1. econwhat wrote:

A “chiseled in stone” commitment kept me from travelling to DC to witness “in person” the inaugural ceremonies, seeing Barack Hussein Obama being sworn in as the FIRST black president of the United States must have been heartwarming to the millions who were there with bright, happy, faces and goodwill! I’m still on President Barack Hussein Obama’s team however doing my part with my money, skill and time to make America better.

But the one that I adore did end up going, staying at the J. W. Marriot Hotel, she sent me pictures from her rooms’ window-view that showed both the District of Columbia flag and the flag of the United States of America in between both flags was President Obama’s car flanked by four men walking beside it. What a great photo!!! She stated that a Philanthropist donated 600 rooms to charity and she was able to obtain one of them because of the work she does…How happy I am for her…she doesn’t brown-nose but things seem to come her way naturally…I’ll get more details when she returns this weekend, hopefully.

2. econwhat wrote:

A “chiseled in stone” commitment kept me from travelling to DC to witness “in person” the inaugural ceremonies, seeing Barack Hussein Obama being sworn in as the FIRST black president of the United States must have been heartwarming to the millions who were there with bright, happy, faces and goodwill! I’m still on President Barack Hussein Obama’s team however doing my part with my money, skill and time to make America better.

But the one that I adore did end up going, staying at the J. W. Marriot Hotel, she sent me pictures from her rooms’ window-view that showed both the District of Columbia flag and the flag of the United States of America in between both flags was President Obama’s car flanked by four men walking beside it. What a great photo!!! She stated that a Philanthropist donated 600 rooms to charity and she was able to obtain one of them because of the work she does…How happy I am for her…she doesn’t brown-nose but things seem to come her way naturally…I’ll get more details when she returns this weekend, hopefully.

Oh yeah, great speech, saw Bush squirm, and we were once again challenged to make life adjustments that will be uncomfortable and perhaps costly to you and those around you but will be beneficial to you and others if we hear our directive and act on it quickly.

3. Miriam wrote:

i like how this video has no comments… and the dance has tons!lol.

4. Garrett wrote:

Obama’s Inaugural Surprise

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 23, 2009; A15

Fascinating speech. It was so rhetorically flat, so lacking in rhythm and cadence, one almost has to believe he did it on purpose. Best not to dazzle on Opening Day. Otherwise, they’ll expect magic all the time.

The most striking characteristic of Barack Obama is not his nimble mind, engaging manner or wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. It’s the absence of neediness. He’s Bill Clinton, master politician, but without the hunger.

Clinton craves your adulation (the source of all his troubles). Obama will take it, but he can leave it, too. He is astonishingly self-contained. He gives what he must to advance his goals, his programs, his ambitions. But no more. He has no need to.

Which seems to me the only way to understand the mediocrity of his inaugural address. The language lacked lyricism. The content had neither arc nor theme: no narrative trajectory like Lincoln’s second inaugural; no central idea, as was (to take a lesser example) universal freedom in Bush’s second inaugural.

This is odd because Obama is so clearly capable of more. But he decisively left behind the candidate who made audiences swoon and the impressionable faint. And that left the million-plus on the Mall, while unshakably euphoric about the moment, let down and puzzled by the speech. He’d given them nothing to cheer or chant, nothing to sing.

Candidate Obama had promised the moon. In soaring cadences, he described a world laid waste by Bush, a world that President Obama would redeem — bringing boundless hope and universal health, receding oceans and a healing planet.

But now that Obama was president, the redeemer was withholding, the tone newly sober, even dour. The world was still in Bushian ruin, marked by “fear . . . conflict . . . discord . . . petty grievances and false promises . . . recriminations and worn-out dogmas.” But no more the prospect of magical restoration. In a stunning exercise in lowered expectations, Obama offered not quite blood, sweat and tears, but responsibility, work, sacrifice and service.

When candidate Obama said “it’s not about me, it’s about you,” that was sheer chicanery. But now he means it, because he really cannot part the waters. Hence his admonition to rely not on the “skill or vision of those in high office,” but on “We the People.”

On the issue of race, he was even more withholding, and admirably so. He understood that his very presence was enough to mark the monumentality of the moment. Words would be superfluous — as introducer Dianne Feinstein was apparently unaware — and he gave it very few.

This was surprising, given that the announced theme of the inaugural — “a new birth of freedom” — invited grandiose comparison to Lincoln. Yet in the inaugural address, Obama abandoned the conceit. He allowed that “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.” When he followed that with “So let us mark this day with remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled,” you were sure he would trace the journey back to Lincoln and the Second (post-Gettysburg) Republic or to King and the civil rights revolution.

