Liberal College Kid

The millennial generation has been characterized over and over again as being the most plugged in and apathetic generation in American history.  For those maybe less familiar with the term “millennial,” it refers to those people who graduated from high school in the 2000’s.

We are a fascinating generation, old enough to remember life before the internet, but not life before computers.  We grew up in the information age, and when we had a question, we just went to google and looked it up.  It goes without saying we are the most connected generation ever, utilizing myspace, facebook, instant messaging programs, email…  We are brighter than any generation before us, and we are expected to live longer, though likely fatter than any previous generation.  My generation is perhaps the first that tattoos no longer mean that one is alternative or edgy.   When it comes to politics, though, we seemingly don’t care.

It’s hard to argue against this point.  By and large we vote far less than older generations, but there’s a reason behind it.  The biggest issue, is that no politician caters to young voters.  Sure some talk about more funding for college grants and loans, but when a “young” politician is in their 40’s, it’s easy to understand where the disconnect is.  No one is talking about things that would truly excite us: like the fact that 18 year olds are old enough to die in Iraq but not old enough to have a beer in their home country.  So, we end up in large part registering with our over-involved parent’s (helicopter parents as they’re called) party and some of us never waver.

There is, of course, good reasons that politicians don’t seek out the young vote.  The fact that we turned out in record numbers in 2004 didn’t matter since every other age group did as well.  There seems to be a cyclical pattern to it all, and I don’t see that ever changing any time soon.

The time will come, however, when it is people our age that will be running this country.  People who came of age during a different kind of war, with a new group of people to hate.  I doubt most people my age could even really define what communism is.  Ask them about jihad though, and they’ll give you a five minute diatribe that could appear on FOX News.

But what does all of this matter?  Who cares about millennials and their personal politics?  Well, I do.  I want people who care about my needs and interests to represent me at all levels of government.  I want people my age to stand up for something, no matter how small, because that’s the only way this fledgling democracy of ours will ever flourish.  And you know what, we are that apathetic, but so is everyone else.  Nearly half of this country’s eligible voters don’t vote, even in Presidential elections.  What’s wrong with our government?  What have we done to ourselves that the people being “represented” don’t even bother to participate in the Democratic process?

My hope is that my generation can change that.  We are more accepting of gay and lesbian lifestyles, multi-cultural people, immigrants, and other religions than any group before us.  These traits will serve us well when it’s our time to lead, but they can serve our country today as well.

So what am I getting at?  Vote, my friends, vote.  If for no other reason than because you can, vote.  And when you do know that it is the only way to effect change in this country.  As for the older crowd out there, listen to young people; you might learn a thing or two.

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I suppose, as they say, all good things must come to an end. I started law school (which has thus far failed to be, as I had been led to believe, nothing more than drinking, debauchery and all around tomfoolery) recently and haven’t had the time to post anything. I’ve also stopped posting because I have almost no contact to the news anymore (that may be a bit too extreme of a statement, but it’s nowhere near the level it was before) and, because of this, haven’t had any brilliant ideas for a post pop into my head.

The one thing that I have been thinking about lately, though, is the recent assertion that Congress may have inadvertently given the President the right to spy on Americans on American soil. I was listening to an NPR broadcast and they were talking about how in a year or so local police departments will be able to request the usage of photos taken from spy satellites over U.S. soil. The argument went that if a hurricane were approaching or if there had just been an earthquake, then the local emergency response units could use these very recent images (as opposed to say Google Earth which has images on it that are years old) to plan evacuation routes and gauge damages.

That may be all well and good but let me introduce you to another scenario that is, in my mind at least, all too likely:

The federal government is looking at LA and trying to evaluate how the city would respond if there were a terrorist attack at the Port of Los Angeles. In order to get an honest assessment of how the city would react and how first responders would be able to access the scene they turn a stack of extremely high resolution spy satellite pictures over to the LA County Sheriff’s Office.

