RickSat lighting up - dimly - from back in the trees in North Carolina.

I expected a little more for my year of devotion to John Kerry and my state-mate John Edwards.

Like, maybe, a Democrat in the White House. Or a Libertarian. A toaster. Anything besides another four years of the lipless wonder and his gang of neo-Nazi power ties.

But, we got what we got. As a country, we probably deserve it, too, judging by the comments made by exit pollers. As a psychologist, I am very aware that - statistically - half the American population can't muster a triple digit IQ. Who knew they all voted Republican, though?

(Wistful sigh). I hear Canada's pretty this time of year. It sure was several weeks ago when I attended Bouchercon in Toronto.

In a few days, I'll pull out of my funk and get angry. Right now, I'm still dealing with Denial and Bargaining. You can forget about Acceptance, though. That train don't even stop at this station.

I remember back about thirty years when we had another jerk in the White House. We had a war based on the Gulf of Tonkin lie, and 50,000 dead good boys. We got angry and took to the streets and made it very clear that we weren't going to take it, like Howard Beal in 'Network'. It worked, too.

Well, dudes and dudettes, we have another jerk in the White House, and - by golly - we have another war based on lies, and we have about 1200 dead good boys and girls. Do we have to wait for a body count in five figures to get off our butts and challenge this dickweed?

When I finally pull myself out of bed, I'm going to write every Democratic Senator in Washington and tell them that if they vote for A SINGLE PROPOSAL backed by this hammerhead in the Oval Office over the next four years, then they don't have a hair on their ass, and they are just asking to get blasted at election time as "flip-floppers". I am going to demand four long hard years of filibusters.

Forty-nine percent of the American voters said on Tuesday that they wanted Bush back in Crawford full-time (as opposed to half the time, as he spends there now). That counts for something. We cannot allow those voices to be stifled just because some delusional guy with a blue-blood pedigree thinks God tells him to give Halliburton a tax break and to put Jerry Falwell on the Supreme Court.

It's rally-cap time, campers.

Gotta boogie.
R