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!

It has come to my attention that our numerous trolls, illiterates, and Palin-bangers are upset about Dane’s trashing of the nation’s most prominently vapid GILF*. Their incohate bleating, weeping, and gnashing of teeth have inspired me to write a post I was going to write anyway, only on the clock instead of this afternoon. Way to go, chums.

Yesterday the LA Times ran a pretty good piece on Washington’s latest completely wasteful boondoggle: Cash for Clunkers. Unless you’ve been living under a rock or a bridge like the commenters a post down, you’re undoubtedly aware that the government is offering a $4,500 rebate on “clunkers” toward the purchase of a new car. Aside from effectively establishing a price floor on the used market and maybe pricing a bunch of people out, the program does not apply to any car manufactured before 1984. Why? Good old regulatory capture and political economy.

The restrictions were pushed by lobbyists for the Specialty Equipment Market Assn., a Diamond Bar group that represents companies that sell parts and services to classic and antique car collectors. The group, as well as classic car enthusiasts, have opposed cash for clunkers because they don’t want older vehicles to be destroyed.

When the proposals for a clunker buyback program surfaced early this year, the specialty equipment association opposed the entire concept because such a program could shrink the size of the market for aftermarket parts. The association eventually got lawmakers to adopt the age limit.

“We are very pleased that Congress was able to include that in the program,” said Stuart Gosswein, director of regulatory affairs at the association.

The association represents more than 7,000 companies that make all manner of auto-related products, including reproduction Model T tires and AMC Gremlin upholstery. The powerful interest group has won legislative battles nationwide to protect owners of classic cars and hot rods from laws covering vehicle noise, emissions tests and much else.

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Only you can prevent me from raping your ears.

Mrs. Opportunity is at it again, causing mounds upon mounds of soundbytes to ooze from various radio and television news talkshow hosts. It’s already abundantly clear that no one should ever listen to what this woman says, but somehow she still gains national spotlight because she has, yet again, failed to understand a fundamental element of national policy.

Now the last few days I’ve had to watch cable news shows, Jon Stewart and others absolutely destroy Palin’s asinine remarks from her Facebook page. Why hasn’t anyone taken then hint yet that Palin is, by all accounts, meaningless?

Her contribution to American politics was, at best, limited during her VP run. Now that she’s resigned from her Governor’s post she has absolutely zero legitimacy as a nationally recognized commentator on American politics. Let’s put this out there one more time: Sarah Palin is not an important national figure. She’s a joke, a lame-duck Governor from a state with about as many people as Portland.

For people like Sean Hannity and Jon Stewart to be discussing her opinion shows their inability to judge what and who should be relevant on a national scale.

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…

According to an Emerald article Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer introduced legislation that would fund a pilot program. This particular program is called the Vehicle Miles Traveled program.

The article says that this program would have GPS units put into vehicles and then drivers would be taxed for the number of miles that they’d driven (on top of the federal and state gas taxes). Blumenauer is trying to make this a national program.

Guess what state has already tried this program out? You guessed it! Oregon and in the lovely city of Portland. People volunteered to have the state put GPS units in their car and track their in-state mileage.

I realize that in the poorly budgeted state of Oregon more taxes is a good thing for those yokels in Salem but this is getting ridiculous. Oregon needs to hire someone from the private sector to figure their shit out because Kulongoski and his cronies are not doing the job.

A part of me also has a problem with the idea of the Federal or State governments putting tracking devices in my vehicle. Yes, the article in question does state that the study in Portland said that while the mileage would be reported the location of the car would be “undisclosed.” I’m calling shenanigans on the whole thing right now because of the word undisclosed. That word means that they have the location but won’t tell the public…yay? Not a cause for celebration.

I’m very much pro keeping the government out of my life as much as I can and this just seems ridiculously invasive.

Here’s to hoping this fails.

First against the wall.

As some of you may know, I’m in D.C. this summer interning at The Weekly Standard. Anyway, I’m working on a story about the recent revelation that the Fund for the Public Interest, the fundraising arm of the U.S. PIRG (of which our beloved OSPIRGs are a part), settled a $2.15 million class-action lawsuit for underpaying its canvassers and organizers.

Well, today I called both the Fund and the PIRG offices, and I was pleasantly unsurprised when, on the second call, the receptionist said, “Didn’t we just talk?”

“Wait, isn’t this the U.S. PIRG?” I asked.

“Both numbers redirect here.”

Oh, but of course they do. Just like how the Oregon Students Public Interest Research Group and the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group share the same office and phone number. Bigger pond, same damn fish.

