Motley Moose – Archive

President Obama Inaugurated for Second Term!

Recall the GOP Agenda after the 2008 election…

How’d that work out for you, Turtle Man???

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

I generally survey a number of news sites around the world and country, choose around 15 articles I can quote, and a few links.  Tonight I am leaning toward social justice.  Sometimes I editorialize.  I also tend not to cover the headlines, but look for smaller stories.  

I am so pleased that our country has re-elected Barack Hussein Obama and I love the overlap of these historic dates.  Yes We Did Again.  

Photo by Flip Schulke, hosted by Alabama Tourism Department.  I was hoping to find a photo in a pulpit, but I liked this one too, Dr. King looks happy.  

It’s not about glamorizing people, it’s about honoring imperfect people who made a sacrifice for us. Jeff Johnson (@JeffsNation)

Newsworks:  Solomon Jones

There Would Be No Obama Without King

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King wrote in one of the more familiar passages. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

As I read King’s brilliant argument for direct action against injustice, I saw more than a man who lives only in old footage. I saw a father fighting for a better future for his children. I saw a man who was not willing to wait for change. I saw myself.

King wrote of seeing “the vast majority of … twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.” When I read that I saw Philadelphia, a place where 28 percent of the population-many of them African American-live in poverty while surrounded by wealth.

King went on to write of tears welling up in his six year old daughter’s eyes as he explained to her that she couldn’t go to the amusement park because of segregation. He wrote of the concerns that any husband and father would have for his family, and at that moment I saw King for who he truly was-a man.

Today, Myrlie Evers-Williams will become the first woman and the first layperson to deliver the invocation at a presidential swearing-in ceremony. Just as the use of Martin Luther King Jr’s bible is symbolic of the civil rights struggle in this country, Mrs. Evers-Williams is herself a living legacy of that struggle, which continues.

Far too many young Americans do not learn this history, nor make connections to the past as part of where we are today and what the future holds for us as a nation.  

President Obama was sworn in to start his second term in the Blue Room by Chief Justice Roberts who used a notecard this time to avoid any errors.  Just a bit of trivia: once POTUS is sworn in again tomorrow today at the public ceremony he will be only the second president to be sworn in four times.

A wake up call from this side of the Atlantic.

I’ve noticed after last night’s results that many of you are feeling despairing about your country, and even contemplating giving up political blogging because of the distress of it. I’ve one word of advice…

Hold on. Buckle up, and keep going. It was always going to be a bumpy ride.