From London to The Warrior

Part of the reason why things have been slower than usual around here at 1832 is because for the last week I was in London for some R&R and some sightseeing. It was my first trip to England and I was very impressed. London is amazing and I was impressed with the Tube and the extremely low level of poverty (I think I saw 3 homeless people the entire time I was there, which is remarkable for a city that size).

The highlights of the trip had to be the War Cabinet Rooms that Churchill used during WWII, which was absolutely amazing and the coach tour I took to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath.

London and the other parts of England that I saw more than lived up to my expectations and I can't wait to go back again someday! I even thought the British food was good! I had Bangers and Mash for my Thanksgiving dinner and it was excellent.

I got back into Milwaukee late last night and was greeted this morning by the newest edition of Marquette College Republican's publication called The Warrior.

The first thing that I noticed about The Warrior today is that like its one page "special issue" that went out before Thanksgiving break, their circulation seems to be way down from their first issue as I didn't see any of the Republicans passing it out during my class changes, saw very few people walking around with it, saw few people with a copy in the Library or in any of my classes, and as a result it took me awhile to find a discarded copy to pick up.

Their circulation seems to be down for a few reasons: 1) The paper has been rightfully discredited and exposed as a right-wing talking piece rather than a truly independent news source; 2) Its really cold out, which means few students are going to take the time to stop, remove their hands from their jacket pockets, and take a copy when they want to get indoors as quickly as possible; 3) The fact that its really cold out means fewer of the Republicans are willing to stand outside for a extended periods of time distributing their right-wing propaganda piece.

I must say that the second issue is very different from their first issue this semester. Surprisingly it seems that for this issue they actually reacted to a lot of the criticism of their publication and the result is an issue that I don't really have any serious objections with, at least with its reporting (the story on Katie Dorman who is suffering from lymphoma is touching and I hope she recovers) and the stories are not nearly as blatantly biased.

There is one thing that I have a serious objection and that is this Warrior staff photo that appears on page 3 of today's issue:


The Warrior is clearly either trying to make fun of the liberal-leaning organization at Marquette known as JUSTICE or it is trying to mislead people into thinking that JUSTICE supports The Warrior, which it most certainly does not (JUSTICE was one of the main organizations against the university changing the nickname back to "Warriors"). Furthermore, the link that is contained in the picture does not send you to the MU JUSTICE website, it simply redirects you to The Warrior website (Click here for the real MU JUSTICE website).

The fact that the College Republicans would actually buy a domain name of a liberal leaning student organization shows just how desperate and dirty they are willing to be to try to divert traffic to their publication's website and further proves they are more interested in provoking liberal students rather than engaging in civil debate. I wonder how they would react if I bought up MUCRS.com, marquetterepublicans.com, mustudents4life.com, mustudentsforlife.com, etc and had them redirect to 1832 or www.mudemocrats.com.

Needless to say it will be interesting to see how JUSTICE reacts to this.

President Bush's Disapproval Rating Approaching Nixon

From the MYDD Blog:

Harris has some rancid new numbers for Bush: 34% approve, 65% disapprove. Although technically it is 34% positive and 65% negative, the 31-point gap equals the worst approval poll faced by any President since Nixon. Check it out:

Poll   President App    Dis     Date

Harris    Bush Jr 34     65     11/05

Gallup    Bush Sr 29     60     06/92

Gallup    Carter  28     59     06/79

Gallup    Nixon  24     66     08/74

65% negative / disapprove also ties Bush with Nixon for the third highest disapproval ever recorded by a sitting President. Only Nixon's 66 in his final approval poll, and Truman's 67 in early January of 1952, were worse.

Can you say "lame duck"? I expected President Bush's approval ratings to continue to fall after Hurricane Katrina, but I never expected it to fall this fast, this soon. I guess the public isn't falling for the GOP's pointless "campaign" style attack on Democrats or the empty remarks President Bush made when he politicized Veteran's Day.

The way things are going President Bush will own the highest disapproval rating by a sitting President before the end of the year.

In fact, I'm willing to bet on it.