(It’s probably pertinent to point out that the Fund doesn’t mention the U.S. PIRG anywhere on its website. It mainly touts itself as a partner with the Sierra Club and the Human Rights Campaign.)

This photo has caused a ridiculous media stir (I blame the New York Post but they just got the ball rolling, everyone else took it to unnecessary lengths):

The photo looks like President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are enjoying the backside of the young girl in the purple/red dress.

Not to be outdone by their own ridiculous claims the American media immediately turned around and defended Obama with videos like this one:

\”The Truth About the Obama Photo\”

This is one of several videos that I’ve seen about this photo from various news sources.

Interestingly of the videos that I have seen “debunking” the image everyone has a good laugh that Sarkozy looks to be clearly checking out the girl. Beyond the fact that she looks 16 no one seems to be have a problem with Ol’ Kozy checking out the young thangs but if Obama does it’s a media hailstorm on both sides of the issue.

Though I’m not surprised.

Personal Opinion on the photo: Who cares? Guy can appreciate a good looking body, look but don’t touch kind of policy.

If I had to hazard a guess though, based on the image and the video clip I would say that Obama did take some time to discreetly check out that girl’s ass. Sure, he “hid” it behind helping that other girl down the one step but still…

—

Well, there you go…another example that American media doesn’t need declining paper sales to die off, it’s doing a fine job by itself.

Well, tonight saw President Obama’s “health care forum”. The ABC network has come under a great deal of criticism for its perceived kowtowing to the Obama Administration and refusing to sell ad time to the dissenting Republicans (can you imagine the outrage had the players instead been Fox News and President Bush, circa 2004?). The Republicans are calling the whole thing an “infomercial“. Media Matters is calling Fox News a bunch of hyporites (I guess whether “turnabout is fair play” or “he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster” is a more appropriate slogan for the left’s sudden enthusiasm for uncomfortably close ties between the government and the media depends on which side of the aisle one hails from…). Meanwhile, reports indicate that ABC employees donated to the Obama campaign by a factor of roughly 80:1 ($124,421 to Obama, $1,550 to McCain) and Michelle Malkin is howling about “astroturfing“. Other statistics (“damned lies…” and all that…) indicate that 89% of Americans are more or less satisfied with their health care, raising the question of why exactly it’s so urgent to push through health care reform right now — as others have mentioned, maybe fixing Medicare first would provide an encouraging example of Obama’s brilliant ideas on health care — or is Walter Reed a harbinger of state-run health care (actually Walter Reed is state-run health care…)?

But never mind all that. The masthead says “a conservative journal of opinion” and, since we’re not getting any of that sweet, sweet, free stimulus money (and since we find the idea of the government bailing out newspapers utterly repugnant– sorry journalism majors), I thought I’d call attention to Cato’s crucial coverage of what’s poised to be a total health-care debacle — one of positively federal proportions. In any case, you can find an informative live-blogged response to the President’s err…  “highly adversarial” appearance on ABC here.

And in case you don’t give two squirts of piss about the de facto socialization of health care in this country, I invite you to instead discuss this article, which seeks to establish whether or not the “FreeCreditReport.com band” is “legit” or not. But I’ll never respect you again.

Rather than trying to append this to the smoking, charred remains of the last post that dealt with intellectual diversity, I thought I’d give this piece from Kenneth Anderson at The Volokh Conspiracy its own space.

Much has been made in the comments section of this blog about what the problem actually looks like and what can be done about it, and I think that Anderson does a reasonably good job of crystallizing a few of the major concerns regarding the lack of intellectual diversity in the academy.

He makes clear the results of a lack of intellectual diversity in the academy, and it’s not just that students run the risk of ending up in a classroom with biased instructors. Rather, courses that approach subject matter from a conservative or libertarian perspective simply are not taught. This is due in large part to the fact that many existing faculty are either uninterested or unable to teach such courses, with the outcome that classes in conservative political thought or historical interpretation, etc. have more or less disappeared from curricula. For support he cites Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, who writes:

To be sure, a political science department may feature a course on American political thought that includes a few papers from “The Federalist” and some chapters from Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”

But most students will hear next to nothing about the conservative tradition in American politics that stretches from John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt to William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman to Ronald Reagan. This tradition emphasizes moral and intellectual excellence, worries that democratic practices and egalitarian norms will threaten individual liberty, attends to the claims of religion and the role it can play in educating citizens for liberty, and provides both a vigorous defense of free-market capitalism and a powerful critique of capitalism’s relentless overturning of established ways. It also recognized early that communism represented an implacable enemy of freedom.

