Jan 21st inaugurated.

 Besides Obama 2nd inauguration , Congress record number of women in Congress, is too important to pass up.Do you also enjoy the fact the picture was photo shopped? Four of the women were not in the real picture. Pelosi OK'd.

Obama's planed inauguration for his second term .The White House Correspondents Association is strongly urging the Obama administration to allow press access to the president’s official swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20, following indications from inauguration committee officials that the event could potentially be closed to the press. Might well welcomed , but for the start of his second term the President still faced the same obstructionists that he faced in the last four years .The thrill is back for many Americans as President Obama’s second inauguration approaches — though maybe a bit less intense.This inauguration’s celebration will be shorter, and almost certainly smaller and less expensive, than the gala that drew nearly 2 million people to witness the first time an African American president took the oath of office. One political observer says the Jan. 21 ceremony doesn't automatically command people's attention because it amounts to more of the same. And in Obama's case, how does someone trump the history he's already made?Will he get anything done? There is a lot on his plate to consider . He has to push buttons with Congress on guns , he has to shake up the issue with immigration . Next of all the Debt ceiling .“In a couple of months, the president will ask us to raise the nation’s debt limit,” Mr. McConnell said. “We cannot agree to increase that borrowing limit without agreeing to reforms that lower the avalanche of spending that’s creating this debt in the first place.”  With this we have a new Congress that will be made up of persons with diverse backgrounds as far as ethnic and gender . You might look at this way. It's the most 'Liberal ' Congress you'll ever see . It's made up of both parties , Republicans and Democrats . Hold on here . Did I say 'Most Liberal'? On both party lines. Yes. What made John Boehner cry as he looked at the new Congress? Relief, weariness, affection, or hurt, or the sense that he wasn’t in a safe place? He had just been reëlected speaker, although there were a dozen votes against him—a high number, as these votes go. Maybe they were tears of resentment at the fun that Joe Biden seemed to be having swearing in senators. The new 113th Congress, which was sworn in Thursday (January 3), includes several religious firsts. Democrat Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is the first Hindu member of Congress. Mazie Hirono, also of Hawaii, is the first Buddhist senator, although she describes herself as non-practicing, and Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic representative from Arizona, is the first member of Congress to publicly describe her religion as “none.”  The bar has never been lower for the nearly 100 freshmen of the 113th Congress who were sworn-in on Thursday. After all, it won't take much to exceed the abysmal approval rating of the previous Congress The new Congress faces many of the same stubborn issues that make bipartisanship in a politically divided country difficult to achieve.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

The House has 233 Republicans and 200 Democrats. Each party should pick up one more seat when two vacancies are filled. Going into the election, the GOP edge was 242-193. Senate Democrats will have a caucus of 55, including two independents, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Republicans have 45. That’s a pickup of two seats for Democrats. The House will have 79 women, including 60 Democrats. At the end of the last session, there were 50 Democratic women and 24 Republican women. The new Senate will have 20 women members, an increase of three. That consists of 16 Democrats and four Republicans. The last Senate had 12 Democratic women and five Republicans. With two vacancies to be filled, the House has 82 freshmen; 47 Democrats and 35 Republicans. As of the end of the last session, 87 of 103 freshmen were Republicans. The Senate will include 14 new faces, with nine Democrats and the independent King. Five are women. New senators include Brian Schatz, who was sworn in on Dec. 27 to fill the seat of the late Hawaii Democrat Daniel Inouye. The House will have 40 African-Americans, all Democrats. The number of Democrats is unchanged, although two Republicans will be gone: Allen West, R-Fla., lost his re-election bid, and Tim Scott, R-S.C., was appointed to fill the Senate seat of Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who is retiring. Scott will be the first black lawmaker in the Senate since Roland Burris, who retired in 2010 after filling the Illinois Senate seat of Barack Obama for almost two years. The new House will have 33 Hispanics, with 25 Democrats and eight Republicans. That’s up slightly from last year. The Senate will have three Hispanics: Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Republican Marco Rubio of Florida and Republican freshman Ted Cruz of Texas. The new House will have nine Asian Americans, all Democrats. There are two American Indians: Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Ben Lujan, D-N.M.