I am normally not a writer to the fine editorial page of the Daily; however, the Bush regime’s latest hallucination left me no choice but to voice my opinion.

The Bush regime and its ancillaries like Fox News Channel are taking on a new cause. They are attempting to brainwash the American public into giving the administration a blank check to carry out its extreme right-wing agenda by their insistence that President Bush gained a mandate in the latest presidential election. I heard that Bush had a mandate at least five different times on a recent episode of Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes” and have heard it countless times before and since.

The fact of the matter is that “W” does not have anything close to a mandate. Yes, Bush got the most popular votes in American history. However, guess who got the second most popular votes in American history? The answer is John Kerry. The final popular vote distribution was 51 percent to 49 percent. Is that a mandate? I think not. The right-wing quacks are constantly showing an electoral map of states and/or counties that voted for Bush or Kerry.

Yes, in those maps, there is much more Bush red than Kerry blue. However, those maps are an exercise in deception. The electoral vote is not based on how much geographic area you can cover (Republicans consistently win the geographically very large but sparsely populated northern Rocky Mountain states), but how much population as distributed through the states you can win. The final Electoral College vote count was 286-251. Is that a mandate? I think not. I call Ronald Reagan’s 49 states versus Walter Mondale’s one state plus the District of Columbia in the 1984 presidential election a mandate.

People who don’t agree with the Bush regime’s policies need to speak up. There are a great many of us, approximately half of the voting-age citizens of this country. However, if we were to listen to the Bush spin machine, we could begin to think that we are a miniscule minority. Don’t let that happen, our future depends on it.

Tony Crnic

Senior

Accounting