RMW I'm already anxiously awaiting your wager that it won't.

GOP3's Brian Collar falls victim to Papa John's fraud despite our warning

Apparently Papa John's has decided to continue with their shameful and misleading promotional campaign despite having been exposed as such by 1832 last week, as Brian Collar from GOP3.com reports:

While walking home from class today, someone handed me a flyer advertising that Papa John'’s was giving away free medium pizzas from 12:00pm through 6:00pm today and tomorrow. The flyer stated that details about the free pizza were available at the Wells Street location.

Intrigued and hungry, I walked to Papa John'’s to see how I might obtain a free pizza. As I arrived there, I saw on a table to the right a stack of sign up forms for a particular credit card company. Thus, I discovered that in order to obtain a medium pizza, one needed to sign up for a credit card.

Free pizza must be the lamest (though quite clever) attempt to induce students to sign up for a credit card. I suggest students avoid signing up for a credit card for a free pizza, even if they intend not to use it. From what I understand, signing up for credit cards and then not using them may hurt an individual'’s credit report.

I'’m hungry for pizza now.

I'm going to give Papa John's District HQ a call later today or tomorrow and find out why they insist on continuing a promotional offer that is misleading and potentially harmful to the students that make up the bulk of their customer base.

College Football and the BCS - Take Two

As another fine campaign of intercollegiate gridiron action winds down, the championship picture is beginning to come into focus. Frontrunner USC silenced any of their remaining critics by beating popular upset pick Cal 35-10 in Berkeley, Texas cemented their elite status by pummeling Kansas 66-14 (the eighth time in a row that the Longhorns have scored over 40 points), and the only other major undefeated squad, Alabama, lost a heartbreaker in overtime to the visiting Tigers from Louisiana State.

For now, it appears that critics of the BCS like yours truly have nothing to complain about. If things work out like they’re supposed to, Matt Leinart’s Trojans and Vince Young’s Longhorns will meet in the Rose Bowl, marking the first time that the two teams that everyone believes to be the two best will meet in the national title game since Ohio State defeated Miami in 2002’s Fiesta Bowl.

Of course, the key phrase above is “if things work out like they’re supposed to”. How often does that happen in sports? In 2003, “if things worked out like they were supposed to”, Oklahoma would have destroyed the upstart Kansas State team they faced in the Big XII title game, and then faced undefeated LSU in the Sugar Bowl. That isn’t exactly how events transpired. Coach Bill Snyder’s Wildcats pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the modern era of collegiate football, beating the Sooners 35-7, and throwing the BCS picture into turmoil. OU did wind up making the final, to the dismay of SC fans across the nation. The rest of the country took their side after LSU won a sloppy championship game and the Trojans efficiently beat a quality Michigan club in the Rose Bowl, resulting in a split national title.

Could a similar scenario unfold this season? Absolutely. Both USC and Texas have significant tests remaining on their schedules. Southern Cal has to face mid-major powerhouse Fresno State this weekend, although their eyes should be looking past the Bulldogs to their season finale against intra-city rival UCLA. Karl Dorrell has the twelfth-ranked Bruins ready to challenge the Trojans and reinstate drama into a contest which has been fairly one-sided in favor of SC over the past few years.

Texas also faces two complicated contests to finish out their set of games, as they’re forced to take on Texas A&M in College Station. The Aggies, at a disappointing 5-5, would like nothing more than to ruin Mack Brown’s dream season in front of their fans. In addition, A&M coach Dennis Franchione may need this victory to preserve his position. A victory over their hated in-state adversary should surely ensure him another season with his club. In addition, unlike SC, Texas must play a conference championship game. And although the Big XII is not as strong as usual this year, ask Bob Stoops and Oklahoma what happens when you overlook this key challenge.

In all likelihood, USC and Texas will breeze through their last two games, and meet in the Rose Bowl on January 4th for an epic showdown. However, if either team loses, chaos like the BCS has never before seen will almost surely ensue, thanks to the supreme quality of this year’s one-loss teams. The Nittany Lions from Penn State would be undefeated if not for a last-second loss at the hands of Michigan in Ann Arbor, as would LSU, which succumbed to a tremendous comeback by Tennessee earlier in the season. Miami has also been impressive after their season-opening loss at Florida State.

