Today

Sunday's "We Are One" celebration was just incredible, from opening and closing with Bruce (and using the three most important [but sadly usually ignored] verses of "This Land is Your Land") to performances beautiful (Bettye LaVette and Jon Bon Jovi's "A Change is Gonna Come"), goose-bump inducing (Beyonce's "America the Beautiful"), and just plain kick-ass (Garth Brooks' mini-set)... it was a great show. But leave it to the foreigners to sum it all up: U2's performance and rewrite of "Pride (in the name of love)" was powerful and poignant, but never more so than when Bono sat down for the ending of it, and just stared off at the crowd, drinking in the moment, smiling not at his own greatness, but at the greatness of the moment.

Today, a new beginning, filled with hope, but not a little tinged with anxiety for all the things that need fixing.

Those political pontificators at Fox NOISE yesterday were yammering on and on and on about Obama's "self-comparisons" to Lincoln, with Karl Rove going so far as to proclaim Obama's use of the Lincoln Bible for the swearing-in as "presumptuous", saying that the Washington Bible was good enough for most presidents, and how did Obama feel that he should be the only one to use Lincoln.

Well, Karl ol' non-buddy, ol' non-pal, here's why, you ignorant (but evilly brilliant) ASS: The Library of Congress never offered it as an option until this year when LoC staffers suggested it THEMSELVES.

Karl, you're a tool. A tool of cynicism and divisiveness... and here's hoping your time (and that of your mentor in the grave, Lee Atwater) is finally done.

It's that kind of politics that made Bruce's inclusion of these three verses Sunday all the more necessary:

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Nobody living (or dead) can stop our democracy.

This is a great day.