Bloodthirsty Liberal

I think I know why President Obama shuns his half-brother George living in a squalid shack in Kenya. He can’t afford the precedent it might set:

By the standards of some other presidential siblings, Mark Obama Ndesandjo – the US president’s half brother who lives in China – is a positive boon.

Normally he keeps quietly to himself in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen where he lives with his Chinese wife, practicing calligraphy and teaching piano to orphans.

On Wednesday, though, he emerged briefly to promote a semi-autobiographical book he has published which he says draws on his childhood with an abusive father – who was President Barack Obama’s father, too.

“My mother used to say of my father, he’s a brilliant man but a social failure,” Mr. Ndesandjo, who took the name of his stepfather, told reporters at a short press conference in Guangzhou.

That was pretty much the image the US president painted of his dad in his best-selling memoir “Dreams From My Father”: no scandalous revelation there.

“A brilliant man but a social failure”. Hmm, with the addition of the suffix -ist, I think we have the perfect description of the son.

How cool of President Obama to go to Africa. Seriously.

Now, if he can only do half as much for that continent as President Bush did, he will remembered as a great man:

An American president who has “the blood of Africa within me” praised and scolded the continent of his ancestors Saturday, asserting forces of tyranny and corruption must yield if Africa is to achieve its promise.

“Yes you can,” Barack Obama declared, brushing off his campaign slogan and adapting it for his foreign audience. Speaking to the Ghanaian Parliament, he called upon African societies to seize opportunities for peace, democracy and prosperity.

“This is a new moment of promise,” he said. “To realize that promise, we must first recognize a fundamental truth that you have given life to in Ghana: Development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa’s potential.”

The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black goat herder-turned-academic from Kenya, Obama delivered an unsentimental account of squandered opportunities in postcolonial Africa.

…

“No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end.”

Preach it, brother! Spoken like a true community organizer.

He added: “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”

Oh, he had me—until then. What Africa needs is capitalism, red in tooth and claw. Institutions are fine—and necessary—but without the twin engines of the profit motive and the market, the boat of commerce is dead in the water. Doesn’t matter who, doesn’t matter where. But yes, strongmen like Mugabe (a runt, if you ask me) are surplus to requirement.

And?

What advice do we have to rid Africa of its strongmen?

Never mind. Ever the proverbial turd in the punch bowl, I couldn’t help thinking of another Obama with “the blood of Africa” within him:

Another Obama relative has a book deal.
A memoir by George Obama, the president’s half brother and a resident of Huruma, Kenya, will be published by Simon & Schuster in January 2010. George Obama, 27, shares the same father with his famous, older half sibling, although George and Barack Obama— 20 years apart in age — did not grow up together and did not meet as children.

George is the youngest of the senior Obama’s seven children and was born six months before his father died.

Little is known about George Obama. The book, tentatively titled Homeland and to be written with author-journalist Damien Lewis, will tell of George Obama’s fall into crime and poverty as a teenager and his eventual embrace of community organizing — a passion shared by the president — and of advocacy for the poor, an identification so strong that he chooses to live among them.

Is that right—he chooses to live in his hut? For somone of whom we know so little, that’s knowing kind of a lot.

And it’s somewhat at odds with this account of the Billy Carter and Roger Clinton of this administration:

George Obama’s arrest last week came as no surprise to those who know him in the Nairobi slum of Huruma.

George, Barack’s half-brother, was picked up during a drug raid with friends who were in possession of cannabis and spent a night in the cells.

When I met the 26-year-old apprentice mechanic last month, prior to President Obama’s inauguration, he kept photographer Roger Allen and I waiting for more than an hour outside the corrugated tin shack he lives in.

Just as we were about to leave, George trudged up the dirt track surrounded by a gang of local youths who our local fixer warned us had a bad reputation.

There were no polite introductions with George. He could not have been more disinterested.

One of his friends told us he had spent the morning in a nearby bar.

What do I know? Community organizer or drunken layabout—really, what’s the difference?

But forget my cynicism (even if you can’t forgive it). Why are the media ignoring the president’s ignoring of his half brother? Sure, Kenya is across the continent from Ghana—but after crossing the Atlantic, he can’t manage to visit his blood relative? His choice, and none of our business—but no one sees fit even to mention it? Not a story, paragraph, or word? If I called the press lapdogs, shih-tzus everywhere would be gunning for may ankles.

Hey, look who beat the rap!

All charges against George Obama, half-brother to U.S. President Barack Obama, have been dropped after his arrest in a drug raid, according to police in Kenya.

He was released on Saturday hours later, police added.

Obama was arrested in a Nairobi slum, and he was picked up with people who possessed marijuana, said police spokesman Eric Kiraithe.

“Being found with people who are in possession of cannabis is a petty offense,” Kiraithe said.

Earlier, police had told CNN that Obama had been arrested for possessing cannabis and resisting arrest, which can carry a sentence of up to a year in jail or hefty fines.

“Police in Kenya do not look at criminals in light of associations with relatives,” Kiraithe said.

Coulda fooled me.

Cause I swear I remember it differently:

Speaking from behind bars, Obama denied the allegations.

“They took me from my home,” he said, “I don’t know why they are charging me.”

If you put the two stories together, you learn that people who possessed pot (which is evidently illegal in Kenya, but not here in Boston) were in his home, but he was in no way involved. And he didn’t resist arrest, either, I guess.

Well, we’ve all had misunderstandings like that. Think of O. J. Simpson.

