(We apologize for the delay for the posters. Proper Facebook clearance was needed.)

Looks like the ASUO Elections season is underway! Here’s some sweet posters!

An e-mail between a former OSPIRG employee and last year’s ASUO Executive Sam Dotters-Katz

This morning I came to the office, and one of our staffers gave me a hard copy of an e-mail given to her by a person who wished to remain anonymous. It was an e-mail sent last year to then-ASUO Executive Sam Dotters-Katz by a former staffer at a branch of what I believe is SOUPIRG (The redacted parts, from what I can make out, say “SOU”–Southern Oregon University). I contacted Mr. Dotters-Katz this morning to confirm the legitimacy of the e-mail, which he verified. The e-mail is rather interesting. Here’s the body:

“Sam,

I felt compelled to write you after watching part of the Senate meeting last night, especially the part involving OSPIRG‘s appeal. I am currently a grad student at U of O, but I was an OSPIRG organizer for one term in REDACTED, when I worked at the REDACTED campus.

Toward the end of my term, I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable “selling” OSPIRG to REDACTED students, as my job basically required me to do. The main reason was that it became so apparent that the decision-makers in the organization weren’t the students, but were the staff. The OSPIRG board meeting I attended then were essentially shames, where students would read from a script prepared by a staff  member and then ram all staff proposed decisions through.

When our student chapter at REDACTED tried to request a small amount of money for a Hunger and Homeless Benefit, we were subjected to a horrific bureaucracy. To be blunt, the student’s couldn’t even retrieve a portion of their own money [emphasis original].

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Last night’s ASUO senate meeting passed the most recent resolution to be voted on by the rules committee next week. The resolution that we have currently does not have last night’s amendments included. We have requested the revisions, and will post them up as soon as possible. The final revision that will be voted on will come out next Monday.

When it was time for the ASUO executive announcements, student body president Emma Kallaway unveiled the newest model for the upcoming ASUO logo.

When this was revealed Sen. Ben Fisher muttered under his breath that the logo looked like a mushroom cloud sending the whole room into uproar. Kallaway mentioned that the logo had been screened by fifty people and no one had noticed the resemblance.  It’s kinda like that picture that can be either an old lady or pretty woman depending on your perception. ASUO is still looking to solidify a slogan, and for that we would like to start our newest contest! Best ASUO slogan suggestion in the comments section wins a new sudsy shirt! New shirts are coming next week in green, navy blue, and black.

The meeting was a pretty tame one in contrasts to more recent ASUO senate meetings, but that all changed in the last five minutes. Senate President Gower was called out by Senate Vice President Schultz for violating the speakers list. Seconds before the meeting ended Schultz called for Gower to step down from his position.

Yes loyal readers, ASUO  fight club is back, and just in time for election season.

Not Sarah Michelle Geller or Sarah Jessica Parker, but Eugenes own favorite Sarah Palin! According to the Register Guard, she’ll be at the Hilton Eugene April 23 to “speak to the faithful”. My question is whether they’ll have the meeting in the conference center or if they’ll be able to fit everyone in Sarah’s hotel room.

From what the article says, Palin’s coming as a keynote speaker for the republican annual Lincoln Day Fundraiser (they’ll be a few months behind by April 23). Republican Party Leaders have been working for almost a year to bring her to Eugene.

No information was disclosed as to how much it cost the party to bring Palin to Eugene, or how much seating at the convention will cost. Interested Republicans can sign up by calling 541-342-4166.

I’ve got a lot of ground to cover in this post, so I’m going to use the bulleted format that’s been so popular in the past. We had several rejections

• Our top story (Things people who read the blog might actually care about edition): After discussions with ASUO President Emma Kallaway and her staffers, the Athletic Department has scrapped its ticketing system, replacing it with a “tiered” one in which students will log on to get tickets at different times based on their class standing, like the one for the 2008-09. At least for the Nov. 14 Arizona State game. They are still open for suggestions about how to do the Civil War on Dec. 3. If you have any ideas, send them along, because I’m pretty sure they’re desperate. (READ MORE BELOW THE FOLD!)
• (more…)

What happens when an influential Senator dies and the law says that he can’t be replaced without holding a special election? Just get rid of the law, which your party put in place back in 2004 to prevent the rival party from potentially taking a vacated Senate seat, so you can appoint this guy to the seat and have 60 “aye”‘s when it’s time to vote on health care:

Racism. It’s at the heart of every disagreement with “progressive” policy reforms. Meet Diane DeVillers of Eugene, who lays it all out in today’s issue of the Eugene Weekly:

There is not as much confusion about the health care issue as we are led to believe. Much of the resistance is all about not wanting President Obama to succeed. The town hall haters, gun-toting radical right wingers, have been steaming since our President was elected. It has taken them this long to finally have the nerve to tell America how much they hate the fact that a black man won the election. It is all about being racist.

While the sane people in America try to get health care reform, the minority is trying to mislead and ruin any attempt for this bill to pass. This includes the whole Republican party… Their loyalties are only to themselves. The majority of people elected this president, so they need to get used to it.

…

The majority of Americans want health care reform, so the Democrats should just do it, any way they can…

Everyone in the room should yell back for them to be silent and let the discussion continue.

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I’ve been reading Fivethirtyeight.com lately, and I thought I should point out something particularly interesting and rather insane. Nate Silver, after successfully predicting Obama’s win, has followed through on his promise to try to predict senate races. While the model is solid for the moment it’s important to remember that it’s long term accuracy is admittedly shaky, even by it’s creators.

In any case, the exercise is pretty cool and if it all goes to pot then at least it will be funny. Here’s what the top 15 races look like for the month of August.

