Thoughts on Inauguration Day 2013

What would Martin Luther King have thought today as we inaugurated a black guy with Hussein as his middle name for his 2nd term as President, a white guy as Vice-President, a Jewish Senator from New York as emcee, Medgar Evers' widow giving the invocation, a gay guy reading his poem about America, a Mormon Tabernacle choir, an aging balding white guy, a young blond woman, and a young black popstar singing their songs, and a Guatemalan immigrant Episcopal priest giving the benediction? I'm guessing he'd be pleased. One surreal moment of Inauguration events: Eric Cantor presents lead crystal vases to President and Mrs. Obama and Vice-President and Mrs. Biden. House Republican Leader John Boehner is attending the Inaugural Lunch. I bet he's packing TUMS. I heard a US Representative gun advocate arguing that the 2nd Amendment was a God-given right. Hmmmmm. If that were true, wouldn't that have been the 2nd Commandment instead of Amendment? In fact, making an idol of the 2nd Amendment seems to be a violation of the 2nd Commandment..... Food for thought as we wait for the next mass shooting. Republicans, with a few exceptions, abandoned Washington DC today in about the same proportion as they have abandoned reason, science, dignity, and comity during the last ten years. In an apparent shift of Republican House strategy on the debt ceiling, they will no longer threaten to shoot themselves in the foot unless they get their way, they will just beg for stuff........"So, it turns out that the Koch Brothers, the Chamber of Commerce, and Wall Street didn't want us to crash the world economy," Paul Ryan sheepishly reported. "Who knew? I guess we read those tea leaves wrongly. That was our only leverage. Since we really don't have any ideas ourselves., we are back to square one. For a short time, we even thought about proposing identifiable spending cuts, but nobody wanted to go first." Senate Republicans, after hearing their various party members threaten to impeach the President, dismantle the New Deal, end the income tax, and secede from the union, are all bent out of shape that Democrats might pass a rule that if you want to filibuster, you have to talk. House Republicans are now deciding whether to even come back to Washington.