Bush lost this election

Post election;
The Bush Regime lost an election. They still hold power. The election victory gives us the opportunity to begin to restore democracy and the constitutional system which has been under assault for the last six years. The Congress, however, can do little to stop a war short of cutting off funding. The Democrats are not about to cut off funding.
What they can do is hold hearings into the corruption and mismanagement of the war.

Jerry Mc Nerney won against corrupt Richard Pombo for Congress. Campaign stops by George Bush and Laura Bush did not change this race. A great victory.

Charley Brown lost a close race to John Doolittle. In spite of corruption charges, Doolittle was re-elected.
I hope that Charley Brown runs again. As demonstrated by the Mc Nerney win, you can run once, build your base, and continue the fight. Perhaps Doolittle will be indicted. Corruption is an important issue. Doolittle’s connection to the exploitation of near slave labor in the Marriana islands is an important issue.

The Doolittle victory raises a question for me. I am trying to understand the righteous evangelicals and Mormons. ( I don’t know if Mormons are included in the concept Evangelicals. It seems to me they would be. They are active evangelizers.) A friend explained it to me. Mormons would be fundamentalists rather than evangelists.

I can not tell if the conservative evangelicals are morally conservative people voting their conscious. Or, as seen in the work of Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff, Tom Foley, Ted Haggart, John Doolittle, and others, does this evangelical coalition include both the morally righteous and plain old hard right wing bigots pretending to take a moral position?

I suspect both are under this blanket.
It is not a viable political position in most areas to be an open bigot. So, bigots have found a way to appear as the morally righteous in right wing campaigns and the evangelical movements. It must be uncomfortable for the religious conservatives - the faithful- when their elected leaders reveal such corruption. John Doolittle received strong support from the religious conservatives while demonstrating corruption.
A major difference between Doolittle and Pombo was that Pombo had strong opposition from a wide sector of the environmental community.

Prop. 89. Public funding of elections. We were clobbered. But, we still need public funding to break the dependency on corporate money and to take back our government from the corporations. The California Nurses Association (CNA) did great work putting this initiative on the ballot. I am a veteran of the United Farm Workers efforts on Prop. 22 and Prop. 14. Sometimes the good guys lose in elections.

Note: in the last two months this blog has been overwhelmed by election news and views.
Now, we can return to again covering public education as well as political views. there is much to be done, starting with seeking adequate funding for k-12 education.
Duane Campbell