A prince's cruel and hostile betrayal of his 85-year old grandmother

Barack Obama is "...putting her on all fours by comparing her with the likes of Jeremiah Wright."

This statement concerning Obama's shameful remarks about his grandmother's alleged racism could not have been more perfectly and visually framed. Thank you, Christopher Hitchens.

Is it a character defect that lies beneath the Senator's inability to see the monumental difference between the two people: the first, a firebrand preacher he met twenty years ago whom he says brought the Word of Jesus Christ into his life; or the the no-nonsense grandmother who took him in at age 10 and raised him?

The men in Obama's life sound like banjo players
That's what people from my part of the country call them, not that there's anything wrong with them--men who use strong women to make themselves look good, to look better than they are, to look fine and accomplished without the hard physical work. But then, Barack Sr. had four wives, so it's diffucult to generalize. I only know of Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, the one who left Barack with Granny when he was 10, and she came from another heavyweight.

That strong woman would be Madelyn Payne Dunham the little woman in the photo above, the supposed racist grandmother of Barack Obama, who come to find out was actually a vice president of a bank while his gladhander grandfather "who could charm the legs off the couch" sold furniture.

Maybe not one to work too hard, Stanley Armour Dunham, Barack's grandpa indeed married way above his station when he got ahold of Madelyn one night before the big one, WWII, at a dance in Wichita. Stanley as much as said so. His wife was the brains of that outfit.

While Obama Sr., a Kenyan (whose family wrote to Madelyn that they were insulted that the Dunhams and Payne's white blood was sullying Barack's pure Kenyan blood--well, laadeedah), and Ann Dunham, Barack's irresponsible mother, were off saving the world and unavailable to finish raising their own children, a profoundly selfish act, Granny gave up what she probably thought were her golden retirement years and raised a little boy. Surprise.

This white devil woman, his blood grandmother, the one Barack recently kept throwing under the bus and comparing her to a latent KKK member--look for the hood in her underwear drawer--as he did all of us whiteys, cared enough about her flesh and blood to give him what a lot would or could not: a fine, fine home, a private education and a Dude's life at the beach!

It's time to get real. The guy's a prince, an enabled prince. Sullied, for sure, King Barack, High Goattender of Kenya, but still, according to almost everyone here in America but me, your grandson is indeed a prince!


What an ungrateful and immature child this Barack Obama is! Most of us get humiliated by our kids in private, but in public? I doubt there is anything worse in the entire world than betrayal from one's children when one is elderly and can't fight back.

I try to imagine any of our icons/greats in the same situation: John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Eisenhower, even our most troubled presidents. I simply cannot contemplate that one of them would be so insensible, so indiscreet as to utter such words which can never, ever be withdrawn because of their public damage to this poor woman. I've said all along he doesn't yet know who he is. God help him.

Here are a few sites to see for yourself about our come-out-of-nowhere wunderkind, the prince:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madelyn_Payne_Dunham

It sounds to me as if Barack Obama and Mrs. Dunham had a fairly decent relationship until he became hip, slick and cool in Chi Town.

And we want a man who would do this to his grandmother for president. Really? We have come a long way, Baby. Maybe the wrong way. Maybe an ugly way that we don't really want to go. We are being bullied by a prince. Watch this one and watch the gang behind him and those who just can't see the difference any more.

Thanks for the read.

Hillary: "Okay, Barack. I've been patient."

Mr. Clinton has been very, very patient with Barack Obama. She's allowed him to build his own base within the party and take in money and even embarrass her in ways no one else could've got away with. Certainly this won't go on much longer. My hunch is the other shoe will drop soon.

Might makes right
I just can't shake the idea that an ex-president and his wife whose entire life is a financial sheet doesn't still have enough credits out there to pull this thing off. There's no way they will let this go. Hillary's too old and they want it too much to let it go. Hillary will be the nominee.

It's really up to Obama. From the press pics, things looked pretty earnest in the Virgin Islands last weekend with Obama. He and Michelle are talking turkey right now. Who knows the kinds of threats and deals they're looking at right now. What a little fool. Why can't he just wait?

But what I do know?

Thanks for the read.

21st Century reasons I'm glad I'm not a high and mighty Democrat

I can't believe it either, but here are still more.

I reject the stealth politics of Barack Obama, who for a while, was looking like a man of honor, with misguided politics, but instead has turned into the same old leftist bag of wind, this time from Chicago, who will continue to tell black people they aren't okay and they're still being exploited by people who aren't black.

That is, after all, what every white person in America heard whether they admit it or not: "...typical white people like his racist grandmother." Barack said those words in the middle of a sentence during an unscripted interview.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright didn't say it; Barack Obama said it in an interview. I heard it. He didn't even know he said it. But he said it. It was second nature, as if he said close the car door.

When the Democrats recognize that Mr. Obama is the racist in the room and Mrs. Ferraro is not, I might take him seriously as a candidate for dog catcher. What a phony. Obama's been to more white teas than my 90-year old white grandma and he's not fooling anyone.

I also reject the idea that an angry 18-year old black girl who has no idea what Americans have done to make her country better can stand in front of me and scream hateful epithets and then call me the hater--and concurrently call herself a peace loving Democrat. I'm tired of being lectured by these peace loving Democrats like her or Code Pink

I also reject her getting in my face. What is with all this physical aggression? Who taught them this physical aggression was okay?

