On Martin Luther King Day and Inauguration Day, my favorite Martin Luther King quotes that Barack Obama is too dense to understand:

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable … Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. … I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values — that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.

The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

I suppose some genius writers out there will have columns or blogs out today comparing King and Obama. Unlike many writers, I do not put words in the mouths of the dead, so I’m not going to claim what King might have thought about our first mixed-race president. You can read the aforementioned quotes and ask whether our affirmative-action president has fulfilled, or is a good example of, any of them. (Particularly the last one.)

I am not watching the inauguration today. I work for a living, so unlike the government employees who have today off, I have productive things to do. Over the past four years, my respect for government generally, the federal government more specifically and the presidency specifically has dropped like a rock.

And how about that inauguration excitement? What excitement? (From Breitbart)

Just days before his second inauguration, however, a new poll from The Hill finds that the public is much more pessimistic about the next four years.

Just 18% of voters believe that Obama’s first term exceeded their expectations. 80% feel the first term fell below or simply met their expectations. 60% of Americans do not feel they will make economic gains in the next four years of Obama’s presidency.

A good deal of the voters’ pessimism is likely due to the fact that Obama spends most of his time on issues that aren’t relevant to their lives. 39% of voters say Obama should focus his energy on reviving the economy. 38% believe he should focus on dealing with the deficit and the national debt. Those thinking his priority should be immigration, gun violence or other issues are in the single digits. …

Obama won reelection by a narrow, but solid, margin. According to exit polls, however, his victory was due more to personal feelings about him rather than his policies. His policy agenda has not captured the attention of the public.

Nor has Obama’s swaying between incompetence and malevolence, given the Nov. 6 election results. As we should have figured out in the past four years, but undoubtedly will find out the next four years, elections have consequences.