Joe Ricketts' New Venture: Mitt Romney Pals Around With Racists

Joe Ricketts of "President Obama is a metrosexual Abe Lincoln" fame is determined to get people to understand that President Obama is totally trying to destroy America, you guys.  After having paid to advertise Dinesh D'Souza's widely panned book "The Roots of Obama's Rage," Ricketts is helping to finance an upcoming movie, "2016: Obama's America," which is based upon D'Souza's book.

Sigh.

I can't be sussed to write anything original about this crap because it's fucking ridiculous and I'm tired of it.  I've got nothing new to say.  So I will simply quote myself.  In September 2010, I wrote a post about Newt Gingrich grabbing the "Obama is an angry black man because Kenya and his angry socialist father" whistle and blowing it has hard as he could.  Gingrich claimed that D'Souza's argument about President Obama offered "stunning insight":

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.” “This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.” 

What follows is a section from my post about Gingrich's statement.  It is equally applicable to Mitt Romney since he will fail to denounce, reject, and "refudiate" Ricketts' racist ass, just as he has failed to do so with Donald Trump's racist ass:

If you want to read the D'Souza's article, you can find it here. Be prepared for a brain explosion or two. It's some of the most ridiculous nonsense I've ever read. Here are some snippets:

A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else?

It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other country.

Perhaps, then, Obama shares Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. The President has benefited from that dream; he campaigned as a nonracial candidate, and many Americans voted for him because he represents the color-blind ideal. Even so, King's dream is not Obama's: The President never champions the idea of color-blindness or race-neutrality. This inaction is not merely tactical; the race issue simply isn't what drives Obama.

What then is Obama's dream? We don't have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father's dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.

So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.

An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Obama Sr. grew up during Africa's struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape his country's future.

D'Souza's article is garbage.  Full stop.

Obama last saw his father when he was 10 years old. His father didn't raise him. But suddenly we're supposed to believe the bullshit writings of an unabashed racist (which D'Souza undoubtedly is, and if you don't believe me, just Google him and read some of his crap) about what Obama is or isn't thinking and who is or is not his hero based on the use of a preposition in the title of his book?! Seriously!?

Hey jackass, instead of telling us what you think Obama is thinking, why not quote Obama, Jr.? Let him tell us what he's thinking¹ Let him tell us how influential a role his father's "African socialism" plays in his politics and world view. And while you're at it, can you tell us why it is Obama's politics and world view are held by millions of progressives in this country who are decidedly not Kenyan?

But no, D'Souza doesn't do that because he can't.

He quotes at length Barack Obama, Sr., and the only quotes he provides from Jr. have to do with the racial identity crisis Obama, Jr. seems to have suffered, and which he came to terms with when he visited Kenya to meet his family for the first time:

In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"

None of Obama's statements even come to close to supporting any notion that Obama is some sort of anti-colonial sleeper agent. Rather, it indicates, to me, that he was simply trying to figure out what it meant to be a black man in America, something that was difficult for him to do because he was raised by a white woman and spent some of his childhood years overseas.

Also, here's a newsflash for you asshats out there. A lot of multiracial kids go through identity crises. A LOT OF THEM. It's not that hard to imagine that a black man raised by a white woman would want to travel back to the birthplace of his father in order to try and figure out for himself what it means to be black in America.

Being a black woman in America who was raised by a white woman, I can relate, and I'm going to guess that Obama's comments have nothing to do with understanding and adopting his father's politics, and more to do with understanding his father as an African and what that meant for Obama as a black man who was attempting to help black folks attain a voice in this country.

And just in case you weren't positive the D'Souza is talking directly out of his ass and in the most offensive manner possible, here's the final paragraph from D'Souza's article:

Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

Real classy, guy. Let's hope the GOP continues on this track, because soon there won't be anyone left who will want to vote for these assholes except the tea partiers and the Palinheads. Don't believe me if you don't want to; you can believe David Frum, Bush's former speechwriter.

[UPDATE: The Economist has areally great article on the so-called Obama Derangement Syndrome. Read it here. Somewhere in the comments section, I saw this comment: "So, is this the first salvo in an attempt to start a rumor that Obama's father is governing America via ouija board?" Love it.]