Chatroulette - > Looking for a random stranger... (captkodak on Flickr)

It’s a Sunday night. You’re done with all of your homework. You’ve had enough of what Facebook has to offer. But you still find yourself surfing the web, looking for something to entertain yourself.

A new website called Chatroulette just might quench your curiosity.

When I first heard about this website, I was hesitant to try it out. Chatroulette is like a webcam to webcam website, but the fun is, you don’t know who you will get connected to.

It was invented by 17 year old Andrey Ternovskiy, a high school student from Moscow, Russia.

The first thing to do when visiting the site is to set up your webcam. Make sure your microphone is working, because the person on the other end is likely to talk to you longer if they can hear you, even though there is a chat box.

Next, click “Play,” and the fun begins. You are immediately connected to another random user webcam to webcam.

The first person I ‘met’ on Chatroulette was a faceless guitarist trying his best to play a song, even though he wasn’t that good. This first time, I nexted him.

Nexting someone means you have clicked on the “Next” button at the top of the page. This disconnects you from the current user you are talking to, and connects with someone else. Sometimes you are the one getting nexted. Try not to take it too personally.

One of the first normal people I met on Chatroulette was a girl named Candice, who is a teacher in the state of Minnesota. We discussed Chatroulette and the variety and copious amounts of nudity on the site as the only inhibitor to the fun.

You won’t always meet normal people on Chatroulette. There is a fair amount of perverts who feel the best way to meet new people online is to start the conversation in the nude. I won’t get too explicit, but the number of naked men is greatly competitive to the number of clothed people. It’s best to next these folks as fast as you can.

I also met a nice couple, named Anna and John, who the first person they met on Chatroulette was me. Unfortunately my browser crashed, and our lighthearted conversation came to an end. A crashing internet browser is another one of the problems currently plaguing Chatroulette.

A dancing girl holding a flashlight was one of the more unique people I met. I quickly nexted her as well, and I’m sure she continued on dancing to others the rest of the night.

Then there are those random users who hold signs demanding and asking other users anything from showing their cleavage to dancing. One of the best examples of this I encountered was a user who held up a sign that said, “Show me your Golden Globes, and I’ll show you my Oscar.”

One of the more interesting people I met was a man who claimed to be a butler for one of the world’s biggest celebrities, which he could not name. He said he was in St. Barts, an island in the Caribbean, with his famous employer. But of course, Chatroulette allows you to be anyone you want to be.

Occasionally, you just might run into a celebrity. I met one celebrity, Jamie Cobb, who will appear in the upcoming film, Sophomore later this year. Of course, I couldn’t help but hypothesize that this was a clever way to virally advertise for the movie by reaching a young audience.

In an initial survey from the Web Ecology Project, the study found that 87 percent of Chatroulette users are men, and 13 percent are women. The same study found that a majority of users fall between the ages of 18 and 24.

If you do plan on taking a look at the site, go on with friends. Don’t get caught doing anything embarrassing. There is a new phenomenon of Chatroulette users streaming video causing other users into watching shocking content, just to get a reaction. These reaction videos have made their way onto YouTube.

So why the sudden popularity in random online social encounters? It harkens back to the early days of the internet when chat rooms were popular. After 2000, and leading up to now, the internet was used a way to communicate better with the people we know in our real lives. This brought innovations in social networking with websites like MySpace and Facebook. Now it feels the internet has a taken 360 degree turn, and is back to its roots.

Talking to someone you don’t know at all feels thrilling since you can be as honest or as deceitful as you want. People on the internet love putting themselves out there, as long as anonymity is guaranteed. And for the most, besides showing someone from across the world your face, on Chatroulettte, they will never know who you really are, unless you want them to.

Chatroulette takes over the internet is a post from: The Young American

A Vietnam War veteran shares his experience 41 years later.

When 19 year old Joseph Garcia decided to join the Navy, he felt that it would change his life for the better. Feeling down and out of luck in East Los Angeles in 1968, he said, “Vietnam was the talk of the town.”

Born on January 27, 1950 in Hanford, California, in Spanish Joseph’s mother Alice described him as, “Muy travieso,” meaning a very mischievous kid.