[…]

While ignoring conservatism, the political theory subfield regularly offers specialized courses in liberal theory and democratic theory; African-American political thought and feminist political theory; the social theory of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school; and numerous versions of postmodern political theory.

Berkowitz argues that, far from actively seeking “conservative” scholars during faculty searches, departments should instead look for professors who, regardless of their political background, would be able to convincingly teach a courses about conservative interpretations of history, ideas, politics, etc. to complement the stable of scholars in virtually every humanities or social science department who are fluent in leftish ideas.

This approach would likely have the effect of attracting a more “diverse” group of applicants and nullifies the basis of the argument that only “liberal people apply to liberal schools” (or the even more absurd notion that conservatives are simply too thick to be academics) while at the same time avoiding any sort of political “litmus test” during the hiring process.

While approvingly quoting Berkowitz’s admonition against “affirmative action for conservatives,” Anderson also notes the stultifying results of the left-liberal coccoon in academia:

… within an academic institution, I find myself treated as “conservative” – either to recoil from in faint horror, with a certain advice to students, well, if you take him, you have to know what you’re getting, or with a certain faint institutional pride that we’re broad-minded enough to have someone like him, which is to say, there is nothing an academic institution cannot praise itself for if it tries hard enough. I’ve had conversations – earnest, well-intentioned – that amounted to saying, “We’re so glad you’re our token conservative.”

If a quality education that exposes students to a wide variety of ideas and perspectives is indeed the mission of this institution (and sometimes one wonders…), then it simply isn’t enough to retort “well, go take an economics class” whenever someone complains that conservative ideas are given short shrift in the academy. Students actually need to be able to expose themselves to a truly diverse set of ideas that are taught by people who’re interested in and qualified to teach them, regardless of their political background (I mean, can you imagine what a class at the UO campus on the ideas of Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley might look like?).

As it stands, students are often presented with the illusion of choice and given the option of taking courses in any number of subjects, a large number of which approach the course material, whatever it may be, with much the same theoretical framework.

That’s not diversity, and telling conservative academics to get out of town and move to Texas doesn’t change that.

“First, they came for the smokers…”

“Next, they came for the Earth-killers…”

“Then, they came for the greedy, fat-cat kulaks…”

Right-wing rhetoric incites domestic terrorism!

California set to abandon the use of textbooks in schools in favor of “internet aids”:

Gov Schwarzenegger believes internet activities such as Facebook, Twitter and downloading to iPods show that young people are the first to adopt new online technologies, and so the internet is also the best way to learn in classrooms.

I think there may be a logical fallacy skulking around in there somewhere.

How can the world’s fifth largest economy not have enough money to be able to outfit schools with textbooks? I’m sure it has nothing to do with out of control entitlements spending. Nope. Nothing to see here. It’s a revenue problem, you see.

I’ll confess: until a few days ago, I’d never heard of Dr. George Tiller. I’m basically pro-choice, but the abortion issue is just not one that I follow particularly closely. While I’ve heard of (and very much dislike) some of the more notorious anti-abortion groups like “Operation Rescue”, my general sense is that most people on the pro-life side of the debate are fundamentally good people who simply have different values (on this question, at least), than I do.

But my intent is not for this post to muse over whether abortion is right or wrong — so please keep your comments on that issue to yourself; no one here cares what you think about it, so I’ll just delete those that try to turn the comments section into an abortion screaming match.

What I want to talk about instead is identity politics, the flawed notion of collective responsibility, and attempts to shape the narrative by seizing on events like the murder of George Tiller and using them for political gain.

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Speaking of The Gay, New Hampshire just became the sixth state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage. Congratulations to NH and all its residents. For being so “forward-thinking” and “progressive,” Oregon is starting to look a little sad.

Barack Obama’s new Supreme Court nominee is stealing your act:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

It’s nice to see that the President of the United States is nominating an open believer in race-based identity politics to the highest court in the land.

Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy weighs in:

I am not yet sure what position to take on President Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor. My general sense is that she is very liberal, and thus likely to take what I consider to be mistaken positions on many major constitutional law issues. I am also not favorably impressed with her notorious statement that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Not only is it objectionable in and of itself, it also suggests that Sotomayor is a committed believer in the identity politics school of left-wing thought. Worse, it implies that she believes that it is legitimate for judges to base decisions in part on their ethnic or racial origins.

Once again the mask slips and the race politics espoused by people like Diego Hernandez, the Commentator’s erstwhile punching bag Nate Gulley, and Sonia Sotomayor is exposed as little more than racism by another name.