Well, folks we only have two more presidents to cover after this series. For some of you “By The Numbers” has been an enlightening journey through the last two hundred years of racism and the presidents of the United States. To tell you the truth, a couple of times I thought about abandoning the project and moving on. To others the sentiment may have been more akin to “WTF” are you doing? Well, it all began while I was thinking about the underlying causes of racism in America… I mean besides the color of our skin. What started this vicious and ongoing hatred we see today? I have a theory. Although there have been enslaved blacks in America since 1619, their plight was not as bad as the plight of the enslaved blacks just a hundred years later. Now don’t get me wrong, black folks were swinging from trees back in those days too, but so were white slaves. Yep, they had white slaves too, but they were called indentured servants.. and if they got somebody faqued up, then you can believe me that while the colonist didn’t have that much food or other supplies, they had plenty of rope. As time went on and the colonist started growing cash crops like tobacco, the need for labor intensified. At first, they tried to enslave Native Americans, but too many colonists were going missing when they went out of their fortified camps and those that came back were missing part of their domes. That’s when they started putting the screws on the enslaved blacks and indentured whites. Colonist: You see that bald-headed man over there? We used to call him Curly… Ya’ll gonna have to take up the slack…” Now besides, their skin color being an asset to the white slaves, they had one more thing going for them. They could write. They sent letters back to Europe telling the aristocracy they were being treated like nigras, and the aristocracy responded. As time went on they were gradually given more rights and privileges to the point where one day white indentured slaves just did not exist. Oh yeah, they were still technically enslaved, but they had been given paths to freedom… and with their freedom land. Now some blacks were also indentured servants and they too were given paths to freedom and land. Believe it or not, some of them owned slaves also, but not white slaves. Blacks were not allowed to own Christians as slaves. They could only own other Blacks or Native Americans. As the laws against blacks became harsher, these free black men were gradually stripped of their freedom. Anyway, as the colonist began to make more money from the crops they sent back to Europe, the more money they wanted. The more money they wanted, the more land they had to have to grow more crops, and the more land they had to grow crops, the more slaves they needed to grow them. That’s when they started that chattel slavery shat here in the Americas. Chattel slavery means that if your mother was a slave, then so are you. Since there is no other way to be born on this planet without having a mother… then that meant every black born here was a slave. Chattel slavery is not new and has been in use in some form since ancient times. Now although they were slaves, they did have some rights back then. They could marry, they could own land, they could have weapons and they could bring charges against their enslavers for abuse and rape. It wasn’t ideal but was better than nothing considering the circumstances. This brings me to why I felt compelled to write this series. Those limited rights were all taken away when the colonist went to war with England. You see many of the slaves sided with England because they promised them freedom if it came down to throwing hands. Well, they went to throwing hands on April 19, 1775, at Concord and Lexington. Now history records a black man named Crispus Attucks as the first American to be killed in the Revolutionary War. I wrote a story about him which you can find here… but anyways, Crispus didn’t fight the British because he was a patriot. He fought them because somebody had bought a wig and didn’t pay. When the person who bought the wig told the dude they weren’t going to pay and smacked him down with the butt of a rifle for asking… well that’s when Crispus took it upon himself to lead a crowd and make them pay. They shot the faque out of that nigra and the rest is history. So I brought up Crispus Attucks because one, what you read in the history books is not correct, and two, because a lot of the enslaved black folks at the time were on the British side. When war broke out at Concord and Lexington, many blacks took up arms against the colonist!! They were shooting folks in the back right and left. Some even put on the British uniform and shot colonists point blank. Black British Solider: Yeah… I got you now!!” Unfortunately, the British lost and that meant that lots of toes were going to be dangling in the near future. The few slaves that fought on the side of the colonist were returned to slavery and the ones that fought with the British were shipped as free men and women to other British colonies by the British as part of the surrender. So now we come to the moment of truth. I surmised that one of the main reasons for this generational hatred is that it comes from the American Revolution. We were once perceived as traitors, and although the memory of black men assisting with the overthrow of the colonies has faded with time, the animosity persists and has been transmitted through generations, transformed into what we witness today… pure hatred. The ones that fought with the British and that stayed here were hunted down and hanged. I’m not talking about taking that nigra to a tree and hanging him… I’m talking about getting the band, inviting folks, cooking food, and then taking that nigra to a tree and hanging him. They wanted to make it as loud and as ugly as they could. So the same reason we were slaves in the first place was the same reason we were all treated as traitors… our skin color. There was no way to tell which one of us had shot how many in the back, or how many had aided and abetted the enemy during the Revolutionary War. So they hated all of us… and if you think we had it tough before… well, hold my beer. I thought by examining the history of the presidents there would be some leftover clues besides our skin color which would give my theory some support. Who knows, it might just be plain hatred. However, I don’t consider this series of articles a futile endeavor, because right or wrong, we are going to click this reason off the list.
