A tale of two crowds

No, this isn't another wingnut post on the Urinary Olympics over the crowd size for the 9/12 protest in Washington, but it's related.

The absolute mess left behind on the National Mall after Barack Obama's inauguration was well-noted on righty blogs, including this one. But what I'd been unable to find until now was anything showing the aftermath of last Saturday's 9/12 rally on the Mall. Roger at XDA, which I read all the time, had it all along and I somehow missed it.

Make of it what you will.

'Post-Barackalyptic wasteland'

Just look at all Ozombies lurching about, not knowing what to do in the absence of His Holiness. And the litter...oh my god, the litter.

Spotted over at Iowahawk.

Jay-Z: 'My President Is Black'

If there was any question that we're entering a new age of gracelessness with the election of Barack Obama, I think those questions are answered explicitly here. There are enough "mother-fuckers" thrown around here in Jay-Z's appearance at this particular inaugural ball (Youth ball, I think) to keep you entertained right to the 5:50 mark where the rapper really finishes with a flourish.

Yay! No more white lies!

BBC manipulates Obama inaugural sound bite

I don't know what you'd call an audio-only version of fauxtography...fauxdio?

TonyN at Harmless Sky uncovered a bit of BBC trickery in their coverage of Barack Obama's inaugural address. It seems they spliced together a few segments from different parts of his speech to make it all sound like a single statement on fighting global warming.

Paragraph 16

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Paragraph 22

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the spectre of a warming planet. We will not apologise for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

Those bolded pieces that TonyN emphasized are the bits that were spliced together to make a single sound bite in the Beeb's broadcast in an apparent effort to make Obama's stance on global warming strongly than it may have otherwise sounded.

Once again, the link to the audio clip.

H/T to reader Ayrdale.

Off to a bad start

For all of Barack Obama's lofty rhetoric about post-partisan politics and bringing the nation together, his presidency got off to a pretty crappy start.

One of the worst things about Obama? His supporters. It's one thing to work oneself into a schoolgirl's ecstatic frenzy over his very presence, but the classless chanting of "na-na na-na, na-na na-na, hey-hey-hey, goodbye!" when outgoing President Bush appeared was completely disgusting.

What's that you say? That was just his supporters and not Obama himself? Well...

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration's "unconscionable ineptitude" in responding to Hurricane Katrina...

That's from the fucking new whitehouse.gov web site. It's apparently now official US Government policy to publicly excoriate a past president for the abject failures of state and local governments. And in the likely event that the page disappears down the memory hole:


And to think I was willing to give them a chance. Less than 24 hours in and I already despise this new administration.

A kibitz from Mark:

Obama Irony alert. The very day that his tech lackeys posted the above, and Joseph Lowery reminded us that whites have yet to embrace right (I guess electing The One isn't enough)... The One declared by Papal Encyclical Presidential Proclamation that January 20th, 2009 to be a day of Renewal and Reconciliation :

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

'My fellow citizens...'

Obama opened his inaugural address with "My fellow citizens...". Not "My fellow Americans..." as might be expected from a new American president, but "fellow citizens".

Guess he didn't want to leave out his fellow "citizens of the world".

The eve of a new era?

So we've got about 48 hours before Barack Obama's inauguration as President of the United States Savior of Mankind, and things are already starting to look crazy. Examples:

• Driving home last night from the airport in Richmond after returning from the west coast, I saw a car with the license plate "NOV0408". Maybe it was the brain damage caused by watching Nights In Rodanthe on the plane ride home, but it took me a second or two to make the connection to Obama's election date.
• All those big lighted traffic information signs on I-295 and I-95 between Richmond and Fredericksburg had messages warning motorists of Inauguration Day traffic. A hundred freakin' miles south of Washington.
• Need a hotel room anywhere between Washington and the area south of Richmond for the inauguration? Fuhgeddaboudit.
• Want a lasting - as in permanent - memento from the big day on Tuesday? You can get an Obama tattoo.

OK, yes, it is a big deal that we're about to install our first black American president. But an Obama tattoo? What if he turns out to be a bigger crook than Nixon and gets his ass impeached? Aren't a lot of people setting themselves up for a huge letdown no matter how Obama's presidency plays out?