Tonight was my first stump speech, and what better first stump to attend than one by Bill Clinton? I arrived at the Grand Wayne Center about 4:00 and fell in line with two girls – one who is a sophomore at Woodlan High School and another who is a sophomore at IPFW. We started talking about Hillary and how cool it will be to hear Bill Clinton speak. You could feel the excitement in the air and there was already close to 500 people in line. Many were wearing their vote Hillary for President buttons, and the only protestor I saw was a guy holding a sign outside the Grand Wayne Center that read, “Guard your daughters. Billy’s in town.” As we waited in line, we talked about Hillary and how she compares to Obama, and all of us agreed that it was great to see so many democrats coming together in Fort Wayne.

Around 5:30 my mom joined us in line, as well as a chef from Ivy Tech. In between our political discussions, we talked about where to get the best food in town with names like Saigon Restaurant, Paula’s Seafood, 816 Pint N’ Slice, and Joseph Decuis being dropped left and right. Finally, we entered the convention center and found some seats about seven rows back from the stage. We passed a few windows on the way in and I noticed the line was now wrapped around the Grand Wayne Center. Clinton appeared on stage at 7:15 after about ten minutes worth of people chanting, “We want Bill. We want Bill,” as well as Clinton fanatics marching up and down the aisles holding signs such as, “Rotate politicians, not troops,” “Money for education, not war,” and “Bring our troops home for Christmas.” This was definitely my kind of crowd.

Clinton gave an awesome speech and held the audience’s attention for a solid hour. He had the whole room clapping, hollering, jumping up and down, and laughing throughout the entire speech. He really knew how to work the crowd and rally support for his wife. Clinton touched on all of his wife’s major political issues ranging from the economy to health care to the war in Iraq. In terms of the economy, he emphasized how the middle class has been of little concern for the Bush administration and because of that, we’re facing a recession, foreclosures in the housing market, loss of income, and unemployment. Hillary plans on reviving the middle class and looking out for all Americans not just the top 1% of wage earners.

He went on to discuss how Hillary will create new jobs in our country by investing in biofuels, alternative energy, and other green processes, and no longer having to rely on oil sellers. Once our economy is back in business, we will not have to rely on China, Japan, and South Korea to control so much of our deficit. He then discussed the necessity of health care reform in this country. Right now our health care providers spend about a third of their time and money filling out paper work for insurance companies because the system is so convoluted. The insurance companies also spend about 80 billion dollars a year keeping people uninsured. This is a ridiculous amount of time and money being wasted by insurance companies, and these types of problems could be eliminated under a national health care plan.

Education was the next topic, and Clinton explained how Hillary will work to fix the No Child Left Behind act and bring the U.S.’s education standards back up to par with the rest of the world. He also discussed the failed war in Iraq and how much it’s costing us in terms of American lives and money. So much of our military resources are tied up in Iraq that we’re having trouble getting the troops we need to suppress Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Clinton stated that we need to get the majority of our troops back from Iraq as soon as possible. We also need to properly take care of our veterans and not leave them jobless and homeless like we did to so many Vietnam vets.

I really enjoyed Clinton’s speech and he made a very convincing argument to vote for Hillary at the Indiana primary on May 6th. I will have to read about her policies more in depth and see how they stack up to Senator Obama’s. It was great to see so many people in Fort Wayne come to see him speak, and it was refreshing to hear about a Presidential candidate who cares about the American middle class and issues such as health care, education, and diplomacy. Hillary has a wide range of experiences (from finding jobs for veterans to extending healthcare coverage for children) that will serve her well if she makes it to the White House.

Posted by Mike Cooper at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I woke up this morning at 11 after having a really bizarre and entertaining dream in which I was driving my car down the highway when all of a sudden I realized I was dreaming. I didn’t wake up, however, and I kept driving my car. Since I knew I was dreaming I decided to have some fun and turn my ’95 Saturn into a flying car. Suddenly, I was flying high above all of the cars on the highway while bumping the latest Lupe Fiasco CD. It was a blast especially because there is no way my Saturn could do anything that cool in real life. I usually consider myself lucky if my car windows don’t leak while it’s raining or I don’t have to kick my speakers to get the music to come back on.

