As I write this the sky is so blue, the reality of global warming and climate change seems physically impossible. A light rain two days ago washed some of the smog from the skyline, and the birds are singing about it. Hope comes easy in early summer.

Next Tuesday I get to vote. I like voting. Yes I'm an angry tree-hugger, with the tact of a badger. I still like to vote. I bitch and moan because it matters, and because it matters I vote. I always vote. More people should vote.

Voting makes me happy. Happy is hope. Perhaps if more people voted more people would have hope. It is my hope that when more people vote, people like Randy Duke Cunningham would not be elected.

Hope is reason enough to bring people to the polls. Hope for clean air and water should motivate everyone to take the time to contribute to the governing of our lives. Voting is about choices. I choose to vote. Ecological wisdom is a top priority when looking at candidates and the positions they take on issues, as are sustainability, personal responsibility, and grassroots democracy.

I have hope because Peter Camejo is running for governor again and former governor Jerry Brown is running for Attorney General. Bill Hauf is also an agent of hope, as he plans to challenge Brian "I'm really a lobbyist" Bilbray for the republican nomination, and Eric Roach isn't. I love it when Republicans eat their own.

Looking towards Baghdad, hope would be folly if not for the possibility control of the duopoly might change hands. Republicans are on the ropes, Al Gore is on the comeback trail, and environmental concern is taking hold in a post Katrina America. Change actually seems possible.

Sending a woman to congress would be a first for the 50th Congressional District. After 14 years of Cunningham corruption electing a soccer mom, Girl Scout leader and school board trustee to Washington to clean up the house seems the perfect response. Not only do I hope voters do the right thing, I'm counting on it.

Francine Busby represents change.

Even as a Green, perhaps because of it, I can see the value of a democratic majority in congress during the last two years of the Bush Administration. The checks and balances established in the constitution and bill of rights must be restored. Balance is the ideal environment for hopeful thinking, and social justice.

We the people have innumerable reasons to be angry. Life in George Bush's America is not for the blissful, ignorance, as embodied by the commander in chief, has proven to be more destructive the anger. It is my hope the growing anger will translate into action, and the action into revolution. To hope is to cherish a desire with anticipation. I had hoped for Cunningham's conviction, and was spectacularly rewarded. That is a gift that keeps giving.

Now the political demise of Supervisor Bill "I didn't take a vow of poverty" Horn is at the top of my hope he hangs list. Bill Horn, for too long the Boss Hog of the San Diego politics, has finally been exposed for the ethical midget he is. Affairs with his chief of staff, shady real estate deals, financial shenanigans, and false and misleading statements on election documents are reason enough to hope Horn will be removed from office sooner rather than later.

Oh yeah, there is also the issue of Supervisor Bill Horn being a slumlord. Like Cunningham, Bill Horn is proving to be his worse enemy. Hope is not only warranted in the Horn case, it is palatable Add to that a libertarian gadfly calling for term limits for county supervisors and I am almost giddy. Change actually seems possible.

Always the pessimist, I am still an optimist. An angry optimist, hope is the Holy Grail that keeps me voting year after year. Hope, like anger, is evidence of care and concern. To be angry is to care, to care is to vote.

On Tuesday, June 6th I am voting for change, I am voting for hope, and I am voting with the intent to change the world by saving it from the likes of George Bush, Randy Cunningham, Brian Bilbray, and Bill Horn.

On Tuesday, June 6th I'm voting for Francine Busby, Peter Camejo, and Donna Warren.

On Tuesday, June 6th I'm voting in hope.