With an Aunt like Zeituni and a brother like George, is it any wonder that President Obama hires tax cheats for his cabinet? He doesn’t see any problem.

You know, Aggie, I’ve been thinking. Why should it be all heartache for George Obama?

Busted for holding a little weed, a little medicinal herb, he’s rousted from his house and hauled off to the can.

Yet his brother, who has described their only meeting as “painful”, has readily admitted to inhaling in his own past (as well as snorting, which George could never afford on one dollar a day), and sits today in the Oval Office of the White House (heated to 78 degrees—”coincidentally” the same temperature as today’s high in Nairobi Kenya, I note suspiciously).

If Billy Carter could make a little money off his brother’s fame with Billy Beer (see below), why shouldn’t George Obama similarly capitalize?

I propose, yet again free of charge:

Each pack would hold twenty reefers packed with the finest Kenyan Gold. Perhaps accessories like roach clips and suchlike could be decorated by the Presidential Seal.

In keeping with the creeping communism of our times, we can cap his profits—say, at five dollars a day, which should be plenty to keep him in tar paper. The rest could go to the Glaucoma Foundation.

He ain’t heavy, Barack. He’s your brother.

I don’t know why I bother with this story, really, except for pure enjoyment:

George Obama, the half brother of U.S. President Barack Obama, has been arrested by Kenyan police on a charge of possession of marijuana, police said Saturday.

Inspector Augustine Mutembei, the officer in charge, said Obama was arrested on charges of possession of cannabis, known in Kenya as Bhang, and resisting arrest. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday, Mutembei said.

…

George Obama and the president barely know each other, though they have met before. George Obama was one of the president’s few close relatives who did not go to the inauguration in Washington last week.

In his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” Barack Obama describes meeting George as a “painful affair.” Barack Obama’s trip to Kenya meant meeting family he had never known.

McKenzie tracked down George Obama in August 2008 and found him at a small house in Huruma, a Nairobi slum, where he lives with his mother’s extended family. His birth certificate shows he is Barack Obama’s half brother.

His what?

His birth certificate?

How come we know what George Obama’s birth certificate says, but not his brother’s? When one was born in Kenya and the other was born in, ahem, America?

I’m sure once George is cleared of the Bhang rap, he can come to America and stay in Auntie Zeituni’s place in Boston. She’s broken so many laws living in public housing as an illegal immigrant, what’s another violation?

I truly don’t wish the president any more “pain” from his family—and it must have pained him greatly to leave a half-brother in a Nairobi slum. George Obama seems nothing more sinister than an honorable heir to the throne of Shaming Sibling in the White House: Donald Nixon, Billy Carter, Roger Clinton, Hugh Rodham, et al.

But I do have to wonder about the circumstances of the drug bust. George Obama (and his family tree) had to be known to the authorities, and I’m going to make a wild guess that this was not the one and only time he could be found with Bhang on his person (and in his bloodstream).

So why bust him now?

I wonder if President Obama’s time in office won’t be more painful for George than the other way around.

They bury this on Friday night, just before we learn the thrilling news about the VP pick

HURUMA, Kenya (CNN) — We found Barack Obama’s half-brother living in a Nairobi slum.

George Obama, whose birth certificate shows that he is Barack Obama’s half-brother, lives in a small house in Huruma that he shares with his mother’s extended family, far away from the presidential campaign circus.

In his memoir, “Dreams for my Father,” the Democratic presidential candidate describes meeting George two years ago as a “painful affair.” Barack Obama’s trip to Kenya meant meeting family he had never known.

In the book, which is popular in Nairobi and can be found in almost any supermarket, Obama looks back at his personal story and his struggles to reconcile with a Kenyan father who left him and his mother when he was just a child.

Barack Obama Sr. died in a car accident when George was just 6 months old. And like his half-brother, George hardly knew his father. George was his father’s last child and had not been aware of his famous half-brother.

“I think I wanted to learn about my father the same way he did,” George Obama told me about why he read the book. “He came hear searching for his roots, and I was also trying to find my roots.”
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Unlike his grandmother in Kogela, in Western Kenya, George Obama had received little attention from the media.

But reports surfaced in the past few days, springing from an Italian Vanity Fair article saying George Obama is living in a shack and “earning less than a dollar a day.”

The reports left him angry.

“I was brought up well. I live well even now,” he said. “The magazines, they have exaggerated everything.

“I think I kind of like it here. There are some challenges, but maybe it is just like where you come from, there are the same challenges,” Obama said.

Obama, who is in his mid-20s, is learning to become a mechanic and is active in youth groups in Huruma. He said he tries to help the community as much as he can.

At least one of his neighbors feels that perhaps the candidate should help the brother.

“I would like Obama to visit his brother to see how he is living, to improve his way of life,” said Emelda Negei, who runs a small dispensary near Obama’s house.

But George Obama will have none of it. He draws inspiration from his famous half-brother. He acknowledges that he is biased but said he knows that his half-brother will be the next president.

“Because he wants to be [president],” he said. “I think in life, what you want is what you are supposed to get.”

CNN doesn’t mention that George is living on $1 per month. Because that would kind of blow the whole up-by-his-bootstraps quality of the piece they’ve written. Why don’t they go into a poverty stricken area of the United States and find some young adults claiming to want to live in a cardboard box under a highway? I mean, this thing was written from the perspective of Rush Limbaugh.

- Aggie