The historic election is indeed cause for joy, optimism and celebration. This Thanksgiving and holiday season we should be thankful as never before. What a great country! Barack Obama is a decent, highly intelligent and progressive human being. Michelle Obama will be a smart and refreshing emissary. The same for Joe Biden. I am confident they will surround themselves with competent thinkers and doers. Here in Blaine County, Proposition One passed protecting invaluable open space. What an enlightened community! A moderate Democrat ousted the nut case Bill Sali. Heck, there is even hope for Boise!
The radical rightwing, neo-conservative, war-mongering Bush Empire—so terribly destructive to our nation and the planet—is disintegrating before our eyes on a daily basis. There is finally substantive hope for real environmental protection, facing peak oil and global warming head-on, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, getting out of the evil Iraq war, restoring our tarnished world image, and grasping economic sanity.
All of us are bone-weary of the preceding suffocating eight years, which evoked emotions captured in this stanza:
I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."---Bob Dylan
The hard work and heavy lifting must now begin in earnest. The Democrats must reach out in a revitalized spirit of cooperation to the Republicans and vice versa. The old monikers of liberal and conservative should be thrown out the window. We must have progressive problem solving as time is seriously running out.
Scott Phillips
Hailey
