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The health-care-reform bill has passed in the Senate, but it has fallen short of the real reform President Obama promised on the campaign trail. The bill is now headed to a conference committee where it will be amended further. Meanwhile, a majority of Americans (55 percent, according to recent polls by Rasmussen Reports) disapprove of the Democrats' reform efforts. From its inception, the movement toward health-care reform has suffered from a dearth of leadership. The powerful Obama campaign machine that once gauged the pulse of the young, Internet-savvy generation has broken down, leaving in its wake the hordes of young...

Monday, 21 Dec 2009 12:11 PM Article Font Size By: James Hirsen Despite widespread public opposition to the current healthcare reform package, which is slated to be passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve, advocates have a new tool in their arsenal to court younger voters. Sex, what else? Rock the Vote, the celebrity weighted group that tries to reel in votes for Dems, recently released a video that encourages young folks to use sexual favors, or the withholding thereof, as a means of persuasion. Libs of the past made a career out of ridiculing abstinence programs. But some Rock...

The political advocacy group "Rock the Vote" has a new video out encouraging young people to abstain from having sex with folks opposed to healthcare reform. Sadly, this isn't your run of the mill call for celebacy, for the video also instructs youth to use sex to get people to change their minds on this issue.

I just saw this on another board, and just posting it here because Parents need to see the propaganda being shoved on their kids. Eva Amurri (Susan Sarandon's Daughter) is in an ad about health care, of course they cite statistics like 2/3 rd's of young adults don't have health care, but refuse to cite that these kids CHOOSE not to carry health care, they all have new cars. flat screen plasma tv's, computers, IPOD's, and cool cell phones though. This Ad even goes so far as saying to with hold sex from someone who isn't in favor of health...

Job Market Worsens For Recent College Graduates Unemployment among young adults is worse than the U.S. average. Don Lee December 14, 2009 Reporting from Washington - The unemployment rate dropped last month for men and women, blacks and whites, lifting hopes that the long dry spell in the jobs market may be coming to an end. But for recent college graduates and other young adults, the labor situation didn't just remain dire -- it got worse. For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November, even as unemployment nationally slipped to 10% from...

Barack Obama was the Political Pied Piper of 2008. His campaign motivated millions of young people to finally come to the polls and pull the levers -- and not just for Obama but other party members down the ticket, yielding sweeping power for the Democrats in Congress. A year of Obama has come and gone and so have many of his youthful supporters. This does not bode well for 2010 and beyond. Obama owes his presidency to the ranks of 18-24 year olds who overwhelmingly supported him over John McCain (66-32 percent). He tapped into their idealistic yearnings with promises...

National polling done by John Zogby for the League of American Voters following a TV and Internet ad campaign in Arkansas, North Dakota and Maine found that 65 percent of the youngest voters are opposed to Obama’s healthcare initiative, compared to 55 percent opposition among senior citizens.

PHOENIX -- A new statewide poll suggests John McCain could get a fight in his bid for another term in the U.S. Senate. And it would come from his own party. A telephone survey of 570 likely Republican primary voters conducted by Rasmussen Reports found McCain the favorite of 45 percent of those questioned. But former Congressman and current radio talk show host J.D. Hayworth was backed by 43 percent, well within the 4 percentage point margin of error for the poll. Hayworth told Capitol Media Services late Friday he has not made a decision, saying he is in the...

Mitt Romney is heading to Reagan country. The former Massachusetts governor is scheduled to speak this Friday to the Young America's Foundation at the Ronald Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, California. Romney is expected to be the dinner banquet speaker for the foundation's West Coast Leadership Conference, which consists of young conservatives from 44 colleges and universities across 12 states. "Young people provide much of the energy in the conservative movement, and if we are going to be successful as a party we need to harness that energy and put it work on behalf of the principles we all...

In November 2008, 658,000 Americans under 30 voted in New Jersey and 782,000 did so in Virginia. In November 2009, 212,000 Americans under 30 voted in New Jersey and 198,000 did so in Virginia. In other words, young voter turnout this year was down two-thirds in New Jersey and three-quarters in Virginia

RICHMOND, Va. - Last year, 23-year-old Rashida Hill watched the presidential debates, visited the college political party meetings and put a Barack Obama bumper sticker on her townhouse door. She voted for Obama because she felt like the election was about "being a part of something." But on Tuesday, the Virginia Commonwealth University student didn't bother voting in the governor's race because, she said, the candidates didn't give her anything to get excited about. "The simple fact is, unless you put it in front of somebody, they're really not going to seek it out," Hill said. Many of the young,...

