Thomas Day, a 31 year old Iraq War veteran wrote a guest column yesterday in the Washington Post’s On Faith section. Mr. Day is also a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, an acquaintance of the monster Jerry Sandusky and a product of the now notorious Second Mile foundation. The point of his column to express what I think is a common theme running my and Mr. Day’s generation, and also the youth movement that has been behind both the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and also the Occupy Movement this year:

[I] have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation. […]

I was one of the lucky ones. My experience with Second Mile was a good one. I should feel fortunate, blessed even, that I was never harmed. Yet instead this week has left me deeply shaken, wondering what will come of the foundation, the university, and the community that made me into a man.

One thing I know for certain: A leader must emerge from Happy Valley to tie our community together again, and it won’t come from our parents’ generation.

They have failed us, over and over and over again. […] They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.

Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.

For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.

We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us — at the orders of our leader — to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping. […]

We looked for leadership from our churches, and were told to fight not poverty or injustice, but gay marriage. In the Catholic Church, we were told to blame the media, not the abusive priests, not the bishops, not the Vatican, for making us feel that our church has failed us in its sex abuse scandal and cover-up.

Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. […]
Now we are asking for jobs and are being told we aren’t good enough, to the tune of 3.3 million unemployed workers between the ages of 25 and 34.

Perhaps the most vivid illustration this week of our leaderless culture came with the riots in State College that followed Paterno’s dismissal. The display resembled Lord of the Flies. Without revered figures from the older generation to lead them, thousands of students at one of the country’s best state universities acted like children home alone.

Generational definitions are hard to come by and subject to much debate. But generally, you have the Greatest Generation, those born in the 1910’s and 1920’s, who fought World War II. The Baby Boomer Generation are the children of the Greatest Generation, and were born in the late 40’s and 50’s, that much is certain. Where the debate comes in concerns the parameters of what constitutes the next two generations after the Baby Boomers. There is Generation X (those born in the mid 60’s and 70’s) and Generation Y (those born in the 80’s and early 90’s). Mr. Day speaks of the generation that is in their 20’s and 30’s today, which would cover both GenX and GenY.

Regardless, it is the collective XY generations are who are in conflict with the Baby Boomers. Fittingly, President Obama is really not encamped in either generation. He is really not a Baby Boomer, obviously, having been born in 1961, although some generational timelines have the Baby Boom generation lasting until 1964. But Bill and Hillary and George W. are Baby Boomers. Barack is not. Barack is also not really a GenX-er, having been born too early. No, he is a child of the Silent Generation, those who were born between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers. But I am really digressing.

What we are experiencing right now is a generational battle. The younger generations have lost all faith in their elders, and are fighting back.

So I stumbled upon a diary on Daily Kos that was posted last week, and found it fascinating. The diarist created the State of Delmarva by taking Delaware and adding the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland and Virginia and then examines the effects on redistricting of on this new state.

At just under 1.4 million residents, [the state of Delmarva] has two congressional districts, gaining one in addition to Delaware’s original at-large district[.]

DE-01 (blue): Rep. John Carney (D) – 64.9% Obama, 33.4% McCain

This very blue district contains all of liberal New Castle County and all of conservative Cecil County, as well as most of Kent County (MD) and parts of Queen Anne’s County and Kent County (DE). (Obviously something would have to be done about those two Kent counties.) Ultimately, it comes out to one of the bluest non-VRA districts in the mid-Atlantic. Carney, who lives in Wilmington, would romp here. Safe Democratic.

DE-02 (green): OPEN – 46% Obama, 52.9% McCain

Due to Delmarva’s concentration of population in the urbanized north, this southern district is considerably larger, including most of the Eastern Shore taken from Maryland and all of Virginia’s portion of the peninsula. Southern Delaware and the Middle Shore are famously conservative, though their red tinge is tempered somewhat by liberal population centers in Somerset and Wicomico counties, as well as the state capital of Dover. It still ends up being a district in which Republicans would be slightly favored, but the area is also ancestrally Democratic and not averse to electing Blue Dogs. Frank Kratovil Jr. might want to take a run here. Lean Republican.

Thinking about scrambling the state boundaries has always been a kinda hobby of mine. Yeah, I’m weird. I have created maps showing the new states of Appalachia (West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania), a unified state of Carolina, North California and South California, the new state of Jefferson (Southern Oregon and Northern California) and Cascadia (Idaho and eastern Oregon and Washington State) a smaller state of Oregon (Coastal Oregon and Washington). The reason is many of our states are at odds culturally with themselves. Chicagoland versus downstate Illinios. Philly v. Pittsburgh v. the Alabama T in the middle. New York City versus Upstate.

