The Inauguration

[more recent posts 1st]

11. The final update: video of Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction [transcript]. Slowly building to a radical close. Superb stuff.

10. Heh: Some Republicans, of course, stayed in Washington. John Feehery, a strategist and former top congressional aide, said he and his wife planned to walk from their Capitol Hill home to the ceremony if they could find a baby sitter for their young son. "I accepted the will of the American people and I'm willing to work with this administration," he said.

A frequent political commentator on CNN and MSNBC, Feehery seemed not in great demand on this day of Democratic celebration. "I might be doing Irish TV," he said a bit sheepishly.

9. Bush at Andrews Air Force Base: he saluted the guard who met him at the helicopter steps. The salute made no sense all the times he did it as President: a salute is given to a higher ranking officer, and he was the commander-in-chief. But now it's just an idiotic leftover stunt.

8. The Bush White House website is already down! They need to save that material. Bush did a lot of his misdeeds in plain sight.

7. There's the Hussein!

6. No that's not Lord of the Dance. It's a Shaker hymn.

5. The more important oath - the one that got Biden in and therefore Cheney out.

4. Barack H. Obama. H?

3. Why does Bush still have the beady-eyed look after 8 years?

2. Hey George -- how does it feel that the new guy's wife is taller than you?

1. There couldn't be a better comic lead-in to the event than the news that Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back while lifting a moving box at his new home in McLean Virginia and so will attend the ceremony in a wheelchair as a precautionary measure. Two things in particular -- the somewhat Freudian nature of the mishap and the way it puts into stark relief the gulf between the Republican fetishisation of manual labour and their own lives. Dick Cheney hasn't done a day's work that didn't involve paper-pushing in 40 years. But he doesn't trust anyone else with his stuff (wasn't Joe the Plumber available?). He also appears to have no plans to move back to his "home state" of Wyoming.