Anyway, I wake up from this dream at 11 AM, or so I thought it was 11. When I looked at my alarm clock it said 6:20 PM! I was like, “S#%#T! I’m going to miss Bill Clinton’s speech tonight!” So, I start getting ready as fast I can and I begin to notice that my bedroom doesn’t look the same. It looked like it did when I was in middle school. I step into the hallway and into our upstairs bathroom and it looks completely different, too. I’m starting to get a little freaked out and then it hits me that I’m still dreaming. I wake up with a start and glance at my alarm clock that reads 11 AM. I was so relieved it had only been a dream that it took me a moment to realize that my house looked completely different. Suddenly, I was back in my old house that I haven’t lived in since I was five. It dawned on me that I was still dreaming and that I had woken up from my previous dream into a new dream! Right after that realization, I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock telling me that it was 11 AM. This time I was back in the real world.

Those were some of the weirdest dreams I’ve had in awhile, and they felt so real while I was having them. However, I enjoyed the experience and I was reminded of why I like dreams so much in the first place. They are one of life’s great mysteries and I’m always pondering the deeper meaning behind them. Are dreams really only side effects caused by the way the brain sorts out information obtained in our day-to-day life, or is the dream world an alternate reality that is as real as this reality? Anyone who’s as fascinated by dreams as I am should check out the movie, Waking Life.

On a side note, I want to say that I’m pretty lucky to get to sleep till 11 every day of the week this semester except for Mondays. It’s my last semester at IPFW and I’ve already been accepted to dental school, so I’m under no stress or pressure. It’s great being a senior and I’m really enjoying every minute of it. Last night I went out to J K O'Donnell's (an Irish pub downtown) for St. Patty’s Day and I had a blast partying with a lot of my friends down there. The real trick to make the most of your college education while enjoying it at the same time is to find a balance between work and play. It’s all about time management. And with that piece of advice, I’ll leave you with this Irish limerick: “As you slide down the banisters of life may the splinters never point the wrong way.”

Posted by Mike Cooper at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that spring break has come to an end and I have a little bit of time to reflect on it, I would have to say that it’s probably been one of my favorite spring breaks in recent memory. I didn’t take a vacation to Siesta Key or do any traveling at all for that matter, but I still had a great time. I house sat all week and fortunately for me, the house had a 50-inch wide screen plasma TV with on-demand cable and surround sound. I spent the majority of my free time sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner in front of the TV, getting up only to warm a frozen pizza or crack open another can of beer. I was living the dream of a lazy college student with no job and no responsibilities. The only decisions I had to make were which movie to watch next and whether I wanted a pepperoni or sausage pizza.

I saw some excellent movies over break. Let’s see if I can remember them: Bananas, Deconstructing Harry, Manhattan, Grand Canyon, Babel, Children of Men, Hannah and Her Sisters, 21 Grams, Ghost World, and There Will Be Blood. I also watched the entire third season of Weeds, which is an edgy and very funny show on Showtime about upper middle class life in the suburbs of California. However, the show is not about your everyday family in suburbia. The mother, the main character of the series, is a drug dealer who accidentally gets her family involved in her shenanigans with gangs, the Mexican mafia, the DEA, and the FBI. The plot is completely absurd, which is what makes the show so entertaining, and the characters (including one played by Kevin Nealon) poke fun at the usually boring and uneventful life of suburbians who all live in identical “little boxes made of ticky-tacky.”

I also caught a few episodes of HBO’s new series, In Treatment. The show has been adapted to the U.S. from a popular and award-winning show in Israel. The premise is simple: each episode is a therapy session with the same psychiatrist and one of his patients. I found some of the patients uninteresting and the dialogue to be a little stilted, but nonetheless the psychology-loving side of me enjoyed learning about each patient’s problems and how the therapist approached them. I recommend this show to anyone with an interest in psychotherapy and who does not mind watching a TV show entirely focused on dialogue between two people. There are no car chases or explosions in this series which is kind of refreshing.

