One day at a time

Updated As our National Day of Mourning - or at least what in a rational world would have been - comes to a close, let's not forget that it did not pass unopposed.

- There were, it seems, a few thousand people in DC, spread out across several protests. ANSWER said there were over 10,000. Based on the pictures I've seen that appears to be rather exaggerated (which they have a habit of doing; I once was at a demo of about 200 people they organized in Boston only to see the next day they claimed over 1,000 attended) - but it's also more than reasonable to regard the press numbers as underestimates, since there were apparently a good number of people strung out along the sidewalks on both sides of the route who don't appear to be included in the media accounts I've seen. So say somewhere between "a few" and "several" thousand.

- Reuters described the "mood along the parade route" as "decidedly anti-Bush."

- CNN mentioned protests in New Orleans; Baltimore; Akron, Ohio; San Francisco; Louisville, Kentucky; Las Vegas; and Austin, Texas.

- United for Peace and Justice had a list of 125 planned protests in 22 states, which is an incomplete list because I know of two additional protests in a 23^rd state not included there. I'm sure there were others also missed.

Shrub and the Shrubberies will try to make the most of his so-called "mandate" of barely more than 1/2 of voters. But this man, who people around the world see as "cocky, shallow, and dangerous," enters office with the lowest second-term approval rating of any president in more than 50 years, with support for his war collapsing, and with even House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA, 22) calling his Social Security plan "a dead horse."

He is not invulnerable, as much as his spin team tries to make him seem so and as much as we sometimes let ourselves believe. So keep on keepin' on.

Updated to include ANSWER's figure.