THE PLATINUM MAN: Barack Obama

Today, a tale of three cities, first from DC:  How goes the Memorandum of Understanding between the USA and Iran?  Some Republican anguish from Time Magazine.

....many Republicans are more nervous than relieved over the deal. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, called it “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades." Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, said of the deal: “If this is true, Iran wins.”

Former MAGA stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene was perhaps the most Trumpian in her reaction, echoing the President’s criticism of Obama’s deal more than a decade ago.

“$300 BILLION DOLLARS TO IRAN??!!! Trump agreed to give Iran $300 BILLION dollars for reconstruction cost after Trump bombed Iran. Are you kidding me? What an embarrassment! Americans are getting screwed again!!” she wrote on X.

In New York City, the Knicks got a ticker-tape parade.

• Can you remember back to 1973?  The USA finally got kicked out of Vietnam, and we suffered from the first Energy Crisis.  Also, the Knicks last NBA championship....with no ticker tape parade.
• Today, perhaps 2 million watched along that parade.

In Chicago, the Obama Presidential Center was dedicated.

• The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum is in Yorba Linda, while in Simi Valley, California, it is the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, both in Southern California.

• 
  The Obama Presidential Center has a four-story museum and a branch of the Chicago Public Library, but note the absence of Barack.  Why?
• Mostly because this Center decided not to partner with the National Archives and Administration for financial reasons.
• There is thus no Obama presidential matter there, only 30 million pages of digital access.
• Barack also said that he did not want his Center to feel like a mausoleum, desiring a living campus.
• Maybe too because Michelle is an important part of this Center.
• 
  The Obama Presidential Center:
• Is located on 19.3 acres in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago, adjacent to the University of Chicago campus, a partner in this endeavor, where Barack taught constitutional law from 1992 to 2004.

• 
  Jackson Park was created for the 1893 Chicago World Expo.
• Lies at the intersection of the historically affluent and racially integrated Hyde Park, where the Obamas once lived, the more economically depressed and mostly African-American Woodlawn and South Shore.
• Whole development took a decade.

• 
  Read this for details. 
• Four living past presidents were there, including Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and George Bush the younger, and their wives.  Very bipartisan and friendly to each other.  
• No Donald Trump.  He had previously called the Center a trashbag in a can.

• Best speech:  Michelle Obama.  Future president?  They can use the same presidential center.  

• 
  It was entertaining, with Jennifer Hudson singing the National Anthem, followed by Impossible Dream, bringing tears to Michelle's eyes.  Also, Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, a bunch of others, and Stevie Wonder closing the event.
• Lot of congresspeople, governors (Pritzker, Newsom, Shapiro), actors, late night hosts, etc.

The re-rise of the Obama's will be troublesome for President Trump.

• Certainly, the media will more and more compare the Obama-Iran deal with what Trump will be getting.

• 
  Dictatorship and suppression vs Democracy and hope.
• Nobel Peace Prize winner vs felon.

• 
  There are numerous rankings of best and worst USA presidents, but here is a typical one showing Abraham Lincoln as #1, Barack Obama at #7.....and Donald Trump at #45, the lowest.  Of course it depends on who is doing the ranking.  But wouldn't you trust bipartisan historians over political parties?

On a lighter note, watch Donald Trump dancing with the Village People to YMCA.  Versus, Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace.

Oh, one more Obama story.  From Google AI:

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham—a student from Kansas—met his father, Barack Obama Sr.—the university's first foreign student from an African nation, from Kenya—in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. [1, 2, 3]

Here is my story of why I call Barack Obama The Platinum Man.

• Barack Sr. and Stanley Ann got married in February of 1961, six months before Obama was born.
• But she moved with Barrack to the University of Washington only a few weeks after he was born, so they lived in Seattle for about a year while Barack Senior remained in Hawaii.

• 
  When I graduated from Stanford, I returned home in June of 1962 to work in the sugar industry.  Barack's father also in June 1962, graduated from the University of Hawaii and got a graduate scholarship from Harvard.  After gaining a degree, he then returned to Kenya, divorced Dunham in 1964, and later died in an auto accident.  

• 
  In 1963, Dunham met Lolo Soetero, who was a graduate student at the East-West Center on the same Manoa Campus.  When Barack was four, they all moved to Indonesia. A sister came.  To the right, grandfather, mother and sister with him.
• “I was raised as an Indonesian child and a Hawaiian child and as a black child and as a white child,” Obama later recalled.   He was then registered as Barry Soetero in school.  Barack still speaks fluent Indonesian.

