Politics and Press

The Media’s Election Narrative

There is one year to go before the 2012 presidential election and the American press continues to focus on the political process over the substance of issues. Early on the press determined that while Mitt Romney held a slight – and decidedly soft – lead in most national polls, a changing series of candidates must be anointed by the press to the role of “anyone but Romney” challenger for the Republican nomination. This has happened with little or no substantive exploration of issues, but has maintained a horserace kind of press coverage..

Initially former Governor Tim Pawlenty was promoted by much of the press for his “seriousness” which the voters then determined was a kind of insipid, tediousness. The press then jumped to Michelle Bachmann who presented a feminine face backed by a religious nuttiness that always seems to show up in Republican primary races in Iowa. She tanked early after voters began to actually listen to the strange things coming out of her mouth.

The press then decided that Governor Rick Perry was the one to take on Flipper Romney, not out of any particular policy differences but rather because he was from Texas, had a lot of campaign funds and talked a big – or at least loud – game. Perry lasted about two weeks as he fumbled in debates for words that might be translated into actual thoughts. The press then ignited his downfall because of a slip in a debate when he lost track of his thoughts – some would argue, not all that unusual an occurrence. Then the press moved to pizza company CEO Herman Cain as a new frontrunner with the innovative campaign strategy of joking about how little he knows about the world while defending himself against numerous (5 and counting) accusations of sexual harassment.

Now the press has identified Newt Gingrich as the next likely antidote to Romney. This, some months after the press dumped him as a tired old hack who couldn’t manage his campaign staff or his wife’s Tiffany account. Meanwhile Ron Paul maintains credible numbers, has an identifiable set of policies and is mostly ignored by the press. Jon Huntsman makes the most sense – especially on foreign affairs – and is mostly ignored by the press as irrelevant. Romney continues to waffle his way toward some weird kind of consistency – that is, the consistency of having no apparent core beliefs that he would not jettison for a few more votes, and the search for an alternative continues, but not based on any particular policy issues.

We have another year of this and perhaps as the process moves along the press will begin to focus on actual issues but for now, the focus remains on the way the game is played rather than on the probable consequences of candidates’ actual policy differences.

American House: How Low Can It Go?

When Americans went to the polls last November did the majority really vote for a decline in their quality of life? It would seem so as we see what their elected representatives in the House are choosing to eliminate or reduce. The initial attack in the House of Representatives targets virtually every nominally progressive program subject to discretionary funding. It attacks support for health programs, environmental programs (many also related to the health of Americans), arts and humanities programs, nutrition programs for pregnant women and infants, food supply regulation, student loan programs, clean water programs, public radio and tv and etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and will most likely enter many peoples’ consciousness only when they get a dose of salmonella, or have to drop out of college, or develop asthma, or have to rely on Fox and CNN for their TV news and analysis.

This opening shot is a sample of what seems likely to come. The scorched earth Republicans and Tea Partiers are intent on finishing the job – started during the Reagan years – of increasing income inequality in America, and reducing opportunities for those at the low end of the income ladder to climb out of lives characterized by inadequate educational opportunities for their children, over-priced and inadequate healthcare, and a public life devoid of art and culture.

The driving abstraction for these efforts is the “deficit”, and the Democrats (including President Obama) have joined with much of the national media and press in allowing the Republicans to determine that as the field of battle.  While many Republicans are not actually serious about reducing the deficit (witness their unwillingness to eliminate the Bush tax reduction for the richest 5% of Americans) they are dead serious about eliminating or seriously damaging virtually any program intended to improve the quality of life for all Americans.  The current budget reductions are a spit in the ocean of the deficit but even so those reductions will retard the economic recovery thus reducing tax revenue further and thus adding to the deficit. So be it for rational thought from this crew.

Lost in all the Republicans’ blather is the reality that the deficit grew enormously under Bush due to the bizarre choice of war in Iraq, the Bush tax reductions, and the costly Bush prescription drug program, which turned out to be a gift to the drug companies. So we face a future of declining quality of life while the people who created much of the deficit AND the people who destroyed a healthy economy through near criminal mortgage and hedge fund frauds continue to work their black magic.

