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Champaign Trail:
Kerry Edwards 04
Bush Cheney 04

PH News: October 2004 Edition
The following is the Issue of PH News that came out in October, from our archives. PH News Issues come out on the first day of every month in print. They come out a half a month or so late in electronic form.

Election 2004

Dr. Dirk Philipsen and Dr. Wesley Hogan
PH News Writers

The stark election moonscape appears forlorn to most everyone. There stands Kerry, a centrist-right wedded to corporate money. Only a vote for him can prevent a stampede by the "R" party – the Rich, the Religious Right, and the cultural Reactionaries. None of the important topics are on the table of the Republicrats.

First, we need to talk about money and how it's organized. How are we to achieve some level of economic equity, when seventy-four percent of Americans are working longer hours for less money than in the 1980s, not to mention that by now less than 500 of the richest people in the world—many of them Americans—own more wealth than over one half of the entire global population combined? Second, Kyoto-Schmeeoto. We need to put our current course of environmental suicide on the political table. While it would be prudent to plan for the seventh generation, at this point even planning for our grandchildren's energy, food, water, and air supply would be radical. Third, the U.S. government squandered the entire surplus of international sympathy post-9/11.  Instead the W. government speedily crushed new opportunities for a more stable and just international system by invading Iraq, alongside a small Coalition of the Bribed and Coerced. Killing tens of thousands of civilians in an unprovoked war, fought outside of international protocol against a country that caused no danger to us marks it as indefensible.

Fourth, real women's issues are not present anywhere. Not anywhere. In neither major party is anyone talking about women and work: availability of decent jobs, family choices that empower, healthcare and childcare that is feasible, pay equity, or the ongoing struggle against sexual harassment and assault. Fifth, neither Kerry nor Bush speak to quality of life issues for the eighty-five percent of the population who lack access to one or all of the following essentials:  healthcare, good schools, college, job security, retirement, healthy & affordable childcare, physical safety, green space, and a quality family/community life. Sixth, where is the plan to address the fact that we have burned up and wasted two generations of African American kids through "sharecropper education," hyper-segregated urban neighborhoods, and the prison system? No one is talking about it but progressives like bell hooks and Barbara Lee, shouting out from the far corners of marginality. If that gaping hole in the national discourse is not appalling, what is?

Finally, somebody needs to put it out there as a Major Political Issue:  we have no Reflection Time. How can we figure out what is important and what is not when most of us are exhausted and frantic during our waking hours?  Americans now work about 390 hours on average more per year than Western Europeans.   And then we commute, drive kids to soccer, fill out forms, chase after health insurance claims or languish in the ER if we don’t have insurance….and on and on. 

Desperate for a clear indicator of personal success, we measure our achievement by what brand of car we drive or what kind of mustard or mayonnaise we use. This intellectual and spiritual impoverishment leaves us drained and empty, and many end up in front of their flat screen TV happy to watch 249 channels of drivel all the way into the Neverland of sleep.  We consume it all so well.  Yet the central question for Election 2004 is wholly ignored in Bush v. Kerry:  What kind of society are we producing?
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Dirk Philipsen is an associate professor of history at VSU, and founder of the ISRR. Wesley Hogan is an assistant professor of history at VSU.

Fall Food

Dr. Renée A. Hill
PH News Writer

     As the days become softer with a chill around the edges, I look forward to the warmth of autumn foods served in a room with a crackling fire and close friends.  As my dear friends gathered around the fire in our aluminum trashcan, we roasted tofu hot dogs on coat hangers, picking fallen hot dogs out of the ashes in the bottom of the trashcan, and laughing with delight as we scraped the rust from the hangers off of our food.  I love fall and fall food, and that is why I am sharing this special autumn recipe with all of the readers of PH NEWS.

Renée’s Recipe for Fall Dessert

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 set of car keys
• 1 car with ½ tank of gas (Go with your own preference here; some people like more, some less. Experiment.)
• A trip to Ukrop’s.

PROCEDURE:

• Warm oven to 325 degrees. Drive to Ukrops and walk directly to the Bakery section.  Pick up an apple pie.
• Experience has taught me that paying for it is best; otherwise, it may be a long time before you can enjoy your pie, especially if you have previous offenses.
• Drive home and warm the pie in the oven, assuming that the house did not burn down while you were gone.
• Cut and arrange attractively on paper towels.  Serves 8.

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Renée A. Hill is an associate professor of philosophy at VSU.

FYI:

• Due to the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban and Congress’s refusal to renew it, 19 different assault weapons are now legal, even though 68% of Americans favored the ban.
   

• Genesis smashed into the Utah desert at nearly 200 mph due to a parachute malfunction. The unmanned space craft was supposed to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, deploy its parachutes, and drift slowly down until, in midair, a helicopter flown by a Hollywood stunt pilot snagged it. Well, NASA, you should have seen that coming.

Quotes

“He failed to tell you the truth. You deserve better. The Commander in Chief has to level with the troops and the nation.”
-JOHN KERRY, speaking about Bush at a National Guard conference in Las Vegas.

“I’m extremely angry, bitter, upset. I fell cheated. Should I go on? I just feel robbed.”
-SERENA WILLIAMS, commenting about calls made by the chair umpire, after losing to Jennifer Capriati at the US Open.

“It’s beyond pitiful, it’s beyond embarrassing. It’s now in the zone of dangerous.”
-SEN. CHUCK HAGEL, referring to statistics showing that only 6% of the money meant to be spent on the reconstruction of Iraq has in fact been spent.

“Look what they did to Richard Clarke. Look what they did to Paul O’Neill…If they don’t like the message, beat up the messenger.”
-KITTY KELLY, author of a book on the Bush family that has been widely criticized by Republicans.