PoliSci Commencement Weekend Festivities

Professora Carolina Calvillo with some PoliSci Chair dude…

OK… this is for our students, friends, well-wishers, wannabes, and hangers-on: The time has arrived for Commencement 2008 — Friday and Saturday, to be precise.

Before we celebrate, we have to do our penance and thank the Lord that you’re actually graduating by participating in the Baccalaureate Mass on Friday evening at the Archdiocese’s new Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.  And no, contrary to the rumors floating about, if Cardinal DiNardo sprinkles holy water on the PoliSci faculty they won’t do this:

Heh.

After the conclusion of the Mass, the University will hold it’s annual Graduation Reception on the Student Life Mall.  We are not holding our traditional pre-Commencement party at the PoliSci House this year, primarily because of this:

Taylor nearly getting arrested by HPD in 2007 on a noise violation because of the band that we hired…

Ahem.  Helpful safety tip: Never peeve the nuns.

We also thought that it would work better by throwing all of our efforts into a real-live, honest-to-goodness, college game day tailgate party, by damn. You people give me a hard time for my days as a beer-drinkin’, football-lovin’ Lambda Chi at OU, but it will pay off big-time on Saturday.

This is the future of UST Fightin’ Celts tailgating!!

Plenty of food, drinks, and loud music will be available.  During the Commencement pre-game party, we will provide a continental breakfast with certain adult beverages (as well as non-alcoholic beverages).  After Commencement, we urge you, as well as your family and friends, to attend our post-game party, which will include various grilled meats to begin your journey down the road to arteriosclerosis, a number of different adult beverages for your drinking pleasure, and the unveiling of UST’s unofficial fight song (courtesy of us, of course).

See you there!

Political Wisdom: Republicans’ Really, Really Bad News

For a good assessment of the meaning of Mississippi’s special election, as well as whether Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is erasing racial consciousness or raising it, check out the Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib’s Political Perception blog today.

In a word (for our fellow Republicans): Ugh.

The really, really bad news for Republicans is found in Mississippi, writes National Journal’s Amy Walter. It comes in the form of Democratic Rep.-elect Travis Childers, who “defeated Republican Greg Davis in a heavily Republican district” on Tuesday. Davis, Walter writes, did everything that any traditional Republican candidate would do. He and his GOP allies tied Childers to higher taxes. They talked about House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. They even threw in Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright. In any ‘normal’ year, this would have been enough to win. But, it’s quite obvious that this isn’t a normal year. And, given that House Republicans have to defend 18 open seats in districts that are decidedly more marginal than this one, it’s hard to see how they can keep their losses this November under double digits. A 20-seat Democratic gain still looks hard to reach, but 10 to 12 seems like a moderate prediction at this point.”

Newsweek’s Howard Fineman asks the question about Obama’s candidacy that seems to be on, or in the back of, everybody’s mind: “Is Obama’s campaign erasing racial consciousness, or raising it?” He writes that the race equation changed in the South Carolina primary, which was “a racially polarized result that has continued to this day. After that, “Obama’s campaign began crying foul over real or imagined racial slights. It worked in many ways, increasing black voter solidarity and goading Bill Clinton into serial fits of purple rage.” Ultimately, Fineman concludes, “The Obama campaign may be right: that raising the profile of this issue is the way to finally defeat it … We’ll see. In this campaign, the new argument over race and personhood hasn’t ended. It’s just begun.”

For her part, though, Sen. Hillary Clinton, in a new ABC News interview, “dismissed exit poll results that suggest some of her supporters are voting against (Obama) because he’s black,” writes the network’s Jennifer Parker. Clinton argued in the interview that in West Virginia’s primary, “an overwhelming majority chose between us based on who can be better on the economy and health care and college affordability.” She also contended, Parker writes, “that just as many people may be discriminating against her because she is a woman.”

