Score one for the 'bama

As a knock on to my earlier post about the Presidential Oath of Office, I'm happy to note that President Obama got together with Chief Justice Roberts and they did their oath thing all the way through without a hitch. Of course people are bitching (a) that there were no press photographers present and (b) that he didn't swear on the Bible. But, he fairly well put to rest the paranoid few who were going to make an issue of the original oath taking. I'm glad he did that. Otherwise we'd have to listen to the moaning for weeks.

But that's not why the President is getting an 'atta boy' from me. It's because he ordered the closing of the Guantanamo military prison. Those of you that know me are probably surprised that I'd not want to keep that murdering bunch of terrorists safely locked up until Cuba sinks into the sea. Under normal circumstances, you'd be right. But our president is not letting them go. He's going to transfer them, he thinks, here to the mainland.

Of course, lots of people, including congressmen, governors, and other bottom dwellers, have ostracised GW Bush for putting those people there in the first place. But, now as the chickens come home to roost -- or in a more appropriate metaphor: the carrion-picking vultures begin to perch -- those same people are saying, "Oh, wait -- not in MY prison." Gosh, that's a shock.

So, I'm happy that this deal is going to make the people who love to gripe but don't want to do anything about it, start putting their money, or at least their prison systems, where their mouth is.

But that's not what I'm really happy about.

What I really hope happens is that they put these guys from Guantanamo into the general prison population in say, San Quentin or Attica -- preferably in the Aryan Nation cell blocks. The GitMo experience will seem like the good ol' days to the terrorists in no time.

So, well done, Mr President. So long as you're not turning those bastards loose, close that baby down, and let them have a little prison hospitality in our 'hood -- for as long as they last.

Faithfully yours ...

I don't know for whom I felt sorrier yesterday: President Barack Obama or Chief Justice John Roberts (what a great name). Everything else about the day had probably been choreographed to the n-th degree. And then it came time for the Presidential Oath of Office -- a grand total of about 35 words. Obviously no one had earlier put the President and the Chief Justice in the same room for five minutes and said, "OK, you two do a dress rehearsal. I know, I know. It's dirt simple and you've both memorized the Oath, but just do it. You know stuff happens." And they didn't and then it did.

Roberts got thrown off when the President interrupted and started repeating the words "I, Barack Hussein ..." before Roberts was ready for him to begin. That gives Roberts one too many things to think about and so he proceeds to change the wording of the oath from that dictated in the Constitution. I thought the look on the President's face was priceless: You STUPID sonofabich. Now what the heck am I supposed to do? Say it incorrectly like you just quoted, or say it the way I know it's written? So the President starts in and then Roberts compounds the problem by interrupting the President. President Obama eventually elected to choose some from each side of the menu: failing to repeat the oath as written and yet not repeating exactly what Roberts had asked him to say. I bet President Obama thought when it was mercifully over, Great. Four minutes into the world's most difficult job and I've already fouled up. Well, the good news is that the press corp (and blog writers) won't have to make something up to write about.

Or maybe he thought, It's like a new car. You drive like you're on eggs until you get the first dent and from that point on, you just motor on down the road -- worrying more about where you're going than worrying about denting the car. I've had my first dent, so look out world: I'm comin'.

And then I had to laugh because one of the TV news reporters mused out loud about whether the President was really the President since the Oath was not correctly administered. Oath or no oath, the man was President from noon yesterday per 20th Amendment to the Constitution. The reporter should've known that.

I've already been reading that the white conservatives are going to take it to court about whether the Presidency is all legal or not. HELLO! Who are you going to take your case to? The Supreme Court? Like John Roberts's Supreme Court? Well, I wonder how THAT'S going to turn out?

Maybe I'm not listening in the right places but it also wouldn't surprise me if some people are saying, "Just another example of the white guy messing with the black guy."

I should say that President Obama was gracious to Roberts when asked about the oath taking later, saying something like, "Oh, you know, we were both nervous .... yada, yada."

My final thought: I'm glad it wasn't me up there in either role. I'd've probably forgotten all the words, puked, and then passed out. Mr. President, things are never so bad they couldn't be worse. Go drive that car like crazy.

Democracy

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." -- W Churchill

My father every four or eight years would say, "What's happening today is really amazing. In only a handful of places in the world does a government completely change, and there is no fear, no armies on the streets, no dead predecessors. The outgoing guy just hands over to the incoming guy and life goes on." So I'm celebrating today in honor of my dad because, once again, I think he's right.

I think President-elect Obama's been horribly over-hyped. I'm almost going to feel sorry for him when the honeymoon is over and people begin to realize that he isn't a saint. He's just a fairly smart guy with limited political experience who's willingly thrown himself in the deep end. As comedian Chris Rock said, you can't even make fun of the guy. It's like: "Ooh, you're young and virile and you've got a beautiful wife and kids. You're the first African-American president." What else are you going to say? Rock goes on, though, by saying that eventually President Obama will screw up and then the comedians will get on him and the rest of us can take off the rose-colored glasses.

I read in another article that it has taken 44 years since the voting rights act passed for an African-American to become the 44th President. I hear people saying that Martin King's 'dream' is becoming a reality. I thought about that some days ago sitting in a restaurant here in Houston. It was an ethnically diverse group ... to the extreme. There was even a Russian among us. For a period of my life back at least in part of the 60s and certainly in the 50s, that mixing would never have happened. We have come a long way and if electing Senator Obama gets people to admit it, it's a good thing.

And the last bit of my political diatribe: The United States of America does make progress. We move forward. The rest of the world at times hates us because we mess up their comfortable status quo. We don't always move forward in the the right direction, but generally we look ahead. I contrast that with other countries who have dipped their toe into democratic waters, gotten scared and turned back to the safety of a somewhat benign dictator. People who long for socialism to keep them safe at the expense of moving forward.

Thanks, but I'll take the worst form of government over all the others, especially the US version.

Good luck, Barack. You're gonna need it. But your country will face forward with you, like we always do.