Friday, August 3, 2018

EXTRA: Presidential birth dates little more than partisan fundraising schemes

12.
 Barack Obama turns 12 on Saturday.



He does, that is, if you follow that quirky means of estimating one’s age by adding up the digits in his actual age (5 + 7) to come up with some youthful sounding number.

SO YES, SATURDAY is the birthday anniversary of that date upon which Stanley Ann Dunham gave birth to her eldest son in Honolulu (I don’t want to hear from the crackpots who persist he was born in Kenya, or Singapore or anywhere else outside the U.S. boundaries).

My e-mails have been flooded in recent days with messages from the Organizing for Action group (the remains of Obama’s old fundraising organization) telling me to sign off on a digital birthday card that will be sent to the man they say is now “Organizer-in-Chief.”

It’s a way of reminding the majority of us who didn’t vote for the current president (and remain disgustingly appalled he could ever win) that there really was once a better time. And that by uniting together, we might be able to undermine The Donald come the Nov. 6 elections (by erasing the Republican congressional majorities that give him strength) and the 2020 general elections when we can vote to remove him from office altogether.

Otherwise, it would be the tackiest of behavior that we’re supposed to celebrate a past president’s birthday. We don’t get similar requests on behalf of Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter.

OBAMA ALSO POPPED into the news this week when he made his own endorsements for Election Day known publicly. There are some 81 people running for various political posts who can say they have the backing of “the Big O!”

Those include a few Illinois races, including that of J.B. Pritzker for governor and Kwame Raoul (the man who replaced Obama as a state senator some 14 years ago) for state Attorney General.

Also, he’s backing three people wishing to run for Congress from Illinois – although the common thread is that Obama is backing the Democrats wishing to challenge Republican incumbents in the House of Representatives.

Only 9.
Obama thinks we’d be better off with Peter Roskam and Mike Bost (both of whom are people who were amongst his state legislative colleagues all those years ago) and Randy Hultgren. Similar to how Republicans would put effort into trying to win congressional seats held by Democrats so as to reduce the partisan numbers.

I DON’T KNOW how many people are going to be swayed by the influence of Obama, who has done one thing right in his post-presidency – he’s kept a low-profile. Otherwise, the people who think that this Age of Trump we’re now in is largely Barack’s fault because he wasn’t aggressive enough in pushing an agenda of his own (Trump has largely been able to erase many of the Obama-era accomplishments) would really be screeching!

Of course, I also noticed the e-mail I received Friday on behalf of one-time Vice President Joe Biden, who wanted us to know he recently had lunch with Barack (and had a ham sandwich). As though he wants us to think he’s still important enough to warrant a presidential campaign come 2020 – even though he’s already 75 and ain’t gettin’ any younger.

A lot of this e-mail traffic is to be expected. They’re probably p-o’ed at me for not giving them a credit card number so as to make it easier for them to charge me money for their campaign fundraising efforts.

Even President Donald Trump is sending out his e-mails – he wants me to send him $1 (or more, if I absolutely feel compelled to do so) to be entered into a sweepstakes. The prize being a chance to eat dinner with the president and a collection of people he says are, “great American patriots.”

14, by 2020.
JUST AS I haven’t felt compelled to sign off on the Obama birthday card, I also think I’m taking a pass on the idea of eating with Trump.

The man who thinks he’s the sweepstakes prize is just a little too full of himself for me to want to spend time with.

Besides, we have a president these days who is a mere 9-year-old (7 + 2, as of June 14) and often behaves as though he lacks even that much maturity.

  -30-

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