Fourscore and four years ago...

... I was watching the presidential debates with little or at the least a general knowledge of "the issues". I remember thinking then, based simply on intuition, or judge of character (and a report that I did on capital punishment, where I discovered that THE dub had executed more people during his term as governer of Texas than any governer of the state in the last 100 years, but that's another issue...) and mannerisms, that THE dub played dirty.

Some might say that the majority of high ranking politicians work this way, i.e., obscuring information, stretching the truth, "miscalculating", lying by omission, and just plain flat-out laugh in your face lying. While there is the ultimate challenge for a politician to appeal to as many people as possible and "win the vote", I doubt many of them could top what we've seen in the last four years in terms of the above-listed characteristics and the events surrounding them.

This isn't a post about all the crap that the current administration has been privy too, it is merely a reflection over my personal involvement with "the issues", and where it began.

So, in the confines of a boxed-in, yet somehow comfortable thirteenth-floor dorm room, we watched "on our televisin skreens"-- yeah, we saw it all go down back in the year two-thousand. It was like a spectator sport; an image of Tim Russert and his whiteboard comes directly to mind, scribbling the electoral winnings for each side like it was Mike Tyson vs. Mr. T. (ok, Tyson would whoop Mr T's ass, cos he's freaking crazy, and much younger. It sounded good, you got a better match?)

Ohh... there goes Florida... "guys, (dorm buddies) did you see that? Something isn't right here, I just don't feel right about this election".

So there it went, and three weeks later, the president-not-elected had been appointed, and I said to my roomate, "here we go, we're fucked". (usually, I'm a pretty optimistic person, but that's the way I felt) I know I'm not the only person that felt this way, and it was that intuition which roused my interest in "the issues". Nothing has happened in the last four-years that in my eyes would compliment the pres' term, at least nothing of signifigance; it has just been one ever growing, insurmountable pile of crap.

The blog, along with the rest of blogdom, has served as an excellent vehicle for getting my opinions out in a quasi-tangible form on the vast realm that is the internet; the ether, if you will. Whatever the outcome is a week from now, it is clear that our lives will be affected by it.

To be continued, sometime before next Tuesday... (sigh... so much crap to do in the midst of all this)