An Anti-Obama Something

The lengths to which some people will bend over backwards to find something, anything, with which to attack President Obama means that when he finishes his terms, this nation is going to find itself with a lot of people displaying some very peculiarly distorted spinal columns.  I mean no one is supposed to go around with the back of his head a foot or two closer to the ground than his belly button.

A recent instance of this is a news item that was published online by a shaky-looking outfit called "Press TV," which I must've happened across on Google News, which is itself not the most perceptive and balanced site when it comes to showing reputable news sources.   The item was written by someone who claimed to have been told by some "African-American activists" that Obama has lost his African-American fan base by having launched "the U.S.'s first military attack on an African country," meaning Libya.

This is all total poppycock, on a whole bunch of counts.

First, where was the poll or other evidence that said that?

Secondly, Obama and the U.S. didn't launch that attack.  N.A.T.O. did, with full U.N. permission, and they're still following it up, though Obama has lessened the U.S. role a notch or two..

But even without all that, I would say that Libya will rarely jump into the minds of Rainbows when one speaks of "African countries" or a "mother country."   Geographically it is in North Africa but Africa is widely and actually catastrophically split in two by the Sahara Desert, and the strip of countries north of there are all in the Arab world and therefore are lumped in much more with the places in the Middle East, while it is the countries south of the Sahara that are mainly what one thinks of when "Africa" is mentioned.

Few and I would even say no Rainbow or so-called "black" American had ancestors that in the slave days came from Libya or anywhere else on that northern or what used to be called the "Barbary Coast."   In fact, they didn't even come from the same side of Africa as Obama's paternal ancestry, the eastern territories bordered by the Indian Ocean.   Instead they all came by the shortest route by far, the same one used by so many of the hurricanes that we get, from places on the West African coast, like Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, the Cameroons, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and the rest.  Therefore Obama's fan base is very unlikely to relate to Libya as a place of origin or for any other reason.

Furthermore that fan base ought to be given credit for knowing that Gaddafi has not only been around for way too long but also he has long been known to have a whole warehouse full of screws loose, and the truth is that he would never be missed

It shows the general anti-Obama conservative ignorance to say that this is the first time the U.S. has drawn a bead on an African country.   It hasn't been too long ago that the U.S. landed troops on Somalia, killed thousands of people there but lost 18 of their own in one day and promptly washed their hands clean of the whole business and left.   And this isn't even the first time that the U.S., all on its own, has hit Gaddafi and Libya where it hurts.   Don't I remember that R. Reagan sent some aircraft over that bombed one of Gaddafi's private dwellings and killed his little daughter?

Yes, I believe I do.

Actually, I would even go so far as to say that, despite so many of the prayers in the opposite direction, Obama's fan base is still in so much of a state of pure ecstasy and amazement that he not only won that election but also that so far he hasn't been shot by someone inspired by the legion of Tea Party harridans, he wouldn't lose much of that base even if for some reason he were to unleash a couple of Tomahawks on 125th Street, in uptown New York City.