Inauguration Day: History and History

Today history was made twice. The first was the inauguration of President Obama as the first black president in American history.

The more ominous history being made is the launching of the first permanent presidential campaign in American History. This article in the Los Angeles Times talks about the organization dubbed “Barack Obama 2.0”. While Bill Clinton was accused of being in permanent campaign mode, it is apparent that the 44^th U.S. president is going to institutionalize his campaign.

The Obama campaign raised over $600 million for the campaign and continued that by raising and spending over $170 million on the inauguration through the private Presidential Inauguration Committee (www.pic2009.org). Through PIC2009 continued to collect email addresses to add to the 13 million email addresses they collected through the campaign.

The collection of emails is also continuing through the benign sounding usaservice.orgwhich links to the PIC2009 site. This site has been plugged by General Colin Powell. Both of these sites are private (non-governmental) sites that are registered and hosted through Blue State Digital, LLC. This company is the same company that helped Obama in the 2008 election. It also has a number of Democratic labor and left leaning clients that would benefit from activists email addresses.

As Obama 2.0 moves forward we are entering a brave new world of both campaigning and more ominously, governing. The world has changed today, for the better and for the unknown.