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Gallery: Obama Inauguration

"Starting today we must pick ourselves up dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America," said President Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, called on his countrymen to begin a new chapter in the US. “Starting today we must pick ourselves up dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America,” he said.

In a deeply religious ceremony, Obama indicated to the world that America is ready to lead with new resolve.

“And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”

He indicated that the country would need to dig deep to face economic and social challenges, and acknowledged the significance of being the first black American President.

“To the nation’s foes and terrorists,” he said, “We will not apologise for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

The ceremony included prayers, blessings, poetry, cannon salutes and Aretha Franklin.

Watching on were Vice President Biden, former Presidents Bush and Clinton, and Hillary Clinton, the Administration’s new Secretary of State.

In freezing temperatures between 1.5 – 2m people watched on from Washington Mall.

The event was covered live by four Free to Air Australian television networks.

34 Responses

  1. This was a great day not only because of the obvious, but for me also because of the fantastic online coverage. I managed to actually switch the TV off thanks to Sky News’ (UK) breathtaking High Definition online stream which didn’t drop a single frame in over 2 hours of streaming I watched. An incredible milestone for such a high quality stream to stand up to the absolute ass load of people who must have been pounding their servers (it worked out for me at over 1GB of data per hour, times that by what must have been in the 10’s of thousands and well, I’m glad I’m not getting THAT bandwidth bill).

    Anyway slightly OT, but congrats Sky on the great initiative and congrats Obama, you brought tears to my eyes 🙂

  2. This event has received such a positive response they should turn it into a weekly show 😉

    PS. That last screen shot reminds me of the show Benson 😉 They should rerun that series…

  3. So 1am in WA it was live?!

    Must be a first!

    I watched it till about 3.30 am 🙂

    I was happy to watch the coverage…. I didn’t in HD though 🙁

    I flicked from 9 and 7, about 4 second delay with 7 to 9, 7 in SD was perfect! Nice and sharp…. 9 wasn’t sorry to say at my end. I would have preferred watching Nine’s coverage but I flicked to NBC i mean 7. Then 10 came along with CBS, and it just had a huge news thingo taking 1/3 of the screen… so I put 7 back on. ABC, not in WS!? 🙁

  4. Watched in Ten HD and it looked lovely. Was flicking between all of the others and the Ten feed (CBS) and CNN were clearly the best.

    Foxnews has been better tho this afternoon and evening in recap mode.

  5. I watched it on 9 with the Today show. They did a great jof, deffenitly the best of all of the networks, and wasnt it great having Karl and Robert there. Congrats to 9 for the great coverage, and lets not forget President Obama, what an amazing speech.

  6. Interesting account of the controlled chaos inside the CNN control room during the inauguration, CNN was the only network to report that Obama had become President at 12 noon in Washington to the second, without the need for the oath of office. Very interesting indeed.

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