Sarah Palin is the terrifying combination of overly ambitious and relatively incompetent. McCain has shown me that the old John McCain that I liked back in 2000 is long gone. He is reactionary, petty, and far too swayed by the far right-wing side of the party.

Blame for the current state of things should not rest solely at the feet of Obama, Pelosi OR Reed. They have all played a role, but the reality of the situation is that the Republicans have not been interested in helping us out of the current situation at all. They vote NO as a block to everything. That said, the Democrats have squandered the majority they had and they have been so busy with in-fighting that they can't get their sh*t together either. None of this would be different (or if it was, it would probably be worse) had McCain been elected.

The fact of the matter is that on the whole, taxes have been cut. On the whole, the U.S. has restored some of its image on the international stage. On the whole, I (and given the poll numbers- the majority of the country) actually trust the government more now.

I am not thrilled with how the past year has gone. I absolutely would have liked to see Obama take Pelosi and Reed in hand and get them pushing legislation through. I would like to have seen bipartisan legislation as well. Here, however, I will point out that McCain (the supposed champion of bipartisan agreements) has done nothing. We have a seriously bad situation with health care in this country. We are in the middle of (two-ish) wars. We have serious environmental concerns that need attention and preservation (all the while the new Governor of Virginia argues how we must use all our natural resources- nice planning for our future). We need Congress to work together to fix the country instead of trying to sabotage Obama and the Democrats. The Republicans will come off better for working with the Dems anyway, and they would have a much better argument for why they should get elected in the next round.

That's my five cents. I don't regret for one second voting for Obama.