Hillary and O'Reilly fork and spoon Part Deux (It's May 1st, Oh, by the way, Happy May Day to all my commie friends! )

It wasn't as good as Part One (what the French word for one?) but still fun in a dreary campaign and it's really fun to see someone cheat on Bill Clinton for a change. And she's still talking dirty about Iran.

Thanks for the read.

Hillary runs away with O'Reilly and the fork runs away with the spoon

I sat all morning visualizing these two who--without their aides knowing--made arrangements to meet later in the evening to watch The O'Reilly Factor.

There they linger in their stolen moment, a quiet rendezvous over drinks in the booth in the corner in the back in the dark. He sips a Coke (he doesn't drink alcohol--a good thing) and she slams a double Tanq on the rocks with three olives--a great thing. Good taste, Hill.

They gaze into one another's eyes. He's smitten; she is too. She adores tall, lanky men called Bill. He likes that brain of hers especially since Pennsylvania. (That's why she needs the Tanq.) Who knew? After all her years of O'Reilly/Fox avoidance Hillary and those big publishing types like Murdoch must get each other now. Good. It's about time. There's hope for lower taxes yet.

If it weren't for all those children and the two spouses , not to mention the morals ...maybe in a different time and place these two may have been today's clean alternative Bill and Hillary.

When I finally snapped out of it I sat down to write this post and finally with that imagery in mind the long awaited Hillary-O'Reilly interview began.

Senator Clinton, NOW you've found your voice!
What have we here. Finally a substantive discussion that every mainstream news outlet can eat their hearts out over. She's one tough woman. Tough. Tough. Why. I'd love to talk to her. She reminds me of someone very close to me.

My non plussed husband demands, "Well, hell, Andrea. Why doncha' just vote for her!?"

"I would," I casually answered, "if she'd get on the Republican ticket with McCain as Veep and keep moving center. In fact, I started liking her when she started talking dirty about Iran last weekend."

(smirk)

My husband left the room in a huff. Poor dear. He hates these election years.

Congratulations, Mrs. Clinton. You've broken through to women like me: we who thought you thought we were beneath you.

Keep this up and maybe some of the rest of us who are trying to be ourselves can break through to the other side too and be honest about what we really think without a bunch of people pushing us this way and that to say this and that to make everyone on earth happy but ourselves. (Some of us do that, whether we admit it or not, you know.)

You obviously were enjoying being yourself today, Senator Clinton, and it was refreshing. I may not vote for you (the tax and abortion thing) but I sure have seen a side of you that is admirable and extremely likable. In another place and time we probably would have been friends.

Ironically, it may be women like me--older white women--who could put you in the White House. Women like me who never had an scintilla of power in our lives. Hmmm. I'm getting a headache from all the...well, headiness.

This Bill brings out the best in you.

Thanks for the read.

Obama and Wright: why should America waste precious emotional energy on the latest civil rights flim flam men?

These two are not doing our nation any good. Some in the black community who trusted Senator Obama may not think too much of him this evening when they wrestle with his excuse-ridden, day late dollar short "explanation" for not responding to the Rev's traveling tent show over the weekend. Wright must have a Pope Benedict Complex.

Others might be shrugging their shoulders and some are thinking the media's out to get the black man and puffing up and getting angry. Who knows? We've never been this close before. That's why I was so insistent we did this "first black person for president" thing right. See what happens when you have phonies?

I wish the Obama/Wright language would not include things like "It's personal--Rev. Wright did this to me" in so many words and "Reverend Wright did this to my campaign." Sounds like a black man grudge. I don't think it plays well with the rest of the country and turns off voters to the point that they don't want the experience to happen again soon.

He's not ready for the job
I think Obama is a phony.

From the beginning I've thought he's been groomed by a bunch of behind-the-scenes people who thought he'd be the one no matter what. Some of the older, more impatient and blacker members of this bunch insisted that regardless of his problems he be sent to the front of the line despite promises made to Hillary and Bill during their first presidency. I knew he was inauthentic (not in their eyes). I've been writing about it for weeks.

Here's why I think people should not believe Obama
If Obama has not heard about Reverend Wright's sermons after having served 20 years in that congregation, then two things are going on:

1. He is not an active member of that congregation, active meaning attending the church more than two times a week in a service function, not including worship and choir. Anyone who has served in any church can tell you that if the pastor had said the U.S. Government started AIDS in his sermon, it would get talked about over Wednesday's potluck supper. It's just ridiculous to be asked to believe that he didn't know about this. Absolutely ridiculous.

