Slovenly, or Infected? Can the stigma get any worse for fattys?

It's not easy being fat, especially in a country that values youth and unrelentingly hyperexposes the population to concepts of beauty that are impossible to achieve. In the face of the onslaught of negative imagery, I have immense respect for people (large, medium or small) who are emotionally strong enough to be at peace with their physical selves.

For as long as I can recall, there has been a stigma attached to being "fat" in America ("gee, no kidding Scott! Brilliantly insightful observation there buddy!"). The common social assumption from my vantage point has been that, if you are fat, then you must be a lazy, undisciplined, slovenly, overeater with no self control. And by the way, so's your Mamma because you probably inherited that fat-DNA from your parental units.

As if that heaping plate of scorn that America heaps upon it larger citizens isn't bad enough, lets now add "infected" to the list.

In fact, research are now discovering evidence that the 60 million Americans defined as obese may in fact have a viral infection contributing to their situation.

Read about the Fat Virus here.

And if you ever learn about a Smart Virus, please email me immediately. I need to catch me some of that!

Suicide Isn't Painless.

I don't care what the words are to the theme song from M*A*S*H. Suicide isn't painless for the people left behind.

After being asked by our Pastor, I decided to help out at church today with a funeral. It was for a 32 year old man who I should have known, but didn't. He killed himself over the weekend, leaving behind two beautiful kids, a boy age 4 and a girl age 7, inconsolable parents and a dazed wife. It was the saddest funeral I've ever seen. I've never witnessed such grief expressed at a funeral.

Afterward I saw a veteran insurance man that I know well. I said, "Al, thank goodness you're here. At least that tells me he's leaving something for his family." Al said they'd be taken care of, and you can always trust Al.

I don't know nearly enough about suicide. The pain may be over for the man, but its just begun for his family. I can't fathom what illness or trouble could have overcome this man. I just know those kids want their father back tonight, and no amount of money can ever replace what they've lost.

Thought for the Day

Dwell not on the past.

Use it to illustrate a point, then leave it behind.

Nothing really matters except what you do now in this instant of time. From this moment onwards you can be an entirely different person, filled with love and understanding, ready with an outstretched hand, uplifted and positive in every thought and deed.

Eileen Caddy

Thoughts on Google Subpeona

You've already heard that the Bush administration has demanded access to Google's ever growing database, which contains an array of information about you and I, and what we search for on the internet. AOL, MSN and Yahoo have already complied, but Google is fighting it. If you haven't heard about it, click here.

Privacy advocates suddenly find themselves in an argument that has been framed thus: Either you're with us, or you're with the pornographers and pedophiles.

Ostensibly, because there are perverts and terrorists in this world, no U.S. citizen should harbor illusions of any semblance of privacy. The government should be able to rumage around in our lives for anything that looks interesting, and given Bush's executive powers, he can find any kind of excuse to lock us up without due process, torture us, shuffle us off to secret prisons, never notify our families, never let us speak to an attorney, not even have to tell us what the charges are. And by the way, he's not subject to any oversight by the judicial or congretional branches.

I hope you've never researached a term paper on "Osama Bin Laden" or searched for "Nude teens" on Google, or you might wake up some morning in a Romanian prison. Yes I am exagerating, but no, I am not making this up. Welcome to the New Evil Empire.

For information businesses like MSN, Google, Yahoo, and Double Click, being based in America with valuable databases means that you can expect to be served an array of invasive subpeonas over time.

In a business where trust and reputation are everything, what does being a stooge for the U.S. government do for your reputation? Not a lot. The 95% of the population of Planet Earth that lives outside of the good ol' USA may not like, for their own personal reasons, knowing that their Google profiles are effectively the property of the US Govt. If Google loses this fight, their global reputation will be forever tarnished.

How long will it be until some of these tremendous global businesses decide that they can easily host these services outside of the U.S.? After all, why even bother with this kind of crap when the expertise and connectivity to run your business exists outside of the U.S.

As the Bush Administration continues to bully the world and stick its finger up the butt-holes of Americans, America will lose its edge in the increasingly competitive world of internet business.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for a decently priced web or email host, check out www.pchighway.com. For a few bucks a month, they'll host your data in Switzerland.

The Re-invented Al Gore

My reaction to Gore's MLK speech:

I just finished listening to the speech, in which Gore basically lays out the points for the prosecution of the President for spying on Americans. If Gore had put as much passion into campaigning for President as he did in his speech to civil rights activists, he would be president today.

