I’ve remarked to a couple of people this morning that I am actually feeling nauseous with anxiety over the outcome of today’s presidential election.

I was kind of this was the last time around, in 2004, when I was wholeheartedly in agreement with the oft-run photo of the British tabloid asking “How could [exact number of people who voted for Bush] be so stupid?” The idea of another four years of Bush was too hard to take, and–while I was one of the record number of people looking at the immigration Web sites for various other English speaking countries–what got me through it was knowing that there were only four years left.

Well, the four years are up. Back in the day, I thought to myself that John McCain would be a Republican president that I could live with, and maybe, to some extent, he still is. I definitely can’t live with her, however. No matter how silly Tina Fey’s dead-on portrayal on SNL is, what alarms me about her is that she’s opened the way up for every religious right nutjob and neoconservative policy wonk to declare McCain/Palin as “their” candidates.

I’ve had enough of the neocons. They’re after my job, you see, and I’d like them to go away.

The other thing that really has turned me off is the way that the Republicans have exploited the blatant xenophobia that’s been cultivated under eight years of Bush. All it takes is whispers in the hallway that Obama is Muslim to turn voters off of him.

So what? Muslims gave us algebra, the numbers we use, the ability to navigate across oceans. Muslim doctors provided Europe with medical textbooks that were still used in the 19th century. And they accepted the heliocentric view of the solar system long before the Europeans, and no one lost their head over it.

And, no, I haven’t forgotten 9/11. I just seem to be able to remember that 1,999,999,950 Muslims were NOT involved with the 9/11 plot as opposed to the 50 or so who were. One of those numbers is larger than the other. Kids, can you tell which one?

Oh, and let’s don’t even get started on the bit where politically Muslims and Evangelical Christians vote in a block on every major issue. Muslims are pro-life, in favor of the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, pro-faith based initiatives, and would vote in favor of school prayer as long as provisions were made for non-Christian children to pray on their own. Heck, if the Dems were smart, they would have encouraged people to think Obama was Muslim and encouraged Evangelicals to think that this meant he was their candidate.

The other thing that I find ironic, by the way, is that the whispers about Obama being Muslim are completely incompatible with the other whispers in the hallway that his Christian preacher is a black supremacist — you can’t have it both ways, folks!

I was a bit stunned this morning when I read that there have been legal challenges filed against Obama’s eligibility to run based on rumors that he wasn’t born in the US.

Allow me to go on record: I don’t think Obama is perfect. Far from it. He’s a bit young. He’s a bit inexperienced. But if we’ve learned anything from the Bush administration, it’s that the president’s experience doesn’t matter if he surrounds himself with people that know what they’re doing, and Obama has definitely done that.

What does McCain have? Karl Rove and a woman who thinks dinosaurs ran around with cave men.

It’ll all be over soon. But I’m on pins and needles. C’mon, America. Prove we’re better than that. For once. Please.