Quirkee.com

The 1984 elections witnessed Senator Gary Hart winning 16 state caucuses to Walter Mondale's 10. Despite a romantic scandal that would have prevented Hart from winning the "Democratic Party's" nomination at the convention, Mondale had already sealed up the votes of the 700 super delegates before the primaries had even begun.

According to an article in The Nation entitled Not So Super Delegates, written by Ari Berman,

"Eugene McCarthy won 79 percent of the vote in the Pennsylvania primary but got less than 20 percent of the state's delegates at the convention. The rest were picked by the party machine. The will of the voters was ignored at the convention, and protesters on the streets outside it were met with clubs and tear gas."

On December 13, 2007, ex-Senator from Maine George Mitchell released a report based on a twenty-month investigation into the use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances. Mitchell generated major media frenzy and public shock when he released the report. He used the term “the steroid era,” to describe the alleged widespread use of these illegal substances over the past decade and beyond. The U.S. Congress has conducted its own investigations into illegal use of these substances. Everyone remembers the giant media circus where members of Congress, led by Virginia Senator Thomas Davis, put Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds on the stand and used the opportunity to berate the players for the use of substances of which many were not banned at the time. Nobody wants to say that steroid or human growth hormone use is acceptable. In fact, the justification for Congress’s involvement is the impact on our youth that idolizes and emulates Major League players and that many have died from the resulting health impacts of using these drugs.

As the clock ticks closer and closer to the primary frenzy that we seem to have been endlessly leading up to, the National polls have indicated a few surprises. The Republican voters have indicated that they are not too happy with their field of choices, which is a surprise based on past elections where the Republican candidate was well supported. Maybe there is a spoiler out there somewhere hiding in the shadows, waiting for the right opportunity to jump into the game. Texas Governor Rick Perry is a possibility, or maybe even Newt Gingrich.

Listen carefully and it sounds like the Bush administrations' drums of war are beating again. One of the latest targets of "concern" for the United States is Iran, one of the original members of "the axis of evil." Maybe in the midst of being disregarded by the Turks and being dumbfounded by President Musharraf's disregard of the warning not to suspend elections, the Constitution, and imprison and beat his opposition, Iran's controversial President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might just be the one to bear the brunt of Bush's anger.

The U.S. Military in March of 2005 changed its doctrine on when to use a nuclear strike to include preemptive efforts against non-nuclear states. The political machine that lead us charging to take out Saddam has been aggressively persuading the world that Iran is a country that is headed for nuclear weapons development, is sponsoring terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, and is guilty of supplying arms to Shia militia fighting the U.S. lead military efforts in Iraq. The worlds' energy future is at stake and nearly 40% of the daily oil consumption passes right through the Strait of Hormuz. It is no surprise to many Americans to hear that Bush may want to attack Iran on the same grounds he attacked Iraq.

Remember doing the craziest things you could think of like jumping off a roof in the dark, or stealing your parents' car for a joy ride when they were out? If you do, then it was not really that unusual for your teen or young adult brain to think that way. I was a perfect angel during my teen years and I never got into any trouble or did anything crazy.

Brain scientists, (I love that word) have indicated that the frontal lobe of the brain is the last part of the brain to develop. The frontal lobe is said to be fully developed by age 25. It controls higher reasoning and logic related to behavior. Look at most of the extreme games type athletes that race a 16 inch wheeled bike down a vertical ramp 50 feet in length and then launch over a 75 foot gap while upside down scratching their ass. They must be crazy or something because I have seen the footage of how it looks facing down that ramp. My broken older body and developed brain scream danger at me. It’s not just close your eyes and go for it. It’s open your eyes wide and get off on the rush of adrenaline that courses through the undeveloped brain. My developed brain will release adrenaline also, but it’s more like the kind of adrenaline you feel when you look in your rear view mirror to see flashing police lights.

