Over 1Million People Expected
Posted by Media Outrage on November 14th, 2008
It is being reported that over 1million people are expected to crowd Washington D.C. for the inauguration of Barack Obama, the United States’ first African American President. Hotels are already booked in the surrounding areas. Analyst are expecting this historic event to exceed every other Presidential inauguration in both people attendance and Television viewership.
Via Yahoo:
WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama‘s inauguration is expected to draw 1 million-plus to the capital, and already some lawmakers have stopped taking ticket requests and hotels have booked up.
Some people are bartering on Craigslist for places to stay for the Jan. 20 ceremony when the Illinois senator takes the oath of office. They are offering cash or even help with dishes for residents willing to open up their homes.
The National Park Service, which is planning for an inaugural crowd of at least 1 million, will clear more viewing space along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route. Jumbo TV screens will line the National Mall so people can watch the inauguration and parade, park service spokesman David Barna said Thursday.
The District of Columbia’s delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is urging planners to use arenas and stadiums to help with overflow crowds wanting to view the ceremonies on big-screen TVs. She is also urging churches to hold viewing parties.
“You can’t judge by past inaugurations. It’s going to break all the records,” Norton said. “They’re going to come with or without tickets. … It’s each man and woman for himself.”
The largest crowd ever recorded on the National Mall was for President Lyndon B. Johnson‘s 1965 inauguration. At the time, the park service estimated 1.2 million people descended on the area. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration drew about 500,000 people, and President Bill Clinton‘s 1993 inauguration drew about 800,000 people, according to park service estimates.
Mediaoutrage- It will be something the entire world will be watching. History in the making.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:43 am
I’ll be there for sure, Hotel room and flight are booked…
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November 14th, 2008 at 3:51 am
Word Lio? When did you reserve?
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November 14th, 2008 at 3:54 am
That will be such a momentous occasion, I wish I could be there!!! But I will be in spirit.
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November 14th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Ditto that Lio, I have friends from Howard I am staying with. And I will fly into DC free. This I can’t miss.
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November 14th, 2008 at 4:10 am
a hotel call Donovan House, in D.C. had to pull some teeth to get a reservation. It seems that every hotel in the d.c. area are booked, Baltimore is the only place where you can still have rooms…crazy.
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November 14th, 2008 at 4:14 am
Damn flying for free !! WOW..you must have good connections
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November 14th, 2008 at 4:17 am
@ Lio, no I work for American Airlines as a reserve flight attendent. I usually fly on the weekends, so I can go to school during the week. And I fly all summer. One of the perks of working for an airlines is the flight benefits…
Baltimore is an hour away from DC, but it is worth it to see President Obama.
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November 14th, 2008 at 4:55 am
I am booked at a hotel and ready to fly…
However, I’m not up for the cold…I’ll make my decision at the last minute…weather contigent I’m sure.
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November 14th, 2008 at 4:59 am
FYI –
This one…just News to Use…
http://www.screenindia.com/news/Obama-s-daughters-not-to-do–Hannah-Montana–cameo/385282/
This one…a true tear jerker!!
http://flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/sets/72157608716313371/show/
Enjoy!!
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November 14th, 2008 at 5:44 am
HOW MANY THINGS DO YOU HAVE IN COMMON?
This is not substantiated, nor researched information. I was not responsible for the collection, nor the communication…
I am merely the Messenger…
Enjoy!
(Many thanks to my Canadian friends and family…)
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Fifty things you may or may not know about President-Elect Barack Obama
He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He was known as “O’Bomber” at high school for his skill at basketball
• His name means “one who is blessed” in Swahili
• His favourite meal is wife Michelle’s shrimp linguini
• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father
• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali
• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can’t stand ice cream
• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars
• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia
• He can speak Spanish
• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead
• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea
• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn’t
• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia
• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs
• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name
• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herma n Melville
• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister’ s fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived
• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy
• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books
• His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck
• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.
• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees
• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date
• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker
• He doesn’t drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol
• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician
• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine
• His daughters’ ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)
• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside
• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal
• His house in Chicago has four fire places
• Daughte r Malia’s godmother is Jesse Jackson’s daughter Santita
• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry
• He uses an Apple Mac laptop
• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300
• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits
• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes
• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)
• His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The Wire
• He was given the code name “Renegade” by his Secret Service handlers
• He was nicknamed “Bar” by his late grandmother
• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds
• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso
• His speciality as a cook is chilli
• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were “street urchins”
• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life
• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government
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November 14th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Im going up there to Bowie, MD. I want to see history and I hope that we all can get there and see a great man become the most powerful man in the world.
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November 14th, 2008 at 10:49 am
i am staying wit my aunt in carrollton city, md and driving there. (i thnk that’s the city’s name, i can never get it right)
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November 14th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Well yall kick it and suck all the joy out for me.
Please take your lap tops with you so we can type while in progress.
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November 14th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
As much as I hate crowds, I will be there (it’s less than 20 minutes from my house!)