But Obama didn’t. Remarkably, he instead reached back — over King and Lincoln — to George Washington. He rooted the values he cherishes most (and wants us to renew) in the Founders, in the First Republic, the slave-tainted one (as our schoolchildren are incessantly reminded) that had to await Lincoln for its cleansing.

Obama’s unapologetic celebration of Washington and the Founders of the original imperfect union was a declaration of his own emancipation from — or better, transcendence of — the civil rights movement. The old warrior Joseph Lowery prayed for the day when “white will embrace what is right.” Not Obama. By connecting himself in this historic address to Washington rather than Lincoln the liberator, Obama was legitimizing the full sweep of American history without annotation or mental reservation. If we ever have a post-racial future, this moment will mark its beginning.

Obama did this in prose, not his usual poetry. And he buried it in an otherwise undistinguished speech marred by a foreign policy section featuring the mushy internationalism of his still-bizarre Berlin adventure.

Perhaps that was just a bone to appease the faithful he had otherwise left hungry. We have no way of knowing. A complicated man, this new president. Opaque, contradictory and subtle. And that’s just day one.

5. Garrett wrote:

Judge Obama on Performance Alone
Let’s not celebrate more ordinary speeches.

by JUAN WILLIAMS

With the noon sun high over the U.S. Capitol, Barack Obama yesterday took the oath of office to become president of the United States. On one level, it was a simple matter of political process — the symbolic transfer of power. Yet words alone cannot convey its meaning.

The calloused hands of slaves, the voices of abolitionists, the hearts of generations who trusted in the naïve promise that any child can become president, will find some reward in a moment that was hard to imagine last year, much less 50 years ago. Our history, so marred by the sin of slavery, has come to the day when a man that an old segregationist would have described as “tea-colored” — the child of a white woman and an African immigrant, who identifies as a member of the long oppressed and despised black minority — was chosen by a mostly white nation as the personification of America’s best sense of self as a nation of power and virtue

At the end of the 1965 march calling for passage of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said politics held the potential to reflect the brilliance of the American creed of justice for all, and a “society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.” Years of hard work lay ahead to shift racist attitudes born of political power being limited to white Americans, he said, then added that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. How long? Not long. Because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

It is neither overweening emotion nor partisanship to see King’s moral universe bending toward justice in the act of the first non-white man taking the oath of the presidency. But now that this moment has arrived, there is a question: How shall we judge our new leader?

If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else — fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism — then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.

Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.

This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.

During the Democrats’ primaries and caucuses, candidate Obama often got affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media. Editors, news anchors, columnists and commentators, both white and black but especially those on the political left, too often acted as if they were in a hurry to claim their role in history as supporters of the first black president.

For example, Mr. Obama was forced to give a speech on race as a result of revelations that he’d long attended a church led by a demagogue. It was an ordinary speech. At best it was successful at minimizing a political problem. Yet some in the media equated it to the Gettysburg Address.

The importance of a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions was frequently and embarrassingly lost. When Mr. Obama’s opponents, such as the Clintons, challenged his lack of experience, or pointed out that he was not in the U.S. Senate when he expressed early opposition to the war in Iraq, they were depicted as petty.

Bill Clinton got hit hard when he called Mr. Obama’s claims to be a long-standing opponent of the Iraq war “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” The former president accurately said that there was no difference in actual Senate votes on the war between his wife and Mr. Obama. But his comments were not treated by the press as legitimate, hard-ball political fighting. They were cast as possibly racist.

This led to Saturday Night Live’s mocking skit — where the debate moderator was busy hammering the other Democratic nominees with tough questions while inquiring if Mr. Obama was comfortable and needed more water.

When fellow Democrats contending for the nomination rightly pointed to Mr. Obama’s thin proposals for dealing with terrorism and extricating the U.S. from Iraq, they were drowned out by loud if often vacuous shouts for change. Yet in the general election campaign and during the transition period, Mr. Obama steadily moved to his former opponents’ positions. In fact, he approached Bush-Cheney stands on immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperate in warrantless surveillance.

There is a dangerous trap being set here. The same media people invested in boosting a black man to the White House as a matter of history have set very high expectations for him. When he disappoints, as presidents and other human beings inevitably do, the backlash may be extreme.