While the Sheriff’s staff is pouring over these photos, marking up entrance and exit routes to the port as well as checking to see if it has any glaring weaknesses in terms of security one of their younger staffers sees something in the corner of his eye that catches his attention. “Looks like this house has a serious grow operation going on in its back yard” he says, as a joke (after all he’s just a file clerk who got dragged into looking over these pictures because everyone else was busy off fighting crime). One of his superiors hears this and snatches the photo from him and takes it to her boss who agrees that, yes, there is a modest grow operation going on in the back yard of a home near the port.

This is where it gets dangerous. The Sheriff’s office realize that they can’t get a warrant to search the home because it came from these spy satellites and the grow operation is located behind some 8 foot walls making it out of plain view from the street. The Constitutionally protected right to privacy prohibits a judge from issuing a warrant in this case because the operation (lets assume the Sheriff’s officials don’t see any actual plants, just the obvious components of a grow op.) wouldn’t have been viewable from the street. Do you think, even for a second, that patrols around the home in question wouldn’t triple over night? The Sheriff (wanting to rid the evil that is a back yard pot farm from his community) would almost certainly do everything in his power to get an officer in a position to get a view inside that house (even if it’s only through a gate or door opened for half a second as someone entered or exited the house) so that the officer could then obtain a warrant claiming that he saw pot (which the Sheriff’s office already knows is sure to be found upon execution of the warrant). Eventually an officer would be in position to see something and the entire operation would be closed down, mark up another victory for the good guys.

Sure, maybe it’s not so bad that there are 50 less pot plants growing in this country as a result of the hypothetical situation I posited above but what about our right to privacy? There is absolutely no way that the government or local police departments should be able to use American spy satellites to look at Americans. The ethics of it are horrific and the results of such action will do nothing but strip away more rights from American citizens. So there it is, my last rant (for a while at least).

Before I go (my torts book is calling to me as we speak) I just want to say that it has been an absolute privilege to write for this blog. I hope that LCK will continue to grow and evolve and serve as a place for discussion of current issues. I hope that the site will welcome its critics because I believe that talking about and debating our differences is what the study of politics comes down to in the end. I also want to extend a warm thanks to everyone who has read and commented on my posts in the past. No matter what you thought about my politics, my writing, or my views on the world today, you took the time to read what I had written. Thank you.

Hopefully I’ll be able to stop in from time to time and post about events in the news or, if people would want to hear it, law school. Until then, thank you again to both the readers and Liberal College Kid for giving me a chance to express myself on this wonderful site.

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A video has recently surfaced of an interview Dick Cheney gave in 1994 regarding Iraq and the Persian Gulf War. The person conducting the interview asked if it would have been wise to move US troops into Baghdad to take down Sadam then. Here’s what Cheney said in response:

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

Amazing how things change isn’t it? Mr. Cheney, listen to yourself and pull out now.

Here’s the video:

So what changed in the mind of the Vice President? Clearly September 11, 2001 had nothing to do with Iraq or Sadam so what on Earth changed in Cheney’s mind? This administration led us into a war that they nearly 10 years beforehand to be flawed. Cheney said it would be a quagmire and that we would be there alone. His prediction is almost ominous in its accuracy and yet he helped lead us into a military occupation he knew would not be successful and would cost American lives. This is an oppurtunity for this administration to save a little bit of face and get out of the war that Bush will be forever remembered for.
I can’t wait to hear what Cheney will say in response to this video, probably something along the lines of “I don’t recall.” But for now at least; Liberal College Kid Agrees with Dick Cheney

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Here I thought we’d have to wait at least a week before the wheels started falling off for the Bush administration, and it seems without Rove the military already can’t get their story straight. Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said to NPR regarding the draft:

“I think it makes sense to certainly consider it,”
“And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation’s security by one means or another.”

< No one’s talking about a draft, it’s an option, on the table, but shhhh…

Let’s compare that to the words of National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe

“The president’s position is that the all volunteer military meets the needs of the country and there is no discussion of a draft. General Lute made that point as well.”

Apparently if one reads between the lines of “always been an option on the table,” it becomes clear that he’s not discussing a draft? Let’s think about this, here’s a guy confirmed by the Senate to run the military because Bush doesn’t really want to be commander in chief all the time, and he’s talking about bringing back the draft! Have we forgotten what the draft does to us as a country?

