It's my day off work, and I'm vegetatin' at home with socks going unmatched and the vacuum cleaner standing idle in the middle of the living room rug ...

and I'm bummed out!

Handling leisure is becoming a complete waste of time -- I need to work.  The passage of time without an agenda is a luxury that is no longer affordable in these final years, at least not for me.  How on earth does Congress have the nerve to idle away the time day after day without doing the People's work?  Many of those currently serving are not that much younger than I am, so the sense of urgency that now accompanies  the passage of time is surely weighing heavily on at least some of our elected officials.  How on earth do they deal with it? 

Since I'm a CSPAN junkie, that means one thing -- sitting at my computer watching the proceedings going (or, sadly, not going) on in the Capitol.

Caught the new Republican leader of the Senate, California's Kevin McCarthy, addressing those gathered at one of Washington's grand hotels before the conservatives of the Far Right.  Karl Rove's bunch?   

In his really good and warmly-received brief speech McCarthy waxed eloquently about his two heroes, presidents Lincoln and Reagan.  In it I heard him utter words that are growing chillingly familiar.  I'm not sure why, except that -- given my history and that of so many citizens of color or differing ethnicities and orientations -- it may come as no surprise that my skin begins to crawl at their utterance.

Why does "American exceptionalism" suggest the concept of a "Master Race" as it was called in the WWII period that my everyday work has memorialized so well,  a concept boasted menacingly by our enemies?

Why do I find Herman Cain speaking for black Americans in that context so disturbing? 

Combined with recent rulings by SCOTUS that legitimize blatant voter suppression;  raising the status of corporations to equal the rights of individual citizens; continuing to smooth the way toward rolling back women's ability to control their own health and bodies, and the dismantling of the nation's Labor Movement, it all seems designed to extend white privilege and arrogance on a national scale, and to reinforce the perceived dwindling power of the long-suffering white males in the population. 

Maybe the sight of the Radical Right's Ralph Reed, now rehabilitated and back in the saddle of leadership of the Tea Party Wing of the party has triggered alarm, and I need to shut MAC down and push the starter button on the vacuum cleaner before gloom and doom begin to totally rule the day!

What do you suppose happened to the euphoria of yesterday?