Your vote must be made by 8:00 PM on Tuesday. Every vote counts!

Remember, voting is your license to bitch later when the idjits in Congress do stupid things! If you don’t vote, then you don’t get to complain.

Ezra Klein has published a wonderfully articulate explanation over on Pandagon of his case for John Kerry. I am especially taken with his description of the differences between Kerry and Bush. Of Bush he says:

I forgive Bush his failings, I forgive him his mistakes, I forgive him his transgressions and his lies and his misjudgments and miscalculations and messes. What I don’t forgive — what I will never forgive — is that he ran for president in the first place. And the reason, dear reader, that I can never forgive him for that, is because he fought to ascend to an office he didn’t understand.

And of Kerry:

Righteousness, as a habit, rejects certainty; in fact, the angels have a troubling predisposition to wander around issues, which makes sticking in their camp a matter of ideological flexibility as much as judgment. There’s no chasm greater than the one Kerry bridged to go from Vietnam war hero to the war’s most prominent opponent, but he was right to serve his country and right to fight for an end to the misguided slaughter. It’s a lesson he’s refused to unlearn, and one he’s spent a lifetime applying. And we need it.

Although lengthy, the whole entry is well worth the read.

We survived another Halloween. Since the weather was fairly decent I had expected a larger turnout. There have been some years when as many as 250 little gobblins rang my bell. But this year, I don’t think there were more than 35 or 40. Instead of coming in a vast, never-ending stream for several hours, kids came in relatively largish, widely-spaced groups. The first kid came around 6:30, and the last around 8:30.

Opening my door after the third ring on my bell revealed two guys who were old enough to have pretty decent goatees. While handing out the goodies, I pointed out that after one gets to the point that it’s no longer necessary to glue the beard on, it may be time to give up on the trick-or-treat thing. We all had a good laugh.

Other than those two, the expected late rush of older high-school kids never came. I’m not sure why. I think this was the first year since I can remember that didn’t happen.

I have a vast amount of candy left over. It’s all going to work today, to be added into the communal goody pot. Somebody else can eat it!