Whaaa? No Styrofoam Columns?!?
Whaaa? No Styrofoam Columns?!?
hysterical historic occasion
It’s gonna be a zoo in DC for the coro inauguration of That One. Anticipating roughly 4 million people to attend the festivities, every shark on the Eastern Seaboard the DC Chamber of Commerce is in high clover gear.
Hotel rooms are booked for a hundred mile radius —at triple and quadruple regular rates, 3 day minimum stay pay required—and locals are renting out their ‘spaces’ for exorbitant amounts. More power to ‘em. [Get your deposit early and all payments in ca$h, folks.]
“It’s going to be like the Million Man March," said author A’Lelia Bundles, a Washingtonian and descendant of Madam C.J*, one of the nation’s first black female millionaires. “People are excited. It’s almost like emancipation and Jubilee.”
...
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chair of the inauguration committee, said she was writing to some Web sites to ask them not to sell scalped inauguration tickets. She’s also crafting legislation that would make it a federal crime to sell the free tickets.
...
Washington’s Mandarin Oriental is offering a “Presidential Privilege” package for $200,900 that includes four nights in the hotel’s 8,000-square-foot Presidential Suite, designer outfits for inaugural events by Ralph Lauren, a chauffer-driven Maserati Quattroporte, dinner for eight at the hotel’s restaurant and daily spa treatments.
Such a deal...
At the JW Marriott Hotel, $1 million will buy 300 hotel rooms, $200,000 worth of food and private access to a tented, heated balcony overlooking the parade route of President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Oh, sure—what kind o’ K Street Snake is gonna snap that up?
Earl W. Stafford is buying it all - and giving it away to… disadvantaged people… the “People’s Inaugural Project,” inviting those who would never otherwise have a chance to wear tuxedos or satin dresses to the president’s swearing in.
“Let dem touch those t’ings!”
...Guests found by nonprofits and social service groups will also get gowns and tuxedos, and grooming from hairstylists and makeup artists. There will be a prayer breakfast and luncheon the day before the inauguration, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
..."These are distressed economic times, so you don’t want to be wasteful,” [Lavern Chatman, president of the Northern Virginia Urban League] said. “But how do you give people hope? How do you make people a part of something? This is an investment and one that will be in people’s souls and hearts. So I don’t see it as a one-time thing; I see it as a lifetime experience."
I see it as pandering and paternalistic condescension that will buy thousands of votes—each.
Emergency legislation approved by the City Council of the District of Columbia...allows any Washington establishment with a liquor license to serve alcohol until 5 a.m. and serve food 24 hours a day from January 17 until the morning after Obama’s swearing-in on January 20.
I’m just glad I’ll be 2,500 miles away.
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