A NEW YEAR

Who would have believed it? After such depths of agony and disgrace, the people of America, one by one, decided it was time for a change. The Republican strategy - lies, secrecy, distraction, judicious cheating where it counts and where it won't be caught - didn't quite work this time. Of course it helped a lot that the really close elections - Virgnia and Montana - had Democratic governors instead of Republicans. We can only thank the heavens above that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris weren't in charge of counting the votes in Montana, that Ken Blackwell wasn't responsible for providing voting booths in Virginia.

And now we will have a new Congress, a Democratic Congress. We can only hope it will do its duty to the nation in fostering open debate of national policy instead of the shameful bootlicking performed shamelessly by the Republicans. We can only hope it will do its duty in questioning the deception and propaganda so skillfully manufactured by the vicious right wing fanatics who occupy the White House. We can only hope it will do its duty in seeing that our nation invests its prosperity in building a future for America instead of bleeding our national treasury into pockets of corruption and greed.

But after such horrible pain and international disgrace and cynical corruption, at least we can say that there is new hope for America in this coming year.

Happy New Year to us all.