Kids These Days

We all do it. We take a look at the headlines, hear the stories coming out of our schools, see a kid crying in the grocery store, and then we lament on the good old days when kids had respect for adults, cared about their futures, and were afraid to defy their parents. Kids these days! Where is this country heading?

Yesterday I got my first real taste of the new school year at my now annual late summer editor's meeting and woke up this morning with one thought on my mind. If only these kids were running our country instead of Congress, we might have a chance...there might be some hope.

Sure, they get a little gaga over One Direction and giggle and whisper when boys come past the room, but if you were in that room yesterday, you might have been surprised by what you heard.

Topics of conversation included the audacity of Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" flap, the need to elect leaders by popular vote rather than the glorified board game known as the Electoral College (they even knew why the electoral college was set up in the first place), and the tragic state of our nation when one choice seems a bit weak-willed to do the job to them while the other seems to lack the compassion they'd like from their leader.

What's more amazing about the eight young ladies I sat with yesterday is what they are about to do. By the end of the year, they will have published a 224 page yearbook that will more resemble a catalog for a prestigious art school than a high school publication. At the same time, they will publish eight issues of a newsmagazine that, if only we could afford color, would make you think you were flipping through Vogue or Rolling Stone. They will be in charge of its content and production, and even have supervisory duties over the rest of the staff. They will have just one to two weeks to write a full feature story and maybe less to design their spreads with the pressure of knowing that being late for yearbook plant deadlines could cost the program thousands of dollars. (It costs about $35,000 to produce a yearbook these days by the way.) These same students are cheerleaders, singers, dancers, and even ukulele players who will be enrolled in several AP courses, some for actual college credit. And that's not even getting into the home lives some of them have to overcome.

You probably haven't accomplished feats that impressive since, well, high school.

So while it's easy to look at the headlines and listen to the complaints of parents, teachers, and administrators, know that you're not getting the full picture. I will have around 100 students this year. Three to five will impress me to the point where I just know they will go on to make the world a better place. They will totally knock my socks off. I will grow to adore another ten to twenty. At least half of them will do fairly well at their jobs of being students. A quarter of what's left will truly want to do well, they will try their best, but lack of skills or various conditions will prevent them from doing so. And in the end, only a handful will truly try to make my life difficult and show that they simply don't fit in an academic setting. And of that handful, only two or three will be the type you see in the headlines and on television that make you worry about the future of our country.

Now look at the Senate. One hundred full-grown adults elected to lead our nation. Can you say the same about that group of one hundred? I rest my case.

Now look at your community. While the kids at my high school are collecting piles of toys for needy children, what are the adults around you doing to help those less fortunate? While the kids at my school are staying late to work on their yearbook spreads, going straight to cheerleading practice, tutoring for National Honor Society, having a very late dinner, then staying up until two to three o'clock in the morning to get their homework done for an AP course load, what are your adult neighbors doing? While my editors spent a week of summer vacation at a yearbook camp, planned the ladder for a 224 page publication, redesigned templates for a newsmagazine, and worked on writing summer articles so we would have something to put on our website when school opened, how did those adults around you spend their time off from work?

Sure adults give back, work overtime, and take work home on weekends and vacations. The point isn't that these kids are somehow better than adults. The point is that they aren't what you might think they are, and I have a front row seat every day to see the truth.

You may look at the class of 2013, throw up your arms, and ask, "My God, is this the future of America?"

But I look at the class of 2013 and say without hesitation, "Thank God, this is the future of America!" If only we don't ruin them between now and then.

And if you still think there was some magic day where teens were more respectful, more civic minded, and stayed out of trouble, just look at the classic 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause. This is a movie from those golden years when everything was roses, sunshine, milk, and honey. Yet there we are following three teens who all end up in jail on the same night. But that movie is about the poor parenting those teens received you say? About how the adults failed them? About how they are misunderstood?

Well, I guess some things never change.

"Disposable Teens"

Let's Get Political...

With so much going on in the world, I'm not sure what to blog about. The Olympics? Too boring. NFL training camp? Now there's some real sports, but it's pretty quiet in Giants world. Michelle Bachman? Sure, if I were writing a comedy routine, I'd start right there, but she's quickly proving her irrelevance. Revisions on my book? That's going smoothly, so not much to tell there. I only write about my writing when I'm whining about something. I've got an agent meeting on Friday with an agent that seems perfect for everything I'm trying to do in my first book, but I've gotten excited about those before, and here I sit unpublished. So we'll just let go and let God on that one.

So what to write about?

I think I won't be timely. Let's look 100 days in the future, as all those emails from every Democrat in America are asking me to do. Election 2012! I was doing some research around the web, looking at poles, maps, reading articles, even checking out data on Tweets and followers for both candidates. The fact of the matter is, as much as the media is trying to make a story out of every little thing on the campaign, it's not much of a story at all. This is looking like another incumbent cruises to victory kind of election, and the media must hate that. Well, unless you Keith Olbermann, and then you're ecstatic. Your guy wins.

I imagine it's time for the FOX News crew to start manufacturing things to bring Obama down, never mind the fact that all past attempts have failed. Let's face it, Hillary Clinton did a better job of vetting Obama than any Republican could. And MSNBC will get in on it too, focusing more on where Obama is vulnerable, they'll probably call it white-voters-buyers-remorse or something like that. Anything to scare liberals into thinking Romney has a chance in order to help Obama gain votes and keep people interested in their news coverage. Maybe they'll highlight voter suppression or something like that.

