Surreality TV

There's been a lot of press about the Harvard prof. who got arrested for effectively forgetting his keys. Now, I'm sure he was being a dick to the cop towards the end, but seriously, you would too if you had shown proof of residence and made it clear that you lived in the property in question and the officer hadn't told you to have a nice day and went on to do some real work.

Now, the question I have about this whole thing? Which one of his fucking neighbors called the cops on him in the first place? I may not know all my neighbors, but I see them enough to recognize them and wouldn't feel the need to call the cops if one had locked their self out of their house.

Yes, the police were stupid to arrest him, and yeah, he was stupid to get in a verbal confrontation with a police officer (you don't provoke them, even when you're right...especially when you're right, because they hate that...if they were normal and rational people, they wouldn't have become a cop), but I still can't fathom which of his neighbors felt the need to be so big a dick as to call the cops in the first place.

I do not own any monkeys.

Since we live just outside DC, we of course watched the Inauguration on our big fucking TV from the warmth of our living room. Only crazy people from far away or folks who actually lived near the mall were silly enough to watch it on a big ass TV while freezing their asses off outside on the Mall in JANUARY. It was twenty something out there yesterday. The people who were close enough to actually see and hear the thing with out needing the benefit of the jumbo trons didn't have tickets. They didn't need them. The next closest people had tickets. There were only two hundred and forty thousand of them and I'm pretty sure even most of them couldn't see or hear shit.

The Mall was packed from the steps of the Capitol to the Washington Monument. The area around the Reflecting pool looked mostly empty (you can't see anything from there and there isn't anywhere to put the big TVs), and then the Lincoln Memorial was packed. Those people were two miles from the steps of the Capitol. I hope they brought their binoculars.

Okay, some actual thoughts on the event instead of on the crazy peepsicles.

When the VIPs were being brought out from the Rotunda/Crypt and I saw Michelle Obama's mom coming down those steps, I could only wonder what was going through her head. The year her daughter was born, the Civil Rights Act would be passed, but at the time a black man could still find himself swinging from a tree for just trying to register to vote. And here she was, watching her daughter about to become First Lady. The parents of her son in law, you know, the one about to take the oath of office to become President of the US, wouldn't have been considered legally married in quite a few states when he was born (Full Faith and Credit? What's that? Never heard of it...).

I know some of you may not think so, but it IS a big thing, if for no other reason than it shows how far we've come in the 44 years since LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act into law. All those older black men and women who had fire hoses and dogs trained on them, or watched it on the evening news? I think they had every right to be moved seeing the culmination of decades of activism come to fruition.

Obama wasn't elected because he's black, he was elected DESPITE that fact (because racism is not dead in America. It has gone underground or put on a suit and tie to be more appealing, but kids, it's still here).

Now, on to the speechifying.

A lot of the talking heads didn't think much of Obama's speech yesterday. Fuck them. He already won. He doesn't need to sway us to vote for him anymore. His speech yesterday was still pretty damn good. After eight years of watching Bush fumble just trying to get a coherent sentence out of his mouth, watching a President who could give a speech off a teleprompter without fucking it up would be an improvement, but Obama goes far beyond that. The man doesn't even use note cards. He has that shit memorized, practiced, and knows how to give a solid delivery of even the most mundane topics.

I was glad to hear what he had to say.

That whole bit about not sacrificing our founding principles for political expediency or security? Very welcome bit of rhetoric, after the last eight years of fear mongering.

Us nonbelievers actually got a shout out!

It was a veiled threat, but hey, guess what Wall Street, the regulators are coming back!

We're actually going to use some diplomacy in dealing with foreign nations. Even the ones we don't necessarily like!

There was more, but the big message was that guess what, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and if we want to get out of the messes we're in, it's going to require actually taking some responsibility and doing some work.

It was no 'The only thing we have to fear...' or 'Ask not what your country can do for you...' speech, but contrary to talking head opinion, it didn't suck either.

Now, Mr. President, the only real Hope I have attached to this is that you actually meant what you said, and can carry through on at least some of it. I've posted previously on Congress making you their bitch if you annoy them too much.

Since we live just outside DC, we of course watched the Inauguration on our big fucking TV from the warmth of our living room. Only crazy people from far away or folks who actually lived near the mall were silly enough to watch it on a big ass TV while freezing their asses off outside on the Mall in JANUARY. It was twenty something out there yesterday. The people who were close enough to actually see and hear the thing with out needing the benefit of the jumbo trons didn't have tickets. They didn't need them. The next closest people had tickets. There were only two hundred and forty thousand of them and I'm pretty sure even most of them couldn't see or hear shit.

The Mall was packed from the steps of the Capitol to the Washington Monument. The area around the Reflecting pool looked mostly empty (you can't see anything from there and there isn't anywhere to put the big TVs), and then the Lincoln Memorial was packed. Those people were two miles from the steps of the Capitol. I hope they brought their binoculars.

Okay, some actual thoughts on the event instead of on the crazy peepsicles.

When the VIPs were being brought out from the Rotunda/Crypt and I saw Michelle Obama's mom coming down those steps, I could only wonder what was going through her head. The year her daughter was born, the Civil Rights Act would be passed, but at the time a black man could still find himself swinging from a tree for just trying to register to vote. And here she was, watching her daughter about to become First Lady. The parents of her son in law, you know, the one about to take the oath of office to become President of the US, wouldn't have been considered legally married in quite a few states when he was born (Full Faith and Credit? What's that? Never heard of it...).

