This picture was taken at a rally in Texas for governor Rick Perry and the former Alaska governor and current hand scribbling “leader” of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin. Seems a little weird to me that the kid is facing one way and the sign another, but…whatever. Maybe he wrote on both sides to improve the sign’s effectiveness. “Home Scholers for Perry” on one side and the old Locke quote, “Resistance to Trannies is obediance to God” on the other.

At first, I tried to convince myself that this sign should actually be read as “Home Scholars for Perry”. But Scholar is spelled with an A and not an E, so that doesn’t work in dispelling the incredible urge to call this kid’s mom a dunderhead. Sure, the kid is holding up the sign, but the lady next to him either wrote it or assured the young lad that it was spelled correctly. Either way, she should be clubbed about the face, neck and shoulders with a large ball peen hammer. You’re not helping your cause — whatever that cause may be.

Maybe the sign is supposed to be read as “Homes Cholers for Perry”. The dictionary defines choler as “an irritable petulant feeling”. Perhaps there is an inordinately large group of far right conservatives who hold an ungodly amount of animosity towards their homes. How Rick Perry got them all to gather in one location and hold up crudely written signs is beyond me.

Wait a minute. Governor Rick was pissed at the amount of power the US federal government was wielding and supported the idea of state sovereignty, right? So, in truth, he held an irritable petulant feeling towards the US — his home. By Jove…it all makes sense now! That kid’s mother isn’t an illiterate numskull after all. Turns out she’s brilliant!

Or not.

Scott Brown will have to run again in 2012 if he wants to retain his newly acquired senate seat. But will he be running for that seat or a much more influential one? Forgive me as I delve into pure speculation.

The one sliver of optimism that kept me buoyed during this first year of the Obama Administration, a year in which much has been expected and little, to this point, has been returned, was the paucity of formidable heavyweights standing on the opposite side of the ring. It was the fact that when I looked forward to the presidential election of 2012, I could not see any truly viable contenders for the Republicans. That may have changed last night.

Now, I will admit that I know very little about the new Republican senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown. I know little about his policies or his background. But I do know the important things. And when I say ‘the important things’, I mean the various tidbits about senator Brown that would make him very attractive to the conservative and independent voters who will be yearning for a bewitching alternative to Obama come 2012.

Brown’s a good old boy who drives a pickup, but can’t be too rednecky for the independents because he lives in one of the most liberal states in the union. He spent a brief period of his life on welfare. That should prove that while Martha’s Vineyard may be a few klicks away for the new senator, he’s no stranger to poverty. He got into a few scrapes when he was a young man, but he states that the violence was due to his sticking up for his mom and sisters. He’s like friggin’ John Wayne, this guy — only without the pansy real first name. In 1982, Brown posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine. When you consider all of the assorted (and sordid) reasons why politicians have dropped their britches recently — Spitzer, Ensign, Edwards, Craig, Sanford — and you consider the fact that Brown doesn’t exactly look like Orrin Hatch, you must concede that a 1982 photo spread of this now happily married hunk appears incredibly tame in comparison.

I’m not saying that this is the guy the Republican party has been dreaming about. I mean, I’m sure they will feel him out for about, oh, a week or so before crowning him the savior they’ve been waiting for. But look at the alternatives they have for 2012. Just the thought of most of these people would give Republican voters a violent case of the trots.

Newt Gingrich is considering a run? Not even Newt Gingrich would vote for Newt Gingrich. He thought that guy died years ago. And in a way, he did. Sarah Palin? Please. “What newspapers do you read?” “All of ‘em.” “Who’s your favorite founding father?” “All of ‘em.” “Bullcrap, who’s your favorite?” “Well, I guess I would have to say, Colonel Sanders.” Okay, I made that last part up, but you see my point. Palin will pop and fizzle by 2012. Mike Huckabee? He was my biggest fear until a few months ago when his own little Willie Horton situation reared its ugly head. Limbaugh? Come on. The bilious rhetoric works for a while. But you can only get so chummy with Satan before your voice becomes static and you are nothing more than a paper tiger.

So, we have a gray-hair, a narcissist, a Dukakis and a Darth Vader. These are our Republican choices? Blech!

So…what can Brown do for you? He’s young, handsome, Caucasian (I know. I hate to say it, but being from the south, I know it must be said), slightly experienced. Nobody knows who the hell he is or what he stands for and he has immediate mass appeal. Except for the being white part, he sounds a lot like another guy I know.

Obama and his cronies up on Capitol Hill better get their shit together but quick. The grooming for his replacement has already begun. And while Scott Brown may be guilty of showing off his package nearly 30 years ago, he may soon be described as being the “complete package” and the preeminent favorite for the White House in 2012.

I’m a huge Obama supporter. Nothing thrilled me more than to see him take the oath of office a few days ago, and I was glad to see him hit the ground running in regards to mending some of the broken fences left by the Bush administration. Of course, some of his immediate amendments and reversals have been given an askance gaze and tongue lashings from his critics while the supporters of such changes are enthralled, convinced already that change has indeed come to Washington.

The reversal of the Mexico City Policy has immediately reopened the door to the abortion debate, and it appears that the door will be blown of its hinges if Obama chooses to pass the Freedom of Choice Act. His desire to close Gitmo in the next year was met by harsh criticism by those who think Obama is already becoming weak on terrorism. Seriously though, what is the solution to Gitmo? You keep it open indefinitely and you are denying due process to both those who should be prosecuted as well as to those individuals who are innocent and watching their lives fritter away in some far off and unforgotten land. If you close it, then the threat of retribution from those who are released, whether they were innocent or not, will always loom. If you kept me in a prison for five years under suspicion of crimes I never committed then released me, I can’t say that revenge would not be close to the top of my “to do” list. So…what do we do?

