This is the first year in I can't remember how many, I didn't have to write a 5K(+) check to the IRS.
That means I can go out and buy four new 10-ply tires, get a new engine for my daughter's car, and take a couple days off to drive down and spend a quality time with my boat.
Having been blessed with self-employment that's still comfortably functional, I'm glad that thousands of my dollars won't be going to Halliburton or Blackwater's coffers to enrich the directors who already are bathed in the blood of innocent people and also hold pride in the knowledge that forests and wildlife will start to have a slight chance to recover. That No Child Left Behind is just ugly history, that my daughter might have some freedom of choice, that wounded veterans can might get some appropriate health care and the chance that if I ever go abroad anymore, I don't have to lie about being an American so I can enjoy other cultures instead of fearing they'll kill me. The food I buy will be scrutinized for safety or toxic poisons more carefully, the people I meet on the street will have opportunity for a future, everyone will stand a better chance of more quality health care, and teachers who love their jobs will continue teaching a better approach to stimulate minds instead of punishing curiousity.
It's going to be a hard time fixing the mess that was left from unchecked greed and we'll all feel some pain but the changes mean hope that it's about time we start to live responsibly and to practice what a blessing it is to be human.
Thinking that the forces that have held a strangle hold on us for so long now are also crimped in style, the chance for change is better than ever before. Dubai is collapsing and the curtains of secrecy are opening, driving a Rolls down to Broadway is a risk instead of prentension, and being filthy rich isn't free license or respectable anymore...there's a chance people can take back their destiny.
I'm happy and that'll reflect on everything I come in contact with, and it spreads from there.
Go Obama, for what else do we have?