CHAPTER 1 - THE BEGINNING OF THE START Barack Obama was born Steven Urkel in a log cabin near Springfield, Illinois. His father was a militant piano tuner from one of those African countries where they change the national boundaries every other week. His mother was a loan officer at the Oppressed Proletariat Bank and Trust Company where she spent her days rejecting loans to people who had little more to cling to than God and guns. As a communist, she hated that her job forced her to oppress the poor and disenfranchised; but, also as a communist, she loved power and control so she threw herself into her work with alacrity. His father, not finding a large number of militant pianos in the American Great Plains, left the fledgling family for places with more bellicose musical tastes, leaving young Steven and his mom to fight capitalism alone.

He began to question his values and those of the people around his, especially when it came to shirts. It was the late 1960s when Black Nationalism and Afro-Centrism began to emerge into the American consciousness along with a lot of other high-sounding poop.

His grandmother was going into trances and making predictions like "Steven, er, Barack - someday you'll throw me under a bus!"

Steven got caught up in the excitement of the times and decided to change his name to Muhammad Alley; Muhammad because he had heard the name in one of those "Mummy" movies and Alley after the place where he spent most of his time. Unfortunately, this name sounded very similar to that of a famous person of that era and was probably already copyrighted. The young man was devastated; he thought he would never have a cool sounding hip name; but, as fate would have it, he was watching an old low-budget World War II movie one day. One of the characters, a Japanese soldier, kept shouting in a kind of pseudo-Japanese dialect "Barack A Bomba! Barack A Bomba!" which was apparently supposed to mean "Bomb the Baracks!" Bad as the movie was, it turned out to be the young man's inspiration! Barack Obama was born!

As a teenager, young Barack's two best friends were named Bugs and Daffy. Daffy was black and Bugs was white. Bugs was always getting the better of Daffy and Barack felt that this was because Daffy was black. Barack was conflicted, as someome who has changed his named so many times at that age is wont to be; one day, his asked his mother "Mom, why can't we have hope and change instead of despair and sameness?" His mother replied, "Just a minute son! I have to stamp "REJECTED" on this loan application! Boo Ha Ha Ha Ha!"

The incident had a profound affect on young Barack. Not only had he not noticed his mother had a laugh like a cartoon villain but she was handing out loan rejections to people who had not even applied. Furthermore, his grandmother was going into trances and making strange predictions like "Steven, er, Barack - someday you'll throw me under a bus!" Barack just knew that the answer for the world had to be hope and change, regardless of the fact that the answer had nothing to do with the question. "Sometimes," Barack reasoned, "you have to answer a question you can answer instead of the one you are asked!" This would turn out to be a pivotal insight for him, for then as now he never had the answers to many of the questions he was asked. But with his phenomenal judgement, he knew - he just knew - that hope and change was the answer and that he was the one he was waiting for.

But how? How could he take meaningless platitudes and turn them into a marketing campaign that everyone would think meant something because it apparently meant nothing but everyone would pretend it was meaningful because they didn't want everyone else to think that they had missed the point? Who in this world makes promises that can't be delivered on but are never called on it because everyone either forgets them or never believed them in the first place?

The toughest thing might be getting rid of President McGovern. That guy could be in office for years!

This modus operandi would never be successful in the world of banking or even piano tuning. After all, if you promise someone their piano would sound like Liberace but instead ended up sounding like a drawer full of flatware falling down the stairs, people are not going to give you repeat business as dad discovered a decade earlier.

The answer came to him like a stinkbomb exploding prematurely in his face. The year was 1972 and a Presidential race was on. McGovern. Nixon. Hot air. Baloney. Bald faced lies. And regardless of all the BS (or maybe because of it), one of these boobs was going to be handed the most important job in the world after the Jackson Five's road manager: President of the United States! Barack found his answer: he was going to become President and MAKE the world HOPE er have HOPE and CHANGE! The toughest thing might be getting rid of President McGovern. That guy could be in office for years!

Coming soon: CHAPTER 2 - THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE OF THE START