I thought people were going to start liking Obamacare just as soon as they found out what’s in it, but even 1 in 4 Democrats favor repeal:

Healthcare reform is hurting the reelection chances of freshman Democrats in the House, according to The Hill/ANGA poll.

A majority of voters in key battleground districts favor repeal of the legislative overhaul Congress passed this year.

President Obama predicted in the spring that the new law would become popular as people learned more about it. But the poll shows Republicans strongly oppose it, independents are wary of it and a surprising number of Democrats also want it overturned.

Emphasis added.  Maybe Republicans could win some crossover votes by promising for full & immediate repeal of Obamacare.

Joe Manchin Suddenly Decides to Sue the Obama Administration

So, in order to hold a Senate seat the Democrats have held for a half-century, the Democratic governor of West Virginia is suing the Democratic Administration in Washington, D.C.:

Gov. Joe Manchin has scheduled a press conference Wednesday morning where he is expected to announce that the state is filing suit against the federal government over the Obama administration’s crackdown on mountaintop removal coal mining.

Jim Geraghty (who alerted me to this story quips, “Suggested new slogan for John Raese: Keep Joe Manchin where he is to continue his legal fight against Obama!”

If this doesn’t work, he can join other governors in challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare.

UPDATE:  Maybe he just saw this: “Rasmussen moves West Virginia race from ‘toss up’ to ‘leans GOP.‘”

After promising to be a “moderate Democrat” (and we all know that term is a lie), US Rep. John Spratt has voted lock-step with the Socialist policies of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.

Luckily for the residents of the 5th District in South Carolina — they have a great Republican candidate in Mick Mulvaney who will splat Spratt on November 2nd.  (Full disclosure:  I have personally donated to Mulvaney’s campaign.)

Mick was elected to the SC House in 2006, his first foray into politics, becoming the first Republican ever elected to that position in his District. In 2008 an unexpected retirement created a vacancy in the SC Senate, and Mick ran for and won that office in what was widely regarded to be the hardest fought legislative race in South Carolina that year.

Mick serves on the Judiciary, Labor/Commerce/Industry, Medical Affairs, Agriculture/Natural Resources, and Corrections Committee. He was identified as the Freshman Legislator of the Year in 2006 by the Palmetto Family Council for his work on the South Carolina ultrasound bill. In 2010 he was named Legislator of the Year for his work in support of the State’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS). He has received one of only a handful of A+ ratings in the entire legislature. His previous endorsements for office include the NRA and NFIB.

Mick’s view of the proper role of the Federal Government:

I believe in the United States Constitution. I believe in the concept of a limited federal government. I believe that the federal government’s primary duty is to safeguard our personal freedoms so that we can reach our highest potential as individuals.

Somehow our government has forgotten that. In just a generation Washington has gone from “Ask not what your country can do for you….” to “We will guarantee your GM warranty.”

It also strikes me that Washington has better things to do than to tell us how to live our lives. I don’t want to live in a nanny state or under a government that thinks it should be Big Brother. Generally speaking I believe what you do in your own home or in your private life is your business. At the same time neither is it the government’s job to institutionalize the corruption of American culture and history, or to legislate the wholesale destruction of our traditional community values.

The best balance comes in recognizing and honoring the limitations on the federal government – and the primacy of the people and the states – set forth in the Constitution.

PLEASE DONATE TO MICK MULVANEY TODAY. 

If John Spratt loses, Nancy Pelosi won’t be the Speaker of the House.  It is THAT important.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Via RedState.com

This film has not yet been rated, but the story received a solid B+ from the White House. Catch the beginning of the end in theaters November 2010, with the ultimate conclusion to be seen worldwide in November of 2012.

The Socialist
Directed by Ben Howe. Post-Producution by Caleb Howe.
Based on a script written by Karl Marx.
Screenplay conceived by The Sixties.
Edited by History.
Starring Barack Obama as The Socialist.

The Howes kick ass.  Follow both of them on Twitter…. or I’ll put a hex on you.  I am a warlock, after all.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

While the polls last week seemed to put the California U.S. Senate seat out of reach for Carly Fiorina, two polls this week indicate that the race remains a toss-up, with the incumbent Barbara Boxer enjoying a modest, but definitely not insurmountable lead.

