Here I Sit ...

...far from home and wishing I weren't. My job sent me almost 300 miles away from home for four days of training in McAllen, Texas. I'm less than six miles from the border and that fact was pretty apparent when I cruised the aisles of the local HEB grocery store this afternoon for some staples. The music (or should I say la musica) that blared over the PA made no pretense of being aimed at an English speaking audience. About half of the products on the shelves were labeled in both Spanish and English and the other half were merely labeled in Spanish. I'm a gringa by birth but am reasonably fluent in Espanol, so I was not uncomfortable ...just found it odd to still be in this country, but feel like I had one foot on the other side of the Rio Grande. I bought what I needed and have been holed up in my hotel room since mid-afternoon. I will be glad when training is over and I'm back at home with Yeoldfurt. If the proverbial caca hits the fan while I'm down here, my odds of being able to walk home would be slim to none.

For lack of the ability get clear reception on any other radio station, I ended up listening to O's speech on the drive down here this morning. The speech itself was innocuous. One commentator afterwards put it well when he said, "It's kind of like when you eat Chinese food and a couple of hours later, you're hungry again." Our illustrious Prez said a lot of things, mostly just a shallow pep talk as far as I could tell. He danced on the edge of playing the Blame Game several times, saying things like 'the recession that began two years ago' and mentioning the three trillion (I think he said three?) dollar debt that 'he inherited from the last administration.' Another commentator afterward really got my goat though. He said that when people say Obama is a socialist, it's really 'right-wing and Republican code talk for the 'n' word.' EXCUSE ME? A socialist is a socialist is a socialist and how does that have anything to do with the 'n' word? I'm frankly pretty tired of people oohing and ahhing over the fact that Obama is 'the first black president' anyway. I think a whole lot of the votes that put him in office were based on that criteria alone. But the man is also half WHITE. Does one negate the other? Of course not. He is no more and no less a black man than he is a white man. He is both. But that has nothing to do with the criticism of his socialistic policies. Nancy Pelosi is a socialist in my opinion and plenty of people have called her one. But are the ones who say she is a socialist get accused of using 'code talk' for a racist slur?

I don't usually post about politics because I don't have the depth of knowledge or finesse of Yeoldfurt and some of you others. But I needed a few minutes of distraction from the fact that I'm stuck down here for now and thought I'd share my two cents.