America VS. The World

All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.
Pat Paulsen

As a nation of immigrants and descendants of immigrants the United States is having a hard time figuring out how to deal with immigrants. The state of Arizona has enacted a law that requires police to demand identity papers from anyone resembling their idea of whatever it is that an illegal immigrant looks like. That would tend towards demanding papers of anyone who might look Hispanic, African, or Asian but probably would not lead to police hassling Scandinavian looking blondes or worse yet, French speaking Canadians.

But lest our pals the Mackenzie brothers expect a warm welcome, the nuttiness is not restricted to Arizona. Minnesota House Republicans rolled out their own brand of Arizona-inspired immigration legislation last week, which they said was necessary in order to deal with the estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants in Minnesota. The bill, introduced by State Rep. Steve Drazkowski (a rather foreign-sounding name) (R-Mazeppa), is called the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act” and like its Arizona cousin it would impose many of the most controversial measures put in place by that legislation. A quick look at a map indicates a rather lengthy, relatively unprotected border with Canada so clearly Rep. Drazkowski has Canucks in his gun sight.

The difficulties presented by foreigners became clearer when a Greyhound bus was pulled over in Portsmouth, NH because a passenger thought he heard the word bomb over a neighboring cell phone conversation. Passengers were told to leave the bus one by one, hands up, were handcuffed and led away, but one man remained on board for hours, refusing to leave. According to police reports later the bus was surrounded and held for hours because the remaining passenger was a “strange looking man who spoke a foreign language”. The man was African, was in the U.S. legally, but did not speak English and was terrified at the huge police presence surrounding the bus.  Now, there are not a lot of Africans or African-Americans in New Hampshire (ca. 1.2%) so we can suppose he looked “strange” and lord knows he spoke a foreign language. But what is going on when a bus is isolated and surrounded by police for several hours out of fear of such a person because of an inability to deal with a foreign language? You cannot make this stuff up.

Somewhat related is the belief – held by over 20% of Americans – that President Obama was born in Africa and is therefore not eligible to be president. Arizona added to its campaign for laughing stock of the Western World when its House of Representatives passed a bill requiring any candidate for President of the U.S. to show an original birth certificate in order to be allowed on its presidential ballots. We can assume that this was not aimed at anyone with the last name “Bush” – or “McCain”, just as we can assume that it is unconstitutional and would have been deemed so had it become Arizona law.

The state of Hawaii, having produced President Obama’s birth certificate for some 40 to 50 birthers each month for over two years, finally passed a law that allows the state to ignore most of such requests, all of which come from the mainland – particularly Arizona, South Carolina and Florida, according to state spokeswoman Janice Okubo.  (Aha! Another foreign-sounding name.)

The press tends to report on these kinds of events in a straightforward kind of way that would make sense if the events made sense. They do not; all they do is embarrass us.

Fox Presents: Fear and Loathing in America

• The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. – Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

A visit to the barber today – with its typical random comments on the state of the world –provided a vivid reminder of the bizarre power of Fox News as a purveyor of misinformation and fear. That Fox is in the business of misrepresenting reality is not an original discovery since any reasonably intelligent adult who lives in the real world and reads about the real world knows that Fox’s O’Riley, Beck, and Palin etc. are clowns and buffoons – our own strange brand of Iran’s Ahmadinejad.

We have an intelligence deficit in America and it is growing. There have always been fringe movements in America – on both ends of the spectrum. But the current right wing fringe seems to be – or pretends to be – so scared of so many things that one has to wonder how they can come out from under their rocks.

Their major fear is terrorism. No one wants a screw-up the size of Bush and Cheney’s failure to act on warnings that led to 9/11. But just where does Rudy Giuliani get off working up a frenzy over Captain Underpants’ failed airline bombing when his boys Bush and Cheney totally screwed up by ignoring warnings that led to an actual, successful terrorist attack? It is not enough that he is a scumbag – what is infuriating is that the press actually gives that pathetic hack a microphone. The Rudys of the world have conspired to create a country consumed with fear of some possible event but unable to understand that 1) such an event may be inevitable, 2) that the country is doing all possible to prevent such an event – even under Obama(!) – and that 3) we are in this together and to use security threats as political currency is to be one with the enemy. Cowardice is the name to be given to those who would scare the people into giving up their liberties and their constitutional rights – tactics that give the victory to Al Quada. Shame on all of those who have set out to frighten us and shame on those who buy into it without serious thought of the loss of liberties they have accepted.

