You will BLUB when you hear Obama's Acceptance speech

[suzywong]

I have a lump in my throat
I really believe that in my kids' lifetimes things will change for the better

GULP

the use of Anne Nixon-Cooper to illustrate the changes in america in the last century was genius and so powerful

I so hope for Obama
a) no one shoots him
b) he doesn't get sucked in to the bureaucracy machine and those around him allow him to carry out his strong and honest convictions over the next 4 years.

I am also overjoyed to see people excited by politics and looking forard with pride to the future.

I cried. Very moved by the C4 coverage of the black uni when they were told he had won. I think he is just gorgeous, so charasmatic and such a good speaker. I think that him just being there gives so much hope and raised aspirations. I was elated with labour in 97 and gutted later, but I really think there is more reason for hope here, 64% turnout, queing 5 hours to vote, its a bit more special than new labour really. Also people didn't fall out of love with JFK and he really didn't change much Barak has a majority in all houses, he really can do things.

I found his 2004 "audacity of hope" speech yesterday too and that had me blubbering.

I blubbered watching the news last night, and I blubbered again this morning when I read his victory speech.

I was really disappointed by the booing of some of the Republicans when McCain gave his speech...

Quite, mm, especially as McCain himself was so gracious in defeat.

He really was gracious, wasn't he? It was the first time I felt remotely impressed with him.

Iorek - agree about McCain. He seemed to be going through the motions the last week or so of the campaign, I'm not convinced it was all exhaustion. He seemed much more himself once it was all over. The speech was more than perfunctory, imo.

I think it's a shame McCain wasn't running instead of W in 2000, was impressed by him, but the best man won obv.

all you above read this

In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." What has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor have passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W Bush finally steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest of humanity will diminish.

The foregone nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, "marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US history", is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as bullshit on a grand scale. Race, gender, appearance, body language, rictal spouses and offspring, even bursts of tragic grandeur, are all subsumed by marketing and ?image-making?, now magnified by "virtual" technology. Thanks to an undemocratic electoral college system (or, in Bush?s case, tampered voting machines) only those who both control and obey the system can win. This has been the case since the truly historic and exciting victory of Harry Truman, the liberal Democrat said to be a humble man of the people, who went on to show how tough he was by obliterating two cities with the atomic bomb.

Understanding Obama as a likely president of the United States is not possible without understanding the demands of an essentially unchanged system of power: in effect a great media game. For example, since I compared Obama with Robert Kennedy in these pages, he has made two important statements, the implications of which have not been allowed to intrude on the celebrations. The first was at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the Zionist lobby, which, as Ian Williams has pointed out, "will get you accused of anti-Semitism if you quote its own website about its power". Obama had already offered his genuflection, but on 4 June went further. He promised to support an ?undivided Jerusalem? as Israel?s capital. Not a single government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem, including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN resolution designating Jerusalem an international city.

His second statement, largely ignored, was made in Miami on 23 May. Speaking to the expatriate Cuban community ? which over the years has faithfully produced terrorists, assassins and drug runners for US administrations ? Obama promised to continue a 47-year crippling embargo on Cuba that has been declared illegal by the UN year after year.

Again, Obama went further than Bush. He said the United States had "lost Latin America". He described the democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as a "vacuum" to be filled. He raised the nonsense of Iranian influence in Latin America, and he endorsed Colombia?s "right to strike terrorists who seek safe-havens across its borders". Translated, this means the "right" of a regime, whose president and leading politicians are linked to death squads, to invade its neighbours on behalf of Washington. He also endorsed the so-called Merida Initiative, which Amnesty International and others have condemned as the US bringing the "Colombian solution" to Mexico. He did not stop there. "We must press further south as well," he said. Not even Bush has said that.

It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates. Obama?s difference may be that he feels an even greater need to show how tough he is. However much the colour of his skin draws out both racists and supporters, it is otherwise irrelevant to the great power game. The "truly exciting and historic moment in US history" will only occur when the game itself is challenged.

Blah :¬P it is important and his foreign policy stance may be lacking in some respects, but he also wants to close Guantanomo and pull out of Iraq, that has to be a good thing right? I know it doesn't matter who you vote for, the politians always get in, but he does represent change in America, this victory shows how far America has come in a relativly short period of time, when Obama was born America still had the Jim Crow laws it was a totally divided nation, it was inconcievable at that time that a black man could become president, it is historic that he has been elected. I feel it will help to raise aspirations of minority groups everywhere. The US democracy isn't perfect, neither is ours, but they are the best systems we have available to us and both countries have maintained a moderate stance on most things for a long time. What is the alternative?

The fact that 65% of Americans voted is pretty good too

It really struck me when he got out of his huge car on Friday to give his press conference, that all of the helpers surrounding him as he go out were black. That is the first time I have ever seen the President of America get out of his car surrounded by black helpers - we are so used to all those in power and those surroundng them being white men. OK so they were probably body guards etc, but it was still very striking.