One reason the 28-year Washington veteran seemed to surge was that with her cash advantage, she was the first to go on the air.  Now that Carly and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (along with the Chamber of Commerce) have returned fire, we see the career politician slipping again.  Her negatives remain very high.  And she just looks old — and out of touch.

While the SurveyUSA and Rasmussen polls still show Boxer ahead, Fiorina campaign spokesman Andrea Saul said the “race remains a dead heat”:

Despite the fact that Barbara Boxer spent weeks pouring millions of dollars of special-interest money into baseless attack ads against Carly, she was unable to significantly improve her standing with voters. Now that Carly is on the air setting the record straight about Barbara Boxer’s dismal 28-year career in Washington, voters are being reminded daily of just how little Boxer has delivered for California – and the gap is closing again.

And that gap may been even more narrow that polls suggest.  Save for a few die-hard lefties in San Francisco, Beverly Hills and other tony neighborhoods of Southern California, Democrats just aren’t enthusiastic about their party’s nominee.  When I told Democratic friend about the merits of Peace and Freedom Party nominee Marsha Feinland, he, while acknowledging the incumbent’s ineffectiveness, said he was sticking with Boxer because she’s the Democrat.  Hardly a ringing endorsement.

With Republicans, particularly in the Golden State (given the Democrats’ recent shenanigans), more raring to vote than their Democratic counterparts, the enthusiasm factor could tip races to the Republican where polling gives the Democrat a slight lead.   (more…)

The National Republican Senatorial Committee shows how to run against a popular Democratic governor in a state where the Democratic president is unpopular.

Meanwhile, in the Golden State, the increasingly desperate Barbara Boxer is clinging to Obama’s coattails.  Note that this president’s rhetoric in Ma’am’s ad doesn’t cite any specific legislation that his California candidate supported.  You can support her less partisan opponent here.

UPDATE:  They’re pulling the ad: (more…)

For a great many reasons, Jerry Brown is exactly the wrong man to helm the (once-)Golden State at this time in its history.  Indeed, when he first served as Governor in the 1970s, he sowed the seeds for the state’s current economic malaise.  In 1978, he signed the Dill Act “giving the public unions collective bargaining.”  Now the public-employees unions, on whose support he has been relying to win the election, all but control the legislature, making pension reform all but impossible “to accomplish.”

For a little more on the state’s “half-trillion-dollar pension mess,” check out this piece by Jane Jamison.

No wonder his camp is eager to exploit the flap over Meg Whitman’s housekeeper.  It distracts voters from the real problems facing the state.

State spending is out of control.  And as the former longtime Democratic Speaker of the State Assembly Willie Brown reminds us, “80 percent of the state, county and city budget deficits are due to employee costs.”  And California’s fiscal problems (not to mention those of other states) are only going to get worse.  According to the Washington Examiner, “the same woman who predicted the Wall Street meltdown is warning about another calamity — our state governments are going broke, with possibly disastrous consequences“:

[Meredith] Whitney has released a 600-page report on states’ fiscal woes, warning of $192 billion in state budget shortfalls, which comes to 27 percent of all combined state budgets for the 2010 fiscal year. States have been borrowing heavily from health care and public pension funds, which are now underfunded by $1 trillion, to cover their debts. What happens when states can’t pay the bills?

We need serious reform of overly generous state pension and employee benefits packages.  In recent years, the federal government has helped paper over the problem of out-of-control state budgets, with the “stimulus” transferring federal funds to the states to pay off their various liabilities.

Without that cash, however, states are going to have to implement real reforms, most of which the ever-powerful public employee unions oppose.  With such unions providing the backbone of Jerry Brown’s campaigns, the former Governor clearly lacks the capacity to confront California’s real problems.

On Sunday, Glenn Reynolds wrote that should Republicans win this fall and don’t get their act together in the 112th Congress, we could see third-party challenges in 2012:

But those establishment GOP figures who think that they’ll cruise to victory and a return to the pocket-stuffing business-as-usual that marked the prior GOP majority need to think again. This election cycle is, in a very real sense, a last chance for the Republicans. If they blow it, we’re likely to see third-party challenges in 2012, not only at the Presidential level but in numerous Congressional races as well.