In 1960, at the age of 10, his family moved to City Terrace, an unincorporated community in Los Angeles County, California.

At the age of 16 he joined the local ‘Pomeroy Boys’ gang, where he first got involved with drugs and petty crime. He was a high school dropout, and his life was headed for the worse. His personal life was getting to him. When asked why he made the final decision to enlist, he said, “No money, no job, I hated my mom, didn’t have a dad, no clothes, no shoes, and my teeth were rotting.” To him, Vietnam was a good way out. It was a way to escape his poverty, and keep out of jail.

In February, 1968 all of Joseph’s friends were getting drafted to serve in the already unpopular Vietnam War. It was his time to decide to enlist. But his decision did not involve the input of his family, only his own.

On the same day in August, 1960, after telling his mother about his decision, his good friend, Big John, drove him down to a Naval recruitment center in Los Angeles. The original recruitment plan consisted of him and some of the Pomeroy Boys enlisting altogether. But this buddy plan never came to fruition, and it turned out to be a one man plan.

Approximately two to three weeks later after taking the test at the recruitment center, he found out that he was being accepted to serve in a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion. After feeling that he would never be anybody or amount to anything in his life, he said, “I was excited about just being accepted.”

Naval Station San Diego is the largest naval base on the west coast of the United States. There he spent 10 weeks in boot camp and survival training.

After a short break, sometime in early 1969, it was time for him to go to Vietnam. His mother Alice and Uncle Felix drove him down to Edwards Air Force Base, located on the borders of Kern and Los Angeles counties. But Joseph and many others of his fellow soldiers were just barely heading to Vietnam, and he himself would not return until almost two years later.

The 18 hour flight from Edwards AFB to Da Nang, Vietnam in June was one of the most exciting moments in Joseph’s life. He was so excited about just being on an airplane that he said, “I didn’t think about the future or the past.”

In Vietnam, Joseph was enlisted to serve in the U.S. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 11, a group also known as the Seabees. This type of military unit was in charge of the construction of roads, bases, and airstrips. In Vietnam Joseph’s MCB 11 was the third phase in fighting for the Navy, meaning that if the fighting got too tough for the first two phases, he would have to fight. Luckily for him the opportunity never arose.

Joseph remembers landing in Da Nang around 9 a.m. As soon as they landed and got off the plane, they were mortar attacked by Viet Cong soldiers. While remembering the first time he heard an incoming attack, he said, “I knew it was death.” Luckily for him, death did not know him. They were immediately ordered to head to an underground bunker that could only fit about 20 people, yet about 300 people tried to push and squeeze in. Surprisingly, his only major injury was during this first mortar attack escape when he fell on his stomach and another soldier stepped on his hand.

He was also impressed with the United States’ military prowess. When talking about surviving an attack, he said, “Your whole life depended on communication.” As anyone serving in the military past or present knows, once that communication is broken, the ability to plan and attack is gone.

Another vivid memory of Joseph’s experience in the Vietnam War was the harsh racism of the Vietnamese towards him and other non-white Americans that served in the war. According to the Veterans Hour, of the 2.59 million male and female personnel that served in the Vietnam War, 170,000 of them were Hispanic, like Joseph. Vietnamese perception of Americans was a white male whose only intention was to cause great fear or harm. Joseph remembers the Vietnamese trying to run them over and spit at them. He said, “To them an American was somebody white.” The Vietnamese had no idea of American diversity.

The National Archives of the United States says that, of the 1.1 million people that died in the Vietnam War, 58,193 of them were serving Americans. Joseph himself remembers killing only about 7 “underground” Vietnamese civilian soldiers during his entire war experience.

But death still affected him greatly, especially the deaths of American soldiers. He remembers the one time he saw a hangar full of American soldiers in coffins. His comment to the horrible sight was, “There’s something about that courage.”

The war ended with a treaty and disengagement of the U.S. in 1973. Joseph was able to leave in August, 1970, as he said, “On a hot summer day.”

