Terran Franklin

And no, it’s not because he found out that I’ve made him into a mongoose in Blood and Metal.

You want me to say one positive thing about Ba Rock?  It’s because he doesn’t go off unhinged and act pretty much like a Birther that you’d find on the news, or for that matter, some SCIU fuckwad who attacks Tea Baggers in front of their children.

Probably one of his best things going for him is that he remains cool and composed when the shit starts getting real.  When there was a racially charged incident that threatened to engulf a college town in flames, he holds a beer summit with the two people involved in the misunderstanding.  Israel setting up a blockade to keep the suicide bombing riff raff out?  While everyone and their cousin were giving Jews the Public School treatment for defending their right to exist, Barack goes on the stage and acknowledges both sides right to exist, and hopes for a peaceful resolution both countries will be happy.  Arizona passing a twelve-page law on Border Security that those who bitch about it refuse to read (Honestly, I think we voted illiterates into congress people, I don’t think they could even read Dick and Jane primers.) and Barack only criticizes over its need to maintain civil rights and hopes that their political process would iron out the kinks of this law he only calls “misguided.”  And when an off-shore oil rig went kablewie and became the Exxon Valdez of the Naughts, the President saved most of his ass chewing for the BP execs, but gave a “Cooler heads shall prevail” image to the rest of the world, much to the chagrin of the press and the elites of the world.

Such as anyone who is still blaming Bush for every little thing that goes down—even after he left office a year and a half ago, and would probably still do that in the afterlife.  At least, that’s the image Nancy Pilosi gives me.  That, and she can’t even read.

In spite of the company he keeps—with all the race bating, radical agendas, and Internet Fuckwadness that is just barely hidden under their skin, there are signs of Ba Rock trying his darnest to get people to mellow the fuck down and cool their heads so that they can better solve the problems instead of ripping each other apart because of it.

Maybe he should borrow a page from his home town and drive that point home with a baseball bat.

Now that’s a kind of Chicago Politics I’d love to see:  I’d love to see Obama get Hu Jintao and Ma Ying-jeou into a locked room and go, “I’m only going to tell this once.  I’ve got fifty Thompson Machine Guns pointed at this room from all directions.  Now you either start talking about resolving this problem over Taiwan, or the Tommies will start talking, and when they start talking, even the deaf and the dead listens.”  And then walk out and lock the door behind him.

I’d vote for someone like that tonight, regardless of what letter is beside their names.  Someone who’ll take on problems like Vinnie:  “You straighten this shit out or you’ll wake up in a trunk of a car, you understand?”

Or maybe he would delegate the bat use to Fareed Zakaria, so that he can get the rest of the press to mellow the fuck down.  And while he’s at it, he should guide everyone in the House to literacy class.

Oh, and by the way…

Here’s the BAM character I was talking about.

His name’s Taveed Rikaria.  Yes, he’s a mongoose.  Yes, he’s named after Rikki Tikki Tavi.  Yes, he’s inspired by Fareed.  And yes, that tail can stretch out a mile long when he runs.  And yes, if he sees an unevolved snake, it’s din din time.  He makes his grand entrance in the first pages of Book #2, where he hosts a nightly radio news show.  His International-based flavor and sharp wit made him pretty popular as an anchorman.  It also makes him drawn to Eric Krockett branching his scope to an interplanetary scale as well.  Expect to have him scurrying out and about chronicling Eric’s exploits during his tenure on Maatla.

And I hope Fareed doesn’t kill me for giving him this kind of treatment.