Friday Funday: A Gift For Grads

This time of year seems to sneak up on us every time - like a holiday of sorts - and every year, we seem to have a similar set of mixed emotions about it.

As a staff filled with people who like learning, and enjoyed school, the month of May always means graduation for us. Paul was a teacher and college professor for many years, and as president of the Peru State College National Alumni Association, he's still involved with the school - so graduation is more on our minds than ever.

We even know a few people who are graduating this month from different schools - and if that's you, congratulations.

There has been a great deal of talk recently about keeping the student loan rates low - including a commentary by us. Contrary to what the fools on the Wall Street Journal editorial board believe, college grads need both lower student loan rates AND new jobs.

We're not going to say it's not a tough job market to be graduating into. The statistics don't lie - things are tougher for recent grads than they have been in America for a long time, as Paul Krugman pointed out recently.

Those who are graduating college should NOT follow the example offered by Mitt Romney, to attempt to borrow money from their parents to start a business if they can't find a job. Maybe that works for those who are born with silver feet in their mouths (as Texas governor Ann Richards once said), but for most Americans who actually work for a living, recent graduates will still likely have more in student loan debt than they'd like.

Still, even with all the doom and gloom surrounding college grads these days, we think it's important to note all the things that are going right.

The overall jobs numbers continue to trend upward, while the jobless claims continue to drop. Job creation is near a four year high, and two sets of manufacturing numbers - apparel sales and factory activity - are both also trending upward. Furthermore, the important thing to remember - with all the economic numbers coming out over the past 48 hours - is that the overall trend is what matters in economic news.

And in those trend lines? The news is good. Economic indicators are continuing to improve - and look to continue improving for the foreseeable future.

For those who are graduating college this month? That may mean those graduates have the best luck of all, the good fortune to graduate at just the moment when the economic recovery really begins to gain strength.

For those people you may know who are graduating from college - or from high school - this month, the best gift we think those grads can receive is the gift of hope. It's the gift of the idea that maybe, just maybe, anything is possible, now that the responsibilities of formal education are done.

As individuals who've capitalized on the education that we each received in college - even in some tough times - we have to say to those graduating: Go for it, whatever "it" is. At this point, why not?

Come to think of it, that's some good advice for everyone, graduating student or not.

Take a chance. Grab whatever opportunity you can. Make it worthwhile. And enjoy it.

Unholier Than Thou

The closer we get to the 2012 general election in the United States, the more that the arrogant, the ignorant, and the unintelligent groups of people in the United States appear to be crawling out of the social woodwork. Sadly, there are some who match all three categories.

What caught our attention today were two different stories in the news, that both had a similar theme. Both involve some stunningly poor judgement.

The first news story is about former Romney spokesman Richard Grenell. Grenell appears to have been run out of the Romney campaign this week, in large part due to the response of the bigots in the GOP.

In case you didn't know - and obviously, many in the Republican Party didn't - Richard Grenell is an uncloseted gay Republican. He is what is and he makes no apologies for his sexual orientation. Frankly, we agree with Grenell on that part of his attitude. Unless you're intimately involved with someone else, what their sexual orientation is really shouldn't be your business. Obviously, those in Mr. Romney's campaign who advise the candidate on hiring also didn't think Mr. Grenell's sexual orientation should be a big deal.

On this, we completely agree with the Romney campaign's initial decision.

We frankly thought Grenell's misogynistic tendencies, and history of poor teamwork was a much greater problem than his being gay. The bigoted extremists on the far right, however, made it VERY clear that - to them - Mr Grenell's sexual orientation was the dealbreaker. From the sound of what happened at the Romney campaign, after the teabaggers screamed, Grenell was shut out of some important meetings - so he left, knowing he wasn't wanted.

In North Carolina, there wasn't nearly as much subterfuge.

The wife of a Republican state Senator made it known publicly that her husband authored North Carolina's controversial anti-gay law, Amendment One - which is on the ballot this year - because he wanted to "protect the Caucasian race" and save the U.S. Constitution from "activist judges".

In other words, her husband, North Carolina state legislator Peter Brunstetter, is attempting to put into law racial and sexual discrimination. In the South. In 2012. In America.

