Senator Barack Obama elected President of the United States!
As you may or may not have been aware, yesterday was Election Day in the United States, in which ballots were cast to decide who would take over as President of the United States in January of 2009. I have to admit, I didn't pay much attention to the usual campaign commercials, mailings, and e-mails, because quite frankly once the mud slinging started (which was almost immediately, in fact) I grew bored with the antics of all involved. I'm far more concerned with the voting records of the candidates, their backgrounds, and what they will do for me personally as a citizen of the United States because, after all, the whole point of an elected government is to represent the will of the people of the country. To that end, I spent rather a lot of time prowling around the Library of Congress' archives, but that's not particularly relevant at this instant.
All of that said, it didn't keep me from tuning the television at home to CNN and watching the numbers roll in minute by minute while Windbringer scanned the newswires and filled my browser tabs with news articles. I've never seen such a landslide before - the final tally of votes from the electoral college was 349 to 147 in favor of Obama. As if it isn't the understatement of the year, that's a decisive victory if I ever saw one. I think it was around 2300 EST5EDT last night that McCain announced his concession speech, which began a few minutes later and was over shortly before midnight EST5EDT. I think Obama's victory speech was a bit shorter; he'd finished speaking and the rest of the audio track consisted of applause by the time I turned in at 0015 EST5EDT this morning. It would seem that the people of this country are more than ready to change things, and to that end they've elected someone to office who will hopefully be responsive to our wishes. Between the war in Iraq that has dragged on for so long that many ignore it immediately as a talking point to the multi-trillion dollar recession this country is in as a result to the housing market crash of just a few weeks ago, many people are, to be blunt, sick and tired of being afraid and are ready to turn things around.
Personally speaking, I hope that Obama removes the more ineffective programs and measures in place in the United States at this time, such as some of the things the TSA does to travelers which doesn't really make anyone safer, or even feel safer. It would also be nice to not have to worry about the possibility of portable computers being confiscated while en route. Oh, and that whole NSA operating outside of its charter bit? I think that's pretty important, don't you?