2. He heard the sermons. How could he not? Barack is making a terrible mistake again in not admitting his first mistake then showing he still has lousy judgment and doesn't want people to know it.

I had lousy judgment and made lousy calls when I was a young person; I didn't want people to know it, but they do anyway. Thus, I'll never be anything more than a blog writer. Those is the breaks. Lots of better people than I and Barack Obama (he's not the Messiah, folks) have made major life changing life choices that have ruined their chances at becoming something special.

But then, if my entire life goal were to be president of the US, as we hear Obama's was since age twenty or so (some say five) things would have been vastly differently for me. I definitely would have been more careful. You can't hang around people who think the government kills its own people by flying airplanes into skyscrapers in its big cities.

Obama had seven long and calculating years to pull away from Reverend Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ when he heard of the infamous sermon about the chickens coming home to roost post 9/11.

Senator Obama, you're the real flim flam man here!
I take it back. Reverend Wright is just doing what he always does: preaching the Word of Jesus Christ as seen through the UCC doctrine, one the Senator and his wife signed onto twenty years ago.

Not only has he denied his church and his preacher, but he's denied his own faith. Let's hope his public denials finally end here. I hate waiting for the fourth crow of the cock like this. This is becoming too painful for everyone. I wouldn't want to be Barack Obama for anything in the world right now. Not because of the election, but for his insides and how he feels about himself. Why do you think Wright's being so hard on him? He teaching this kid a lesson.

BTW, Mrs. Clinton rented the movie, "Hoosiers" earlier this evening to relax for her interview with Bill O'Reilly on Wednesday. I have a hunch they'll get along quite well.

Thanks for the read.

Chris Matthews and his Sunday morning pals

(I feel guilty. I should be in church.)

Joe Klein, the brilliant writer with Time Magazine; Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal Constitution; and Patrick Healy of The NY Times. They were all there. It was a Libs compadre moment. I was probably one of among ten or so to watch it. Here's a summary what they had to say.

"That Clinton woman is taking the presidency away from the black man and she is really a bad person to do it."

Those darn Dems. They just kill me. Like there's something wrong with talking about her opposition's electability.

What's on next?

All politics all morning
Okay. I know NBC's slant. Let's get another take. What do these Dems really want? And most importantly to this Republican, can they get it?

Of course, what I think they really want is nothing more than a total and complete change in our nation's psychology and approach to American life and politics. In other words politics--what we civilized people use to keep from killing each other--is bad and we need to change how we practice them.

I've been listening more than usual to a bunch of rich 40-year olds during this election season. They're the ones who seem to have the Democratic party by the you-know-whats these days--the ones who claim they can and must do politics their way lest the entire world fall into an abyss because of policies of this barbarian, George W. Bush and his predecessors, all of whom are bad inherently.

The "New School" people--the real radicals, the big money--are convinced (as is every generation) if they can just grab hold of the reins of power this time they can somehow use their own inimitable wisdom and superior intelligence and accompanying technology which those who have gone before them did not somehow possess because they, themselves are so very special this time. This time is different. This time. We all say that, by the way. This time.

Let's look at ABC.

Local Yokels
I tuned in just in time to watch a local city councilman, Democrat Richard Alarcon as he was insisting upon a surtax on the 270,000 millionaires in Los Angeles who live in homes over 5000 square feet. "They'll never miss it." That's the kind of change they believed in.

Next up came one of the Latino super delegates for the Dems, about 35 or 40, who announced he regards the use of "negative ads" as one of his guidelines for choosing the nominee. No, seriously. This is a man who is participating in grown-up American politics, no doubt his first time. His other criterion was "electability." I thought it was noteworthy that this imbecile listed it as second on his list and mentioned Mrs. Clinton as having "...stuck her toe into the negative ad category." He read that somewhere and decided to use it--the "toe" part.

I resisted the urge to commit Hari Kari out of frustration that people could actually be so idiotic, that critical thinking abilities could have not been fully developed in this individual, then I realized he was instructed in Los Angeles schools. I've thought of taking up a hobby which doesn't involve handling sharp things.