What angers and frustrates us so much about ignorant, arrogant, fools like the Brunstetters and those who ran off Mr. Grenell isn't the fact of their stupidity. This is, after all, America. If someone wants to be a racist, or a bigot - or both - they can certainly do that. In fact, we'll be more than happy to endorse the rights of groups like the KKK and the Westboro "Church" mutants to publicly display their biases. At least they have the REAL courage of their convictions.

The problem we have with the twits in these two stories is their false piety. They, and those like them, almost always attempt to claim that whatever version of religion they believe, allows - or even commands - them to act abusively to their fellow human beings.

Even if we were to agree with any of their skewed and faulty arguments, where in their religions does it say they get to be the ones that hand out the punishment? Further, where does it say that their religion gets to override the laws of mankind?

Since most of these folks claim to be Christian, and most of us are acquiainted with at least the basic tenets of Christianity, we can tell you - quite clearly - that there is nowhere in the average Christian Bible that says Christians can ignore the laws of man, and become judge, jury, and enforcer of punishments they judge others to deserve.

If a person wishes to judge others in a secular way, using logic and secular rules of debate, they may certainly do so in America - and we hope they do.

But using a false version of piety to defend bigotry and racism doesn't fly in America, or Christianity - no matter how big your megachurch's piggy bank might be.

The Difference Between Hype & Substance

As we pointed out Tuesday morning, modern Republican politicians don't seem to understand the difference between theory and practice these days. Nowhere was that more evident Tuesday than in the fake outrage reactions of right-wing media organizations and politicians to the President's comments about the anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

In case you were busy Tuesday - maybe flying to Afghanistan like the President or members of the White House Press Corps - you may have missed the explosion of hypocrisy that permeated the media. In short, as we'd forecasted, it was a huge eruption of hypocritical organic fertilizer.

The sanctimonious idea the right wing was desperately clinging to Tuesday was that President Obama doesn't have the right to take some kind of credit for his gutsy decision a year ago, that was directly responsible for the death of Bin Laden. As we also pointed out Tuesday, that fallacy in thinking is laughable on its face. President Obama had to make a very difficult call - one that could have easily ended poorly, like the decision to rescue Iranian hostages that President Carter made in 1980.

Luckily for him and us, President Obama capitalized on the opportunity to get rid of the world's number one terrorist, and the mission was successful. The fact that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, had at least two well-publicized opportunities to take out major Al-Qaeda figures, and capitalized on neither opportunity, didn't seem to matter those in the right-wing media.

Those same dogmatic media conservatives were insistent that President Obama's announcement of Bin Ladens' death last year, and his relatively few words this year about Bin Laden, were actually the real offense to the senses. The fact that President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" photo-op came eight years before the actual end of the Iraq war - and nine years to the day from yesterday - didn't seem to matter to them. They were outraged about hype, because - dammit, didn't liberals understand? In their minds, Republicans are always supposed to be better at this war and military stuff.

Meanwhile, President Obama was busy actually moving America's real foreign policy forward in a surprise trip to Afghanistan.

The White House kept most of the media in the dark about the trip, and was mostly successful, announcing with a flourish Tuesday afternoon, that President Obama was signing a new pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, signaling a real end to the Afghan War that Bush and company began over a decade earlier.

In short, on the anniversary of the day that President Obama announced that American servicemembers had killed Osama Bin Laden, President Obama signed the first of many official documents that will bring about the real end to the Afghan war. In a somewhat ironic twist, the agreement Obama signed with Karzai is similar to one that President Bush signed with Iraqi President Maliki, that began the American exit from Iraq.

The new agreement says that - as Mr. Obama had previously planned -  by next year, American military forces will be in full support mode of the Afghan forces, and by 2014 all U.S. combat military troops will be out of Afghanistan.

Then, for an undetermined period of time, 15,000-20,000 non-combat American forces will remain in Afghanistan. At that point, the U.S. will continue to help fund Afghanistan's anti-terrorism forces for a few more years - if the U.S. Congress can figure out how to get anything done.

That, of course, is the kicker.

If Congress - and especially the extremists on the far right - keep following the idea that hype is more important than substance, we doubt they'll follow the lead of President Obama.

They'll be too busy preening for their next media opportunity to say Mr. Obama never does anything of substance.