Gubernatorial candidates Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell have toured, tailgated and twittered to win an elusive, college-age voting bloc. Efforts from the campaigns, both Democrat and Republican, to improve student voter turn-out, however, may only go so far at the University, where apathy, registration confusion and pre-voting numbers seem to foreshadow a potentially low turnout. Charlottesville General Registrar Sheri Iachetta said gubernatorial races historically bring in fewer voters than presidential elections, and that this year, absentee turnout might fall to 40 percent, lower than what it has usually been in previous years.

The love affair between Barack Obama and young Americans may be on the rocks. Recently released figures from the Department of Labor reveal staggeringly high joblessness numbers among America’s youth. Indeed, 53.4 percent of young Americans are without a job – a post-World War II high. With over half of 16-24 year olds jobless, even after stimulus package after stimulus package supposedly meant to create jobs, one has to wonder how Barack Obama’s approval ratings are doing among his strongest supporters. Unsurprisingly, the answer is “worse.” According to Gallup, approval of President Obama among young adults aged 18 to 29...

Last year the media did not mince words in their race to announce that young voters were flocking to Obama. In fact, a google search I conducted while doing research for this entry yielded 210,000 results for the very specific search phrase "young voters flock to Obama". The link provided is to the first one on the list. It was hardly surprising after young people's ridiculous choice at the polls in 2006, when they helped usher in a new era of governmental horrors by voting in droves for Democrats thus handing them control of Congress. Back in 2007 the new...

The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent -- a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. -- meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time. And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults -- aged 16 to 24, excluding students -- getting a job and moving...

CHICAGO -- Young Americans showed their collective power when they helped vote President Obama into office. Inspired by his message of "change," they knocked on doors, spread flyers, voted for him by a 2-1 margin, and partied like rock-the-vote stars when he won. Since the election, though, that fervor has died down _ noticeably. And while young people remain the president's most loyal supporters in opinion polls, a lot of people are wondering why that age group isn't doing more to build upon their newfound reputation as political influencers. "It's one thing to get excited about a presidential candidate. It's...

Young Americans showed their collective power when they helped vote President Obama into office. Inspired by his message of "change," they knocked on doors, spread flyers, voted for him by a 2-1 margin, and partied like rock-the-vote stars when he won. Since the election, though, that fervor has died down _ noticeably. And while young people remain the president's most loyal supporters in opinion polls, a lot of people are wondering why that age group isn't doing more to build upon their newfound reputation as political influencers. "It's one thing to get excited about a presidential candidate. It's another thing...

A few months ago, it was all about “hope and change”. As the youth vote now feels good about what was accomplished, they’ve moved on… A lot of the tech-savvy activists who helped put him in office are young, feeling indestructible and not all that into what they see as an old folks issue. It’s a crucial gap in support and one the White House may have to correct if Obama is to regain the momentum and get Congress to act on his top domestic priority. Matt Singer, a 26-year-old founder of the liberal group Forward Montana and an activist...

Gallup's breakdown of Obama's job approval by age was illuminating. First off, note Obama's drop-off among young people. Young people were supposed to be a critical component of the new Democratic majority. Granted their approval is still slightly higher than the other groups, but it has far and away been the most volatile, dropping more than any other. This should not come as a huge surprise. Baby Boomers were partial to McGovern in 1972, but swung around to Reagan in the 80s. Young people's political dispositions are still being formed.

For class of 2009, degree doesn’t mean a job Fewer than a fifth of graduating seniors even have offers, research finds Alex Johnson Matt Dumont has been looking for work since May. “I’ve had a couple times that I was told that I was one of the top applicants, went in for an interview, and then I just never heard back from them,” said Dumont, who graduated last spring from Abilene Christian University in Texas with a degree in English and minors in Spanish and the Bible. Dumont was haunting the college’s Career Center last week, looking for leads and...