Now I know many people’s first reaction to this will be, well the kid writing this is prime draft age that’s why he’s against the draft. Sure I suppose that’s a part of my reaction, but let’s think about this historically. The people called on to go to war in this country are the less fortunate and less affluent. Those of us lucky enough to be in college would stay out of war while our peers who aren’t in school would be forced to go fight in a war the majority of our country doesn’t support. Then of course is the topic of race, as inevitably minority people would be called on in disproportionate numbers to “serve” their country.   Are we not past this yet as a people? The volunteer army keeps our armed forces staffed with people who willingly chose to go to war if necessary, people who accepted that risk when they signed on to join the military.  How will it help our cause to send young men who want nothing to do with the war off to fight?

I’m thankful, that for now at least, the President is contradicting his war czar on the topic of the draft, but with a looming report due in September on the success of the surge I have a sinking feeling that Bush will side with his czar. Where’s Rove when you need him to make sure everyone gets their story straight?

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Celebrate my liberal friends!! Bush’s brain is leaving the White House!

< I Quit!!!

The Washington Post said:

“Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush’s two national campaigns and his most prominent adviser through 6-1/2 tumultuous years in the White House, announced today that he will resign at the end of the month.”

Mr. Rove’s role in the White House is one that has perhaps redefined the way we view the President’s advisers who do not have to be approved through the confirmation process. Just to refresh anyone’s memory here’s a small highlight reel of Rove’s accomplishments:

Rove was involved in the CIA leak case, narrowly skirting indictment there as he and other Bush staffers let Scooter Libby take the fall and then ultimately not go to jail. He has been called out by Democrats in Congress for his role in the US Attorney scandal. You know, the whole ‘give my former aide one of these positions since he’ll be sure to only go after Democrats.’ He claims executive privilege to refuse subpoenas and he would not show up for a congressional hearing on the improper use of Republican National Committee e-mail accounts by White House folks. A real winner huh?

Another of my favorite Rove stories was his fight with Sheryl Crow, featuring the dialog:

(from the Huffington Post) Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, “Don’t touch me.” How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, “You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us.” Karl then quipped, “I don’t work for you, I work for the American people.” To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, “We are the American people.”

Then, of course, there was MC Rove:

But seriously, what is Rove’s legacy? He has been, without question the most powerful man in our country who was never been elected or appointed to any governmental office as outlined in the constitution. Rove’s position falls into Article II Section 2 where it says “but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.” Is Rove’s really an “inferior office?

The fact that he was able to claim executive privledge signifies that his office is far from inferior, which makes me think we may need to take another look at who the President surrounds themselves with. Rove led the fight to trample the constitution with such measures as the PATRIOT Act, helped out a CIA official, helped fire US Attorney’s for not being partisan enough, and generally broke the law along with the rest of the Bush administration.  He will be remembered as a very bright man, but one who helped usher in one of the darkest chapters in our country’s history.

Perhaps Senator Leahy summed Rove up best when he said,

“The list of senior White House and Justice Department officials who have resigned during the course of these congressional investigations continues to grow, and today, Mr. Rove added his name to that list. There is a cloud over this White House, and a gathering storm. A similar cloud envelopes Mr. Rove, even as he leaves the White House.”

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Many people didn’t watch it, we didn’t even write about it yesterday, but it turns out there was a Democratic debate yesterday hosted by the AFL-CIO in Chicago. The one candidate not present was Mike Gravel, but honestly I don’t think that mattered very much to people.

< The Contenders…

Sure there were a few big moments. Obama continued to threaten a sovereign nation who is on our side in the war on terror, Hillary told us if we want a winner she’s our girl, and Kucinich got the second biggest round of applause when he called for the end of NAFTA and WTO (love that guy!!). But the truly great part of the debate happened off the stage.