Several seasons ago, when Philadelphia Eagle’s black quarterback Donovan McNabb was struggling, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh said the media wanted a black quarterback to do well and gave Mr. McNabb “a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve.” Mr. Limbaugh’s sin was saying out loud what others had said privately.

There is a lot more at stake now, and to allow criticism of Mr. Obama only behind closed doors does no honor to the dreams and prayers of generations past: that race be put aside, and all people be judged honestly, openly, and on the basis of their performance.

President Obama deserves no less.

6. Garrett wrote:

President Obama’s first mistake
“Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.” — President Barack Obama

If the president didn’t know that wasn’t exactly the case when he delivered his inaugural address Tuesday, he surely knows by now. Alert Herald readers called this week to remind us that we’ve had 43 presidents, counting Obama. No doubt a similar message reached the president.

It’s one thing to hold the most powerful elected office on Earth, quite another to avoid everyone who’d delight in pointing out any errors or omissions.

Barack Obama is our 44th president only because Grover Cleveland gets counted twice. Plenty of presidents have been re-elected, but Cleveland was the only president to leave the White House and return later for a second term.

Those unique circumstances make Cleveland the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. No. 23, Benjamin Harrison, served four years inbetween.

Cleveland was also the only president married in the White House, and we’re pretty sure he’s the only president to have a candy bar named for his firstborn — the Baby Ruth.

So, Obama is the 44th president, but only the 43rd American to take the oath of office.

Those Americans who caught Obama’s error deserve an “A” in presidential knowledge, but not in rhetoric. Imagine if Obama included in his inaugural address an explaination how he’s the 44th president but only the 43rd to take the oath.

It would have made his remarks more accurate, but about as uplifting and inspirational as, well, this blog.

7. Garrett wrote:

January 22, 2009
An Uneasy Feeling
by Victor Davis Hanson
Pajamas Media

Yesterday..

All Americans must appreciate the outpouring of good will, unity, and hope for a successful Obama administration. But I had a certain feeling of uncertainty yesterday at the coverage of the festivities.

Let me preface that worry: I did not think much of Bill Clinton our modern-day Alcibiades. But all through his administration, and of course before and after it, I thought a great deal of the United States, especially in comparison to the alternative.

Before Clinton bombed Milosevic in 1998 I believed that it would have been wiser to have gone to Congress and gotten an authorization to use force (as in the case of Bush in 2002). He might have also at least tried to convince the U.N. (as Bush attempted in fall 2002). But no matter: he began bombing he said to stop genocide, and I wrote an op-ed at the time for the Wall Street Journal calling for unity to ensure an American victory over Milosevic.

Whether Obama is President or McCain had won, no matter; it is still the U.S., and as a Jacksonian I pretty much pull for America — all the time. I am not a Socratic citizen of the world — given the thugs that rule most of Africa, the creepy places such as Iran or Russia or North Korea, the land of the Lotus-eaters in Europe, or the tribal dictatorships I’ve seen in the Middle East

I thought Jimmy Carter proved a self-righteous disaster and endangered the nation — remember the hostages in Iran, and the rise of radical Islam, the commies in Afghanistan and Central America, the holocaust in Cambodia, the oil mess, the sanctimonious preachy lectures, etc. — but I never thought that only with the ascension of Reagan could I really be again proud of the U.S.

The point? I distilled from the press coverage and the crowds and the punditry yesterday that for all too many suddenly a vote for Obama redeems America. Now, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in their lives they are apparently proud of the United States. (Had we not had the financial meltdown in mid-September, and had Obama stayed three points back in the polls, would millions have stayed soured on America and now in sullen silence licked their wounds?).

So I am surprised that suddenly the election of a single individual means that we are united, patriotic, proud of America? Suddenly Okinawa or Antietam, or all those who died at the Argonne, are ours to claim again? (This reminds of elementary school, when our third-grade split up into two sides, as the teacher quizzed us on geography — and the losers of the contest cried and said unfair and how they didn’t like school or Mrs. Wilson, and then when they won the next day, how suddenly third grade became glorious, and Mrs. Wilson and her games were once again wonderful).

But America was always ours, the public, and the nation transcends the proposition of whether Obama gets elected or not — given that the United States, in its worst hour, was better than the alternatives at their best. So I think it would be wise to cool it on the “I am now proud of America” rhetoric. If getting your way means suddenly the dead at Iwo or those who were blown up in B-17s over Germany are at last your own and matter, then we are in deep trouble.

