Ryan Sims

You may have heard.

Some other quick observations concerning the inauguration. You may have noticed these as well.

• The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court flubbed the Oath of Office. The new President tried to correct him. Didn’t work out so well.
• The new Vice President’s middle name is Robinette.
• Every speaker I saw invoked God at some point, in a markedly Christian light, and expressed some measure of apparent chosen-one-ness about the United States. Doesn’t quite jive with the idea of oneness in this new administration.
• The President’s speech became decidedly more moving as it drew to a close, apparently following the old standby “Start strong, finish strong” strategy.
• Mr. Obama sent a one-line heat-seeking missile at the outgoing President on his terrorism policies. “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”
• Dick Cheney looks 700% more evil in a wheelchair.
• Mitch McConnell looked pissed.
• The members of the Army NBC showed appeared either worried or apathetic. None seemed excited.
• Aretha Franklin has odd tastes in hats and sang a marginal, at best, and overly-grunted rendition of My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.
• The Lincoln Bible is not large.
• The Biden family Bible is very large.
• John Williams’s arranging is everything–every single thing–it has ever been cracked up to be.
• No expense was spared in miking the fantastic quartet playing Mr. Williams’s arrangement. I’d love to catch a glimpse at the full equipment list.
• Anthony McGill played the most beautiful clarinet I have ever seen.
• Someone at NBC knows how to mix music for television playback. I’d be shocked if the SNL team wasn’t behind this somewhere.

A quick view into my psyche through my internal monologue during the broadcast:

This is really happening. I’m really still in shock about this? I suppose that’s alright. Am I too idealistic?

People are packed in for twenty city blocks. You’re not the only one who’s idealistic.

What makes my eyes well up like this? Why is this new form of patriotism effecting me so?

I think I liked the election day speech better.

I wonder what my friends in Europe are doing right now.

There are a lot of people walking around outside. I wonder how many of them voted for McCain. . . . . I wonder how many of them voted.

The snow is beautiful. Something about that beauty is appropriate.
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One of my best friends, and one of my closest political confidants, is on a plane right now, headed to the West Coast to start a Master’s program in nuclear nonproliferation. I’m thinking about you, Sarah.

Oh dear God this man is full of shit.

Now that the whole nominee thing is effectively squared away, we find good old Johnny McCain stumbling toward senility at every possible turn.

Saturday evening, the presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee declared, “I’ll admit to you that it’s tough, it’s tough in some respects.”

What’s tough, you ask? Senator McCain stuttered the above in response to the question, “How can I be proud of my country?”–a question asked by a man who noted he was educated at Princeton and earned over $300,000 annually.

I’m incredibly anxious to see how the media handles this one. It seems whatever Faux News can get their slimy little fingers on in order to somehow criticize Michelle Obama turns to Conservative hate gold. (‘Terrorist fist bump’ anyone? ‘Obama’s baby mama?’)

I expect at least 60% less coverage of McCain’s utterance than there was of Mrs. Obama’s “proud of my country” gaffe.

And while it might be difficult to totally disagree with Mr. McCain here, considering the atrocities occurring daily in the Middle East, the handling of the Gulf hurricanes last year, the treatment of our returning veterans, and so on and so forth, the fact remains that this is a man who cannot even remember what talking points he’s spewed this week.

Consider some of his yammering on Meet The Press (R.I.P. Mr. Russert) juxtaposed against his now-infamous comatose green-screen stump speech (bottled hot water to dehydrated babies, eh?) to a few hundred supporters (on the same night Senator Obama clinched the Democratic nomination and spoke to a crowd pushing 30,000).

What we have here is a failure to communicate. A consistent failure to communicate, that is.

A vote for John McCain is a vote for a man who can’t even position himself. And it’s a vote for a continued mess in these United States.

How can we be proud of our country? Vote for change.

. . . it looks like we have a Democratic Presidential Nominee.

I haven’t been exactly open here as to who I’ve supported, but after Dennis Kucinich gave up the fight, I shifted my support and attention to Barack Obama. He wasn’t the most typically progressive candidate left in the race (that was John Edwards, whose positions I generally supported, if not his fundraising methods).

But he became the most progressive candidate for me.

It’s the ability to motivate people. College students, elderly couples, anyone. Democrats, especially newly-registered Democrats, are out in force this primary season. And those newly-registered Democrats vote strongly in favor of Senator Obama.

It’s the speeches filled with something other than the typical.

It goes even to the Reverend Wright debacle (about which I couldn’t care less, frankly, and which got more ridiculous media coverage than just about anything deserves). Such aplomb, such candor.

Now that’s not to say I fully agree with everything Mr. Obama has to say. He’s not the perfect candidate for me.

But he just might be the perfect candidate for the United States right now.

The upshot to this long and arduous primary season has been the thousands upon thousands of more voters, more new voters, and more people excited for their respective candidate than I’ve seen in my (notably short) lifetime.

And the majority of that bustle of voters has pointed its efforts toward Mr. Obama. Not in my 21 years has a candidate removed more asses from desk chairs and put those asses in polling places.

It was during the Iowa Caucuses I first began to really admire the pull of Mr. Obama’s message. In a fascinating display of the nearest thing we have to direct democracy in this nation, motivated caucus-goers pulled others to the Obama camp, forwarding a message of hope, a message of change.

And now it’s Obama vs. McCain.

You know who I’m supporting. Support your candidate.

Vote. Vote. Vote.

Five years at 365 days/year+5 days+1 Leap Day=1831 days of War.

In those 1831 days, 4000 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq.

A little division:

4000 killed/1826 days=2.1845 U.S. Soldiers killed, on average, every single day.

So there’s that. Something to think about.

Five years in Iraq.

I started with a massive bitch session right here. Then I deleted it. And now I’m at a loss for what to say. I opened the Huffington Post home page yesterday afternoon and read that big, red text that says:

3,990 US Troops Killed… 29,395 Wounded… 2,100 Have Tried To Commit Suicide… 88% Of Military Officers Say War Has Stretched US Thin… 82,000-89,000 Iraqi Casualties… 4,500,000 Iraqi Refugees… Global Terror Incidents From January 2001: 1,188… Global Terror Incidents From January 2006: 5,188

And another little piece of me died.

Yeah, sometimes I cry.

I cry for those who are dying, those who will die, those whose families will never again see the faces of their loved ones.

And I cry for all of us. All of us who sit at home in the States, turn on the evening news and watch the night’s Iraq War report with frozen faces and disconnected minds. All of us who hear it and it doesn’t register, all of us who see it and don’t feel what we felt anymore. All of us who are furious but fed up. All of us who the Vice President just threw right the hell under the bus.

Thing is, yesterday, when I read the above headline, I didn’t cry. It was like it meant nothing. Just big, red words. Just big, red words, screaming out but finding nothing but deaf ears–or worse still, ears that once heard but are now closed in a self-defense sort of deafness. Those are my ears.

And right then, the Vice President’s bus hit me.