Next popped up another one of the Dem super delegates who is Nancy Pelosi's forty-year old or so daughter, a rather sandpapery person who evidently was rubbed the wrong way again when asked if her mother and Mrs. Clinton were still friends. Her response, "What a silly question," to a seasoned journalist took her appearance from important to twit in just four little words. Shrugging off a legit question may have seemed kewl to her Marin County buds, but it is simply impatient and stupid to non-California voters. Even Hillary Clinton learned that such a tin ear can get you tossed out on it if you're not careful, almost too late.

During these commercials, I have to include in my Sunday morning's assessment the opinions of the usual suspects, bad pennies and some retreads whom I heard over the week. They must keep turning up because we're living longer, we had no draft and we had great medical care and medicine in the last generation. These overgrown, professional students always wanted revolution and I guess they've settled for their organic one. Slow, ain't it, Dudes? Well, when you're comfortable in places like Santa Monica, the oppressor ain't so bad, especially when you make the kind of money most of them pull down. Shaking things up has been very good to them.

What's on CBS? Good. More Dems.

Between their ears
Rebels are boring as hell because they all look alike, act alike and sound alike. I decided to switch the channel just in time for a new guest on another local LA political Sunday program that no one watches.

Did you know that there are black people and women among the Dems who want to forge some sort of a union? That's a good thing, I guess; however, they're almost beside themselves because they see the Barack-Hillary thing as a competition. I just didn't know there was that big of a schism. Who knew?

That's what Lizabeth Gant-Britton, Ph.D from UCLA said. Dr. Gant-Britton, a beautiful, about 45-year old tiny, blond, light skinned African-American who co-authored a few books about fascinating black women, one of whom was Frederick Douglas's wife, was most candid about her fears that the Dems will blow this whole thing. It was apparent that she had a real investment in this election as she patiently explained this historic opportunity for women and blacks. It seems as if the parties don't trust one other. I'm not sure what Dr. Gant-Britton will do because she's black, white, a woman and has two names. She's really in a bind.

Redux: Moyers and Wright on PBS
I had to watch that again. And again. I had other choices as Rev. Wright had been speaking nonstop to many groups the whole weekend. Who could miss him or Senator Obama?

It was Rev. Wright's appearances that reminded me about something else that's happening in this election. Suddenly, it's okay to be a Christian--if you're a Democrat--and the right kind of Christian, preferably black.

I don't recall ever seeing so many campaign speeches made in so many churches, namely Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party who have campaigned in church after church after church. Democrats keep a straight face and dare to talk any Christian about separation of church and state in our courts and in our schools? Their hypocrisy as they speak of state business behind pulpits is in direct conflict with the rest of what they say on Monday and is the biggest civic joke of the century which no one seems to get but me. Or I've missed the discussion.

Get me my epee, quick.

What's a dreary relativist to do?
There was very little subtlety as the Sunday am Dems spoke openly, resigned and wistfully of the immediacy of what's ahead because of what they've perceived as their party's odd locus--black man and white woman, religious folks and secular progressives, rich moguls and poor streets folk. How could god, if there is one, grace our beloved party with this embarrassment of riches? We want it both ways. We don't want to take a stand, to make a choice.

In the Democrats' world which values non competition, non judgment and complete separation of church and state, ideals they've grown up with their entire lives which is demonstrated by their own vague gray scale of life, their internal ambiguity and personal angst must be killing them as they are presented with these huge contrasts in real life. Watch how they choose. It will be dirty, desperate and ungodly as hell. Let me add here there ain't nothin democratic about any of it.

I hope there's enough Xanax to go around should things not work out--especially in Obama's favor. God knows I'm going to need it just to get through the fall out.

Or maybe I'll just go to church next Sunday and let those other nine viewers watch Matthews.

Thanks for the read.

Bill Clinton: The Old Lion puts Dems on notice

Former President Clinton was off his game back there for a while. It happens to in-between folks, as he calls himself, especially those who have had quad bypass surgeries. But that doesn't mean people go completely dumb or become someone else. Maybe he just wasn't motivated what with being on the sideline and all. Things were looking grim.

Today in PA though he seems re-energized. He's out there as the ex-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, who is out to get his wife what he promised her--a shot at the presidency.

Show me the votes
Watch the super delegates begin to lean toward Clinton after Hillary's Pennsylvania win. I think it will be a big win. Regardless, she won't quit. Things will go south for Obama and he won't last past May, June at the latest.

