To me the biggest issues that should decide Election 2014 (and hence, who controls the Senate) are not being talked about. At all. Which is inexplicable to me.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a gathering of hundreds of scientists from over 80 countries. And here is their warning to the humans of planet Earth: there's a 95% certainty that climate change is causing "irreversible and dangerous impacts" and that human activity is to blame.
There will be wars in some countries, in the not too distant future, over food. There already are devastating storms and wild weather changes, and at some point insurance companies will be unable to cover losses when flooding and other environmental devastation becomes too much for them to bear. Property damage will be horrible, but what about the resulting loss of life? Human life, wildlife, plant life... climate change literally has a scorched earth policy.
But apparently that's not what voters are worried about. In 2014 voters are worried about... Ebola. Yep, a disease while, albeit awful and even life-threatening to those who have contracted it, still affected in this country fewer people than you have fingers on one hand.
Apparently there are people who think Democrats are to blame. Personally, I blame CNN (and other media outlets like it), where it's all Ebola, all the time, for spreading panic when there are numerous other things they should be reporting on. Like the 300,000+ people who marched in New York City this past September to call attention to climate change. Bet you didn't hear butkus about that in the media! If they had given that topic one-tenth of the coverage they've given Ebola, some people might actually start to get it. Instead, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets continue their anti-environmental nonsense with impunity.
And then there's the women's vote. Never mind that Republicans are still not willing to vote for a bill that simply says women should be paid the same as men for the same work. But hang on, men from our country aren't the only ones who want women to be undervalued and underpaid! Click here for an article on Evan Thornley, Australian co-founder of LookSmart, who admits that women aren't paid equally to men, and proved it with a presentation including a slide titled "Women: Like Men, Only Cheaper." I wish I were kidding about that one.
How about abortion and birth control rights? That has largely disappeared from discussion this election cycle. The Republicans, meanwhile, aren't backing off from their view that women shouldn't concern their pretty little heads with such things. Men (many of whom don't know how birth control or a woman's body parts work in the first place) will tell us what to do with our bodies, even in cases of life-threatening conditions such as ectopic pregnancies, while they continue to get Viagra, penile implants and penis pumps paid for by Medicare.
Why a woman would vote for a Republican is simply beyond my comprehension, but that party is inexplicably making headway with my gender. Any woman who would vote for someone who doesn't want women treated the same as a man in the workplace, and who wants to control what she does with her body, is a traitor to her gender in my opinion. It's time for women to wake up and realize that for all their talk of "family values," the party that values them and their opinions the most is not the GOP.