Pike County - Young Republicans in Pike County have formed a chapter of the Pennsylvania Federation of Young Republicans (payrs.com) and the Young Republican National Federation (yrnf.com) in Pike County. The Young Republicans reach out to registered Republicans between the ages of 18 and 40 and is the oldest political youth organization in the country. The Pike County Young Republicans (PCYR) will give young voters in the area an opportunity to become more involved in local, state, and national politics while also giving them the ability to let the party know what is important to young voters today. The PCYR...

Dear Young Obama Voter, Congratulations. You have truly changed America. Those of you under 30 voted 66 percent to 32 percent for Barack Obama, an unprecedented margin. Your elders 30 and over voted for him, too, but only by a 50 percent to 49 percent margin. You converted a 2000-like margin to a solid majority and added significant numbers to the Democratic majorities in Congress. You voted, as your candidate and our president said, for Hope and Change. But I ask you to consider whether the policies that the president has proposed and in some cases pushed through really amount...

Another chestnut dug up by The One’s bete noire at Naked Emperor News, destined to be the inspiration for a new lederhosen segment on “Glenn Beck.” You might recall that this issue’s come up before in the context of Obama’s campaign: For a few days after the election, Rahm Emanuel’s stated fondness for mandatory national service was a hot topic on righty blogs, especially after the Obama transition website posted an entry on national service “requiring” 50-100 hours per year from students. After the outcry from the ’sphere, the “requirement” language was quietly replaced by more ambiguous language about “setting...

The Daily Beast's Meghan McCain on why the far-right pundit, who says McCain needs to shut up, won’t be getting her wish—and why telling moderates to get out of the party is bad for the GOP. BY MEGHAN MCCAIN Michelle Malkin, the conservative pundit and author of the recent book Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, was asked during a live chat on Politico’s The Arena on Friday which conservative political figure or commentator needs to shut up. Guess who her answer was? Yeah, that’s right—yours truly. So Michelle Malkin successfully rounds out...

What GOP presidential candidate do young conservatives prefer for 2012?.. I had a chance to ask this morning, during my talk at the national conference of the Young America's Foundation. The audience was about 250 conservative student activists. Their views are of course not representative of the general population, college students, or even conservatives. But they do represent something — a level of energy and enthusiasm on the Right. They are an interesting micro-demographic. Their opinions matter. Here's how we did it. I read a list of eight potential candidates: Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee,...

Almost four decades ago, the 26th Amendment lowered the US voting age to 18.  At the time, most neurologists believed that the human brain was fully developed by about age 12, so allowing Americans to vote at 18 seemed like a safe move. But parents of teenagers knew that was nonsense, and new research is confirming those parental observations.  Since the voting age was lowered in 1971, scientific advancements such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allowed researchers to get detailed three-dimensional images of developing brains. Although human brains typically reach their adult size by age 12, they are far from...

Youth hit hard by lack of jobs, school grants Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, July 12, 2009 Jordan Atkinson had all the trappings of a typical Marin County childhood. He lived in a big house in Novato, played Pop Warner football, spent weekends with friends listening to hip-hop. Now, three years out of San Marin High School, Atkinson is homeless, a casualty of the recession. "I was spoiled. I had a lot of things easy," Atkinson said recently while drinking a smoothie at a Novato cafe, taking a break from job applications and college forms. "Now, unless someone physically...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Rhode Island's governor has vetoed a bill that would let 16- and 17-year-olds register to vote. It's the fourth time that Gov. Don Carcieri has vetoed the legislation. The bill would have let teens "pre-register" to vote, with their registration automatically becoming active when they reach 18. Rep. Edwin Pacheco, D-Burrillville, who introduced the House measure, has said enrolling teens would help get more of them involved in the political process. Carcieri says the current law, which allows teens to register if they are eligible to vote by the next election, has served the state well....

Forbes notes that the average viewer age of the Comedy Central stars has gone up by five years. "On their late night talk shows, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert love to refer to their audiences as dorm-living, pot-smoking couch potatoes. But the reality is that their average viewer is more likely to be a hard-working Dad or even a retiree. So while Stewart's show grabbed big buzz this week for skewering The New York Times' for being the kind of news a "grandmother" would love, in May the median age of The Daily Show viewers crept up five years to...

Video at link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhUMDFMf1fQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infowars.com%2Famericorps-paramilitary-propaganda-ad%2F&feature=player_embedded

If the Republican Party thinks it has problems now, just wait. The party’s poor performance among young voters in the 2008 election raises questions about the long-term competitiveness of the GOP. The “millennials” — the generation of Americans born between 1982 and 2003 — now identify as Democrats by a ratio of 2-to-1. They are the first in four generations to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives.