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November 14th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Roving Rocksee Girl Reporter is merely the messenger…
You have to read this entire article. Very touching.
Subject: The Butler Sees A New White House
The Butler Sees A New White House
[http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-11/43238367.jpg]
Email Picture
CLARK, The Washington Post
Eugene Allen, 89, a retired White House butler, tries on his old tuxedo for a photo. Allen, who served eight presidents during a period when America ‘s racial history was being rewritten, is marveling at the election of Barack Obama.
Now retired, he started when blacks were in the kitchen.
By Wil Haygood
November 7, 2008
Reporting from Washington — For more than three decades, Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.
He trekked home every night to his wife, Helene, who kept him out of her kitchen.
At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the Oval Office. Helene didn’t care; she just beamed with pride.
President Truman called him Gene. President Ford liked to talk golf with him. He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week.
“I never missed a day of work,” Allen said.
He was there while racial history was made: Brown vs. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington , the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations.
When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn’t even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia . “We had never had anything,” Allen, 89, recalled of black America at the time. “I was always hoping things would get better.”
In its long history, the White House — note the name — has had a complex and vexing relationship with black Americans.
“The history is not so uneven at the lower level, in the kitchen,” said Ted Sorensen, who served as counselor to President Kennedy. “In the kitchen, the folks have always been black. Even the folks at the door — black.”
Before Gene Allen landed his White House job, he worked as a waiter at a resort in Hot Springs , Va. , and then at a country club in Washington .
He and wife Helene, 86, were sitting in the living room of their Washington home. Her voice was musical, in a Lena Horne kind of way. She called him “Honey.” They met at a birthday party in 1942. He was too shy to ask for her number, so she tracked his down. They married a year later.
In 1952, a lady told him of a job opening in the White House. “I wasn’t even looking for a job,” he said. “I was happy where I was working, but she told me to go on over there and meet with a guy by the name of Alonzo Fields.”
Fields was a maitre d’, and he immediately liked Allen.
Allen was offered a job as a “pantry man.” He washed dishes, stocked cabinets and shined silverware. He started at $2,400 a year.
There was, in time, a promotion to butler. “Shook the hand of all the presidents I ever worked for,” he said.
“I was there, honey,” Helene said. “In the back maybe. But I shook their hands too.” She was referring to White House holiday parties, Easter egg hunts.
They have one son, Charles, who works as an investigator with the State Department.
“President Ford’s birthday and my birthday were on the same day,” he said. “He’d have a birthday party at the White House. Everybody would be there. And Mrs. Ford would say, ‘It’s Gene’s birthday too!’ ”
And so they’d sing a little ditty to the butler. And the butler, who wore a tuxedo to work every day, would blush.
“Jack Kennedy was very nice,” he went on. “And so was Mrs. Kennedy.”
He was in the White House kitchen the day Kennedy was slain. He got an invitation to the funeral. But he volunteered for other duty: “Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral.”
The whole family of President Carter made Helene chuckle: “They were country. And I’m talking Lillian and Rosalynn both.” It came out as the highest compliment.
First Lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him in the kitchen one day. She wanted to remind him about the upcoming state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. She told him he would not be working that night.
“She said, ‘You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself.’ I’m telling you! I believe I’m the only butler to get invited to a state dinner.”
Husbands and wives don’t sit together at these events, and Helene was nervous about trying to make small talk with world leaders. “And my son said, ‘Momma, just talk about your high school. They won’t know the difference.’
“The senators were all talking about the colleges and universities that they went to,” she said. “I was doing as much talking as they were.
“Had champagne that night,” she said, looking over at her husband.
He just grinned: He was the man who stacked the champagne at the White House.
Colin L. Powell would become the highest ranking black of any White House to that point when he was named Reagan’s national security advisor in 1987. Condoleezza Rice would have that position under President George W. Bush.
Gene Allen was promoted to maitre d’ in 1980. He left the White House in 1986, after 34 years. President Reagan wrote him a sweet note. Nancy Reagan hugged him tight.
Interviewed at their home last week, Gene and Helene speculated about what it would mean if a black man were elected president.
“Just imagine,” she said.
“It’d be really something,” he said.
“We’re pretty much past the going-out stage,” she said. “But you never know. If he gets in there, it’d sure be nice to go over there again.”
They talked about praying to help Barack Obama get to the White House. They’d go vote together. She’d lean on her cane with one hand, and him with the other, while walking down to the precinct. And she’d get supper going afterward. They went over their election day plans more than once.
“Imagine,” she said.
“That’s right,” he said.
On Monday, Helene had a doctor’s appointment. Gene woke and nudged her once, then again. He shuffled around to her side of the bed. He nudged Helene again.
He was all alone.
“I woke up and my wife didn’t,” he said later.
Some friends and family members rushed over. He wanted to make coffee. They had to shoo the butler out of the kitchen.
The lady he married 65 years ago will be buried today.
The butler cast his vote for Obama on Tuesday. He so missed telling his Helene about the black man bound for the Oval Office.
Haygood writes for the Washington Post.
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November 15th, 2008 at 12:14 am
the give grammys for audio book too ??
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