GOP: From hanging chads to hanging chairs
In 2000, a presidential contest between eventual Republican winner George W. Bush and Dem challenger Al Gore, hinged on hanging chads of ballots cast by Florida voters with Bush winning the Sunshine State and 25 valuable electoral votes.
Bush claimed a razor-thin victory with 271 electoral votes, one more than necessary for a walk into the White House for the first of two memorable terms.
This year, America has moved from hanging chads to hanging chairs as President Barack Obama protestors have taken to strapping up empty lawn furniture, a sort of hate lynching of the 44th POTUS.
Nothing quite like a good American lynching to serve notice that a portion of the U.S. electorate would celebrate an old-fashion rope necktie for our first African American (black) president.
Many Americans proclaimed that racism had died, that we had turned the corner following an Obama 2008 win. Instead, anti-black sentiment remains a hot-blooded, red-button issue in a country besieged by ignorance, prejudice and hate mongers.
Rawly stated, there’s a “n-ger” in the Caucasian House and a number of white people would prefer a dead Obama rather than four more years of him as front man for the greatest country on the planet, minus the racism, of course.
Excuse the racial epithet but we should admit that while Obama represents the hope and dreams of every young American, his success produces a polarization of attitudes.
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney complained that 47 percent of people will vote for President Obama no matter what. Mr. Romney, who sounded more like a political victim, owns a similar percentile who stand with him, no matter what. Mr. Romney also failed to mention the 20-percent of Caucasians polled in 2008 who said they could never vote for a black presidential candidate, no matter what.
You could put up President Barack Obama against any other white candidate, probably even a mongrel, and one-fifth of Americans would vote against our current president.
While a plurality of Americans felt like we had passed away and ended up in heaven because voters elected a black president, smarter people understood that the Obama victory would stimulate a push back of people with power.
It’s not just happenstance that blacks find themselves in the very worst of conditions since the Obama victory. Blacks remain immersed in high unemployment numbers, draped by deplorable health care statistics, awash in unspeakable violence, and send our kids into the worst school systems, etc.
That’s not because Mr. Obama does not care, but this condition of black folk emphasizes the origination of power. Governors control purse strings, especially for New Jersey urban cities such as Atlantic City, Newark, Trenton, Camden, etc. Leaders must dance or deal with a perceived devil like Gov. Chris Christie in order to receive valuable transitional aid.
Trenton experienced such drastic cuts in state support that 100 police officer jobs were cut, crime ratcheted upward as criminals living in a corrupt political system, seized on an opportunity to deal drugs or impose terror on unprotected communities.
Complaints from the Republican camp include their anger that Mr. Romney’s private comments at a fundraiser were not for public consumption. News anchors overused “surreptitiously”, as if Rommey should not be held responsible for thoughts captured by a hidden camera.
The Romney contingent sounded like a married man who cheats on his wife with a hooker inside a pitch dark Route 1 motel, as if, whispers in black light are less punishable than daylight cheating time.
Meanwhile, actor/director Clint Eastwood delivered an empty-chair interview with President Obama during a Tampa Bay-based
Republican National Convention.
Eastwood moved toward climax, telling his passionate listeners that “if somebody (President Obama) does not do the job, then we got to get rid of him.”
Television cameras panned an applauding audience as decibels of cheers skyrocketed.
What the cameras failed to show was Eastwood’s gesture as the octogenarian geezer raised his index finger and pulled it across his wrinkled throat.
The actor who gave us “Hang ‘Em High” pitched a cut him here agenda.
In November 1999, NFL officials outlawed the throat-slash gesture with a letter that depicted the move as “an unacceptable act of violence.”
“We know of no interpretation of this act by which it would not be considered threatening or insulting.” wrote George Young, the league’s vice-president for football operations.
Amazing how one of the world’s most physically punishing sports recognized behavior that celebrated violence.
President Barack Obama remains fair game for lynching, dicing or slicing.
Some Repulicans appear to have taken a strategy out of a Malcolm X playbook — Death to President Barack Obama.
By any means necessary.