Gore nailed it!

The limp pickle former-Democratic presidential candidate seems to have found his groove as a passionate second guesser of the Bush administration. Thank God, someone has stepped up to articulate the anger and sense of betrayal that many Americans feel after learning that Bush has shredded the constitution. Thus far, the only democrats who have opened their mouths on this issue just seem to be ticking people off with their partisan whinning.

As my own Independent political leanings continues to drift further and further from the Republican extremist politics practiced in the White House today (am I drifting, or are they?), I commend Gore on a speech well made. The reaction by independents to his speech were measured as being very favorable.

Though I voted for Bush in 2000 when he briefly floated toward the center, I will be hard pressed to consider a vote for any Republican candidate this year who insists that the president is right in creating a constitutional crisis with his domestic spying agenda.

Perhaps Bush's chummy relationship with Russia's Putin has rubbed the wrong way. Has Bush influenced Putin? It appears that Putin instead has rubbed off on Bush. America is not the Evil Empire, and so Gore is correct to articulate a case against Bush's perversions of presidential power.

Gateway to Hell - or How I restored audio to my MX3560 laptop

The one or two of you who read this blog regularly realize that you never quite know what you're going to find on topic. It might be a reminisce, a father gushing over his kids, an American citizen angry at whatever. It may be interesting, or I might bore you to tears.
I make no appologies, because this just a blog. Thoughts go straight from my little mind to you, with very little editing. For people who like this blog, that's probably the attraction. For those who hate it, that's probably the reason.

Today brings another such rant, but this time I've decided to take on a multibillion dollar corporation. Gateway Computer, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

It has been three weeks since I bought a Gateway MX3560 laptop computer. I was attracted to the compact size, the price, the quality of the screen, the price, the length of time I can run it on the battery, and the price. I also thought it would come with legendary Gateway support, should I ever need it.

I began my descent into frustration and anguish after I upgraded the laptop from XP "Home" edition to XP pro. I also just wanted to get all of that crap off of my PC that Gateway loads it up with: you know, samples of Norton, a trial of AOL, etc.

Upgrading the my MX3560 should have been a no brainer, and would have been if Gateway had posted the correct audio drivers for the machine in their support area. So for weeks, I've been chatting with a guy at Gateway support named Trent. God bless Trent -- he really tried to help. But everything he had me try failed, for no other reason than the drivers were wrong. But after weeks of screwing around with this, I finally had to take matters into my own hands and try to Google an answer. What I discovered is that there are others out there in the same boat that I was in. Many pleas for help, yet no one has definitively posted a cure for this ill.

So today, I am writing this entry in the hopes that I can save at least one gentle soul from the frustration that I went through.

If you are the owner of a Gateway MX3560 laptop, and after installing Windows XP you find that you have no sound, and you've tried everything (including their "automatic" driver installation software) but nothing seems to work, here's the driver you need:

It's called the SoundMax audio driver. The file name on support.Gateway.com is D00188-002-001.exe. Click here, and hopefully you will go to the write place on their website. At present, Gateway does not say that this driver will work with the MX3560, but trust me -- it does. The driver they are giving you is the wrong one.

Look, if a numbskull like me can google an answer to this problem, why can't Gateway? With all of their resource, why should it take weeks and weeks for them to solve this problem? Clearly, I was not the only person having this trouble.

I know that I mentioned price as a major reason for purchasing this laptop. But I'll let you in on a little secret: I would pay 20% more for a laptop that I thought would come with competent technical support. I had always thought Gateway was known for its great "South Dakota" support. That was probably when it was a South Dakota company. Now that's based in San Diego with manufacturing jobs shipped to China (I don't know where Trent was based. If he was Indian, he had a good American accent), perhaps Gateway is now content just to be a lowest-cost manufacturer and to compete as a commodity.

So my parting advice to you is that if you're thinking of buying a Gateway laptop is to base your decision entirely on the price/feature comparison. The Gateway brand no longer represents quality support.

Please excuse me. I need to go writ an email to Trent at Gateway support and tell him how to solve his problem

One down, only four more missing drivers to go.

UPDATE:  If you are unable to install this driver on your PC with Vista/7/8, try running it in Windows XP compatibility mode. I was able to do this successfully. Just right click on the Driver, choose Properties, the click the Compatibility tab. Check "Run this program in compability mode for:" and choose "Windows XP."

