I view the next four years with acute apprehension. Suddenly, it seems as though a terrible pall has come over the country. I know it's not just me, because all the people I talk to feel it too. In fact, most of the people I know have been sick with a bad flu, and I can lay the cause of it at the door of the election debacle. At least I haven't felt like writing anything. Thinking about the next president has been too painful. I now remember that it used to be this way, this dreadful pall, during the Reagan years, into the Bush years. It was there too, the dark shroud, during Nixon's evil debacle, but I was too enmeshed in my own psychological and spiritual search during his tenure to pay attention to the outside world. But today I'm fully engaged and I'm having a hard time coping with what I see. WE ARE IN DEEP TROUBLE.

I feel resentful and furious not only towards the Republicans, but to Ralph Nader. I hate feeling this way. The Republicans say we should get over it. But this time we can't. They didn't win this fair and square and this fraudulent election has been one of the most shameful incidents in our history. I don't think I'll ever get over it. I don't understand how Bush can possibly think that he deserves to be in the White House.

If Nader really believes that the Democrats would have blocked the counting of the votes in Florida if the shoe had been on the other foot, then the whiny jerk is truly a demented egomaniac. I'll tell you something in secret that some people don't know. Ralph Nader is a closet Republican. Why else was he so anxious to destroy Al Gore? I also think he doesn't like Jews. Joe Lieberman is a Jew. The New Republic mentioned that Nader is Lebanese and that he once wrote an article thirty years ago that was published in a strongly anti-Semitic magazine. He also said that the Jews were chiefly to blame for the trouble in the Middle East. Anyone with any smarts knows that all Middle Easterners share the responsibility for the deadly chaos there.

There is no difference between the two men running for president, Nader said. He lied, straight out and too many people bought his lie.

Would Gore have nominated someone like John Ashcroft, a fundamentalist s.o.b., for Attorney General?

Of course not.

Would Gore have placed an old fart like Rumsfeld, who wants to resurrect Star Wars, in as Secretary of Defense?

Of course not.

How about the protégé of James Watt in as Secretary of the Interior? She wants to drill for oil in the Alaskan wildlife refuge. Will this woman support Green Party ideals and would Al Gore have put a pro oil individual in charge of our nation's most pristine treasures?

Of course not.

Didn't Nader supporters think about what Bush's cabinet would look like? Didn't they realize that he'd have to throw crumbs to the religious right wing? I feel sick to my stomach when I think about these rotten old bastards having so much power.

God still has the upper hand. Perhaps it is impossible for real spiritual enlightenment to develop on this planet unless the glaring light of truth shines directly on the Republicans and their dangerous games. And perhaps with the dead president in office cycle occurring during this election, it's better to have a dead Bush than a dead Gore. Mr. Gore has a lot more to offer the world than light headed Mr. Bushie. I 'll never be able to call him Mr.President. He will always be Georgie porgy puddin' pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

For those of you that have read the Handmaid's Tale or seen the movie, the choice of John Ashcroft for Attorney General must have sent a chill up and down your spine. I can't get the movie out of my mind since reading his biographical sketch in the NY Times and looking at his horoscope.

As a Taurus, he won't be a man amenable to suggestion. He'll stick to his anti-abortion, anti-solar energy, pro-Confederate, anti-homosexual agenda. At his confirmation hearing, he'll say that his moral standard won't interfere with his prosecuting the unlawful, whether they be abortion clinic bombers, or killers of homosexuals, but I don't believe he'll really put his heart and soul into it, to you? He just needs to do one little two-step from his antiquated religious right wing agenda into the Handmaid's Tale. It's a story about a society run by religious fanatics who control and tyrannize childbearing women in the society.

By picking Ashcroft, everyone knows that Bush is paying back the religious right wing for helping him win the presidency(oh I forgot, Dubya didn't really win it. Oh well. I guess we're all supposed to bite the big one and try to be nice to the new president, even though he really isn't legitimate. Bush reminds me of Rodney King, pleading, "Can't we all get along?"). The religious right kept a low profile after the primary season almost gave us John McCain instead of Dubya. Having the religious right wing active in a political campaign is the kiss of death. People just don't like the tyranny of the religious right wing. Hmmm, I wonder why? Could it be, they're in league with Satan? The majority of us don't like totalitarian moralisms shoved down our throats. When one third of the people dictate to the other two thirds, we have an authoritarian undemocratic system, don't we? The Republicans can't hide behind a democratic facade anymore. They clearly don't want democracy, because when the majority of the people decide, they lose.