Don't Let This Happen Again...

These are just a few images from the infamous Election 2000: the night that wouldn't end a decade ago. I must have aged a couple of years as I stood out on the sidewalk in front of the Florida Supreme Court building, awaiting rulings on whether we would keep counting ballots in Florida to determine our presidential winner. As you all remember, what the Florida court said didn't matter doodly-squat to the United States Supreme Court. They took over. They declared George W. Bush the winner. And our country is still trying to recover from the idiocy that marked his presidency.
If you think partisan politics is bad now, imagine being a reporter witnessing the end of a Warren Christopher news conference and seeing the Senate Sergeants remove the American flags flanking the podium to put in two other American flags before the appearance of James Baker.
"Tommy," some of us asked the Senate employee. "What are you doing?"
The long-suffering Senate worker looked at us, the Florida members of the media, and grumbled. "Can you believe they (Democrats and Republicans) won't stand in front of each others American flags?!"
I'm not making this up. It really was that stupid. That divisive. That childish.
There is no presidential race this time around, but I am a little concerned about this being the 10th anniversary of the 37 Days of Election Night. I am trying to figure out what Florida can do this time to make itself a laughingstock. Perhaps electing a man to be Governor who ran a company that committed the largest Medicare fraud in the nation's history ($1.7billion). That, along with electing a dimwit tea partier to the U.S. Senate could seal this state into the book of Stupid forever.
The only way to prevent this is for people to go vote, and make sure that their vote did get counted. I'm tired of Democrats in this state whining about "all is lost" because Obama really did mean, "Yes, We Can... But...." Anybody should have been able to figure that out. Again, George W. Bush, the squatter President, had eight years in office. There was no way Obama, or anyone else, was going to clean up his mess in less than two years. So quit kvetching and go vote. Or else we really will have the dynamic duo of Marco Rubio and Rick Scott as the face of Florida's election 2010. And that's scary!