Soon the US will swear in its 44th President. My office is planning on an extended coffee break to watch.
This will be the 11th Prez that has served during my life time. Hard to believe that’s 1/4 of them! I don’t remember much of Dwight though.
Obama iz a kool kat
Steve, you had a few more months of Dwight than I did. I had barely considered that he was president during my lifetime.
As for the inauguration, we’ll be breaking too though I’m not sure I’ll be able to get near the TV. I’m trying the CNN/Facebook stream but not having much luck.
I wish Obama and his constituents, however one chooses to define them, the best of luck and a modicum of wisdom.
Listen to NPR!!
He’s president now!
yes…i just heard his translated speech in the radio 
who? what? when?
what happened 
Im confused!
haha I’m not that dumb, and if you highlighted this neither are you!
hahahaha…
Just seen some of the coverage.
The difference between two countries:
- Our head of state travels in a golden coach drawn by horses; the US head of state travels in an armoured limousine calle The Beast.
- In the USA, a million people gather to watch the inauguration and there are tears of joy; in the UK there is collective cynicism and apathy about democracy.
What a great day for democracy. If nothing else, Obama is a great public speaker and a charismatic new face of the western world, and a huge PR improvement on Bush. But on top of that, I think he’ll be pretty good at the job. He must have something to have overcome so much to win.
As Lenny henry said, he’s the first English speaking president since Clinton.
haha gotta love Lenny Henry!
Depends on the inaguration. I don’t think there were a million people out to watch W’s inaguration. This is the biggest inaguration I can remember, though I have never paid as much attention to one. Jacquie and I almost went to DC for it!
Amen.
I just read W’s inauguration cost was 42.3 million. Obama’s is over 150 million.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl204
I’m sure all the Obambies figure an extra hundred mill is no big deal.
Did anyone ells catch the “hand shake” between bush and obama before bush stepped onto the copter? It made me lawl:p
But as the story you linked to points out the figure for the Bush inauguration does not include security, whereas the Obama figure does. The cost of the Obama inauguration when you don’t include security like with the Bush figure is around $45 million. And the Obama inaugural committee independently fund raised $41 million of it.
Yes, security for Obama’s inauguration will be higher than Bush’s because the threat levels against Obama are higher than was for Bush, and also there are way more people there today than were there for Bush.
Democracy is only good when you get what you want from it. Otherwise, you’re at the mercy of the masses… you’re subject to the “tyranny of the majority”.
I’m still in mourning over the passage of Proposition 8 in California. In this case, Democracy hurt a very large group of people, not only in California but all across the US.
We’ve still a long way to go as a country.
That’s what the Supreme Court is for to protect us from the Tyranny of the Majority. And hopefully the Prop 8 legal challenges will go all the way to the Federal Supreme court and clean this up once and for all.
But today is a good day none-the-less. Hopefully the “Get to know me” ads do some good.
And thank God we have both the Supreme Court and Congress to prevent these tyrannical fools who become presidents from doing any more damage than they already do.
Biggest inaguration EVAR.
I just heard 1.4 million.
Last big one was LBJ with 1.2 million
It didn’t even hit me until I was looking at the list and dates of the presidencies on the front page of today’s paper. I don’t remember him at all. I do remember watching the Kennedy funeral on TV. For most of the '60’s the presidents were just faces and names on evening news to me.
I got to thinking too how there could be 11 presidents in my almost 49 years when you would think most did two terms. Kennedy was cut short and Nixon resigned so Johnson and Ford both had partial terms, Carter and GHWB only one term. In that time only Reagan, Clinton, and W served two full terms. Guess it adds up.
I watched on CBS. They commented that Biden was sworn in before noon, Bush’s term ended promtly at noon, and Obama wasn’t sworn in until several minutes after noon. So they were wondering if Biden was acting president for those few minutes.