Yalie-In-Chief goes nucular

Re: Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy

What I can't stand is that Obama insists on saying "nuclear" -- as if it were a nucleus at the center of an atom and not, as we've learned from our current Yalie-In-Chief, a nuculus. (Which I believe is a type of cloud formation, isn't it? Cumulo-nuculus?)

Bush is himself excellent evidence in support of his own argument that simply throwing money at an education doesn't necessarily result in having one.

Patriotism.

And it's not just me. Here's just one sample from a friend's e-mail that came in this morning: "The BBC said that this election has wiped out America's original sin of Thomas Jefferson owning slaves whilst proclaiming equality for all. Obama's win has rekindled a sense of Patriotism that I have not felt since I was a little child."

YES WE DID!

OH MY GOD. I can't believe it. I can't post anything at the moment more than an incoherent, jubilant, BARBARIC YAWP. Last night in Athens was a celebratory madhouse: people crying, strangers hugging each other, everyone congratulating each other, people streaming out into the street to call their parents and friends. There was one line in Obama's acceptance speech that sent chills down my spine. It was when he said, in effect: for those of you who have doubted whether our Founding Fathers' dreams of the American Ideal, the Great Experiment, were possible anymore -- tonight you have your answer. The crowd went berzerk. They started chanting, at the top of their lungs: USA! USA! -- this crowd of Democrats, liberals, college students. For SO LONG we've felt embarrassed about our country -- have had to apologize to people when we went overseas or met foreigners on our soil. "Yes, I know -- the United States is ugly these days. Warmongering, unjust, unilateral, uncharitable, anti-intellectual. But we were the site of a Great Experiment in human governance -- once." Shouting USA! USA! has for so long been something that generally only big crowds of Republicans could do. The rest of us -- the people who REALLY care about values and about the American Dream -- have had to take small pleasure and cold comfort in dissent, in serving our morally unhinged nation by being its Loyal Opposition. NOT ANYMORE! It felt SO GOOD to be able to be truly, madly, unabashedly proud of our country again -- to hope that we might once again be a moral leader among the nations of the world. And it's possible; it's happening. Did you hear the interviews of the people all around the world who stayed up late to watch the election results come in? Germans, French, Kenyans, Japanese people -- people all around the world, in whose eyes we've fallen, were last night talking about American like it was 1945 again, saying what a great nation America is, expressing hope that it can become a moral world leader once again.