Joseph feels lucky to have gotten out alive and be given the opportunity to move on with his life. He got married, had children, and even became a grandfather. Even though the thought that he survived the war never crossed his mind until many years later, today he thanks God for letting him live through Vietnam. But for the soldiers that did not make it through, he said, “It was all under the American flag.”

Almost 41 years later, the experiences Joseph took from his service in Vietnam still affected him for many years afterward, causing him to turn to drugs and alcohol. Today he is now clean and sober, and has been an Alcoholics Anonymous member since 2004. He lives in Long Beach with his wife Merlyn, and he works at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Hospital as a housekeeper where he helps sick and disabled fellow war veterans.

Joseph Garcia has had a tough life. He believes his life was a series of bad decisions, but now some good ones too. Today he lives day by day thanking God and he has developed a strong relationship with his mother Alice and family. His story is one of sadness, and in the end acceptance for his life’s decisions, which includes moving on with his life after war, like so many other veterans have before and after him must do.

“There’s Something About That Courage” is a post from: The Young American

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The magic number was supposed to be 60. It’s how many senators the Democratic Party had in Congress for one full year. And although many significant legislative accomplishments were made in that time, one important reform never happened: health care.

Then the state of Mass. voted to elect Republican Scott Brown to replace Sen. Ted Kennedy, and the prospects of passing health care reform seemed worse off than before. Democrats were left with only 59 standing senators.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll from Feb. 9 found that 63 percent of Americans still believe Congress should “keep trying” to pass a health care reform bill.

The bill currently stalled in the Senate has been watered down from what it once was. Instead of a public option (a national health insurance exchange) which would have the people power to compete against and bargain with insurance companies, the current version of the bill contains state health insurance exchanges and would be as effective in bargaining with the national health insurance companies.

A study by the Health Care for America Now organization found that due a variety of factors, but most predominantly the recession, insurance companies lost 2.7 million customers in 2009. And to make up for the lost profit, insurers raised premiums.

As reported by the New York Times on Feb. 15, just a few weeks ago Anthem Blue Cross, California’s largest health insurance provider, raised their premiums an average of 25 percent, with some customers seeing increases as much as 40 percent. It is another sign that insurance companies will continue to raise premiums on customers unless Congress steps in and makes the much needed reforms.

But the issue is a deadlocked Congress, a fledgling majority party in the Senate, and a President unwilling to step in and take charge.

In his State of the Union Address on Jan. 27, President Obama said, “if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town — a supermajority — then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well.”

But here’s an open secret. It doesn’t actually take 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. It only takes 51 votes, or 50 if the vice president decides to break the tie. The number 60 is derived from the number of senators it takes to get past a filibuster (a tactic used by obstructionist senators who use speeches to prevent a bill from being voted on).

A filibuster can only end with 60 votes in the senate. This process, called “cloture,” brings the debate to an end and then a vote can finally take place on the actual bill. But in recent times just the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to scare the party in power into submission.

Now with the only 59 surviving Democratic senators, and no possible Republicans willing to vote with Democrats, the senate has only one other option to pass health care reform.

“Reconciliation” is a process that is not subject to a filibuster and only requires 51 votes to pass a bill in the senate. It was created to make changes to the budget, but in recent times has been used to include other provisions only slightly dealing with the budget.

In this case, health care reform would have an enormous effect on the budget. Its costs would definitely see an increase in spending, but Democrats hope to bring in enough revenue over the next ten years to pay for those costs.

The problem with reconciliation is that many important health care reform provisions would not be allowed to pass through reconciliation.

Mark Schmitt, a political scientist and author, wrote in The American Prospect on Jan. 11 that the problem with reconciliation is, “Provisions that don’t directly affect the budget can’t be included.” He added, “Much of the fine detail of health-insurance regulation in the current bill would likely have been lost if pushed through reconciliation.”

The final bill would end up being a series of rules and regulations determining the practices of health insurance companies, and not much would get accomplished in terms of making sure everyone has access to affordable health insurance.

Although the final outcome of health care reform remains uncertain, and even though those 40 million Americans may not get the affordable health insurance they had once hoped for, it’s important that congress gets something accomplished before time runs out on this president and this congress.

