Here in Yellowknife, started my travel for the year. So far I have two trips to Yellowknife and two trips to Lagos planned. That will get me up to about 50,000 miles - all by the end of April! It is possible that I will significantly exceed that but we don't know yet! Got to figure out what to do with all these accumulated miles - stay tuned, some ideas are percolating!
So, Senator Harry Reid put his foot in his mouth referring to Obama's "Light skin" and lack of "Negro accent". Awful! Terrible. He should resign and the Republicans will make him do so, just like the Democrats made Trent Lott resign after his innocent misstatement at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday! I mean all Lott did was imply that the United States would be a less troubled place if Thurmond had been elected President on a segregation platform. Yeah, both bad, both equivalent.
Except... Hate it when facts intercede....
Reid was praising Obama when he suggested that the current President could win. Awkward wording, stupid even, but this is a guy with an A+ rating on racial issues by the NAACP. Trent Lott really did suggest that the United States would be a better place with no inter-racial marriage, sports, bus service, voting legislation for blacks. He did this praising a man who not only was racist in his stated beliefs as a Presidential candidate but also fathered an illegitimate black daughter whom he never acknowledged throughout his life for fear of voter retribution. Oh, and that pesky NAACP rating - Lott had an F.
Here is an interesting quote on Thurmond, I couldn't make this stuff up, plus a link to the Wikipedia article from which I quoted:
"He left office at age 100 as the oldest-serving and longest-serving senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in the latter by Robert Byrd).[1] Thurmond holds the record for the longest serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history at 14 years. He conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone U.S. Senator in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. He later moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time,[2] never fully renouncing his earlier viewpoints.[3][4] After his death it was revealed that Thurmond and a black maid, Carrie Butler, had a daughter whom Thurmond never publicly acknowledged.[5] He is the only U.S. Senator to reach the age of 100 while still in office."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond
The Democrats didn't force Lott to resign, the Republicans did - they turned on their own guy, rightly so, I might add. So there is no equivalency or favoritism of accusation. The Republicans just don't get it.
"I have a dream" said Martin Luther King... I hope that one day, the United States can get over the huge pain it still feels with respect to race. It is difficult but it is not rational. My Great Grandfather, if I could bring him back to life for an hour, would be shocked to find out that he has, among his many descendants, three people who are half black and one who is half Asian. But, as a society we get over our hangups and prejudices - we mover forward. The United States needs to move forward as well.
So endeth the first blog of 2010!
Paul
