Halloween headlines and scary stats

The St. Louis Post Dispatch had a headline recently that read, "34% of people believe in ghosts; 31% of people believe in Bush". While this is funny, it is a bit scary that 31% of people still believe in Bush. With an election year on the horizon, we need to start a dialogue now and commence action tomorrow. It comes down to this: by the time it is all said and done, we will have spent trillions of dollars on a war in Iraq, yet left our own health care system and schools in dire need. What this amounts to is a lot of unnecessary death, and I'm not just talking about the killing oversees and the lack of adequate health care for people here. Leaving children without quality education is a violent act. (If interested, you could read some of Carl's papers on the subject.) The truth of it is that I am horrified that I am leaving Lily (and many generations to follow) these problems to inherit: foreign politics that make other countries desire retribution, debt beyond repair, an environmental crisis, a promotion of superstition and violence above rationality and a general disregard for the truth. A scary world indeed.