Boy, a little bit of dictatorship sure sounds nice around now. As the midterm elections approach apace, we, the crack young staff of "The Hatemonger's Quarterly," are sufficiently irritated by the rigors of the campaign season that we're almost pining for an American monarchy.

Now, don't get us wrong, dear reader: We're not like so many of our left-wing (and, increasingly, right-wing) pals who dislike our country's desire to promote democracy worldwide. Further, we don't have a hankering for dictatorship due to some love affair with Bush's "imperial presidency," as some of our "progressive" pals might put it.

Frankly, dear reader, it's much simpler than that. The incessant chatter about political minutiae has officially driven us up a wall. The omnipresent partisan muckraking has irked us no end. The constant predictions from moronic talking heads have left us enraged.

We don't know about you, but we'd blithely vote for Charlie Rangel if doing so meant an end to the 24-7 coverage of the Virginia Senate race. Heck, we'd vote for Saddam Hussein if it'd get Ned Lamont to disappear.

And the television commercials? Oh, don't even talk to us about the television commercials.

Nothing's quite as depressing as taking in disingenuous ad after disingenuous ad with lines like: "My opponent supports the killing and eating of babies. She's just not right for New Mexico." Perhaps the only thing worse than these wretched bits of propaganda is all the hand-wringing about negative ads in the first place.

"Negative ads are so horrible, so despicable," say manifold television pundits and shifty party operatives. "They're nasty, they're disgraceful, and they turn people off of politics."

Naturally, this sort of sentiment is just meaningless claptrrap: Every political campaign claims to detest negative advertising, yet nearly every political campaign engages in it. It seems, however, that merely stating that you oppose these noxious ads gives you carte blanche to produce them.

Let us not forget, of course, the manifold accusations of polling irregularities, voter fraud, and the like--all of which, thanks to the Sore-Loserman crowd, have already appeared in advance of the actual voting. Although we're sure this must make life predictable and easy for the likes of Jesse Jackson (he can come up with great rhymes for "Republican theft" well before anyone heads to the polls), it makes it intolerable for us.

So, sure, we love democracy. The worst form of government, excepting all the others--blah, blah, blah. But, to be downright honest, a few more weeks of this wall-to-wall political detritus, and we'll be begging for some sort of a coup. Anything to put us out of our misery.

(Note: The crack young staff normally "weblog" over at "The Hatemonger's Quarterly," where they're happily ruminating on the three seconds of calm in between the 2006 midterm election and the 2008 presidential race.)