For the national GOP, it’s do-or-die time. So guys, you’d better perform — unless you want me to be writing another “I told you so” column in 2013. And trust me, you don’t.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) echoed that thought, predicting

. . . that if Republicans win majorities in Congress but don’t follow through on their promises, it could cause a third party built in the shape of the Tea Party movement to take off.

“I will say this: If we do not govern according to our principles and if we don’t follow through on the things we say we’re going to do, I think there will be a third party in this country,” the fourth-ranking Senate Republican said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program, set for broadcast this weekend.

To that end, if victorious this fall, Republicans should follow the lead of the Club for Growth and push for an immediate and full repeal of Obamacare: (more…)

Last night before bed, I checked into Memeorandum to see if there was anything worth blogging about it.  I had to scroll down past link after link after link to the latest outrage Christine O’Donnell committed in the 1990s to get to the real eye-popping news of Gallup’s first “likely voter” poll of the 2010 elections.

This is not the first time I’ve noted the Christine O’Donnell obsession of the normally even-handed blog-aggregator.

Well, Jon Stewart has noticed this phenomenon as well, only among Democrats:

You know, I feel like again, this woman, Christine O’Donnell, she may be qualified. She may not. I’m not all that impressed with what’s in the Senate right now. But the last thing that I would suggest is that her witchcraft or masturbation stance is what we should be even thinking about or focusing on, and I think that’s an enormous mistake that the Democrats will make.

Democrats do seem to have a fascination with defining the right by some figure they find fascinating enough to demonize.  Wonder how they’d feel if Republicans tried the same tack.

Gallup has released a poll which is simply astounding.  Crying “Holy Smokes Batman!” Hugh Hewitt calls the new Gallup numbers “extraordinary:

Americans are going to vote against Democrats from top to bottom, and they are not going to be diverted by Gloria Allred, secret tapes, or any other stunt. It is a massive rejection of President Obama’s policies and those of Pelosi and Reid.

And consider this: The gap may widen, not narrow, as more and more people focus on the dismal results of the blank political check given the Democrats in 2008. The American people made a huge mistake two years ago. They won’t be fooled again.

Calling the numbers “astonishing,” Michael Barone wonders what election the 2010 mid-terms will most closely parallel:

These two numbers, if translated into popular votes in the 435 congressional districts, suggest huge gains for Republicans and a Republican House majority the likes of which we have not seen since the election cycles of 1946 or even 1928.

Perhaps, it’ll be like 1894 when the GOP picked up 100 seats. Still, this sage pundit urges caution. Oh, and what are those two numbers you may ask. Here let me show you Gallup’s chart:

The GOP even leads among registered voters, but the two numbers Barone referenced come from the second two lines in the chart above, from the two different turnout models Gallup uses.  Under the second such model, the GOP has an 18-point margin, otherwise it’s just 13.  Wowza.  And independents are turning away from the big-government policies of he incumbent Democrats:

Independents in both likely voter models skew strongly toward the Republican candidate. Gallup has found independent registered voters consistently preferring Republican candidates throughout the campaign.

But, good as these numbers are, let’s remember what the sage captain of the Millennium Falcon once said.

Almost exactly eleven yeas before Germany began World War II by invading Poland, her government, along with the governments of the United States, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and a number of other nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war.  Italy and Japan joined Germany in declaring war on the Allied nations.

You cannot outlaw war.  You cannot outlaw evil.  And much as we’ve tried, laws cannot succeed in banning human cruelty.  To be sure, they can increase its cost, hence the need for laws punishing such crimes as rape and other assaults, invasion of privacy and murder.  Once those laws are in place, we need make sure they are enforced.  More laws will not necessarily make future generations any more secure.

And it seems that whenever we hear a story that moves all of us, about the beating death of a young child or the suicide of a gay teen, various advocacy groups rush to advocate for more laws.

The problem, however, may not be the inadequacy of the laws on the books, but the cruelty of the perpetrators.

Some gay groups seem to think that additional anti-bullying policies might have prevented Tyler Clementi’s roommate from recording the young man’s private activities.  Earlier today, I received an e-mail from the folks at California Faith for Equality (CFE) urging people, among other things, to “Organize . . . turn your anger and grief into actions to improve anti-bullying practices in local classrooms, campuses and transform our congregations into accessible networks of safe spaces.”  While well-meaning, I’m not sure such practices will make much of a difference. (more…)

While Barbara Boxer is on the air with yet another nasty ad attacking Carly Fiorina for supposedly shipping jobs overseas while that accomplished Republican served as CEO of HP, the 28-year Washington veteran fails to address her own record on job creation.