I do have one major problem with President Obama. He is just a few days into his presidency and already I am beginning to hold my breath in the anticipation that business as usual may already be easing itself into the Oval Office. If you are going to make a rule that is to protect the government from the influence of lobbyists, don’t turn around and introduce an immediate exception to that rule. Not only does it call into question your integrity, but it also sets a precedent for your administration. Once you make one exception to a rule, where does it end? If you create a law and immediately demean that law by introducing exceptions, how are we (the people of the United States) and they (our enemies and allies around the world) ever supposed to believe in what you say?

Or do you live by the idea that you are the decider, and as a result, all laws are to be followed unless you decide otherwise? Cause I can tell you, if that’s your way of thinking, all I can say is, “Been there, done that.”

A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life to read. I felt bad about the fact that I started the book but never completed it. After hearing the recent soundbites of Warren equating homosexuality to pedophilia and incest, two incontrovertible crimes against humanity, I imagine it may be quite a while before I ever finish the book. I’m sure it’s a good read, but the recent news has kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.

I don’t want to go into a long, drawn out diatribe on this whole Rick Warren thing. There are just a few things I want to point out.

1) I think President-elect Obama made one of his first missteps as our new leader when he chose Warren to offer Invocation at his Inaugural ceremony. Warren is considered by many to be a good man. He is respected around the world and his literature has become required reading for many people of faith. But some of his beliefs are so antithetical to Obama’s, one has to wonder what positives there would be in extending such an invitation. I am in the midst of partaking of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals, and from the introduction alone, one could replace Lincoln’s name with Obama’s and the difference in the two and their approach to forming an administration would be nominal. To me it is true that the best discourse may come from those whose ideals are not always perfectly aligned. Such differences can provoke better decision-making.

However, why would Obama alienate the very people who gave him such a strong backing during his campaign, especially by embracing someone who is not even going to be a part of his cabinet? There is no real benefit to bringing such controversy to a historic ceremony that is full of pomp and circumstance but not at all impactful when it comes to policy decisions. Why rock the boat if you don’t have to? And why spit upon those who so lovingly lifted you upon their shoulders and helped to carry you into the White House?

2) That being said, it must be reiterated that Reverend Warren is not a part of the Obama administration. And it should also be pointed out that Obama has proven himself to be a shrewd, meticulous and determined man. He has made it clear that the final decisions to be made will be made by him. “The buck stops with me.” So, while his choice for this historic yet — in the grand scheme of things — relatively insignificant ceremony was a bad one, I truly believe that Obama’s policies will, in the long run, be more offensive to Reverend Warren’s sensibilities than to the LGBT community. Obama says he supports the Gay community (and abortion rights, which also differ greatly from Warren’s own ideals) and, at this point, I take him at his word. We shall see.

3) On a personal level, it bothers me when people try to equate the struggles of African-Americans to the struggles of Gay men and women. I think the discrimination both groups receive is the same, and I think that the psychological effect such discrimination has on the two groups is the same. But I think there are differences that make one a struggle from crib to grave and another an internal struggle that can remain hidden until it is either forced or voluntarily brought to the fore. I am not diminishing the pain and suffering endured. I am not diminishing the torment one must feel, spending a life rejecting what is only a natural feeling, a feeling that is often portrayed by friends and foe alike as sinfully unnatural. And I am not diminishing the obvious physical and psychological torment endured during overt gestures of hate by the intolerant. I guess I feel that one group (usually) has control over when and how their “outing” is revealed while the other group is thrust into combat the minute they emerge from the womb. The struggle for both is a tough one, but the road on which these struggles transpire is markedly different.

A recent AP News article states that many people do not perceive President-elect Barack Obama as a black man. He’s described as bi-racial, multi-racial, blah, blah, blah. The author Christopher Hitchens claims that he is just as white as he is black and that he is not the “first black president”. If I am not mistaken, Hitchens grew up in the U.K. and not the United States, more specifically, not below the Mason-Dixon line in the U.S. So, perhaps I should give him a pass on this one. In this country, it isn’t what you actually are. It is all about what people see. Perhaps Hitchens missed the innumerable death threats Obama has received in the last few months, or perhaps he neglected to see the number of Americans who would not vote for Obama simply because they thought he was black — and to be fair, the number of Americans who voted for him for the exact same reason.

You know what? Technically, these people are right. Genetically, Barack Obama is not a 100% black man (in this country, who is 100% anything?). But, right now Obama has a 79% approval rating in his handling of the transition from Bush’s administration to his own. 68% of the country has confidence in the president-elect, according to Gallup. He’s doing really well with American’s at this point. But the pessimistic side of me can only think that as Obama’s approval rating goes down, the blacker he’ll become. And if he ever achieves the cellar-dweller numbers of Bush, he’ll be darker than Wesley Snipes. It’ll go from “he is the perfect example of what America is. He is multi-racial, multi-cultural. His is the face that represents the portrait of the American landscape” to “See? I told you not to vote for his black ass. He was genetically disposed to pull us into the crapper.”

I truly, truly hope that I am wrong. But this country has seemingly come a long way in a very short amount of time. And I have to be cautious in thinking that humanity has truly taken a turn for the better.