I know some of you may not think so, but it IS a big thing, if for no other reason than it shows how far we've come in the 44 years since LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act into law. All those older black men and women who had fire hoses and dogs trained on them, or watched it on the evening news? I think they had every right to be moved seeing the culmination of decades of activism come to fruition.

Obama wasn't elected because he's black, he was elected DESPITE that fact (because racism is not dead in America. It has gone underground or put on a suit and tie to be more appealing, but kids, it's still here).

Now, on to the speechifying.

A lot of the talking heads didn't think much of Obama's speech yesterday. Fuck them. He already won. He doesn't need to sway us to vote for him anymore. His speech yesterday was still pretty damn good. After eight years of watching Bush fumble just trying to get a coherent sentence out of his mouth, watching a President who could give a speech off a teleprompter without fucking it up would be an improvement, but Obama goes far beyond that. The man doesn't even use note cards. He has that shit memorized, practiced, and knows how to give a solid delivery of even the most mundane topics.

I was glad to hear what he had to say.

That whole bit about not sacrificing our founding principles for political expediency or security? Very welcome bit of rhetoric, after the last eight years of fear mongering.

Us nonbelievers actually got a shout out!

It was a veiled threat, but hey, guess what Wall Street, the regulators are coming back!

We're actually going to use some diplomacy in dealing with foreign nations. Even the ones we don't necessarily like!

There was more, but the big message was that guess what, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and if we want to get out of the messes we're in, it's going to require actually taking some responsibility and doing some work.

It was no 'The only thing we have to fear...' or 'Ask not what your country can do for you...' speech, but contrary to talking head opinion, it didn't suck either.

Now, Mr. President, the only real Hope I have attached to this is that you actually meant what you said, and can carry through on at least some of it. I've posted previously on Congress making you their bitch if you annoy them too much.

I know people are excited over Obama having won. Hell, I'm glad he won. I even went and voted for him.

Now, let's look at what we can really expect once he takes office. Looking at how he ran his campaign, he's very good at organizing and delegating to very smart people to Get Shit Done. This will serve him well when it comes to the daily grind of running the Executive Branch. He's also very good at motivating people to work towards helping him enact his vision, which complements the organizational skills and will be useful in the same way. He appears to be highly pragmatic: knowing when to give in and not make perfect the enemy of good enough. He's going to need that. A lot.

Congress is its own beast, with 600+ heads, each with their own goals, vision, and electorates to answer to. The Hydra wouldn't stand a chance. This is where it all sort of falls down. He's been a Senator for a few years now, but he hasn't actually spent much time in the Senate. He might sort of be aware of how legislation gets drafted and moved around various committees at an intellectual level, but he's not had the down and dirty day to day trench fight experience dealing with lobbyists, back room staffer relay, and committee politicking personally that it takes just to get a bill on a committee schedule, much less on the floor for a vote. He's got Biden by his side, who has been doing that for years, and he seems to be smart enough to know that he needs that experience and to listen to it. And he better, or Congress will make him their bitch. Most of them have been around a long time, and despite the last eight years, they know and trust each other far more than they do the guy in the White House regardless of party affiliation. These guys have been cranking out sausage for decades, and some newbie twerp, no matter how much he might be revered by the public, better play by their rules or they'll just watch him flounder and laugh from the other end of the Mall.

I expect he'll be a very good administrator who will restore faith in, and respect for, the office he's currently queued up for once he's there, but I expect his policy goals are going to be harder and take longer than he expects and will be watered down to some degree in the process of making them happen at the Congressional level.

This is only the third time in my thirty eight years that we've had a Democrat in the White House. I think the Republicans can just get the fuck over it right now and quit fucking whining. History says they'll be back in charge soon enough.

Somehow, I don't think reversing Bush's misguided tax cuts are going to destroy the nation, so please, people who voted for McCain, shut the fuck up already, I'm tired of hearing it, and it's only ten in the morning.

This is only the third time in my thirty eight years that we've had a Democrat in the White House. I think the Republicans can just get the fuck over it right now and quit fucking whining. History says they'll be back in charge soon enough.

Somehow, I don't think reversing Bush's misguided tax cuts are going to destroy the nation, so please, people who voted for McCain, shut the fuck up already, I'm tired of hearing it, and it's only ten in the morning.

What country to Republicans run away to when their guy loses?

At least I don't have to listen to people threatening to move to Canookistan, but the lamentations of the right leaning folks in the office should be interesting this morning once they start filtering in.

Forty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot for trying to bring about racial equality in America. Today, a black man won the election for President of the United States of America. Racism is not dead, but it's on life support, and we've the the plug in our grasp.

Now, I said I wouldn't believe VA went to a Democrat until I saw it, and for most of the night, I didn't think it would happen, but surprisingly enough, not only did the Commonwealth go for the Democrat, it voted for the black man.

I'm both shocked and impressed. I expected it wouldn't happen. I grew up here, and in some ways, VA is still very stuck in the Old South.

Forty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot for trying to bring about racial equality in America. Today, a black man won the election for President of the United States of America. Racism is not dead, but it's on life support, and we've the the plug in our grasp.

Now, I said I wouldn't believe VA went to a Democrat until I saw it, and for most of the night, I didn't think it would happen, but surprisingly enough, not only did the Commonwealth go for the Democrat, it voted for the black man.

I'm both shocked and impressed. I expected it wouldn't happen. I grew up here, and in some ways, VA is still very stuck in the Old South.