It’s January 20, and in the United States we are having the peaceful transfer of power from one elected executive to another. It’s something that we do every four to eight years. Perhaps many of you will forget, but I remember what happened the last time. The White House’s offices were vandalized by some of the the outgoing Clinton staff. This was often denied and swept under the rug as much as possible, but it did occur. The present outgoing administration has too much class to let this happen. The letter “O” won’t be removed from computer keyboards like the letter “W” was in 2001. Our most recent former president is a gentleman and a class act – not a liar, as so many have said. I had more than a few disagreements with President Bush (how many newspapers and magazines have disrespectfully taken to calling him Mr Bush, or just Bush?). The government is bigger, more powerful and we have less freedom than we had eight years ago – I think that he might have done better, but the deck was stacked against him.
The new President is riding a wave of hope and admiration. Good for him. Let’s hope that he isn’t treated the way President Bush was by the news media or the other politicians in Washington. There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section that pretty much sums up how I feel about that. The news media is absolutely fawning over the new president. Why??
We’ve elected the most inexperienced and liberal candidate ever, and you must excuse me if I don’t run over to hug the man who has been elected by shamelessly promising gobs of free stuff in exchange for votes from frightened sheep. Since the government is broke (way worse than broke – we’re spending our grandchildren’s money) they’re
going to have to get the money to pay for all of this new spending from folks that work (like me). Sorta dampens my enthusiasm a bit. A third of each working day is already spent earning the money to feed the big government pig. How much more of my time, my life and my work will they require? Twenty minutes of every hour… How much of this money is completely wasted? How much of it is spent to make sure that those in Congress maintain their seats and their power and their comfortable lifestyles?
Our nation was founded as a federation of United States. The writers of our constitution went to great pains to limit the powers of the federal government. Barack Obama took an oath today to honor and defend that document. Let’s wait and see if he keeps his word.
Monica and I were walking downtown this afternoon and passed a bar. Instead of the usual novella, the TV in the corner was showing our new president’s inauguration speech (with a voice-over in Portuguese, of course). Lots of folks in the bar were watching. That’s cool.
I wish him only the best and I hope that he does well. I also hope that he disappoints all of the people that voted for him expecting him to be Santa Claus.
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