"Change" is the term that at least two of the Presidential hopefuls are running on. But I got to thinking today, do we really need a change in Washington?

Let's see what's happened in the last eight years...[br]

• We're in the longest war in the nation's history, with no "victory" in sight. Almost 4,000 of our youngest generation have been killed and almost 50,000 more injured, many with lifelong disabilities. So far the Iraq war has cost each American family the better part of $10,000, with the cost escalating.
  
  
  
• We've gone from almost a $3 trillion surplus in the federal Treasury to almost a $10 trillion deficit. We are now the world's biggest debtor nation by far.
  
  
  
• The value of the U.S. dollar is now at its lowest point in history. Foreigners are visiting and buying up assets here in the U.S. at a record pace while Americans have to think twice about a foreign vacation.
  
  
  
• Forty million Americans have no health care insurance while the cost of healthcare has been projected to double by the year 2017.
  
  
  
• Even though virtually all the financial experts say that Social Security will be insolvent within a couple of decades, our federal elected officials have made no move to resolve the problem.
  
  
• Our children's educational standards continue to decline. American kids rank below the top 25 countries in standardized tests at the high school level. Our legislators and elected leaders pontificate when American companies move jobs offshore, oftentimes saying that they simply can't get qualified and trained people to do the jobs here in the U.S.
  
  
  
  
• Some of our elected leaders produce repeated soundbites objecting to "amnesty" for the 10-20 million people who have entered the U.S. illegally. Yet anyone with any common sense would conclude that it would be next to impossible to actually catch the illegals and send them home. And if we did, no one even mentions who would fill all the fruit-picking, maintenance, food service, construction and manufacturing jobs the illegals are currently performing. It's pretty easy to figure out what might happen here in The Villages if every worker who speaks little or no English suddenly disappeared. Think about it. And by the way, some experts have estimated that there has been little or no decline in the rate of illegal immigration into the U.S. That's notwithstanding more pontificating by our representatives about new and tougher border security
  
  
• We've spent billions on "homeland security", yet almost every group who tries to demonstrate the inadequacies of say, airport security, are successful. Heck, several reporters were able to get bomb-making materials into LaGuardia Airport awhile back, then put them together and produced an explosion. And let's not even get started on whether we could deal with another Katrina.
  
  
  
  
• Last but not least, by my count a little less than 5% of the members of the U.S. Congress have been indicted, convicted and sentenced, or are currently under federal investigation for various forms of fraud and influence peddling. And I haven't even begun to count the members of the Executive branch who have been similarly dealt with.

So the question on the table for each of us as we proceed into the election "season" seems to be...Is change in Washington really needed?

Someone convince me of what's going so well that change isn't needed...a LOT of it!