Oprah ought to give these kids the gift of good manners while she's doing the BIG GIVE. What this young woman and many others like her have never been told is her rights stop at the end of my nose.

These children are simply exhausting and their bad manners are irritating as hell. Another reason I am thrilled not to be a peace loving Democrat.

Finally, with regards to race, I reject that Democrats allow this kind of hateful rhetoric to permeate every discussion we have in America so that they can satisfy what appears to be a shrinking minority of their party. They do it to assuage their own unameliorated guilt and character weaknesses.

Here's a puzzler about the Democrats: they claim to be want to move on; yet they do not. They are redux masters. They refight and regurgitate the same old demons and inner battles about guilt, money, success, exhorting one another about the importance of remembering where they come from, their high school OCD like preoccupation with image and style, ad infinitim. They never move on.

All that guilt, turmoil and mind changing makes me glad I'm not a Democrat.

I reject that Democrats have suddenly declared Iraq a non-issue in this campaign unless one of them attempts to put out a policy speech. Obama's silly one last week sounded like something from a boy scout jamboree. I deplore how the Democrats handled the war issues publicly when any intelligent person knows both Clinton and Obama are lying. Of course, we're staying in Iraq.

I believe they have put our nation at risk. I'm sorry if they're offended at my having to say that, like defending my country is offensive. Someone has to. I'm offended at their behavior, as well. Code Pink is an abomination. Freedom has been very, very good to them.

I reject their idea that America is a place full of poor, little, decrepit things who think with their sexual organs and pick vegetables. Moreover, I'm tired of being talked to as if I were one of those faceless victims and do not pay for their very health care. .

I'm also not a Dem because I'm weary of first-generation Americans who are way too young and inexperienced from towns like Berkeley and other obnoxious, self-impressed, no-balls burgs who take their barely-formed, tunnel-visioned brains and IPO companies, like Google into Communist countries and play games of Ping Pong, while literally thousands of human beings (Christians, real democrats) die at the hands of murders.

These juvenile dilettantes, these vain Christopher Robins with no consciences, no sense of right and wrong, these relativists who have sold out to the horrors of the Chinese Central Committee, have no more appreciation and knowledge of geopolitics than Dora the Explorer. These are real live human events which are taken up by mathematicians, by little princes. Regardless, in the way they have displayed their craven spirits, there is not a man amongst them. They should have rejected any conditions the Chinese gave them. Their response should have been: complete freedom or no Google, no Cisco, no Yahoo. What a disgraceful display of cowardice.

Meanwhile, another one, but much older, is Larry Ellison who laughs all the way to his Swiss bank, the "immigrant" who changed his name in honor of Ellis Island, and founder and head of Oracle, the software founder and vendor for the federal government information systems. It's important to note that those systems were obsolete before they were implemented, most of them, and did not work.

While people in HUD were pulling their hair out over buggy and faulty Oracle databases, Larry was lolling on the deck of his giganto yacht in Hong Kong and laughing his behind off over media's reports of the latest fears about how people are about to lose their privacy in the U.S in a 1990s interview."Too late; they already have," he chortled, threw his head back, finishing his cooler. I detest such arrogance. It should anger everyone who pays taxes. I have to laugh when the Democrats bring up Ken Lay and Enron.

They love Larry Ellison in the Democratic Party because he gives a lot of money and I suspect they're a little afraid of him. Like most people who are technologically challenged, they are also impressed. They bestow honor and blessings on technocrats and other specialists as if they were gods. In our knowledge age, in a way, they are gods--to the Democrats.

Maybe that's why I never considered seriously becoming a Democrat. I've never been impressed enough with another human being to consider such adoration these Democrats love to throw at their leaders. Passing out at rallies?

It's too third world for me. Didn't we move away from that when we left whatever country we left to come to America?

Typical Democrats. They ought to try being impressed with America, not destroy what it stands for by constantly testing the goodness of its ordinary people. Yeah, we're not all great. But most of us are pretty good folks. We try.

Thanks for the read.

Slavery: The scourge that won't leave us alone

Well, shut ma mouth! Maybe throwing money at the problem of racial discrimination isn't the only answer.

I know! I've got it!

Let's try getting a bunch of white people together at a white person's pep rally in the burbs to remind angry black people, especially black men, to get over it. One more time. We'll be sure and trot out all the people they hate, but we consider exemplars of how things got so good for black people because we're all such great white people.

Hey, guess what? Even Barack Obama can't seem to do that.

Black Dudes and Dudettes! Yur Free...Fly like a bird...like me and my dudes
I accidentally listened in on a man conversation using an eavesdropping device I bought from an infomercial for $19.95--you know the one where that unpleasant woman is yelling at her husband to turn the TV down? That one.

Here's what I heard at the 2nd tee box from bunch of guys who sound like they truly, honestly, deep down in their hearts believe that their black sports heroes, et al. need to "get over it" (whatever the "it" is) and move on:

After all, they're free now; they've been given lots of opportunity and God knows they have the chance to go ahead of your kids for Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, I know, it sucks. While we ameliorate, we alienate and someone pays. That's why I hate affirmative action. There has to be a better way. Not that it hasn't worked.

