I'm taking my time with Obama's inauguration speech, because as essentially a definition of the Obama administration, it deserved a better than average fisking. Nevertheless, other aspects of the inauguration are more easily analysed--such as the report that twice as many private jets--600, landed at Washington, Dulles for the inauguration, than in 2004. Look for Kansas to be reforested later this year to offset the carbon dioxide hurricane.
You just know all these rich people have skin in the game.
OK, the global warming hypocrisy is just too easy. More interesting is the very earliest signs of Obama let-down.
Purple ticket holder at the Obama inaugural-->
And, there I stood. I stood next to women from Florida who had saved for months to make this trip. I stood next to a woman separated by the crowd from her husband. I stood next to people who had been standing in that same spot since 5am. . . since, in one case, 3am....
And all the time I am watching other people go through the metal detectors that were meant for my crowd and me. It gradually became very clear that they were drawing from another line--a line that had formed hours after mine.
But there was no escape--no chance to leave my area. I was boxed in. I couldn't join the line of latecomers.
People chanted, "Let us in." People chanted, "We have tickets." People chanted "we are purple," waving their precious 4x6 inch tickets in the air.
And then they just started begging and shouting. Let us in. We have tickets. We've been here for hours. Let us in.
And then it was noon. And everything stopped.
And then a 21-gunner of deafening percussion.
And then, shear, crushing disappointment descends over the crowd. Unlike the smiles on all the faces you walked by on, say, election night, or in the metro last night, this crowd had to summon up all they had left after multiple hours in the cold to give a tepid ovation to the inauguration of a new president.
The first of many disappointments for starry-eyes naifs. If you can't manage an event like this, how will you manage the economy?