When Mrs. Boxer was first elected to the U.S. Senate during an economic downturn in November 1992, unemployment in the Golden State stood at 9.8%, a very high number, to be sure.  (It stood at 4.7% when her party gained a majority in the Senate in November 2006.)  In August 2010 (the last month for which such statistics are available), unemployment had climbed to 12.4%, with Boxer’s jurisdiction experiencing one of the largest “over-the-month employment decreases” in employment, shedding 33,600 jobs.

Over the year, California was one of two states (the other being Democratic-controlled Colorado) experiencing “statistically significant job losses”, with 112,800 jobs disappearing. All those jobs were lost six months after Mrs. Boxer’s beloved “stimulus” passed and while Democrats were in complete control in Washington.

If seeing shuttered storefronts and learning of friends’ job losses weren’t enough, Mrs. Boxer’s successor and the National Republican Senatorial Committee remind us of the reality of Barbara Boxer’s California:

You can support Carly here.

Now that I’ve finished “original” research for the first draft of my dissertation, I am reviewing several books on gay psychology and essays on gay relationships as I prepare to write the paper’s final chapter.  Due to the unique nature of my program, I intend to apply the insights I gained in studying Athene’s role in the lives of the men of Greek mythology to the needs of gay men today, considering particularly how feminine friendships can benefit us.

And one essay which I believe beautifully addresses gay friendships is Andrew’s piece, “If Love Were All,” in his book Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival.  In that insightful essay, he reminds us of “the need for nonfamilial and nonsexual intimacy [which] is surely uppermost in our minds, however hard it its for us to articulate it.”

As I review his essay, I’ll be seeing if he can offer any insights on the gay male “need” for a guiding female hand as we seek to find our place in the world.

One more thing to note; in that essay, Andrew addresses some issues raised (at least in my mind) by Tyler Clementi’s suicide — on the importance of friendships in helping us feel we have truly found our place.

I may or may not use his essay.  I won’t know until tomorrow when I review the underlinings I made and the notes I took when first I read it.  That said, I still recall how moving was his prose.  While we may not today share his politics, we should at least appreciate how thoughtfully he addressed an issue which merits more discusion.

While 28-year Washington veteran Barbara Boxer may be leading Carly Fiorina in recent polls, her negatives remain high.  No wonder independent voters are breaking for the challenger.

Last week, the Democratic-leaning editors at the San Francisco Chronicle refused to endorse the incumbent Senator, reminding Californians that “Barbara Boxer, has failed to distinguish herself during her 18 years in office. There is no reason to believe that another six-year term would bring anything but more of the same uninspired representation.”

They might not like her rival’s politics, but where impressed with her personal qualities, “Carly Fiorina, has campaigned with a vigor and directness that suggests she could be effective in Washington”.

While more appreciative of Fiorina’s politics than were their counterparts in San Francisco, the editors of the Los Angeles Daily News were also impressed with the challenger’s personal qualities and are backing her for Senate.  Carly, they contend, understands what it takes to fix America’s fiscal problems:

One of Boxer’s main attacks on Fiorina has been that she cut thousands of jobs as CEO at HP, implying Fiorina only knows how to destroy jobs, rather than create them. In the long run, preserving the business preserves jobs. As any business person knows, a bankrupt company doesn’t equal any jobs at all.

In many ways, the federal government represents a troubled company teetering on the brink of financial ruin. . . . It has taken on more debt than it should have and has chosen to ignore the inevitable sinking.

Indeed, we see Fiorina’s business experience as exactly the right background for the newest senator from California. (more…)

Whenever I’m feeling less than optimistic about Republican chances this fall (or in any election), it’s always helpful to turn to the perennial political optimist Hugh Hewitt.  And today, he doesn’t disappoint:

Democrats know the polling as well as anyone else, so they have only one hope –short term shocks and allegations of scandal that divert the attention of the MSM and, they hope, the voters.