His election is indeed an historic event

I have to say I like what I have seen of Michelle too. She seems a very genuine person.

Also, the President of the United States being someone I might respect is a whole new experience for me. I'm nearly 40, and in my lifetime they have all (the ones I can really remember) been figures of fun in some respect.

but michelle needs to retire that dress she wore on election night.

to a bonfire.

I like this - it's hilarious - and irritatingly catchy!

and read this

The detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the flawed justice system created to try terrorist suspects held there are among the most complicated legacies of the Bush administration. They're Obama's problem now. The president elect has said he will shutter Gitmo and put some of the detainees on trial in American criminal courts or military courts martial (his campaign did not return calls seeking comment.) But the prisoner mess created by Bush with the stroke of a pen in November 2001, and made messier over seven years, will take time and resourcefulness to clean up. Here are four reasons the controversial facility will probably still be open for business a year from now.

The Yemeni Factor. Any route to closing Guantanamo involves repatriating most of the roughly 250 detainees still held in Cuba. Sending detainees home requires negotiating the terms of their release with the home country. Since Yemenis make up the largest group of prisoners in Cuba, talks with the government in Sanaa will be key. But Yemen has been the hardest country to engage on the issue, according to a former senior official familiar with the process. The Bush administration has asked home countries to impose restrictions on the returnees. Saudi Arabia, for example, has imprisoned some Gitmo veterans, limited the travel of others and put those it thought it could co-opt through a "de-radicalization" program. "Yemen doesn't want to be seen as doing anything for the United States," says the former official, who declined to be named discussing sensitive diplomacy. Even if it agreed to U.S. demands, Yemen might not have the capability to honor them. "It has areas of the country that are poorly governed and its borders are porous," said the former official. If the new administration is willing to release detainees without demands on the home country, the process can go quickly. But the risk is that some might pose future security threats to America.

Other detainees face possible torture if sent home?most notably Gitmo's 17 Uighurs from China. Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank headed by former Clinton White House aide (and Obama ally) John Podesta, has suggested the United States. ask its allies to help create an international resettlement program for those detainees who can't return to their countries. The goodwill Obama has already generated in Europe and elsewhere will help. But the process will take time.

The NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) Problem: The United States will continue holding a few dozen suspects it intends to put on trial or deems too dangerous to release. But where? A secret study conducted by the Pentagon in 2006 outlined alternative sites within the U.S., including the military facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and at Charleston, S.C., according to a former Pentagon official familiar with the details. But congressmen representing those and other districts with military brigs have already vowed to fight the move. "What you have is a NIMBY problem," says Charles Stimson, who served until last year as the Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Detainee Affairs. "I haven't seen one congressman raise his hand and say, 'give them to me'." Even if Capitol Hill could be persuaded to go along with the relocation, Stimson said, extensive work would have to be done on existing military brigs before Guantanamo detainees are housed there. "You can't commingle them with military detainees, so you'd have to set up a separate wing or clear out the facility," he says. The structures would have to be reinforced so they wouldn't be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. "And you would have to address secondary and tertiary [security] concerns within the town, the county and the state."

Miranda This: Once moved, the high-value detainees already indicted for their role in the attacks of 9/11 or other crimes would presumably be tried in either federal criminal courts or in military courts?a suggestion put forth by Obama in a statement earlier this year. But it's not at all clear that convictions could be won against even top Al Qaeda suspects like the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. Federal and military courts are much more protective of a defendant's rights than the military commissions operating at Guantanamo. In a federal court, an Al Qaeda defendant held for years at a secret CIA site could complain that his right to a speedy trial was violated, that he was never read his Miranda rights, that the evidence against him did not go through a proper chain of custody and that confessions were gleaned through coercive interrogations, according to retired Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor in the Guantanamo trials. "Any one of these issues could jeopardize the prospect of a conviction," he said. Some legal scholars, like Neal Katyal at Georgetown University, have suggested creating new "national security courts", where suspects would have more rights than they do in military commissions but would not get the full range of criminal protections. The idea is controversial in the legal community, but might be the only viable alternative to the discredited Gitmo commissions. Establishing the new courts would require a lengthy legislative process.

We'll Always Have Bagram? Obama will also have to think through where the U.S. can put detainees it captures in the future. The detention center at Bagram air base in Afghanistan is currently being expanded. But Bagram shares Guantanamo's dark record of abuse, secrecy, and detention without trial. Human rights groups describe it as Gitmo with a different zip code. To really change course, the new administration will have to formulate a new policy for holding terrorist suspects that allows them some form of quick and fair adjudication. "In my mind, Guantanamo is a symptom of a larger problem," says Matthew Waxman, a law professor at Columbia University who has held senior positions in the State Department and the Pentagon. "We're going to continue capturing and detaining Al Qaeda members. We need a durable system for handling them." Ideas abound. Choosing one and building a new structure around it will require strong leadership?and time.