The PON (Party of No) and Fox and the ranting Tea Partiers have gained a certain power with their use of fear. We are scared to use our tried and true judicial system to bring terrorist criminals to justice – omigod – do not try them here, do not try them there – let’s eliminate the constitution and just throw them into a cell somewhere – but not here – lest we all might have to take a risk that is not even a real risk. Cowardice? No need to sell it here buddies – we got enough. We will take our shoes off in the airport; we will allow you to body search our toddlers and our grandmothers –because it makes us believe we are safe. We believe in Santa and the tooth fairy.

We are afraid to allow natural gas into our ports if it comes from Yemen – let’s live on firewood and refuse to trust the Coast Guard with our safety – they cannot be trusted.

We cannot allow gays in the military unless they lie about being gay; Congressman Hunter from California is scared that we might end up with hermaphrodites and transgenders in the military – now that is truly scary. Senator McCain is also concerned – after agreeing to support the military leadership – he has now jumped ship, illustrating the fragility of courage. The fact that Britain’s, Canada’s, Australia’s and Israel’s militaries have no problem with gays makes no impact – this is America – no gays – unless they lie about being gay. Jesus – you cannot make this stuff up.

Eight years of Bush and Cheney and Republican leadership left us with a useless unwinnable war in Iraq with hundreds of thousands dead, an untenable situation in Afghanistan, a horror show in Pakistan, a deficit of $1.2 trillion, an economy dominated by greed at the top and subservience below, a broken healthcare system, a tax system designed to protect the rich and screw everyone else, and a government committed to eliminating civil liberties. And what do we fear? –decent, affordable healthcare that mythically includes death panels; regulating banks that have royally screwed us; a centrist President Obama who some believe to be a socialist – a Muslim, a terrorist, a Kenyon, or God help us – a black. We are not supposed to consider such possibilities but it is time to grow up and smell the garbage. There is a real stink in the country.

A friend suggests that the anti fluoride folks must have been right and that it is why people are losing their sanity. They fear foreigners, immigrants – legal and illegal; any suggested change of the status quo; terrorists both real and imagined; mythical socialists, black political leaders. Fortunately for them, there is a standing army of banal and venal politicians and newscasters ready to march to the Fox Drummers. We are truly screwed.

Massachusetts: The Victory of Anger Over Intelligence

“The Mass. election was a bummer …The greatest concern I have is for the economy and social stability. Deep down my attitude          towards health reform, the environment, energy is ‘not my problem’.  I have health insurance, live in the country and won’t live long enough to run out of home heating oil or gasoline. I support those issues more out of social responsibility; if society doesn’t care, why should I? “– Anonymous

In the wake of Scott Brown’s Senate win n Massachusetts, there are many scapegoats: the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, was a weak campaigner who thought it was a lock and behaved accordingly; the national Democratic party which totally missed the influx of outside money from insurance companies and Dick Armey’s tea party idiots; and the press that rarely looked at the substance of the issues, choosing instead to focus on the process of the campaign. But in many ways President Obama has the largest responsibility for the loss and the most to learn from it.

It begins with recognition that the people are pissed off – and with reason. That they are apparently incapable of or too lazy to truly understand the issues and to recognize what the Republicans have done to destroy America’s future in order to destroy Obama is irrelevant.  Obama is the President and he can choose to fight it out or to continue to pretend that bipartisanship is desirable and possible.

Obama’s cool, rational, smart approach is ill suited for the times – his idealistic search for bipartisanship looks in hindsight like innocence – even naiveté. There is substantial evidence that people do not think, do not read, do not discuss. They listen to Rush Limbaugh, watch Glenn Beck, take orders from their preachers or priests, and refuse to take responsibility for the nature of their lives. Scott Brown won because he is a handsome hunk who drives a truck and throws raw meat off the back end at all the poor souls looking for success in all the wrong places.

