Excuses

Well, it's been too long... I could list a couple of reasons why I haven't written here, but it would be a disservice to you, the imaginary readers, so I'll just say that I wasn't feeling the passion for writing about the same issues that I felt great passion for in the rest of my life. I've decided to give it another try. Since this is the political hemisphere of my weblog I guess I should try and recap what's been going on in the world in the last 2 months.

It really seems like years since the end of June. In the presidential race Kerry looked like he was narrowly in the lead for most of the time. He did not get the traditional "bump" in support after the Democratic National Convention. This has been attributed by some as an effect of trying to keep the speeches positive and free of blatant attacks on the Bush administration. Some also put forth the networks' huge cut in coverage for this year's conventions as a possible cause. This doesn't seem to be the case though, since George Bush seemed to jump anywhere from 4 to 12 points ahead of Kerry after his party's convention. That being said, it looks as if things have pretty much evened out again.

(As an aside, polls are notoriously flawed in both their methodology and their results. A good example is that a Gallup poll released just before the 2000 election had George Bush winning by 13 points which obviously didn't happen since Gore won the popular vote by all accounts. The place I stole this information from [and where they stole it from] also pointed out how the youth vote is always discounted because youth frequently aren't the head of their household, don't have the time or the inclination to take a phone poll, (and my own situation) don't have a land line to even receive the call.)

The conditions in Iraq have consistently deteriorated. It seems from watching and reading that we are being pushed into a corner despite what the officials say. Most agree that the situation is getting worse weekly. Even Pres. Bush admitted he made a ‘miscalculation of what the conditions would be’ in postwar Iraq.” [New York Times, 8/27/04] (I'd put the link, but you have to pay for articles more than 7 days old. The remarks have been quoted enough that they should be easy enough to find on Google). Both Rumsfeld [Rumsfeld News Conference, 4/15/04] and Powell [Associated Press, 9/2/04] have admitted to miscalculating "the conditions in a post-war Iraq".

As of today 2 more Americans have been decapitated, and the remaining Brit threatened. We met the demands of the kidnappers (which we never used to do). Additionally 2 more beheaded bodies were found on the side of the road last week.

The official count of US casualties in Iraq are over 1000 (Iraqi casualties have been estimated to be somewhere between 12,778 and 30,000). Even the actual number of US deaths is hard to find since we passed the 1000 mark last week.

But you can go on about Iraq all day.

How about health care? Health care costs are rising at five times the rate of wages . Neither candidate is harping on health care (which I find to be one of the bigger issues, certainly more important than Vietnam-related stories or anything that ends in -gate). Kerry has a plan to cover approximately 27 million (a little more than half) of the uninsured for anywhere between $656 billion (his number) to $1.5 trillion (American Enterprise Institute's [self-described proponent of limited government, so take with a shaker of salt] number). Bush's plan (also according to AEI) will cover 6.7 million people (approx. 1/7th of those without health care) and cost $129 billion over 10 years (I'm assuming Kerry's costs are over the same time period).

Kerry would repeal Bush's tax cuts on families who make over $200,000/yr to pay for his plan & would also allow the government to negotiate w/drug companies for lower prices. Edwards' background as a trial lawyer could be a liability when talking about medical malpractice reform (which is one of the causes of skyrocketing insurance premiums.) thought the Kerry camp is claiming it as an asset: "Only John Edwards and John Kerry have the ability to put sensible malpractice reform in place that protects peoples' rights but also gets rid of the frivolous suits and reduces the cost,'' said Kerry.

Anyway... I'm exhausted. Tomorrow's topics for review are : civil rights, the environment, world opinion, foreign policy... and that's just the presidential topics.