Oh HBO..why must you bring back such bad memories

By: doctormatt06
Published On: 5/26/2008 11:32:39 PM

(cross-posted on DailyKos)
I have to tell you, tears came to my eyes after watching the movie 'Recount' on HBO yesterday.  Flipping through HBO again this evening, I saw that it was back on, and I had to really just vent a little bit.  To be honest the last 8 years have really been a big suck-fest of crappitude for the American people.  And yet, it seems like a bell-curve of idiocy.  I'll go into that a little more in a bit.  First I would just like to explain the 2000 election from my perspective.  I was 17 years old, too young to vote, but not young enough that I couldn't be politically active.  It was my senior year, and I had been getting more active in politics, although before that point, I felt myself to be a liberal Republican, along the lines of my grandmother, looking at Gore and Bush, it was an obvious choice who I should choose to vote for.  But there were other issues that drove me to the Democrats.Continue with me over the jump....
I'm a Virginian, here in Virginia we don't have to register by party preferences, so even when I say I'm a Democrat, that's not totally true, I'm an independent, who's extremely liberal, so I tend to ally myself with the Democrats (when they aren't being total sell-outs).  I had the chance to attend a Young Democrats Club meeting at Falls Church High School, where I went to school, where our State Senator named Leslie Byrne gave a good speech on why being a Democrat was important and why we should help out Al Gore.  Needless to say, she did a good job of convincing me that the Democrats were the better party (Although the republican sex-witch hunt versus Bill Clinton didn't really help me from thinking they were a bunch of religious nut jobs).  At the same time, attending a rally for Democrat Chuck Robb, helped me figure out that he was the candidate to beat this idiot Republican with a loudmouth named George Allen.  So I would drive down the street three times a week from September to November to call voters to get out the vote for Gore/Robb/Corrigan (the guy who was running against Tom 'The Republican Brand Sucks' Davis.So...after working my heart out, calling tons of voters, getting tons of, "Yes, I'll vote!!!", after walking door-to-door, after tons of pizza, and thanks, and being the only young guy with a bunch of old ladies working at this calling-station, we lost....BIG TIME.  Chuck Robb lost his senate seat.  Tom Davis blew Corrigan out of the water (although at the time, I'll admit that I didn't really dislike Davis, as I felt he matched this district well), and Gore had lost, or had he?  The situation in Florida pissed me off.  My government teacher told the lot of us, that this was the first time in her recollection that the election hadn't ended by Thanksgiving time.  I came away from that election depressed, saddened, and just angry.  And I will tell you, that anger has never left me.  Every election to that point, I have worked harder, I (a college student no less!!) have given money to the Democratic party, I have been more and more convinced to defeat Republicans means convincing others of your point of view, so I've become my family and friend's source for political news (slanted against most Republican views...I'm still a fan of smaller governemnt, if possible).  I have gone from a liberal (Rockefeller) republican view of the world to a Liberal Progressive Democratic view of the world, and I think it took the class of Al Gore, and the total crappitude of George W. Bush to move me there.  So I would like to say, to those of you like myself who have come to hate George W. Bush for his incompetence, arrogance, shamelessness, and lack of care for his country can come to one happy conclusion about his stolen election from Al Gore, he has destroyed conservatism and the republican brand for a long time, thank you God!  And I'm agnostic!

Comments



great diary :) (chiefsjen - 5/27/2008 9:15:55 AM)
i watched it with my husband and it was good and depressing.... let's hope we squash them in November this year.


I need to catch Recount when it is next on (snolan - 5/27/2008 12:13:29 PM)
Though I am sure it will just make me mad as hell again.

Since 2000 the most important issue for each state legislature and governor has been making elections verifiable and fair, and of course, nearly all states have completely ignored this issue.

They, and the voters who put the legislators in office, clearly don't care about having fair and verifiable elections.  It astonishes me.



I did watch it, it did make me mad (snolan - 5/28/2008 10:45:40 AM)
I am mad all over again at:

1) Jim Baker for being slime.

2) Joe Lieberman  for throwing the Republicans a bone.

3) Katherine Harris for being such a complete shit - sorry but the willfully ignorant deserve to be taken out of the gene pool; and her religion, her shallowness, and her narcissism are all clear indicators of her willful ignorance.

4) The Florida Republican Party for systematically disenfranchising ~20,000 voters.

5) Each and every state legislature and governor in the United States of America for STILL (as of May, 2008) having no way to verify elections using transparent processes that we can all easily see, understand, and agree to even when we are unhappy with the results.

6) The stacked supreme court, who had no interest in the will of the people, and only wanted their precious corporate benefactors protected by a puppet president and his regime of foreign distractions while the wolves looted the hen house right here at home.

7) The voters of Florida's 13th district, who even after we all learned the evil that Katherine Harris had done, still voted her into office....   utterly amazing and completely unforgivable.

8) ~40 million voters who voted for George W. Bush, and made the theft of our democracy possible (you can't steal an election that is not even close).