Although all of the aforementioned teams must worry about handing over a November contest to an opponent, there is one group that can’t lose, regardless of the results of 2005’s college football term – the fans. This particularly entertaining effort is above all others in recent memory, and its resolution promises to be just as exciting.

Veteran's Day Salute

1832 proudly salutes and thanks all the men and women that have served in our military forces. While today is marked on the calendar as "Veteran's Day" we are proud of and we thank those who are serving or have served to protect us and our country everyday.

Papa John's: Misleading Students and Increasing Student Debt

Papa John's is passing out this flyer on campus today proclaiming that students could get a free pizza if they are one of the first 200 students to come in between 12pm-5pm today or on Friday, however, the flyer is nothing more than an insulting reminder that "nothing is really free".

It turns out that this flyer is nothing more than a cheap ploy to get students to sign up for a Chase credit card, which is never stated on the flyer or by any of the people who are handing the flyers out on campus. Upon discovering this, I and all the other students in line with me, promptly left in the store in anger. However, when I walked near Papa John's again a little while later, I was surprised to find students actually lined up filing out credit card applications for a pizza that would only cost them around $10.

Unfortunately, this type of shameless tactic is not uncommon on college campuses. Aside from the nearly 10 credit card offers that I get in the mail, credit card companies during several points throughout the year, have had booths and people passing out flyers hawking all sorts of supposedly "free" items to college students in exchange for filling out a credit card application.

If a student isn't smart enough to figure out that a "free" $10 pizza isn't worth the cost that the credit card will likely bring to them, do you think these students signing up for credit cards right now at Papa John's will be able to use these cards responsibly? I don't think so either.

The fact is that very few college students actually need a credit card and the ones that do will have no problem finding a card on their own.

The recent bankruptcy bill that was signed into law over the summer has made some progress in preventing credit card companies from giving cards to anyone with a pulse, but more needs to be done, especially with regards to the targeting of college students by credit card companies.

1) The University needs to take a more prominent role and stand up for students in protecting them from the credit card companies. They should refrain from giving away students information to credit card companies (which it seems that they clearly do, because I get tons of credit card offers that ID me as a Marquette student as well as cards that are clearly partnered with the University). In addition, the University needs to take a more active role in educating students about credit cards and it should do what it can to limit access by credit card companies to our campus.

2) We need a law that bans credit card companies from giving away "free" items to anyone who applies for a card. Rewards programs that occur after one signs up for a credit card, like frequent flyer miles, are fine and should stay, but giving away "free" stuff to anyone who simply applies for a card encourages people to sign up for cards that they simply don't need and seems to be targeted toward students and the poor.

Finally, I want to remind students why credit card companies are willing to give you all of this "free" stuff. When credit card companies look at students, they don't see a person, they simply see you as $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Why? Because credit card companies only make money off people that do not pay their balances in full every month! (students are known for doing this) They are giving you free stuff to get you into more debt! The more debt, the more money they make off the high interest rates. It is that simple!

Any business on or off campus that encourages students increasing their debt doesn't deserve the business of students.

(I'll let you make fun of the grammar errors and the odd formatting of the Papa John's flyer)

Marquette Lands 2-Star PG/SG David Cubillan

From "Cracked Sidewalks", a Marquette Basketball Blog:

On the first day of the national signing period, David Cubillan, a SG/PG from highly regarded St. Benedict's in Newark, NJ, committed to Marquette University. Cubillan will provide much needed support in the MU backcourt -- even with the talented freshmen this season, MU does not have another PG or combo guard on the roster. After last season's struggles, Crean vowed never to be caught without enough capable guards in the program - - and now Cubillan is part of the solution to that problem.

Cubillan was a high school teammate of current MU freshman Dwight Burke last season, and plays for coach Danny Hurley.