Many Southern California communities have suffered the tragic results of the worst wildfire in history. Hot weather and low humidity combined with drought conditions to make the entire area ripe for disaster. Add in a slice of Santa Ana winds with gusts up to 65 miles per hour and the inevitable happened. Fires broke out overnight in two places on Sunday October 23, 2007. During the night, the winds picked up hot embers and carried them off to start new fires. By Monday morning, there were over 8 major wildfires burning out of control threatening heavily populated areas. Huge areas 100 square miles and more encompassing more than 500,000 families were evacuated. Flames ended up blazing through many multi-million dollar homes leaving nothing but ash and dust in their wake.

Health care coverage has evolved around the world. Many countries, including our neighbors to the North have socialized medicine. The United States is currently ranked 37th in overall health care performance. We spend more on technology and treatment than any other country and we still come up less healthy. We spend more than $6,000 per capita, which is twice as much as any country. The strong connection between a nations' health and its productivity are too strong to ignore.

The Clinton's tried and failed to bring about universal health care during the 1990's. It is majorly weighing on the minds of the people in America and continues to be a major issue in the race to the white house. Major employers like GM for example, are reporting losses due to health care expenses. How can small and big businesses compete when it costs more to pay for health care than they are making? It's the same old story of corporate greed and profit impacting the quality of life. The drug and health care companies are responsible for the killing of the health care initiative of the 1990's.

According to Divorce Magazine about 59% of the US population is married, down from 62% in 1990, and 72% in 1970. The number of married people is declining, but the divorce rate has gone up. In fact, the percentage of the population that is divorced has reached 10%, up from 8% in 1990, and 6% in 1980. By age 55 95% of the population will have married. The real focus of these statistics is the impact the divorce rate has on the children.

Many children of divorced families go on to face challenges that children with both parents in the same household do not face. Growing up is hard enough alone without the added stress of separated families, stepparents, and living in different houses with a different parent and different norms. The societal norms have evolved since the 1970's where women were usually granted full custody. Some really conservative states have even enacted legislation intended to protect the "best interest" of the children. States can't control parents' decisions to divorce or to separate if they are not married, but they can reduce the negative impact on society by recommending parental guidelines aimed to produce functioning members of society, not patients in hospitals with padded walls or in jail or prison. The newly evolved guidelines are based on the recommendations of psychologists, psychiatrists and child advocates to name a few. The terminology used in the courts of most states is "rebuttable presumption." It means that it is presumed that both parents are fit and capable to have custody of the child unless proven otherwise. It is considered a rebuttable presumption that Joint Custody represents the best interests of the child or children.

Democratic presidential hopefuls descended upon Iowa for another nationally televised debate Sunday August 19th, 2007. Next year at this time, we will still have a few more months until the election. That will make this election the longest running infomercial in world history. Watch out George Foreman and Ronco. With the way presidential campaigning has taken a front row to most other news in the world, it is possible to convince yourself that the election is the most important current event, even overshadowing the profitable "mess" we have going on in Iraq. The demographics of the United States is very well mapped out into lovely colors from the rainbow, blue and red, making it clear that divide and conquer works well.

Ideologically the Republican and Democratic parties are different with the key issues of gun control, military spending, taxation, abortion, and gay marriage making up the public's view of the battle lines. Some folks would even say that the Republicans represent big business and world financial institutions, the status quo. The characterization of the Democrats is that they are the party of the people. When the voting records are tallied however, there has consistently been amazing similarities in the results. Are the leaders that skilled at unifying the parties despite their orientation or does it suggest the reality of a single party system that is designed by and maintained by the rich for the rich? People often talk about the need for a third party, but I heard the phrase Demopublicans, as the new name for the single party we have. It's not just voting records that indicate the similarities. Take campaign finance and dig just below the surface and sadly to oversimplify the situation like a 9th grade English class discussion of theme, but the theme is the pharmaceutical, insurance, and financial lobbyists have established a system where their wealth and access to power and decision making processes have destroyed the concept of representative democracy. This leads us back to the Democratic debate. I did not watch the entire broadcast and stopped taking notes after a while because I got a little bored and could just go to each of the candidates' web sites and make a nice collection of sound-bytes if I really wanted to report what they said. During one of many quick nap/daydreams I could swear I heard someone say, "Not only do you get the handy, experienced candidate of change, if you act now, you too can get a purple, ink-stained finger to prove to everyone that democracy still exists. What are you waiting for? Operators are standing by now to take your call."