Current Political Events: November 2004 Archives

1) American health care is wanting. 2) America's college bound are destined for unprecedented debt. 3) Poll finds Americans support Roe V. Wade. 4) Lowering the minimum wage is one outcome of government policies. 5) Bush gets some more money to under educate school kids.

1) Mental Illness in America is the unspoken, and other half, of the health care crisis. The Washington Post reports:

The study -- the result of a months-long examination of the state's foster care and mental health services -- chronicles the difficult decisions that thousands of Virginia parents have made to relinquish custody of their children to the foster care system so they can get mental health services that are otherwise unavailable or unaffordable.

No, those are not well wishes for President Bush. But, we all have much to be thankful for if we will take just a few moments to recount our blessings. We are not living in a post nuclear holocaust world, yet. President Bush does want to be remembered favorably in history books. That has to be good for a thanks or two. And though our democracy is full of faults and malfunctions (mostly folks in Congress), we are still a long way from Orwell's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. And mad cow has not spread to turkeys yet, so, please enjoy family, friends, good food, and American abundance while we still have it.

Two questions. If you don't stop Congress now, when will you? And second, now that we and the new Iraqi interim government have killed thousands of Sunnis, can we convince them that voting us out at the ballot box will succeed?

Winslow Wheeler, author of The Wastrels of Defense was interviewed on Booknotes (C-span) by Mr. Brian Lamb a few days ago. It was a very telling interview. The basic premise was that your Congressional representatives, charged with the responsibility for the checks and balances of our government, far too often elect to ignore, or even undermine, those checks and balances. They do so for two reasons, observing checks and balances is harder and more limiting than ignoring them, consuming more time and man-hour resources, and ignoring or undermining them enhances their political careers and insulates them from criticism by the public. Taking a stand draws criticism, not taking one goes unnoticed.

The Texas School Board forced publishers to alter text in their middle and high school textbooks to delete the words "married partners" and to put in place the following definition of marriage: "lifelong union between a husband and a wife." What Texas (the second largest text book buyer in the country) dictates to the publishers, ends up in textbooks in a host of other states which buy books from the same publishers.

Now, does one really have to ask if the definition above is going to make a dent in the 50% and growing divorce rate in Amerca? I don't think so. Is this the new wave of legislating through school curriculum for the future ? I do think so. Will it be successful - that remains to be seen.

Nader 397,468 - Badnarik (Libertarian) 379.000 - Cobb (Green Party) 105,590 -- Kerry (Dem) 55,750,105 -- Bush (Rep) 59,284,062. By the Republican standard, Nader won among third party candidates with a progressive mandate! This is rather laughable, considering how close the numbers were between Kerry and Bush.

Even the Electoral College vote was close, where just one state could have reversed the result. The only mandate coming out of this election is that our country needs a president who can cross party lines and represent a true majority of American's interests. Without fulfillment of such a mandate, the divide in America will only deepen and splinter.

Ohio appears to be the new Florida of the 2000 race. As of 4:08 AM on Wednesday morning, despite other writer's claims of a win for the President, it is still too close to call according to MSNBC's Electoral College map. As Sen. John Edwards said, it will not be over until every vote counts and every vote is counted. Thus, Sen. Kerry has not conceded the race. The President is growing impatient as daylight approaches in a couple hours, for one of the too close to call states, to be completely counted and throw any one of those states into his column to put him up past the 269 Electoral College (EC) votes which has been unchanged since around midnight.