Anybody else penciling in this time?

[Happy Monkey]

That's how I felt four years ago. I guess I was fundamentally optimistic when it came to politics, and I felt that even if Bush won, he couldn't be that bad, because the two parties were two sides of the same coin.

George W. Bush and Tom DeLay destroyed that illusion for me. They, along with the Republican leadership in the last four years, have been systematically destroying all social progress made since World War II. They consider politics to be more important than governance, and will do anything to increase their political power - and their rank and file will not call their leadership on it.

I am not a rank partisan. I would probably have voted McCain over Gore. If the Republican machine had not grown so powerful and poisonous, I would consider voting McCain over Kerry if such an event occurred. But now the Republican party has been coopted by the religious right and the PNAC. The people compromised by those groups need to be removed from positions of leadership, or this country will go to a dark, dark place.