I wasn't even gone for very long but it might as well be ten years. I still have to adjust and work and so on and even though I'm here, I'm not. All I think about is where to go next. So......I understand that there are people who disagree with my politics, but it really doesn't matter who is prez. Kerry would have been maybe 7 percent better. Bush can be impeached or assasinated but someone else will take over who is just as bad, and anyhow it's rich men who run things here and they're not going anywhere and they're not going to change, the whole system isn't going to change. I live with it every day and have for years in NYC and it's the same over and over. Everything is in the interest of rich men (mostly men) and I can stay and solve my immediate problems but it'll stay the same with me working my ass off and getting maybe two weeks to travel and then it's back to slaving away for days, hours, years. I know I sound bleak, but I took 6 months off and some I traveled (though not enough at all) and other times I just took to have to myself and whatnot. My options are running low and the fact that I went somewhere won't win me sympathy at any unemployment or poverty agency here. So I bottomed out. No, it's not hopeless, but today was frought with so many problems I feel like I've been raped or beaten. But things are definitely bad under GWB maybe they're a lot worse than they would have been under Kerry, and not much worse than Clinton, but they're bad. Billions of dollars are spent daily on this war yet workers here can't get unemployment extensions, even though jobs have been outsourced. They won't even allow birth control overseas. So what are we supposed to do? Marry? Who?