Obama - Yes!!!!

YES!!!!
YES!!!!
YES!!!!

i completely stole that from an email from my brother, patrick, who lives just outside of amsterdam with his family. it completely sums up how i feel and if i'm going to capitalize anything on this little blog, the end of the reign of darkness we have fallen under qualifies more than anything else. whew!!!! seriously... i am so happy, so excited, so completely fucking RELIEVED!!!! i didn't know it was possible to be so relieved!!! about half way through obama's speech last night i started crying and just couldn't stop. 90% of it was sheer relief that, as gerald ford once said about completely different circumstances, our long national nightmare is finally over. i just didn't know how we could make it through another four years if mccain won and now i don't have to.

i am still kind of in shock. we have a black president - woo hoo!!!! this country will never be the same in ways that can only be great, wonderful, positive and thrilling! i never thought it would happen in my lifetime and i have never been happier to be proved wrong. i am so proud of this american experiment in a way i cannot even express, and i think of all the little kids who will grow up thinking that having a black president it totally normal, when everything in our history says otherwise. what an historic occasion, an historic paradigm shift. i love that these kids will think "why shouldn't the president be a black person? or a woman? or both?" it's just the first step towards finally starting to heal our country but what a first step!

drew and i were talking after he got home with the champagne - buying it beforehand was just too jinxy - while watching obama's speech and agreed that it felt so great to hear someone telling us we were going to have to sacrifice and work hard to restore our country, our world, instead of telling us to go shopping. what could be more crass, really, than telling a traumatized country to go hit the mall? but that's just what bush did. i distinctly remember reading how the president and first lady went to dinner at a mexican restaurant to let the country know things were "back to normal" when they were anything but and we were only just starting to tumble down the rabbit hole. i remember thinking "what the fuck do they mean back to normal?" it made my head hurt then and it still does now. i know that i am hungry for leadership that i can believe in, that restores hope to all of us, and i think obama can do it. as drew said last night, i am eating my words, even about the fisa vote (but man, he better fucking fix it pronto.) i think our country is so fucking starved for real leadership and is so worn out from the bullying, greed and neglect that bush tried to pass off as one and the same. i truly am more hopeful at this moment in history than any other... about my country, its founding ideals and principles which i truly and deeply cherish, and our place in the community of nations.

so say we all.