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and frustrated Americans who see big problems going unsolved.
• It won't be easy. Both sides claim, with some justification, a mandate from the voters.
• "We'll have as much of a mandate as he will," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said shortly before the election, correctly anticipating the results.
• Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was frostier in his post-election remarks. "The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president's first term," McConnell said.
• "Now it's time for the president to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House," he said, "and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office."
• ___

• JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- From his old school in Indonesia to a Japanese beach town that happens to share his name, people around the world cheered President Barack Obama's re-election Wednesday and expressed hope that he will help allay global conflicts and economic woes.
• The results of Tuesday's election were closely watched in many countries. Several U.S. embassies held mock elections and threw parties as returns came in.
• At Jakarta's Menteng 01 Elementary School, which Obama once attended, students happily marched with a poster of the president from one classroom to another after hearing that he had defeated Republican Mitt Romney to win a second term. "Obama wins ... Obama wins again," they shouted.
• A statue of a young "Barry" Obama, as he was called as a child, stands outside the school.
• "I want to be like him, the president," student Alexander Ananta said.
• ___

• Altering the course of U.S social policy, Maine and Maryland became the first states to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote, while Washington state and Colorado set up a showdown with federal authorities by legalizing recreational use of marijuana.

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