Number 44 to 45: The Handoff

I never feared a new administration in the White House before. Ever. I may have not liked what was coming but be it Reagan or George W. Bush, no matter how bad I ever thought the person would be there, I never feared for the nation, for us all.

Not in 6 decades. This catches it.

God help us.

This Is It. Final Day

It's like he didn't even try...

And It's Nearly Over

Presidential

President Obama was on Bill Maher's "Real Time with Bill Maher" show last evening on HBO for a one on one interview.

This, then, ladies and gentlemen, is calmness and intelligence and lucidity and yes, being presidential.



In sharp and stark contrast to this year's Republican candidate for the presidency.

Democrats, Progressives, Bringing America Forward

So we Americans, through the Democrats, gave America our first black president. It's been outstanding.

Next up?

The first female president, to follow and carry on the progress.

Then? After that?

Obama Could Become Supreme Court Justice After Presidency

Be still, my heart.

A new day

Thank God. (or whom- or what-ever).

We made it.

A lot of us weren't sure we would.

But we did and we're here.

Doesn't it feel refreshing?

Doesn't it feel as though a great, dirty weight has been lifted off our collective shoulders?

Think of it:

President Barack Hussein Obama.

We came out on the other side of the Bush administration.

As I've said, I wasn't sure we would.

There's two magnificent things about all this, all at once.

The first is that we have a bright, hard-working, intelligent and eloquent President in office, at long last.

And the second is that we no longer have to hear or see or read about that idiot who just left for Texas.

Sure, we'll have problems and sure, he'll disappoint us and we can't possibly get everything we all want but at least we don't have to any longer be ashamed of our President and what he does and what comes out of his mouth.

We, hopefully, no longer will have our government going against us--fighting us to pollute the air or to get their corporate ways and running against our needs, the needs of the people and the middle and lower classes.

"Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

It's a new day truly

"Yes, we can..."

...but only if we work, work hard, work together and take our country back from the corporations.

What's changed

...and what hasn't.


So, here we are, finally, with a historic election and one that was way too long.

It's nice to have it over.

It would have been nice to have it over even if, God forbid, it didn't turn out the way it did--if it didn't turn out this, the right way.

No more election commercials.

I've been thinking for 24 hours about what I'd write.

About how nice it is it turned out correctly.

About how monumental the whole thing was and is, in so many different ways.

But what I've really come down with, finally, is the realization of where we are and what we have and what we've done--and where we are not and what we don't have and what we haven't done, all at once.

Yesterday, by the grace of God (I use that as purely a euphemism) and by education and experience and so many things, we elected the best man, of the last two standing, for President.

That's one of the most important things. And it's huge.

Secondly, not incidentally, he is an African-American. The first in our more than 200 year history to have done so.

That's the monumental part, certainly, as we and the world all know.

What we don't have is true equality.

The United States never has, let's be clear on that, had the equality we declared in our Constitution.

Sure, we may have had more equality than other nations or, possibly, than any other nation on the planet (who really knows?).

But when this nation began, we wrote that we insisted on "equality for all."

At the time, that meant for all property-owning white males. Period. That was all.

Then, we added, what? "People of color"? Kind of. Sort of. Even though they couldn't really vote or buy whatever property they could afford and live wherever they wanted.

Then we added women to the list of "equality".

Yeah, so they could vote but forget about equal pay. Even today, in 2008.

But yesterday, it was also proven in this election that we still aren't there in terms of true, blanket, it's for everyone equality.

While the United States voted Barack Obama to be our next President, California voted to ban marriage for same-sex couples.

No equality.

2 men or two women who want to live together and commit to one another able to have complete, legal parity to opposing sex couples.

Nah.

Nope.

Not gonna happen.

"Wouldn't be prudent."

Yeah, right.

So the fact is, we took a big step last night, to getting closer to our country's long-term goal (of what we understood we had all along, right?).

But no.

We're not all the way there.

Not yet.

We have to keep working on it.

Let's celebrate this advance, sure.

But we still have a lot of work to do.

At least we repudiated the current butt-head President, his sidekick Vice President "The Dick" Cheney, the Republicans, the Republican platform of hate and exclusion, the hating and discriminating religious Right Wing and everyone like them and in their camp.

A brief time now, to celebrate, before we slug on.