Monthly Archives: January 2009

Helen Thomas on the Inauguration speech

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44 Takes Office with Blunt Rejection of 43

Looking westward into the sun and speaking to more than 1 million people on the Mall in front of him and to millions more around the world, President Barack Obama delivered a tough inaugural speech that must have made members of the outgoing Bush administration squirm in their chairs.

After thanking President George W. Bush for his service to the nation and for helping during the presidential transition, Obama veered sharply, offering no attempt at sugar-coating, no deeper genuflection toward the Bushes, who left the Capitol by helicopter soon after Obama’s blunt speech and headed for Texas.

Instead, Obama hit his theme early and often in his 18-minute address: The presidential inaugural oath is sometimes taken “amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.” Now is one of those times, he said.

Obama declared “we are in the midst of crisis” and recounted wars, a badly weakened economy that he blamed on greed on the part of some and “also on our collective failure to make hard choices.”

Homes have been lost, jobs shed, business shuttered, he recounted. Health care is too costly, schools fail too many students and we waste our energy.

There was no affable reference to Bush’s eight years in office or mention of the wonders of the Bush legacy, nothing warm and fuzzy. It was a putdown, a repudiation of the Bush years.

Obama was just warming up.

Aside from these “indicators of crisis,” the nation is on an emotional downer. Our national confidence has been sapped, Obama said, and there is a nagging fear “that America’s decline is inevitable and that the next generation must lower its sights.”

OK, having painted the gathering gloom, the new president told what was needed to get out of it. Citing past sacrifices by Americans, Obama declared: “This is the journey we continue today.”

While the challenges facing us are serious and many and will not be met easily or quickly, Obama defiantly proclaimed: “But know this, America — they will be met.”

Read the rest of her piece here.

Obama inauguration speech a homerun

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CommonDreams, by Naomi Wolf

President Obama is a class act.  He told Americans the truth — that things will be difficult, but they are well worth doing — and we cheered.  He stood right in front of George W. Bush, and in no uncertain terms declared, “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” — and then he moved into his house.

Here’s Naomi Wolf’s take on the speech:

I know that Barack Obama is incredibly smart, and it’s not that I’m surprised that he gave a fantastic speech. But I’ve been following American politics for a long time, and sometimes you see something that works on so many levels that you kind of have to gasp at its sophistication.

This speech marked a sharp line in the sand, breaking overtly with the past administration. That message was clear and intentional. It is a much more confrontational approach than ­inauguration speeches have typically been in America. I am overjoyed.

I thought Obama did three things impressively. Firstly, he sounded a note of our dire circumstances that was in line with a reality that many have been in denial about. That is technically ­brilliant, because he’s inheriting a mess, and he’s telling people, “We’re not going to dig ourselves out of this easily.” But also, “Don’t blame me for it all.”

The second was that he reasserted the primacy of the constitution and the rule of law. With Bush sitting behind him, that was like showtime at the OK Corral. I have written in the past that it is going to take a grassroots movement to support him in reasserting the rule of law, because there are so many vested interests that stand opposed to it. But that was a shot across the bows.

Thirdly, most amazingly, I feel that he dialled down the threat level of the US with just a few sentences. He reached out a hand to the Muslim world. For Obama to say, “I’m not going to demonise you” – that is extraordinarily stabilising.

Reality — it’s a good thing.

Read the rest of Wolf’s article here.

Praying for American Failure

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The wingnuts are at it again. Today, Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America. During the day which ushers in a new era, the right remains firmly entrenched in ideology with their own version of hope: hope that the Obama presidency fails.

From Limbaugh (via Washington Monthly):

On his radio show last Friday, Limbaugh said, “I disagree fervently with the people on our [Republican] side of the aisle who have caved and who say, ‘Well, I hope he succeeds.’”

Limbaugh told his listeners that he was asked by “a major American print publication” to offer a 400-word statement explaining his “hope for the Obama presidency.” He responded:

“So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, ‘Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.’ (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’ Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: ‘Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.’ Somebody’s gotta say it.”

From the blog RedState (don’t click the link unless you absolutely have to, I hate to give them any hits.  Remember, I read wingnut sites so you don’t have to.):

Many sensible centrists and conservatives – even among those who did not vote for Obama – have expressed a willingness to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. They say, for the sake of the country, that they hope that Obama will make a good President. It’s a natural enough sentiment, I guess; people like for the trains to run on time. I will agree with it in this one respect: I hope that he keeps the country safe from a terrorist attack.

Beyond that, however, I hope that Barack Obama is a failure as a President.

Before you recoil in horror that I could express such a sentiment, allow me to remind you what the pleasant face and smooth rhetoric hide in the case of Barack Obama: they hide a morally depraved and crooked man. A man who, in the midst of a discussion about infants left to die without medical care on an operating table, blithely explained that he was more concerned about the grisly prospect of one abortion doctor second-guessing another abortion doctor (presumably Obama supported eliminating medical malpractice suits in Illinois, and such support was tragically lost to posterity). A man who used his position of authority in the Senate to funnel money forcibly extricated from taxpayers to his wife’s employer, and interests friendly to his Presidential campaign bundlers. A man who has gotten to his position of power by climbing the greasiest and dirtiest ladder in all of politics.
…
And as for myself, because I know who Barack Obama is and what he really stands for, I will oppose everything he does, and I will do so from day one. Who among you will join me?

No, I, for one, will not join you. I think Steve Benen says it best:

No, I don’t think Americans have to root against the country. If Obama fails, we fail. If his presidency falls short, there are negative consequences for all of us.

This is the opposite of patriotism.

Indeed.