8. Garrett wrote:

Barack Obama’s Soaring Pragmatism
So far Obama’s just tossed nonideological drapery over the usual Democratic agenda.

By Rich Lowry

Barack Obama’s inaugural prose has justly been panned. As Obama took the oath of office “amidst gathering clouds and raging storms,” recalled the country’s past of drinking “the bitter swill of civil war,” and urged the country to brave “the icy currents,” one wondered whether his presidency might founder on the treacherous shoals of overwrought clichés.

The poor writing was overwhelmed by Obama’s masterly delivery, the glorious spectacle of the flag-waving multitudes, and the overarching ambition of Obama’s address. In 2008, Democrats were faced with a choice to go “safe” with Hillary Clinton, a known quantity who promised to hold Democratic states and add just enough electoral votes for victory, or go “audacious” with Barack Obama. At this juncture, it’s hard to believe the choice was ever a close one.

Since the election, Obama has only strengthened his political position with a widely praised transition. He has appropriated the country’s first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, in a historical body-snatching reminiscent of what Ronald Reagan did with Franklin Roosevelt. In his inaugural address, he grounded his vision in the Founding Fathers, sounded a significant conservative note in calling for a return to “old” and “true” values, and defined opposition to him as a stale remnant of bygone ideological debates.

Barack Obama imagines himself a colossus standing bestride the political world subsuming all the disagreements of the past 30 years in himself. William Herndon said of his friend Lincoln, “his ambition was the little engine that knew no rest.” Obama’s is the engine that knows no bounds.

Taking office amid economic turmoil in 1981, Reagan famously said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Obama’s rejoinder was that “the question is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” He thus wipes away a defining dispute of recent American politics with a wave of the hand and a declarative sentence. Obama portrayed the debate over the size of government, the efficacy of the market, and how to protect the country as consisting of a series of false choices resolvable by a pragmatic commitment to pursuing what works.

This is a central contradiction of Obama’s speech: He praised “hard choices” in theory—as all politicians do—while presenting the actual choices that have bedeviled us for decades as a mirage. George W. Bush’s second inaugural speech had a whiff of utopianism in its confidence in the universal march of liberty. Obama’s utopianism is in positing that legitimate tensions between desirable things—American leadership and warm relations with allies, etc.—don’t exist.

There’s a presumption in Obama’s soaring pragmatism. Does he believe that he considered every major issue in our national life from a stance of pure ideological neutrality and the answers just happened to coincide with what the Senate Democratic caucus believes 96 percent of the time? One hopes not. Obama the pragmatist said he will end government programs that don’t work, but he has been in public office since 1997 and never notably crusaded against wasteful and inefficient government.

This raises the larger question: Does Obama mean his rhetoric? If he were to follow through on his inaugural oratory he’d run a “kadima” government, a centrist one holding as many frustrations for partisan Democrats as gratifications. If he doesn’t, he’ll simply toss nonideological drapery over the usual Democratic agenda.

So far, the evidence points to the latter. Obama’s reaction to the recession has been to propose an enormous spending bill that throws money at every typical Democratic priority. The research is decidedly mixed on whether this kind of fiscal stimulus works, and the Congressional Budget Office says that only $135 billion of the $355 billion in discretionary spending in the House stimulus bill would be spent by October 2010.

If this is Obama’s idea of an empiricism in public policy that will sweep all before it, watch for the currents to get icy and storm clouds to gather.

9. DCI74 wrote:

Marc man please do something about this. All these long-ass articles is insane, a simple link will suffice.

10. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

Garrett, PLEASE go back to Alaska…Go get some frost bite on your got’damn fingers or something…

11. Garrett wrote:

Somebody has got to add some content to this site . . .

12. Garrett wrote:

Let’s Stimulate Private Risk Taking
Tax cuts are the way to nudge capital toward productive uses.

By ALBERTO ALESINA and LUIGI ZINGALES

In virtually all economics classes, including those taught by the many excellent economists on the Obama team, the idea of government spending as an engine for growth is not a popular topic. Yet despite their skepticism of Keynesianism in the classroom, when it comes to public policy, these economists happily endorse a large stimulus package that could bring our deficit to 10% of GDP. Why?

One explanation is that these economists think this recession is an extraordinary one. In normal recessions — the argument goes — an increase in discretionary government spending is unnecessary and even counterproductive. But in the event that a recession becomes a depression, a Keynesian stimulus package might work.

