2. This is 2009, not 1959 or 1969. Nobody can honestly or seriously deny the progress and reform that has occurred in this country.

3. I am happiest for black Americans tomorrow, most of all for those centenarian children of slaves that still live today, who have voted for Obama and may now see him inaugurated. Along with these come the few foremost non-black civil rights activists from the Civil Rights era, the authentic people, in other words. This is truly their day. I don't care for the ridiculously excessive and hyped (verging into the realm of mentally ill behavior) adoption-and-obscession with Obama by the rest of the crowd. Have a party, but be grown up and get real, too, people. Plenty of us who aren't liberal (or who were liberal but changed in the normal way life proceeds) have no poblem with the guy, and even find him impressive*, but no, despite what one poet said on NPR, no, he hasn't been sent down to us from Heaven.

* I saw the 2004 speech — those others of you who did agreed with Hillary Clinton's reaction to it, if you remember that, too — and though I thought this year was one election cycle too early for him, I took him fully seriously after Super Tuesday, as did many others, obviously.