“I’m a person who appeals to women with a variety of issues… I’ve worked to improve mental health and worked to help the mentally ill for over a decade-and-a-half, including when I was in the legislature. Women’s issues are everything women care about and I have an awful lot of issues that I appeal to women on, just as a natural course” (Ken Cuccinelli)
This story broke here on Blue Virginia in March and was picked up by Think Progress. This story is very relevant today and bears repeating. On top of everything else, Ken Cuccinelli equated women and their issues with mental health or lack thereof. But although we should not equate a lack of mental health with all of womankind, or mankind for that matter, mental health is nothing to take lightly. And it is long past time to remove the stigma of mental illness. But let’s be real. With his dubious footing in the real world, Ken Cuccinelli shouldn’t be talking about anyone else’s mental health.
Ironically, though, there is evidence that draconian GOP policies, of which Cuccinelli is one of the harshest and most severe perpetrators of all, are taking their toll on the US population. Indeed, as Thom Hartmann reveals, in the past decade, the suicide rate in America is up.
The fact is, America’s suicide rate is on the rise, and Conservative economic policies are to blame.
In a study released in May, Professors David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu of Oxford University in England found that suicide rates in both the U.S. and U.K. increase when working class wages and wealth decline
But Cuccinelli doesn’t like scientists. He doesn’t like PhDs or professionals. Maybe he’ll try to route these guys out of their fields too. But while Kook is in denial about all things real, the reality is despair is up. Dis-stress is up. It took root in the Bush Recession. And the GOP answer is national gridlock and national and state austerity. The GOP still will not support anything that even remotely supports job growth. It’s national and state leaders still pretend, after more than thirty years of evidence to the contrary that tax cuts equal job growth. And it is just not true. They cut taxes, cut jobs, lower wages, and bring on austerity. It’s downright pathological. And Cuccinelli’s equates mental illness with women?
Meanwhile, instead of real job growth, Cuccinelli seems to think a culture war a war (on women, minorities, those who are LGBT, scientists, teachers, non-evangelicals, and progressives) is the way to go. Cuccinelli doesn’t support mental health. He doesn’t think the citizens of Virginia should get health care at all. He opposes the Affordable Health Care Act and wants its repeal. He doesn’t support Medicare or Medicaid. It’s every woman (or man) for her/himself. So, no, Cuccinelli doesn’t have empathy for those needing care, of either the physical or mental kind.
You have to wonder: How can he be even close to McAuliffe in the polls? Hasn’t the folly of the NC vote for Republican pretend moderate (wolf in sheep’s clothing) Pat McCrory sunk in in Virginia?
With a Tea Party GA, McCrory’s turned NC politics back to the 18th Century in less than a year. Cuccinelli doesn’t even pretend to be a moderate. VA, you are in for one hell of a drop off a cliff if you do not defeat him.
McAuliffe for VA governor.
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