• 
  Concerned for his education, Obama's mother sent him back to live with her parents in Hawaii.  Grandmother was a bank official, so they could almost afford sending him to Punahou School from the fifth grade, where he was not an exceptional student.  Somehow, though, there was an added scholarship fund.  Mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro, returned to Hawaii in 1972 for graduate work at the University Hawaii in anthropology.
• Gaining a PhD in biochemical engineering, I started teaching at the University of Hawaii, also in 1972.
• 
  Mother and half-sister to Indonesia in 1975, leaving behind Barack.  Graduated from Punahou in 1979, the year I took a leave of absence from the University of Hawaii to work for Spark Matsunaga in the U.S. Senate.
• Mother divorced her second husband in 1980, went back to Hawaii to earn a PhD in 1992, but died of cancer in 1995 in Hawaii.
• Barack in 1979 moved to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College on a full scholarship.
• Transferred to Columbia University in 1981.  I left DC in 1982 to return to the University of Hawaii.  Barack graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a 3.7 GPA.
• Spent two years in New York City as a project coordinator, and moved to Chicago in 1985.

• 
  Lived with anthropologist Sheila Miyoshi Jager in the 1980s, and proposed twice.
• I worked in the U.S. Senate from 1979 to 1982. 
• Got a full scholarship to Northwestern University School of Law in 1988, but enrolled at Harvard Law school, where he was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year.  Served as a research assistant to Laurence Tribe.  

• 
  Met Michelle Robinson in 1989, but she declined date requests.  Eventually began seeing each other and got engaged in 1991.
• In 1990 was selected as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.  Graduated from Harvard Law in 1991 with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude.
• Went to the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught for 12 years to 2004.

• 
  His family history indicates a relationship back to Jefferson Davis, President of the South, and also distant ancestors in common with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
• Elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 and US Senate in 2004.
• Daughters Malia born in 1998, followed by Sasha in 2001.
• I retired from the University of Hawaii in 1999.

• 
  Supports the Chicago White Sox.
• Gave that noted keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
• Announced his candidacy for President of the USA in 2007.  Democratic field narrowed to Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton in 2008.

This is where and when The Platinum Man began to grow in my thoughts.

• I began writing for The Huffington Post in 2008, and my first piece was Well Barack, We have a Problem...
• Then during the heat of the presidential race against John McCain I wrote an article with the title, Barack Obama is Gray.  To quote:

My very first HuffPost a few months ago was entitled Well, Barack, We have a Problem. It was a wishful paean in search of the individual perhaps best suited to save our planet from global warming, while galavanizing world peace. In a Ray Bradbury Sound of Thunder reversal, I have come full-circle back to Barack Obama, but to a harsh real world on the verge of something worse than a recession.

Towards the end of CNN's post-presidential debate discussion on October 7, David Gergen declared it was too early to proclaim Barack Obama the victor of the 2008 presidential race simply because Obama was black. Polls are not totally believable, said Gergen, and Obama's blackness may cost him as much as six points. Gergen will be criticized, no doubt, for dealing this racial card, but he injected a very crucial point. This might well be the only factor left standing in the way of an Obama presidency.

I went further to say:

This is where Barack Obama should have a huge advantage, for he is both black and white: his father is a PhD Kenyan, and his white mother was born in the heartlands of Kansas. Because she was busy saving the world in the Pacific and gaining her PhD at the University of Hawaii, Barack was in large part reared by her two white parents, and in Hawaii, where, again, there are only minorities. We are not a perfect society here, but equality trumps over prejudice in our mélange melting pot.

There is a simple solution (see box on right) for the Obama campaign. Neutralize the Bradley/Wilder effect from the decision-making equation. Just make sure that the American populace knows that Barack Obama is Gray, or, better yet, both black and white, tinged with a variety of other colors from his upbringing and experience.

Before submitting this article to HuffPo, I had a second thought.  Why call him gray, when I could make him sparkle with PLATINUM.  Well, I stuck with gray.  So today, I have promoted him to The Platinum Man.

I'll end with the World Cup:

• The only notable game was the Democratic Republic of Congo's tie with heavily favored Portugal.  In that game, the only active soccer player perhaps more famous than Lionel Messi, missed on three shots for Portugal.  However, Ronaldo became the oldest outfield player to start a World Cup match at 41 years and 132 days.  Messi won the previous World Cup for Argentina in 2022.  Ronaldo is looking for his first.
• Today:

Tomorrow, Australia vs Team USA in Seattle:

U.S. ET: Friday June 19, 3 p.m.

Hawaii:  Friday, June 19, 9AM

UK BST: Friday June 19, 8 p.m.
India IST: Saturday June 20, 12.30 a.m.
Australia AEST: Saturday June 20, 5 a.m.

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