Progressive politics made a grand entrance in the United States for 2014.  As soon as Bill de Blasio was sworn in as New York City’s 109th mayor, he told the crowd that “we won’t wait” in addressing the economic inequality that he condemned as a cornerstone to his successful campaign.

Former President Bill Clinton performed the ceremonial oath of office before a crowd outside City Hall on Wednesday.  The formal oath was administered hours earlier after midnight, in the first minutes of the New Year. 

“Our work begins now,” Mayor de Blasio told the audience, reiterating his plans to increase affordable housing, preserve local hospitals, and expand pre-kindergarten education.

“We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love,” he said.  “And so today, we commit to a new progressive direction in New York.  And that same progressive impulse has written our city’s history.  It’s in our DNA.”

The presence of the Clintons, a former president and possible future president did not go unnoticed by political analysts.

Across the country in the Rocky Mountains at 8:00 AM, Colorado’s legal marijuana stores opened for business, perhaps marking the first and last time that potheads were awake at eight in the Morning.  Colorado voters in 2012 approved Amendment 64, making it legal for people over 21 to buy small amounts of recreational marijuana beginning on New Year’s Day 2014.  And buy they did.

There’s a catch:  Marijuana is still illegal under Federal Law.  Federal narcs aren’t expected to do anything too seriously against Colorado while President Barack Obama is still in office, but at some point a conservative could be elected president, and that sets the clock back.

The Annual Rose Bowl Parade did not go off “without a hitch” in Pasadena, California – In fact, two guys DID get hitched.  Danny Leclair and Aubrey Loots became the first same-sex couple to get married on a Rose Bowl Parade float during the parade.  Despite a planned boycott by finger-wagging moralists, millions of people watched and the republic did not fall.