Over the last 20 years, breast cancer alone has claimed more American lives than the Vietnam and Korean wars, World War I, and World War II combined. In the 1940s, the lifetime risk for breast cancer was 1 in 22. Today that has nearly tripled to 1 in 8, and growing. It's becoming a "rite of passage" for womanhood, but not just for older women.

Breast cancer is now the leading cause of death among women ages 34 to 44. In 2003, an estimated 211,000 women were diagnosed with the disease and 40,000 died from it. Every two minutes a woman is being told she has breast cancer, and every thirteen minutes a woman dies from the disease.

It's time to take the For Sale sign off the White House.

Since the mid-1990s, insufficient funding and the "soft," unregulated money blitz by both major parties has jeopardized the integrity of the presidential public financing system. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold law) helped by removing the soft money for the general election, but hurt by doubling the "hard," individual contribution limits to $2,000 per election. This doubles the influence for wealthy donors, but provides no increase to the public funds.

Every three minutes a woman will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. Five will die of breast cancer every hour. Since 1940, a woman's risk of getting breast cancer has doubled. More have died of breast cancer over the past 20 years than all the Americans killed in WWI, WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined.