Starting to Settle--A Little

The day after the election, we stayed home and watched news coverage all day. We were revelling in the win for Obama and breathing a sigh of relief that McCain would not get the chance to carry on Bush's legacy of the last eight years--not to mention, no Sarah!

But that afternoon, we got a call from a coworker that some nastiness was going down at school. Some conservative teachers were freaking out and getting really ugly about "that man" winning. A student had uttered the "N" word causing a fight with a black classmate. A teacher from the high school was being verbally abused by most of her staff because of her support for Obama. WOW--not only a killjoy but seriously shocking and saddening! We had no idea we were surrounded by such extreme ignorance and racism.

Then we started reading stories in the news about cross-burnings and assassination threats...

Now we've had some time to settle into the new reality. Racism is alive and well and nasty as ever. So we have to brace ourselves for a new phase of what was suffered in the 50s and 60s. We have to be ready for facing racism (of all types) but remember our old "Rules for Radicals" teachings (Saul Alinsky)--fight from within, fight smart, fight educated. Kind of like, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." But I regret having to feel cynical. I wish...sigh...I guess I wish it was easier,...automatic...that the world would say, "Oh, I get it now" and just move on.

Yeah, yeah, not to be. So, we stiffen our backbones and upper lips and take it one day at a time.

That's enough cliches for now. Goodnight.

Obama's Cabinet

Vice President: (Cheney)...Joe Biden (D-Delaware)

Chief of Staff: (Bolten)...Rahm Emanuel (D-Illinois)

http://www.politicalbase.com/profile/Mark%20Nickolas/blog/&blogId=5260

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081107/ap_on_el_pr/obama_potential_appointees

Senior Advisor:...David Axelrod

Press Secretary:... Robert Gibbs?

Office of Management & Budget (OMB) (Nussle)...

Environmental Protection Agency (Johnson)... Robert Kennedy?

Office of National Drug Control Policy (Walters)...

U.S. Trade Representative (Schwab)...

Chairman of the Federal Reserve (Bernanke)...

Social Security Administration (Astrue)...

Director of National Intelligence (McConnell)...

Dept. of Agriculture (Schafer)...

Dept. of Interior (Kempthorne)...

Dept. of Commerce (Gutierrez)...

Dept. of Justice Attorney General (Mukasey)...Napolitano? Holder? Ogletree? Patrick? Comey? Fitzgerald?

Dept. of Defense (Gates)...Gates? Danzig? Hagel? Nunn? Hamre? Reed?

Dept. of Labor (Chao)...

Dept. of Education (Spellings)...Caroline Kennedy?

Dept. of State (Rice)...Kerry? Richardson? Lugar? Hagel? Susan Rice?

Dept. of Energy (Bodman)...

Dept. of Transportationm (Peters)...

Dept. of Health & Human Services (Leavitt)...

Dept. of Treasury (Paulson)...Rubin? Summers? Geithner? Volcker? Buffett? Tyson?

Dept. of Homeland Security (Chertoff)...

Dept. of Veterans Affairs (Peake)...

Housing & Urban Development (HUD) (Preston)...

Supreme Court Appointment?!!!.....Hillary Clinton???

First Family Elect

Yes We Can!

What a tremendous night it was! I came home from voting feeling like I was setting up for a New Year's Eve party. Wil and I had invested so much time and emotion in this campaign, particularly the last six months, that the arrival of election day left us electrified and "giddy"!

We had the TV and two laptop computers tuned to the election. On CNN.com, we had several tabs open to the election results features. The electoral vote calculator was engrossing--playing with the states, predicting which way each state could go and how it would effect the election. By about 9:00 p.m., every calculation I made left me stunned by the inevitability of Obama's win. It became clear that even without a few eastern states that had not tallied yet, Obama would win when the west coast closed.

Minutes before 10:00 p.m., CNN announced that the west coast would be closing and projections would be made. At 10:00, I heard that the polls had closed, and suddenly the TV went CRAZY! CNN was flashing "Obama wins the presidency!" I couldn't believe my eyes--that it was over, that it was true, that Obama had indeed WON!!!!!!!!!

Obama's speech was exactly what I have been longing to hear a President say, that ideals like diversity, honor, dignity, caring for people's basic needs, could be real. I've wanted to hear that real people of all walks of life deserved respect and that we could all come together to renew pride in America and return dignity to all the people with deep social and financial needs.

Barack Obama has renewed my passion for this country, and I am ready to get to work to help make the change we need to see!