There are too many successes to throw away something till there's a replacement. I hate the waste and reverse discrimination. God, where am I gonna get that 5000 bucks for Jaime's teeth, Marsha's tuition? State schoolain't cheap. I shouldn't even be out here playin today. They all think we're rich as Midas. I don't know what they think anymore after that Obama and Reverend Wright thing...Hell, I thought things were getting better, except it sounds like they all hate our guts no matter what we do. I heard one girl saying it was about time blacks got all the power to take over and get the white man back.

Yeah, it's sorta when you think everything's copacetic with the wifey. Then I'm on the couch while Rover's lickin my nose.

But I told my kids we gotta get through this hate issue, when they asked, they said they were scared of some of the black kids at school--I told them to get over it and reach out to those kids...we want to help their kids. Jeez, I hate that. Why do they think we don't? Goddam Katrina, anyway. Makes ya sick. You really think we want bad things for their precious kids? That makes me sick, Man. Just sick.

I don't know. My old man hated em. I had to come a long way to even be in business with some of those guys, now they're my friends, I think, and now look what's going on. It just makes me want to go back to the way things were.

They don't care. They just want payback. Look at the black CEOs in the Forbes 500. Uncle Toms? Who cares? They made it and they're doing a job just like me. Why does everyone have to be a damn martyr? Good bucks. Yeah, they say they just have to do what The White Man says. Well, who the hell doesn't? Guess they never worked for a Japanese company. Who tells em all this?

You're right, Man. Shoot, I worked my way through school. My pop was a truck driver and my mom checked groceries at Safeway. They didn't hold any slaves. I didn't either. Yeah, we came from the south, but we got over it. Things have changed a lot down there.

I don't know where they get that we're all so rich or that we don't want them to have anything. I'm mortgaged up to my ass. My wife's driving me crazy with wanting more stuff and my kid's all want rapper's crap. Dude, I can't win for losin. I got a big job here and no one seems to give a damn about me.

The richest woman in the country is a black woman. Then they go and call us racist which is so off base and so wrong. If they only knew how much we really care. And it hurts personally when black people say those things. I wonder sometimes if that's what my black friends think of me. "

Every white person who has thought these things wants to know: what do black people want anyway?

America was built on slavery, at least the early part of her was
I knew you wouldn't like it; I've tried to tell others this before.

My husband stood up and walked out of the room. This evidently was a painful revelation for a noble white guy who felt he was on top of his own righteous race relations and thus always took the high road. He came back in and said, "Well, yeah, but we didn't use slaves until after the Revolution, and only in the South."

My husband is not a stupid, uneducated man, and evidenced by his early fifteen-year career in big time newspaper publishing, his ability to analyze events is far beyond mine. So I was frankly surprised at his apparent ignorance, almost resistance. It was as if I had insulted him. I realized he had no clue. Educators, for whatever reason, decided not to dwell on that abhorant part of American history.

"No, sweetie." I had to tell him. "I'm sorry to break your heart. It truly breaks mine too. But who do you think picked and cured all the tobacco the colonies exported to Europe in the late 1600s and into the 1700s?"

He still didn't quite believe me.

I blew through the facts. "Africans, some brought into the West Indies and up into the colonies... some brought directly, who picked the cotton and cut sugar cane to rot those English teeth. Why do you think the colonies exploded into its own expansive economy during in the 1700s? Slavery built the farms, mills, and plantations up and down the Atlantic Coast, not just immigrants. They kept slaves because they made them money. Period.

It's always about money. You of all people know that sordid dynamic of life. Follow the money.

And many of those folks, Protestants included, had slaves in the North for a long time until their faith could no longer justify holding human beings captive, even as early as the 1600s, lots of them."

"No," accusingly he glared, "prove it."

I was stunned. Why do white men, especially those who have made it, do this knee jerk denial thing when I bring up slavery? It's everywhere, believe me. And it's universal in terms of industry. It's like, okay, we did it; we stopped it; now let's move on. Like emancipation fixed it. Nothing ever happened before or after.

"I don't need to prove a fact!" I slammed back. "Why can't white America just admit what happened? I'm so tired of lies on both sides. This is why we're in trouble today. Lies. Black people lie. White people lie.

You can't steal people and get away with it and then act like nothing happened! Why did it have to come to this? We're still a long way off if we can't even accept what we've done. No one really wants to understand anything anymore. They just want it their way, or the highway."

Then I left the room and threw that damned eavesdropping thing away.

Thanks for the read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade


Then this afternoon, after I posted this, the Obama camp attacks the only news source, Fox, who's willing to at least discuss the issue. This is typical of old line liberal politics. Distract, distort. Make allowances for bad behavior then attack the messenger. Obama looks like he's had to resort to those bad politics after all. Meanwhile, it's a dangerous place we're in and I wish we could back off. I doubt this will go away now.

As Wanda Sykes asked Jay Leno the other night, "Jay, who we black folk gonna blame once a black man get's the White House?"

Hillary will end up the nominee, not that I'm an authority or anything. It's just a feeling I have.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/Obama_campaign_praises_Wallace_says_Fox_has_been_deeply_irresponsible.html

Is this what African Americans and Obama supporters really think? Tell the truth.