There are certainly economic models that show how government spending can shift the economy from a bad equilibrium (where people do not search for jobs because they do not expect to find them, and firms do not invest because they do not expect to sell), to a good equilibrium (where people search for jobs, and firms invest and generate demand for their goods).

But this particular recession is unique not in its dimensions, but in its sources. First, it is the result of a financial crisis that severely affected stock-market valuations. The bad equilibrium did not originate in the labor market, but in the credit market, where investors are reluctant to lend to risky firms. This reluctance is making it difficult for these firms to refinance their debt, forcing them to default on their credit, further validating investors’ fear. Thus, the problem is how to increase investors’ willingness to take risk. It’s unclear how the proposed stimulus package would help inspire investors to do so.

The second reason this recession is unusual is that it was caused in large part by a significant current-account imbalance due to the low savings rate of Americans (families and government). Even assuming that more public spending would increase private consumption — a big if — such a measure would cause even more imbalance.

So how do we stimulate the economy without increasing the already large current-account deficit? It’s not easy, but here is an idea: Create the incentive for people to take more risk and move their savings from government bonds to risky assets. There is no better way to encourage this than a temporary elimination of the capital-gains tax for all the investments begun during 2009 and held for at least two years.

If we fear this is not enough, we can temporarily increase the size of the capital loss that is deductible against ordinary income. This will reduce the downside of new investments and increase the upside.

More savings need to be invested, and firms need an incentive to invest in order to help aggregate demand in the short term and promote long-term growth. The best way to do this is to make all capital expenditures and research and development investments done in 2009 fully tax deductible in the current fiscal year.

A large temporary tax incentive may be just enough to jolt investors from their current paralysis to take action. Such a switch will also be fueled by the temporary capital-gains tax cut mentioned above, which will motivate people to move their savings from money-market funds to stocks, increasing valuations, investments and confidence.

Many are concerned about what we can do to help the poor weather this crisis. Unlike during the Great Depression, we have an unemployment subsidy that protects the poor from the most severe consequences of this recession. If we want to further protect them, it is better to extend this unemployment subsidy than to invest in hasty public projects. Furthermore, tax cuts have a much better effect on job creation than highway rehabilitation.

No doubt, it is much easier to sell the public and Congress a plan for more public works than tax cuts, particularly while Main Street despises Wall Street — with some good reason. But the role of a good economic team is to courageously propose the right economic policy, even when it is unpopular. The role of a president is to sell it politically, as real change we can believe in.

Mr. Alesina is a professor of economics at Harvard. Mr. Zingales is a professor of finance at the Chicago Booth School of Business.

13. Garrett wrote:

Besides, most of the traffic at this site is currently going to the dance post, so what’s the BFD?

14. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

i never knew that copying and pasting other people’s shit was considered to be adding content…plagiarizing is lame. did your brain get frost bit while hibernating on that cold ass rock in Alaska???

15. DCI74 wrote:

Plus they are all opinion pieces wyltk. I get my perspective on Republicans and conservatives from people that have actually worked in adminstrations not from people that just paste op-eds. But I’m sure somebody will read it, just not me.

16. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

and yeah all the traffic is going to the dance post, because no one gives a shit about your bitchin’ and moanin’. the man hasn’t even been in office a week, and everybody is chewing his balls off. who cares that you can’t get over Garrett?? who really fuckin’ cares? i prefer to give the man a fair shake, before i start talking shit. that’s just my opinion. everyone isn’t blessed to be an oracle like you.

sucks for me.

17. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

the only person that is reading that Bullshit DC, is cross-eyed ass Garrett.

18. DCI74 wrote:

Hmm… On Inauguration – 65 posts, Video of the Day – 55 posts. When did 55 become bigger than 65?? Somebody needs a remedial math course review.

19. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

#14 *GET OVER IT!!!

20. Garrett wrote:

It would be plagiarism if I attached my name as author of the work. I didn’t, it’s not. Pretty simple concept.

As far as content, well, if that’s your definition, then I guess you’ve got a problem with a lot of what MLH puts up here (i.e. other people’s posts, articles).

And DCI74, that makes no sense. Some of those opinion pieces were written by folks that have worked in the executive branch.
That smell is your own petard.

21. DCI74 wrote:

lol @ wyltk. like nn said some people just love and need conflict. Garrett is dying for attention and it’s pretty pathetic. He reminds me of the kid that nobody chooses in a pickup game of basketball and instead of just taking the L and going home to practice his dumb ass wants to stand on the sidelines talking shit an interrupting the game while the ballers are getting it in lol. We would just laugh at those clowns.

