Coupla people here seem to have forgotten that national-level elected officials were likely once state house representatives, county commisioners, school board members, dog-catchers, and long ago, regular people. The people who eventually make up the bigger picture were once our neighbors who got involved because they wanted things to be better.

And government is necessary so that we can make certain things happen that we want to happen. Roads, school systems, law enforcement, international relations, all require some sort of government structure to exist with any sort of order. Without it, these and many more systems would all be horribly chaotic and worse than we can imagine.

The government is not the enemy. The government is us. And unsatisfying elected officials only get into office because the electorate fails to inform itself and vote accordingly.

What was the question? Oh yeah. As already mentioned, I don't think either Kerry or Bush are terribly inspired. On terrorism, I don't think there is much different. But Bush is far worse on almost every other score. Like Jim Hightower says, "First, we get rid of Bush, then we get rid of Kerry."