What Bill Clinton is doing right now is what I've been hoping for. Clinton, the powerful lion, yawning and cleaning his refined paws, has waited for the young and stupid, clumsy, falling-apart and inexperienced cub with too big feet, surrounded by a pride of minor lions to make his fatal mistake. Sure enough, Obama has come close. Oh so close. The next time he'll be mortally injurted when he slips again say, this time into something like a Russian bear's den. The Old Lion has seen plenty of lairs and dens, drank vodka with the head bear himself. He's laughing at Barack now. So am I, frankly.

Now that Bill can show that Obama's not ready for prime time, the Party's scared as hell. Not willing to give up the Party for anyone, the old pols like Kennedy, Dodd, all the Eastern libs, are going to swing back to Hillary, but not too obviously too fast. They don't want to be called racists, after all. Remember, this is about what looks right.

Then, they're going to get rid of Howard Dean, that idiot.

Meanwhile, the first black president, Bill Clinton is owed much more than just a pat on the back by that turncoat bunch of black bosses and self appointed reverends without churches. I predict even many of those chips will fall toward Hill long before the convention in Denver where it gets hotter than Hades that time of year. Hot and high.

By golly, I have to agree with the president on this one. Just who do these ingrates think they are? Why, by just moving his office to Harlem Bill managed to single handedly up their local economy by some $471 million. Bill and Hillary Clinton aren't about to forget what the national black community owes them and they shouldn't. Not by a long shot. Why, it's just good manners, if nothing else, to pay back what someone owes you.

The Obama people should have listened when Bill told them Obama wasn't ready. Even Gerry and Hillary gave Obama an out. He could have been veep and a contender for president. Now? Probably not. Not of America. He and Michelle have pissed off too many white people, but you've already heard about that from me in a tongue-in-cheek way in other posts.

It's such a cruel hoax. On that very basic issue, the amateurs running his campaign have made a stink over the fact that people want to know more about the man who will be running the world.

Psst. Kids. That's not a sleazy attack. As usual, newbies take things way too personally, another sign of their arrogance and inability to handle power. That is the precise reason I think Obama's over and now no one wants to face it and/or doesn't know how to handle it. With so much emotional investment, how are they going to report this?

I should feel sorry for Obama but I don't. I think his lack of sincerity and his hostile treatment of his grandmother was so out of line that I would rather ignore him. The black community was duped by this guy and that is something I can't forgive.

Another Lion in Winter
What's stunning is to watch the raw professional political power of Bill Clinton. His appearance on the campaign trail today was a big lay down for Hillary's win in Pennsylvania tomorrow. He's showing up now for himself and for the honor of his wife. Hard as it is for many to believe there is profound human dignity, love and grace in this dance.

It's the dignity of trying to regain and retain his dignity, I suppose; it supports the idea that hope (there's that word again) really does spring forth eternally. Such theater or displays have accompanied our world's politics for millennia. It's fascinating to witness these forces of nature who are willing to become the actors and dancers in our prosaic lives. The good ones and bad ones--I have to wonder what goes on in their psyches and hearts as they become the fulfillers of our destiny.

In the meantime, the rest of us are privy to a deeply personal moment for Bill and Hillary Clinton, like them or detest them. He has stepped up to rescue her honor after showing shocking neglect and dereliction to his loyal lioness mate. Historically, there is much more to this period in than a spoiled young woman from a forgettable place in California in a blue dress and beret. Neither you nor I will be around to editorialize on the margins.

Watch this story as it unfolds. It is perfect and heartbreakingly beautiful if you love politics as much as I do. Or drama or Shakespeare or...

Thanks for the read.

Prince Barack of Indonesia and Hawaii speaks of Small Town, PA

Senator Barack Obama made these statements at a fundraiser in San Francisco when describing those pesky xenophobes in Pennsylvania.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Town and towns between miles!
I was eighteen when I saw what was to me a phenomenon as I drove in the western part of that beautiful state. In other states, like eastern Kansas for instance where I grew up, a person could ride for fifteen, heck, probably even thirty miles before you got to another town. For a place to have a berg after every turn or hill in the road was just too strange. Pennsylvania, with its old towns and different sounding people and many cultures was a lovely new experience for me.

Though I didn't realize it then, I had Pennsylvania DNA all over me. Darn near all my American family began there many years ago. As I went through some genealogical research later in my life, I discovered many names of other families in census records who also had parents born in Pennsylvania. Lots and lots of them.

