3--2--1--BYE BYE GEORGE; TAKE A HIKE, DICK!!!

I've been smiling more and more each day over the past few weeks. And now it is three days until the Cheney-Bush Cabal exits the stage and a new American Administration takes over. The sense of relief in this country and the world is palpable.

I've spent many blogger words on Dubya and Lord Darth Cheney over the past few years. In a way I'll miss them - hell, I'm going to need some new topics! But good riddance to bad garbage! The Lovable George and Kind Uncle Richard dog-and-pony show that has been spun out in the national media the last few weeks is a sickening reminder of how these bad characters operate. Their attempts to create a fantasy legacy for themselves is, and will prove to be, nothing more than the usual lies and fairy tales. On more misinformation campaign perpetrated on the public. Sorry fellas - were not in a buying mood today. Go peddle your flawed merchandise somewhere else. We've got important work to do cleaning up the mess you left behind.

I've realized something about President Obama (I know, he's not President yet - but in my view he has been more presidential since the day he won the election than Bush ever was in eight years). Obama is a different kind of politician, a different kind of leader. He has a calmness about him, and an apparent lack of vindictiveness and partisanship. It bothers me that Bush and Cheney are just going to walk away. I think they are guilty of a multitude of transgressions - even crimes - for which I want to see them pay, and pay dearly. But our new President thinks we have better things to do than go after them, and maybe he's right. Maybe I need to be a better person in that regard and look more to the future than the recent past.

History will tell the story of the Bush-Cheney years, and I firmly believe history will not be kind to them. This will be especially true if the Obama years turn out to be what the majority of Americans hope and want them to be: not just a "return" to greatness for America, but a moving forward to become an even greater America. Not greater in the sense of military might, economic superiority, and world dominance, but greater in the sense of leading the world on a different journey, one that focuses on peace, prosperity for everyone, growth and development that are realistic for every Earthling, not based on profit for the few. The journey that I think - and hope - President Obama can start us on is more than getting us out of the hole we're in and back to some status quo. And this journey can't be realized unless the majority of us understand where we have to go, what we need to do to get there, and why it is so urgent for us to start.

I'll leave it for others to recount the misery of the Bush-Cheney years, to make the long lists of the wreckage they are leaving behind. My pledge to you, the few and loyal readers of this blog, is to focus on the positive and the future - not an easy thing to do for this old cynic, but hey, anything is possible.

Sherry and I will be hanging our American flag from the front porch on Inauguration Day, and we'll have a big sign next to it: YES WE CAN!