Hell, look at Delaware and our above and below the canal battles. Such a battle is not solved with a new state of Delmarva. To solve that, you create a state of Delmarva sans Northern New Castle County, which is added to a new state of Franklin (SE Pa and Southern Jersey). But I digress. What do you think of this? I have always felt Delaware deserved a second congressional district as we approach a million Delawareans. But I doubt it will ever happen unless the state actually gets bigger. LOL.

While we are at it, perhaps some new counties in Delaware. Make Middletown a county seat of a new below the canal county between New Castle and Kent. And divide Eastern Sussex and Western Sussex into two counties. Yeah, yeah, I know, not practical or feasible in this day and age of budget cuts and consolidation. But I dream.

“President Obama called for the removal of Gaddafi. Just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing before I say, yes I agree, I know I didn’t agree. I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason — no, that’s a different one. I gotta go back to… Got all this stuff twirling around in my head. Specifically, what are you asking me, did I agree or not disagree with on what?”

That’s Herman Cain, struggling to collect his thoughts in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which was videotaped. In the same interview, he came out in support of collective bargaining rights for public employees, a conservative sin graver than any harassment of women. At the link, you can watch the video of his Perryesque Libya answer and his new found love of worker’s rights.

So Cain’s over. He is already dropping like a stone in the polls.

ORC International for CNN. 11/11-13. Republican primary voters. ±4.5%. (10/14-16 results.)

Romney: 24 (26)
Gingrich: 22 (8)
Cain: 14 (25)
Perry: 12 (13)
Paul: 8 (9)
Bachmann: 6 (6)
Huntsman: 3 (1)
Santorum: 3 (3)

An 11 point drop before this interview. I expect Cain to be Bachmann territory shortly. Meanwhile, a new Public Policy Polling survey shows Newt Gingrich taking the lead, with 28%, followed by Herman Cain at 25% and Mitt Romney at 18%. The rest of the field: Rick Perry at 6%, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at 5%, Jon Huntsman at 3%, and Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum each at 1%.

“Gingrich’s lead caps an amazing comeback he’s made over the last 5 months. In June his favorability nationally with Republican voters plummeted all the way to 36/49. Now he’s at 68/23, representing a 58 point improvement in his spread since then. As recently as August Gingrich was mired in single digits at 7%, and even in September he was at just 10%. He’s climbed 18 points in less than 2 months.”

So the King (Cain) is dead, long live the King (Gingrich). How long will Gingrich last? I mean, the GOP cannot possibly nominate him, right?

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Romney leading the race with 32%, followed by Cain at 27%, Gingrich at 22%, Paul at 9%, Perry at 4%, Bachmann at 2%, Santorum at 2% and Hunstman at 1%.

“Debates are good, but we’re reaching overload.” — Political consultant Ed Rollins, in an interview with The Hill, noting that “there are going to be 20-plus debates in this primary process.”

Five reasons why Rick Perry will survive … for now.

The County by County breakdown in Ohio from last week, with blue counties voting for collective bargaining and red voting against.

If all publicity is good publicity, the Occupy Delaware people have plenty to be pleased about with yesterday’s News Journal coverage.

“100 Protesters” feels like a large number and for the first few paragraphs the coverage was relatively free of the sneering condescension that NJ editors typically spray all over stories like this.

WILMINGTON — About 100 Occupy Delaware protesters marched through downtown on Saturday, stopping in front of several banks to shout their frustrations over inequality, corporate greed and political corruption.

“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” they chanted in front of Bank of America.

“The people, united, will never be defeated!” they yelled at PNC Bank and Citizens Bank.

“We are the 99 percent!” they cheered. “And so are you!”

This fits a trend nationally, as the greatest success of the OWS movement has been to shift the narrative in the media. But the News Journal could not resist in finding the protestors with different agendas:

Other protesters brought different agendas to the march.

Some signs urged an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. One pushed for an audit of the “unconstitutional Federal Reserve,” another for an end to genetically modified organisms in the food supply and still another proclaimed “Robin Hood was right.”

Bernie August of Newark said he was most concerned about the threat of nuclear weapons and “the machines of war.” He wore a Soviet Union pin on his black beret and a Malcolm X pin on his fleece vest. He calls himself “a red” but doesn’t consider himself a Communist.

Bernie sounds like exactly the professional elder experienced protestor Liberal Geek spoke of several weeks ago: trying to jump on the bandwagon of the Occupy Movement so as to continue their decades long history of protesting that began in the 60’s. I am sorry Bernie, but you are the type of person who gives the Occupy movement a bad name. Nuclear Weapons? Machines of War? Malcolm X? I’m a Red? Sweet Jesus. Try to stay on topic there Bernie. Indeed, if I didn’t know better, I would have to assume Bernie was a plant from the Republican Party.