Let’s get serious
White folks may want to catch Dr. Henry Louis Gate's specials, "African American Lives" the next time it airs on PBS. Certainly because of this series, I understand some of this African-American anger. Thanks to Dr. Gates we have been given some scientific fact to work with, not emotion or wishful thinking, nor theory; rather, no nonsense, time-to-tell-the-truth DNA.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates%2C_Jr.



The series, produced by the talented, genial Gates, the Harvard professor, consists of re-enacted stories and utilizes modern genealogy computer technology programs, personal family histories, and DNA to connect with famous black Americans' family trees. I will focus on a few of Chris Rock's and Oprah Winfrey's family backgrounds here for the purposes of my argument.

I enjoyed seeing all the series subjects when they're sincerely surprised, especially when they were caught off guard in their moments of discovery and excitement when Dr Gates revealed each family's new document and photo. I admired their candor, and could relate to many of them because of my own love of genealogy and family and cultural history. As they were surrounded with their families, it was apparent the love they shared. I wished I could thank each of them for the opportunity for these views into their lives at this intimate time which after a time seemed almost too personal and intrusive.

In general, and this is the most exciting, fulfilling part, every one of the individuals came from people who were something. By that, I mean they BUILT something, or GAVE something or DID something for others, values tragically taken from then and lost during the shameful Jim Crow era and the black flight north.

One scene of Chris Rock looking at photos brought back my own memories of Thanksgiving evenings at my grandmothers when I was a little girl. We were getting somewhere, I thought. Chris is a lot like me--he really likes this stuff. I was impressed with Chris' mother, her beauty and elegance, and yet somehow related to her earthiness as he looked through their family photos at her comfortable home. It was clear he adored her this typical black matriarch. I could she her slap him upside the head as needed.

Later, however, I was startled by Rock's lack of reaction when he, alone in another, moodier shot with Dr. Gates, was informed that West African blacks sold blacks into slavery. It's almost as if he didn't hear it. He seemed to absorb it, but didn’t comment. I watch him more carefully during his silence.

Deep down is there a reaction? Of course, in my white mind, I regard this silence and stoicism as black man bravado...and beneath him? We're at the core of our problems here. I can feel it. He doesn't believe it. Nothing.

Dr. Gates bravely brings up his own more obvious Mulatto race--he has very light skin and has red hair (almost as if Dr. Gates wants to set a challenge for each person in the series--probably my wishful thinking again). Then he drops a bomb on Chris and presents him with DNA evidence which proves Rock's nearly as much Caucasian as he is African. Rock bristles. I bristle. Dr. Gates presses on.

My white mind wants Rock to acknowledge that his presence, his intelligent, heavenly, beautiful, glorious presence is the best of both OUR worlds--white and black.

But he won't do it. He won't give me a thing. Not one little piece of my whiteness is responsible for his success and presence. He just won't do it. Now I’m hurt. It’s his pride. And my pride. It's too much for me to ask, and I realize that. It's too much.

It was a white man or woman (who knows?) who presumably took his black grandmother or father to his bed and made Chris 50% white. And Chris just can't forgive his grandfather/mother for that even though look who Chris turned into regardless of who that white man or woman was. My God, pride, Man, pride! Why this pride? How many years ago was this?

Whatever, like Barack Obama, the man who states he is black, all black, all the time, yes, he does because he only appeals to African American issues and Chris Rock is really half white. Half white all of the time. The DNA says so.

Gates then engages in a hypothetical, asks Rock if he had just a drop of black blood, which race would be consider himself. Rock, as if his entire career depends upon it (doesn't it?) burst forth in that fabulous Chris Rock laugh and voice, "Why, blaaaacccck, Man, blaaacccck!, Of course. Man. Are you kidddin?!" I notice a look in his eyes here which says something like, "Do you know what I do for a living?"

And this is healthy why? Because he's a very wealthy comedian who makes money hating white people. Healthy for him and very bad for young black men and women who don't get it.

This fascinating series deals with five or six more African American people, one of whom is Tina Turner who was convinced she was at least half Indian. Come to find out she has much less than she was told, only 1/3.

In fact, very little Indian blood--less than 1%-- is found in African Americans, and it is a myth that has been circulating among African Americans for years. Rather a much, much larger proportion of black people are at least 50% white. Since I haven't lived in that community, I don't know what their internal prejudice is about, but I'll bet there's some. There's a form of it in all social groups regardless of what it's called. I have a hunch it's about color--dark and not so dark.

When Rock finds he has less than 1% Native American blood, he is crestfallen. Gates asks him why; he replies he thought he was more heroic because naturally Native Americans were persecuted by the white man and were heroic for fighting them. I felt sorry for him. Why must be fight so much?

So Mr. Rock connotes Caucasian blood with raping and Indian blood with heroism and that drop of black blood makes him what?

Remember, I said he ignored Dr. Gates information about blacks swiping blacks to sell to slave traders. That was immediately after they raped everyone. Then they sold them to the black and white traders. Denial is in Africa, after all.

I think I understand that. Perhaps it's a coping mechanism. Rock's ancestors had been kidnapped, tortured by their own, then tortured again by nasty white people. And after the 25TH beating, who'd care who's responsible?

Yet in the long run, his black ancestors in Africa, 40% to 50% of him, were no better than his white ones. It's a conundrum. How can a person hate so much of himself, which is precisely what many African Americans must deal with eventually. They can't run from the truth, like it's some unfortunate truth.

