ScottMW.com

Change We Can See

I try not to be an Obama zombie, but if he’s doing what he says he will — how can you not like the man? He’s shown, so far, that he’s the kind of man says what he means, means what he says and does what he says he will do.

Put simply, we were eating really bland junk food and now we’ve got steaks.

In the first few days Obama has been the president of the U.S., he has set the bar pretty high by making changes to the way Washington does business, some major and some minor.

Here are the ones I could come up with-

• Ordered a freeze on new regulations
• Started a plan for withdrawal from Iraq
• Ordered the closure of CIA prisons
• Stopped allowing torture and instead requires interrogations to go by the Army Field Manual
• Ordered increased governmental transparency over the coming months
• Banned aides from attempts at influencing the administration when they leave his staff
• Banned gifts from lobbyists to anyone in the administration
• Overturned the Gag rule which prohibited aid from going toward any organization that mentioned abortion as an option in family planning
• Asked Sun Chairman Scott McNealy to author a white paper on the benefits of using open source for the government as a whole

And that’s just the first week or so. What will he do in his four years as president?

I don’t know but if it’s anything like this, America really is back, baby.

Lady Liberty's Crown: Re-Opened

Okay, I don’t want to seem like an Obamaniac but seriously, has he been kicking ass and taking names lately or what?

From freezing the salaries of over-paid White House aides to closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison to inquiring into open source software for government-wide use, it’s been what — three days? four? — and he’s taking care of business.

Now he wants to re-open the crown portion of the Statue of Liberty to allow visitors to have the view that was open to the public before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the twin towers. According to NBC New York’s article:

After Sept. 11, access to the crown was closed as a security measure, along with the rest of the Statue and Liberty Island.

When the island and base of the statue were reopened several years later, the crown remained closed. U.S. Park officials said the narrow spiral stairway first built for worker access was a danger for anyone suffering an injury or other medical event, such as a heart attack.

In addition, a 1999 internal study found that if there were a fire in the pedestal, the interior of the statue would act like a chimney, with smoke suffocating anyone on the stairs.

However, several politicians, including Weiner, have pushed for reopening the crown to visitors, and have proposed a plan that would allow perhaps 10 at a time to make the climb.

If there’s a ‘fire in the pedestal,’ I think the people inside the statue would have bigger fish to fry than suffocating smoke, but that’s just me.

Personally, when I went to New York a few years ago, we skipped the island with the statue on it and went to Ellis Island to visit the museum because no one was allowed to even set foot inside. Now that they’re talking about opening up the best part of the statue, I’m thinking about making another trip. New York is awesome.

Thank you Obama.