Less than 24 hours to go

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

When we began the Freedom Clock nearly two years ago, it seemed that we would never be rid of Bush. Now the 600+ days have ticked down to a scant few hours.

Tomorrow I will be blogging live as we hit the glorious count of 0 days/hours/minutes/seconds and swear in a new president. Feel free to swing by.

PAD

31 comments on “Less than 24 hours to go”

  1. Has anyone tested what happens when that widget hits zero? I mean, what if it blows up and shows some sort of disgusting picture when it’s zero? Or freezes the website? Or goes back in time and rewrites the constitution so that W gets an automatic third term?

    Widgets. Can’t trust them.

  2. Ray, you weren’t by any chance in a bunker surrounded by non-perishable canned food on January 1, 2000, were you? 🙂

  3. One really nice touch about the clock is that it doesn’t seem to be counting down to 12 o’clock midnight tonight, but to 12 o’clock noon tomorrow, when the actual oath of office is scheduled to begin. (The actual inaugural program begins at 10am). Did the creators of the Clock know the exact time it would be two years ago?

  6. “Joy and relief” may be overstating a tad… I tend to go with them when the bad guy buys it before he’s actually committed his dastardly crimes.

    This is almost more of a perfunctory pre-req for getting the new guy on deck and hoping he can actually save the universe.

    I’m certainly rooting for him, in a non-Australian kind of way.

    Cheers.

  7. It does amaze me how much the rest of the world cares about this. Before the election I saw a British talk show where the guests were casually talking about how great it was that Obama was going to win.

    Right now I’m just hoping he can live up to a tenth of what we need from him. I’m cautiously optimistic, but there’s a lot that needs doing.

  8. Luigi Novi: Did the creators of the Clock know the exact time it would be two years ago?

    Isn’t the inauguration always at noon? Or does it vary?

  9. I remember tuning into Rush Limbaugh’s tv show one day back in the 90’s, and he had a countdown timer for Clinton’s departure from office titled “America Held Hostage – xx Days Until Freedom”. I wonder if he’ll start the clock again with Obama? Anyway, I agree with the title of Al Franken’s book on Rush. I watched the show for all of 30 seconds before I felt ill.

  10. We will be running live at work tomorrow. Usually I’m off-desk at noon, but for some strange reason I’m on from 11 to 1, but we’re bringing the super-sized TV out to the lobby for the patrons to watch, so I can see it there. And flick back and forth here, if we’re not too busy. At home we’ll be flying all our flags, since I now feel there’s something to be proud about again.

  11. Yeah, it’s hard to believe. After 8 years, we’re finally rid of him.

    And screw the Bush apologists that say that it doesn’t matter who is the President, one man can’t change the world, etc. For good and for ill (a lot more for ill, IMO), Bush has changed the world.

    For one thing, there is a big psychological effect. Many people aligned with the whoever is in the White House always get some feeling of entitlement and THEY change the world in lots of minor and major ways.

    For this President, it was conservatives in general, and Evangelicals in particular that benefited from this sense of empowerment.

  12. When people tell me they feel giddy, I always groan. It sounds so trite. Yet here I am feeling giddy from my utter sense of relief that Bush if finally, to use a bushism, depowered, I have been anticipating him announcing some kind of executive order making cheney the POTUS.

    There was a weird vibe at work today, not everyone shared it, but I was sure I could feel optimism rear its head one again.

    R-

  16. So, why is it that foreign Heads are not invited to the inauguration? I heard it’s tradition, but I was curious about the origin of the custom.

  17. So, why is it that foreign Heads of State are not invited to the inauguration? I heard it’s tradition, but I was curious about the origin of the custom.

  19. 3 hours until our Long National Nightmare is over.

    Maybe they know something we don’t know about the safety of attending this event?

    Ahh, more regurgitation of the GOP Talking Points memos. Please, do yourself a favor and stop reading such bs.

  20. Posted by John at January 20, 2009 04:42 AM
    Daniel,
    “why is it that foreign Heads of State are not invited to the inauguration?”

    Maybe they know something we don’t know about the safety of attending this event?

    http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/2009/01/inauguration-attack-none-of-them-are.html

    Okaaayyyy. That link was one of the most nauseating bits of racist tripe I”ve read since….well….ever.

    I’m pretty sure that the Secret Service is keeping an eye on whack jobs like Hal Turner and his fans.

  22. Manny, you have a gift for understatement. Whoever this Hal Turner is, he’s a foaming-at-the-mouth sociopath, bragging that he’s going to kill a bunch of people (“sub-human simians and mentally ill whites”) at the inauguration. I doubt he’s smart enough to get away with it, but… still. That’s really staggering.

    Now, anyone who agrees with Hal Turner — that’s someone I’m comfortable with labeling as sub-human or mentally ill.

  24. Bill, have you ever heard of “The Turner Diaries”? It’s sort of a future history paradise for racist wing nuts. I wonder of this (I hesitate to say) person has anything to do with it.

  26. Just looked up Hal Turner on Wikipedia (knee jerk reaction, sorry). If what’s there is even partially right, well, this guy has got issues to spare.

  27. I still have trouble believing Hal Turner merits a Wikipedia article, or gets mentioned in our local papers, let alone that he gets mentioned on this blog.

  29. The clock is now counting up. Which is sorta cool if anticlimactic.

    However, that clock has also made my browser unhappy on some occasions. So can I ask that even though it now serves as a celebration of the transition, it be removed from the site?

  30. And now it’s a clock that isn’t there, and I’m no longer getting a trio of javascript exception errors whenever I visit the site in Firefox. 🙂

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