The Daughter of a King
Let's move on to the most successful woman, not black woman, woman in television and media.

"Oprah's Root's" kept my heart snapping a bit and here’s why. After telling about her childhood family showing her mother, the nuclear family and extended family, Dr. Gates slowly moved his finger along the map of Africa up from the tip at Capetown, north then westward and gently urged Oprah to say hello her real west African roots.

Oprah’s DNA evidenced she was snatched from a Senegalese village along with her family, maybe sisters, rather than nurtured in the royal Zulu birthing hut in South Africa as she had fantasized. I felt compassion for this little Mississippi girl who always said she learned things the hard way, and the utter sadness she must have felt in her obvious disappointment.

But she needn’t have been disappointed, only shocked maybe as she herself stated she was when Dr. Gates asked her--"No! I'm just sh-shocked!"

I wondered if she started her own urban myth. Or did the Zulu princess thing come up at a advertising or publicist meeting that some make believe artist came up with? Or did a that little girl with pigtails conjure this up sitting in front of the mirror in her little bedroom and finally believe so well that she got herself a tiara and sash at a beauty pageant? Why do we need to make up lies about ourselves to be okay?

I'll venture to say that if Oprah hadn't invented herself into a Zulu princess, she might have met someone like Chris Rock, and her life would've been over. His anger would kill any ideal she had of overcoming anything in life, let alone being a happy, successful black or white woman.

Personally, I think Oprah became who she is because of her wonderful father. Its clear Oprah's pop made his peace with who he is, black, Mulatto, whatever. He was just a good man. After him, Oprah is where she is because of one person: Oprah!

Some of us need to know where we come from
Some folks don't give a whit about any of this stuff. I do.

It was deeply moving to me to find out who my kin were. Not the ones I knew, but the ones I didn't know. The ones I imagined after I saw their names on the 1790 Census Form in the state they lived in and then rush to history books, now the Internet, and drill down to their very village and lives. Their truth in their time literally changed how I thought about things. It made a material difference in my life--no, not money.

For what ever reason the people at the time kept their secret, by the way, that is their business. Years later, however, the truth had to be told. As it turned out, no one really cared and life goes on.

And then there is another mystery in my very typical American family that I want to solve and that's why I have hold some kind of hope for a maturity in the truth that Dr. Gates and his work will bring to more serious African Americans. It's a start.

I also have Indian blood, Chris!
I'm hoping the development of new technology will reveal a way to determine the DNA of my maternal grandparents. Not likely. Those peoples are long gone. How ironic. I'll probably never know who I really am. That's a bad feeling, if you let it be.

My earliest known maternal grandparents lived and died in western Pennsylvania in Ft. Duquesne area and left a little girl named Massa who was taken in as an infant by Europeans, Swedish missionaries perhaps or an American soldier and his wife at the fort, maybe Scots.

My Native American grandparents, surmising from American history, were probably Algonquin, Iroquois or Delaware and most likely were killed or slaughtered. The violence in the region was such that assumption is not out of the question. I choose, however, to assume they got sick with a fever. Who knows? Not an educated guess.

Massa, I mean Mary, later married a white man in Ohio and birthed my great grandmother, who was called a half-breed, which could not have felt very good. In honor of that half breed woman who lived life on the frontier and was my mother's grandmother and favorite person in world beside herself, I blessed one of my daughters with a middle name, Isabelle, and one of my beloved daughters, God bless her, has given one of her daughters a middle name, Isabelle. What else can you do?

Unfortunately, some people on this earth will never find comfort regardless, but due to the immaculate record keeping of the slave traders, shippers and buyers (Nazis and people like this are anal retentive, another reason to keep a real messy desk like mine) we now have a way to locate the origins of more and more African-American origins each month.

What do you want to be when you grow up, beside rich?
Chris Rock said he would rather identify himself as black if his body contained just one drop of black blood than if his entire being held 50% of white blood. I don't know where to go with that as white person. That shuts down the conversation, doesn't it? That is pretty shocking. I mean, if we’re ever going to get along. I think we have to keep working at this. Sounds like they all just want to get even.

http://www.barackobama.com/factcheck/2007/11/12/obama_is_a_patriot.php

But it's difficult to think we'll ever go beyond terrible rhetoric and racial insults of Wright, Rock and and all the folks who honestly believe white people are to be the most hated people in the modern world. I frankly am not interested in giving them power over my life.

And that is why people like Reverend Jeremiah Wright hanging around Barack Obama give white people the heebie jeebies.

Thanks for the read.

Obama's facing more major fallout thanks to campaign errors, terrible judgment and stupidity

He's a 2-year old who was given his head on fast Kentucky Derby-style tracks designed for made 3-year olds. He's already come up near lame from hard press workouts and stress of the Texas and Ohio stakes, and he's facing an utter breakdown from bad training, riding and handling as he faces that long Quaker State mile ahead.

The smart money may even pull out before the race. Can he hold on or will he just become another claim horse for next season's Tuesday races? Er...sorry, that was a lead in for another project. Pretty good, though. I'll leave it in.