22. Garrett wrote:

Wouldn’t you like to know, with all my heart, it would be impossible for me to possibly care any less about what your opinion of me is. Bite me.

23. Garrett wrote:

Same for you, DCI74.

24. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

i know what plagiarism means. and you have WRITTEN all over you. everything you post is unoriginal and phony. basically, you have no opinions. you’re a RCRR. so thanx, but no thanx for your corny ass lesson.

as far as the Doc is concerned, he made this Blog for others to write THEIR OPINIONS. this isn’t just his blog. so you don’t even qualify to be in the same context with him right now…

you fucking republicans love to try to bring the brotha down…

and as far as biting you, i told you i don’t do the pasty ugly type…plus, there’s enough frost on your ass, you don’t need me for that….

25. DCI74 wrote:

Man you sound ridiculous. Of all those op-eds you posted only one author actually worked for an administration and that would be Charles Krauthammer, the rest are just talking heads. Try again homie.

26. Garrett wrote:

I thought you were going to ignore me, skippy?

VDH has done some consulting work for an administration, so, once again, wipe off your face. Not that I’d expect you to admit being wrong. But even if he hadn’t, you were incorrect.

But hey, Obama supporters helped stimulate the economy already!

One Hundred Tons of Garbage Collected After Obama Inauguration One-hundred tons of trash were collected by city and federal sanitation workers after President Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration in Washington, D.C.

Cristina Corbin

FOXNews.com

Friday, January 23, 2009

The scene looked more like the leftovers of a massive college frat party.

Heaps of plastic bottles, food wrappers, soda cans, and newspapers, which blanketed the National Mall Wednesday morning, were a stark contrast to the stateliness and splendor of President Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremony a day before.

One hundred tons of trash were collected by city and federal sanitation workers, according to Department of Public Works public information officer Linda Grant.

In comparison, 40 tons of garbage were collected in New York City’s Time Square on New Year’s Day 2009 — after one million people attended the celebration — according to the city’s Department of Sanitation.

Grant said Washington’s massive inaugural cleanup effort began at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

“By 5:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, we collected about 90 tons of the garbage,” she said.

27. Garrett wrote:

Wow, WYLTK, you might want to try typing slower, it’s really hard to read your posts with so many mistakes.

EE Cummings might have liked it, I guess . . .

28. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

you’re just jealous that all the republican parties are fuckin’ LAME….literally.

29. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

no it’s just hard to read them when you’re cross-eyed…

30. DCI74 wrote:

Lol OMG there was garbage at the inauguration, what a travesty!! Ok that’s it, time to impeach Obama lol. I’m choosing to indulge you because it’s Friday but don’t get used to it.

31. Garrett wrote:

Garbage goes in a garbage can, not on the ground. No excuse for laziness. No garbage can? Garbage can full? Take it with you.

I just thought it was interesting to note such poor behavior.

http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2009/01/23/hope-change-an-inauguration-tale/

32. Clifton Harrison wrote:

Wyltk, DC….This loony toon is loving this…He has no real honest argument or opinion about anything Obama has/will do. It’s just Hannity/O Reilly/limbaugh talkin points. Ignore it

33. Garrett wrote:

Oh, really?

Remember what Mssr. Obama said about cutting federal programs that don’t work and insisting on making better those that we need (based on whose definition of need)? If you’d like to get a handle on the conservative point of view/suggestions concerning that, The Heritage Foundation has a great position paper at

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/sr0035.cfm

The two authors have republican executive and legislative experience at the state level.

While many want much from the new administration, you just can’t print more money without paying the piper down the road.

34. DCI74 wrote:

Yeah Clif, I’ve had my fill so I’m done with his bitter ass. You can find me in Tim Tims post talking about cheating!

35. R.oB. wrote:

WYLTK,

Don’t take Garrett on. He can’t produce and he can’t respond. He needs to lean on others. He has yet to actually answer any questions posed to him with anything but dogma and ideological rhetoric. He spouts free-market fundamentalist dogma about private capital saving us. So then I asked how it was doing so. Have yet to hear an answer. He tries to change the subject by presenting op-eds like factual articles (a frequent ideological fallacy). It took five minutes to find an article that “responded” to it. I’ll steal a little of DC’s thunder and call them Press Missiles. Absolutely useless. Now in all of this, he still manages to follow the script by insulting you personally rather than deal with any of your ideas. I’m convinced that’s because he is intellectually impotent on that front.

