If you want things to worry about, I suggest these three. All are probable. All are awful.

1. If the Dems take both houses of Congress, Dems share responsibility for everything that’s going wrong because Bush and the Republicans pushed the nation so far off course. This increases the odds of a Republican president in 2008, especially if McCain is running. And McCain is as conservative as they come. He makes W look like Barbra Streisand.

2. Major hedge funds – those vast, unregulated pools of money, which have been generating double-digit returns because no one (least of all, their own managers) know exactly the worthiness of what they’re investing in – are teetering. With energy prices moderating, hedge funds have made the wrong bets. This wouldn’t be a problem if hedge funds were still playthings of the rich. But over the last five years, pension funds, mutual funds, and college endowments have all gone into them in a big way. In other words, the coming hedge-fund crash will reverberate throughout the economy, and hit a lot of innocent people who never expected they were invested in them.

3. Cheney wants to bomb Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear facilities. He’s become even more hawkish than before, and Rice is no match for him. He’s the president of American foreign policy. He figures he has only about 18 months left to do what needs to be done, to ensure his and Bush’s legacy and make the world safe from the axis of evil. He also figures Iran and North Korea are becoming ever more dangerous, that no one else is willing to do anything about them, that the US has the fire power to do what needs to be done, and only whimps are putting up a fight inside the Administration. All he needs to do is convince Bush, who is coming around.