If Bird Flu Strikes, What Will You Do?

Bird Flu appears to be spreading quickly in Turkey. It doesn't help that thousands of people are hiding their poultry from health personnel, who are trying desperately to contain the outbreak by slaughtering the birds.

There's been so much attention and hype placed on the bird flu viral threat since last year, that the magnitude of what we're facing is even beginning to sink through to people as thick as myself.

After viewing a PBS documentary about the flu pandemic in the early 20th century, I was left with a decidedly un-American pessimistic feeling that another pandemic is all but unavoidable. The bird flu virus has technologically accelerated means of transportation today that dwarf the transmission potential of its predecessor. With high speed trains, plains and superhighways, the spread of bird flu could be much more rapid and widespread than the earlier pandemic.

So what's your plan? If the bird flu virus begins to spread like wildfire, how will you handle it?

Businesses are unprepared to experience an economic disruption such as this. It's estimated that as many as 40% of workers could be staying at home, either because will be sick or afraid.

Preparing for bird flu should not be associated with the lunatic preparations some people took to survive Y2K. Flu pandemics have been documented in modern times, and are a natural part of the cycle of life. They're like earthquakes -- just a matter of when, not if.

Personally, I've decided that my kids have to come first. If the worse begins to happen, I plan to load up the car and head to our rural lake cabin to sit it out. I intend to pull them out of school and homeschool, and to live off of savings and investments as long as I can, or until the pandemic subsides.

Is this reactionary? Perhaps. But at least I've got a personal plan that I'll hopefully never need to implement.

The bird flu holds the possibility to wreak havoc on our social and economic infrastructure in ways that could far surpass impacts of our recent hurricane season. You and your family and business should begin thinking of a plan, while there's still time. And so should your local, state and federal governments. Any plan of action is better than none.

Let's hope bird flu is the next Y2K.

Cost of the War in Iraq

What's the war in Iraq going to cost you? Well, a study by Professor Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Linda Bilmes, a budget expert from Harvard, concludes the cost could be two trillion dollars.

It's hard to even begin to fathom the problems in this country that we could tackle with a $2 trillion payload?

Ending homelessness?
Curing cancer?
Investing in renewable energy?
Rebuilding our crumbling highway infrastructure?
Paying off the national debt?

If only we had the national will to wage such a war on critical domestic issues, we could be building a country that in twenty years or so would be worthy of our children.

Witnessing the Violence of Iraq from the Homefront

War is never two things: pretty, or cheap.

Americans have been relatively shielded from the horrors of the war. After those fabulous "shock and awe" fireworks and desert-cam images we were treated to at the beginning of the war, ostensibly to convince us that was going to be a cake walk. From where I'm sitting the TV news media has relatively shielded from most graphic and viseral horrors of the war, and its true costs -- both human and financial.

Yes, its understatably sad to see people crying after a bomb has shredded their children to ribbons. Those images tear at our hearts for a moment before the most civilized of us must put them out of minds. To enter the world of sadness of the crying parent would be just terrible for most of us -- its our worst nightmare, and TV gives us just enough distance from the situation so that part of our psyche can pretend that the problem goes away along with the images.

The aftermath is what the media typically capture, because its hard to impossible to catch the news happening in real time, especially in war. There are no press releases issued prior to a bombing or a secret raid. That means that the most shocking images must come to us from the participants in the wars rather than the media.

American troops themselves are purported to have traded digital pictures of mutilated insurgents for access to pornography. And who could forget those aweful pictures from Abu Ghraib.

For their part, the insurgency and terrorists have also shown us incredibly cruel video and photographs of beheadings, mutilations and roadside detonations.

Increasingly, the U.S. media's role in covering the violence of the Iraq war seems to be that of editor: reporting on the existence of these terrible images, and sometimes taking us right up to the most violent moment without showing us the most graphic.

The internet is increasingly disintermediating the editor, but in times of war an editor is exactly what I want. I want to be protected from the violence, the pain, destruction and the suffering. I want to know just enough about what's going on, but not everything. Because if I were exposed fully to the true horrors of Iraq without filtering it through an editor, I am certain that I couldn't handle the truth.

NSA Spying on Americans did not meet a special security need

Today brings more troubling indications that George Bush's blatant bypassing the "checks and balances" of the Federal Surveillance Court has not contributed significantly to America's security interests, but has contributed greatly to American's mistrust of him and the U.S. government.

