Which One Is Not Like The Other Ones?
 
Among those apparently driven round the bend by Obama’s poll numbers is the National Black Republican Association.
Always a little on edge, the Association has tried its “King Was A Republican” campaign with no visible effect,
 “Urban Print” 
 and now they are reaching back to defend Nixon’s embrace of Southern, er, traditions.
“President Richard Nixon’ 1970’ “Southern Strategy†began a 30-year odyssey to get fair minded people in the South to stop voting for racist Democrats who were discriminating against blacks.”
Fairminded Folks 
Bush To Broadway 
Just when you thought we’d be clear, The New York Times reports “You’re Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush” will open his last day in office.
Return To Yesteryear! 
“Mills of the gods” visits the opened to the masses and gussied up Johnson Ranch outside Austin, and comes away whimsically impressed by the old monster’s lair:
“The newly opened office brought back a flood of memories of mid-sixties furnishings and decorations. God but it has hideous. They had to tear up a very nice room to bring it back to the schlocky state Lyndon had left it in. Cheap paneling, a large T.V. built into the wall, crummy portrait of the homeowner , phones with six lines, hunting knife, everything but the head of a deer… Here were the tools of his domination of the Western world for five years. Here were the telltale signs of the Texas farm boy from Southwest Texas State Teachers College, overcompensating so that he could overcome in his own mind the fact that he was not like a Kennedy.”
The enduring weirdness of past greats is of course our endless obsession at Presidents”R”Us. True LBJ completests should check out a brief-lived but commendable effort at Minor Tweaks, where an impressive collection of Johnson oddities was accumulated in a short period.
“We’ve all had stories that didn’t come out exactly as we had hoped.” 
FOX News’s John Moody provides a stirring summation of the Bush Administration while explaining his hire of Pulitzer Prize-winning Judith “The Conduit” Miller.
Bulletin! Update! Moody Rhythms Strike Again!
“Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old white volunteer for John McCain’s presidential campaign, says she was mugged at an ATM machine in Pittsburgh (my hometown) by a big black man. She further says he threw her down, then disfigured her by carving the letter “B†into her face with a sharp implement when he saw that she supported McCain, not Barack Obama.
Part of the appeal of, and the unspoken tension behind, Senator Obama’s campaign is his transformational status as the first African-American to win a major party’s presidential nomination.
That does not mean that he has erased the mutual distrust between black and white Americans, and this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.
If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.
If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.”
And Lo, It Came To Be
Transparency claims another victim 
Ford’s Theater announced last year that it would morph into a center for the study of Lincoln leadership, teaching timeless lessons in the shadow of a Disneyfied assassination site.
Now the glorious plans are unfolding, and an early casualty of”opening up” Ford’s may be the bloody clothes Lincoln wore the night he was shot. Conservators complain that the Theatre’s plans to display them in its fancy new lobby will allow ultraviolet rays to slowly destroy the garments.
But “producing director” Paul Tetreault says the show will go on. And Presidential museum enabler Richard Norton Smith says you can’t have a pilgrimage without relics.
