The advisories out of the inauguration offices make the historic event sound so appealing: Long lines, crowded trains, expensive hotel rooms, hours of standing in the rain or sleet or snow, and a security ban on umbrellas and strollers for those getting-heavier-by-the-minute children.
So, don’t go. Instead, attend the inauguration on-line via LINK-live, a collaboration involving a social networking system with live, web-streaming and plenty of opportunity to participate via Twitter and Flickr. Check out the details and links below:
Barack Obama: The 44th or the 43rd U.S. president, depending on how you count it
One of my editors asked me this afternoon why everyone keeps referring to Barack Obama as the pending 44th president of the United States when, in fact, he will be the 43rd man to serve as president.
For an inexplicable reason, the commonly accepted presidential numbering system lists Grover Cleveland twice — No.’s 22 and 24 — because he served two non-consecutive terms. Hence, Obama is said to be the 44th president while only 42 other men have held the job. Interestingly, the men who served two consecutive terms are listed only once. (Check out Wikipedia’s list.)
Does anyone know how this decision to count Cleveland twice came about? (I put this question to a couple of crack U.S. presidential history buffs and I’ll let you know what they say.)
Whatever the reason, it aggravates my accuracy-is-paramount editor and even a third-grade teacher who wrote to Newsday.
“It seems to me like they just started doing it a LONG time ago on faulty logic and everybody has just fallen into step,” my editor says. “Stupid geese that we are … ”
I Googled “Obama” and “44th president” and found 2,160 entries under news.
Honk. Honk.
UPDATE: My friend Tim Farley, presidential buff extradordinaire, has this to say about the question: “A ruling by the State Department said that Cleveland should be listed as both the 22nd and 24th president as the administrations were not consecutive. They were two different administrations all together. They had different VP’s and a different cabinet. So, the standard answer is ‘a ruling by the State Department.’ “
The young daughters of Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia and Richmond Councilman Tony Thurmond (who was elected on Nov. 4 to the West Contra Costa Unified School District) talk in this video about why they are going to vote for Barack Obama.
Maya Thurmond, seated on the right, is 5 years old. She is talking with her friend, 4-year-old Emilia Gioia.
Check out which newspaper they read, too. (Clue: It’s not the San Francisco Chronicle!)
Citing the overwhelming demand, Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, will hold a drawing for two pairs of tickets to the Jan. 20, 2009, inauguration ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Rep. George Miller’s office will no longer take names of individuals requesting inauguration tickets.
Given the heavy demand that will outstrip availability, Miller Chief of Staff Danny Weiss says it would be unfair to take down names and give the impression that obtaining a ticket is possible.
Click here for a link to my story today about how to get on a waiting list for tickets to the Jan. 20 inauguration of Barack Obama. Below, you’ll find contact information for East Bay members of Congress.
Remember, the tickets are free but you can only obtain them from your member of Congress or the U.S. Senate:
Web sites being asked not to scalp inaugural tickets
Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The senator overseeing Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony is writing to Internet sites like eBay asking them not to sell scalped inauguration tickets.
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is also writing a bill that would make it a federal crime to scalp tickets to the historic event January 20.
Feinstein, who chairs the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, says she foresees overwhelming demand for the 240,000 available tickets and has heard reports of them being sold for as much as $40,000 online.
The tickets are supposed to be free to the public and distributed through congressional offices. The offices won’t get the tickets until shortly before the inauguration, to try to prevent scalping.
Heminger’s profile is limited largely to the transportation world but he has made friends in high places. He helped lead a commission created by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and runs what is considered one of the most progressive metropolitan transportation organizations in the nation.
Heminger is said to be interested in the post, and his advocates are working to put him face-to-face with the Obama transition team.
Traffic World reports that rumors center around “Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell as well as members of Congress such as House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar and two Oregon Democratic congressmen, Pete DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer.”
Other names on the potential secretary list include former FAA directorJane Garvey under the Clinton administration.
But Traffic World also wrote:
“Transportation industry executives close to the Obama campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, say it is more likely, however, that the incoming administration will seek to put a new stamp on the department through new appointments less familiar to Washington’s political establishment.
There is a wide array of transportation officials at the state and local level who could have a role at the top of DOT or in agency posts, including Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay area, and New York City Transportation Commissioner Jeanette Sadik-Khan.
During his eight years at the commission, he has developed a friendship with San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi , the Speaker of the House, who named him to a congressional commission that recently unveiled a raft of proposals for altering transportation policy in the next decade — the most controversial being an increase of as much as 40 cents during the next five years in the federal gasoline tax, which is now 18.4 cents a gallon. His commission work and congressional connections could give him a leg up as an Obama administration ponders big changes to surface transportation policy.
TransportationThe Hill reports, “For Transportation secretary, Obama may tap Steve Heminger, who is the executive director on the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission.”
An Associated Press story (click here) lists Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, as one of the people under consideration for labor secretary in Barack Obama’s new administration.
Miller’s name has also come up as a potential education and interior secretary.
I talked to Miller two days ago about his interest in cabinet appointments and he emphatically says he has no plans to leave Congress, where he is the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s top advisers.
Check out my Oakland Tribune political reporter colleague Josh Richman’s blog entry: “Berkeley Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun MagazineNetwork of Spiritual Progressives, sent out a missive early today discussing “why many of us were shocked and deeply disappointed when we learned on Thursday that Congressman Rahm Emanuel was to be the Chief of Staff in the Obama White House.”