The bad news for this spring's college graduates is that they're entering the toughest labor market in at least 25 years. The worse news: Even those who land jobs will likely suffer lower wages for a decade or more compared to those lucky enough to graduate in better times, studies show. Andrew Friedson graduated last year from the University of Maryland with a degree in government and politics and a stint as student-body president on his résumé. After working on Barack Obama's presidential campaign for a few months, Mr. Friedson hoped to get a position in the new administration. When...

The bad news for this spring's college graduates is that they're entering the toughest labor market in at least 25 years. The worse news: Even those who land jobs will likely suffer lower wages for a decade or more compared to those lucky enough to graduate in better times, studies show. Andrew Friedson graduated last year from the University of Maryland with a degree in government and politics and a stint as student-body president on his résumé. After working on Barack Obama's presidential campaign for a few months, Mr. Friedson hoped to get a position in the new administration. When...

Comedian Sarah Silverman has gotten a lot of mileage out of the notion that older Jewish voters, especially those in Florida, need to be persuaded to support Senator Barack Obama. Yet as it turns out, those bubbes and zaydes may be the ones prodding their grandchildren to support the Democratic nominee for president. Contrary to the perception that young people are in the bag for Obama, polls indicate that younger Jewish voters are more likely than older Jews to support Republican Sen. John McCain for president. This surprising finding most recently turned up in an October 23 analysis by Gallup...

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) visited Drexel April 13 for a town hall meeting discussing a "Just and Clean Energy Future". The main goals as highlighted by the presentation were for 100 percent renewable energy, tax on carbon and the presence of green jobs, according to Nathan Taylor, a junior mechanical engineering and the event's organizer. Students were the main target of the town hall, according to Taylor. "We're trying to make a point that students matter, seeing that Specter is up for re-election, he should listen to the students," Taylor said. Specter said his main platform in running for re-election...

In today's Daily Beast the daughter of Sen. John McCain, Meghan McCain, wrote about the need for "a gayer GOP" in order to expand the Republican Party's hopes of winning back a majority coalition and in particular in order to appeal to young voters. I recently completed research on the topic of young voters and the GOP: where the Republican Party is losing young voters, how serious the threat is to the party, and how the Republican Party should respond. And on this point, Ms. McCain has it right - the issue of gay marriage is one on which young...

Republicans appear to have another repeat candidate in 2010, as former Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) has filed to reclaim the seat he lost in November. Goode filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — a move that allows him to raise money for the race — but he told The Hill that he hasn't made a final decision about running again in 2010. He said he filed because he received several “unsolicited” campaign contributions. Once a candidate receives $5,000, he or she must file a statement of candidacy with the FEC. “I’m filing that because a few people have...

During the past couple of weeks, the Washington media and political establishment have focused on such matters of crucial and lasting importance as President Barack Obama’s possible “overexposure,” whether he showed suitable affect by chuckling during a TV interview in a time of severe economic difficulty, and just when he became angry about the bonuses received by American International Group executives. To be fair, the focus on trivialities is bipartisan. We have also been treated to several days of discussion about whether conservatives Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter or moderate Meghan McCain have the appropriate body shapes for Republican women....

NASHVILLE, March 30 (UPI) -- Members of a youth group with followers on seven U.S. college campuses say their organization is focused on protecting Western civilization. Trevor Williams and Devin Saucier said they founded a Vanderbilt University chapter of the Youth for Western Culture in order to protect the Western world from corrupting influences and not to promote racism as some of the group's critics suggest, The (Nashville) Tennessean said Monday. "We're not racists," Saucier, a Vanderbilt sophomore like Williams, said.

Why Young People Like Obama by VANESSA VAN PETTEN Obama is creating a mass following of net-generation teen, pre-teen and millennial young people. Many parents ask me: Why do teens and young people love Obama? Here are the reasons I think that Obama strikes a strong chord with our generation. 1) Obama is young We like Obama because he does not feel as far away from our own reality as many of the other candidates. He feels young, he feels fresh and therefore he is relatable to us. 2) Obama lets youth feel important Talk about a grass roots campaign!...

