Onto Oblivion

It's almost over. Four days until Tuesday and it seems like an eternity. Anything can happen and no one seems to know how this is going to end. Any chance Barack Obama has of salvaging his presidency depends on a victory for the Democrats on Election Day. It's not bloody likely that his party is going to be able to take back the house, and retaining control of the senate is, at best, a roll of the dice. I won't be out celebrating if the Dems are able to pull off some kind of miracle. Both parties are hopeless - with one being just barely palatable. I sometimes feel as if I'm at a restaurant and the waiter is asking me if I'd like a glass of donkey piss to wash down the plate of elephant shit I've ordered. Really, it's gotten that bad.

I'm prepared for the worst - which in my case is the best. The lower this doomed country sinks into the shit-hole, the higher my stock rises. I won't be happy if the GOP - through election fraud and suppression of votes - finds itself in full control of both houses of congress come January. I imagine that a plutocratic dictatorship would be oodles of fun to write about.

"There's gonna be a lot of dues, Jim."

Lenny Bruce

Grover
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Then again it's possible that a decade or so of total conservative control of the government is just what the people need. Maybe then they'll finally learn the lesson they should have learned over a century ago: Right wing form of governance DOES NOT WORK. The down side of that scenario would be the fact that, at the end of that decade, their government will have ceased to be. That is the Republicans' dream. Remember the fantasy of Grover Norquist? His dream was to be able to shrink the government down to a size where it would be small enough to drown in a bathtub. We're on our way.

Think about this: During the final years of George Dubya Bush's reign of folly, the extreme right - for the first time in nearly eighty years - were able to seize control of all three branches of government. The result was the worst economic catastrophe in almost eighty years.

That's not a coincidence, folks.

I'm a bit numb at the moment. That's not the sort of state one wishes to be in if your desire is to illuminate and enlighten. Whatever happens come Election Day, I'll get by. To be honest with you I don't give a fuck what the final result is. As long as the day's events are amusing - that's all I really care about anymore. Isn't that awful? Maybe by Tuesday I'll be a little less apathetic. Maybe not. At least I won't be bored. That's something to look forward to, ay? There's always a silver lining.

Don't forget to set your clocks back two centuries on Tuesday!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

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SUGGESTED READING

Eleanor and Franklin
by Joseph P. Lash

This was the first of the FDR biographies to tell the story of Franklin's affair with Lucy Page Mercer - a distant cousin of mine (I come from a long line of home wreckers). Lash's prose takes a little getting used to at times, but he deserved the Pulitzer he won for writing it.

AFTERTHOUGHT:

I was just awoken from my apathy: