red sky in the morning~Chris Tatro (sendoutcards.com/site) photo

Hello and a red sky good morning to everyone! There’s a 20% chance of rain for our area in the form of thunderstorms. It would be exciting to have the rain but we don’t need any lightening.

Speaking of excitement, Chris and I awoke at sunrise to a stunning sight. Every window facing East was ablaze with blues, pinks, and oranges. It was a fast changing light show of rippled clouds that got redder and redder with the sun’s climb.

You know what they say, though: Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.

red sky sunrise

Speaking of warnings, I just watched a handful of young Black protesters in  Coral Gables, Florida interrupt a Barack O’bama campaign speech.  They were holding scribbled signs that linked this dark-skinned man to the Ku Klux Klan.

I guess all the red skies we’ve been seeing these last couple years weren’t kidding.  Everything seems to have gone haywire—we’re poised for a storm, the likes of which most of us have never seen.

Trying to link the KKK with Obama just doesn’t make any sense, though.  Having grown up in the South, I’m very familiar with the Ku Klux Klan and its pinpoint focus, i.e. against everybody but White Anglo Saxon Protestant Rednecks (WASPR).  Could they have changed that much? I don’t think so.

A red-faced Klansman of monumental girth and meanness lived on my street. As fathers went, he was the scariest by far.  Late, one Friday evening, I saw him waddle out to the family Pontiac wearing what looked to be a long, white mu mu.  He was in a hurry but stopped long enough to model his tall, white pointy hat with eye-slits for us. Did he ever look dumb driving away with half that mu mu hanging out his car door.

Though his values live on, the neighbor died a long time ago—he died of a gigantic heart attack. For good or ill, that KKK image of him burned itself into my memory banks. This was the very same redneck who stormed in our back door like a clumsy bull one Saturday morning because my sister had invited a ‘Negro’ schoolmate home to bake some chocolate chip cookies.

Moving on. It’s a mystery to me how African American protesters (mostly male) could put Obama and the Klan in the same thought, much less the same sign.  Someone must have done their thinking for them. After searching the web, I found out more about these strange protesters: “Blacks Against Obama,” they call themselves—and they’re even against Oprah.

Ideologically speaking, the young black dudes are all over the place.  A couple of them said  Obama was “endorsed by the KKK.” Others said he was for abortion and gay marriage.  Still another sign read, “Jesse Jackson hates Obama.”

According to the article I found, Obama knew these protesters were in the crowd. He originally said they could stay inside and listen to his speech.  But the kids had to be escorted to the door when they wouldn’t stop shouting.

I find Obama’s equitable behavior laudably fair, seeing that McCain would not have allowed any known dissenters within five hundred yards of him.  What I don’t understand is how these African American protesters made the odd leap about the KKK backing Obama for President: Not under any circumstance, past, present or future, would the Klan support an African American for anything.  Unlike most things these days, that you can bank on.

If anyone needs some historic reminders of KKK activities, here’s a weird one from the early 1920′s.  I found an astounding article about the KKK’s political takeover of Anaheim, California.  Yes, folks, Anaheim as in Disneyland.  The KKK had plans to make this mostly white town a ‘model klan city’. Follow the link for more info.

Twentieth Century crossburning in Anaheim, California

Back to Obama:  I worry that race will be the deciding factor.

My eighty-eight year old daddy, for example, grew up in the bottom lands of Mississippi, just a bit southeast of Memphis.  His mother was Choctaw and Irish; his daddy was Cherokee and English.  Neither family owned land after the ‘white’ man came. They were the kind of Native Americans that intermarried and became sharecroppers.

My daddy is one of those American success stories, though.  He grew up to be small business owner and a middle class citizen.  Recently I asked him about politics and his answer made me really sad.  I found out that Daddy will never vote for an African American; never mind that Obama is half-white, or what used to be called ‘high yellow‘.

What you’ve got to understand, folks, is this: My daddy is not a total redneck, especially in the Lady Rothschild sense of the word. This is the very same ‘Daddy’ who stood up for my sister’s right to have an African American friend; the same ‘Daddy’ who went out to the car and shook the hand of the ‘colored’ girl’s daddy when he dropped her off in broad daylight in our all white neighborhood; the same ‘Daddy’ who loaded his shotgun because the KKK neighbor threatened to burn a cross in our front yard, the same Republican-voting ‘Daddy’ who said he would vote for Hilary Clinton just a few months back.

I am so disappointed—so disappointed to have to admit that Daddy can’t make that final step to freedom.  If it’s in his DNA, thankfully it didn’t get passed on. All his five kids are liberal as heck.

Too many oxymorons spoil the stew.