A man named Steve Skvara had the line of the night. He said:

“After 34 years with LTV Steel, I was forced to retire because of a disability. Two years later, LTV filed bankruptcy. I lost a third of my pension, and my family lost their health care. Every day of my life, I sit at the kitchen table across from the woman who devoted 36 years of her life to my family, and I can’t afford to pay for her health care. What’s wrong with America and what will you do to change it?”

As he said it his voice cracked with emotion and the entire event paused and gave the man a standing ovation. Skvara’s story was proof that this election touches people. This is not simply a contest, nor is politics something that only effects those directly involved in the government. Our democracy effects each and everyone of us and there is more that we can do as a country to take care of one another.

Ask yourself several questions: What is more important, the war in Iraq or education? The war in Iraq or healthcare? The war in Iraq or stem cell research? The list can go on… What happened to our priorities? Perhaps the best question to be asking right now: is the infrastructure in Iraq more important than infrastructure here in America? The answer, I hope, is no. When did it become more important to rebuild another country instead of taking care of those of us at home?

This presidential election in 2008 has the potential to forever change our country. We could see the full funding of healthcare for all Americans, real funding for education, campaign finance reform, real funding for stem-cell research, and the end of the greatest foreign policy blunder since Vietnam. America is a progressive nation, one that since it’s creation has set the standard for countries all over the world.  We had the first democracy in modern time, wrote a constitution that has become the standard to which other constitutional governments are measured against, and provided freedoms never before seen in the world.  What happened to our world leading spirit and initiative? We can reclaim our position as the nation that sets the standard that other countries strive to recreate. There is no reason we don’t have the best schools, brightest students, healthiest citizens, most fair elections, and most accomplished scientists.  If we truly are the leaders of the free world it’s time we start acting like it.

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After seeing poll after poll saying Rudy Giuliani leads the Republicans I’ve finally decided to weigh in on the matter here at LCK. As a young child growing up we were taught that the President commanded respect and represented America to the world. We learned that the President is our Chief Executive, Commander in Chief and Head of State and that that person should be held to the highest of standards. I’m not in elementary school anymore, but I don’t think we should throw out all of those lofty goals.

I still want a President who represents me and everyone else, not who represents the 51% of the country who voted for them. I still want a President who truly commands respect, and if it’s not too much to ask I’d like them to be the absolute best person our country can muster. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask for. I don’t want a President I’d like to have a beer with, I want a President who is the smartest, most well-spoken, and most charismatic that we can find. That goes for both sides of the aisle, but there is one person I just can’t help but pick on… Rudy Giuliani.

Clinton messed up, sure, but compared to Giuliani a blow-job in the oval office hardly compares. Rudy married his childhood sweet-heart. Sounds all well and fine, until you read that she was his second cousin! Then there’s the whole dressing in drag thing. The National Review even wrote about it, and they’re a conservative publication!

<The best the Republicans can come up with…

The time has passed when Presidents could be seen as infallable and almost other worldly.  We’re living in the information age where there is more access and more media then ever before.  Because of this, no President will be able to protect secrets the way they used to.  By this I’m talking about how many people didn’t know FDR was in a wheel chair when he was President.  Because of this fact, though, do our standards need to change?

Some people argue that we need to change the way we look at politicians.  Rather than making the election about who they are, it should be about what they are going to do.  Wouldn’t it be refreshing to not hear about people’s families, their lives outside of politics and just talk about where they stand on the issues?

I suppose it’s all just part of our psyche these days when Lindsay Lohan is on the front page of all the celebrity magazines.  We are obsessed with celebrity and that’s exactly what national politics have become: a spectacle of celebrity.  I’m sick of politics being about elections and not about things that matter.  It’s not about getting elected, it’s governance and the sooner the rest of the country reaches that conclusion the better.

If Giuliani truly is the best the right can muster though… 2008 will be a great year to be a Democrat!

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President Bush today called a press conference to address the horrible event that happened yesterday in Minneapolis, MN where a bridge on I-35 collapsed into the Mississippi River. < The decider deciding apologies are over rated

Apparently he then forgot where he was and what he was talking about and shifted the discussion to spending bills. Of the 737 words the Decider said, 228 were actually words of sympathy relevant to the collapsed bridge in Minnesota. The rest of the speech consisted of the President demanding Democrats in congress pass the 12 spending bills that are required before the end of September. Here was his segway:

“We also talked about — in the Cabinet meeting talked about the status of important pieces of legislation before the Congress. We spent a fair amount of time talking about the fact that how disappointed we are that Congress hasn’t sent any spending bills to my desk.”