It has been revealed that more than 18,732 requests to spy have been filed with the Foreign Intelligence Survellience Court since the court's creation in 1979, and only four have been rejected. This further questions George Bush's purported need to bypass the court with his illegal orders to the NSA to spy on Americans, since only the most outrageous requests would ever be rejected. This court, as weak a check it is on the power of the president and the NSA, is all we've got.

Bypassing the court certainly has not met a need that has added to America's security interests, but rather has shredded the U.S. constitution. A country such as America, a country of laws and checks and balances, does not need a dictator to protect its citizens. All this points to some other domestic political goal of the administration.

Yes, of course, the terrorists must be identified and stopped dead in their tracks. And at times of war, some rights and privileges should be placed on hold. Yet, if we let terrorists induce fear which causes our government to turn America into a police state, the terrorists have won. Clearly, the NSA spying on Americans has not contributed to our safety.

The Bush Administration demonstrated with the UN spy-scandal that it would abuse the NSA for political purposes. The door is now wide open for a deep investigation on what the heck is going on. Congress must step up to this challenge.

Bush Used NSA to Spy for Political Purposes

NSA documents show that President Bush used the National Security Agency to wiretap the home and office phones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how UN delegates would vote on a resolution that cleared the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Two former NSA officials say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at Bush's request President Bush. Bush wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Ms. Rice did not respond to our email requests for comment (isn't it still condi@whitehouse.gov?).

Although the preceding isn't completely new information, it will come as a surprise to many Americans. The UN-NSA spying controversy received scant coverage when it leaked out in 2003.

These activities should be closely examined because it shows that President Bush has a history of using the NSA to further his political ambitions. If the NSA was directed to spy on UN delegates for the purose of diving a vote tally, its more than possible that Bush may have directed the NSA to monitor the acitivities of other political adversaries.

Hats off to NASA on 2nd Anniversary of Mars Rovers

Hats off to NASA and its brainiacs for the immensly successful Mars Rover missions. Although the missions were expected to last just 90 days, the Rovers are still roving after two years on the surface of the red planet. They have contributed an amazing amount of knowledge of humankind's understanding of Mars, and probably will continue to for quite some time.

In celebration, I'd like to rerun a column that ran on My Mountain early last year that you missed.

"The Earthings are Attacking!"

Did you hear the news? Human beings want to go to Mars. Like some kind of Martian horror novel in reverse, George Bush announced that he is beefing up NASA in support of a manned mission to Mars. Even the Europeans want in on this one, which makes the initiative credible.

When I was kid watching the Apollo moon missions, the road to Mars seemed very short. It was easy to dream that, perhaps, I would be the first person on the red planet. The pace of technology made it inevitable in our imaginations. We didn't go Mars of course (robotic missions notwithstanding).

The dream I had a child has been vividly handed off to the children of children. Take my kids for instance: where I read comic books about the conquering of Mars, they play their realistic computer games like "Magic School Bus on Mars," and view Mars Rover pictures that provide a level of experience which far exceeds the best my young imagination could muster. But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming middle-aged (41 to be exact) father of three.

Spending time in corporate structures, interacting with other human beings for four decades, and being exposed to human nature has lead to me to this conclusion: I don't think that we should go to Mars.

Not yet, at least.

I'm not convinced that mankind is mature enough to handle it. Humans have not yet shown the ability to respectfully settle new continents, let alone new planets.

Consider how we conquered the natural environment in North America, imposing a grid on the natural landscape, selling it off for profit, and then plowing under an entire natural ecosystem. We are only now beginning to appreciate and understand the value of native prairie grasses and flowers, of song birds, and clean air. Less than 1% of the native grasses in the Great Plains of North America have survived the plow.

Consider the explosion of invasive animal, bird, fish and plant species that has accelerated the loss of what little remains of the native North American environment.

"So what?" you say.

That is exactly my point. Its too late to turn back the clock here on earth. What's done is done, and maybe we can plant some grass here and restock a fish species there and we can feel good about caring enough to do those things, but we can never ever go back.

I think the interests that are driving us toward the exploitation of Mars three decades hence are the same forces that drove us to destroy the North American natural environment. As a species, human beings are too immature to be trusted with full access to Martian resources. We shouldn't go until we have matured.

