ELECTION - THE DAY AFTER: 2:34 PM EST

I'm just now catching up on everything else that happened in the elections yesterday. When I took Michael home his dad told me that the Republicans had lost both the House and Senate. That was the first and last time that I even thought about the national elections until the last little while.

It doesn't matter to me anymore which party is in control of Congress, or the White House even for that matter. It took me long enough but I've come to realize that both of the major parties... actually, just about any party for that matter... are preoccupied with only one thing: acquiring power. They keep telling us that if we only give them more power, that they will earnestly work to make things better. So we give them power, only to watch them abuse it time after time. I don't know if I could even trust the "third-party" groups, like the Constitution and Libertarian parties as much as I would like, because they are founded on the same basic principle: "please just give us a little bit of power".

I took a peek at a couple of the big political sites (I'm not going to name which ones: they're both all too well known for which party they shill for). It didn't take much to predict what their reactions would be to yesterday's election, and it was just as I was expecting: there is jubilation on one, and outrage on the other. One is deeply saddened that their party has lost power, while the other one is basking in euphoria.

And while I'm giving it this cursory glance I can't help but wonder: "What difference does it make?" I saw this same thing happen twelve years ago when the Republicans toppled the Democrats from power in Congress. Now the tables have turned... and for the life of me I can't understand how this is going to really change things at all. The Republicans have had both houses of Congress and the White House for six years now. They've had more than enough opportunity to make a long-lasting impression for the better on the American landscape. Instead I've watched them over the past twelve years as they've progressed from sweeping victory to utter stagnation. This Congress has been little more than a rubber-stamp on everything that President Bush has presented before them: No Child Left Behind, the PATRIOT Act, "campaign finance reform"... you name it, they've done it for him. The only thing that I can see happening any different is that the change in power in Congress will make it a little harder for Bush to get anything passed that he wants... but since so many things of his ideology matches those of many of the Democrats, I don't really expect him to be hampered all that much. One way or another, we are going to get amnesty for illegals rammed down our throats, no matter who's in power in Washington: it just got a little easier after last night, is all.

Other than these observations, the whole Congress situation doesn't really figure on my radar. There really isn't much more than I can say about it.