It's Sunday morning...

...and I have to keep my promise to attend yet another car show. So I'll bore you with pictures later. This should be a good thing, right? Get out of the house, be out in the open air, hang with people, and all that. So why am I not looking forward to it?

Simple: it's not what I want to do.

And the hour-plus drive to and from the show site gives me too much time to think. Very little of what I have to think about these days is calculated to put me in a good mood.

Since it's pointless to think about my unpleasant work situation or my nonexistent personal life, I could ponder the upcoming hanging of Saddam Hussein, which is a good thing for sure, but somehow somewhat distanced from my environment.

Or I could think about the elections on Tuesday!

Can't escape that. The phone has been ringing incessantly with prerecorded pitches from the Clintons, my two worthless senators, the mayor of L.A. (don't know who he was pimping for; the message was in Spanish) and many others. There are constant radio ads, flyers in the mailbox and yard signs, too.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to Tuesday. Not. My fellow Californians, who have proven themselves to be as dumb as fenceposts when it comes to voting, will no doubt approve $100 billion-worth of new bond measures, because they are all for good causes (clean water, schools, better roads, and so on) and, as the ads tell us, they won't raise our taxes.

People actually believe that....

But it's not school bonds (though there are new ones passed every election, and the new/better schools never seem to happen) that irritate me as much as the "affordable housing" bonds. I can't afford to buy a house in Southern California; hell, I can barely afford to rent an apartment. But the bonds won't give me any low-rate mortgage loans or grants or build houses in my price range. Instead, they will go to people who have less than I do, the chosen favorites of the politicians.

That sounds altruistic and wonderful, but the true discrimination of our age is against the lower-income middle class of white citizens (which includes me), who are being forced to help people on welfare, illegal aliens and other "disadvantaged" minorities buy homes. I can see the logic of asking people who have a home help others; I cannot understand why everyone else has to have a house, TV set, SUV and free health care before I do.

This is my major beef with the Democrats, who will, if the predictions are accurate, be running the country after Tuesday. They love this stuff; nothing pleases them more than socking it to those who actually produce goods and services of value and playing Santa Claus for their pet "victims."

I drove through one of the "disadvantaged" parts of town the other day. Every other building in the "business" district was a "community outreach center," a "community health center," a "neighborhood cultural center" or an "anti-gang center." Your tax dollars at work....

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of removing obstacles to success for people who work hard, regardless of race, creed or national origin. Assuming they are in this country legally, that is. Some people do need a hand when things get tough.

But a paternalistic government that plays favorites and institutionalizes victimhood is not the answer.

If we could prune away all the wasteful government programs, shut down all the giveaways and stop all the pet projects of the fatcats in Washington, the tax burden would drop dramatically and working people might once again be able to enjoy some of the fruits of their labors.

Of course unemployment would skyrocket as all those government employees hit the streets, but I can't feel much pity for the "outreach coordinators," "forum directors" and "community specialists" who have long been living off the fat of the land. They're simply not qualified to hold real jobs.

Maybe they could do "the jobs Americans won't do."

Damn. Now I'm in a truly foul mood.

Time to hit the road.