I think back to 2008 when Keith Olbermann did the basic math about half way through the night and was all like, "With California certain to go to Obama, hasn't he already won?" and Chuck Todd chastising him with something like, "Shut up Olbermann, we still have two hours left of coverage!" These are paraphrases, of course. Don't quote me on this (or anything ever).

Either way, 270towin.com, my favorite source for election hanky panky, has Obama as a 94% chance of winning, and there's nearly as good a chance of a freakish tie as there is of Romney winning. Basically, if you really focus on the maps, all Obama has to do is win Virginia OR Ohio OR Florida OR Iowa (Iowa, for crying out loud!). Obama is polling well in Ohio, close in VA, and has a shot in Florida and Iowa. I think the key to the new electoral reality we're facing is Pennsylvania. I remember during the Bush elections we used to call PA a swing state as much as Ohio and Florida, a key chunk of electoral votes. Now it is solid blue, probably with the help of Joey-B.

The website runs 10,000 simulated elections daily based on crunching state-by-state polling numbers and other trends, and Obama wins 91% of the time. The mean, median, and mode for his electoral votes in those simulations is 303, a number I'm comfortable with and expect may be the count, unless Romney makes even more "gaffes" before election day and Obama takes North Carolina and Florida too. Right now I have the most Obama could take up in the 340's, with the absolute most Romney could take at 276. That means that even with Romney taking the popular vote and winning all the states that even Obama has a slight lead in right now, he would just barely make the 270 necessary to be president.

Other sites seem to agree. I've seen projections of 290, 303, and 274 safe for Obama at various polling sites across the internet. That's the safe number with the possibility for more. So while the national polls are showing a close race, with quite a few undecided, we don't elect presidents nationally. A candidate could have a national lead by winning by large margins in states he was going to win anyway, but losing very close elections in the states he loses, but if he loses those close battles in key states and enough of them, he loses the electoral college. Ask Al Gore all about that.

So, unless something drastic comes out on Obama or happens in the next 98 days, the 98% are going to be celebrating four more years of Barack-n-roll in the White House. And truthfully, with all that Obama has weathered, and all the attempts at using his past and his various connections to bring him down, if a surprise is coming our way, it's coming from Mittens, not Obama. Just think about those tax returns that must be so damaging that taking the hit for not bringing them out is less of a political setback than letting us see them.

The good news is that if the political nonsense of false promises that can't possibly be followed through on has got you down, you now have my permission to quit watching. No matter how much the cable news networks try to hype the race, it's a foregone conclusion the incumbent is going to win yet again. If you want political drama, watch the race for the House and Senate. Most have the Senate at a tie, with VP Biden breaking the tie, and I've seen equally reliable predictions for both the Dems taking back Congress and the GOP making major gains on their majority. And let's face it, there's a lot more at stake with who is making the laws than who is signing them. We've seen already that no matter what progressive agendas the President wants to push, it doesn't matter with a block-and-blame Congress.

If the Democrats take back the law-making body of government, and have Obama in the White House to put the stamp of approval on their legislation, we could see some of the most innovating, controversial, and history-making legislation of all time. We are ripe with debate in this country, and a sweep of the Presidency, the Senate, and the House could mean single-payer health care, gay marriage, legalized pot, a new immigration policy based on compassion, and the 1990s tax codes sweeping the nation. (Ahhh...Clinton-era budget reduction gets me all wispy in the morning.)

If you're a Democrat and all of that excites you, get campaigning, donating, and voting. Strike hard and fight. If you're a Republican and that scares you, stop being crazy. Stop showing the nation daily that you're more concerned with hate and childish squabbling than with helping the people of this country. In fact, I even know a way you could possibly turn the Presidential race on its head. Should I tell?

The fact is, nobody is excited about 2012. Obama would be winning by a bigger landslide if liberals were still excited about him, and conservatives hate their candidate. Not much excitement there or a struggling economy could guarantee Obama doesn't get a second term. So how does the GOP excite their base when all the candidates that get tea-party folks and hard-line cultural conservatives frothing at the mouth make independent voters sick to their stomachs?

Condi. She's tough. She stood up to Bush and Cheney at times. She's a woman, a real woman, not a woman that sends womanhood back to the 1800's. African-American voters might give her a look, and on every controversial issue her stances wiggle right down the middle. Abortion is bad, but the family should decide. We need to be tough on immigration law enforcement while realizing we are a country of immigrants. And I love this quote, ‘“Let me be clear. I’m evangelical and I’m proud of it. I consider an evangelical to be someone who professes faith in a way that draws others to it.” (As oppose to scaring the living shit out of others.)

Source: The Politico

Not only do I think Condoleeza Rice could shake up this election, though probably not win it, I think she has what it takes to be the first woman president in 2016. Tell me Hillary vs. Condi wouldn't be the greatest presidential campaign story in the history of our nation. I think Rice actually brings some honesty to the table, will stand up for what she believes in even if I don't agree with her on some things, and could take the GOP in a direction it hasn't gone recently with fiscal conservatism and social sanity. What a great alternative to the Michelle Bachmans of the party. She also handles herself in an interview in such a way I think she'd be a master debater (see what I did there?), so no Sarah Palin "I can see Russia from my house" jokes on SNL

Well, the veepstakes should come to a close shortly after Romney returns from his international dating game, a game he is losing, so probably in a week or two we'll know for sure. I predict he'll pick another white, male stuffed-suit that does nothing to excite and everything to simply "do no harm," ushering in another four years of Obama. The only question left to answer is what type of four years will it be. Four years of Congressional cooperation in changing the world as we know it, or four more years of block-and-blame campaigning for the 2016 presidency.

I'm thinking, sadly, we're looking at the latter.

Get it?