A Change Has Come

It is almost impossible to remember the euphoria last year when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first person of colour to be inaugurated as President of the United States, but euphoric it was.

The media are a fickle bunch, last year he could do no wrong and this year well he can do right. The main thing that seems to have upset them is his health care proposals.

It's difficult for us on this side of the pond to appreciate why the topic is so toxic.
An important fact to bear in mind is that of the nigh on forty million people without insurance and ready access to healthcare an overwhelming majority are from the lower socio-economic classes and disproportionately of Black and Hispanic ethnicities.

However, in the words of the immortal Sam Cooke (whose birthday it is today) A Change Is Gonna Come.
There were times when I thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on
It's been a long, been a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.

Gaining power is hard, but doing the right thing with that power is harder still.
What was that about campaigning in poetry, but governing in prose?
I think he's doing good.

A Double Dose of Depression

Just when you thought the US was "post-racial" having elected Obama, along comes Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Louisiana who has refused to marry a couple of different ethnicities.

What's even more shocking is that this is not his first refusal, but his FIFTH, and the authorities have done nothing about it.

Okay the man's an idiot and a racist, but he should not be allowed to be an idiot and a racist on the public purse. Instead, he should be sacked and the prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

When I taught a course on the American Civil Rights movement, I drew my students' attention to Loving v. Virginia (1967), where the Supreme Court unanimously declared the Commonwealth of Virginia's "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, so ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage.

However, I did have to laugh at his comment that he had, "piles of black friends [who] come to my home [and] use my bathroom". If I was him I'd check to see that they didn't take a dump anywhere else.

Obama still cool!

Just seen the videos of President Obama's White House Correspondents' Dinner. What a hoot.

My favourite?

Dick Cheney was supposed to be here but he is very busy working on his memoirs, tentatively titled, "'How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People".