MU is still actively recruiting seven-foot center Chas McFarland, who will decide between BC, Marquette and Wake Forest after visiting Tobacco Road this weekend. Lazar Hayward, a fast-rising senior from Buffalo, NY via Notre Dame prep in Massachusetts verbally committed to MU earlier this year and is expected to sign his LOI this week.

From all of us at 1832, Welcome to Marquette David! (ok maybe not all of us... somebody here goes to Indiana)

Xoff Writes Pure Gold!

Xoff has written a work of art on his blog that gives insight into the minds of Congressman Mark Green and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker as they prepare to go head to head to be the Republican nominee for Governor. Below are the opening few lines from X0ff's depiction of a call between Green and Walker:

Republican governor hopefuls Scott Walker and Mark Green held their first real debate this week on taxes and spending. It was on a private phone call, but fortunately the CIA, acting under its Patriot Act authority, had tapped it and prepared a transcript, and a White House staffer was more than happy to leak it.

GREEN: Hello, Congressman Green here.

WALKER: Hi, Mark, it's Scott Walker.

GREEN: Good to hear from you, Scooter. How are things in Milwaukee?

WALKER: I've asked you before not to call me Scooter.

GREEN: Sorry, it just slipped out. Hope that doesn't happen in the campaign. What's on your mind?

WALKER: It's the budget reconciliation bill that's up in the House this week.

GREEN: Yeah, pretty cool, huh? We're trying to cut $54-billion dollars from Medicaid, food stamps, child support, student aid, and some of those other wasteful, liberal, bleeding heart programs that are nothing more than social engineering. That'll make sure we have enough money to give that $70 billion in new tax cuts to the rich.

Please read the rest on Xoff's blog.

LA TIMES: NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO

Yesterday voters in California stood up and said no to the Governator's right-wing-year or reform-waste-of-time-and-money agenda by not only voting NO on all four of the propositions he brought to the ballot in this special election (Props 74,75,76,77).

Voters in California stood up and declared teachers are not the problem with our education system and instead delcared they are the solution, by voting against proposition 74, which would have increased the number of years a teacher would have to work before they can become tenured.

Voters in California stood up and declared that hard working government employees and unions are not what's wrong with government, and instead delcared politicians and failed public policy are, by voting against Proposition 75, which would have limited public employee unions ability to use union dues in political campaigns to fight for the jobs of their workers.

Voters in California stood up and declared our public schools need more funding, not less, by voting against Proposition 76 which would have capped funding for California Schools.

Voters in California also stood up and voted no on other right-wing propositions that found their way on this special election ballot and they stood up and said no big drug companies by voting no on Proposition 78 and voted no to limit a women's right to choose by voting no on Proposition 73.

(Yes I am leaving out my thoughts on Prop 77, which voters rejected, more on that later).

Governor Schwarzenegger pushed for this special election out of frustration that couldn't get these measures through the democratically elected representatives in the California legislature, implying that he knew the constituents of the state better than they. Well $50 million dollars and five months later, California voters proved the Governator to be nothing more than an arrogant fool who has approval ratings that are approaching that of recalled Governor Gray Davis.

Memo to the Governator: Please Refrain from Saying "I'll Be back" in 2006, the voters have indicated that you clearly won't.

Maybe California won't fall into the ocean after all.

I want to end with a shout out and thank you to the Secretary of State's office in California for making a java script application available to track the results from last nights election in real time, it was a great idea and I hope more states make similar applications available. It was a great relief to not have to sit here hitting "reload" every 5 min. last night.


Click here to read commentary from the Los Angeles Times

Voters to Right-wingers: Please Exit Stage Right!

Democrats have pulled off victories in races where Republicans used incredibly nasty personal attacks (Kilgore attacked Kaine’s Catholic faith and Forrester went after Corzine and his family) and it appears even attempted to cheat by tampering with touch voting machines in Virginia.

What makes these victories all more exciting for Democrats is that Virginia has been a Republican strong hold for years and it voted overwhelmingly for President Bush last November, yet Tim Kaine, with the help of current Governor and potential 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate Mark Warner, were able to defeat Republican Jerry Kilgore and President Bush. This was a battle of money, organization and star power, and the Democrats won on all fronts. As much as I like Senator Evan Bayh from Indiana, Mark Warner has now proven that he has the star power win states in the south.

