Two columns running top-to-bottom on a page in the New York Post today are begging to be linked.

One is headlined: “Debt too big, 96% tell poll.” The other story caption reads: “Graying of US voters.”

It’s not necessary to read the stories. The headlines say it all.  Virtually every American knows we’re spending too much money on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — programs that appeal to older voters — and young people are under-represented  at the polls. Spliced together, these stories paint an inescapable trend:  Young Americans are going to keep getting hosed.

I am amazed that young people aren’t rioting today. Because they are getting screwed to an extent I didn’t know was possible in this country. With 45 cents of every dollar spent by the federal government being borrowed, Washington, with the full consent of a majority of voters, is literally stealing from its children.  This isn’t marginal deficit spending; it’s theft. How can we not be better than that?

It’s ironic that those Americans who truly understand this emergency — the Tea Party crowd — are ridiculed as crazy by those who most appeal to young voters, Jon Stewart, et al. It speaks to the idealism and optimism of youth that they cannot see — or believe — the full extent of the fiscal selfishness being perpetrated by their elders.

I’d like to believe that I would have caught it at 19, but I would not have. I’d be too busy trying to catch 19-year-old girls, unsuccessfully of course,  and closing neighborhood bars. But more than that, I would not have considered it. It was ingrained in me at that age, a priori, that my parents’ generation had our best interest in mind. I considered it natural law.

Isn’t it? How can we be doing this to our kids?

I was entirely convinced yesterday that it was necessary to release a post mortem photo of Osama bin Laden. DNA evidence is the proof, but photos pack a wallop. I thought it important for the final image of bin Laden to be as unromantic as possible. (Although a post mortem photo of Che Guevera didn’t prevent that murderer from being romanticized.)

But my wife, who is smarter than I am, made good arguments last night for why that might be unnecessary, indeed, unhelpful. Despite some of our fashion trends, we are  a more tasteful nation than that, she pointed out. In other words, releasing the photo might diminish us.

Then I thought about a compromise. What if a photo was shown to select Arab leaders who could visually verify that the body in the photo is bin Laden. They could vouch for its authenticity, at least on face value. Anything can be faked. But what if one of them questioned it? What if one said he was unsure? And even if all of them said that the man in the photo indeed appeared like a deceased bin Laden, there surely would be doubters and conspiracy theorists anyway.

Some say showing the photo would rile up Islamic extremist fervor. I laugh when I hear that. As though Islamic extremists aren’t riled already. I don’t see that as a factor.

I am not alone in my vacillations, of course.  The most disturbing thing of this whole controversy may be the Administration’s very public internal debate on the matter. The CIA director says the photo will be released, while the Secretary of State and Defense Secretary say it shouldn’t be. All publicly. The Obama Administration had a good victory in taking out bin Laden. It made an administration with questionable competence look professional.  They shouldn’t squander that by airing internal rifts in the action’s aftermath.

So what to do about the photo?

I say show the thing and move on. Anyone who doesn’t want to look at it doesn’t have to.

My Challenge Flag

Mark Twain said there are three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

I’m not sure into which category the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) starting salary statistics for Spring 2011 college graduates will fall, but I am increasingly convinced, based on a flurry of emails I just received, that they rest squarely in one of those ignominious baskets. (Please see previous item.)

I therefore officially challenge NACE to release the methodology used in determining that the  “average salary offer to all Class of 2011 graduates” is $50,462. I do not believe that figure, and I ask that NACE back it up. I will formally apologize if I am proved wrong.

If you are dubious about NACE’s starting-salary figure, please re-tweet or “like” this post. Lies, damned lies, and statistics need to be challenged.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers just released its starting salary figures for 2011 college graduates.  I say they are bunk.

The Association, which sounds to me like a cheerleading group for the higher education industry, says the average starting salary for someone fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree is $50,462. In what world?

Here’s how NACE writes this on its website:

“The good news continues to roll in for the Class of 2011 as results from NACE’s Spring 2011 Salary Survey show that the average salary offer to all Class of 2011 graduates now stands at $50,462, which is up 5.9 percent over the overall average of $47,673 to Class of 2010 graduates. Salary Survey is a benefit of organizational membership, and is available it is available to e-members and nonmembers on a subscription basis.”

I live and work in New York where salaries are typically higher than in other parts of the country, and the recent college graduates I’m meeting with are asking for — and getting — far less than that. Granted, many of the candidates I am speaking with are looking to work in politics, which is longer on hours than on benefits, but still these NACE numbers seem way out of whack. The average American grownup salary is $40,711.61, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Here is how NACE lists salaries by major:

Majors for 2010-2011 bachelor’s degree graduates with the best salary offers:

Source: NACE

Jobs for 2010-2011 bachelor’s degree graduates with the most salary offers:

Source: NACE

I can’t prove these numbers are wrong — I have neither the time nor the tools to check them — but it smells to me like they are.  My gut says this is the college industry looking to rationalize today’s ridiculous college costs, and they should be called on it if they are manipulating statistics.

