Anyway…

Hey, it just goes to show you, if you work hard and apply yourself, one day you can become king of Uganda…

For years, Charles Wesley Mumbere worked as a nurse's aide in Maryland and Pennsylvania, caring for the elderly and sick. No one there suspected that he had inherited a royal title in his African homeland when he was just 13.

On Monday, after years of political upheaval and financial struggle, Mumbere, 56, was finally crowned king of his people to the sound of drumbeats and thousands of cheering supporters wearing cloth printed with his portraits.

Now I just have to wait for Ian to inherit a royal title that I can lift, and I'm totally in there!

He's got an interesting background. He's like a fictional character, but he's real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace.

And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage — cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it's just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you're into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.

Not bad. But I still prefer his old character sketches from before he went electric.

Developing…

Incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel left on Tuesday for a "long planned family vacation in Africa," a transition official confirmed to the Huffington Post…

Transition officials did not specify where in Africa he went, though another source said the family would be going on a safari. Nevertheless, it's an interesting choice for a holiday vacation.

At least Emanuel was smart enough to chose an actual other continent.

Barack Obama made the very common mistake of assuming he was leaving the country by going to Hawaii.

According to Cameron, campaign insiders allege…

* Palin couldn't name the three countries in NAFTA.

* She refused preparation for the Katie Couric interview. (You don't say?)

* She threw temper tantrums when faced with bad press clippings.

* She had some very interesting beliefs about Africa…

According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked "a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency," in part because she didn't know which countries were in NAFTA, and she "didn't understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a country just in itself."

That's right: A country, not a continent.

And yet still not as bad as her husband, Todd, who until 2002 seemed equally convinced that Alaska was a country, not a state.

There are currently 53 countries in the African continent.

There have been exactly zero United States presidents with blood ties to any of them.

(Actually, technically speaking, 43 of our presidents have had blood ties to them.)

Go Back to Day 54.