Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing. I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you. My life before anyone, my harsh life.
I Am Different
The vast landscape out west The tall mountains of Colorado That take you down the mind alleys All the way back to Nepal
The blaring traffic in Manhattan The honks, the shouts The bustle on a tired afternoon In Jackson Heights That remind of Asan in Kathmandu Janak Chowk in Janakpur
The mud roads of my childhood Of kids hitting the pond water With their tiny feet
The bus to Janakpur Crowded with people All the way to the roof top It is no small wonder The bus does not just veer off By the roadside
The incessant monsoon rains That come unfailingly each year No drizzle But floods and gushes Washing away houses and paddy fields
I have walked to the snow line Up in the Himalayas It got blue cold But my first snowy winter Was in Kentucky My homevillage, hometown Flat as the floor Less than a hundred feet above sea level Less than a hundred miles from Everest That I have never seen
India was never a foreign country To me My home was only a few miles from the border Half the extended family was on the other side But for the strong anti-India sentiment In Nepal, in Pakistan, in Sri Lanka, in Bangladesh I had to come all the way to America To claim my Indian half
Delhi, Patna Much of north India in between I saw I missed out on Alaska, Hawaii
What does it mean to you That I have been different places I grew up some place very different I was 23 when I landed in Seattle The cab ride from the airport in Kentucky Cost me a small fortune of 70 bucks
That first speech on race was a super hit: almost four million hits on YouTube so far. But it is race that still haunts us. Race is the reason we are behind in PA. Hillary's margin comes from her lead among white voters, which is in high double digits right now.
But that was not exactly a speech on race, it was a damage control speech on race in response to some real intense stuff from Jeremiah Wright. God damn America? US of KKKA? I mean, I have said United f____g States, but what Wright said is in a whole different league.
What Barack needs to deliver is a speech on race. I was hoping he would do that right after South Carolina. But I kind of liked it that he tried to suggest his way to deal with race is to not talk about it too much. I wish that were so. But it has become obvious Barack might have moved on, but the country has not. His family might have moved on half a century ago, but the rest of the country still struggles with it.
He has to do what his father did as a foreign student in Hawaii at a bar in the 1950s. Some random white guy hurled a racial slur at the senior Barack. Senior Barack patiently walked over to the man and explained to him as to why it was not okay why he did that. The man got so impressed he paid for Barack Senior's lodging for a few months, something like that.
What his father did to that one man, now Barack Junior gets to do to an entire country. He has to face the fact that race is still a major issue in this country's life. Some would say it is The Issue. Then he has to suggest America's diversity is what gives it great strength, otherwise Shanghai also has the skyscrapers.
The wide gap Hillary has over Barack in PA is not because these folks don't know yet where Barack might stand on Iraq or health care. And it is only a small bit about being less familiar with Barack. It is to do with race. And they are asking for help. These are not racist bigots. These are just people used to a certain way of thinking, and noone of any national stature ever told them otherwise. Barack gets to be that person.
There is no skipping this race issue. Race has to be talked of as a diversity issue, and diversity has to be shown to how we will cure the big problems like global warming.
Besides, that is the only way to compete with Lincoln in the greatness department. That guy ended slavery, you cure racism. It can be done. There is concrete data on disparity. And the number one thing to do is engineer a total spread of democracy.
Already Hillary's lead in PA is down to single digits and we still have weeks. It is hard for the political junkies to imagine, but Barack is not well known at all. Half of PA does not know he gave that speech in 2004.
Where Is Michelle? I Miss Michelle
Michelle was all over the place all the way to the victory in Iowa, and then also through January. Then she kind of disappeared. She is not as high profile no more. Granted the Obamas have two young daughters, and Michelle does have a career of her own. But you show Obama alone on the campaign trail a little too often and voters start to think maybe he is single.
The president is expected to be reassuring on the family question. Voters like to feel the top person is a family man. Otherwise voters get a little disoriented.
Iowa is all white. And Michelle is a big reason we won there. I know it is not about race. It is not a racial calculation on Michelle's part to stay away. It is her two kids on her mind. Well, she should win this one, and then both she and her husband get to see the two kids every day when they come back from school.
Get Michelle back in the game. Send her all over PA. We need a victory, yo! The two Obamas must make at least a few joint appearances each week. That we should be able to take for granted.
Obama considers Gore for cabinet post Sydney Morning Herald, Australia He's somebody I talk to on a regular basis. I'm already consulting with him in terms of these issues but climate change is real. ...... "All of us are going to have to change our habits. We are a wasteful culture," he said. ..... Using compact fluorescent light bulbs, energy efficient appliances, and unplugging power chargers when they're not in use are relatively simple solutions, he said. ...... "Those kinds of simple steps, if everybody takes them, can drastically reduce our energy consumption."
Social Media Will Change Your Business BusinessWeek Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later ..... they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. ..... The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses. ...... "Blogs are what's causing the Web to grow" .... It's wrapped up far more in people's day-to-day lives. It's connected to time. ..... Picture the blog world as the biggest coffeehouse on Earth. ....... the blogs track what's on our minds. ..... "Never in the history of market research has there been a tool like this." ...... mainstream media will start to look more and more like—you guessed it—blogs ...... Popular blogs can land sponsorship deals for as much as $25,000 per month, say consultants. O.K. money for an entrepreneur, but a rounding error in the ad industry. ....... $410 million for About Inc., a collection of 500 specialized Web sites that smell strongly of blogs ..... Blog reporters showed their value following the Asian tsunami in December. Thousands of them posted pictures, video footage, and articles about the disaster long before the first accredited journalists showed up. ........ The winners will be those who host the very best conversations. Mugabe's Zanu-PF loses majority BBC News Endorsements, Focus Aid Obama in PennsylvaniaYahoo! News Beer and bowling: Obama plays the regular guyTimes of India Obama to Clinton: 'Rocky' was a movieBaltimore Sun Unions give Obama a big welcomePennLive.com Clinton Challenges Obama to Bowling Throwdown NPR Instead of withdrawing, Clinton challenged Barack Obama to a bowling contest. ...... She added: "Happy April Fool's Day, everybody." Hillary Clinton is ready to meet Barack Obama in the nearest alleyLos Angeles Times Wyoming Governor Endorses ObamaThe Associated Press Obama claims victory in Texas The Australian, Australia “The Obama-Clinton match-up in Texas is now complete and there's not the slightest question about who won. .... “It is unequivocal, it is 100 percent clear, that Senator Obama won Texas and won it probably by five (delegates).”
Polls: Obama Gains on Clinton in Pa. The Associated Press by drawing more support from men and younger voters ..... her lead has steadily eroded from 16 points in mid-February and 12 points in mid-March ...... Since mid-February in Pennsylvania, Obama has gone from trailing Clinton among men by 10 percentage points to running even. He now leads among people under age 45 by 9 points, reversing an 11-point deficit. ..... Clinton leads in the state among people without college degrees, but what was a 29-point margin in February is now 19 points. ..... She has a 25-point lead among whites and almost as big a margin with women, which have changed little since February. ..... whites, who make up 86 percent of Pennsylvania's population, about 6 points above the national average ...... Obama was endorsed by the state's popular Democratic senator, Bob Casey