Thus the Gloria Allred carnival in California last week. More dirty tricks will no doubt be launched in the weeks ahead.
But for reasons explained in my new Washington Examiner column, these diversions won’t work, and especially not on senior voters, who have been used and abused by President Obama.  So have middle class voters, and even young voters are dismayed at the vast gap between the president’s promises and his record.

But it is seniors who have taken the brunt of the president’s punishment, and they will be dealing punishment back at the voting booth.  They couldn’t care a whit about Gloria Allred, or tape recordings of Sharron Angle.  They are afraid of what the president and the Democratic Congress has done and what it will continue to do.

Emphasis added.  And that’s why Democrats keep pounding the table.  In warning us of future such pounding, Hugh reminds us that the world has changed and alternative media now provide an antidote to Democrats’ normal sources of attack amplification: (more…)

California, as anyone who reads the news or lives in this state knows, faces a raft of economic problems.  Businesses are fleeing the states.  Storefronts sit vacant on once thriving thoroughfares.  The unemployment rate remains mired in double digits.  The state budget bleeds red inks.  Private sector workers who keep their jobs have seen their earnings decline while public sector employees enjoy some of the best compensation packages in the nation, with their overly generous pensions threatening to bankrupt the nation.

Willie Brown, the former Democratic Speaker of the state Assembly says “that 80 percent of the state, county and city budget deficits are due to employee costs.”   And the Democratic Governor with whom he first served rambles on about his glory days in the 1970s while his allies hit his Republican rival for having hired a housekeeper who (unbeknownst to the Republican) falsified her papers.

Meanwhile, that Republican has come up with a plan to fix the state (while interest groups favoring her opponent dishonestly call her plan almost identical to those of George W. Bush).  Meg Whitman could lose this race, not based on her ideas, but based on the nasty, negative campaign Democrats are waging against her.

In short, she could lose to Jerry Brown for the same reason Bill Simon lost to the perennial candidate’s former chief of staff, a Democrat who was returned to the Governor’s mansion, not based on his record of accomplishment or promise of achievement, but on his success at demonizing his rival.

Yet, less than one full year after winning reelection, facing some of the same problems which currently plague the Golden State, Gray Davis was recalled by California voters.  Could that happen to his political mentor should he win next month?

Oh, and, the unemployment rate in the Golden State was roughly half what it is today when Davis won reelection.

The ugly season in just beginning.  Go over to Memeorandum and you’ll see that if the media are trying to manufacture a scandal about a particular candidate in a close election, that candidate is a Republican.  Harry Reid is not trying to win election on his 28-year record representing Nevada in Washington, but on Sharron Angle‘s gaffes.  National Democrats aren’t so much concerned with Chris Coons’s ideology as they are with what Christine O’Donnell said in the 1990s.

Barbara Boxer would rather misrepresent Carly Fiorina’s record at HP than defend her own record of support for Obamacare and other big-government programs.  And Jerry Brown would rather dwell on Meg Whitman’s household help than debate her comprehensive plan to build a new California.

George Will said it best when he pointed out why Democrats are busy pounding the table: “It is a lawyers’ adage: If you have the law on your side, argue the law; if you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have neither, pound the table.”

Scratch the surface beneath 2008 Democratic National Convention delegate Gloria Allred’s accusations against Whitman and you find that, well, the California Republican gubernatorial candidate did nothing wrong.  Nothing.  Indeed, if anyone did anything wrong in this case, it is the left-wing attorney.  She, as law professor William A. Jacobson points out, “exposed her client (Whitman’s former housekeeper) to serious criminal jeopardy by taking her public”.

The letter that supposedly shows that Whitman knew her client was an illegal immigrant, actually included this line, “This letter makes no statement about your employee’s immigration status.”  Now, said letter also included the apparent handwritten note from Whitman’s husband Griff Harsh asking the housekeeper to look into this matter — which is exactly what the law required him to do:

Lawyers said an employer’s obligation upon receiving a no-match letter from the Social Security Administration is to check their own records for typographical or other errors, inform the employee that the records do not match and tell the employee to correct them.

“There is no additional legal obligation for an employer to follow up or respond to SSA with new information,” said Gening Liao, a labor and employment attorney at the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, which defends immigrants.

He informed the employee.  And she held onto the letter.  That Allred had the letter from the housekeeper indicates she knew the housekeeper had faked a Social Security number.  She knew her client had been made aware of her own deception.  Let me repeat, she knew her client had broken the law.

