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And Beyonce sings the National Anthem…
Obama’s 2013 Inaugural Address – Discuss.
– January 21, 2013Posted in: "The OC", 2012 Presidential Elections, barack obama, democracy, Fresh Juice, patriotism
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Time to make donuts!
Let’s hope the inaugural address provides the impetus for the federal government to bring about positive change over the next four years.
Congratulations to President Obama and his family. Celebrate today and begin good work tomorrow.
Donuts? Count me in!
He’s definitely an orator. Hopefully his skin has toughened during the last 4 years and he will say it like it is. It is absolutely impossible to “compromise” with this Republican Party’s representatives. They can present an idea and if he accept it and incorporates it into his proposals, they are then against it. So he might as well just push for his policies, which are very much supported by the majority of the people. I think he has the ability and the organization to corral that support and make it work for him.
What you’re describing – the GOP stubbornly opposing anything the President comes up with, even if it was originally their own idea – a policy they stuck to for his entire first term – is now known to be a decision they made exactly 4 years ago in a secret meeting on the night of 2009′s Inauguration Day:
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-783519
I hope they give up that tactic during his second term. It was horrible for the nation, and I’m not sure it was that great for the Republican Party either.
Vern,
So how much good did they get done the first two years of his presidency (4 yrs ago) when he had a majority in Congress?
I’m not so sure you or anybody can blame the lack of productivity on either party or the POTUS. Neither Harry or Nancy wanted to play nice with the new upstart from Chi-Town. They flat out squandered their opportunities.
That my friend, is a party issue that they couldn’t get a handle on, mostly because none of them would compromise and work together, it had little to do with the R’s in the rooms.
We are a very polarized society that lacks the communication skills to be able to debate without calling each other names and making the opposition screaming mad, we end up with the kind of govt we vote in. Fractious and loud, without many real leaders, but a bunch of mud throwers.
Add to that we have a media that generally likes to pour kerosene on anything that looks like it might be combustible and then throws matches on it, just to be able to tape it for the news programming dept’s. Most of the media editorializes they don’t report.
At least here you know what you’re going to get.
We had a majority in Congress for no more than a few months – the space between when Al Franken finally beat all his recall challenges from Norm Coleman … till when Ted Kennedy kicked the bucket and got replaced by that naked guy with the truck.
Don’t forget, in today’s Senate you can’t get anything done any more without 60 votes. And even during that brief interlude we had corporatist DINOs like Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and Blanche Lincoln.
So yeah, we had the House for two years, but never really the Senate. Not in an era when EVERYTHING gets filibustered.
The Democratic Congress DID force cell phone companies to make interchangeable chargers, as I discovered to my delight when I got out of jail in ’09!
The cloture rule was invented by a Dem. controlled Senate in 1917.
Be careful what you wish for, it may come back to bite you in the butt.
Yeah, but … do I really have to put up one of those charts showing how insanely the use of the filibuster has grown? I hope they at least pass the “talking filibuster” reform – I’ll be happy for a future Democratic minority to be constrained by that as well. Bring back Mr. Smith!
Vern, do you really want another B-1 Bob up there, really?
*A truly great communicator with substance and drive. Good luck Mr. President……we will still tell you our beliefs……even if we disagree. All in all, we are extremely impressed and very inspired by your Inaugural message. This was a historic inaugural and will be remembered for many years.
“Learn from history – yet don’t get stuck there….but grow now into the future!”
….was our take!
Richard Blanco, was the first immigrant, first Latino, the first openly gay person and the youngest inaugural poet.
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches 2
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello| shalom,
buon giorno |howdy |namaste |or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound 3
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/489865/richard-blancos-inaugural-poem-one-day-inspires-moves-americans/#CZGS6GAPt81WAzBE.99
*Did you see the look on Eric Cantor face when he was reading that poem? Let’s just put it this way…O’Reilly and Hannity and even Rush……haven’t got the guts to challenge it.
Funny to see…
They wouldn’t dare. Richard’s parents are from Cuba and he lives in Florida… BTW is Greg partying in DC tonight?
No, I spent much of the day in Urgent Care. (Not my care at issue, but I had to be there.)
In one word ……. uninspiring.
It inspired me, but I’m not surprised it uninspired thee!
From the guys at Calbuzz: “What Obama’s 2nd Inaugural Was All About”
President Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural was not so much an outline of intentions as it was a re-framing of the social contract between the people and their elected government. Commentators on the left and right, mesmerized by the tick-tock of official Washington, generally have failed to see what Obama was up to in this speech: placing our times in their historical context on the long road to liberty and justice for all.
Obama outlined the enduring values that bind us as a nation and at the same time illuminated the arc of history he envisions for us as a people greater than the sum of our individuals. The rhetorical heart of his address was this:
“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”
By linking the first women’s rights convention organized by women in 1848 to the first civil rights and voting rights movement organized in 1963 to the gay rights insurrection of 1969, Obama stitched together the march toward freedom and justice that personifies the journey of America from a contractual arrangement among land-holding white men to a vibrant, multi-national, socially complex nation.
It was not by accident that Obama opened his address by quoting from the Declaration of Independence…
read more: http://www.calbuzz.com/2013/01/what-obamas-2nd-inaugural-was-really-about/
Conclusion:
Obama’s Second Inaugural was, in fact, much more than a bill of particulars or even a vision for a second term, as so many commentators have argued. It was, rather, an exposition of what constitutes the social contract in today’s America. And for that, he will be long remembered.