Our Scale:
10 – You can sit next to the table and watch while we play a couple of hands of bid whisk.
9 – You are able to use the word “Bro” in front of us.”
8 – You can bring something to the barbecue and we’ll put it on the table with the other food.
7 – We will wave at you if we see you on the street.
6 – We won’t side-eye or back sass if you bring a watermelon to our family dinner.
5 – You can leave with a little bit of your dignity after saying “My Nigga.”
4 – If we hear you calling for help, we will call the police after we have charged our phone.
3 – We will count to three before we let the dogs out if you come to our house.
2 – We won’t pee on your statue during daylight hours.
1 – Faque Off!!
William Jefferson Clinton – 3
Elected 1993 -2001
We will count to three before we let the dogs out if you come to our house.
Slick Wille has harmed Black Americans as only a few other presidents have done before him. The signing of the 1994 Crime Bill led to generations of young black men being put behind bars for decades over mostly minor non-violent crimes. The erosion of the black family had not been seen on that scale since the days of slavery. So before we get ready to tear Willie a new one, I do want to say that he was not the cause of mass incarceration. That is a myth. The age of mass incarceration started under Reagan and Bush Sr. Both Reagan and Bush ran on a “Get Tough With Nigras… I mean ‘Get Tough With Crime” platform. It was expanded under Clinton. The 1994 Crime Bill gave a federal component to three strikes. That means after three federal convictions they can lock you up and throw away the key, no matter what the third crime was. People were getting life for taking a loaf of bread or possessing a nickel bag of refer. It introduced mandatory minimums taking away the judge’s authority to include mitigating factors in sentencing. The penalty for selling crack was way harsher than for selling the same amount of cocaine. (Crack was the drug of choice in minority communities.) The number of crimes eligible for the death penalty was increased and nine billion dollars was set aside for the construction of new prison facilities. The fact of the matter was that crime had actually started to go down by the time Clinton took office. The “Get Tough on Crime” campaign started because it was the platform the Republicans had used in the presidential race against Clinton. The Democrats and Clinton wanted to appear tough on crime and as soon as he got into office they came up with that draconian shat. His wife backed the bill also. Clinton was warned by the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP that signing the bill would be devastating to communities of color… he signed it anyway. By the end of the Clinton presidency, the number of people in America’s prisons rose by nearly 60 percent… most coming from black and brown communities.
But that ain’t all… When Hillary Clinton ran against Barrack Obama in 2008, Slick Wille showed his true colors. He made several racist remarks about Obama including “A few years ago that guy would have been carrying our bags…” and reportedly at the Democratic Convention said to a senator, “A few years ago that guy would have been bringing us coffee.” The senator reported it to the committee and they wanted to give Clinton a lesser role… like maybe introducing somebody instead of being a keynote speaker. Clinton threatened to boycott the convention and they caved in. I listened to the speech and at the time I thought it was pretty good. Little did I or anyone else know how he really felt about us. But his bigotry and racism go way back before the Hillary/Obama presidential campaign. While governor of Arkansas, he once said before a crowd of supporters, ” Black welfare recipients had a personal responsibility problem.” Now mind you most of the recipients of public assistance are white… but we have a “personal responsibility problem?” Now to be transparent, black people represent a more significant percentage of recipients of social services based on race, but we also represent a more significant percentage of the people who have been discriminated against in housing, jobs, health, and educational opportunities, the main things public assistance attempts to address. Now I don’t know what was in the Kool-Aid, but in 1996 Clinton signed the… and now get this… he signed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.” Black folks were jumping up and down and smiling in his face, taking pictures, and shat with him… the bill removed 60 percent of the people on the public assistance rolls! Who did they think those people were? How come they didn’t realize that Clinton was locking up black men and throwing away the key, while simultaneously destroying what was left of black families by removing their only safety net? A lot of young black males turned to crime to take up the slack. Hillary Clinton called young black males “super predators.” She later took that shat back after we called her out on it and she needed the black vote to support her ambition to become the first woman president. When Obama ran for office and screwed up her plans, Slick Willie saw the writing on the walls. Ain’t no way his wife was going to get the black vote against a black candidate. He went from “We shall overcome…” to “Faque the nigras,” and to replace our vote, he started to backdoor court the angry white voters that didn’t want to see a black man as president. Anyways, the whole Clinton mystic was nothing but smoke and mirrors. Maya Angelou said it best… “When someone shows you who they are the first time… believe them.