What the health? is a post from: The Young American

President Barack Obama

As Congress finalizes its plans to pass national health care reform, President Obama announced that he intends to send an additional 30,000 troops to support the war in Afghanistan.

The Senate health care plan has a cost of $848 billion over a ten year period, as projected by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

According to the Congressional Research Service, over their concurring eight-year period, the combined cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon top $1 trillion within the next few months.

Elected leaders are scrounging for ideas to bring in revenue to pay for health care costs. Suggestions such as taxing sugary drinks, hygiene products, and taxes on cosmetic surgery have all been seriously considered.

But the issue is not whether health care can be paid for. The U.S. has the revenue: Iraq and Afghanistan.

In November Rep. David Obey (D-WI) proposed a progressive income surtax (an increase on an already existing tax) on all Americans. The bill is called the “Share the Sacrifice Act of 2010.” The bill would tie a tax increase to the escalation of troops in Afghanistan.

The tax would add an additional 1 percent tax for households that make between $30,000 and $150,000 a year and increasing for those over the $150,000 mark. It would also exempt military families as well as families who have lost a relative in either of the two conflicts. Although highly unlikely to pass Congress, it makes an important point.

Comparisons can be drawn between the Vietnam War under President Lyndon Johnson and now the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan under President Obama.

In the Washington Post on Dec. 1 Rep. Obey said, “That’s what happened with the Vietnam War, which wiped out the Great Society. In each case, the costs of those wars shut off our ability to afford anything else.”

In his speech on Dec. 1 announcing the escalation of troops to Afghanistan, President Obama said, “There are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history.”

As far as history goes, Johnson’s Great Society initiative, including his War on Poverty agenda, was established in 1964 during the same time the President escalated involvement in the Vietnam War.

Because of the distraction of war, most of the Johnson Administration’s domestic policies were left on the wayside, and the war on poverty was never won.

Today, while things are falling apart at home, and with the nation still in economic turmoil, it should be clear that there is a need to focus on the domestic agenda alone. Staying the course on current foreign policy path limits the nation’s ability to take care of itself at home.

As the country attempts to save lives at home through preventative health care, it will almost certainly lose more lives to war conflicts abroad.

A calculator provided by the National Priorities Project concluded that taxpayers living in San Bernardino County will have paid $5.2 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

For the same amount of money, 2,132,788 people living in the county could have been provided with health care for one year.

If history has taught anything it’s that the cost of foreign policy entanglements abroad has hindered our ability to make social progress at home.

The Vietnam War killed the nation’s ability to make social change at home. The same might be said one day for Afghanistan, Iraq and health care.

War abroad or health care at home? is a post from: The Young American

Getty Images

I was nine years old when George W. Bush was elected president of the United States in 2000. I now realize that half of my life has been spent under the rule of King George II. I decided that the best way to commemorate his presidency was to look back on the ups and downs of a tumultuous eight years that changed American culture and society forever.

In September 2001 George W. Bush had been president for only eight months. He became president after one of the most controversial elections in American history. He lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but still found himself sitting at the desk in the oval office at the White House thanks to the Electoral College.

That September America was attacked on the eleventh day of that month. The President was visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. One of his aides whispered in his ear that America had been attacked. What followed was one of Bush’s most critiqued presidential moments. He didn’t freak out, jump up, and run out of the building. Instead he sat and thought. Should the President have gotten up, acted more swiftly and confidently? Should he have sat there like he did as to not panic the children in the room? He did the latter, and days later, on September 14th, in New York City at ground zero he showed a confidence in his ability to track down the people who had crashed a plane into the ground in Pennsylvania, attacked the Pentagon, and demolished the Twin Towers. “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon,” he said.

A year and half later, on March 13, 2003, Bush felt it was time to get back at those who attacked us, but we suddenly found ourselves in Iraq. We had been in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001, the location commonly believed to be near where Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11 lives. But instead, we chose to focus our resources elsewhere, and we invaded Iraq under pretenses that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction.

