Almost 8 years ago, I wrote an essay titled "The Worst Election ever?" Clinton had just won reelection over Bob Dole. At the time, I thought that elections couldn't get any more ridiculous. Ever optimistic, I was quite wrong in thinking that we had hit an election low. Here's some of what I wrote about the 1996 election:

1996 was the year that Clinton was returned to office, even though most voters don't trust him, and even though a wide variety of scandalous behavior makes it possible he will be impeached.

1996 was the year that Republican negative ads were rejected by voters, in spite of the fact that they were largely true... and Democratic negative ads were seemingly accepted, in spite of the fact that they were largely lies.

1996 was the year that both the Democratic and Republican parties stole a long-time Libertarian phrase... Self-Government... and used it without having the least idea what it means.

1996 was the year that labor unions extracted involuntary "dues" from members to spend on a huge anti-Republican TV campaign, and failed.

1996 was the year that the Democrats ran against Newt Gingrich, who wasn't running.

1996 was the year the Republicans chose to run Bob Dole as a tax-cut, smaller- government candidate, despite his being a long-time big-spending, big-government Republican.

1996 was the year that campaign spending reached all-time highs... at least 600 million dollars.

1996 was the year that the National Taxpayers Party appeared, seeming to be a libertarian group, but with their religious right morality somehow determining what is right and wrong.

1996 was the year that the Natural Law Party appeared, promoting Education and Transcendental Meditation as the cures to all our ills.

1996 was the year that Ross Perot took another shot (and 30 million dollars in Federal Matching Funds), claiming he can computerize government to make it better; an idea that all computer people know is nonsense.

1996 was the year that half-a-million people voted for Ralph Nader, without knowing what he stands for, without him campaigning, and with him running for a party whose platform he didn't endorse.

1996 was the year that the two major parties exerted their muscle to keep fully-qualified, on-the-ballot Presidential candidates out of the debates and off of network TV.

1996 was the campaign during which Clinton and Dole both insisted that campaign finance reform was needed, while they and their parties spent more questionable funding than ever before.

Well... there have been a lot of changes since 1996. As near as I can tell, almost all of them have been for the worse.

The Taxpayers party changed into the Constitution party and evidently just nominated a Presidential candidate this weekend.

The Natural Law party closed it's office in April 2004, and has morphed into the US Peace Government which will set up their own government. They will use group practice of the Transcendental Meditation program and its advanced programs, including Yogic Flying, and specialized Vedic performances that maintain harmony, coherence, and peace throughout society. It appears that their leaders will be appointed rather than elected.

Ross Perot evidently has gone back to making money rather than wasting it trying to win rigged elections. The Reform party sort of merged with the Natural Law party, and then had an implosion with the Pat Buchanan nomination victory to get their campaign finance funding. The Reform party has endorsed Ralph Nader. It has always been impossible to tell what that party stood for, and their endorsement of Nader adds still more confusion.

During the confusion in the Reform party (which was once Perot's United We Stand), the Independence party of Minnesota was established, then joined the Reform party, then dropped out, and has become a Minnesota-only party.

The Green party, however, most closely associated with Ralph Nader, has rejected Nader, deciding that endorsing a party member who supports their platform would be a novel idea.

Meanwhile, back in the camps of the "big junkyard dogs", we have a Republican President and Congress who have been spending as if our pockets were bottomless, while claiming the opposite, and Democrats who are still not satisfied with the Republican spending, and want to spend even more.

Meanwhile, we have both the Republican and Democratic candidates supporting a war in Iraq that the American public doesn't support.

Meanwhile, since 1996, our prison population has continued to skyrocket even though crime is down, and the economy sucks, and the War on Terrorism is creating enemies faster than we can torture or kill them, and the War on Drugs, despite failing, is still putting sick people in prison... and so on and so on.

I've never known so many people to be confused about how to vote in the next election. Despite the GOP and Dems doing a good job of working the "keep the other guy out of office" scam, a lot of their loyalists aren't buying it again, because they see no difference between the D's or the R's, and what they do see is ugly as hell. Nader's only appeal is that we've heard his name and it isn't Bush or Kerry.

Since 1996, we've gone from a truly skilled liar in Clinton, to incompetent liars in Bush and Kerry, but we still have an ever-more-oppressive government hanging over our heads. Most of us would like nothing better than to just STOP THE INSANITY, but we don't know how.

Many have become resigned to voting for the lesser of two evils, and hoping for the best. The Democratic and Republican PARTIES are the problem, and they've effectively taken the power of our votes away from us. They will again use our money to out-spend and out-campaign all the other candidates, and that financial power will force the media to ignore all other contenders. We all know that nobody else has a chance to win, and the voters have come to accept it. We're caught between a BLUE rock and a RED hard place, not because that's what the voters WANT, but because they've been FORCED into accepting it.

Tomorrow, I'm going to do my best to convince you to "waste your vote" and send a loud "I'm not gonna take this any more" to Washington.