It's not easy being green
Barack Obama is very, very green, still angry at whites and too connected to virulent, angry, black politicians to be a president for all Americans. No one's going to vote for a guy whose main spiritual and family advisor/preacher spouts anti American slogans like "God Damn America" and tells his congregation America started the HIV to kill black people. This is the guy Obama went to Chicago FOR in order to learn how to be black. He said it himself. Of course, now all his supporters are saying Barack has never seen the guy before in his life. Yes, and Jackie Kennedy and I corresponded with each other the entire time she was in the freakin White House, Barack.

Who does this guy think he's talking to? The humble and stupid people of Botlelelelcoelxow? Jeez. See what I mean about being president to ALL the people?

But, because Obama's people are impatient and unaccustomed to power politics and in fact eschew power politics as corrupt, as usual, depressed, as usual, and mad, as usual, and the Clinton's pissed off so many of the party leadership, they are pushing this unvetted kid too soon. The black leadership is the key here; it is radical and in cities all over the country. One must ask why the pressure is so great to get Obama up and running this soon. I'm very concerned what lies beneath the rush in regard to racial tensions in our cities and what is being promised and/or prevented by the black bosses.

What a disservice to Obama. I suppose, he probably would've made a fair president eventually. Maybe, for a Democrat, if he only liked America better and had a passing knowledge of life and the real world--if only he had an inkling of what he's about and who he is. Unfortunately, neither Michelle, nor Oprah, nor his bosses in Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, Milwaukee will allow him to find that out.

Since this is about race, always has been and only about race, I'd like to let Mr. and Mrs. Obama know that the hated old white women of the Democratic Party were doing them a huge favor. But somewhere in between the Obamas' barely hidden hatred and sickeningly apparent arrogance, somehow the cues were missed. Or they were ignored, which is why I said the Obamas are arrogant.

They will not be ignored!
Most women over the age of 50 pretty much know what's going on in life. The first thing they know is you don't burn bridges, which Michelle managed to do within the first or second month of her national public life. If you want people to vote for you, it's probably a real good strategy not to piss them off, Michelle. Live and learn.

I can see it now.

"You know?" Michelle Obama says to Oprah years in the future, downing a Chardonnay, now living off the good graces of these loyal old political friends. "Looking back, I probably shouldn't have said all that garbage about being really proud for the first time and acted so tough. No. I remember Barry was really mad at me that night."

"Do you think, Michelle?" an older, wiser Oprah responds. "Anyway. That's water under that bridge you done burned, girl. Pass me the wine."

I'm sure Geraldine Ferraro also probably wished Barack had showna bit more elegance and hadn't allowed his people to be so unnecessarily rude to her after she made her silly comment about being in the right place at the right time. She didn't really mean anything by it. Nevermind. The classless Obama camp made that innocuous statement into something racist and unneccessarily contentious. I wouldn't have resigned, by the way. She probably wanted to pinch their heads off. I would've, probably because I'm a lot like Michelle.

Don't these new kids ever learn? How unneccessary, Geraldine must have thought. Well, I tried to help their man before it was too late. You can lead a horse to water...

Mrs. Clinton had also been patient and gave Barack one last shot at being a gentleman, saving his butt from the embarrassment she was about to exploit and instead let him maybe become the president in 2016. Does anyone now wonder why there were three offers on the table for Veep before all of us got a chance to listen to the Reverend's opinion of the USA?

I told you Hillary was just messin' wit jah, Barack. Not that I'm an authority or anything.

"He's turned into the preacher from hell, Michelle! "
And he's making Obama look like the anti Christ. If he weren't so arrogant, he would've known that after the Reverend made his ridiculous remarks about us deserving what we got on 9/11. He had a long time to disassociate himself. Instead, he named the guy to his campaign committee. Obama's not very bright or he believes what the guy's saying. You decide.

Senator Obama is finding out that life is cruel. If he'd just stayed a nice Mulatto intellectual and learned how to grow into a progressive Democrat at the liberal knee of his white Grandpa and friends in Hawaii...what with all his natural abilities, why, he coulda been a contender in nature's own time and space. Sorry to be blunt, but black or white, there it is. Who's going to want a used Obama? I suppose he could go be president of a small country somewhere, preferably a socialist one in Latin America, but other than that...

I'm wondering. The recent developments make those Veep offers from Senator Clinton look pretty good, after all. If and it's a huge IF, if they're still available, that is.

In the meantime, I believe I saw Senator Clinton's press secretary spotting her as she was doing back flips--good thing she wears all those pant suits.

I hope she realizes she still has to beat the war hero. Talk about an authentic horse race.

Thanks for the read.

Working the Sunday New York Times crossword in pen

John Robert Layman 1929-2008

My big brother died two weeks ago today in St. Paul, Minnesota. He leaves his two beautiful daughters: Ann Elizabeth and her husband, Dennis Scott and Marian Ruth and her husband, Matthew Kirby. Some of you may recall that his only son, John Robert, Jr., was killed in a horrible accident last October.

John is survived by a talented and gifted grandchild, Daniel Scott, a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston and another talented and beautiful granddaughter, Stephanie Scott, who is still in high school in St. Paul. My treasured former sister-in-law and mother of his children, Marilyn Stockton Layman, lives in Kansas City.

He also leaves his little beloved sister Shirley Anne, his little brother, Curtis Frederick and me, Andrea Margot. I am sixteen years younger than John and the baby of this wonderful family.

