Hi folks,

When I moved to Florida in the fall after six years in Canada I was looking forward to voting in the primaries and explaining it all to my son, now old enough to really get into the details and implications...

...and then I noticed that my vote wasn't going to count...  My first thought was "Who the hell thought of this?  Didn't a 'Florida 2000' alarm go off somewhere?"

When I switched over my drivers' license I filled out my state voter registration and put down "Independent" instead of "Democrat" - which I had been intending to vote in the primaries prior to learning it wouldn't matter.

2000
All Al Gore wanted to do was count the FL votes.  
To find out who won the presidential election.

On cable news, the mantra was "STOP, GORE!  
You are HURTING THE COUNTRY." and "Americans just want
to move on."

"People on the street" were interviewed, all saying the same
thing:  "Americans just want to move on."

The election was OVER.  
Why did Gore want to keep dragging this on.  It was really
hurting the country.

We were all lulled into resignation.  
The democratic party took the easy route, sighed, and gave up.  

As a result, thousands and thousands of people were murdered.  
Thousands of Americans have lost their homes.
 The middle class is a peasant class, while CEOs get billion
dollar salaries.  Our economy is far out of wack.

2008
Cable news chanting in unison again.
"Get out, Clinton!  You are hurting the democratic party by finishing
the primary process!  You are hurting the country!  You are a divider,
Clinton."

Same mantra.

Are we going to sigh and cave?

If so, our options are between a candidate who should be in
assisted living enjoying shuffleboard, and a mediocre neophyte
with little record, soft ethics, poor health and economic proposals
and very bad judgement in the company he keeps.

We will be tossing a star - a brilliantly informed, relentlessly hard
working candidate with amazing accomplishments, including the
recent child car safety bill that went through the senate - but you
never heard about because things like this are not important to the
media.

A weak president is important to the corporations that puppeteer
 news hacks like Tim Russert, Chris Matthews and Campbell Brown.
A weak president means a weak America, which means more control
and money for corporations.  More lucrative wars, richer CEOs, and
desperate employees - who will work for less and less.

Are we going to sigh and shrug and let cable news stop the democratic
process in its tracks once again?