The New York Times’ Gail Collins finally produces the plan for Clinton to still win the nomination:

“1) A big, big win in Kentucky next Tuesday. Ideally, Obama should be limited to no more than 100 votes.

2) Oregon, scheduled for the same day, inexplicably breaks off and sinks into the Pacific Ocean.

3) Puerto Rico, clocking in on June 1, not only gives Clinton a huge majority, but also manages to become a state in advance of the vote.

4) Finally, on June 3 as the South Dakota polls open, Thomas Jefferson’s head on Mount Rushmore comes to life and starts shouting, ‘You go, girl.’”

Commencement Week Humor, Part VI

Dan Wasserman, The Boston Globe

Westboro Baptist Church strikes again…

The group of loons which has been known stage pickets at American soldiers’ funerals with such endearing signs as “Thank God for 911,” “Thank God for AIDS,” “Thank God for Katrina,” “Thank God for IEDs,” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” is back again with “Thank God for the Great Killer Earthquake in China.”

Lovely.

Tell it to these people…

Hat tip to The Opposite End of China blog.

Xinhua now reports that the earthquake deaths are estimated at over 50,000 in Sichuan Province alone, with nearly 20,000 confirmed.

PoliSci Hockey update…

The Dallas Stars did Detroit a favor, winning Game 4, which allows the Red Wings to clinch a berth in the Stanley Cup Finals at home… likely against the Pittsburgh Penguins, who hold a commanding 3 games-to-zip lead over Burke’s Philly Flyers.

Faletta reminded me that it’s good to be a Detroit sports fan right now — at least in basketball and hockey…

Commencement Week Humor, Part V

Courtesy of Phdcomics.com:

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignments

• How Can John McCain’s Appearance on ‘SNL’ Go Awry? Let Us Count the Ways — Chris Rozvar and Jessica Pressler, The Daily Intel Blog, New York Magazine
• Death Toll Up, Struggle to Reach China Survivors — Andrew Jacobs, New York Times
• Are the Republicans Doomed? - Jim VandeHei & Mike Allen, The Politico
• The GOP Must Stand for Something - Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal
• Opinion: Let them eat Juche — The Economist
• Editorial: The Republican Panic - Wall Street Journal
• A Mississippi Microcosm? — Richard Cohen, National Journal
• Editorial: McCain’s Path to Victory - Washington Times
• Clinton’s 11th Hour Push - Alexander Bolton, The Hill
• Edwards Backs Obama, Sends Signal to Clinton - Peter Slevin, Washington Post
• Republican Election Losses Stir Fall Fears — Adam Nagourney and Carl Hulse, New York Times
• Freedomland– William S. Lind, The American Conservative
• Turning Voters Into Morons — R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., The American Spectator
• The Sky Is Falling — by Gregg Easterbrook, The Atlantic
• The Shape of Things to Come — Todd Purdum, Vanity Fair
• Like There’s No Tomorrow: How economists think about procrastination — Ray Fisman, Slate
• You Won’t Fool the Children of the rEVOLution — David Weigel, Reason Magazine
• Why Hillary Is So Hard to Take — Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
• McCain’s Veepstakes: Maybe Mitch? — John Gizzi, Human Events
• Conservatives are fed up with the Republican party — Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show
• The last six weeks have been a great benefit to Obama — and may emerge as the most important period of his quest for the presidency — Douglas Schoen, Los Angeles Times
• New Math for November — Timothy Egan, Outposts Blog, New York Times

Lunch with Irma

This is so cool!

From a new article by Corby Kummer in The Atlantic Monthly:

At Irma’s in Houston, Mexican food is in the right hands—mothers’ and grandmothers’…

Check out the Slideshow: “Lunch with Irma”

The Change You Deserve: Republican slogan borrowed from antidepressant…

Why are we not surprised by this story, given all of the crap the GOP has faced lately?  Sigh…

Hillary’s Downfall

Heh. Caution: Some adult language…

Commencement Week Humor, Part IV

If only all college ads were this honest… heh. Caution: Some adult language.