Don’t let him spoil your normally good energy. Remember, he lost. You won. Case closed. Enjoy yourself and if you are feeling a little evil enjoy his sarcasm because I think you know what it signifies.

Garrett,

I have a question for you. Which statement is correct?

The sky is green.Da skeye iz bloo.

You begin to see why your tactics make you look petty and foolish.

36. DCI74 wrote:

Lol @ R.oB. “press missiles” I like that man!

37. Garrett wrote:

So, Rob, where’s your factual information that the government handing out money is going to save us? You’re such a hypocrite.

Good Lord, man, there are literally thousands of examples of why private enterprise is better than what the government produces.

You might not like to read this because the professor doesn’t share your political thought, but he makes some great points:

http://reason.com/news/show/131112.html

All you spout is leftist dogma. That makes you so erudite?
Puh-lease, mutha-fucka.

38. Garrett wrote:

Come on, Rob, please, where’s all your fact-based sources to back up your philosophy? Where’s the messiah’s facts that what he proposes will work?

39. Garrett wrote:

http://rsc.price.house.gov/UploadedFiles/pb_070208_capitalgainsrevenue.pdf

Private capital works.

40. Garrett wrote:

Interesting testimony in the U.S. House Ways & Means committee yesterday concerning the President’s proposed stimulus package and job creation.

41. R.oB. wrote:

To Garrett’s #33,

You mean like Keynesian economics? Try any Econ 101 textbook. Question answered. Directly. No fuss. No muss. I’m still waiting to see how private capital is supposed to get us out of a credit crunch.

Peace

42. Garrett wrote:

Keynesian economics is based on short term government spending to stimulate the economy; Obama’s plan isn’t based on short term spending, so no, question hasn’t been answered. Study your boy’s plan with a bit more detail. His plan is based on long term deficit spending. More than half of the money he proposes to take from tax payers (you know, people that actually pay taxes) won’t get into the system until after 2011.

Many of your boy’s economic advisers aren’t so bullish about the ability of the plan to have any Keynesian effects. Plus, any Keynesian bounce is just a guess, not fact.

Some economists think that the fed’s “aid” is more interference than help. Private capital will be more available in terms of investments, venture capital and loans (to people and businesses that deserve them) once the housing and financial markets bottom out. Keeping loan rates low, home prices artificially high and preventing the foreclosure process from going forward (where needed) will prolong the recession, not curtail it.

43. R.oB. wrote:

Keynes wasn’t necessarily short term. He was more into fiscal policy damping out the amplitude of the cycle. But the fact is governments deficit spend during recessions to shorten their duration not to “make work.” That’s what is Keynesian about Obama’s plan.

And I’m not fooled by that shady taxpayer rhetoric from the GOP. Everyone pays taxes. Not everyone pays income taxes, but so what? That shell game is hot garbage. It’s not the taxes, but the income distribution relative to GDP growth that’s the real game. And the rich have been making out like bandits for decades while the rest saw their real incomes stagnant.

By law, the Fed must “interfere” with the economy since they are supposed to tamp down inflation. And all those results you list assume a rational market, which simply does not exist. It’s all emotion. We have a fed funds rate of 0.25% (!) which equates to free money yet no one is lending. How much more does the market have to bottom out, Garrett? Should the Fed start paying people to borrow? Free market fundamentalism is a completely discredited economic philosophy. You can’t justify nationalizing AIG with it. Yet what would happen if it weren’t? Would that have been preferable?

44. R.oB. wrote:

P.S. F*@% an “effectively!” A fed funds rate of 25 basis points means that money is free in real dollar terms! That shit is unprecedented.

45. Garrett wrote:

Income distribution is part of capitalism. The manager makes more than the guy making the fries. Marxists have a problem with that, but I don’t. Want to make more money? Better yourself to move from the fry guy to the manager.

My wife and I aren’t rich, but we’ve made progress in our wages (and not at the expense of others, but through hard work). Others have lost their jobs. I’m sorry about that, but there aren’t guarantees in life.

I listened to the Messiah’s address today. “Unprecedented action”? The dems have the votes to pass the bill, a little fat might (might being a very positive, but not likely term) be trimmed from it in the guise of “bi-partisanship” and a portion of those out of work will be able to get back to work on infrastructure projects. That’s not going to help folks that aren’t blue collar workers.

