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with a message for Barack Obama, next President of the United States



I wish I could gloat.

Certainly I, and my fellow liberals, deserve to. For the last eight years, we've been treated like we didn't exist by the current administration. I did celebrate on Tuesday. Cried pretty much nonstop for about three hours.

It was the looks on the faces of the people in Grant Park that kept me blubbering.





This is my favorite photo from that night.


My favorite because Mom's and Dad's faces reflect my feelings.

Don't let me down, Mr. President-Elect. My children are like this daughter in her "change" shirt with her face aglow with trust.

I believe in your message, Obama. And damn it, I expect to see works projects that employ AMERICAN construction workers rebuilding our decaying infrastructure. I expect to see AMERICAN techies designing green energy systems to be manufactured by AMERICAN workers. I expect to see my son and his wife actually get to consider starting a family because you help them get out from under their $900 per month health insurance premiums on one teacher's salary. I expect to sacrifice to help my neighbors who are losing their homes because of medical bills or because one or both of them have lost their jobs, but not so that some stock broker can get an $11,000,000 bonus for a year's work instead of just $1,000,000.

I expect to see American soldiers from Iraq trickling safely back in to the United States AND I expect to see progress toward co-existance in the Middle East.

I expect to see Osama bin Laden on trial for the pain he inflicted on my child who was living and going to school in New York City on September 11, 2001. He still can't talk about the horror.

A CNN international newscaster said that it was amazing but the international reaction to your election was pretty much a wiping away of the negative feelings for the US inflicted by the idiocy of George W. Bush, almost a post 9-11 support for America under our new leader.

Don't let us down, Mr. President-Elect. We recognize that you are up against tremendous challenges. We recognize that the reality of the mess left by your predecessor is that you may not be able to move as quickly as you would have liked toward rebuilding a healthy America.

But I expect to see movement.

Don't let me down.