The McCain Doctrines

The New York Times’ Matt Bai has a long piece on Senator John McCain that is scheduled to run in this Sunday’s Times’ Magazine.  The gist of it is summarized thusly:

…McCain is the outlier. Among his fellow combat veterans in the Senate, past and present, he is the only one who has continued to champion the war in Iraq; by contrast, Kerry, Webb and Hagel have emerged in the years since the invasion as unsparing critics of American involvement there. (In a new book, Hagel, who voiced deep concerns about Iraq even as he voted for the war resolution in 2002, predicts that the war will turn out to be “the most dangerous and costly foreign-policy debacle in our nation’s history.”) This divide among old allies may be the inevitable result of a protracted war that has cleaved plenty of American households and friendships. But it may also be that the war is revealing underlying fractures among the Senate’s Vietnam coalition.

In our opinion, it’s also one of the principal reasons why he is the GOP nominee today…

Read the advance version here.

Both parties Veep picks…

The Washington Post’s Chris Cilizza’s top five Vice Presidential picks for both candidates.

For McCain:

1. Governor Tim Pawlenty (MN)
2. Senator John Thune (SD)
3. Former Congressman/OMB Director Rob Portman (OH)
4. Governor Charlie Crist (FL)
5. Former Governor Mitt Romney (MA)

For Obama:

1. Governor Kathleen Sebelius (KS)
2. Governor Ted Strickland (OH)
3. Senator Hillary Clinton (NY)
4. Governor Tim Kaine (VA)
5. Former Senator Sam Nunn (GA)

We have a couple of questions regarding Cilizza’s list: Where the hell is Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina for McCain and Senator Jim Webb of Virginia for Obama?!

Nota Bene: Today’s Additional Reading Assignments

• Pax Corleone — John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell, The National Interest
• Ballots and Wallets — Andres Martinez, Conde Nast Portfolio
• An Indie Scene That Comes With a Texas Twang in Denton — Lionel Beehner, New York Times
• The Association Between Urban Sprawl and Obesity: Is It a Two-Way Street? — Andrew J. Plantinga and Stephanie Bernell, Journal of Regional Science (Volume 47, Issue 5)
• Maybe We Can’t: The black case for Obama-skepticism — Cinque Henderson, The New Republic
• Hillary: I’m Here, Get Used To It — Byron York, National Review
• Who stole the American spirit? — Zachary Karabell, Wall Street Journal
• Blogs and Wikis and 3D, Oh My! — Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed
• The World’s Worst Government — Alvaro Vargas Lhosa, The New Republic
• Political Donations from Academia — Jay P. Greene’s Blog
• Can You Catch Up on Lost Sleep? — Molly Webster, Scientific American
• She won’t go easy — Camille Paglia, Salon.com
• Vive la différence: dispelling French myths — Anthony Peregrine, London Daily Telegraph
• Measuring the ‘Aeneid’ on a Human Scale — Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education
• The dysfunctional world of parliament — Keith Martin, National Post (Canada)
• Sister Act: Is Indiana really disfranchising elderly nuns? — John Fund, Wall Street Journal
• Six gas-saving myths — Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com
• HBO Film About 2000 Recount Draws Protests From Democrats — Edward Wyatt, New York Times

OU Freshman wins Muskogee mayoral race

On Tuesday, John Hammons, a freshman majoring in Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Oklahoma, was elected mayor of Muskogee, a city of 38,000. Hammons, 19, won nearly 70% of the vote over his opponent, according to the Tulsa World.

Alas, my fellow Sooners can’t crow for long: during the campaign, Hammons pledged to transfer to Northeastern State University in nearby Talequah if elected…

Hammons sets the bar high for our PoliSci majors.  So… I have but one thing to say to our students reading this post: Get to work at surpassing what Hammons has done!!!