Breaking: Thought to be Extinct GOPosaur, Alan Keyes sighted (and arrested) at Notre Dame

Breaking News, Lefties... apparently while I was settling down to take my post-finals nap, there was a sighting of a thought to be extinct variety of GOPosaur. Alan Keyes, former serious contender joke of a Republican presidential candidate, and former carpetbagging Senate candidate (ran against Obama in 2004) must have been craving another 15 minutes of fame. With Randall Terry hogging all of the crazy, Keyes must have been pretty jealous, because well, with the two of them in the world there's just not a whole lot of kookiness to go around.

One of my favorite blogs, Wonkette, featured a brief sampling of the high comedy Keyes brings to the Notre Dame community:

These words must ring in the ears of faithful Christians as they consider the grim reality of abortion. Every time abortionists rip a child limb from limb within the womb; every time they crush the fragile head; every time they scorch the life from its body with a death dealing solution; every time they scrape its nascent cells of life from the walls of a womb- Jesus is savagely beaten again; his skull pressed down with thorns; his limbs pulled savagely in their sockets; his hands and feet pierced through with nails; his breath drawn with fiery pain; his life finally extinguished; every time.

It gets better. Check out the full letter here (.pdf) Apparently he was planning to get arrested (egomaniac? ...nahhh) and plans to keep bringing the crazy every day:

I will do it all day and every day from now until the Master comes if need be, though it mean I shall be housed everyday in the prison house of lies and injustice that Obama, Jenkins and their minions now mean to construct for those who will never be still and silent in the face of their mockery of God and justice, their celebration of evil.

Alan, can you let us know when you're coming? I'd love to sell tickets to this shit-show. It would be a great fundraiser for our College Dems! Anyhow, I just finished my finals today, so call/text if you want to go celebrate some evil with me! :)

Oh, and one more thing... what's the deal with batshit-insane radical anti-choice fundamentalists having gay children that they are ashamed of? Both Randall Terry and Alan Keyes are complete assholes for parents.

Photo: Jim Ridder/South Bend Tribune

GOPosauric Park

Best of luck to everyone finishing up their finals right now...

When you're done, make some popcorn and check out this summer thriller:

Just thought I'd share this laugh with you guys... I'm too sleep deprived for any serious blogging at the moment. Time for a nap.

In the meantime, if you'd like to vote on what to name our new pet goposaur, head over to Daily Kos where they're taking a poll. The final voting is taking place between "NoNo" and "Gipper" haha. And I am sooo getting one of those shirts!

*Update* The new official name of the GOPosaur is "NoNo" haha, I love it.

Summer Plans?

As we're chugging through the last days of finals, anyone have any interesting summer plans? I don't know about you guys, but I've been thinking... ya know what? Glenn Beck is right. I'm over this socialism stuff. That's right. I'm resigning from the Democratic Party, turning in my ACLU card, and getting the hell out of Dodge France!

That's right, baby... Libertarianism all the way!!! Think the beaches of Cabo, or Key West are where it's at for spring break? Well, who wants to join me in THIS Libertarian paradise this summer!?!

I'll be continuing to blog over the summer from a pirate ship off the coast of Somalia. See ya in the fall! Good riddance, you heathen socialists!

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

Today, President Obama drew mixed responses from Congressional Democrats and Republicans over policies intended to close major tax loopholes for corporations. Basically, multinationals have been dodging taxes, legally, by using loopholes, such as the Cayman Island Scheme. Here's a website that offers assistance for tax havens, aptly titled ESCAPEARTIST.COM! Way to be obvious.

Anyway, some members of Congress, such as Max Baucus and Joseph Crowley, to name a few, are hesitant to the plan, saying that it will hurt American companies in a time when they are already suffering. Here's the problem with these kinds of arguments:

If American corporations' financial success is based on weaseling their way out paying of billions of dollars per year, they don't deserve to exist. I'm sorry. I'm not anti-business, but the rules need to be fair. This is hurting the American taxpayer (to use GOP rhetoric) and sends the message that certain companies (the ones who can take advantage of tax havens) are more deserving than others. Now, you can't exactly blame the corporations. It's legal, right? Let's close the loopholes so they can't make that decision. There's no defensible reason for keeping them. Not to mention, it's likely that they will only find new loopholes. Let's do the right thing.


Here's an excerpt from a Bloomberg article to explain a little more:

The package of corporate and individual tax changes, which will be part of a detailed budget the administration plans to release May 7, would generate about $210 billion in tax revenue over the next decade, according to Treasury estimates. Obama’s proposals, if adopted, wouldn’t take effect until 2011.

The entire article can be found here.

For further information, I highly recommend, once again, the book Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston. You can get it here.

