OBAMA WINS NOMINATION. CONGRATULATIONS, AMERICA!

Barack Obama won the Democratic Party's nomination to be their candidate for the presidency of the United States. History was made today and America grew up a little bit. While Hillary Clinton has not yet conceded and the designation isn't completely official, it's basically a done deal. A black man is the nominee of one of the major parties for President of the United States of America! He was judged by the content of his character and the voters decided he has the goods to be our president.

So maybe America does have a shot to really get back on track to becoming the America we can be, the America of our Declaration of Independence, the America of our our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, the America we believe we've got it in us to become. After 8 years of Bush the Younger and his co-conspirators doing their damnedest to turn America into a playground for the haves at the expense of the have-nots, a nation bent on aggressive intimidation of the world and its own citizens, Americans have said enough of this bullshit. We're putting a man up for president who is everything they are not, a man who by his very presence in the race changes things around here in a very big way.

Barack Obama has not won the presidency, of course. There's still the matter of campaigning against a formidable Republican nominee, Senator John McCain. There are those who feel McCain is the better man for the job, and there are those who don't believe that for a second but will vote for him anyway because he is white. No sense denying that fact or pretending to ignore it. But there are those as well who will vote against the Republican Party because of its 8 years of criminal misrule that has made a lot of people who love America very angry.

That's a lot of people not voting the issues, but the issues should be what wins this election. McCain is more of a status-quo guy, so far vowing to keep most of Bush The Younger's policies in place. He might want to re-think that position during the general election campaign. How many people outside of the super-wealthy are better off now than 8 years ago? How many Americans think it's okay to have the government that represents them spy on its own citizens, torture prisoners, start unprovoked wars, try to dismantle our beloved Bill of Rights and let New Orleans drown? Not too many.

Senator Obama is a good campaigner, having narrowly beat a very able campaigner in Senator Hillary Clinton for the nomination. His task now is to convince the entire nation, not just the Democrats, to grow up on several levels, not just in voting for a black man. He is asking Americans to work together once again towards our common good. He is challenging us all to see beyond our differences and to recognize what we have in common. The vicious partisan politics we have fallen into must end, and reasonable ideas introduced by anybody in either political party must get serious consideration. So the radical change he seems to be asking for is merely a return to sanity in Washington.

So history was made today by a black man running as just a man, his race being as little an issue as is imaginable in a nation with our troubled racial history. If and when he becomes president, he will have his work cut out for him to restore American policy to American ideals and to undo the horrendous damage done to our nation's reputation by Bush The Younger. He will be left with an immoral war in which America was the instigator and the villain and will have to figure a way out of that mess. The economy is in a shambles and Americans are restless for change. Well, if we show we have truly grown up as a nation and make Obama our president, change is what we'll get the moment he takes the oath of office. If we elect McCain, just one more mediocrity in a long line of grey men in grey suits reeking of ulterior motives, we will get more of the same downward spiral started by Bush The Younger. Obama in '08!