Socialism and nationalizing every industry isn’t the answer. Those rich you complain about? You think the venture capital and loan market is tight now? Obama spends a trillion dollars, it will shrink even more. The free market trumps socialism, hands down, for creating opportunity for all. Laugh all you want, but Obama’s plan won’t create opportunity, it will just create dependence. My children won’t be dependent on the government.

http://readthestimulus.org/

46. Tanya wrote:

LMAO!!!! This post is tooo funny! I could “listen” to WYLTK, DC and Garrett go back and forth all day! lol

“That smell is your own petard.” – Garrett
That was hilarious, but Garrett, you know better than to come at DC like that! WYLTK will fight for her man! lol

BTW – Garrett, what the hell is wrong with you posting all those articles like that??? lol

47. Tanya wrote:

WYLTK & DC,

I’m disappointed in you two! Garrett didn’t say anything to personally attack either of you, all he did was post a few articles that he wanted us to read. Although it was annoying, did you guys really have to come at him like that? You guys gave the first personal “hit” here. I thought we were all moving forward in peace and love in 2009?!?!? lol

-submitted in peace and love!

48. Tanya wrote:

Rob,

“Don’t take Garrett on. He can’t produce and he can’t respond.” – Rob

But Garrett did produce, and he did respond. He produced articles that support his position and cosign his opinion. As much as I love my buddy WYLTK and the Barbershop dream boy DC, they haven’t produced anything substantial to challenge Garrett’s position, and they haven’t clearly asserted their position. They just insult Garrett and brush him off. They haven’t expressed why they believe Garrett is wrong on his points, they just beat him up for sharing his points!

And why do you keep referring to Garrett’s responses as dogma and ideological rhetoric? Do you realize I can say the very same thing about many of your statements? Garrett is a Republican, of course many of his statements are going to appear dogmatic. Just like any and every Democrats’ statements are going to appear dogmatic. You are not immune to this. Independents are the only ones semi-free of dogma. So WHAT is your point??

-also submitted in peace and love!

(not trying to be confrontational or argumentative, just saying)

49. Tanya wrote:

Now, I love Barack, I really do! I’m encouraged and inspired by the mere sight of a picture of him. I supported him, and I’m proud of him.

BUT….

I’m a bit upset with him already! Obama hasn’t been in office a week yet, and the man is already doing crazy leftist sh*t. Abortion is the most horrible thing, and Obama has already reversed the ban on federal funding for Abortion.

The country is in dyer straights right now and this man makes one of his first actions an Abortion policy?????? WTF!

I’m very upset about this. As someone who cherishes GOD give life, the life of an innocent baby, the life of all people, I’m very, very, very upset about this.

Obama has already given people (Conservatives and all GOD fearing people) a reason to criticize him! His honeymoon is over!

50. Garrett wrote:

Uh, Tanya, Obama’s positions on abortion were well publicized before the election. They’ll be more.

51. Garrett wrote:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AMBNS?cid=124

Economic stimulus? Me thinks the proper word is actually going to be “inflation”. It’s going to get very ugly.

52. Tanya wrote:

Garrett,

I know, I know. Obama has been very open and very bold about his support of partial birth abortion. But with the Economy in turmoil and people losing their jobs and their homes left and right, and considering that he promised to provide solutions for the Economy within his first 100 days; I’m just a little jolted that he had time to sign an Executive Order, so soon, to pay for women to kill their innocent babies.

Who would have thought abortion would be the FIRST thing on his mind? Who would have thought he would spend our money, at a time like this, on something like that?

Not to mention the fact that he promised an unprecedented transparency for his Administration, but didn’t allow cameras or press in to see him sign the *free money for baby killings* Executive Order. (Was he hoping the masses wouldn’t know? They don’t.) BUT he did allow all the cameras and press in the world in to watch him sign the Executive Order to close Gitmo.

I’m just a little taken back. I didn’t expect the lefty bull this soon.

53. Tanya wrote:

Just checking back for comments and re-read my comments and realized I made a really silly typo:

*Edit #42 – dire straits

54. Garrett wrote:

Tanya,

So far he’s got an economic “stimulus” plan that’s just a trojan horse for more wasteful government spending, despite his pledge to cut the waste in government; signed an order closing Gitmo without a plan for what to do with the bad guys; signed the abortion executive order; and went back on his pledge against lobbyists in his administration.

He’s been a busy leftist. Not a busy centrist. Not a busy conservative. Not a busy post-partisan. A busy leftist. That’s who you voted for.

I realize he’s not as leftist as MLH and others would like, but anything short of Che incarnated wouldn’t meet a lot of the far left’s approval.