“Mission Accomplished,” read on a banner a little over a month later on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Bush said that we had been victorious with our major combat operations. “In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed,” Bush declared. But, we would find ourselves in Iraq to this very day, and the terrorist who had planned 9/11, Bin Laden, still not yet captured.

The President’s re-election bid in 2004 blindsided many Americans who felt he was sure to lose that one at least. He didn’t, and America had just signed up for four more years of “Dubya.”

At the end of August, 2005 brought us the year of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in American history. President Bush was criticized for his slow reaction to rescuing and providing aid to the victims of the hurricane. He had appointed one of his friends to be the head of the Federal Emergency Management Association, Michael Brown. Brown resigned shortly after President Bush told him, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” It was also reported that Bush had been vacationing in Arizona at the time of the disaster, and when it came time to visit New Orleans for his first time since the disaster, he flew over in an airplane instead of walking among the people.

The war in Iraq had reached its most difficult year in 2006. Americans wanted out, but Bush stuck to his guns and stayed. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, also resigned that year after revelations of mismanagement in war strategy and that nine billion dollars had gone missing. Photos of tortured prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq also fueled the fire of American unrest. In January 2007, Bush even committed to sending more troops to Iraq as part of his “surge” plan.

This year, in 2008, we witnessed the devastating fall of the American economy. Private banks were bought by the government to save them from going under. American automakers find themselves on their own brink of collapse. And, now we can officially say that we are in a recession.

As George W. Bush enters his final days in office we can look back and say that he has at least done one thing right. That is his graciousness at a time of the transition of power in America. Barack Obama won the presidency this year, and I’m sure when Obama spoke to Bush over the telephone on election night that he thanked him for doing all that he did over the last eight years, right and wrong (mostly wrong) to help him get elected.

Rising from the ashes of the burning Bush is a post from: The Young American

So, why the blog name change from “Think Youth” to “The Young American“?

To be honest, I’ve wanted to change the blog name since August 25, 2008. We were in Denver for a convention, and just the mention of our blog’s name was a hassle. For some reason, to get the words “Think Youth” out of my mouth was a difficult part, but what was even harder was having the person who had to hear the blog name actually understand what I was saying.

“What is your blog’s name?” she said.

“Think Youth,” I said.

“Thank You? Thank Youth?” she questioned back.

“No ma’am. Think Youth,” I repeated. What followed was the actual spelling of the blog name.

“T-H-I-N-K Y-O-U-T-H!” it ended.

So, I hope that our new blog name not only sounds nicer, but is easier to say. “THE YOUNG AMERICAN.”

Most urls/links will automatically update and redirect to the new domain name, but just to be sure, please update your bookmarks, and thank you, not think youth:

http://www.theyoungamerican.org/

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheYoungAmerican

The Young American is a post from: The Young American

Florida and Arizona also voted to ban same sex marriage, and the state of Arkansas voted to stop homosexuals from adopting children.

Update, 11/5/08: The same sex marriages that have already been established in the state of California will most likely still be valid and legal because they took place during a time in which they were legal.

But, a San Francisco Attorney plans to take the case to the state Supreme Court in hopes of overturning the decision as unconsitutional.

Florida, Arizona, and uh California!? ban same sex marriage is a post from: The Young American

Like Obama said, the campaign took him from “the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California.” All across America young people came out and supported change.

It led him to November on the night of this historic presidential election. Young people supported Barack Obama 68-30% over Senator John McCain. Young people ages 18-29 made up 18% of the electorate this year, slightly higher than 17% in 2004 and 2000. That may not seem like a large increase, but in a year where overall voter turnout reached massive numbers (estimates place overall voter turnout at around 60%) it sure made the difference.

It was the young voters who won tonight. Those that supported one specific candidate, President-elect Barack Obama.

What Made the Difference Tonight: Youth Turnout is a post from: The Young American

Looking back, I think we can say that the lengthy Democratic primary was part of Obama’s success. His national infrastructure that was created to beat Hillary Clinton has been used to defeat John McCain. His debate performances against Hillary taught him how to face off in a real debate.

CNN reported that Obama won Hillary supporters 84% to John McCain’s 15% tonight. Thank You Hillary.

How Hillary Helped is a post from: The Young American