Earlier tonight, Greg Borowski over at All Politics Watch posted an interesting entry about polls showing Tommy Thompson continuing to trail his opponents in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Saturday’s Iowa Republican Party straw poll looms over Thompson’s campaign like a black cloud, because Governor Thompson has made it abundantly clear the straw poll is a “make or break” event for his campaign. Thompson has said he needs to finish first or second in order to be able to continue his campaign, and the polling I’ve seen shows Thompson finishing well out of the top three.

Tommy Thompson’s based his whole campaign around Iowa, and while he’s got a low-key, down to earth speaking style that could really resonate with Iowans, he suffers from being the less charismatic than Mike Huckabee, who has a really similar style of speaking. Those the same conservatives who would probably support Thompson for his down to earth speaking style and personality are instead flocking to Mike Huckabee, who has that “aw shucks” thing down pat, with the main difference between him and Tommy Thompson being that Huckabee doesn’t seem like as much of a boob as Tommy Thompson. I think it’s safe to say Tommy Thompson won’t finish in the top four in the Iowa straw poll, and I expect to see him drop from the race shortly after the results are announced.

During my scan of the interwebs, I happened to come across one article and one news brief related to autism that I felt were worth sharing here.

The first is a news brief from Greater Milwaukee Online discussing Governor Jim Doyle’s plan to be part of a rally Tuesday in Milwaukee with 200 autistic children, their families, teachers, health care providers and others who work with those with autism. The rally is in support of a measure currently under consideration in the State Senate that would mandate health insurance companies provide coverage for autism treatment. Currently, autism is classified as an emotional disorder by insurance companies, as opposed to being classified as a neurological medical condition. This provides health insurance companies with a convenient excuse to avoid having to pay for autism treatment, which in most cases can total tens of thousands of dollars a year.

The refusal by insurance companies to provide coverage for autism treatment means that even folks who have health insurance are forced to rely on Medicaid to provide autism treatment. Having to rely on Medicaid means having to deal with the unimaginably long waiting lists to get such treatment, and I fail to understand why I should have to wait over 11 months to get my son the help he needs simply because my insurance company wants to save a few bucks. I know I’m being selfish because my son’s affected by autism, but I fail to understand why I pay health insurance premiums only to have my health insurance provider tell me, “No Thanks” when it comes to helping get my son the help he so desperately needs. I think it’s an absolute travesty that someone with health insurance should have to rely on public assistance to get help for their child, and this situation is a perfect example of why we need comprehensive health care reform here in America.

The second article I came across today happened to be on Time.com. The article outlines a new study due to be released soon that contends that autism may be caused by watching too much television at a tender age. Now I don’t know how much stock to put in the results of the study, simply because the study itself didn’t actually measure the amount of television being watched by children; it merely looked for a connection between autistic children, weather patterns, and a cable television hookup in the home. I’m certainly no expert on autism, but I tend to believe there’s no one easy answer as to what causes autism, or why there’s been such an explosion of diagnosed autism cases.