Inaugeration Day - President Obama

Inaugeral Address - 1 / 20 / 09

"We are in the midsts of crisis..."
"...the challenges that we face are real...they will not be met easily...but...they will be met"
"...the risk takers, the doers...who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom..."
"...and so, to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today...know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity..."
"at this moment...a moment that will define a generation...it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies..."

"what is required of us now is a new era of responsibility..."

Here's to Day 1 of the Obama Administration

~

Obama's Sober Message (huffingtonpost)

VIDEO:

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.....and, looking back, Frank Rich sums up all the great "achievements" of the Bush Administration - (from his 2007 book The Greatest Story Ever Sold ) (p.208)

“It’s legacy will include the destruction of America’s image, credibility and prestige abroad; record budget deficits produced by unchecked spending and tax cuts; an abused and broke military; a subversion of the Constitution achieved by rigidly ideological judicial appointments, the abridgement of civil liberties and outright lawbreaking in the White House; an indifference to environmental imperatives, including the energy conservation urgently needed to end America’s chronic economic dependence on the congenitally unstable Middle East; and the promotion of America’s homegrown religious fundamentalism with both official and political assaults on medical and earth science (including evolution) and the rights of gay Americans. (And that’s just the short list.)”
Not to mention “No Child Left Behind [doing] more for the nation’s testing industry than for students, who found their curricula narrowed to the two subjects (math and reading) measured by tests.” And the “…AIDS initiative…blunted by being yoked to abstincence programs that flattered Christian right voters in the Republican base but were irrelevant to the rampaging life-or-death tragedy in Africa.”

And finally, - indifference towards rebuilding infrastructure, lack of investment in education, the failure of emergency response to Hurricane Katrina and lying their way into a phony war…

Thank you very much, Mr. 43 “President…”
Good riddance.