Subject to Change

When my son was born I took three days of work to be at the hospital. I used more personal time after the birth to be home with him in his first few weeks.

I worked through the presidential inauguration, but I had the radio playing at a reasonable volume.

I conducted a non-scientific poll about this picture, which has the NAACP crying in their Colt 45s.

I won’t claim to understand why these girls are dressed like shower poufs, or why they were invited to inauguration day. I just know that the cries of racism are patently lame. So, I took a survey of a strong liberal and a strong conservative at work. Kelly, who talks like a conservative but votes like a liberal represented the moderate point of view.

Liberal: “Tell me those aren’t your bridesmaid dresses.”

Conservative: “Looks like Easter.”

Kelly: “Southern dresses?”

So, Kelly gets the prize for getting closest on the imagery. She also gets bonus points for her blank stare when I explained that the NAACP says the dresses are offensive.

I’ve heard a number of disappointed conservatives express the thought that Barack Obama is “not my president.” I hate to have to break it to you, but he will be. Unless you’re willing to break the law to disobey the things you disagree with there’s no escaping it. Are you going to stop paying taxes because you don’t believe in Obama’s government? Maybe you’re going to disrespect the military because you don’t agree with the way President Obama deploys them? Sorry. If you’re a conservative I know you’ll have trouble doing anything of the sort.

And another thing: on election night someone shared a story with me, of a suspiciously armed man found in Chicago. I know that at any given moment in any administration there are people out there who would like to see the president fall. If you’re one of those people, could you please do us a favor and keep your paws off Obama? The last thing this country needs is for someone to give more ammunition (literally) to the “right is racist” argument. If anything happened to the new president it would be terribly annoying and I’m not ready to cope with the fallout.

Since I have to blog in spurts I don’t often have the time to comment on all the things I’d like to. Here are some more comments on the election yesterday:

If there’s one good thing about Obama’s margin it’s that it all but rules out fraud as a factor in this election. That’s bad on the one hand because potential fraud cases are more likely to be swept aside. On the other hand, the only thing worse than Obama as president would have been Obama as president after a questionable election.

This thought is a 180 from the previous: since he lost anyway, it would have been sweet if John McCain had scored the popular vote, while losing the electoral vote. It would have been such a treat to watch the liberals stand up and defend the electoral college. We may get the opportunity anyway, because Obama’s “mandate” is not quite as impressive if you look at the popular vote. I suspect that the electoral count will be a favored statistic whenever conservatives challenge our new leadership.

I wonder what will happen with respect to Obama’s online credit card donation snafu. Somebody is going to pay dearly for it, I suspect, as any number of donations is found to be “in error.” This won’t reach Obama, of course, but it will be interesting to see exactly where the buck does stop. If you’re interested in the fallout I suspect that you’re going to have to watch the news very carefully for a while. This is probably going to get covered up for as long as it doesn’t interfere with the new president’s administration.

I’d like to be more glad that we finally elected a black president, but I’m not. This president has nothing else going for him, as far as I’m concerned.

The Race Card is now as worthless as the Jose Canseco rookie card I bought for $22. You may as well put it in your bicycle spokes.

I’d like to be happy about this moment, because my public school education taught me to look forward to the day we elected a woman or African American to the presidency. Obama just doesn’t do it for me, though. He’s creepy. It’s that smirk. I know that smirk. I do it too, when I’m about to say something I know you’re not going to like and I’m happy you’re not going to like it.

I’m planning to make an appearance at Papa’s tonight, for election night’s Drinking Right.

Should I be sober (and bored) enough to comment in real time it will be on my Twitter feed.

I wouldn’t count on much, though. Twitter is understandably slow tonight, and I expect to be enjoying my short venture into the real world.

Stickers don’t lie.

Does this sound fair? It doesn’t sound real, but I thought I’d point it out anyway because it’s certainly possible and probably illegal.

It reminds me of the old phrase: be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Vote Obama.

Liberal Democrats are to report to the nearest Obama headquarters for a free neuralizer treatment, to wipe away the memory that Powell was once a Bush crony.

Excuse the grainy cell phone image. I was coming back from lunch and spotted the McCain tour bus at the Hilton across the street from my office.

I’m considering stopping over to make an appearance as “Aaron the Drunk and part-time Buckeye.”