If individuals desired to get to Ohio and Indiana they had only a few "civilized" choices in 1812, such as they were: one had to go through Pennsylvania and many Indians to get to four or five traces (roads) if you lived in the Southern Atlantic area of the colonies, you could take the routes up through the Cumberland Gap out of North Carolina and across the Ohio River into Kentucky. Neither choice was exactly a super highway with a Motel 6 keepin' the light on for ya. The way through to the Northwest Territory from the Atlantic Coast was PA. There warn't no toher choice. If ya git ma drift.

Back to those cultural and elitist misspeaks from Obama, my American family's story is not very special or very unusual...by a long shot. I suppose that is why I'm so put off by this latest "missed" analysis by Obama.

There actually are American groups (black and white) who have kin who lived in PA for a century or so before they were able to come West. That, or they made it big and stayed; and others immigrated into PA for the reason of moving on. Amazing as it is, Pennsylvania has somehow handled it. These are data Senator Obama should know before he spews sociological opinions about the place, comparing them to the midwest.

It's a big old place and yes, somehow the state has survived, with guns and religion, from all the stress that strange and different looking people and cultures and immigrants have brought over and over and over again. It embarrasses me to see a presidential candidate make such a gigantic error in knowledge about a major force in our American history. It's astounding to me.

It would behoove Mr. Obama to pick up a few Pennsylvania history books plus 49 or so others, and actually read them. I have a few here in my own library, if he'd like to borrow them. Or he could ask his younger researchers to do it, if they could disconnect themselves from a rap song long enough.

The Keystone State
Back to my trip my first exposure to the bucolic part of beautiful PA was when I met and fell in love with my Aunt Jane's and Uncle William's beautiful four-story stone home built in the 1700s outside of Centerville. I had vowed to myself that I was to be married in that house someday. I'll never forget that lovely place and the feeling of "being at home." It sat on a working farm, above a lea with small lake, a spring house as I recall and among rolling hills. Washington, Pennsylvania, the home of a pretty fierce labor guy isn't far away.

And in the lowest depths of that same lovely home are hidden the secrets of the most compassionate, remarkable courage of some Pennsylvanians who carried out the Godly tasks of righting a few of the wrongs in our nation: a stop on the famed Underground Railroad--doubtlessly fortified with guns and religion. I don't even know their names. I think their clinging to guns and religions might have been a good thing.

It's on the other side of Pennsylvania that my Quaker grandfather was born on the Delaware River in 1670 in Chester, now Philadelphia, the birthplace of our Constitution. The Society of Friends members were abolitionists, and some even died for those unpopular beliefs. I guess that would be the "religion" Obama refers to so flippantly as part in his little offhanded remarks he made to elicit money from his supporters while they drank bad wine (and didn't know it).

I have to mention, if only to demonstrate the breadth of Pennsylvania's people and culture in their small towns, the Irish Protestants in my family who came to this country after losing their own ancestral homes to the British. They probably didn't have guns to cling to so they escaped with their lives and came to America to get away from the British.

They settled in the Parsippany area where many of my kin still live. One, my great grandfather many generations ago, lost a leg at the Battle of Yorktown. I can't imagine people like them being caught up in the bitterness this Mr. Obama speaks about. They've been through these downturns quite frequently in the past few hundred years.

I'm pretty sure sons and daughters of the Revolutionary war don't get bitter. They just go on with their lives and figure out other ways to get through. Cling to guns? I don't know about that. Maybe on a cold morning and if the deer haven't shown up yet.

Cling to religion? Yes, for sure. Admittedly, faith does mean quite a bit to families there or they probably would've quickly converted to keep the ole Irish barn.

There are millions of Americans like me whose roots are in Pennsylvania and like me, are spread across this country, a fact that is not lost on Mrs. Clinton. Nor on Senator McCain.

Guns and religion
Someone needs to tell Senator Obama that the steel industry's closings and rearranging of the state's economy probably has little to do with whether Pennsylvanians continue hang a gun over their doorways or go to church. When deer and other wild game become extinct and when God really is dead, we'll talk.

These new Democrats clamor they want someone who's been around, who's been somewhere. Well, Barack's been somewhere. He's grew up on an island that is predominantly Muslim for four years with his Mom and then went to be a Dude when he was ten in private schools in surfin' Hawaii on Waikiki. That's being somewhere. Then he was airlifted into Chicago to learn how to be black. That's being somewhere.