A baby sister's memories
There are many. One was when we greeted John at Kansas City's Union Station just returning home from his duty in Korea when I was six. It was cold and snowing. Packed like slices of pickles in a jar were Marilyn, John and my eleven-year old bro, Curt, in the backseat of the 1952 sedan; Mother, me and Daddy in the front--you could do that in the old days--we were all so excited to have him home safe from war.

Later in the evening I listened to their grown up stories, asked Daddy what the "call of nature was" when John mentioned a bullet whizzing by his ear, getting to stay up until my mother had to drop kick me into the bed. I'll never, ever forget how relieved Dad was to have John home and how Mother, God bless her, was plenty relieved too.

John was brilliant and rather a puzzle. He loved classical music. He had a fabulous gift of woodworking, something he fell heir to from his great grandfather and name sake Robert Curtis Love. Like him, John was very gentle and held a sad acceptance of life. Yet his tremendous humor offered me a respite that was reassuring. He didn't promise anything like a heaven or something like a fairy god mother, but was more interested in telling the truth in what lay ahead. It was as if he trusted that certainly I was strong enough to handle it. Sure enough, he was right.

I'm not really sure of his beliefs spiritually as he simply wasn't the kind of guy to discuss such things with his kid sister, maybe with a pal, but not with me. He was a fatalist in that he saw usually what was coming, said it, cautioned you not to be surprised, then helped you get over it. This knowledge is not unusual in men of John's age and geography.

Maybe this basically Midwestern trait is passed down as a survival skill from those ancestors who came across the Cumberland frontier leaving the comforts of Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, i.e., already knowing you'd better figure out what's ahead and not cry over the inevitable spilled milk.

His attitude of life, and my own, which I see more clearly now that have the perspective of living in such a limp place like California, must have come about from being the child of my massive father, as well as from the similarly proprioceptive strength of that parent's immense will power and sense of honor. Add to such a foundation the fight, spirit, faith, pride (oh my God, her pride) and the guidance of an equally strong-willed, highly intelligent and occasionally hysterical and neurotic mother and you've formed a pretty complex personality. That's not all bad, by the way, contrary to popular psychological opinion. Not that John didn't have his moments, as we all do. He indeed did.

It seems to me though John did life pretty much without complaint and carried on always with a sense of humor. I think he got that from Mother, who claimed she was never bored as long as there was one book left in the world to read. John felt the same, I think.

"Sister," he'd say as he turned "Rite of Spring" over on the turntable he had built by hand, "when you're depressed, take a walk down to Katz," the best drugstore in KC. Then he'd lean down to pick out a perfectly straight--by eye-- two-by-four stick of mahogany, light another Lucky Strike, switch on his finger-threatening lathe and show me how to make a chair leg.

After he did his part for Korea (maybe he never thought he had a choice, however unlikely, although the beginnings of dodging the draft was part of the chatter in his crowd), John married beautiful Marilyn, studied for premed at University of Kansas, fathered my nieces and nephew, then after a time on his way up at Ford Motor Company in KC, he was offered early retirement in the 70s, to which he responded, "Gosh, I've never had so much dough in my life!"

Talk about la dolce vita, John Robert took the money, the benefits and never looked back, not that he needed it. He raised his family, did what he needed to do. Everything John touched was financially a good thing. The guy liked to work, so when he later moved to Louisiana, naturally he formed a couple of hands-on businesses. As he got older and was in failing health, he moved to St. Paul to be near Ann, his daughter.

I must mention that John and I were the Kansas City Chief's original fans back in Nineteen-Ought-Whenever. I will won't forget our times at Arrowhead Stadium. Come to think of it, John was an excellent athlete in his day--just one more thing he was good at. I'm sure John was a source of pride for my dad, who was an high school athletic coach for fifteen years before he went into industry.

My sis and I saw John three years ago in St. Paul. We toured the St. Paul Cathedral, walked through that capitol city with him as if he had been recently hired as its official tourist guide (it is truly a lovely, old town). Ann told me he had begun walking daily to the St. Paul Library and had a regular route of buddies to see. John never met a stranger, as they say.

John's memorial was last Saturday in St. Paul. It was hard to say goodbye, especially as "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", and the rest of J.S. Bach, John's favorites, played around and through us.

John's mind, although not as memory-sharp as it was because of his sickness, was never far from the NY Times crossword puzzle, especially Sunday's. "Sissy," he'd say to me, "you're not really a pro until you work the Time's crossword in pen, with no cross outs, like me." Then he'd laugh that sweet laugh.

John worked his life in pen--with no cross outs.

Good bye, John. I love you.

There will be blood in the Clinton-Obama fight

It's the blood that attracts many of them to politics. It's the power that keeps them there. Get a taste of either one--the blood or the power-- and it seems hard for many of them to go back. Will Barack make that mistake?

Hillary was just playin wit jah, Barack
Numbskulls in the media thought Bill Clinton was being a nice boy while the reality was he was off breaking bones for Hillary. Downline, in south Texas and along the Ohio River Valley bosses were telling labor unions where they needed their boys and girls to do their jobs and they got it done. I'm sure the consequences were not good for screwing up. That's good.

