And the evil villain from Raiders of the Lost Ark:
I know The Daily Show has been running with a Blofeldian resemblance, but I think the hat is what sent me in this direction. I have yet to be able to find the image I really wanted to post for Cheney, but I'll update it when I do. Images above courtesy of Reuters and Rotten Tomato. And now I am putting this behind me, and moving on.
Today, for the first time in a long time, I am PROUD to be an American. I am proud to be a member of the Untied States. I am full of hope for this nation to regain the respect we earned, and will need to earn again. I look forward to being an independent nation, not borrowing from other countries to fund wars. I loo very forward to the end of international wars where people die every day because of money, power and oil. I especially look forward to having a President I can look up to for his integrity and intelligence. I crave a leader who will lead.
Today I wept during the inauguration. I was moved by so many images, none the least was the sight of our 44th President, and the feelings of happiness and hope for our nation!
If you did not watch this earlier, you really should:
I saw this today, and it started me thinking about the U.S.:
This song, written by Woody Guthrie and sung by millions of school children is considered subversive by many for all of the lyrics you probably don't know. And in looking it up I've found that it was sung, with all of the verses, by Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger and Tao Rodriguez during Obama's Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial just two days ago, which I just watched:
I teared up and got the chills just watching this, I can't even imagine what it must have been like to actually be there. Amazing. Woody wrote about what he saw and what he knew, and this song was written as an alternative to America the Beautiful. Woody was watching people starve to death, and not be able to feed, house or clothe their families. Farms were going under, there was no work to be had. Any of this sounding timely and familiar?
Obama is standing for hope and unity, and I will work toward that end as well. I want our country to be the United States again, I'm really tired of being the divided states. In fact, I remember on 9/11 saying to one of my coworkers that the simple goal of terrorism is to divide the nation. The fact that we were only united to save our own bacon, yet divided on everything else leads me to believe that they met that goal. I hope now we can turn that around.
I heard that Beyonce is going to sing an Etta James song, "At Last" for the Obama's first dance. Why wasn't Etta herself invited? I know she's still around - I saw her in concert a few years ago, and she was AWESOME! Of course, that was before her gastric bypass, and I think she's lost some of the lower end of her range since then. But still, she is around and still performing.
I watched this last night, and my first thought was that I really haven't given Olbermann a fair shake. I don't watch his show, and the only exposure I'd had was clips on The Soup, so I wasn't rushing to watch. Now I'll be setting my TiVo for 2 hours each night to catch both Keith and Rachel Maddow (who I do watch).
Thank-you Keith Olbermann for voicing what we already knew - this is about Love. Even though this was masked under lots of other things like religion and lies, you get it and I hope others who watch the clip will too.
Today I am Happy, and I am anxious. I am proud to be an American because we finally got our collective shit together and elected a Black Man as our President. I am hopeful about the future of our country as we all struggle to survive the current financial crisis, and improve our name in the World at large. We will need to continue to work together, harder than ever, to ensure we can all see this through. Now is the time for change for the better, of healing old, deep and gangrenous wounds. Now is the time to serve our country in the ways we can, by reaching out to our neighbors and collectively lifting us all up to a better place. We have done this before, and we can do it again.
We are America, and we are survivors.
I am also anxious today because a fundamental right may be striped from a minority population in my state of California. I'm talking about Proposition 8, an insidious, hateful proposition that places people into secondary citizenship because of love, and in the name of tradition and religion. I am waiting for the final vote tally, as mine is one of the absentee ballots that could swing this whole thing around.
I am proud of America, and hopeful for California.
