I was sitting on the big exercise ball that is 97% magic at getting Leila to stop crying, when the clock turned 10:00 and the West Coast polls closed. CNN announced the clousure and the screen faded out...faded in and I was expecting them to maybe award Obama California, but instead they announced him the presidental elect. I held Leila in my arms and Katy was walking down the stairs and I thought I am glad you are here for this moment.

I am an Obama supporter, not lover. But what struck me about last night was the rising excitement of the broadcasters and the sense of a new start with which the evening was infused. The Republicans are trying to say otherwise, but this was not a vanquishing of George Bush, it was a vanquishing of the party that had brought us 2 failed wars and a wildly oscillating budget...oscillating, I guess, only if you oscillate into an abyss. It will be nice to have JR. out of office. But no real change could have come by replacing him with another republican.

I have not been am Obama lover because it has been impossible to know how true he would remain to me. Up until yesterday the thought was it was impossible to be elected, much less elected President, without giving away your favors to big business and industry. Maybe nothing has changed today, and that would be a crushing loss. But yesterday we elected a man who seemed to stay true to his beliefs, attacked his attackers and looked to unify his constituents, and he did this while relying on mass quantities of small donations. Not none of mine. May that fact help him stay true.

What attracted me to Obama was his message of Hope. An elusive thing. We made a mistake 7 years ago, in the wake of 911 by proposing the oldest and worst solution to our new problems...by seeking only war we squandered all the good will the world was willing to express us. Near the end of his speech O'Bama said, "To reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope."

Obama knows in his heart that unless human liberties are shared by humanity, those liberties are frail. This is not something that Bush and all his Christianity has ever considered. It will be interesting to see how and how quickly Obama is able to correct the abuses of the Bush administration. A declaration against all forms of torture and violent coercion would be a nice first days work. Obama has the heart to do this, what will his head tell him to do. What will happen to the prisoners at Guantanomo? The warrentless servalence, the secret forgien prisons? The illeagal survalance here and at home? And these questions do not even begin to ask what will happen about those 2 pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanastan, nor how will he begin to mend all of the international fences that Bush43 bulldozed.

This country is too proud and to often too full of itself to simply say, we made a mistake, and if 47% of the populations could vote for the old guard and California vote 60+% in favor of Obama while at the same time abolishing Gay Marraige...then this country clearly does not understand yet how liberties must be shared by all and it will not be easy for Obama to see his way to make the clearest and most basic changes.