Bush should push the policies he campaigned on
To the Daily:
Today’s viewpoint by Daniel Faichney, Challenges ahead
in the next four years (11/03/04), was simply not logical. In
keeping with the editorial mourning of the Kerry campaign
(One-party state, 11/03/04), Faichney continuously insisted
that President Bush “must” do this, or
“needs” to do that. Seemingly, Bush must be John Kerry.
Every line of this viewpoint was devoted to explaining how Bush
should adopt Kerry’s policies. A high voter turnout does not
mean that Bush should abandon everything he said in his campaign
and be Kerry. It means exactly the opposite. The country elected
Bush (both through the popular and electoral vote), and his
“responsibility” to the country is now to follow
through on what he has promised to do and what he has campaigned in
favor of. While I strongly disagree with many of Bush’s moral
values, the country has spoken, and it wants Bush.
Nick Jordan
Rackham
Country should apologize to younger generations for
re-electing Bush
To the Daily:
The most heated election in recent memory is now over, and the
people of the United States, with a mandate no less, have spoken.
Through the voice of older generations, they have affirmed the
record of President Bush — and so much more. By casting their
ballots, they have affirmed record budget deficits, the leading of
thousands of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians to their untimely
deaths with the threat of imaginary weapons of mass destruction and
the guidance of an economy that could not even net the creation of
a single new job. At a time when the youth of this nation are
already facing massive disinvestments in education and an
increasing percentage of the budget devoted toward other
generations that make up the same population — senior
citizens — it is hard for any non-youth voter to argue the
common adage that we are indeed the future. With a blatant
disregard for the well being of our future, whether it be through
getting the opportunity to have a good education or for that
matter, a job, to securing our livelihoods by not waging
unnecessary wars or sacrificing our generation’s fair share
of tomorrow’s gross domestic product through gargantuan
deficits, to you America, I say this: I demand an apology for your
approval of Bush.
Our generation is not one to demand preferential treatment, nor
are our demands unselfish. What we merely ask for is an equal
opportunity in life, to fulfill our potentials and to do so without
such inherent disadvantages created every day by this
administration. It is not your generation that sends soldiers to
fight on the front lines in Iraq, it is not your generation that
suffers from the underfunding of No Child Left Behind and it is not
your generation that must deal with an economy that is getting near
record lows in investment, shrinking the job market by the time we
enter the workforce. When the baby boomers were born in the 1950s,
both social and foreign policy issues were rampant. The majority of
the population was still bent on the notion that two groups of
people could somehow be separate but equal and the notion of Middle
East peace and amicable relations with Asian countries seemed very
far away. In 2004, we see these problems seeping through societal
structure again, appearing once again to be the price our
generation must pay for the repeated mistakes of the generations
before us.
Quang Nguyen
Engineering freshman
Coverage of football game too focused on Edwards
To the Daily:
Let’s hear it for the Daily’s sports staff. Like
most other fans who stayed the duration Saturday, I revelled in the
Michigan football victory all weekend. I soaked up all the football
coverage I could find. Imagine my surprise when it was all Braylon,
Braylon, Braylon. To be sure, every time a ball is thrown between
the second “I” and the “N” painted on the
endzone turf, everyone knows Edwards is coming down with the ball.
But as Chad Henne and Spencer Brinton (who share the number 7) can
attest, there are more than 100 players on the team, not just No.
1. The Daily I knew would have more balanced coverage, only to read
the sports headline Braylon’s late show (11/01/04)
before I got angry, though I kept reading. Thank you Chris Burke
for letting me know I was not the only one out of 110,000 to see
Jason Avant’s spectacular grab to tie the game in the second
overtime and for showing that someone else noticed Michael Hart
piling up over 200 yards with admirable second, third and even
fourth efforts and even noting that Garrett Rivas was not only not
bad, he was actually perfect in the clutch. All in all, great
coverage of a great comeback. It’s nice to see someone who
actually knows football writing about football.
Ryan Kotenko
Engineering freshman