Um, Bobez, man, this is from the Washington Times:

"Moving presidents in and out of the White House is a ritual akin to the inaugural ceremony itself - except the action occurs out of sight.

What takes most families days to accomplish happens within a few hours. Between noon, when the incoming president takes the oath of office, and 5 p.m., which is roughly when the inaugural parade ends, the furnishings and personal effects of two families will have been moved out and moved into the six-floor 132-room mansion - a scripted transformation done with the precision of a military maneuver.

Around 10 a.m., the outgoing president and family gather in the State Dining Room with the White House resident staff to exchange farewells and presents. It's an emotional scene, relates former chief curator Betty C. Monkman, "saying goodbye and wondering what the future will be."

A tradition begun under former chief usher Gary Walters' watch is to give the outgoing president two flags: the one flying over the White House when he took the oath of office and the one flying on inaugural morning. These are boxed in wood from the original building - renovated during President Truman's time - and at least one usually ends up in a future presidential library.

Next, the outgoing president receives the incoming president as well as the Congressional Escort Committee - a bipartisan group - which will formally escort both men to the Capitol. The outgoing and incoming vice president and their spouses arrive, and all go to the Blue Room for coffee and pastries for what will be the outgoing chief executive's last "taste" of the house he has called home for the past eight years.

"Until President Bush and his family depart from the North Portico, the house is theirs," Mr. Walters says. "Sometimes family members - guests - are slow to depart, but only after they leave does the transformation occur."

By the time the inaugural ceremony ends at the Capitol, moving vans will have made their way through traffic to the White House South Portico out of view of the cheering crowds lining the streets on the north and west sides. The vans are chosen by the incoming family and paid for by them.

When the new presidential family and their guests finish watching festivities from an elaborately constructed reviewing stand, they retire to eat, relax and mingle with friends and relatives prior to the evening's succession of formal balls. Only when the Obamas enter the North Portico after the parade does the mansion officially become their home. The packing boxes will be gone and everything will have been put away."


What are they smoking that they don't know what you know??


A