Generation Y enjoys a last hurrah before recession hits Spring Break is traditionally a time for US college students to indulge in serious hedonism. But this year, as job prospects disappear and debts mount up, there is an extra edge to the beach parties. Who knows how bad the hangover will be? Paul Harris in Panama City Beach, Florida The Observer, Sunday 15 March 2009 A male-versus-female drinking competition under way in Panama City Beach. But America's current generation of students faces a grim future at graduation. Photograph: Andrew Testa Jason Wenning, a 21-year-old medical student, sat in a sandy...

This must be what the country felt like when John F. Kennedy took the office - so much hope and youthful exuberance. The media is flowing in praise and pride at how diverse a nation we are now, at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream coming true, at how "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers" as they grow up on more equal ground than at any time in history. And, oh yes, we voters have judged a man, our president, not by the...

Among the Young ConservativesNotes from CPAC, the national conservative conference, where this week youth has been served. By Mollie Reilly | Newsweek Web Exclusive Feb 28, 2009 It's 9:15 a.m. on Friday morning. Most college students across America are still hitting the snooze button. But here, in the ballroom of the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., thousands of young people are standing and cheering for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "Some people call this the conservative spring break," said the 67-year-old senator from Kentucky. I am at the second day of the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The...

Republicans could use some political openings and this week two popped up. Both offered the chance to win back lost constituencies and cause the Democrats some grief. And both stemmed from policy overreaching or miscues by the Obama administration. The first may be with regard to young voters. Michael Barone at CPAC got me thinking about Republicans and young people. He contends that although the youth vote overwhelmingly went in the Democrats’ column, the policies which the Democrats are pursuing, including nationalized health care and abolition of secret ballots in union elections, aren’t very youth-oriented and potentially could turn off...

"The Democrats think you are stupid," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told the under-40 crowd at CPAC brought together by the Young Conservatives Coalition. DeMint marveled that so many young people supported Barack Obama in 2008, given that they will get the bill for the Democrats' massive deficit spending. The YCC is a new group founded by a network of young DC-area activists, and describes itself as "an advocacy organization dedicated to leading the next generation of the conservative movement." At today's even in the Omni Shoreham Hotel's Palladian room, YCC distributed orange-and-black stickers with their motto, "It's Our Turn." "People...

Hello, I am a long time reader and very rare poster, I apologize if I'm putting this in the wrong area. I don't think I've ever created a thread here before... Anyways, I am a college student and have been asked by student.com to become a "News & Politics" blog writer. I've been around that site since I was 15 or so(22 now) and accepted, and I was wondering if free republic would be willing to look over my articles before I post them? I'd appreciate your criticism much more than the criticism of high school students. I know you...

Sixty four years ago today waves of incredibly brave Marines swept onto the beaches of Iwo Jima to take it from the Japanese and destroy their dreams of ruling the world. Iwo Jima was the penultimate battle of the war against Japan, but in many ways its importance overshadows the battle for Okinawa a few months later. By early 1945 both Franklin Roosevelt and the American people were worn out by three years of constant two front war. Many Americans might not realize it, but there was a growing sentiment in our country that since we’d beaten Italy, and were...

Republicans would often say that no matter how far their senators, congressmen and latter-day president strayed from real conservative values, it was the various state governors who were gloriously holding the line against taxes, spending and other big government initiatives that originated from the left but were cheerfully adopted by the right. That is, until this week. GOP governors from all over the country have begun lobbying for the passage of Obama’s $819 billion spending plan and, naturally, demanding their own cut. And these aren’t just wishy-washy moderates such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Charlie Crist, but even those “conservatives” regaled...

I am about to throw a brick on my 50" TV screen watching Geraldo on FOX report on the Youth Ball. Would someone please do our nation a favor and stuff a large sack of raw potatoes into his mouth? This guy is truly a sychophantic pig

America's 20-something "millennials" have driven, hitchhiked, walked, biked, and bussed their way to Washington in hordes this week to witness the must-see, must-be-there event of their lives - the swearing-in of Barack Obama. Many of their Baby Boomer parents can relate: they remember this thing called Woodstock. No one is suggesting that a rock concert on a farm in upstate New York where guitarist Jimi Hendrix wailed the "The Star Spangled Banner" - don't even mention to the sex, drugs and three days of rock and roll - approaches the weight of the inauguration of the first African American president....