So, a technical riddle:Joe Biden was sworn is as Vice President a short time before Obama. George Bush's term expired during the interim (along with Dick Cheney's), so for a minute or two, Biden was legally the acting President. I wonder if that counts enough to make him number forty-four and Barack forty-five ... ?
Obama delivered a good speech. Not going to erase the memories of Lincoln's second, FDR's "fear itself" or JFK's inaugural orations, but a fine call to the nation, along with a couple of backhanded slaps at the outgoing administration's riding rough-shod over the Constitution.
A page has turned, folks. The long national nightmare might not be over, but things are looking up. Not just a great day to be an American, but a great day to be human ...
Obama became president at 12:00 EST, regardless of when the oath occurred.
ReplyDeleteWell then, since the ceremony was running a few minutes late, Obama may have actually become President before Biden was sworn in.
ReplyDeleteMy word verification for today is "unweedr". What would an unweeder be? Someone who deliberately plants weeds, or just someone who refuses to take the trouble to pull them out (that would be me)?
Somebody who is against smoking ganja?
ReplyDelete...says the ABM.
ReplyDeleteWe will know Obama's true colors by his treatment of the war criminals in the outgoing administration.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I am not hopeful. But at least it will be an improvement.
Death to all torturers.
it is a better day..President Obama is finally in..ahhh..can you smell the fresh air?..I can...bout time
ReplyDeleteI think the timing is a non-issue; the 20th Amendment reads:
ReplyDelete1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Before President Obama did anything that would qualify as the execution of his Office -- he was sworn in.
You mentioned the word responsibility. Your government is directly responsible for the many deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and in many other parts of the world. Obama cannot change the world but we will try to change US policy. If you keep on supporting Israel, do not leave Iraq and Afghanistan we will do the followings: we will kill your ambassadors and their families, ceos of your companies and their families and other prominent personalities and then we will tell their families to sue the US government. No suicide bombers but we will employ snipers to kill those targets. Like in Iraq we will have our own ace, king, queen, jacj etc. It will like candid camera, it can happen anytime and in any part of the world. Just wait for the surprises.
ReplyDeletethanks anonymous: thats just what everyone needed to hear you must be great fun at parties sheesh. Well that aside i raise my glass to obama and wish him well hes got a hell of a job to do.
ReplyDeletelangdon
Actually, Anon, you obviously haven't been reading this blog, which has always been anit-war in general, and against the one in Iraq specifically from the git-go; nor did the word "responsibility" come up in my posting or the follow-up posts.
ReplyDeleteThis is not the place for you to be offering threats, but I suspect what you wrote was triggered by anything having to do with Obama or the government in general and probably went out to all kinds of blogs around the country.
That "Anonymous" post popped up on every blog that doesn't need a log in to leave it.
ReplyDeleteIrked me sumpthin' fierce.
Last time I looked, you needed to find the secret word to post in the comments column on my blog, so somebody is paying that much attention that they are eyeballing a log screen and then manually posting unless the harvestbots have gotten a lot better.
ReplyDeleteA fair number of the captchas (scrambled words) can be read by bots in fact. It's turned out to be a fine training tool for certain types of AI.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious how you think President Obama is doing now that we're almost 2 months in.
ReplyDeletefyi, I was and am a strong supporter. I think President Obama has a high hill to climb, and I'm amazed at some of the nonsense the republicans are trying to discredit him, but for my part I say we've just had 50+ better days.
I think "better days" covers it pretty well.
ReplyDeleteNope, I not in favor of war, no matter who is in charge, unless there is no other option. I don't think we should be lobbing missiles into Libya, and I think Obama's rationalization for doing it there and not Ivory Coast rings hollow.
ReplyDeleteBush is still what he was; that the guy who inherited his complete cluster-fuck is having a hard row to hoe to try and fix it is no surprise. But on his worse day, he's still better than George on his best day.