But he hasn't been to the places I've mentioned evidently for any quality time or anywhere else that does not have a vast ocean around it. In other words put this man on a Greyhound with a ticket across America and he's lost. He looks at a group and sees a labor union or a voting block or calls Reverend Wright or one of the over-the-hill NAACP pals in his fave fives in Atlanta and yells for help.

Back at the center of the universe in San Francisco
I could see him in my mind's eye as he's holding a nice Cuban cigar in one hand, highball in the other (he's learned from the con artists in Atlanta to expect good bourbon straight from a Waterford glass to get respect from the white man), speaking to a ring of sycophants; explaining these Pennsylvanian "natives," that he and Michelle actually lived among some quite like them in a place called Chicago, observed their mating habits, gathered and kept their "scat."

Mr. Obama's friends and he don't realize that others are listening while they ridicule the real people who have built this country, the very ones who have made them extremely rich.

"Damned xenophobes. Guess we'll just have to eliminate their guns and religion when we get our power. Good grief, what's next? Rain dancing? How charming. I'll have to tell my wife when she returns from freeing the Tibetans."

They (princes) talk like that, you know--the kind we Americans ran away from centuries ago.

Of course, what Mr. Obama hasn't got the experience or brains to know yet is this: big money goes away as fast as it seems to come in when you have these kinds of slips. I don't think he has another one in him. I heard Mrs. Clinton just gave the go ahead on that order of pastel pantsuits from the biggest department store in Pittsburgh.

Thanks for the read.

Jack Mack is back in a big way on The View

If you've got the time and stomach, click below to watch Whoopie, Joy and Baba interview Senator John McCain.

I sure wish everyone had listened to us moderates when it counted back in 2000 when Bush and McCain were running against each other for president. But then, the party had to do its anointing thing to Sir Bush...so sickening.

Gee. We'd have a whole different world, wouldn't we?

http://abc.go.com/daytime/theview/index

The leadership gap between Obama and John McCain will be painfully clear by the time the American people vote on November 5th. That is, if Democrats still have their big turn out.

By then the young senator from Illinois might look like an amateur and real Dems will either vote for Senator McCain or get real drunk.

Or both. Just like they did with Reagan.

Thanks for the read.

McCain-Obama Ticket

I had an MLK-style dream, America.

There they were: Ebony, Ivory posed with Chief Justice Roberts--or was that Thurgood Marshall--behind the great dais at the swearing in at the inauguration.

Michelle insisted upon holding the Bible for John McCain--not a good start, but a start. I remember feeling impressed at Michelle's raw power for as she grasped tightly that Bible with one hand, she was very casually holding Cindy McCain in a half-Nelson with her free arm. Admittedly this is not a dignified change, but it is change nonetheless.

I didn't see Barack. But I know he was there somewhere. Wait, on second thought, that might have been Barack in Michelle's deadly hold, not the new First Lady as I had first thought. By now she had switched to a amazingly tougher grip which utilized her jaw muscles. That way she could discipline her children with just a look and make sure the car got washed. Don't ask me how this wonderwoman does it. Oprah's wondered that too.

Wait a minute. Neither Mrs. McCain nor Barack wear pantsuits and I distinctly remember a gold pantsuit! Could that be Mrs. Clinton in the grip of the new Second Lady?

Well, you can't believe what happened next. I'll just take you along with me on this ultra American democratic magic carpet ride.

An orange-blond floozy-looking kind of woman in a blue dress with a half empty quart of Jim Beam dangling from her plastic alligator carryall that had horseshoes on it and a hoary eyed, red nosed Bill Clinton with long flying hair looking ironically like John Brown tore down the stairs waving a long pointy finger in the air.

As he rushed past the seated dignitaries, including ancients like Bob Dole, George McGoven, all the Bushes, all the Kennedys, even Billy Graham and Jeremiah Wright he ranted "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky." I remember thinking in my dream that I wished I had a camera. It was almost ethereal. But then it was a dream.

When he and the floozy in blue reached the podium, Bill removed his cashmere jacket and handed it to the bewildered, fluttery floozy (she thought it was vicuna), rolled up his sleeves and acted as if he was about to do something he'd regret. Again.

