Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day - and Happy Inauguration Day to President Barack Obama

A truly extraordinary man and a beacon for those who believe in peace and equality: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day (his assassination still saddens me deeply, so many years later) and Happy Inauguration Day to our wonderful president, Barack Obama, whose presidency MLK helped make possible.

I am honored and proud to have a president who is a caring human being, intelligent, very hard-working and quietly ambitious to achieve so much in his second term.

Washington has not defeated him - neither have all the ridiculous haters in this country who, from the start of his presidency (and for reasons which more often than not, I am certain, relate to racism), have tried to deny and defeat it.

He is a two-term president, reelected by more than half of this nation. He is our president, we should respect him - and not allow the likes of the moron Donald Trump to be so offensive toward him.

Photograph courtesy of Alex Wong/Getty Images (Guardian Newspaper)

May President Obama achieve great things in this, his legacy term. I wish him the greatest success in making our economy fairer for everyone, for reforming immigration, for making global warming a real and immediate issue that we must deal with (which it certainly is) and with reforming our ridiculous access to weapons of mass destruction (i.e. guns) to the greatest possible extent.

I also hope that he makes some key Supreme Court appointments and leaves our nation as changed and transformed for the 21st Century as it is possible to do.

I wish he could enjoy two more terms after this.

(You may also like to read this Huffington Post piece: MLK Day 2013: Nation To Honor Martin Luther King Jr. As Obama Is Inaugurated and view these remarkable images from The Guardian newspaper, Inauguration Day in pictures as Barack Obama is sworn in - live updates, from which the image above, of President Obama standing as Beyonce performs the national anthem, is taken.)

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