Hang on, people are dead and injured there are more than 50 cars at the bottom of the Mississippi River, some of them potentially with bodies in them. There is an entire state that is in complete shock. This is a national disaster Mr. President and you are “disappointed” with congress not getting you a spending bill! This was supposed to be a moment when our nation’s leader reached out to the people of Minneapolis to express real sympathy.  Not to mention the fact that this segment of his speech could be used in elementary schools for fifth graders to fix the President’s poor grammar.

Further compounding this whole thing, the President said “I told them (Governor Pawlenty and Mayor Rybak) we would help with rescue efforts, but I also told them how much we are in prayer for those who suffered.” Prayers are not the issue here Mr. President. Your war has cost more than $450 billion and is not slowing down any time soon. The culture of this Right Wing revolution has created politicians like Pawlenty who run on campaigns where they promise no new taxes. You know what, taxes are a necessary thing! That bridge was known to be structurally flawed, and the Democratic led state legislature in Minnesota passed a bill to raise gas prices 5 cents per gallon to fund highway and road construction projects. The Republican governor vetoed the bill.

No matter what anyone on either side of the aisle says, this is a political issue. We are spending money on the wrong things in this country and we have gotten to the point that legislators are having to choose what to fund. And to top it all of we have a President that can’t even issue a real apology to the people suffering in Minnesota.

Prayer and positive thinking are all well and fine but they don’t solve the problem.  And actually, rescue efforts won’t solve the problem either.  The issue at hand is not one faulty bridge, it’s the deteriorating condition of our roads and bridges everywhere in this country as we see more and more traffic and heavier loads traveling on our highways than ever before.  This needs to be a national effort and Congress and the President need to take real steps to make sure that tragedies like this don’t befall any more American cities.

Liberal College Kid would like to offer their sympathy for those affected by this tragedy.

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Barack Obama has adopted the position that we should invade Pakistan. Well, more or less. His comments were made at a speech event at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His precise words were:

“It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005.”

“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

Translation: if Pakistan won’t do something about Al Qaeda, since we’re pretty sure that’s where they are along with the Taleban, then he as President will.

“Yeah I’m gonna’ bomb Pakistan… It’s over there.”

Ok, the idea that we should be fighting the people who actually attacked us on September 11, 2001 seems very justifiable. I would expect it more from a Republican, you know war, death, guns they love that stuff. But coming from Obama, this just seems off. He’s been staunchly anti-war on Iraq, I guess I just assumed that meant he was anti-war. He said the war on Iraq “should never have been authorized and should never have been waged.” Doesn’t quite sound like a guy who’s ready to go start another war.

Yet that is exactly what Obama is seemingly doing. Once again, we have a politician making threats on another nation. Of course if they are harboring terrorists it’s a bad thing, but we’re reaping the consequences of the strategy of threatening a nation and then invading it. We need to be encouraging dialog and working on diplomatic solutions, not threatening to invade! Besides, maybe Obama’s advisers forgot: Pakistan has the bomb. We’re not talking about a country with chemical weapons that we gave them, they have nuclear weapons and a large military. This is a country that should command a certain level of respect regardless of their religious make-up. I can’t believe I’m agreeing with something Tony Snow said, but his point on Pakistan seems correct. Pakistan has, for the most part, been helping the U.S. in the war on terror. They support it, and have in fact been criticized by other nations in the Middle East for allowing US planes and what not to be in their country. Now one of the leading Democratic nominees wants to invade?!

The next President must be a Democrat, but it must be one who recognizes that the Bush policy towards the Middle East is flawed. We can not have a repeat of Iraq and that seems to be exactly what Obama is proposing. As hard as it may be to believe, this liberal college kid can no longer support Obama. Go Kucinich!

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