Here is my test for whether we as a race are ready to go to Mars:
1) Have we put an end to War?
2) Is all of the world's citizens are fed with access to clean drinking water?
3) Do we all have access to health care?
4) Are we supplying our energy needs with non-polluting, renewable resources?
5) Are we educating all of our children?
6) Are we protecting the earth's oceans, forests, prairies, mountains, air and streams from pollution and degrading exploitation?
7) Are we able to celebrate and tolerate our cultural heritages.
8) Are we conscientiously tending our world for the benefit of future generations?
9) Are our current development efforts sustainable, or are we still building huge cities in places where they shouldn't be, such as wetlands, deserts and on top of faults?

If we can do these things, ingraining them within our governing institutions, then perhaps we are ready to go to Mars. Perhaps we won't make a mess out of this new word.

Arriving on Mars will provide humanity with an amazing new opportunity to reinvent itself.
It's an opportunity, like the settlement of North America by Europeans, that can not be repeated. To squander the opportunity to live peacefully and respectfully on Mars, respectful of the natural environment, would speak very poorly about our species.

Lets stay on earth till we get it right. One hell is better than two.

Deficit Reduction Should Not Happen at the Expense of Student Loan Funding

This morning my two-year-old son got the best of me.

My wife went grocery shopping yesterday and picked up a giant box of Lucky Charms breakfast cereal. You know, the one with the little guy who laments, "They're always after me lucky charms!" I don't buy it any more when I do the shopping, because I know the kids will eat all the marshmellows (the "charms") and leave the reast of the fodder to soak (what we call the "luckies"). My kids are charm-pickers.

Pete got his first bowl of Lucky Charms, ate the charms, left the luckies, and then wanted more. "No," I said. "You have to finish the rest of it." He must not have heard me, because when I returned from the bathroom, I found Pete happily sitting on the floor, picking through the contents of the entire giant box of Lucky Charms, looking for the luckies. He offerred me a rainbow charm and let me join in his feast.

The charms are probably the least healthy part of Pete's breakfast, but its his favorite part because they're so tasty. Despite being more nutritious, he'll always leave the luckies to spoil.

In the morning paper, I read that that the U.S. Senate approved a five-year, $40 billion deficit reduction package during the final hours before Dec. 21. The measure is set to pass in the House of Representatives this month, and would cut Medicaid and farm subsidies, among other programs, and is being touted as an example of future spending restraint.

USA Today observed that this attempt at "deficit reduction" is trivial. "$40 billion over five years might seem like a lot, but it pales compared with the $1.1 trillion in cumulative deficits for the same period that the White House projected last summer. It's perhaps 20% of the money Washington will spend to rebuild the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast," the noted in an editorial today.

And $12.7 Billion of this is being cut from Student Loans, while college tuition continues to inflate faster than the personal income of the students and their parents.

It seems to me that in a world of increasing global competition, in a country that must import increase numbers of doctors, scientists, engineers and other educated professionals (the House voted in November to triple the number of H1B Visas), that we should be doing all we can to ensure that numbskulls like my little Pete and workers-in-transition will be able to access the higher education system in this country. That's the best way to help ensure that our economy will have the intellectual resources its needs to compete, and the best way to ensure that Pete won't become any more of a burden than he already is.

Don't be fooled by a couple of insignificant Congressional attempts at "tough decisions" that will "reduce the deficit" but require "sacrifice" from people who don't vote (like the poor, the sick and students). Deficit spending is way out of control, as is the national debt. Since I last commented on the national debt on Dec. 29, it has grown by another $13 Billion.

If we're going to make a difference in bringing in our national debt, then we need to look at where the budget is most out of control. Iraq and the Pentagon are good places to begin the discussion.

While porkbarrel projects may be a delicious charms in Congress's bowl of sugary cereal, America will still need some nutrition in its diet if it is going to remain healthy and viable as a country. Education is nutritional for America, America values education, America needs educated workers, and so education needs to remain accessible to Americans.

EPA Backing off on Toxic Release Reporting will shield polluters

It's great when government works. It doesn't always, but once in awhile they hit a home run. For example, the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory Program (TRI).

For almost 20 years, the TRI program has been successful in making communities around the country safer and healthier by providing critical information on the toxic chemicals released into our land, water, and air. Information like that provided on Scorecard.org allows you a window in to polluters in your community.

