Inaugural Commentary

It is absolutely true Obama's inauguration Tuesday was a triumph of the civil rights of African Americans while at the same time the good ol' patriarchy is still in place.

It probably will be fifty years at least before a woman becomes president after almost every other country in the world has had one. The 2008 campaign was a shameful example of sexism at work, some 40 years after the second wave of feminism supposedly changed people's minds about women's roles and their place on the world stage.
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Obama has barely been in office two days, yet the pundits are trying to analyze how effective of a president he is.

Not even I, who has been highly critical of Obama in the past, am that presumptuous to either call him the second coming of FDR or to write off his presidency.

Of course the media should do its job:

A lot of people, and not just conservatives, think the media have rolled over for Obama. I've certainly been critical of the coverage at times. But what's past is prologue. If journalists don't start holding the 44th president accountable -- in the same way the left wanted us to hold George W. Bush accountable -- we will have defaulted on our mission. It will be bad for the country, and bad for Obama. He didn't run as a black candidate. He ran as a politician who happened to be black. And so our journalism must be color-blind as well.

As we know, the media by and large NEVER held Bush accountable for anything, while at the same time reporters and pundits held Bill Clinton accountable for EVERYTHING from the time he was in utero. Why is Kurtz wringing his hands over the media possibly not doing their job on Obama? The media haven't done their job in years.
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Here is another commentary from the WSWS about Obama's inaugural address:

Most popular among this socio-political layer were the sections of the speech suggesting that the economic collapse precipitated by Wall Street is the fault of the American people as a whole, who now must accept sacrifice in the interests of the nation. In particular, they fastened on the lines about a “new era of responsibility” and the financial meltdown being the result of “greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”

Columnist George Will, who hosted Obama at a pre-inauguration dinner with other right-wing commentators, praised in particular his use of the Biblical phrase, “The time has come to set aside childish things,” interpreting it as an admonition to the vast majority of the American people for demanding “more goods and services than they are willing to pay for.” Driven by his contempt for working people, Will happily endorses the demand that they give up such “childish things” as the belief that they have a right to a job, a home, health care and a decent income.

That's why the alarm bells went off in my head when I listened to him.
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Here is some good commentary mentioning some New Deal revisionism and also Obama's swiping words and phrases from other people.

And yes, it is true Obama is not a great orator. He's okay, but in listening to him and listening to other presidents' speeches, he doesn't particularly stand out. Bill Clinton for one was and is a much better orator when not running overtime.

Joe Biden

has been sworn in. Obama should take his oath in a matter of minutes.

9:06 PST: Obama has been sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts fluffled his lines a little bit, but Obama was sworn in.

The Speech is underway. Technically, Barack, just 43 people have taken the office; Grover Cleveland had two nonconsecutive terms.

I will post the speech when it becomes available.

Despite Some Kool-Aid Nonsense

about Obama's alleged oratorial talent, this post has some good points and agrees with my contention about compromising with the GOP assholes, especially in the Senate:

I believe that there are valuable lessons to be learned by the outcomes of these conciliatory presidencies. They were wholly ineffective in bringing about reconciliation and the nation suffered greatly by the compromises and failures by the more beneficent party (ALWAYS the Democrats)

Further lessons can be learned by looking at the presidency of Jimmy Carter, another conciliator who was thwarted at every turn by the obstructionists whose strength arose from Carter's conciliation. Everything Carter wanted to do was what we needed, and although he is not remembered this way, his policies were a HUGE success, the credit for which Reagan successfully stole. That effort to include the other side in our doings was painted by those very same opponents as weakness and, to our great discomfort, he was defeated when he ran for reelection, precisely as a direct result of his unwillingness to engage in strongarm tactics.

And, perhaps more importantly and relevantly, lessons should be taken from the most successful presidency in our entire history, that of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was NOT a conciliator by any definition, attacking the Republicans and their robber baron constituency boldly and bluntly at every turn. He made no pretense at reconciliation, preferring instead to move America in the direction it needed to go.

Roosevelt took office under conditions very similar to what we face today. We will fail if we give strength to our opponents through compromise and conciliation. We must do what is RIGHT, not what we think will stop their whining. NOTHING will stop their whining, and we cannot permit the media and the American people to give any weight to this whining by incorporating it into our policies and programs now. The Boehners and McConnells of our political landscape and their desire to obstruct and destroy whatever we try to build have to be belittled, despised, demonized, just as they have so routinely done to us, and their influence must be reduced to a universally ridiculed nothingness, nothing more than a mote in the eye of the body politic.

There is no strength in weakness. If Obama really wants to hit the ground running, he needs to come out swinging to clear the road ahead.

Absolutely, but given Obama's penchant for asskissing the other side, I ain't hopeful. Let's hope he doesn't.

Live Steaming of the Inauguration

is here, if you can stand the insufferable Keith Olbermann:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Other networks are televising it as well. The temperature is colder than a pile of polar bear shit in Washington.

Frankly, I am going to skip that nauseating crap from MSNBC. I will look at C-SPAN, if I can access it, or CBS.

Inaugural Madness

The AP's Ron Edmonds decided to take a picture of the crowd at the Washington Mall early this morning to demonstrate just how huge the crowds are for Obama's inauguration. It is certainly a triumph of hope and wishful thinking on the part of the masses to think Obama can magically turn things around. I remain a skeptic though I wish him the best of luck. He better rely heavily on Joe Biden, who DOES know his stuff even if he tends to make verbal gaffes.

The Inauguration

The wealthy, of course, get the plum seats and the best treatment.

If I am still alive in 2013, and the Democratic candidate/president is inaugurated, I will try to be there in person.