He leaned back, aimed, then took a swipe at Michelle, missed. Then he swung at Thurgood Marshall--or was is John Roberts--missed. Michelle dropped Hillary, never one to pass up a good fight with someone her own size, and took her best Queensberry stance. Make my day, she seemed to say.

Why fight when you can run, Bill grabbed Hillary by her gold Cruilla collar, then took the floozy over his shoulder and carried them both up the stairs into oblivion. I do remember Mrs. Clinton yelling and screaming expletives and something like,"This was supposed to be my day, Bill, you idiot. Let me go! You want a see my blue dress? Who the hell are you? I'll show you a blue dress, Bill, you SOB! "

I love my dreams. Sometimes my dreams are the best entertainment I'll have all week.

This is what we're talkin' about!
It's so crazy it might just work. The McCain Obama ticket, I mean. I think Obama could grow into the job if he could be shown how real life works by a President McCain. He's not stupid, after all, and every man eventually reaches that point of no return no matter what his political affiliation.

Now if we could just pull him off that silly leftist agenda of his (or his supporters'). And that pesky preacher of his (or his supporters')...then there's that wife of his. You don't think they'd have Raul Castro or Hugo Chavez stay over in the Lincoln bedroom...or Jane Fonda!

Now, that's a nightmare.

Then I reread my own March 30Th entry about how Obama disgraced and betrayed his own grandmother to make his pals like him and I got over the "dream."

Nevermind.

(sigh)

Thanks for the read anyway.

Bill Clinton: public service has been very very good to me

Now the smartest people in the world are damned near the richest! Since 2006 the Clintons have amassed a huge fortune of $109 million. That's a lot of bucks for simply showing up or signing off on a few book proofs.

The night of one of the first debates I asked my husband, an ex-golden handcuffs man of fifteen years in major league publishing exactly what, in his professional opinion, would drive Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edward or anyone else to keep up this grueling campaign for president.

He never missed a lick.

"Every person on that stage knows they're each worth more than any one of them would've been otherwise. That's what this is all about for these people. Money."

My husband now rests his case. You notice I said he is an ex-newspaper man.

Thanks for the read.

Barack and Michelle get my Bronx cheer for propaganda video to the little people

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/yestheycan

Doesn't this insult anyone besides me? I am tired of civil rights sacrifices being thrown back in my face. Maybe I'll tell why some day; maybe I won't. I don't think I should have to.

Dumb is as dumb does: our public schools on display
If only the kids in Michelle's video could actually read, and uh...maybe spell, and uh, you know, like, uh write. I'm joking, as usual. Perhaps they can, but the chances are good they cannot.

But. Why are they in such distress? What is their problem exactly? They certainly don't look very hungry or frighteningly destitute. Who are they fighting and why? What oppressive government are they warring against? BTW, I didn't have a cool arts school to attend when I was in high school. Wow. Wish I had. Maybe my envy, God forbid, is the root of my frustration.

However, I still don't understand. What is it that we have done in this terrible, third world country of ours that requires that they suddenly give this blind and mournful allegiance to a socialist called Barack Obama, a little man who appears out of the Pacific Islands like a Bird of Paradise, who promises what? What does he promise that they do not already have access to? I do not get it. I guess I'm tired of "getting" it, after getting it for so long and for so many billions of dollars.

Back to the video, I expected these children to genuflect at any moment, which is typical of Democrats young and old (except the wrinkly, wizened pols who realized their salvation was lost years ago and now only cross themselves at cocktail hour every day, saving a little aged Kentucky bourbon to dob behind their ears). Their servile, deferential, sweet workers mentality is sickeningly ripe for exploitation. Michelle Obama should get the Leni Riefenstahl Award for best BS in a campaign.

The last line on this stupid pile of progaganda sounded like girl saying, "...and just think, I could possibly be a ambassador or something like that too."

What imbecilic teachers she must have had for not one of them to have told her that America has had many people of color in our diplomatic corps, and the top diplomat is not only a real, live African-American from Mississsippi, but a woman. Put that in your Uncle Tom pipe and smoke it. Condi Rice, regardless of what people think of her politics, is at least, authentic. Inconvenient, but authentic.

It's all show biz for the folks who want power. Style and show biz.

"This will get them," one remarks.

"You're right. The hope in their faces says it all," says another.

"Send it out under my name. I think it's safe to come back." Michelle instructs. She's feelin' it, especially since she's got the Heinz money with her.

Where are my aspirin?

Thanks for the read.

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.