The world is safe for another four years...

Well, the American elections are over and Obama has clearly won. Even better, the Republican senatorial "rape candidates" (e.g. the ones who had revealed their horrifying views of rape and their contempt for women) during the election campaign have all lost - including Mr Richard "if a woman gets pregnant from rape then it's a gift from god" Mourdock of Indiana, which, as he was standing in a state where I have a close friend living, was personally cheering as well.

Additionally, several states in referenda have legalised marijuana and/or equal marriage rights for LGBT people.

So, all in all, it looks like, for another four years at least, we have a sane and competent person in charge of the most powerful nation and largest economy on Earth. And, given that the alternative was a man whose idea of economics was to increase the deficit even further through tax cuts for multi-millionaires, whose investment company picked more duds than winners and whose idea of diplomacy was to promise, on day one if he was elected president, to pick a fight with China.

Nevertheless, that this was such a tightly fought election, does remind us non-Americans of the way in which American voters regularly struggle to decide how to choose between an average candidate and an incompetent cretin. So no doubt in four year's time I'll be agonising again from afar as the US ponders long and hard of whether to give the key to the White House to a candidate so inept that they'd struggle to amount to anything more than a laughing stock in most other western countries.

Still, it's their country and who they decide to run it is up to them. I just wish that we didn't live in an era when US election results can affect those of us who don't get any say in them.

So, in summary: four more years without a nuclear holocaust - hurray!

A fairly accurate summary of US elections from the perspective of an outsider

On a more serious note, let's not also forget that President Obama has also killed up to 3,191 innocent civilians as "collateral damage" of drone strikes. So for me I can only ever view this election result as the lesser of two evils.