Of course, if somehow the world cruises along at it’s current pace and the model holds, then we will have another amazing prediction from Nate Silver and his buddies. In case you don’t know who Mr. Silver is by now, he’s the guy who predicted the winners of the Oscars and the presidential election within fractions of their actual outcomes. Oh yeah, and this.

Kudos to Dracobly for this one.

Crossposted over at The Weekly Standard:

I received an email at my University of Oregon account today informing me that there are “intern opportunities with Organizing for America,” formerly Obama for America. According to the email, OFA is launching what it calls the “National Organizing Internship” for college students around the country. From the email:

 

Organizing Interns work side by side with OFA staff and community leaders to help build support for President Obama’s agenda. They will learn core organizing principles that are crucial for any campaign.

President Obama describes his time as a community organizer by saying: “It was the best education I ever had, because I learned in those neighborhoods that when ordinary people come together, they can achieve extraordinary things.”

This is your chance to get that same education.

If you’re passionate about making sure every American has quality health care, reviving our economy, and building a clean energy future, don’t miss this great opportunity. No previous experience is needed in order to apply.

Yes, you, too, can learn how to walk door-to-door and hand people flyers! You will also learn core phone-banking principles and how the OFA staff prefers their coffee. And yes, students are eligible to receive college credit for pushing the president’s agenda, provided they set it up with their school. Become a cog in the great hope machine today! Just don’t call it astroturfing!

With the Obama Administration on its last legs after less than a year, having spent what was left of its political capital in a savage, blood-soaked gladiator brawl over questions about the President’s place of birth and in the wake of ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s sudden resignation from office and her subsequent abortive foray into avant-garde poetry, rumors abounded that the Oregon Commentator’s own Sudsy O’Sullivan was already preparing for an easy cruise through the 2012 election.

Sadly, it seems that Sudsy’s Presidential ambitions have been stymied before the beloved anthropomorphic mug of beer’s campaign even got of the ground with the revelation that Mr. O’Sullivan was, in fact, born in Kenya.

Via operatives planted at the headquarters of the “Birther” movement, the Oregon Commentator has obtained a copy of Sudsy O’Sullivan’s birth certificate, which we have reproduced below:

Despite torpedoing President Obama’s entire Administration and forcing the nascent O’Sullivan campaign to scuttle its plans for a 2012 run, one of the leading lights in the so-called “Birther” movement, the amusingly named Orly Taitz, has praised California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, saying:

Governor Schwartzenegger has done a fantastic job here in California. The state has never been in better shape. People poke a lot of fun at Governor Schwartzenegger’s so-called “accent”, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s a patriotic American, through and through.

In fact, we’re hoping he’ll consider a 2012 Presidential run because we’re confident he has a good shot at the Oval Office. At least he’s demonstrated that he knows how to run a responsible budget, unlike that stinking foreigner who’s been treating America like Occupied Poland since January 20th…

Well, anyone who’s been following the news in the last few days knows that the European Left took a bit of a drubbing in recent elections. In some ways it’s heartening. But then you remember that fascists like the BNP won some seats and that kind of puts a damper on the whole thing.

Anyways, the preceding paragraph merely served as an excuse for me to link to this YouTube video:

Someone in our comment section brought it to our attention that the cease and desist letter sent by the Oregon Action Team to anonymous person(s) it accused of libel was actually a sample letter cribbed off the Internet. For use against the Opus Dei, no less. Here’s the first paragraph of the sample cease and desist letter:

Dear Sir or Madam:

This CEASE AND DESIST ORDER is to inform you that your and the Opus Dei cult’s harassing and intimidating actions against my fellow Catholics and I has become unbearable. Such anti-social behavior is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated in any way, shape or form. This letter is to demand that your and the Opus Dei cult’s continuing involvement in, planning and encouragement of, high-pressure recruitment, information gathering, harassment and intimidation must CEASE AND DESIST immediately. Should you and the Opus Dei cult continue to pursue these activities in violation of this CEASE AND DESIST ORDER, we will not hesitate to pursue further legal action against you and the Opus Dei cult, including, but not limited to, civil action and/or criminal complaints.

Now go back and check out the OAT’s letter. You can’t make this stuff up.

In case you haven’t seen it, the Daily Emerald has its article on the final ASUO election results up, and it’s full of hi-larious quotes from the Oregon Action Team’s campaign manager Marcus Krieg. Here’s Krieg talking abut how the OAT got an absolute shellacking:

“What’s unfortunate is I think our candidates ran a real honest and good campaign,” Krieg said. “It’s real tough because I think the ASUO will miss the Oregon Action Team this year.”

Krieg also mentioned “bad press” and the manner in which Kallaway and her running mate Getachew Kassa administered their campaign. He cited their decision to ally with slates whose presidential candidates lost in the primaries as evidence that their claims to independence were false. “They’ve run a really shitty, really petty campaign,” he said.

The article goes on to say that new ASUO president elect didn’t receive a congratulatory phone call from either Michelle Haley or Ted Sebastian, although she did receive some from ASUO Sen. Demic Tipitino and current president Sam Dotters-Katz. Kallaway also said in the article that she hopes OAT members still apply for some of the open positions in the ASUO. Krieg’s classy response?

Krieg said he is skeptical that there will be a place for his candidates under Kallaway. “Every time they look at us, they’ll know that they won a really underhanded campaign,” he said.

Krieg must be gunning for a PR job with the Republican party, what with that charming, conciliatory attitude.

Honestly, I wish the OAT had won a few more seats because we need diversity of opinion in the ASUO. Having a single party in power is never good. But when they conduct themselves like that, it’s hard to muster a lot of sympathy.