'The time has come ...'

Up at 3 am. Pot of tea, some toast, on the couch to watch my homeland take out the garbage.

The homophobic Rev. Rick Warren offers an opening prayer. He asks God to 'deliver us from evil ...' Amen to that, brother.

Clock strikes 4am as Joe Biden takes the oath of Vice-President, giving the boot to the darkest of dark shadows that have skulked White House hallways these past 8 years. Appropriate that Cheney's looking like Lionel Barrymore in It's a Wonderful Life, being pushed in a wheelchair. Perhaps a little waterboarding might take his mind off his injured back?

Obama is like a race horse during the oath with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, champing at the bit, hungry to begin. The oath ends. He's President Barack Hussein Obama. Hallelujah!

The Miserable Failure is now an ordinary citizen. Albeit one who, in this perfect summation by Dan Froomkin:

... took the nation to a war of choice under false pretenses -- and left troops in harm's way on two fields of battle. He embraced torture as an interrogation tactic and turned the world's champion of human dignity into an outlaw nation and international pariah. He watched with detachment as a major American city went under water. He was ostensibly at the helm as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression took hold. He went from being the most popular to the most disappointing president, having squandered a unique opportunity to unite the country and even the world behind a shared agenda after Sept. 11. He set a new precedent for avoiding the general public in favor of screened audiences and seemed to occupy an alternate reality. He took his own political party from seeming permanent majority status to where it is today. And he deliberately politicized the federal government, circumvented the traditional policymaking process, ignored expert advice and suppressed dissent, leaving behind a broken government.

Obama thanks him for his service to the nation. I hope to never again reference him in this blog.

Obama's speech ends at 4:26am. Oscar lays against me, purring, his nocturnal routine disturbed by my pre-dawn patriotism. A part of me rejoices in knowing right-wing haters, Limbaugh/Hannity dead-enders, and, most especially, racists are adrift in poison seas of their own creation, miserable, paranoid, desperate for something to grab on to and sustain them through this Democratic-led political era. They'll comfort themselves with cheap Obama slurs and mock him as a media creation, a false idol, or much, much worse.

On this hopeful day, those people don't matter.

Here in Australia, where former Prime Minister John Howard was chucked from office in 2007 for being a Bush/Cheney toady, inauguration coverage is non-stop. People are happy, excited, relieved. The knucklehead substitute teacher, the frat-boy goofball who trashed American ideals like a spoiled child of privilege tearing up his family's Cape Cod summer home, has been frog-marched from the building and replaced by a thoughtful, inspiring, self-made adult. Seeing Michelle Obama beside her husband as he takes the oath is to know dignity has returned to the White House. There's no Fox News to spread conspiracy theories and propaganda about 'hidden agendas'. If you were to headline the Aussie -- and I dare say international -- angle on this inauguration, it would be this:
Obama/Biden Sworn InEarth Improves Instantly