family newspaper. Gee, do you think all of these names also apply to his white side? Just yesterday Senator Jack Harper of the Arizona Legislature explained why Arizona should join other states in suing the feds over Obamacare: “The socialists of today are only a gun confiscation away from being the communists of tomorrow.”

People Wrongs and States Rights

Obama has had an interesting year. The right-wing crazies accuse him of dragging the country to the left. The left-wing crazies accuse him of not moving the country away from the malefactions of George Bush. Republican governors are suing the government to prevent the new health care law from being implemented. They are all yelling about sovereign states’ rights. With this present right-wing crazy Supreme Court no one really knows, but all the court precedents to this date should predict the absolute failure of these suits. Do states have the right to declare federal laws null and void within their own borders?

The Southern states tried to nullify the elimination of slavery before the Civil War. They lost that war. Nearly a century later there was massive resistance to the Supreme Court’s ruling on segregation in the schools in Brown V. Board of Education. Many public school districts in Southern states virtually closed down to prevent the integration of the races. Whites “raced” to attend private schools. Black high school students were spit upon while federal troops escorted them to classes in Central High School in Little Rock. It took an army brigade to get a black James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi, at that time dominated by the rebel flag. Virginia segregationists tried to preserve segregation by creating “private academies.”

Many other states’ rights doctrines of nullification have been tried over the years. All have eventually been overruled by various courts. Jim Crow was not saved by the courts. He was sentenced to death. He’s on death row but hasn’t been executed yet. Jim is still going through many appeals from Southerners and Tea Party leaders.

What is the Republican health care program they are going to put in when they repeal Obamacare? Wisconsin Republican Representative Paul Ryan, the new darling of the right-wing crazies, says we should cut more taxes on the super rich and privatize Social Security and Medicare. Minnesota Republican Representative Michele Bachmann, a real right-wing crazy, says Americans should buy their own insurance with “their own tax-free money.” Whatever that means!! But we do know that means 46.3 million Americans will be left with no health insurance.

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