Obama’s great victory resonates all the way back to the beginnings of slavery in the United States. It is a great and important victory and a mighty step towards redress and healing the rift that has torn American society apart for decades. Obama needs to be where he is at this time and this place, no doubt about it. But there’s one problem that no politician has addressed in a real way and this problem transcends our history, our society, our civilization, and strikes at the very heart of our world. That problem is global warming and nothing short of a dramatic change in our concepts of who and what we are on this planet will help us. Building more cars, however “energy-efficient” they might be and paying someone to plant a tree when someone else builds a factory is not going to save us. That’s all smoke and mirrors. My hope remains that Obama will be the first American president to meaningfully address this problem. That’s my litmus test for him. This is not something that we can all do, as Dan asserts. We can’t blame ourselves when the brain surgeon we’ve hired decides that he would rather not tangle with the tumor that is slowly draining the life of the patient before him. This is something that our President–our political specialist–must do for us. Yes, I’m hopeful, but my hope is tempered by the fact that every day that this problem is not taken care of, is a day that brings all of us–of every race and nationality–closer to an existence far worse than any scenario that our present president may have ordered to be deleted in the name of better business.