This week President Barack Obama became the
first sitting President to visit Alaska and the Arctic. While there, he’ll discuss climate change and
its effects, evident in Alaska and elsewhere.
In addition, he is set to appear on a Survival
TV Show, "Running
Wild with Bear Grylls," NBC and the White House announced Monday. The show will be aired later this year, as
will the interview filmed when he visited the Oklahoma Prison.
PETA, among
others, criticized him for his decision to appear on the show. For good measure, however, the President took
another action, an Executive Action; one that left Conservatives peeved. He changed the Name of Mt. McKinley, the
highest peak in the United States, in fact, the highest in North America
(20,237 feet), to Denali,
or Great One. The U.S.
Government renamed Denali, Mt. McKinley in 1917.
The
President’s opponents immediately condemned him for acting like a dictator,
taking unconstitutional action, overstepping his authority, engaging in a
partisan stunt and, of course, exhibiting racial animus.
Rep. Bob
Gibbs (R-Ohio), said:
“I hope my colleagues will join with me in
stopping this constitutional overreach,” vowing to work with the House natural
resources committee to reverse Obama. “President Obama has decided to ignore an
Act of Congress in unilaterally renaming Mount McKinley in order to promote his
job-killing war on energy. This political stunt is insulting to all Ohioans.”
Former Rep.
Ralph Regula, also from former President McKinley’s home state of Ohio, weighed
in too, in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, saying:
Sen. Rob
Portman (R-Ohio) framed it as:
Rep. Mike
Turner (R-Ohio) scolded Obama
for moving to:
“Undermine a prior act of Congress.”
Ohio Gov.
John Kasich, a GOP Presidential candidate utilized social media, and:
House Speaker
John Boehner, also from Ohio, pronounced himself:
“Deeply disappointed.”
However, lest
the surge of exuberance by Ohio Republicans deludes you into thinking this
matter was simply a provincial dispute, fostered by individuals from a State
that had its local hero’s name decommissioned, and removed from a Mountain 3,000
miles and several Time Zones away, au contraire mon frère! It was no such thing.
One
Representative, Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill), said on Fox News, he thought the move
might be related to McKinley having been a Republican. He noted:
“People feel like this president is constantly
trying to, like, stick it in our eye, and put his thumb in our eye.”
The
conservative website Gateway Pundit posted an item
titled:
“Obama Renames Mt. McKinley (Named After Some
White Guy) to Denali.”
At the
conservative outlet Breitbart.com, Ben Shapiro
asked:
“Why did Obama choose to change the name now? Presumably because Obama has now solved all
the world’s problems, and decided against his second choice, Mt. Trayvon.” He continued a “more serious” explanation was
that Obama “opposes the legacy of President McKinley,” which includes the
Spanish-American war and annexing various territories. Asked Shapiro: “[W]hen
will President Obama change the name of the American Southwest to Aztlan?”
The deeper
one wandered into the conservative blogosphere and Twitterverse, the uglier the
messages became – about President Obama’s presumed anti-American views, his
Muslim practices, and his primal and unquenchable urge to defecate on his
predecessors.
Here’s the
almost comical, truly ironic, best-kept non-secret. The President is actually perfectly within
his authority to make this change. If his opponents are really outraged, they
can overrule him in Congress, or they can elect a president who will change the
name back.
The sticky-wicket,
tricky little problem with both of these possible options is that Alaska, run
by Republicans, wants the name to be Denali and have been trying to make the
change for decades. The Alaska delegations — Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan
Sullivan and Rep. Don Young, Republicans all — heralded the
move (even as Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents McKinley’s
hometown, joined the opposition).
That,
however, is not the only fly in the proverbial ointment, in this case. There is the (elephant in the room) not so
small matter of Conservatives professing to support local control, and
lamenting the devolution of power at the local level. Yet, oddly, it seems to this casual observer,
in this particular case, they are demanding the federal government overrule a
state’s wishes. Oh what a conundrum, a
tangle Web, I believe Mr. Shakespeare dubbed these kinds of matters. As Washington Post Columnist Dana Milbank said
in an Opinion piece Monday, perhaps a more ideologically suitable solution
would be to rename something actually in Ohio for McKinley. A city, a river, an Interstate…the possibilities
are endless.
As for
Denali, Mr. McKinley hadn’t even visited the Mountain, named for him by
a prospector before McKinley was elected the 25th president. A prospector, William Dickey began proposing
the name Mt. McKinley in 1896, after traveling the Mountain Range. Eventually, sixteen years later, after McKinley’s assassination on September 14,
1901, Congress renamed the Mountain. For
hundreds if not thousands of years of years prior to that, natives of the land had
referred to it as Denali.
In 1959, Alaska gained
Statehood. Afterward, Alaskans – many of
whom had never stopped referring to the mountain as Denali – started wondering
why their State’s natural crown jewel was named for a President from Ohio. The Alaska Legislature has been backing a
proposal to change the name back to Denali since 1975. To wit, it’s fair to say, this idea is not
only not some egomaniacal, brainchild of President Obama, since it predates his
1961 birth (in Hawaii, by the way). In
point of fact, the most fervent backers of the idea are republicans. Go figure.
Mr. Milbank
speculates, and I believe, that the dustup over renaming the mountain will be
added to the other molehills of the President’s supposed overreach, which have
been turned into mountains, and already includes:
· Obamacare
· The Stimulus
· Dodd Frank
· The IRS
· Immigration
· Executive Appointments
· Saving General Motors
· Contraception
· The ATF
· Prosecution of Low Level Drug Offenses
That’s just
to name ten; not necessarily a Top 10, just ten, although Obamacare is likely
at the top of almost everyone’s list.
I’m sure any Conservative worth his or her salt could tick off another
dozen without drawing a second breath.
The real rub here is, the common objection to all of these is less about
what was done…than who did it. IJS!
Yes,
Conservatives’ heads will once again spin due to an action taken by President
Obama. Ultimately, though, the rest of
us can be at peace knowing…”The Mountain Wouldn’t ComeTo Obama…So The President Changed Its Name!”
I’m done; holla back!
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