Posted on 01/18/2009 2:51:43 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Washington - Barack Obama's team vowed to lose no time remaking the nation and the world as a blazing constellation of stars kicked off a three-day inauguration party for America's first black president on Sunday.
Once he takes office on Tuesday, top aides said, Obama will immediately set in train economic revival, an end to the war in Iraq and a new dawn for US diplomacy.
U2, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder - whose songs were totemic anthems of Obama's barnstorming rise to power - were headlining a concert for a sea of people standing in arctic cold in front of Washington's Lincoln Memorial.
The tens of thousands attending were the advance guard of an inaugural crowd expected to number millions, as an unprecedented security operation began with police and army reservists taking up position across the US capital.
Hollywood royalty including Tom Hanks, Jamie Foxx and Denzel Washington were reciting historical passages interspersed with the all-star musical lineup, to mark the formal countdown to Tuesday's momentous inauguration on Capitol Hill.
Wreath
In advance of the afternoon party, Obama struck a more sombre note as he joined vice president-elect Joseph Biden in laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery.
Dressed in black winter coats to guard against the freezing temperatures, Obama and Biden held their hands over their hearts as "Taps", the US military's haunting lament to the fallen, was played by a lone bugler.
Obama and his wife Michelle then climbed into the incoming president's new armoured Cadillac with a blue licence plate reading "44" - his numerical position as the newest, and first African-American, commander-in-chief.
A 'new Declaration of Independence'
The incoming First Family headed to a raucous reception at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, Washington's oldest African-American church, and joined in a swaying, emotive recitation of hymns and Biblical passages.
"Let's make sure this election is not the end of what we do to change America, but the beginning," the president-elect said as he trundled towards Washington and his place in history during a day-long train journey on Saturday.
Along a railroad from Philadelphia to Washington, a route once traced by his hero, Civil War president Abraham Lincoln, Obama urged Americans to adopt a new "Declaration of Independence" from bigotry, small thinking and ideology.
Aides said those themes will figure large in Obama's inaugural address after he is sworn in at noon on Tuesday and takes his place alongside the pantheon of past presidents including Lincoln and Franklin D Roosevelt.
A regular Obamastock. Like Woodstock but with far more insanity to go around.
Alas, the Demagogues are incorrigible bigots, small-minded ideologues, who will never learn better.
p.s. Anyone else thing that our Declaration of Independence is just fine, thanks? We don't need a "new" DofI, OR Constitution, we just need the Demagogues to learn to honor the ones we already have.
Within two years, his own party will want to run him out of town and nobody will be left for Obama to lie to or con.
They'll quickly turn on him when he falls on his face and he surely will.
They'll devour him as a pool of sharks devours one of its own when it becomes wounded.
I’m raring for him to “go”, too.
I suspect many of us feel the same way...
Amen...see my post 27.
I was wondering if anyone here caught “The Little Obamas” tonight at the inauguration? I was at my lady friend’s house playing scrabble (so I only caught the tail end)with her family and they were on tv reciting Obamas praises. Their teacher said that they begin class everyday with that. Am I just paranoid or was that for the most part what I thought it to be? And...is there a thread on it yet?
great post and link!!
The mindset of a TOTALITARIAN???
Right on. This Israel thing isn’t going to last 48 hrs. Obozo will put his hand on the Bible (or Koran), swear, and next thing he knows they will be burning his effigy in the Middle East on a massive scale.
Black this black that. If you were not a racist this idiot will make you one.
That is hallowed ground that they are not fit to walk on.
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