The best movie I watched over break would have to be There Will Be Blood. There Will Be Blood is currently playing at Cinema Center Tech over at Indiana Tech’s campus (which is a great independent movie theater, by the way). It was actually my second time seeing this movie, and I think I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that There Will Be Blood is possibly one of the greatest American films ever made. I was drawn to this movie even from the very first scenes. Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) is an ingenious director, and for the first 20 minutes of the film there is no dialogue at all. Anderson emphasizes the allure of oil to Daniel Plainview, masterfully played by Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York), by keeping the camera focused on him as he hacks away at rocks while pausing for several beautiful landscape shots with hints of Jonny Greenwood’s (from Radiohead) haunting musical score creeping in.

Some of the first words spoken in the movie are from Plainview in which he declares, “I am an oil man” to a room full of potential investors in his oil business. These words echo throughout the rest of the movie while we learn of his monomaniacal love of oil and capitalism. The war between capitalism and religion in America is the main theme underlying There Will Be Blood with Plainview representing capitalism and Eli Sunday, wonderfully played by Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine), representing religion. Both characters have a fanatic love of their warring ideals and they continue to clash more and more as the movie progresses eventually coming to an intense climax at the end of the movie.

The ending consists of some of the most intense scenes I’ve seen in any film and Plainview’s dark and megalomaniacal personality is reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s character in the Shining. Of course Daniel Day-Lewis’s Oscar-winning performance is what makes the movie superb, but it is the deftness of P.T. Anderson as a director which takes the movie to an almost transcendental level. His graceful, tracking shots of the characters coupled with cinematography comparable to Terrence Malick, his timing of Greenwood’s score, and his unrelenting focus on the evil and greed within Daniel Plainview and the allegorical nature of his personality to the undercurrent of capitalism and religion in America are what make this film a masterpiece.

Posted by Mike Cooper at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wrote this Letter to the Editor almost four years ago, but I think it is still applicable today:

It is unfortunate that many Americans have the attitude that if someone disagrees with the current administration then they do not belong in this country. This country was founded on the freedom of the individual, but it is beginning to seem as if this freedom is slowly slipping away. If a U.S. citizen cannot express his or her own opinion of the President and the government without being called anti-American, then how can he or she be considered a free citizen? If everyone took the attitude that it is anti-American to disagree with or protest the decisions made by our current administration, we could very possibly end up living under a dictatorship.

I did not vote for Bush and do not agree with his politics, but I still consider myself an American. I consider everyone who lives in this country to be American—no matter who they voted for or whether or not they even voted. I voted against Bush for two reasons. The first reason is that I am a pacifist. I have never fought in a war, but I know enough about them to loathe the kind of damage and destruction they cause. In my opinion, wars are so terrible that there is no logical reason or justification to start them. I believe in the sacredness of all human life, and because of that, I do not agree with the justification of killing others even in the name of freedom. Many people argue that change cannot happen without wars. To them, I say, look at Gandhi. Gandhi was a pacifist and made many positive changes in the world without supporting warfare.

The second reason I did not vote for Bush is because of the chauvinistic attitude he seems to have for our country and the Christian faith, and the intolerant attitude he has toward other countries and faiths. I do not think anything good can come from believing that one religion and country is better than the others. By taking this attitude, people stop questioning their own beliefs. If people do not critically examine their own beliefs, they will never fully understand them, and furthermore will never learn to respect people whose beliefs differ from their own.

Unfortunately, many Americans have taken a superior attitude toward people of other nations and faiths. Carl Jung, the renowned psychologist, made an important point that if people are unwilling to acknowledge their own darkness and flaws, they will unconsciously project their darkness onto other people. It appears that this may happening with our own people. We are unconsciously projecting our own imperfectness onto people of other nations. How can we justify going to war when we are also imperfect?

Gandhi made a profound and powerful statement when he said you can die for your own version of truth, but you should not kill others for your own version of truth. I think it is important for all of us to be reminded of this statement. We are starting wars in the name of our own version of truth, which is a dangerous thing to do. I think it is time we take a step back from the judgmental lens that we have pointed at other nations, and point the lens back at our own nation.

Posted by Mike Cooper at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)