Keller @ Large: Today Can't Be As Bad As Yesterday

BOSTON (CBS) - Yes, there's snow in the forecast, and winter has a long way to go.

The economy is still struggling, and gas prices are through the roof.

But I just know today is going to be a better day than yesterday. Call me Pollyanna if you want, but I'm positive about it.

How can I be so sure?

Because it would be really hard to have another full day of news as bad as yesterday's news was.

I spent the morning outside the State House helping with the TV coverage of the governor's inauguration, not far from the spot where I watched his inspirational inaugural ceremonies four years ago.

But there were no happy crowds of people on Beacon Street yesterday.

The show was moved inside this time around, and a lucky thing, too, because the past four years haven't been especially productive for our political leadership, forced into halting reforms by public outrage, enmeshed in scandal, unable to do much of anything creative to create jobs, caretakers of a hemorrhaging budget deficit.

And then the governor gets up in the House chamber yesterday and bellows into the microphone that "the time for action has arrived."

It has?

Then what on earth have you been doing for the last four years?

I got back to the office half-frozen in time to see the video of the grieving brother of that Woburn police officer murdered by a paroled lifer, standing with dozens of police to decry the ineptitude of the state parole board that let him out.

A three-year-old could have seen that the killer was unfit to return to society, he said, which I guess is the kind of "recrimination" the governor was complaining about the other day in his bizarre comments about the crime.

Now thoroughly depressed, I went online to a national news web site and was presented with the following stories: partisan bickering in Congress as unemployment claims hit new highs... incendiary devices found at state buildings in Maryland... autism research fraud revealed...new storm headed for New York, where rats are running wild.

Well, OK, maybe that last one wasn't so bad.

But I fail to see how today could produce a more rancid crop of political foolishness and human depravity than yesterday.

Let it snow, I don't mind.

After all that, shoveling out the driveway will be like a mini-vacation.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.