Come On Up For The Rising - Inauguration Day

It's a big day in Washington tomorrow as Barrack Obama swears the oath and becomes President of the United States of America. Once he cleans that old man smell out of the furniture in the Oval Office ("What the hell smells like Cheney in here?"), and changes the locks (Hilary probably still has a copy of the key) President Obama will some heavy lifting to do - Bush left the place a mess. But for the first time in a long time, the majority of Americans, and most of the world, seem to believe that things can get better. The air of optimism is almost tangible, you'd think this presidency is going to be scripted by Aaron Sorkin.

I'll have the radio tuned in tomorrow and plan to watch the highlights when I get home. I loved how some of my co-workers were looking forwards to "Obama Day". And why not, because this day is a big one. It proves change can happen if enough voices cry out. This is a day that's bigger than politics.

While you wait for the show to get underway in D.C., kill some time with the Obamicon.me site, where you can upload a picture and have it re-touched in the style of of Shepard Fairey’s iconic work shown above. You can't avoid it: I saw CBS network promos down in this style today. My contribution:

While we march into this new age, take one last, long lingering look at the clusterf*ck that was the Bush years, and no better narrative exists than The Story Of Bush, as told through the headlines from The Onion catalogued by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, As Teresa said:

There will be histories written about the Bush administration. They’ll be privy to information we don’t have yet, because the future is like that. On the other hand, we have our own privileged knowledge: We know how the story looked like to people who didn’t know how it was going to come out.

Now, in this moment before a changing world overwrites our memories of the era, let us pause to salute our constant companion of those years: The Onion. Other histories of the Bush years will doubtless be more factual, but none will ever be truer.

(via Accordion Guy, who also pointed out the brilliant someecards has out for the election).


This one's also a favourite.

Bye bye Bush. Hello hope.