In New Jersey, Republicans had a real opportunity to make headway into a traditionally blue state where voters have had it with the corruption by the local Democrats, but I guess the voters in NJ, like the general population, have had it more with Republicans.

In St. Paul, MN, in race I had almost forgotten about, Democrat Chris Coleman defeated Democratic Mayor Randy Kelly over Kelly’s endorsement of President Bush last year.

The message from these elections is clear: If you are a Republican or a supporter of President Bush please exit stage right.

You know you are a sad political junkie when....

You plan on staying up all night to wait for the returns from NJ, VA, OH and CA during an off-off-election year.

Well the polls have closed in NJ and VA and I fully expect both Corzine and Kaine to win and keep both of those Governships "blue". Likewise, in CA (the state that I am originally from) I expect most if not all of the Governator's ballot measures to be defeated.

Oh by the way Mom and Dad, you both better have gotten your absentee ballots in! Don't make your son lecture you about voting! And to my brother Evan at Princeton, I heard how lazy you were about registering to vote in NJ last year for the general election, so I better hear from you about how you voted this time or you will be considered persona non grata come Christmas time.

All kidding aside, if today's elections don't make today a bad day for President Bush, then the news about yet another Republican leak investigation probably did wonders to brighten his mood.

Anyway, the polls as stated before the polls have closed in NJ and VA, and 1832 will provide commentary as soon as we can (I have a meeting at 7pm CST) and we will wait for the OH and CA returns as well.


UPDATE: NBC 12 in VA has just reported that the AP has called the VA Governors Race for Democrat Tim Kaine! Way to go VA Democrats we knew you could do it!
NBC 12 has a live video stream up that you can watch here.

UPDATE #2: I just came across this story from WDBJ7 shows Republicans tried to play with voting machines again:

News 7 has received calls from several voters in at least four different precincts who say their votes for Tim Kaine were not recorded or took several attempts to go through.

They contend the electronic touch screens repeatedly indicated they were voting for Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore instead of registering their intended vote for his Democratic opponent Tim Kaine.

UPDATE #3: The AP has just called the NJ Governors race for......... JON CORZINE! Way to go NJ Democrats! So far we are 2 for 2 today!

"The Warrior" further proof MUCR's are out of the mainstream

Today the Marquette College Republicans relaunched their little right-wing rant of a newspaper and gop3.com proclaimed, "We hope the left on campus has a heart attack when they see it."

AHH! Chest pains! I think I'm having a heart attack! BELCHHH! Nevermind, I guess it was just a little heartburn from my nacho cheese dip.

In all seriousness I came closer to dying from choking to death on a manny's nacho chip from laughing so hard when I saw that the whinny Republicans on campus decided to relaunch their complete failure of a publication from last year (did it even make it past one issue?). If the news that they were starting the publication wasn't cause for enough laughter, the picture of their staff has to be one of the most ridiculous promotional photos I have ever seen. I don't know who did the "warrior" facepaint, but it makes them look more like cute little mice with whiskers than "warriors". I don't even think I need to even discuss in detail how this picture illustrates perfectly why Marquette will never be "Warriors" ever again, just look at the picture:


But guess what? The laughs don't stop there! Check this very intelligent graphic by Brandon Henak, The Warrior Business Manager and blogger for GOP3.com:

Yeah that's "Freedom" on the "Y" axis and "Time" on the "X" axis.... I'm seriously thinking about sending this into Jay Leno's Headlines.

Ok... I've stopped laughing now and I could go on and on about the stupidity in the articles, but I really might die laughing if I keep reading them (so read them for youself at your own risk) and I need to get back to my point for writing this: The Warrior is only further proof that the Marquette College Republicans are out of the mainstream of Marquette.

Why? In 2000 Al Gore won Marquette's campus by 863 votes and two of the Marquette wards were Bush wins. And what happened on this day in 2004? With the help of a stronger and better organized Marquette College Democrats and a more liberal student body John Kerry won the Marquette campus by 2,361 votes and in doing so won every single Marquette ward.

