I am not the type to jump onto bandwagons early, especially when it comes to politicians, and I usually take everything they say with a dose of cynicism, but it didn't take too long for me to catch a case of Obama-mania during the election campaigns and into election day. Obama's early selections for cabinet and other posts were mostly in line with his policies, but things started getting uneasy when he started getting too cozy with people who were at polar opposites to his stand on key issues.

Names like William J. Lynn a former defense lobbyist, Sanjay Gupta with ties to parmaceutical companies, and the selection of Rick Warren the controversial evangelical preacher to deliver the invocation at the inauguration sent ripples through the blogosphere and made me start feeling that we were taken for a ride by another unscrupulous politician who was now mapping out the demographics for the next election.

Things started looking different as the inauguration day approached, and his reach to people on the other side of the isle started making sense. Watching the artists on the "We Are One" event - From Usher, Mary J Blige, Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks and Sheryl Crow and the diversity of the crowd brought such as sense of unity and togetherness. I didn't get to watch the whole inauguration ceremony live, but I was a able to catch the swearing in and the whole scene was just majestic and everybody looked so excited and I had a hard time holding back the tears. When was the last time people all over the world - from Japan to Pakistan, Indonesia to Malaysia, Kenya to Lithuania celebrated the inauguration of a new US president? Probably never.

Things will probably not change much right away, but I'm just glad Bush, "Dr. Evil" Cheney and the axis of deceit and tyranny are finally gone and brighter days are ahead. Other unseemly creatures like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are still on the loose, but they won't have much of an audience left and their extinction is imminent.

All the best Mr. President.

I have been thinking about this for a while, and somebody put it so well on Craigs List, of all places - this is actually the best rant I have run into on the List in a while. If the red states really want to cling onto evangelism, right wing ultra-conservative views and their so-called 'family values", why should we in the blue states be forced to live under what we consider oppressive ideologies? Why should we have to go through all these gut-wrenching campaigns every four years? Maybe we should just leave them and see how far their views will take them, it looks like the civil war never really ended and probably never will. How about a United States of America and a Confederate States of  America as two different countries, after all we don't seem to have much in common.

Here is the link to the full posting on Craigs List.

I am not usually big on politics, but Obama deserves big props for winning the Democratic Party nomination. Here are some interesting and rare pictures of young Obama, including one of the few pictures there are of his father Barack Obama Sr. Click on the picture below for the complete gallery.