Many people think that toothless lions are pathetic.  They cannot harm others and will die soon.  Many people have taken comfort in the election of a more “centrist” Congress and believe they have taken the teeth out of the Bush Administration.  Nothing can be further than the truth.

A toothless lion remembers his days of greatness and power.  Lame ducks have a lot of insults to combat in the time remaining to them.  The election is over but the inauguration of a new Congress is not until January.  It is not even the middle of November.

If the saying, the more things change the more they remain the same, is true – then we will be getting the same that the Congress still in power has been dealing out for the last two years and basically for all of the Bush years.  They still have the power to deal out pork, favors and set in motion a new program to regain power when Bush leaves office.

Of course, the Republicans will have to invent a new Bush or create one but they have two more years to do it. Seeing their track record, they know quite a bit more than the Democrats about how to mount campaigns that make themselves seem like the saviors of humankind while the Democrats appear to be toothless lions.

To carry the anthropomorphic comparisons a bit further; leopards do not change their spots.  Those who love corporate bonuses will never become tree huggers.  There are at least two separate species of law-makers responding to the constituencies that have the known world crashing down around their heads.

The questions are: What will these ducks; lions and leopards do about the Iraq War?  What will they do about the energy dependency on oil?  What will they be doing about the fabled but true Global warming?  What will they do about Darfur and other such cesspools of human degradation?

Then, too, what will they do about the disparity between a tiny super wealthy class and the rest of us?  What will they do to guarantee honest elections and reliable voting machines?  What will they do about a fair minimum wage?  What will they do about the ceaseless drift in the daft moral/faith business of running our lives?  The answer my friends lies in the facts that quacks, teeth in old gums and spots will be able to get your goat even though they were voted out – this time.