But now the Bush administration wants to raise the reporting threshold to 10 times its current level. Moving from annual reporting to every other year reporting, and allowing for less-detailed reporting on persistent, bioaccumlative, and toxic (PBT) chemicals poses a significant threat to our nation's health, safety, and environmental quality. As the United States responds to the effects of Hurricane Katrina, the EPA should recognize that there is a need for sufficient reporting on toxic chemicals released into our environment. And this comes at a time when we are still discovering just how toxic even trace amounts of certain chemicals can be.

American citizens need to retain the right to know what toxic chemicals are being released in their communities. I invite you to join me in voicing the wish to leave our kids a cleaner less-toxic world by urging the EPA to abandon its reduction proposals. Business and the environment have fared pretty well with TRI over the past two decades. Why shoot a horse that is still winning races?

But hurry! January 13 is the deadline for commenting. The Union of Concerned Scientists is providing leadership on this issue. Follow this link to learn more and take action.

The Giant Slurping Sound that Bush Can't Hear

Remember Ross Perot? Some of his greatest contributions to America came in the form of new vernacular. Single handedly he improved the expressiveness of the English language with such classics as "fuzzy math" and "giant sucking sound." The latter expressed what Perot believed we would hear if the U.S. passed the North American Free Trade Agreement:the sound of American manufacturing jobs being sucked across the border to Mexico. In hindsight, it was the suck heard 'round the world as manufacturing jobs poured into China from the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and even Mexico.

Today I'm not gong to debate whether the global economy is a good thing or a bad thing for America. I do, however, want to acknowledge the impact of the Giant Slurping Sound coming from the far east. That is, the sound of China sucking up an ever increasing amount of the world's oil supply.

China's economy is exploding and so is their demand for oil to keep it humming along. Securing oil for their soaring economy and increasingly affluent masses is tremendously important to China, so say the Chinese. China's reliance on net oil import has grown to 11.5 percent from 0.45 percent reported in 1993. The International Energy Agency has predicted China will have to import half of all the oil needed to fuel ts economy by 2010, and the percentage will soar to 60 percent by 2020. It makes sense that the Chinese would try to spend some of their dollar cash horde to acquire energy assets overseas, such as Unocal, to make certain their economy continues to grow.

How does a thirsty China bode for America, who is already the largest single importer of the world's oil? And now with Russia firmly in control of Gazprom and apparently very willing to flex its new energy muscles (as we are witnessing today with Ukraine), the U.S. is standing naked on the world energy stage without a comprehensive energy strategy, ready to ravage any pristine natural resource that holds any small promise to yield a drop of oil. In the three months since Katrina exposed the weakness of our weak gasous underbelly, the initial furor has subsided -- $2.25 per gallon now seems cheap and is accepted.

If you thought $3/gallon was high, just wait until the Chinese economy really gets cooking. We ain't seen nothing yet.

Bush has missed his defining moment. He had the chance to go down in history as one of the great presidents. He could have put a stake in the ground to challenge Americans to move away from fossil fuels in the same monumental way that JFK did when he challenged Americans to undertake the impossible task of putting a human on the moon.

Unless he begins to quickly show some leadership on energy and global warming and unrestrained spending, GWB's legacy will be a bankrupt America, bereft of political clout and a ravaged environment.

This would not be the America that I wish to hand off to my children.

The Dems Missed Opportunity

I was reading how Congress voted to “save” 40 billion by hacking programs for the poor and hacking into student loans programs, when I saw a reference to a UN press release titled, "INDEPENDENT EXPERT ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND EXTREME POVERTY CONCLUDES VISIT TO UNITED STATES"

The investigator found that America, the wealthiest country on earth, with higher per capita income levels than any other country, also had one of the highest incidences of poverty among the rich industrialized nations. The official statistics show that 12.7 per cent (or 37 million) of the population lived in poverty in 2004, while 15.7 per cent (45.8 million) were without health insurance coverage and 11.9 per cent of households (38.2 million people, including 13.9 million children) experienced food insecurity. The statistics also showed a significant disparity in poverty between African Americans (24.7 per cent), Hispanics (21.9 per cent) and non-Hispanic Whites (8.6 per cent). Moreover, despite the overall economic recovery in the United States, the incidence of poverty, including food insecurity and homelessness had been on the rise over the past years.

I don't know why the U.S. democrats haven't jumped all over this indictment of the Bush administration. Perhaps it speaks to the ongoing leadership confusion within the DNC, or perhaps they're just too consumed with the Iraq war to pay attention to domestic issues. That's a mistake Bush made, and the Dems should not hasten to repeat it.