Merry Christmas?

I’m back in Boston for Erev Christmas. Very happy to be here with family.

I was struck when the news ran a story about Robert Byrd pushing himself to the wall to keep coming back to the Senate for votes. It’s stories like this where I see a 92 year old man taking the work so seriously that he shows up at 1 AM to vote, yet how republicans can sleep at night when they will use blatant stalling tactics to prevent anything from being done.

For all intents and purposes, they were hoping that our senators would not be physically able to stay at work and would be too old to finish the job.

Their actions are infuriating, vile, and shameful. Bernie Sanders didn’t go far enough.

This is supposed to be a season where we strive to be our first, best selves. Where we celebrate the struggle of oppressed people against evil, and the birth of a man who preached caring for your neighbors as you would your own family, as you wish they would act towards you.

The Republican party purportedly has Christian values, but I, for the life of me, can only see behavior you’d expect from Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine, caring only for themselves. They are perfect examples of what is truly wrong with our world.

Well, I suppose we have to take whatever small victories we can, and today was absolutely a step forward. It’s not perfect by a long shot, but politics is the slow boring of hard boards, and this is how progress occurs. So, we should be happy.

In the spirit of the holidays, and the Tiny Tim vote, God, Bless us, every one, even Tom Coburn…

-m3