WE THREW THE BUMS OUT

I had to pinch myself all day yesterday to make sure I was not dreaming. We did it, America! We threw the bums out! We took back our House and Senate! After six long years of darkness and despair, we went to the polls and exerted our power to fire corrupted, incompetent, morally reprehensible and lazy lawmakers. No amount of GOP gerrymandering, dirty tricks, rigged machines, voter suppression and intimidation kept us from exercising our constitutional right to be heard. We stood firm for the nation our founding fathers had established. Future generations will thank us for putting the brakes on the Bush Administration. Volumes will most likely be written about this era of darkness. Absolute volumes.

There are so many to thank in helping us achieve this amazing outcome, it not miracle. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Air America Radio for letting the voice of freedom ring loud and clear. This was so crucial during the time when Bush deception and spin could confuse and manipulate even the most sage and reasoned. The press and media naturally get an F, but after it became apparent Iraq is a fiasco and the seemingly endless scandals continued to erupt from the Party of Corruption, journalists had finally begun to smell the stench spewing from the sewer.

Huge kudos to the genius of Howard Dean, Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer whose campaign strategies were obviously a smashing success.

Bold on line news organizations, blogs and bloggers such as The Huffington Post, Raw Story.com, Buzz Flash.com, the Brad Blog, Salon.com, Truthout.org, Firedoglake.com, Daily Kos, Move On.org, to name a few, were and are still are my lifelines for information. Mainstream newspapers such as The New York Times and Washington Post had finally awakened from its post 9/11 slumber and returned to the business of reporting the news, even if the news is critical of the Bush Administration.

Lou Dobbs of CNN bravely and doggedly exposed the GOP’s cynical and inept policies on his show through his “War On The Middle Class” and “Our Broken Borders” series. John King did the same with his expose on “Our Broken Government.”

Keith Olbermann is the first mainstream cable news anchor who possessed the courage to stridently and routinely inform his viewers about Bush’s deplorable tactics and outright lies on a number of levels. Colossal thanks to gifted comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. These comedians ironically behave more as news anchors than some of the “real” and professional news people. Stewart and Colbert make us laugh as we learn how bad things really are in a country driven by Bush radical and neoconservative ideology.

Thanks, too, to those who had served in the Bush Administration, such as Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke for exposing their grim and troubling experiences by writing or having books written (“The Price of Loyalty,” and “Against All Enemies”). These men, both Republicans, got the boot for refusing to put politics ahead of policy.

No amount of spin, lies, distortion, departures from reality, fear, smear, propaganda machines such as Fox News, Rush and the other right wing scream machines, money and power could prevent us from knowing the truth. We threw the bums out while we still had the constitutional right to do so. Cheney’s probable secret dream to wrest our right to vote from us somehow is now toast.

Most of all, mammoth thanks to every campaign volunteer whether one stuffed envelopes, block walked, organized events, donated money, drove folks to the polls, made phone calls, wrote letters to newspaper editors or blogged for a candidate.

It is we the little people who make the seemingly impossible possible. 79 million of us voted on Tuesday. The GOP harassing and deceitful robocalls, intimidation in Virginia and other places, the long lines, the chaos with voting machines in some areas and foul weather in others did not deter us. We did what we knew we had to do.

WE THREW THE BUMS OUT