We showed the inauguration to the boys at work, so I had to watch it, record it, edit it down to the highlights and then show it again. The Daily Show did a brilliant piece where Jon Stewart highlighted how the rhetoric of Obama's address was virtually the same as what George W. Bush has previously said.

Meet the new boss, indeed.

I found it very inspiring to watch the reactions of many African Americans. Especially when they talked about how for their own kids, becoming President is a possibility, not just a dream. In that sense, it was a historic day. A moment in history. But beyond that, the honeymoon will be short. No one can live up to this kind of hype. Will he undo some of the Orwellian policies of the Bush administration? Certainly. Gitmo is a good start. The problem is that too many Americans are living in a fantasy world (Bill Clinton, the most conservative president in the last 25 years, was right about living in a fantasy) where money rains down from the heavens, and Obama's the new Messiah who is going to make it rain. Maybe I just haven't yet embraced what is right.

In Excelsis Deobama?

“I would say any one of the Biblical leaders,” said Denzel Washington’s mother, Lennis Washington, who was attending the inauguration with her son on Tuesday. “The apostle Paul, Moses, John the Baptist – any one of them. Seriously, he is like one of those apostles for our day. He came to lead us to the original design of what we are supposed to do on this earth.” -- Denzel Washington

One of my favorite articles from yesterday:

If you don’t want your money given to others — say, Wall Street banks, auto companies, welfare recipients, stem-cell researchers, military contractors, the Israeli air force, the Iraqi and Afghan rulers — too bad. You have no say. Correction: you have one impotent vote every four years. That’s virtually the same as no say.
If you don’t want the armed forces killing people in your name, again, too bad. No one asked you.
If you don’t want the Treasury and the Federal Reserve stealing your hard-earned money through deficits and inflation, you may as well shut up. It’s going to happen anyway.
This is the power the peaceful transfer of which we celebrate.

While this is only part of the picture, it's an important piece of the puzzle and it lays out exactly where we're headed. And we're headed there even faster given our current economic climate. It's a fascinating analysis and it has some great art direction with great illustrations of most of the concepts.

A particularly interesting segment is the one on Financial Warfare. Considering the direction that we're headed, it's a little scary how exposed we are to being manipulated just like we did Britain and France in the 1950's. China could pull that off against us.