Thats a swing of almost 1,500 votes

So should it surprise you that the College Republicans are trying to prevent liberal leaning students from voting through moronic "voter id" bills? Does it surprise you that they scream bloody murder that the Marquette Tribune is liberal? Does it surprise you that they whine that the administration is so liberal that they are out to get College Republicans? Given the fact that their claims of intentional oppression by the University are false (liberals have had just as much if not more trouble with OSD than MUCRs), the answer is it shouldn't.

The actions of the Marquette College Republicans in the last year are acts of desperation. They are desperate because the fact is that College Republicans is now a fringe student group at Marquette and will only become more of an group of outcasts as Marquette continues to attract a student body that is not only superior academically but more diverse racially.

Don't believe me? According to an inside source (who wishes to remain anonymous) who has connections with the various people in the Marquette administration says that a political survey of the current freshman class (which is also its most diverse and brightest class to date) show that this class identifies itself as liberal or democrat as opposed to conservative or republican (which also explains why MUCD's membership is way way up).

Another problem with the publication is they try to masquerade it around as merely an "independent-run student publication", which it clearly is not. If it was truly an independent paper set up to run stories without bias and stories that the Marquette Tribune cannot write because of its affiliation with the University I wouldn't have a real issue with it. But that's not what it sets out to do, The Warrior is clearly nothing more than a right-wing propaganda piece as almost every news article contained in it not only completely lacks objectivity but at multiple points the articles inject purely republican talking points and liberal bashing right into the article (visit www.thewarrior.org and read the articles for yourself). However, at no point in either the print or the online version of The Warrior does it state that it is a conservative paper.


Furthering this huge propaganda lie is this fun disclaimer statement found on the inside of the
publication:

Does anyone really believe that all the funding for this paper is coming from "advertisers"? The first issue had what three ads? I'm sure that doesn't cover their start up costs... In fact I am almost certain that the start up costs came from Marquette College Republicans either directly or that MUCRs made arrangements to get the funding from a number of well-funded conservative groups such as the Collegiate Network or others.

The Marquette Tribune editorial board may be liberal, but the writing in the news sections at least sets out to try to be objective. The Warrior could careless about objectivity as its sole purpose is to attempt to feed Republican talking points into the minds of students by hiding under the headings of an "independent" and/or an "alternative" newspaper. I think the Marquette student body is smart enough to figure out that this paper isn't real news and anyone with a brain won't read it, leaving only the outcasted membership of Marquette College Republicans as its readership.

So The Warrior is really nothing more than an act of desperation, as Marquette will probably never return to the conservative all white male Republican-utopia that it once was. It is a publication that furthers their collective denial that anyone at Marquette even gives a damn what they think or what they want to whine about today or tomorrow or any other point in the future.

Senate Rule 21: Harry Reid you are brilliant!

The unity, the guts, and the cleverness displayed by the Democratic Party of late has been nothing short of remarkable. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to close the doors of the Senate using Senate Rule 21 and force the republicans in the Senate to address the manipulation of this nation into war is the latest sign that the Democratic Party may have found its brain and its spine and actually figured out a way to connect the two.

Harry Reid's gusty actions basically say, "The American public wants answers and we are going to drag the republicans kicking and screaming into the Senate chambers and lock them in until we get them!"

A recent Milwaukee Journal Senitnel Editorial which apologized for its part in furthering the administration's "duping" puts the question best:

So there it is - with an addendum. We take responsibility for being duped on the matter of WMD - and still arguing against war - but at what point will those doing the duping be held accountable for taking us to war? Two thousand U.S. dead - and up to 30,000 Iraqi dead - and still counting.

Thanks to Senator Harry Reid that "point" may be soon.

And the right-wing nut jobs thought the "nuclear option" was the Senate rule play of the year. Well newsflash, Democrats can still filibuster Scalito and Harry Reid just forced the republicans into appointing a bipartisan committee to oversee the progress of the "Phase 2" probe.

The Bush administration is going to be facing tough questions for a long, long time.