• Take a look at Slate's compilation of Bushisms.

  Jesus H. Christ. I knew most Americans were simple-minded. I mean, just check out the way they drive, what they watch on TV, where they live. But I had hoped that they weren't criminally insane.

  The economy is bounding along like a giant Rottweiler on meth. We're at what passes for peace these days. And the last actual commie under the metaphorical American bed, Gus Hall, has died and gone to Hell.

  Nevertheless, Americans seem to be preparing to hand the White House over to a smirking crypto-Texan with a resume that's even shorter than his attention span, an intellectual flyweight who makes his dimbulb daddy look like Stephen Hawking, a bumboy for big bidniss whose only real accomplishment in his six whole years of public service as governor of the Lone Star State is putting the death back in death row.

  Pick a Loser, Any Loser. I have never voted for a winner in a presidential campaign. I have tried in vain to register as a Yippie, been a card-carrying member of two communist splinter groups, and voted for the likes of George McGovern, John Anderson, Ross Perot and Harry Browne.

  There has also been the occasional election in which I could not, with the liquor stores closed and oblivion thus unavailable, cast any vote at all. And this could easily be another one of them, with yet another non-choice between a conehead and a bonehead.

  Forget all the jawboning about Social Security, tax cuts and who goes to school where. When you step into that voting booth on Tuesday, Nov. 7, ask yourself whether you'd want either one of these dingbats in your house, much less the White House. Then go home and shoot yourself, because one of these turkeys is coming home to roost.

  They're All Bozos On This Bus. Gore is a recovering Poindexter, the kind of guy who queered the grading curve in the tough classes by dint of relentless study while you were making a hash pipe out of an Air Force-surplus oxygen mask, some tinfoil and a faucet.

  If he didn't exactly invent the algorithm, he was the kind of Brainiac who talked about it at parties, a dufus who could fall into a barrel of tits and come out sucking his thumb. While the rest of us went to San Francisco with flowers in our hair, he went to Vietnam, even if it was only for five months as an "information specialist," a Remington Raider, the kind of ersatz GI who never retreated but backspaced lots of times. And if he likes to make stuff up, well, so do I.

  George W, meanwhile, is the kind of dime-store Odysseus who started the barfights that his frat brothers had to finish. He spent the Vietnam war dicking around in Texas with the Air National Guard, in a unit that Molly Ivins reports "included the son of former Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen, the son of former Texas governor John Connally, and enough rich young men to field a polo league."

  His career as an oilman and major-league-club owner involved mostly spending other people's money. And when he opens his mouth in conversation with anyone over the age of 4, you know he not only bought the answers to the midterm, he hired someone like Al Gore to take it for him.

  Assume The Position. Now, granted, trying to choose between these two privileged white guys is like trying to decide which gang you'd rather be raped by while imprisoned for a misdemeanor drug offense.

  But Gore is such an earnest geek, you'd at least have the questionable solace of knowing he had thought long and hard on the issue, consulted all the experts, and come to the conclusion that this sort of hands-on, multicultural experience would help you to become a better, more productive citizen.

  Bush, in the words of Richard Pryor warning Gene Wilder about chatting with the killers at the Arizona State Penitentiary during the filming of "Stir Crazy," would have you turned out "just to see that look on your face."

  Of course, you don't have to vote for either of the front-runners. The Green Party offers consumer watchdog Ralph Nader; the Libertarian Party, Harry Browne. Also on the ballot in Colorado are John Hagelin (Natural Law); Howard Phillips (American Constitution); Pat Buchanan (Freedom); Earl F. Dodge (Prohibition); James Harris (Socialist Workers Campaign); and David McReynolds (Socialist Party USA). And each of these alternative candidates has the chances of a Twinkie around Rush Limbaugh.

  Indecision 2000. So what's a voter to do? Strike another feeble blow for an alternative to big business as usual by voting for a third-party candidate, an act of desperation that will probably give us President Bush, the biggest dipshit fool to hold the office since Warren G. Harding? Or pull the lever for a stumblebum who, incredibly, has managed to piss away a wealth of political capital, amassed over eight years of relative peace and prosperity, in what should have been a one-punch fight with a patrician pendejo who thinks he can inherit the presidency like a family business?

  Does it really matter which dog comes out on top, when both of the front-runners are pampered toy poodles equally happy to lick the manicured hand of corporate America, who see the office as just another liver treat in the silver dish they've been noshing from all their privileged lives?

  Yeah, it probably does, this time. While both men clearly are liars, only one is a fool, and if I have to eat a heaping plateful of bullshit every day for the next four years, I want it to be properly prepared.

  So last week, I drove down to the Custer County Courthouse and cast an early ballot for Al Gore. What the hell, I had to take a truckload of garbage to the dump, and it was on the way.

  This column is exclusive to the DogSite, God help us all.