Morning in America

Our long national nightmare is partially over. Today, my Bush Countdown Clock hit zero, Barack Hussein Obama II was inaugurated the 44th President of the United States, and for the first time in my life, I'm proud to call somebody my President.

Some might call me a political curmudgeon. It's easy to despise George W Bush, widely considered America's worst President in history. We've all lived the past 8 years of war, economic and environmental ruin, and abrogation of our Constitution.

Bush's reign of error caused a lot of people to long for the days of Bill Clinton. I call bullshit on that. It's too easy to love a scoundrel when you don't notice that he's violating you, and Clinton violated us repeatedly by doing far more to implement the Reagan agenda than Ronald Reagan ever did. Think about all of the worker & consumer protections we lost during the Bush era...think about the market fundamentalist policies that led to the long, steady decline of the American Middle Class...those policies were supported and further implemented by Bill Clinton, assisted by the Republican Congress of 1994-2006. DLC Democrats like Clinton share the blame with their troglodyte Republican counterparts for the woe we now face.

George H. W. Bush was inept (like his son), corrupt (like his son), and just plain evil. Never let a man who loves pork rinds, hates broccoli, and used to be the head of the Secret Police run your country. Why is it that every time a man named Bush becomes President, the economy goes to shit, and lots of innocent people die? Enough said.

Reagan, also known as Grandpa Caligula, has been canonized in the years since he died. And it's crap. Reagan hurt working people, wasted our national treasure on war toys and military contracts for his benefactors, and started the right's efforts to vilify anyone to the left of Hitler, working mothers, and non-Christians. He also violated the law...repeatedly...and got away with it. If we need to pin the start of America's decline, Reagan's election victory of 1980 may well be it.

Jimmy Carter...what can I say? The best ex-President America has ever had. Too bad he was a failure as a leader. Another reason to never let a Fundamentalist Christian run the country.

Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon. If for no other reason, that puts him down as a villain in my history book.

Finally, we come to the man who was President when I was born...the infamous Richard Milhouse Nixon. Need we recount this man's assault on our democracy? Watergate was just the tip of the iceberg. His history has been beaten to death, especially in comparison to George Dubya. I used to think that I'd rather have a dumb fascist in the White House than a smart fascist...now I'm not so sure.

So there you have it: the long, sordid history of fang-dripping, bought-and-paid-for occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave that have sown their terror on the American people during my lifetime. Not a one I was proud to call my leader. And now that's changed. America's President is now a somewhat progressive, fiercely intelligent, relatively uncorrupted and honest black man with a funny-sounding name that makes xenophobes cringe. The racists are hot and bothered, their designates in the GOP in dissarray. It's time for change to come to America.