Someone who can should dig into these numbers, because they don’t ring true.  Not even close. $100 to anyone who proves me wrong.

I had a philosophy professor in college named James P. Carse who said something in class one day that I’ve always remembered.

His best friend had died some weeks before at Beth Israel Hospital. She had been married to another friend of the professor’s for 25 years, and throughout the marriage the couple had been fighting. On any given morning, one friend or the other might be found on the Carse’s pull-out couch, where he or she, key in hand, had sought refuge from spousal hostilities the night before.

Both Professor Carse and his friend’s husband were at her side when she died. Her last words spoken were to her husband: “All my life,” she said holding his hand, “you have been my very best friend.” It was the last thing she said.

And here’s the point that has remained with me for going on 30 years:  “It was the way the marriage ended that defined the whole of it,” Carse observed. “Had it concluded in a fight or in some other way, the whole of it would be affected.” In other words, endings are definitional. They matter even more than beginnings.

I immediately thought of this Sunday night when my wife alerted me to Bin Laden’s death. This was the ending we required. This is the ending that will historically define the last 10 years of U.S. history.   Those shaky moments in Iraq in the Spring of ’06 and the Taliban claw backs in Afghanistan no longer matter. This story is concluded.

The clock will keep ticking; the fight will go on against Islamic terrorism, but the book on  9/11 has been shut. It is now whole.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

ABC News just released this fascinating run of events that led to Bin Laden’s assassination.  It all began when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, soon to go on trial for his life at Guantanamo, blabbed during his controversial interrogation ordered by the Bush Administration.

Right or wrong, it directly led SEAL Team Six to Bin Laden’s front door. Pretty good fodder for debate…

News of Osama Bin Laden’s death obscured an extraordinary interview given by 60 Minutes’s Lara Logan last night.  Logan was brutally assaulted by a mob of men in Tahrir Square on February 11, the night Hosni Mubarek stepped down.  She only survived the ordeal because Egyptian women, in traditional head-to-toe-dress, stepped in to save her.

The South African war correspondent said she would give just one interview about the attack, and then get back to work, like the professional she is.  It is an extraordinarily brave interview that deserves more attention than it will receive today.

Spontaneous Celebration in Boston Sunday Night

(This from former Larchmont, NY mayor Liz Feld who is doing a temporary family stint in Boston.)

Last night and through the early hours of this morning, thousands of college students paraded through the streets of Boston, escorted by police cars. They chanted, sang, cheered and waved American flags. They weren’t celebrating a World Series victory, protesting greenhouse gas emissions, or marching for collective bargaining rights.  These young men and women joined in the most spontaneous outpouring of patriotism and pride in decades after hearing their President announce that the face of the War on Terror – the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — had been wiped off the earth.

Celebrations like this one broke out in the stands of a late night Phillies-Mets game, in front of the White House, in Times Square, and on college campuses across the United States. But what is most touching and remarkable is the age of those who may be celebrating the most.  This generation of students has never known a world without terrorism. They have grown up with orange, yellow and red terror alerts, airport security pat downs, nightly newscasts with video and reports of the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden.  In towns and villages across the country, a generation of kids has grown up with 9/11 as the day they lost a parent, neighbor, friend or relative.  Earlier Bin Laden directed terrorist attacks – the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, and the USS Cole in October 2000 — happened far away, not in their backyards.  But on 9/11, these kids saw their parents and neighbors go off to work one morning and never return, and they have lived with the images of the falling of the twin towers night after night ever since.

This generation’s most formative years have been spent fighting two wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan — confused that while U.S. soldiers continue to make the ultimate sacrifice, we still live in a country vulnerable to terrorists.  For nearly a decade, U.S. military and intelligence agencies have prevented another attack on U.S. soil but that couldn’t change the reality that this generation largely has been defined by the events of 9/11.

The success of the CIA-led operation in Pakistan yesterday  — catching “the bad guy” and getting justice for the United States and the countless victims of his terrorist reign – can begin to redefine that reality. The jubilation, relief, and pride we witnessed last night proved that.   What we saw in the celebrations was the faith and conviction that standing up for ourselves, and fighting to protect our freedom, is far more powerful than any fear or threat of evil.  So many of the brave men and women fighting for us overseas are no older than the students cheering for them right now.  World War II gave us “The Greatest Generation.”  Osama Bin Laden found out last night that this generation has a resolve second to none.

“Best Monday morning in years.”

That by email this morning from my longest-known friend who escaped the North Tower of the World Trade Center 10 years ago (after evacuating it because of an earlier al Qaeda bombing eight years before that.)

I think we all feel that way today, along with gratitude to President Obama, President Bush, the intelligence community, and our armed forces for giving us this closure.

No matter how Afghanistan ends, no matter what occurs tomorrow, last night’s raid restores our national pride. That is worth everything.

Marc Ambinder

Great piece by Marc Ambinder in the National Journal today about President Obama’s re-election chances.  It is a balanced and cogent analyses of the mood of the nation, and how it may affect the campaign.  Worth a read from parties on all sides.