Obama and his goodytwoshoes kids with their goodytwoshoes advisers guiding them didn't get it done because they're a bunch of dumb newbies. Regardless of their big money--poor implementation, as Dubya found out in Iraq--is everything, they don't have the horsepower, especially in Texas and Ohio against the Clintons.

This happens every generation. The Democrats destroy themselves, only this time the participants are post menopausal and are wearing pantyhose and wish like hell their husbands wouldn't sing "Viva Viagra" so much.

It doesn't take ESP
Who in the room doesn't believe Clinton won't be the nominee? The discussion now is how far will she go?



Thanks for the read.

Limbaugh: I wish we could kick him out of the GOP. Anyone?

(See also my piece dated February 8, 2008 in which I state my case against Limbaugh in more serious language.)

I think it's time for Rush Limbaugh to stop his assault on Senator McCain. Also, Limbaugh showed huge disrespect for our American system of government by asking Texas Republicans to basically cheat by voting in the primary for Hillary Clinton, which he shouldn't have done.

Get him out
Who does this guy really think he is?

The Republican leadership needs to shun him and his pals. Do we really want his influence, his humor, his ideas, his money? The GOP owes absolutely nothing to Limbaugh, contrary to what he says. They say our party is the Party of the Big Tent. Well, there ain't no tent big enough to hold Limbaugh, what with the head and the rest of it.

It's always an interesting part of human nature that pride follows the exact same route of delivery before you bust your butt on it.

One would think, wouldn't one, that Limbaugh's friends would at least see that he's gone a little too far this time and say, "Hey, Rush, dude...slow down. You're hittin hard on the Hillary thing in Texas. That's not right."

"Ah, screw 'em if they can't take a joke..." he replies as he has another grape peeled by a staff member.

No, instead, they're talking to each other, wondering how they're going to get back at the moderates like me for ignoring their excesses once again: "Hey, Annie, Laura. It's Rush. Yeah. Didya see Texas tonight? Yeah. I did it. Yeah. I. Did. It. Me. Yeah. I changed history. I'm puttin that Hillary broad in the White House. Me. Little ole Rusty from Cape Girardeau, MOE. The fat kid who couldn't get into Mizzou. Yeah, Thanks. I gotta admit it was fun. Aw, but McCain. What a downer. I really wanted to kill him...or somethin"

Guess Rush didn't really figure on how to play with a ex-POW guy. They're usually pretty tough opponents.

Meanwhile, I suppose when you get to certain levels of participation in the game of power, you'll switch sides just for the gamesmanship, especially if you consider yourself a loser at life.

It's the character, Stupid
Rush Limbaugh, the son of lawyers and judges is a spoiled brat who otherwise probably would have turned into a drunken, toothless, corpulent, petty criminal except by his accidental birth on the right side of the Missouri Pacific tracks.

It's time to cut Rusty loose from the GOP. Why? Because he's unrepentant. He won't stop. He just keeps doing it. Kinda like Bill Clinton.

The First Republican (my grandfather) will roll over in his grave if we don't.

Thanks for the read.

Texas Democrats will not allow an Obama win, IMHO

When I was a student at Texas Christian University I learned a little about Texas Democrat politics, and if I wanted to live, Texas football. Not a lot, but enough to know more than the media numbskulls who've never been there longer than two weeks.

Box 13, Jim Wells and Duval Counties, Texas
Easterners think they're so freakin' smart what with their Ivy League schools and their clubs and their ridiculous secret societies. Well, the rest of the country can be twits just like them, especially in Texas.

Power players like Jim Wright, former Democratic Speaker of the House, whose permanent office is located in the library at Texas Christian University, lavishly displays Texas individuality and influence on the rest of ya'll.

TCU,in Ft. Worth, Texas, is my brother's and my alma mater. This kid from Kansas City was considered a Yankee so I wasn't accepted very quickly. After a few lonely, bewidering days I was fortunate to have made some really close, quality Texas girlfriends, the ones whose mamas weren't sitting outside the soroity houses during Rush Week in their Cadillacs waiting for their Niemann-marcus card-carrying Honey Sues to pledge their fave soroities. But that's another article for my "Lucy" blog.

One girl, whose political leanings I won't mention, was another politics junkie like me. We had our own intellectual sorority. We clicked because we liked to believe we thought strategically, rather than with emotion. Of course, we were just kids and were probably just idiots. Don't get me wrong; we were also crazy about guys and getting away from our parents at all costs.

She was my new best friend (I was to be her maid-of-honor at her wedding) whose father was a well-known, major Texas pol from a huge south Texas city who gave me the skinny on dirty in-state politics. Maybe it was just girl talk; though later I read respectable historical pieces that substantiated her underground tales about "Landslide Lyndon" Johnson's rise in the senate, the dark side of the big bosses like George Parr, the political corruption of Jim Wells and Duval Counties, on and on. Of course, her information came from sitting around the Sunday dinner table.

This and other Lone Star State's political lore isn't new or hidden, but it does bear repeating: Texas Democrats have seen (and counted) dead people's votes in some southern Texas counties for decades now, a political fallback Senator Clinton may owe her gods for years to come.

Don't Mess with Texas
You read it as you enter, travel through and leave the state. It's probably important for outsiders to remember. Especially if you're new--and young--in politics.

Thanks for the read.