Do Tell…
Missus: Yap, this is yo cousin, and I need yo help…
Aunt Yap: What in the six-legged raccoons of Blackity are you calling me for? Yo side of the family hasn’t spoken to our side since yo great, great granddad, hung Uncle Clerow for marrying his niece Lilly Longrope!
Missus: Well the Longrope’s are getting ready to hang another one… Lilly and Clerow had a daughter… They sent the gal to live in White City where she married a man named Robert Isa Deadman. They had a son named Arthur. He became a writer of disrespectful racebooks. Arthur was Grandpa’s daddy’s first name!! He used to babysit Lilly!! Arthur’s middle initial is “L…” The “L” stands for “Longrope!!” That boy they are about to hang is a Longrope and a Yippity!!
Aunt Yap: I’d be hard press to claim him as a Yippity… I had to show him “THIS,” before he ate any pine needle stew and wood rice. That’s why he’s in that mess… fool jumped out the window onto white man’s land! But I guess Uncle Clerow would want us to save him… what do you have in mind?
George W Bush – 6
Elected 2001 – 2009
We won’t side-eye or back sass if you bring a watermelon to our family dinner.
George W. Bush had the potential to be an 8 or 9. Two things faqued him up, 9/11 and Katrina.
On September 11, 2001, I was off work. I worked weekends so Tuesday was one of my days off. Back in those days, personal PCs were becoming mainstream and I had just gotten one. I was sicced up because I had just purchased this webcam. Yessss… I thought I was the man… I had a personal computer, a personal computer desk, a webcam, “AND” a “wireless” mouse!! They didn’t have Bluetooth mouses at the time, so yeah… just call me Mr. IBM. Anywho, while I was trying to get my webcam to work, my brother called and asked me to turn on the TV. The first plane had already crashed into one of the towers and while my brother was telling me about the first crash, a second plane crashed into another tower. It took us a few minutes to grasp what had just happened. While we were still trying to figure out what was going on in New York… they started reporting a third plane had just crashed into the Pentagon! All hell had broken loose!! My brother got a call from his job and was told he was needed immediately. After he hung up, I call my daughter’s mother to see if she had heard anything from the schools. She said they had let everyone go and she was on her way to pick up our daughter. I didn’t live with them but was only 10 minutes away by car and if shat went south I could easily scope them up and haul azz! Her mother worked in downtown DC and lived on Capitol Hill. The school was also on Capitol Hill. It only took her 15 minutes to get there after she boarded the train. I called her again about half an hour later, with my car keys and Mr. Ugly in my hand ready to jump and start blasting if she mentioned the “T” word… “Terrorist”! Fortunately, they were at home safe and watching the events unfold during one of the most consequential days in American history.
Well, the rest is history. Weapons of mass destruction… chemical weapons… Iraq responsible for the attack on America… all lies. It didn’t really hit me until the day I went with my mother to Walter Reed Medical Center for a check-up. We checked in and took a seat in the waiting area. While we were waiting I noticed two fine-looking black women seated not far from us. I smiled and nodded as one of them caught my glance and she smiled back. Now I’m feeling like this looks like the time for big daddy to make a move, but before I do, I figure I’d go into the restroom and do a little primping… straighten my clothes and comb out my bush. As I was coming out of the bathroom, one of the saddest sites I had ever seen overtook me. The woman I was getting ready to make a move on… legs had been amputated. The other woman was helping her into a wheelchair. My heart dropped to my feet. She looked to be in her twenties and was faced with this devastating reality for the rest of her life. I thought of Bush and hated him with every fiber of my being as I started to notice all of the young black servicemen and servicewomen amputees there, all over a bunch of freaking lies.
His administration also took down two of our most distinguished black public servants, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Spewing Bush’s lies in front of the United Nations and the world, Colin Powell’s once spotless reputation was left in tatters. Two years after giving the UN speech, in an interview with Barber Walters, he said, “Bush faqued me up and Ima get his azz!!” Okay no he didn’t… he said his speech to the United Nations was “painful” for him personally and would forever be a “blot” on his record. “I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and it will always be a part of my record.” As for Rice, a once brilliant and progressive professor of political science at Stanford, she was reduced to a sniveling yes man… or woman however you want to see it. She used her intellect and prestige to rubberstamp one of the greatest war crimes in American history supporting the invasion of Iraq on the pretext that it had something to do with the attack on the “homeland.” The invasion cost the lives of 5000 US servicemen and wounded another 200,000. Both Powell and Rice knew that Bush was lying, but decided to take one for the team. Before Powell died he admitted the mistakes of the Bush administration. Rice to this day has denied any wrongdoing and is currently working as the director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, a public policy think tank.
