"My Fellow Americans...

...our long national nightmare is over." - Gerald Ford, 1974.

While I once respected John McCain, I am relishing the spectacle of seeing him beaten like an errant stepchild by alcoholic parents. I am gleefully watching the Republicans disappearing like roaches when the lights come on.

The Reign of the Dumb is over, and now the work begins.

I have spent eight years as a citizen of a nation run by a dullard, a man so stupid that I often felt glad to be mistaken for a European. It's not an odd feeling to think oneself smarter than your leader, but it is indeed an odd feeling to knowthat you have more education. It does little to shore up the scant faith I have in politicians to begin with.

Even some of our worst presidents were undeniably smart.

But more of them were f@#$ing idiots.

It has been a long time since I felt even remotely capable of being proud of my government. Thankfully, today, I can say that I am.

The generation before mine had a habit of knowing exactly where they were when John Kennedy was shot.

My generation (and/or yours) will be able to say that we remember where we were when America elected an African American president. It is one of the greatest moments in American history, because it shows that a flawed system is still a functioningsystem.

I never thought this would happen in my lifetime, and I'd like to hope my life is only about half over. But America is so fed up with the place we're in that we decided to give the biggest finger we could to the Republican party. With both hands.

It would be only fair to thank George Bush for being such a F@#$-up For The Ages that Americans were essentially forced into overcoming one of their worst and deepest-held prejudices.

All my students will tell you that I hold a deep abiding hatred of stupidity. Most of you already know I am hardly a  cheerful man. So the last eight years have been... challenging.

But today, I am smiling. Today, optimism has been validated and comeuppance has landed an uppercut so strong it will hopefully knock the GOP back for at least a decade.

Of course, it will take us that long to clean up all this elephant sh*t, but at least we staunched the flow of it.

I keep going back to the news page to make sure it's real.

I'm afraid I'm going to wake up.

Either way, George Bush can kiss my ass. Eight years of this sh*t and all we have to show for it is his mother's face on the $10 bill? F@#$ off.