Somemore on Our New President

Frank Rich:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/opinion/18rich.html?_r=1&em

And:

"Next to much of our history, this is small stuff. And yet: Of all the coverage of Obama’s victory, the most accurate take may still be the piquant morning-after summation of the satirical newspaper The Onion. Under the headline “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job,” it reported that our new president will have “to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind.”

Those messes are enormous, bigger than Washington, bigger than race, bigger than anything most of us have ever seen. Nearly three months after Election Day, it remains astonishing that the American people have entrusted the job to a young black man who seemed to come out of nowhere looking for that kind of work just as we most needed him.

“In no other country on earth is my story even possible,” Obama is fond of saying. That is true, and that is what the country celebrates this week. But it is all the tragic American stories that came before him, some of them still playing out in chilly streets just blocks from the White House, that throw both his remarkable triumph and the huge challenge ahead of him into such heart-stopping relief."

Barack Obama

So tomorrow is the day. Our favorite president elect will become our 44th president. He will also be the first African American president. I don't usually write about politics (unless of course you believe all writing and/or expression is political) and want to apologize in advance if this is annoying.

There is something so emotionally overwhelming about Barack. I don't know but I am taken aback by it. In the January 19th New Yorker, there is this amazing photo and interview exerts from 1996 of and with Michelle and Barack. It is incredibly intimate and honest and real. And that is what gets me. I can't believe he is going to be at the helm of our great nation.

I recently had been sort of over him. Like when he chose all those experienced, ivy-leaugers to fill his cabinate and realizing that the kind of change I am imagining in no way could come from within our system. And I was thinking the problems he is inherting are so large that anything he does is will be judged as failure. And that he was too well marketed. (Naomi Klien...) And being annoyed at the emails I still get asking for money.

This morning I talked to both of my grandpas. And the republican one started a conversation about tomorrow. And he said, "Well at least we all know he is smart." Yeah. He is smart. And he is fucked and our country is fucked.

I am remembering back now to November 4. I did not think he could win. And when he did. When they called the election at just after 8pm pacific time, not only did he win, he dominated. Totally killed it. I was surprised. I was setting myself up for disappointment. And here I am now doing the same thing. So, I am taking an active of role in no expectations. Nothing. Just Bush leaving is amazing. Anything President Obama does on top will be even better. So I guess I will end it with god bless america. Here we go, another moment we will test this thing called democracy.

And also I love how the US is pulling a 3rd world by having Obama heads all over tshirts, posters, buildings, buttons, flags...

Hill-Dog

Although I am 100% for Mr. Obama...

This quote from HRC last night really hit home:

“The hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country,” she said. “And I resolved at a very young age that I’d been blessed, and that I was called by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted.”