THE ROACHES ARE COMING OUT OF THE WALLS

I love it. The Repugs are getting desperate. One of our senior executives walked into my office right before lunch and said, "I forgot to mention something yesterday when we were talking about the election. I think what would be best for the country would be if the Democrats won control of the Senate and George W. Bush got re-elected. What do you think?" The poor man seemed woefully disappointed when he found out I wasn't buying. He voted last week, and I think he's needing reassurance that he did the right thing in voting for GWB.

Well, just now he re-entered my office, this time with another sr. exec in tow, and wanted to know if I'd thought any more about it. What is this, I wondered, a negotiation? If I'll give him the presidency, he'll give me the Senate? I pointed out patiently that it is clear many Republicans don't understand the level of our antipathy towards Furious George, who has advanced the most radical social agenda in recent memory, redistributed the wealth to skew even more towards the super-rich through a series of ridiculous tax cuts, sent our young people to war without the proper equipment, protection, training, and exit plan, begun an assault on our civil liberties, and just generally had one huge FUBAR first term. I reminded him that a flat tax, sales tax, or other "tax reform" initiatives floated by Bush that would eliminate the mortgage interest tax credit could seriously jeopardize our business. The three of us kicked this around for a few minutes (when I said flatly that putting the entire tax burden upon current income and not taxing accumulated wealth in any way was immoral, the higher-ranked of the two agreed with me), then got into a discussion of how much better the markets perform under Democratic presidents as opposed to Republican CiCs. My chum left looking very depressed -- he expected more support from the other guy.

I generally try to be gracious about politics, but I'm still recovering from the flu and don't have the patience today of all days to make someone feel better about their simply terrible choice.