So that was the first thing that prevented Bush from getting a higher score in my opinion. The second thing is Katrina.
Hurricane Katrina was a category 5 storm that basically flushed 400 miles of the central southern part of the United States into the Gulf Of Mexico. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were at the heart of the storm which packed 125 mph winds when it made landfall. Close to fourteen hundred people died. Now, the National Weather Service warned the residents the day before that once Katrina hit, the area would be uninhabitable for weeks. It was one of the biggest news stories at the time. The mayor of New Orleans at the time was a black man named Ray Nagin. He evacuated the city and opened the Super Dome for the people who weren’t able to leave during the evacuation. In doing so he created one of the worst humanitarian crises in American history. It wasn’t all his fault and we are going to get back to this soon. All across the southern central United States cities and towns on the coast were being evacuated. We are talking about millions of people! Guess what George was doing while they were evacuating the southern United States? That dude was on TV looking like the Marlboro Man chopping wood and drinking sweet tea on vacation while the southern central United States was being washed out to sea. He didn’t even go down there until four days after the event. Now although Alabama and Mississippi took their share of the destruction, the greatest destruction happened in New Orleans when the levees gave way. Now although most of the city is above sea level, many neighborhoods where blacks and other vulnerable communities lived were below sea level and these areas posed the greatest risk of catastrophe if the levees gave way. Then the unthinkable happened… the levees gave way. Thousands of black folks were stranded in flood waters as high as 20 feet in some areas. Television cameras showed hundreds stranded on rooftops and in trees. So earlier we talked about Ray Nagin and the Super Dome. So how should I put this? His decision to house people at the Super Dome until aid arrived was one big clusterfu*k.” Aid didn’t arrive for weeks! The conditions rapidly deteriorated. There was no air conditioning and not enough toilet facilities for the number of people there. It took four days for federal aid to arrive and in the meantime, people were running out of food and water. There were no first aid stations and little security. Scores died there… some on TV. It was estimated that there were 30,000 evacuees at the Super Dome during Katrina. Now this is when Ray Nagin begins to make the national scene. He started calling the Bush administration out and putting it into racial terms. Not only did Nagin call out the Bush administration on racial terms about the slow and inefficient response, but he started naming names. They were pissed off at him! Nagin wasn’t faquing around. After the storm, he upset our brown-skinned brothers at a town hall meeting about rebuilding New Orleans by saying to a largely black audience, “I can see in your eyes, you want to know, how do I take advantage of this incredible opportunity? How do I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexican workers?” I’m like… man… tell us how you really feel. He also said during a press conference that “New Orleans will be an African American city… God told me so..” He was referring to the fact that since the low-lying areas of New Orleans were now uninhabitable, those people would move to the areas which were above sea level and which were in the past more desirable. He referred to New Orleans as the next Chocolate City. Now even though Nagin was putting his mouth on the Bush administration about what he considered a racist response to the crisis and naming names… pissing off the Hispanic community by talking about he is not going to let them overrun the city and telling the white folk that from now on New Orleans is going to be known as Chocolate City… that’s not what ultimately done him in. Where he faqued up was implying that New Orleans had suffered these devastating storms because of the illegal Iraq war that Bush pursued and that God had told him so… I knew right then and there it was going to be a rope waiting for him somewhere. Bush was already under a lot of pressure about the war and tying it to one of the greatest disasters in American history was a no-no! During the next election, outside money poured into Louisiana by the truckloads, and Nagin was defeated. For the first time in 32 years, New Orleans had a white mayor. Now normally I would say his next choice would have been what I would probably have done… pack up my stuff and head home. But in his case home was Texas… that’s right, the Texas where the Bush family is from. Now I don’t want to say they had anything to do with what I’m about to say because I don’t know, but not long after he arrived, Nagin was subsequently charged in New Orleans with 21 federal crimes, including bribery, wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and tax evasion. They wanted 20 from him… but settled for 10 years. He was released in 2020 after serving a little bit over five years. He now shines shoes in front of the Super Dome where they say for an extra 25 cents, he will sing Mammy for you… okay… no he won’t… Nagin’s official release date from federal custody was this year. He lives in Dallas and reportedly is keeping a low profile as he fights restitution penalties.