Here, the Golden State faces annual budget crises, growing unemployment while storefronts sit vacant and a left-wing attorney, with a record of filing frivolous lawsuits against Republicans and celebrities, hijacks the Governor’s race (via Instapundit).  (more…)

Perhaps I’m wrong and it wouldn’t have made a difference if Tyler Clementi had had an older gay friend or mentor to whom he could turn in his moment of mental anguish.

To be sure, it’s not just this story that makes me think of mentoring.  The issue of mentoring has been much on my mind since I first started wrestling with my sexuality.  The first gay “role model” I had was perhaps one of the most negative influences on my life and on my family as well.  And I always wondered if my coming out would have been any smoother had I met an older gay man capable of showing any compassion for my particular situation.

It is perhaps due in large part to his (negative) influence that I was so drawn to the goddess Athene when I read, re-read and listened to the Odyssey in the years after college and in the course of my graduate studies in Mythology.  Her gentle guidance stood in stark contrast to his arrogant indifference.  She both helps the hero’s son Telemachus find his first (male) friend — and facilitates his reconciliation with his own father.  It’s as if Homer knew that we human beings need divine guidance to navigate the treacherous waters when we first leave home and find our way in the world.

This story has stirred up so much with so many of us, in large part because we see ourselves in this young man, recalling the awkwardness of our freshman year in college, our first year away from home, when our aspirations often (unbeknownst to us at the time) conflicted with one another, finding our way in the world while seeking to belong in a new (and often) foreign environment.

Perhaps, the mentor issue comes to my mind because of my own experiences.  And other things surely must come to mind to other individuals, gay and straight alike.

The bottom question we need to ask is what can we do to make that journey less treacherous for young men and young women who differ from the social norm.   (more…)

In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election, there were two numbers which should have concerned each of the two major political parties.

The one that should have most concerned Democrats was that their party’s nominee barely John McCain among voters over 30, winning them only by a margin of 50-49. Despite his significant cash advantage in the fall campaign, the media cheerleading for him (and downplaying stories damaging to him) while demonizing the GOP’s Vice Presidential nominee, the failure of the GOP presidential nominee to come up with a compelling message on the economy, the market meltdown in the middle of the campaign as well as Americans readiness to change political parties after one has been in power for eight years, Obama could barely muster a majority among voters less prone to the passions of youth.

The number that should most have concerned Republicans was that “Obama carried voters under 30 by 66%-32%“.  It’s not a good sign for a political party which it can only capture the imagination of only one-third of younger voters.  But, Mary Katharine Ham points to some (potentially) encouraging poll numbers for the GOP, showing that as young voters cool to Obama, they are warming to some particularly Republican issues:

For instance, a majority of voters ages 18-29 side with the majority of the American people against the president on the Arizona immigration law and the Ground Zero Mosque. According to the Rock the Vote poll, they support the Arizona immigration law, 53-44. . . .

In a broader shift from 2008, and a foreboding one for Democrats, the federal deficit has crept into the issues most important to young people. (more…)

On Friday morning, when penning a followup post on Tyler Clementi’s suicide, I wrestled with whether or not to call those who taped him as pranksters or tormentors.

Since reading about the story, I wondered whether those two young people were truly evil or just depraved, indifferent to the consequences of their actions.  Had they been older — and not fresh out of high school, suddenly thrust into the new-found freedom of college life — they would clearly more likely qualify as evil.  To be sure, what they did was cruel, but did they intend it to be so?

All that said, it will be for a court of law to determine whether they committed their actions with malice aforethought or depraved indifference.  More importantly, it is for us, as gay people, to determine what we can do to help those young people who find themselves in a situation similar to Tyler’s, in situations in which many of us, once found ourselves.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Mary offers a most thoughtful response:

These kids who thought it was amusing or funny or revenge (who knows what they thought, if in fact they thought at all) are reflecting the narcissistic theme of their generation. To them, all of life is nothing but a reality show featuring them. We’ve raised a generation of kids to believe life is all about them and with no thought of what effect their thoughts, actions, behaviors have on others around them. What will such selfishness bring to the future? I shudder to think. In the end, their behavior is somewhere between prank and torment…more towards the torment end.