Still Rubbing My Eyes

Well, it's a week since Obama was elected, and I feel a little, after eight nightmare years of Bush/Cheney, like the munchkins after the house fell the first time, when Glinda says, "You can come out now!" Can we? Is it really safe? Bush is still signing executive orders and messing with the environment, and Obama isn't in power yet, really, but the image of him with his hand on Bush's back, on the day when he visited the White House and issued a statement about preparing to dismantle Gitmo, and to review overturning stem cell research limits set by Bush...well, it rocked my world. A president with integrity cleaning up the horrible mess left behind by Bush and his cronies. Can this be real?
On a sad note, the Proposition 8 passage in California unrocked my world--it stole away the thunderous joy I felt in the first hours after Obama was declared the winner, and replaced it with hurt and sadness and frustration that the same people who voted for Obama still don't get that marriage is an equal opportunity civil right, exactly like the right of people of two races to marry, and that civil right is all that matters. Religious beliefs are irrelevant constitutionally, and

I am just so angry that we still have intelligent people voting against civil rights, even as they pulled the lever for Obama. Will he have more courage than Clinton, who passed "Don't Ask Don't Tell" just after being elected? Will he rise to the moral courage of Ted Kennedy, who took a firm position on this and got a largely Catholic state to support gay marriage?

Well, we will see. I do believe in this new president and his ideals and inspirational spirit, and the miracle of his election still feels unreal, but I am fully aware that a miracle did happen, and a house did fall on one wicked witch, (apologies to the good witches out there!) and we are all going to be able to come out from behind the bushes because the wicked old witches of the Bush/Cheney years really are, at last, nearly, most sincerely, dead!
Leonore