ONE WEEK AND COUNTING!!!!!!!!

January 20, 2009 is exactly one week away. At noon on that date, Barack Hussein Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America.


Although I won't be one of the estimated 2 million attendees, I will certainly be one of the billions of people watching the inauguration on television. And I AM SO EXCITED!!!



The swearing in ceremony needs to take place by noon on Tuesday, January 20. And there will be a luncheon that follows that Congress hosts for the President, followed by a parade and then a series of inaugural balls that evening.

This is the official website for the inauguration (click here), and this is a link to the inauguration schedule, which includes not just the day of but a few days before (click here).

I know that Barack Obama's inauguration and presidency is not going to solve all the world's problems or even all the problems of the U.S., or even all the problems that the Bush administration created. And I know some of his decisions about his cabinet and inauguration ceremony have created controversy, especially among liberal-progressives (and I include myself in this category, although I didn't think that his cabinet appointments appeared controversial and the Rick Warren thing, well I don't like Rick Warren or agree with his political positions regarding abortion or queer lifestyles (or probably sexual lifestyles overall for that matter)) but I am also realistic about the fact that as much as I support and like Obama, he is a politician as well as a leader--and politicians need to negotiate political landscapes and make decisions that aren't always completely partisan.

Unlike this former official at the Justice Department, Brad Schlozman, who reportedly only hired "real" Americans to the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department under Bush's administration--and apparently for Schlozman, real Americans are conservative Republicans and not "politburo members" who are "a member of some, you know, psychopathic left-wing organization designed to overthrow the government"

[These are all ACTUAL quotes that Schlozman made in email exchanges to colleagues/friends. For more on Mr. Charming, see this NPR piece from "All Things Considered."]

Barack Obama proves that "real" Americans don't have to look like Mr. Schlozman or think like George W. Bush. Real Americans get to be people like me and like you.

And I can't state enough how simple and yet powerful that idea is. So I'll just leave you all with the photo below, which really made me smile when I found it on the web: