A few bits and pieces on Obama

Politics is and always will be a filthy business and I feel dirty just writing about it, so I'll share a few more bits on the US elections in this post and then that will be all for a while.

- The Boston Globe's 'Big Picture' site has a fantastic collection of high quality photos of Obama. It would have been nice to see a McCain collection as well, but I guess it's all about the victor right now.

McCain may have suffered a mighty and somewhat inevitable defeat but he ended on a very noble note. You can see his final speech on Youtube or read it on his web-site. Here's a snippet:

'Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences, and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.'

It will be interesting to see who Obama appoints to his team, but for now many are just glad to see the back of the 'monsters', as Paul Krugman puts it:

'Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”

Four years ago it seemed as if the monsters would dominate American politics for a long time to come. But for now, at least, they’ve been banished to the wilderness.'