44th President Barack Obama

I watched the inauguration this morning, the turnout was estimated at two million people showing up and cheering as Barack Obama was sworn in as the next President of the United States. As always, he gave a good speech, one that will be quoted from and dissected in the days to come. More important for myself, was learning that Mr Obama is a fellow left-hander...

Barack Obama has become a symbol of hope to many Americans, beyond being the first Black man to become President. Its hope that the way we do politics in this country is changing, the way that we do business will change, and the way that our military will perceive their role will change. It's going beyond Democratic ideologies or Republican ideologies, changing into a pragmatic ideology that finds solutions that will work. Think of Congress as an idea buffet...

The last few years have been too stressful because we have built for ourselves a culture composed of fear. The incidents on 9/11 shocked us and filled us with grief; Mr Bush then set us on the course of two wars to combat terrorism, which did nothing but create more fear and caused thousands of many needless deaths.

Morgan Spurlock, in his book, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? gives us the statistics that during the time period "from the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 through 2005, about 3,200 American civilians died in terrorist attacks, 2,973 of them on the single day of September 11, 2001. In that same period, in round numbers:

. about 700,000 Americans died of heart disease

. roughly 600,000 Americans died of cancer

. nearly 500,000 Americans died in car accidents

. about 200,000 died in homicides

. nearly 150,000 died after falls

. almost 40,000 people drowned

. and more Americans were killed by police officers -almost 4,000 - than by terrorists."

Politicians, and especially the Republican Party dominated by the right wing ideology, have used that fear to keep people distracted, cowed, and obedient. It has also kept donations flowing into right wing policy institutes and other foundations set up to siphon off our money. And, as Mr Spurlock states: "the government hasn't just kept us in a panic; the government itself has been in a panic."

So, its time to change from the way we have been conducting government for the past 20 years, roll up our sleeves, and figure out how to get ourselves out of this fine mess we have gotten ourselves into. And I say this with all due respect to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy...