When I was a little girl, if something good ever happened to me, my mean older sister did everything she could to steal my spotlight instead. If I got a decent report card for the first time in years, she's run around bragging about how SHE made the honor role -- again. If I was going to dance at the Girl Scout folk dance festival, she'd go on and on and on about how her essay on teenage goals and aspirations won a prize from the Lions Club, even while I was trying not to trip over myself while dancing "La Raspa".

When I was happily living at the dorms in college, she used her role as PRESIDENT of the local chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma to force me to join KKG so that she could continue to lord it over me still, even in college. Humph.

And when my father died, my mean older sister was the one who forced us all into probate court so that everyone in the family had to focus on HER.

Well, January 20, 2009 was supposed to be Barack Obama's big day to shine. And so what happens? Just like my mean older sister always tried to outshine me, GWB tried to outshine Obama -- even on his big day. And GWB almost succeeded

Just three freaking weeks before the inauguration, Bush gave Uhud Olmert the green light to bomb the daylights out of Gaza! How's that for stealing the show?

At a time when America should be focusing in on Michelle Obama's new dress, all eyes in the nation -- and even the world -- were once again forced to focus in on Olmert and Bush. And as my inbox filled up with photos of the corpses of hundreds of dead children in Gaza after being irradiated and blown up, and the Israeli neo-cons bombarded the world with stories about how they HAD to kill women and children in Gaza because of something that had happened 65 years before and my inbox filled up with photos of corpses from the Nazi Holocaust, NO ONE was thinking about Obama. Everyone, even me, was focused on George W. Bush.

I bet you anything that Bush was all excited and pleased about that.

And I bet you anything that Obama was feeling all left out, ignored and pissed!

And I also bet you anything that Obama got right on the phone to Olmert and said, "Ehud, if that Gaza mess isn't cleared up completely by Inauguration Day, Israel is never gonna see another dime of American money ever again nor one more F-16 jet. And YOU are gonna have to pay for all those weapons and illegal settlements yourself."

And what do you want to bet that Olmert got the message loud and clear, pulled his troops out of Gaza and even stopped the bombardment of UN facilities -- way before Obama's historic inauguration began.

PS: On Inauguration Day, it looked like GWB still didn't want to give up the spotlight. Did you SEE how Obama left the podium after his speech and started striding purposefully back to the capitol building, juggling for position, trying to get ahead of GWB? And how Bush was not to be outdone and ran after Obama like a puppy dog. And then Obama walked faster. And Bush walked faster still.

How embarrassing for Bush.