As I speak, I am watching the Cubs whoop the snot out of the Braves 9-4 after 4 innings. Of course, if they had won yesterday they still would have been eliminated by the end of the day yesterday. This season was quite bittersweet. I figured they were going to go very much further than last season. Instead, they’re probably going to have one more win than last season, and no postseason to show for it *sigh* Ahhh, well.. it’s not like they ended the season without a fight.. They’re not total losers.. I think that era is now gone, even if they didn’t get as far as I would’ve liked them to.

Something happened last night that hasn’t happened in a long time; I lost in bowling *GASP!!!!!* I lost 2/3. There was actually one game where I didn’t bust 100.. I had a low of 80 and a high of 144.. Not a very good night of bowling, for sure. It was still a blast, though. I’m definitely a big-time bowler.. Maybe not so big that I’d join a league, but definitely fun enough to play every few weeks or so.

This election is turning out to be really strange.. This country is extremely polarized for this one; it’s very surreal. We’re almost ripe for another civil war, although I truly doubt things would get that extreme. While I agree that we haven’t found anything in Iraq to this point, Iraq was still a damn good idea.. I think, though, that would have been a bad idea if it turns out that the dethroning of Hussein caused or is causing the proliferation of WMD in a way that wouldn’t have been done if we hadn’t gone in. Ultimately, I don’t think that’ll be the case. The world and, more importantly, the terrorists see that Bush does what he says. I think this country is in pretty darn good shape security-wise.. At least at the moment.

The Patriot Act does scare the heck out of me in many ways–but the only thing that truly petrifies me is if it remains a permanent fixture of our security once the world settles down. I think it’s a good band-aid for security for now. Repealing at this point would be a bad mistake; I personally don’t see my rights being trampled on but, of course, any surveillance that might be under the cuff. I have nothing to hide.. Privacy is never a guarantee in any nation, even ours, but the Patriot Act should certainly not be a permanent fixture.. And, I don’t believe the current administration sees it as one.

Socialism.. The Democratic Party’s mostly left-leaning policies also frighten me. What can I say? There are elements of both parties that frighten me, but socialistic tendancies frighten me the most. I am of the belief that government should be charged with administering very little. At most, the purpose of government should be defense and the creation and maintenance of basic infrastructure (e.g. roads and bridges). Social programs and discretionary spending run rampid in Washington (even with Bush in charge), and I think Kerry would do nothing but increase that. I believe that welfare should be eliminated; charity should be a decision left up to the individual and not left to Washington bureaocrats, all of whom are quite distant from average Joe American. Government should have nothing to do with health care, mostly nothing to do with education, nothing to do with “family planning”, and certainly should have nothing to do with a pooled pension (social security) that my generation will never see. Most of all of the above should be done on either an individual/family or local level.

Socialized health care will give the nation nothing but hospital after hospital riddled with inefficiency. VA hospitals; they are the epitomy of inefficient health care. Imagine a whole nation of hospitals run in that way. You don’t even have to wait for it to happen to see it happen.. Look at Canada or Europe.

I really don’t care what Kerry says, the tax cuts were not for the rich. Everyone got one.. I was a student when the tax cuts went into effect, and I was making around 10K at the time.. Even I got a tax cut. Democrats, and many Republicans, complain about unemployment. If you do happen to give big tax credits to corporations, then they are given a monetary incentive (e.g. the wages) to hire more and new workers. This brings down unemployment, which also helps the economy. We may have a wartime economy going, but that doesn’t have to mean that we need to take more from everyone.. War should be a good hearty portion of how things are spent in Washington, but it doesn’t have to be all-inclusive. Things are dire, but not that dire. Certainly, much of the almighty pork in Washington can be diverted–even if on a temporary basis.. We have many battles going on as a nation; not only the War on Terror, but also a war to keep unemployment down and keep the booming economy booming.

There are those who say that Bush was given his chance and blew it. Of course, if I were given the intelligence from not only the CIA but European intelligence that Hussein was both creating WMD and working to procure more, then I most certainly would’ve done something about it. When you are dealing with the possible distribution of that to terrorists, you can’t help but act pre-emptively about it. If he didn’t act, and something happened, then we’d be in one terrible situation if those weapons did get distributed due to our inaction. I’m sure many of the terrorists see nuclear weapons as nothing more than very large firecrackers.

Anyhoo, enough of my political ranting. Election time just gets me all worked up sometimes. This country is very evenly split, amongst those who care.. Basically, it’s 1/3 of the country who are one way, 1/3 who are another, and 1/3 who don’t care. Either way, it will more than likely be a minority that will elect the next president–I doubt that either Bush or Kerry will get 51%.

In the end, it probably doesn’t really matter. He who gets in, gets in. Personally, I don’t think Washington has much of an influence over my every day life and I hope it stays that way no matter who gets in. The less they take away, the better. Isn’t that one of the things this nation fought against in its infancy? It does disturb me, though, that apparently Kerry brought a cheat sheet to the debate on Thursday. If we can depend on that kind of honesty from him at a debate, then what can we expect from him as president?