Nov 6, 2004

WASHINGTON — Bruised but unbowed by labor’s failure to oust George W. Bush in the Nov. 2 election, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told a news conference here that the movement will “fight like hell” to stop Bush’s ultra-right agenda in his second term. click here for Spanish text

Editorial

This is a deeply divided country. Out of some 114 million votes, George W. Bush garnered just over 3 million more than John Kerry. Bush will claim a mandate for his extremist agenda. Hell, he claimed a mandate when he grabbed the White House in 2000 by one Supreme Court justice vote. But the reality is at least half the country is against him.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Tabare Vazquez, a former mayor of this capital city, won Uruguay’s presidential election Oct. 31, becoming the nation’s first leftist leader and strengthening a regional shift toward left-leaning governments.

CLEVELAND — Before sunrise at the Aurora School in Bedford City east of Cleveland, nearly 100 voters lined up in the rain.

“It’s never been this crowded this early. I’m impressed,” said Camille Huffman, 38, a bank worker who has been voting in the area since she was 18.

Close to 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion, according to a groundbreaking report published online, Oct. 29, by a British medical journal, The Lancet. More than half of the deaths were women and children, according to the report, the first scientific study of the invasion’s effects on Iraqi civilians. click here for Spanish text

TOLEDO, Ohio — For weeks, voting rights activists in Ohio had been saying they didn’t want their state to be “another Florida,” defined by vote suppression and massive malpractice by election officials. But in the end, it was.

NASHUA, N.H. — In a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats, voters in New Hampshire gave its electoral votes to Sen. John Kerry and threw out their GOP governor, Craig Benson, to elect Democrat John Lynch.

In California, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer won a third term by a whopping 58 percent to 38 percent margin over Republican challenger and former Secretary of State Bill Jones, despite the support Jones received from Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

TAMPA, Fla. — One of the bright spots in Florida was the passage of the amendment for an increase in the state minimum wage, starting at $6.15 an hour and beginning six months after enactment.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — One of the big positives about the get-out-the-vote operation here was the number of volunteers. America Coming Together expected 300 people and 700 showed up before Nov. 2 and 1,400 on Election Day itself. Many were high school and college students or union members.