So these two defining moments in American history went into why I gave G.W. Bush his score. The other components of his score are for the positive things he did in the name of civil rights. He declared the first federal ban on racial profiling, making the practice a federal offense and he integrated the executive branch of the government. By that I mean the top four positions in the executive branch are the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, and the attorney general. Until President Bush, none of these four offices had ever been occupied by a person of color. President Bush appointed the first Latin attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, and both the first and second African American secretaries of state: Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
In the end, I don’t think Bush is a racist… not even a bigot. I think he made some poor choices and his legacy will reflect that.
In The Beginning
Cuss: We’ve been waiting long enough… Luke ain’t back and I say it’s time to see the bottom of somebody’s feet! I don’t know why you told that boy he can pray to his gawd before we hang em… Now he done started reading the good book and is only on page four…
Longrope: Well if the Missus ain’t here in the next ten minutes he will be reading page five in the Upper Room… bring that terrorist over here…
Hussein: I AIN’T NO TERRORIST!! I’M A REPORTER!!
Longrope: Boy ain’t you forgetting something?
Hussein: I’m sorry suh… I AIN’T NO TERRORIST SUH!! I’M A REPORTER SUH!!
Longrope: Now smile when you say it…
Hussein: (Hussein smiling…) Suh… I ain’t no terrorist suh… I’m a reporter suh…
Longrope: If it’s one thing I can’t stand… it’s a boy grinning at me and calling me a liar… you think something funny here?
Hussein: No suh… you told me to smile…
Longrope: I don’t remember telling you to smile… Now smack me across my lips with the back of yo hand…
Arthur: “AND THO I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH…”
Hussein: So suh.. if I smack you across yo lips… I can leave then…
Arthur: “AND THEN THE LION LOOKED AT DANIEL…!!”
Longrope: Sure.. go ahead…
Arthur: “AND I STOOD AT HIS FEET…”
Cuss: Cuzin… somebody’s coming up the road… looks like Missus and another car…
Longrope: We gonna finish this later… terrorist… you were getting ready to smack me across my lips right?
Hussein: Yes Suh…
Arthur: “AND HE MAKETH ME LIE DOWN…”
Barack Obama – B
Elected 2009 – 2017
Hardly Any Diggity
I want to give a shout-out to one of my friends for helping me choose a scale I can use with a black president. I saw it on my Facebook feed and I’m like… perfect! So many of you have heard Blackstreet’s classic “No Diggity.” Well, any black president that has made it to that chair without rope burns and doesn’t want to be a banjo strumming yes man, has to be able to work the system and bag it up… no diggity…
Our Scale For Black Presidents: (Yeah… there are going to be more…)
A – No Diggity
B – Hardly Any Diggity
C – A Fair Amount Of Diggity
D – An Overwhelming Surplus Of Diggity
The election of Barack Obama was one of the most transformative events in world history. After four hundred years of slavery, a black man became the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on the earth. He was also one of the most hated men on earth. As a matter of fact, during his first State Of The Union address, a particularly vulgar and stank Congressman named Joe Wilson yelled out in the middle of Obama’s comments… “YOU LIE!!” It was unheard of!! Wilson got a taste of his own medicine when at a town hall meeting his constituents said the same thing as he lied about the Affordable Healthcare Act. Wilson lost his next election and is now working as a waiter at Three Racist and A Cotton Field… Anywho, Obama was hated by whites and even some blacks. He came on the national scene unknown and untested. To tell the truth, I don’t even know why he ran. One day he was just there. In the beginning, his presidential campaign was a Jenga block from falling over. That is until March 18, 2008. Now I don’t know if you remember this, but Obama’s campaign hit a snag when they linked him to a pastor named Jeremiah Wright. With level 5 being the highest level in black nationalism, the pastor was a boiling hot three and a quarter. Wright was Obama’s pastor and was known for giving sermons that some people viewed as anti-Semitic. The conservative and far-right media jumped on it and quickly tried to tie Obama to being anti-Semitic. It looked like that shat was going to work too until he gave his “A More Perfect Union,” speech. Now the speech was in response to the criticism he was receiving over the Wright sermons. They wanted an explanation. The speech was billed by the white media as the “Nigra’s Gonna Apologize and Make Us Believe He Ain’t Anti-Semetic” speech. They were looking for Obama to apologize thereby damaging his credibility, disown Wright, and then help them hang him from the highest tree they could find. To Obama’s credit, he didn’t abandon Wright. As a matter of fact, he said “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother…” It was an astounding statement! The white media was pissed…, “NIGRA THAT’S NOT WHY WE PUT YOU ON LIVE TV!! WE WANT AN APOLOGY AND A WHOOPING!! AND IF YOU DON’T APOLOGIZE AND WHOOP WRIGHT, THEN HE AIN’T GONNA BE THE ONLY ONE SWINGING FROM A TREE AFTER THE SHOW!!..” Alright… no they didn’t… On the contrary, after explaining that Wright was a victim rather than a perpetrator of racist ideology, he won the hearts of millions. Some people say it was that speech that made him president. I remember listening to it… it was amazing. Here is a link.
