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Inauguration Open Thread

Jill

Who’s watching? (I am watching from Paris, drinking tea and eating maracrons — it beats the hell out of four years ago when I was watching in freezing cold weather on the mall). What do you think? My thoughts are here, at the Guardian.

40 thoughts on Inauguration Open Thread

  1. Man, what a speech he gave. A very progressive one, IMO – loved the shout-outs to LGBT rights, immigrant rights, climate change, etc. I am looking forward to some very good things happening in the next four years ( if the fucking Congress stops being so damn, well, Congressy).

    Also, allow me a moment of shallowness in saying I loved loved loved Michelle’s coat and dress, and still love her new hair 🙂

    (BTW Jill, don’t know if you noticed but your next post will be #5000 for the blog…MAKE IT COUNT! Hats? Cats? Hats on cats?)

    1. Oh, I think the occasion definitely calls for pictures of cats on hats that are on cats. That is, for cats with hats with cats on. Perhaps even cats with hats with cats-with-hats on. A cat with a Cat In The Hat hat?

      Ok this is getting too meta for me. I’ll shut up now. XD

      And yes, I loved the shout-outs in the speech. And Michelle Obama coat and those gloves, OMG.

      1. This blog is anti-dog. When we have a dog in the white house, why aren’t there any dogs in Feministe?!

        I demand more dogs! Or Fennet Foxes!

  2. What do you think?

    I think that I am super-jealous. I want to be in Paris eating macarons! At least I can drink tea…

    Enjoy your travels, Jill!

  3. I still don’t understand why anyone invites Beyonce to sing the national anthem. There are plenty of singers who can sing the phrases without taking a breath after each word. It’s annoying.

  4. I’m going to be the critic here. He’s set the bar very high here, but all I heard were the same platitudes I’ve heard for four years.

    I’m glad he mentioned several liberal causes that had yet to be formally addressed by a standing President, but I’m looking for action, not words.

    1. I’m looking for action, not words.

      I don’t know why I’m bothering, but… you can’t be looking very hard if you missed the Affordable Care Act, DADT repeal, abandoning defense of DOMA, appointing the first Latina to the Supreme Court, SCHIP expansion, mandating contraceptive coverage in employer-provided insurance, expanding Pell Grants, etc.

  5. four more years of large scale immigration,indefinite detention,targgeted killings,torture,imperialism,wire tapping.

    2. Every time I think “Foxy has some good points,” I add in, “But spits out some racist, disgusting, ignorant bile.” Then I ignore all the things you do.

    3. large scale immigration,indefinite detention,targgeted killings,torture,imperialism,wire tapping.

      Let’s see, which one of these is glaringly out of place with the others. Hmmmm.

      2. It’s like the old Sesame Street segments! Three of these things belong together, three of these things are kind of the same…

      3. Does this mean that the Irish part of me is okay, but the Peruvian part of me can go kick rocks? Not really a worry, since I’ve been practicing my binary fission. I’m so Amoeba like I can make Foxy happy, I presume.

    4. I am so fucking sick of you, Foxy. I’m almost curious enough to try to understand the mental contortions one has to undergo to attack both imperialism and immigrants in the same breath, but then I realize even asking the question supplies the answer. Troll, begone.

  6. Immigration hurts the poorest of poor.If clinton with his neoliberal economic policies has not passed NAFTA mexican economy would have been better and large scale immigration might not have occured.

    1. Yep. It’s NAFTA that’s destroyed the Mexican economy, and not, say, that time that the US decided to entirely ignore the lessons from alcohol prohibition on the basis that the economic chaos from the War on Drugs would be primarily wrought in Central and South America.

        1. Um, are you serious with this question or are you just trying to imply that I’m an “obama-apologist” like mac?

          It’s because the US political culture around drug regulation is fucking ridiculous. Because Obama is either sufficiently kool-aided to think that the policy (and I use the term loosely) is actually working or he’s sufficiently cowardly to not address the problem while he’s in office. I suspect that like Clinton and Carter he’ll backflip once he’s got some distance from the Oval Office, but frankly I don’t really care. The War on Drugs is evil and I’m not going to be tricked into pretending the Obama administration isn’t complicit in maintaining it just because you live in some bizarre alternate universe in which supporting the rights of migrants and refugees is inconsistent with supporting the rights of other workers.

    2. I’m not sure why I’m bothering. However, the Mexican countryside was hurting terribly long before NAFTA.

      The neoliberal shift in the 1980s made things worse, but they were not good before. Even in the 1960s and 1970s life for poor rural people was grim. There are no “good old days” for most peoples’ families.

      Plus, one of the things that increased migration to the U.S. from the Mexican countryside (at least before the economic crisis; immigration in the U.S. is down right now) is decreasing repression. Rural people in poor states (including Chiapas and Oaxaca and Guerrero) experience considerably less repression today than in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and early 90s. This is still the case, even though drug violence has increased horrifically in some areas. People who are less beholden to local landlords and violent political bosses can save money to pay to emigrate to the U.S. Also, there has been a significant recent increase in teenage boys and young men who are trying to come to the U.S. to escape being forced into joining drug trafficking gangs. The situation is damn complicated; its not just NAFTA!

    3. Funny you should say that, because the poorest of the poor–say, undocumented immigrants–seem to feel they’re better off with immigration.

      Or is this you not including immigrants in the categories of “poor” and “working class” again?

      1. @eg,no iam specifically referring to the indigenous poor.There is vast scale of research done on the effects of immigration on the wages.You drank too much koolaid to understand reality

  8. the head of a giraffe against a bright blue sky: its mouth is pursed sideways[Moderator note – ORIGINAL COMMENT CONTENT HAS BEEN FLUFFINATED:

    Bunnies! Squirrels! Ducklings! Flowers! Clouds! The world is such a wonderful friendly place!]

    1. I totally blame the insidiously pernicious influence of Pharyngula‘s Chris Clarke, Whatever‘s John Scalzi and The Bloggess‘ Jenny Lawson for germinating the genesis of the Fluffinator moderation mode.

  10. the head of a giraffe against a bright blue sky: its mouth is pursed sideways[Moderator note – ORIGINAL COMMENT CONTENT HAS BEEN FLUFFINATED:

    Whee! Morphing my sockpuppets is so much fun! I like stripey socks the best of all! Stripey socks with kitteh buttons and puppy buttons for eyes!]

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