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Olbermann: Don’t ignore Bush’s torture confession

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Raw Story

On the eve of the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann delivered perhaps his most heartfelt argument yet for prosecuting high administration officials who authorized torture.

As Olbermann explained in a diary at Daily Kos shortly before delivering his Special Comment, “The prosecution of torture might not have to be the first priority; it might not have to be a sweeping event consuming the nation, but we must have a catharsis. Most importantly, the great and tragic events of our history have proven that the failure to achieve such a catharsis, the failure to atone, has its own tragic, long-range consequences.”

“We have tortured people, you and I,” Olbermann said in beginning his Special Comment. “This is the people’s democracy, we are the people, these are our elected officials. That they did not come to us and ask to act thusly in our names is unfortunate, indeed criminal, but it is also almost irrelevant. They work for us, and they have tortured people, and so we have tortured people.”

Read more…

Transcript at Crooks & Liars.

PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA!

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Barack Obama has taken the oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States.

The former state and national legislator was sworn in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, with a crowd of up to 2 million people gathered on the National Mall and an estimated 1 billion others watching on television around the globe.

See also:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

Today’s Header – Open Thread

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Our header is one of two oil studies for murals originally commissioned by the United States government and created by Barry Faulkner in 1936 for the National Archives building. We chose this image to represent the return of our government from a monarchy to a Constitutional republic.

The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States (our header) were murals created by Barry Faulkner (1881-1966).

For details go here

Please feel free to provide your own comments and, of course, read what transcends as this historic day goes on in posts below.

I Can Be Cheery Now

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Like many Americans today, I feel completely different when I look at the White House now. I feel proud again.

I also feel silly, too, so here is Johnny Nash to help celebrate the new administration of President Barack Obama.

I Can Be Cheery Now
Original Words and Music “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash,
Additional Lyrics by Wayne A. Schneider 2009

I can be cheery now, disdain is gone.
Continue reading →

The first urban president?

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Well, maybe not the “first” but certainly the first one in recent memory to be obviously urban (and urbane). Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight.com (and Baseball Prospectus, which is the gold standard for stat-loving baseball fans and analysts), makes a great case that Barack Obama’s election marks a sea change in how Americans vote and where they vote from. If Republicans could learn real self-awareness, they might take note that the “Real America” and shit-kicking aw shucks “All hat and no horse” sales pitch may be a thing of the past. Since one of Nate Silver’s gifts is the ability to render statistics into something vaguely resembling English, it’s well worth reading the entire Esquire article.

Like many incoming presidents, Barack Obama was elected partly in reaction to the failures of the previous one, a president who was dogmatic, insecure, white-bread, and — at least ostensibly — rural. By contrast, Obama is unmistakably urban: pragmatic, superior, hip, stubborn, multicultural. But Obama’s election may also represent something more — if not a sign that America’s psyche has changed then at least that its demographics are on the move. We may still romanticize some of the more familiar, rurally oriented narratives of presidents past: the Ronald Reagan frontiersman caricature (which both Sarah Palin and John McCain tried to co-opt at various times) or the Bill Clinton born-in-a-small-town shtick (see also: Edwards, John; Huckabee, Mike). Fewer and fewer of us, however, have actually lived those experiences. In 1992, when Bill Clinton won his first term, 35 percent of American voters were identified as rural according to that year’s national exit polls, and 24 percent as urban. This year, however, the percentage of rural voters has dropped to 21 percent, while that of urban voters has climbed to 30. The suburbs, meanwhile, have been booming: 41 percent of America’s electorate in 1992, they represent 49 percent now (see chart).

In other words, if you are going to pit big cities against small towns, it is probably a mistake to end up on the rural side of the ledger. Last year, Obama accumulated a margin of victory of approximately 10.5 million votes in urban areas (see chart), far bettering John Kerry’s 3.6 million. Obama improved his performance not only among black and Latino voters but also among urban whites, with whom he performed 9 points better than Kerry. Obama also won each of the seventeen most densely populated states, a list that includes such nontraditional battlegrounds as Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana. (One hidden advantage of urban areas: They’re easier to canvass to get the vote out.) By contrast, for all their bluster about small towns, John McCain and Sarah Palin beat Obama by just 2.4 million votes in rural areas, actually a bit worse than the 4.3-million-vote margin that Bush racked up in 2004.

Important dates in the short life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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I thought I’d go ahead and re-run my post from last Martin Luther King, Jr Day, especially because of the fact that tomorrow this country will inaugurate it’s first African-American President.  I think Dr King would be so proud…

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I was thinking last night about all the things Martin Luther King, Jr. accomplished in his life, and remembered that his life was cut short at the age of 39. I decided to look for a timeline of Dr. King’s life, and found an amazing wealth of information. Here are some key items I plucked from his lifetime:

1929 – Born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15 to Alberta Williams King and Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr.

1944 – Dr. King attended Booker T. Washington High School and left before graduation due to his acceptance and early admission in Atlanta’s Morehouse College program for advanced placement in the Fall of 1944. He was 15 years of age.

1946 – The U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in interstate bus travel on June 3.

1947 – “Freedom Riders” made up of an interracial group tested the laws of interstate bus travel in the segregated South, April 9.

1947 – Dr. King decided to become a minister and delivered his first prepared sermon in his father’s church, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, at age 18.

1948 – Dr. King was ordained as a Baptist minister and received his B.A. degree in Sociology from Morehouse College in June at the age of 19.

1951 – Dr. King graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary with his B.D. degree at age 22 in June.

1953 – Dr. King married Coretta Scott on June 18.

1954 – Dr. King became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Church in Montgomery, Alabama on October 31

1955 – Dr. King received his Ph.D in Systematic Theology from Boston University on June 5. Continue reading →