So during his first four years in office, Obama had the herculean task of getting the American economy back on track after George W. Bush had trashed it. In 2009 Obama inherited an economy in a recession that was on track to becoming the next “Great Depression.” As a matter of fact, it was called the “Great Recession.” In the month that he took office, more than six hundred thousand Americans had lost their jobs. By October unemployment would reach a staggering 10 percent. The current unemployment rate is about 3 percent. So you and I know that if it was 10 percent overall, it was probably 50 percent in the black community. Insurance giant AIG collapsed and threaten to take the economy down with it. The financial and automotive sectors were collapsing also. So when America put the first black man into the presidency, they put his ass in the frying pan with fat back and gasoline. It was a recipe for failure. But the Obama administration did the unthinkable, it thrived in that atmosphere. First, they bailed out the automotive and financial sectors. Now the conservatives would have you believe that they were using taxpayer dollars to bail out a bunch of mansion-dwelling, yacht-riding, jet-setting, caviar-eating, Rolex-wearing money hogs, but that was not the case. It wasn’t a bailout in the strictest terms. Obama was buying shares of these companies which the American people owned! Once the companies were back on solid financial ground, they would buy back the shares… with interest. If they faqued up again, the US would own the company, and the first order of business would be firing every last one of them and taking them to court for defrauding the United States… That’s twenty years right there and believe me, they were more serious than a heart attack about that… ask Donald. He did the same thing with AIG insurance. The U.S. still owns some of AIG I believe, but the others have paid us back and the last I heard we made a tidy little sum off the deal with the financial and automotive sectors. As for unemployment, he tackled that problem the same way Franklin Roosevelt did, by enacting infrastructure bills and social spending. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “initiated more than 13,000 projects through the Federal Highway Administration, improving more than 42,000 miles of road and more than 2,700 bridges. The majority of the trillion-dollar recovery act went to social spending, $40 billion went to unemployment insurance, along with $25 billion to COBRA health coverage, and $20.9 billion to SNAP. $200 billion went to individual tax cuts and $120 billion to education and job training-related programs. The rest went into smaller social spending programs. For saving America, he won his next election by a landslide.
Now no good deed goes unpunished. Obama’s second term would be one of the most hateful in American history save for perhaps the Lincoln years. They wanted him to fail in his first term and when he didn’t the knives came out. In his first few months in office during his second term, an event would occur that would pit him against a foe he had wrestled with during his first term, the NRA. The massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newton, Connecticut would affect the president as no other event had. He demanded immediate gun control legislation! Of course that was a no-starter. The gun lobbyist and their supporters were still feeling some kinda way when he told them in 2008 that they were like dusty old cowboys needing a bath and a shave, riding across the stank prairie on old flea-infested horses with Festus, clinging to their guns and bibles and chewing spitting tobakee… Okay, he didn’t say it like that… but that’s what they heard. It wasn’t any way they were going to support any kind of gun control coming from an Obama administration. The Sandy Hook massacre would be the first of many mass killing events during the Obama administration and with each event the push for more gun control and with each push the more the conversation changed from gun control to nigra control. While Obama wasn’t going to win the gun control argument, he was winning the moral argument and the moral argument was winning significant white support to his side. Racist: “Okay, we are not going to win the gun control moral argument folks… let’s try the ‘He’s a nigg@r argument’…” So yeah that’s how it started. Anywho, remnants of that struggle are still being felt today more than 10 years after the school slaughter. Alex Jones, a conservative firebrand and host of the far-right radio broadcast, Infowars, was judged to be liable to the parents of the massacre for one billion dollars! That ass*hole went on air repeatedly calling the massacre a “red flag” operation. The parents were subjected to threats and harassment by 2nd Amendment rights supporters and Obama haters. Last time I heard they were taking him to court because they said he was trying to hide his assets from them and they wanted his dogs and toupee… okay they didn’t want his toupee, but they did want his dogs! Anyway, people were starting to make money off of hating Obama and the shat was just getting started.
