One of the great ironies of Democratic voters is how many of them are being harmed by the policies of their own party.  Jews vote overwhelmingly Democrat, but Republicans are the true friends of Israel--a fact which is made increasingly clear by the current war.  Young people also tend toward the liberal side of things, but Democrats have shown no inclination to return the favor by helping young people out.  
    First, Democrats turned their backs on the youngest generation by killing private retirement accounts in Social Security reform.  Who can blame them, liberals had whipped seniors into a frenzy with the lie that SS reform would endanger their retirement.  And unlike young people, seniors vote.  But nevertheless, young people should be punishing Democrats for betraying them for crass political gain.
    Now Democrats are at it again.  They want to exploit the pathetic knowledge of economics the American populace has gained from the government schools for their partisan gain.  They want to raise the minimum wage.  It will be on the backs of young people.  Only a small fraction of the workforce earns the minimum wage.  They are unskilled, new hirees, who are also very young.  Around 3% of hourly workers make the minimum wage and of that 3%, half are under 25.  So, guess who can no longer find a job when the minimum wage is raised to $7, $8 or even $9.  Right, teenagers.  The minimum wage is not supposed to support a working family or lift people out of poverty as our economically hapless, Democratic friends have opined.  It's for unskilled labor.  This study concludes that you can estimate a 1% decrease in employment for every 10% you raise the minimum wage.  Finally, it is important to remember that most workers do not stay at the minimum wage for long, that is why only 3% of the workforce earns it.  As they gain skill, they get paid more.
    Even ignoring statistics and the fact that the minimum wage causes unemployment, the minimum wage is wrong based on principle.  The government should have no business in the agreement between business and employee about wages.  It contradicts the working of the free market.  If a worker has enough skill to earn above the minimum wage, no one is forcing them to accept the minimum wage, they can find a business that will agree to hire them for what they are worth.  On the contrary, if a worker has no skills, even the government cannont force a business to pay them more than they are worth, the business will just lay them off.  Jimmy Carter tried price controls...they didn't work.  So why are we still chasing the folly of wage controls?   

  Few activities will have as great an impact on the development of young american males over the next few decades as video games.  Game producers have worked consistently over the last decade to make games more immersive.  They want gamers to feel as if they are in the game.  Combine the immersiveness of the games with massive amounts of time spent playing them and you can see that video games will have a large impact on the mindsets of the next generation.  But what kind?
    I have yet to see a video game about reforming social security or reforming the judiciary, but I could spend the next 15 minutes reading off names of video games devoted to fighting.  Oh how young guys love fighting.  So, the chief area of impact video games should have is on foreign policy.  Once again, no games about talking with terrorists or doing diplomacy with rogue states.  You shoot them, blow them up, kick their butts, and break their things.  This is not a tutoring lesson for the next generation of American males to practice convincing a dictator to play nice by appeasing him.  The likelihood that a resurgence of aggressive, peace-through-strength, foreign policy will result from American males addiction to video games seems likely to me.
    Of course, many guys will not transfer their gaming mindset completely to politics.  There will be plenty of gamers that leave their gaming at the door of the living room and think by a different set of principles about politics.  But, not all of them will.  Only time will tell how much of an impact the "Gamer Dad" will have on politics in several decades.  

And to think that the Republicans could not get John Bolton's nomination through the Senate.  He has got to be the best diplomat to the UN in many years.  Powerline notes Bolton's excellent response to a question:
    

Reporter: The news for the last 48 hours from the Middle East, it is more and more apparent now that many in the Middle East, Lebanese and others, are accusing the U.S. and the Security Council of being the obstacle to a real ceasefire immediately because that’s what they need. Could you explain in a couple words what is really your position about this?

Ambassador Bolton: Well look, I think we could have a cessation of hostilities immediately if Hezbollah would stop terrorizing innocent civilians and give up the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. So that to the extent this crisis continues, the cause is Hezbollah. How you get a ceasefire between one entity, which is a government of a democratically elected state on the one hand, and another entity on the other which is a terrorist gang, no one has yet explained. The government of Israel, everybody says, has the right to exercise the right of self-defense, which even if there are criticisms of Israeli actions by some, they recognize the fundamental right to self-defense. That’s a legitimate right. Are there any activities that Hezbollah engages in, militarily that are legitimate? I don’t think so. All of its activities are terrorist and all of them are illegitimate, so I don’t see the balance or the parallelism between the two sides and therefore I think it’s a very fundamental question: how a terrorist group agrees to a ceasefire. You know in a democratically elected government, the theory is that the people ultimately can hold the government accountable when it does something and doesn’t live up to it. How do you hold a terrorist group accountable? Who runs the terrorist group? Who makes the commitment that a terrorist group will abide by a ceasefire? What does a terrorist group think a ceasefire is? These are - you can use the words “cessation of hostilities” or “truce” or "ceasefire.” Nobody has yet explained how a terrorist group and a democratic state come to a mutual ceasefire.