Dubya smirked his way through another inauguration yesterday. It made me physically ill to watch, I had to leave the room during his speech (I caught the replay on CSPAN).
I thought back to the 2000 election. After the Supreme Court ruled and the House certified the election I put aside my active opposition to this tool of the neo-cons for a while. I remember thinking that this form of government has held up through bad presidents before in its 212 years, how much harm could could this guy do in four years? Well, we found out, didn't we.
So rich, white evangelical christians converged on the Capitol yesterday to celebrate another four years in power. Four more years of war! Wooohooo!!! They danced and drank champagne. Meanwhile, the kids that they sent to fight their war of American imperialism are dodging bullets and bombs in Iraq and 1,370 families of American soldiers are mourning. These balls and celebrations were largely paid for by corporate donors who the GOP spokesman kept calling "volunteers".
I flipped around to see if any of the networks were covering the protests. ABC had several reporters covering it and CSPAN2 televised the ANSWER protest. It was not until I watched Democracy Now! this morning that I got a sense of what was happening.
Nonviolent protesters were met with force by the over 7,000 uniformed police. At this event, which the Presidential Inaugural Committee dubbed "Celebrating Freedom", people were arrested for heckling the president. The police even had people dressed as protesters in the crowd--in this photo the two men wearing kuffiyehs are actually undercover police arresting the female protester.
My favorite group of protesters yesterday:
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