"Starting up a brand new day..."

Isn't it amazing how gas prices went down so dramatically just before the election? My, my, what an amazing coincidence!! I paid $2.18 a gallon this morning to fill up the minivan, spending a whopping $24.85! Man, I haven't paid that little in, what, two years?? Of course, I was at a quarter of a tank, but STILL!!

Too bad it didn't help! I think the Republican party severely underestimated both our anger... and our intelligence. After all, to their way of thinking, we were stupid enough to vote for the Shrub twice, right?

Over 136.6 million voters said, "Oh, HELL, no!!"

And we didn't let them steal it, either.

I wonder how many voters insisted on paper ballots rather than the electronic voting machines? I know that when I went to vote last night, I chose paper and sat down to do my thing, and heard a couple come in behind me who opted for the touch screens, and within seconds I heard, "Ma'am? Ma'am, excuse me but the machine's not working right!"

A poll worker bustles over and says, "What's the problem, sir?"

"I voted straight Democratic, and the damn thing just switched all my votes over to the Republicans!"

So, the poll worker gets him to move aside and she clears it and resets it and says, "There you go! Try it again, sir," and starts to walk off.

"Dad blast it, the damn thing did it again!!" he nearly shouts before she gets two steps away.

So she comes back, clears it and resets it. They do this two more times before he turns to her and says, "Can you just give me a damn paper ballot so I can vote and get out of here??"

They gave him a paper ballot!

*snorts with laughter*

You know, when I watched McCain's concession speech last night, I turned to the Husbandly One and said, "I said this about Hilary Clinton, and I'll say it about McCain now. If he had shown us this through his entire campaign, things might have been different. I still think Obama would have won, but it would have been a lot closer."

I was disappointed to hear all the booing and rudeness while he tried to speak, though I wasn't surprised. It is what he has encouraged through the majority of his campaign, and he only started backing off when he realized what his vitriol was arousing in his supporters. The Husbandly One said something interesting, though. He said, 'You know, I've been following his campaign, just to get a feel for what was going on, and watching videos of his rallies, and you know, the people who were the worst, the ones who would bring stuffed monkeys with the word 'Obama' written on them, and so on, were older people, you know, in their sixties, seventies, and up. "

And he's right. I started to say, "You know, those are people who really should know better," and then I stopped. Because I remembered my dad and his attitudes when I was growing up. He's a Mississippi country boy who had grown up during the Depression, and fought in World War II, and was raised a hard core Southern Baptist, and he had all the attitudes of a typical Southern boy of his time. He was racist.

BUT... he knew that attitude was wrong, and needed to change, and he also knew his children could not share his attitude and beliefs. So, he worked hard to conceal his prejudices from us, though they slipped out from time to time, and made sure we didn't share them. I didn't even know he thought that way until I was in my twenties, and man, talk about a big let-down!

Thing is, a lot of folks from his generation, those people born in the twenties, thirties, and early forties, shared his attitudes and beliefs, and a lot of them never gave them up, or found them hard to change. And for some of those people, McCain's campaign brought those attitudes and fears boiling right back up to the surface. Which is incredibly sad.

Obama's speech... y'all, I was in tears. It was... a wonderful moment. We let the Impertinent Daughter stay up to watch the results, and I hope she remembers last night for the rest of her life. It was a huge moment, wasn't it? You have to admit, the man is a superb orator. We haven't had one of those in the Oval Office in a very long time, and oh, isn't it wonderful?

Okay, I'm babbling, but I think I'm entitled to a bit of babbling! It's relief, sheer relief!

How much y'all want to bet oil prices start climbing way up again?

*is too happy to care!*