It's around ten p.m. so the results should be available around now but I am not in any particular rush to find out the results. Which means, of course, that I have a pretty good idea of what probably happened. (Yeah, I know the polls will be open for a couple more hours in California, I'm talking about the east coast... Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, etc.) My son was channel surfing a few minutes ago and I caught a quick slice of some news babbler asking George the Shrub if he was planning on asking Colin Powell to be his vice presidential running mate. Dubyah said he hadn't asked anyone. Yeah, like that good ol' boy racist would team up with a black man... I mean this is the candidate who had supporters asking voters if they knew that McCain had a non-white daughter.

When the Shrub first began his run for the job I thought well, he may not be the sharpest pencil in the pack, but if he can keep Al Gore out of the White House... And then he ran this terrible mud-slinging viscious campaign, just out and out lies and general nasty allegations... plus being in bed with the loony-toon Pat Roberstson Christian Right.

What a freakin' dreadful choice we will have in November. Al Gore or George Bush. I don't know which one would be worse. Well, actually, I am positive that Gore would be terrible, probably the biggest threat to America since Richard Nixon stained the office, but to think that the only other choice would be the Little Shrub of Texas... We could pick somebody at random off the street and do better.

If you haven't guessed by now from the way I've been freely casting aspersions at both sides, I'm not particularly in love with either of the major political parties (nor the minor ones, for that matter). Yes, I happen to be an enrolled Republican, always have been, but I rarely vote that way... I just have always refused to join the party of southern segregationists, not even when Nixon was despoiling the GOP, and I figure that by being enrolled in a party, at least I would get to vote in primaries. Of course, until four years ago, I lived in New York State where the party bosses usually managed to make that meaningless. And although the Shrub and his Christian Right fascist supporters appear to be subverting the GOP, how could I ever join the party of Clinton and Gore?

I tend to consider myself to be a libertarian in political leanings, but note that was lower case l not upper case L because I consider Libertarians to be as foolishly blind to the realities of human nature as an academic Marxist.

I don't know how I will vote in November. Not for Gore, never... the man is a danger to the country... Clinton is a sheer politician who lives to be a politician, he espouses liberal causes, may even believe some of that, but he has too much difficulty keeping his pants zipped... Gore shows no such difficulty... Gore is either a True Believer in Big Government as Big Nanny (or Big Brother) or is just very cynically successful in appearing that way.... whichever, I think he is as big a threat to privacy and individual freedom in this country as Nixon, perhaps even more so... He has certainly proven to be an even bigger liar than Clinton... Shrub isn't even in the same league, but he's trying...

Oh well, this wouldn't be the first time I voted for other than the two main candidates. Here in Rhode Island we have the Cool Moose Party (I'm not kidding!)... they have sometimes fielded successful candidates for local and state offices... I wonder if they will have a presidential candidate on the ballot in November?

When I had started this rant, I had been planning on talking about my fabulous career as a voter -- I have voted for the winning candidate just one time in the nine presidential elections since I turned twenty-one -- but the hour grows late and this entry grows long and I grow sleepy so I think I'll put that discussion off to another time.