The low level of discourse in this country on issues like healthcare reform is appalling; always discussed without the long view. Between 17 and 22% of all healthcare expenses go to insurance companies who provide no healthcare -  they only serve as gatekeepers to deny insurance to those who most need it. The U.S. pays double for prescription drugs what other countries pay for the same drugs. The per capita cost for healthcare in the U.S. is double that of every other Western democracy. While one might believe that therefore we have the best medical care in the world, virtually all measures indicate that is simply not so. There is a reason the stocks of health insurance companies went up substantially yesterday; their investment in the Brown campaign was paying off and investors knew it. There is a huge reckoning coming on healthcare and the American people are in for bad surprises unless costs are contained and there is no evidence that the issue will be addressed in my lifetime. As for the current bill – Obama tried too hard and too long to get Republican support for a plan and gave up too much to get a semblance of bipartisanship.

There is a strange sense among Americans that if the people vote for something or someone they must be right. This has been wrong as often as right – people sometimes make good judgments and sometimes bad. Since we are all grownups and different people we are allowed to disagree. What is neither useful nor smart is the kind of grandstanding done by people celebrating the victory of an empty suit by dumping on those who disagree with them. Tea Party mythology has it that liberals are smug elitists; they are proving that smugness is a more common  ailment.

Is Massachusetts Turning Red?

The special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat has apparently become surprisingly close. At least that is what the pundits are saying. Massachusetts has a health care program similar to the national program being hammered out in the Congress, allows same-sex marriage, voted overwhelmingly for Obama, and has not sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate since Ed Brooke was defeated for re-election in 1979.

Scott Brown, the Republican candidate is a state senator with a not especially compelling record but has run an aggressive campaign with considerable outside support from conservatives. He has vowed to be the 41st vote against national healthcare reform, does not support abortion rights, runs Cheney-style terrorist threat ads in his National Guard uniform, opposes same sex marriage, and once sponsored an amendment in the state senate to allow hospital staff to refuse contraception to rape victims.

Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate, has run a bland campaign until recently and has belatedly stepped up her rhetoric. If Massachusetts goes against its historic liberal roots, it will be a nasty wake-up call to Democrats nationwide and could signal the beginning of the end of the Obama presidency. While this seems unlikely it is now a possibility.  No one would have predicted this scenario when Senator Kennedy died.

2009: The Summer of Hate

Autumn has not come soon enough. The summer of 2009 was characterized by some of the ugliest and most stupid political nonsense that the country has ever had to put up with. Birthers question Obama’s citizenship and search for evidence of his secret African, Muslim birth certificate; Obama’s efforts to reshape a disastrously expensive and inadequate healthcare program has turned into accusations that he wishes to organize death panels to move the country toward forced government-run euthanasia; dumbbell radio has initiated rumors that Obama is plotting to put conservative, white voters in prisons, etc. ad nauseum.  Republican senators and congressmen are making careers out of outright lies and there are enough people looking for reasons to hate Obama that those lies find fertile ground. Former Governor Palin continues to shock us with her vapid stupidity and ugly posturing, Senator Grassley suggests that death panels might actually be in the wind, South Carolina gives us a Congressional mediocrity who shouts “you lie” at Obama and thousands of less than ordinary people march in Washington shouting stupidities and lies into the TV microphones. “Town Hall” meetings to discuss healthcare reform frequently included the sideshow of idiots with guns, roaring their disapproval of healthcare reform while screaming their rights to carry assault rifles to political rallies. What do we do with people who rant they want no government role in healthcare and in the next breath rave about keeping government’s hands off their Medicare? What can be said to people who in one breath call Obama  “Hitler” and in the next, “Stalin”? What can we make of Fox cable commentators that promote the lie that Obama  wants America to be a “socialist” country – or even a communist country? Or that Obama “hates white people”?

American politics has always had its nutcases but mostly they have been on the fringe and political parties have tolerated them while trying to maintain at least a moderately high road of discussion and dissent. This is no longer the case with Republican politicians milking the cow of hatred and fear to further their meager agendas and much of the press reporting their lies and fabrications as if they deserve equal time. The current healthcare debate is the focus of much of the ugliness and it seems increasingly likely that we will get a watered down mess of a bill that will fail to reduce costs and improve quality largely because of the stupidity of a small portion of the country, the cowardice and venality of politicians on both sides of the aisle, and the pathetic performance of a mainstream press that focused on process issues and largely avoided calling out the liars.