In 2010 the Republicans took over the House of Representatives and held 49 seats in the Senate. Racist: “We got yo ass now!! You can forget about passing any bills here boy…” For the next six years the Obama administration couldn’t even pass gas on the Hill… well almost. They did manage to get one major bill through and we are going to talk about that in a few. Now nothing tested Obama’s black credentials like the Trayvon Martin killing by the vile George Zimmerman. We are not going to rehash the ugly episode other than to say there will be dancing in the streets when the day comes. On February 26, 2012, a Florida jury acquitted Zimmerman of all charges for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Black America collectively thought… “Ya’ll gonna make me lose my mind.. up in here..up in here!!” While racists were going… “Don’t try that in a small town…” America looked to its first black president to see what side he came down on. For two days, not a word from the white house except to say ya’ll calm down. Black folk were getting resigned to the fact that somebody had gotten to Obama and he was getting ready to put raisins in the potato salad. Then the following Friday after the verdict, Obama bought out the fried chicken and biscuits!! In a nationally televised broadcast, he said what we had all been thinking… “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago…” No one was expecting it. Obama made a surprise appearance at the daily briefing. For twenty minutes he laid out what type of rat ass shat had happened in Sanford, Florida, and the effect it would have on Black Americans. Without a teleprompter, the president shot them right through the heart… Here are a few snippets from the impromptu address…
“There are very few African-American men in this country who have not had the experience of being followed when they are shopping at a department store. That includes me.
There are probably very few African-American men who have not had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me – at least before I was a senator.”
There are very few African-Americans who have not had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had the chance to get off. That happens often…”
The president had chosen a side and it set the scene for the things to come. Here is a link to the Martin speech.
Now a while ago we talked about one piece of major legislation that Obama was able to get through Congress. On March 23, 2010, he signed into law Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act also known as ObamaCare. At first, the president didn’t like the term “ObamaCare. It was a nasty little term the Tea Party pinned on the legislation trying to tie it to the failed Hillarycare bill. The shat backfired though as Americans started to see that the legislation would indeed provide affordable healthcare to millions! Obama seeing the support the bill had, started to embrace the label. The law came into force in 2014, and so did the racist trying to overturn it. By 2016 more than 24 million people who had not been covered by medical insurance were now covered… thanks to Obamacare. The Republicans and their far-right supporters knew they had faqued up. Not only did they now have to contend with a black president who had saved the economy during his last administration, but had for the first time in American history instituted a national healthcare system… and they were responsible for naming it after him! Racist: “Hot diggity dog!! That nigra got me messed up!!” They wanted him and I’m not sure if they didn’t try to get him. In September 2014 a man with a knife manages to scale the White House fence and enter the building before being apprehended. The mofo was headed to the residence! Fortunately, the Obamas had just left minutes before on Marine One headed to Camp David. So let me tell you what the Secret Service said about the incident… “The reason he got so far was because they didn’t think he was armed…” I would have fired so many mofo’s that they would have thought Washington was burning down!! Where the hell do they do that at? I’ve heard of people being shot at for just climbing the fence… and not actually going over it, and if you are from DC, everybody knows that half those bums in Lafayette Park are either Secret Service, FBI, or DC police undercover agents. I’d be like, ” Everybody put their guns and badges in that trash can in the foyer and get the faque out!! I’ll protect my own damn self!!” By the way, he was armed with a 10-inch Bowie knife. Gonzales was given a 15-year suspended sentence by the Feds and a 17-month sentence by D.C. for breaking city gun ordinance laws. At his sentencing, the judge said, “No more guns, no more machetes, no more knives, no more tomahawks. Got it?” The dude was going to make an example outta somebody if he would have gotten to them.
There were a lot of other things Obama did in office that people don’t know about and little credit is given to him. He issued an executive order raising the minimum wage for contract government workers. I used to work in the Capitol as a busboy back in the day… the pay was $2.25 an hour. Obama moved to make the Internet a regulated utility. That means one day we will not wake up and somebody has purchased the Internet and is now charging for access. The Republicans are still fighting that one, saying the Internet should be based on a free market model. He ended the war with Afghanistan and negotiated a peaceful and honorable settlement. He prevented the deportation of up to four million immigrants who had lived in the States for decades. The Republicans vowed to defund the project, but they never did… at least not under Obama.
So these are some of the good things the president did and some of the obstacles he faced doing them. Now it’s time to talk about some of the less pleasant things he did. Yes, Obama wasn’t perfect but who is?
