inauguration

President Obama's inauguration is tomorrow. As ridiculous as some of it will be, its still a landmark in history. Try to catch it live if you can. Its something you probably won't forget for the rest of your life.

Hopefully, conservatives will be open minded enough to give Obama a chance. Thats really what his vision hinges on, unity. Blind support for a party is very dangerous. There are a lot of problems in this country right now and whether your guy won or not, we need to work together to fix them. Read this following quote by Rush Limbaugh for a guide on how not think.

On his radio show last week, Rush Limbaugh railed against "people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, ‘Well, I hope he succeeds. We have to give him a chance.’"

"Why?" Limbaugh demanded. "They didn’t give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated, the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I’m not talking about search-and-destroy, but I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed."

I feel bad for you if you can't see the toxicity in that ideology. I really do. I found another quote from Martin Luther King III in the Post. I think these words are incredibly on point and absolutely appropriate on a day that we honor his father.

Though it carries us further down the path toward equality, Barack Obama's election does not render my father's dream realized.

Mr. Obama will have the opportunity and the duty to pick up the mantle of Abraham Lincoln, of Lyndon Johnson, of Bobby Kennedy -- and of Martin Luther King Jr. Yet this duty is not Obama's alone. We must all embrace this dream as our civic responsibility. For it to function effectively, we must all take an active role in our democracy and champion the cause that is the common good. ...

In five years, the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington will be upon us. As we prepare to celebrate a new page in American history tomorrow, let us pledge to reduce the poverty rate 20 percent by the time that milestone arrives.

Let us promote community building by funding programs that promote service to our most impoverished regions and let us embrace nonviolent resolutions to all conflicts, domestic and international.

Its a lot easier to ignore the larger scale problems we face and I'm sure we are all guilty of it to some extent. Tomorrow is a chance to become more involved and more aware of those issues. Its a chance for us to "change from politics of cynicism to a politics of hope". I'll leave you with one more quote from President Obama, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. "

(A guide to the proceedings can be found here.)

-J. Wolfe