A more general question is why such ugliness? Has any president in memory been insulted, lied about, and threatened the way Obama has? There has always been a robust political discourse in America but the current atmosphere is different – and I join Maureen Dowd who in today’s NY Times calls it by its hidden name: racism.

Obama and the Politics of Disappointment

As the Obama presidency approaches the six-month mark the record is decidedly mixed. Our friends, the brothers Mackenzie, have indicated their disappointment in a recent posting critical of the “Buy American” element of the stimulus package and lays the blame on the “Obama regime”. While American presidents do not normally have the luxury of leading a “regime”, Bob and Doug point out the need for a more vigorous political stance by the president.

“Buy American” represents a gut response from politicians unwilling to provide leadership to the electorate, and unable to resist foisting easy answers onto a population whose inability to accept the reality of the decline of America leads them into a mythical America Uber Alles. A Buy American campaign fails to recognize that foreign companies hire many Americans and it begs for retaliation by other nations, leading to even greater trade imbalances and reduced employment in the future. Globalization is here to stay and politicians need to recognize that and deal with it honestly and realistically.

While the Republicans in Congress continue on an obstructionist journey to oblivion, Democrats in Congress share the blame for Buy American sentiments as well as for more serious failures looming on the horizon. Solidarity is not a keystone of the Democratic Party so while the Republican Senate and House of Representatives could support just about anything George W. Bush dreamed up, Democratic Senators and Representatives lack the kind of party discipline needed for a Democratic president to move the country toward major change – change perceived by some as threatening to lobbyists and major campaign contributors. Obama’s apparent commitment to  “pragmatism” in working with Congress in developing policy leads inevitably to disappointment.

While disappointments are there, more are sure to come. Prisoners remain in Guantanamo while members of Congress from both parties cower in fear over the possibility that any of them might be housed in prisons in their states; the stimulus package is far from successful and may very well end up an economic fiasco; a variety of security programs of questionable legality initiated by the Bush administration remain in place; the war in Afghanistan is beginning to look like a project of questionable value to the national interest; the health care debate seems headed toward the continuing of private insurance programs with no public alternative; the Congress  is unlikely to allow the Department of Defense to shake off the influence of the military industrial complex and  many major  public welfare initiatives are likely to fall victim to the economic  recession.

The current Congress lacks the statesmanship, ethics and intelligence necessary to deal effectively with domestic policy that has been built on a long history of private gain at public cost. There is an argument that capitalism has been the great strength of the United States but as we become increasingly committed to bailing out inefficient and even crooked industries, capitalism as we’ve known it begins to look more like the problem than the solution. If Obama is to have success it appears that it may have to be in foreign affairs, where presidents have more power and less need to coddle members of congress.

TORTURED LOGIC

“Thus, although the subject may experience fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. As we explained in Section 2340A Memorandum, “pain and suffering” as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of “pain” as distinguished from “suffering.”… Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to treat “suffering” as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering”….Jay Bybee, former Dept. of Justice Lawyer in the Bush Administration and current 9th Circuit Judge

Judge Bybee, a graduate of the University of Obfuscation Law School, might also have noted that chopping off a prisoner’s leg is allowable since he had two of them. He did not comment on what to do when you run out of legs but perhaps there are other body parts to consider– testicles, arms, kidneys etc. Reading the memoranda makes it clear that in this and other instances our Law Schools have helped create some monsters that would make Goebbels proud.

The release of four selected torture memoranda from the Bush Justice Department have raised two firestorms, each interesting in its own way. From the right we get the old familiar argument to screw the law and do anything we wish to anyone we think might want to hurt us, regardless of evidence and American values. A deep thinker from the Heritage Foundation reminded us on TV that in the white heat of post 9/11 it seemed clear that we needed to make sure we got the information needed to protect the country regardless of our laws or international law. He conveniently forgot that some of the memoranda were written as late as 2005 and that – in fact – we HAD the information that 9/11 was around the corner, that the information was given to Bush and National Security Advisor Rice – and ignored by both, and that there is little if any evidence that the subsequent use of torture ever improved the quality of information received.