Now there aren’t a lot of things on this list and before we go on I’m not going to cover things like reparations or any other similar policies aimed exclusively at Black Americans. In our heart of hearts, we all know that he could only do the things they allowed him to do. Why kick a hornet’s nest when you don’t have to? It’s all good though, because maintaining his unbiased credibility will allow him to influence policy for years to come far beyond the time he stayed in office. What he couldn’t do, he may be able to get someone else to do. That’s only possible if they like and trust him… not if they think his only motive is moving forward a black agenda. So I get that he did what he could while in office and for real because of that we didn’t have another four years of Trump. The only reason we had the first four years of Trump was because they played the electoral college card. Trump won by using the electoral college against us and only focusing on the states that could get him in office. With Obama out there, Biden picked up more votes in those states because of Obama’s popularity. Now if those voters thought Obama had an agenda other than an American agenda… well we might be speaking Russian as a second language and bowing to the Supreme Comrad Leader, Donald J. Trump.
Anywho, the first thing I had an issue with was re-authorizing the Patriot Act. It’s true that he didn’t want to do it, but he did it anyway. The Patriot Act was something George W. Bush cooked up after the 9/11 attacks. It gutted the Constitution and gave the president overwhelming authority in times of national crisis… national crisis.. not war. So who’s to say what a national crisis is? Racist President: The nigra’s are rioting because we approved the death penalty for back sass. Deport them all… I authorize it under the Patriot Act.” Feel me… No one actually knows what’s all in the Patriot Act because some of it is top secret. We know about eavesdropping, wiretaps, and detention without hearing or trials… otherwise known as suspension of habeas corpus, but that’s about it. The Patriot Act is thousands of pages long! I think they said something like if you don’t sign it, we are going to move the doctor over to the old executive office building and cut the funding for your security staff down to an old hound dog, the deceased Sargent Of Arms left to the animal shelter in his will… Now I don’t know if that’s what happened… but he signed it. One more little tidbit about the Patriot Act. It’s the blueprint for stop-and-frisk and no-knock warrants. No knock warrants… think Breonna Taylor. So there is that and finally, I want to talk about Libya.
The attack on Libya and the removal of Muammar Gaddafi was the greatest mistake of the Obama administration. It was predicated on advice from none other than Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. You know the one that was feeling some kinda way when she lost the Democratic nomination to Obama and now has to stand up every time he enters the room… Hillary: “Not only did I lose… but I got to stand up every time that nigra enters a room I’m in… Ima get his ass. Ima get him faqued up in Libya with that sand nigra Gaddafi and see how he likes that… ‘Yes, Mr. President it is a wonderful morning’…” Obama: “Be seated…” So yeah, she was the one who persuaded Obama to intervene. Now there is another line of thought as to the reason why Obama intervened in Libya. The official reason was that Gaddafi was killing his people with poison gas and was a murderous psychopath. The other line of thought was that Gaddafi was trying to bring Africa together and issue one currency for the continent and one passport. All African countries… one currency and one passport. That’s the one I’m going with… and if I knew about it, so did Obama. The West couldn’t allow a United Africa. They sent agents in there to start political turmoil and when Gaddafi dealt with it, they branded him a tyrant. It was the UN Security Council that gave the go-ahead for Obama to intervene in Libya. After the death of Gaddafi, Libya became a failed state and a haven for terrorists. Before the intervention, Libya was one of the most stable countries in Africa. Before the killing of Gaddafi, Libya had the highest GDP per capita and highest life expectancy on the continent. Free college education, free gas, free housing, subsidized food, and health care. Remember Libya was an oil-producing country and if Gaddafi got his way and introduce a one-currency continent, that would have meant nationalizing all the resources in the participating countries. You buy African resources… you pay in African dollars. Where do you get African dollars… Africa. The West and Big Money: “Somebody needs a whooping!!…”
So yeah those are two of the mistakes the Obama administration made and they will be with us for the foreseeable future. After all is said and done and with the review of all but two presidents behind me, I would have to say that Obama is one of the five greatest presidents who ever lived and I’m not saying that because I’m black… I’m saying it because it is true.
What Comes Around…
Missus: Hold it right there Cedar!! That tan one there be a Longrope!!
Longrope: Missus they both tan… although this one here is a little whiter… that’s why I’m letting him read a gawd-fearing white man’s holy book… What say you, he be Longrope?
Another car pulls up and out jumps Littledek!
LIttledek: I’M OFFICER LITTLEDEK AND EVERYONE HERE IS UNDER ARREST!!
Next week we will be wrapping up “By The Numbers” profiling our last two presidents. We will also be revealing Hill1News’ choices for the five greatest presidents and five worst presidents. Please join us next week as we wrap up, ” By The Numbers.”
Thanks for reading ©Hill1News
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