I'm sick of it...

...and I'm going to do my damndest to ignore everything related to politics after tonight's fiascoes. Yes, more than one; George Bush babbled away about some hallucinations he has about the "state of the Union," and some worthless clown from the Democrats gave his equal-time "response."

What strikes me is that both sides have no clue about what's going on in the world outside our porous borders. Oh, they think they do, but it's clear that the process of moving people and money around as if they were pieces in a board game has softened their brains to the extent that they have no longer have any ability to separate their fantasies from reality.

And both sides, in a major change from the way things used to be, are convinced that it is the government's job to ensure that we are happy, healthy and successful. All they need is for us to give them more money and more power over our lives. Ever since the days of FDR, the Democrats have adhered to the philosophy that what's best for us is an all-giving, all-powerful government. After all, they know what we want and need, and are better able to understand and provide it than we are.

But now the Republicans, in the person of one George Bush, ne'er-do-well son of a mediocre president, are making the same ugly noises. At one time -- does anyone remember Barry Goldwater, God bless him? -- Republicans were the "less-government" party. Goldwater didn't see government's mission as being a kind of nursery-school teacher dealing with mildly stupid children as Democrats do; he appreciated the limits on governmental power as prescribed by the Constitution.

If he were alive today, Goldwater would have to find another political party to join. His is as dead as the Whigs or the Dixiecrats.

All those years of fat living and lack of serious oversight have turned the government into a bloated, corrupt mess. The ideologues outside the government who march in lockstep with their political parties' beliefs are simply enabling them.

We are in no position to take "democracy" to Iraq, which has shown little enthusiasm for the concept. Better we should work on restoring true democracy in this country.

In case you've forgotten, that means holding our elected officials directly responsible for adhering to the regulations and limits on power decreed by the Constitution, holding them directly responsible for doing what we want them to do, and holding them directly responsible for using the smallest possible percentage of our money to do what little they are supposed to do.

Screw it. We're doomed.