Bush was coronated with much fanfare and excessive 'security' entailments today. The number of guards was astounding, which formed a thick black line from the aerial view that effectively barred any sort of mass participation. Nonetheless, protests shown through, though marginalized. In his second inaugural speech, Bush in his 17 minutes at the podium did not have the time to mention the war in Iraq or begin to address the serious situation we are in but found the ability to throw in the word 'freedom' 25 times (not counting 'liberty' or 'free'). As many expected, myself included, nice, pretty words to mask uncomfortable if not disturbing realities. One sentence had me almost laugh out loud, in which we are told that our government (or, in his world, 'America') "will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling." What? Perhaps it was some, I don't know, transcription error or something: he couldn't of said that, could he? Anyway, it was a speech completely void of meaning and emblematic of the duplicity and opportunistic hypocrisy that we have come to see in the past four years. And (I had thought that I would never have to say this) also for the next four. Having won just about 50.73% of the popular vote, our duly-elected President strides as if he indeed has been given some sort of mandate with which to change the world, and our future. The door is open to the second term. Knock it out the park. Let us get out of your way first ...