It was not a huge surprise to see an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the release of the information by former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who were apparently upset that leaking the memos’ “…effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on September 11, 2001.” They must have missed the part – referred to above – where Rice and Bush were warned well before 9/11 – a warning based on intelligence gathered via more traditional – and legal – means. But then Hayden and Mukasey both have metaphorical blood on their hands in this matter so it’s not so surprising they take this view.

The blast from the left is criticism of Obama for deciding not to prosecute Intelligence operatives for torturing prisoners with the approval, even urging, of lawyers from Bush’s Department of Justice. (a piece in today’s NY Times details one such case) This is a quandary since to say “they were only following orders” has a 1940s reminiscent stink about it, but this was clearly a decision intended to protect intelligence operatives from the consequences of the folly of their masters and to avoid harming those agencies that – like it or not – we depend on for a degree of security. As for bringing the likes of Judge Bybee and others in leadership positions to justice, it seems unlikely until and unless Obama gets a much larger majority in the Congress. And even then, he would more likely argue for a kind of Commission on Reconciliation and Truth but when looking at the Bush administration and his cronies in Congress it is hard to imagine anything like truth or reconciliation being of any concern to them. And to be credible, such a Commission would need to be bipartisan.

In other news: President Obama welcomed Texas Governor Rick Perry’s suggestion that Texas secede from the Union and offered his assistance in facilitating the process. There is a strong rumor that George W. Bush would emerge from retirement to fill the Office of Texas Monarch, leaving Perry with even less of a job than he has currently.

Reflections on the Inauguration

“George W. Bush did enormous damage to America’s standing in the world and its strength at home. Yet the vitality of the US system resurfaced, and American voters have chosen in Barack Obama a man of vision and statesmanship. It now falls to him to renew the confidence and restore the reputation of the American republic.” Financial Times editorial, January 18, 2009

The inauguration was a blast –for many reasons: it was the end of the Bush/Cheney era; it was a symbolic period at the end of a long sentence of overt and then nuanced racism; it was the end of a generation of conservative mis-rule of America’s treasure; and an opportunity for people to celebrate possibilities and for a few days put aside the worries produced by the destruction of the Bush years.

As someone who tends to avoid huge crowds I felt some anxiety as I headed for the mall with my friend John for the Sunday concert. Joining some 800,000 people between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument turned out to be a glorious event – full of great music, thankfully brief speeches (has Joe Biden ever before spoke for less than five minutes?) and a huge crowd of happy and grateful citizens. No one complained about the cold or the relatively brief wait to get through security. John and I began our hike back to his car as the President-elect spoke, thinking the concert was over but were brought up short as the recognizable voice of Pete Seeger came loud and clear singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is My Land”.  Stopped us in our tracks.

Following a festive dinner Monday night, Tuesday began with an early morning trip to the security point to get to a law office on Pennsylvania Avenue to which a friend’s brother-in-law had gotten invitations for us to view the afternoon parade.  My wife and I then spent three hours in what the press later called a “line” but which was actually a mob. The National Park Police and DC police had efficiently managed Sunday’s security, but on Tuesday we were under the control of the Secret Service. It is enough to say that after 2.5 hours in a “line” two-plus blocks long and 15-20 people across in frigid weather, moving at a dead snail’s pace, we were confronted by a DC policeman who declared a medical emergency and ordered everyone to disperse. This turned out to have no effect; the crowd simply surged forward threatening to crush the people in front against the metal cage security gates. Imagine a Brazilian soccer crowd on an acid trip and you get the drift. So we bagged it.

We gave up standing in the bitter cold for the comfort of seats at a friendly bar at Dupont Circle two feet from a flat screen TV and Bloody Mary mix. The bar was full for the actual inauguration and people drank, wept, cheered and totally ignored Bush and Cheney when they were introduced. Someone wondered whether old white guys would tear up when Obama took the oath. The answer? Yes we can.  Yes we can.