Image source: chud.com

Get Real, Rover!

Now anyone who knows me knows that I love to dialog and discuss issues with people of various backgrounds. A two-hour conversation with one Mary Daly regarding the crosses on South Quad during the Blue-and-Gold Game proves this. What I cannot stand, however, is ridiculous claims without any evidence to support them. The previously mentioned President of Notre Dame Right to Life and newly selected Editor-in-Chief of the Rover committed this argumentation sin in her first column in her new position (found on page 2).

Though there are many parts of her column that I disagree with (if not all of it), the part I find most repulsive is her claim that Notre Dame's Catholic identity is critical to how other top-tier schools view us. Further, she even goes as far as to posit that losing this identity would cause other schools to view Notre Dame less seriously and with diminished respect.

Now when this portion of Daly's column, I was extremely curious to see what evidence she would provide to substantiate these rather bold claims. I was terribly disappointed (and perhaps somewhat elated) to see that the best support she could muster was from a sole Harvard student's op-ed. That's right, the views of one student suddenly constitute proof that the Ivies and the like love/respect our Catholic nature.

I believe that other top universities accept our Catholic underpinnings and respect us for them, but at the same time see it as restrictive to our pursuit of academic excellence. I find a few supporting arguments, none from student op-eds.

Firstly, Notre Dame sacrifices (albeit without a strict quota) hiring professors purely based on merit in order to have a good amount of Catholic professors. How would top academic institutions approve of this?

Secondly, what respect have we gained from other academic institutions based on the Obama furor? Obama chose Notre Dame over his all other highly touted universities. In return we protest and ask him to decline the invitation? I'm sure Harvard and Yale are loving Notre Dame for this.

My final argument relies on collegiate rankings. The widely read ranking of top colleges by US News and World Report includes peer review as part of their rankings system. In the most recently released rankings, peer review counts for approximately 25% of the final rank. According to this ranking, Notre Dame is the 18th best university in the nation. In another ranking system, published by the Times Higher Education-QS, peer review is given much more weight (40%). Notre Dame takes a nosedive in this ranking, falling to number 53. Looking solely at peer review, Notre Dame does not even crack the top 33 US universities.

Fr. Hesburgh once wrote about the conflict of being a Catholic University and noted the difficulties inherent in searching both for the "Truth" and pursuing academic freedom/excellence. Given all that Notre Dame sacrifices in the name of our Catholic identity, should we really view it as something other top-tier universities value? This is not to say that our Catholic identity is wrong or should be challenged, but only to remind the Mary Daly's of the world that other universities view it as a hindrance to our academic mission.

Sunday Evening Tunes

I swear, I will eventually start featuring music other than Electric Six in this feature. But they are awesome, and I felt the need to spread their greatness to you all for a few weeks in a row.

So, I give you another wacky E6 classic, "Gay Bar." Prepare to be disturbed on a variety of levels.

And here's an awesome mashup I found, dubbed to the same song, which is quite fitting for our site. I thank Jackie for the inspiration for this.

Happy studying on this pre-finals weekend! In fact... I should probably get to that now...

Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo

Sunday Fundays here at Lefty's is becoming a bit of a tradition. There's not much news on Sunday, so we like to have a little fun... not that we don't during the week, but it's definitely Sunday's theme.

So in keeping with the spirit of the Lord's day, I would just like to take this opportunity to kick the Republicans while they're down. Because, well, it's just fun.

Meet the new mascot of the Republican Party:

The GOPosaur

Note the duality of the elephant trunk functioning as the dinosaur tail, and the dinosaur head coming out of the elephant's ass. Haha, classic. This image was designed by malacandra, a blogger over at Daily Kos. Genius.

Daily Kos also put together this lovely montage of Republicans shitting their pants attempting to come to terms with one of the most prominent Republican Senators, Arlen Specter (R-PA) (D-PA) leaving their sinking ship and joining the Democrats under our big tent.

Enjoy.

Better Late Than Never: Lefty's Hosts Cenk Uygur

(Bill and I have been struggling to get this to work for a while, but here it is!)
Dear Lefties,

Once upon a time, on April 17, 2009, Cenk Uygur, progressive internet/radio talk show host of THE YOUNG TURKS, came to Notre Dame to speak about the role of new media in politics. Notre Dame College Democrats, along with your favorite blog of all time- Lefty's Last Cry, hosted the event. For all who attended, it was a great time. We snapped some great photos of the event. Check 'em out here:

All in all, the whole thing was a blast. Pizza was eaten. Laughs were had. We even unveiled our brand new College Democrats t-shirts, one of which we gave to Cenk as a visitation gift. Lefty's very own writers got to meet each other for the first time, which made me very happy. At the time, we were trying out a promotional week, which went over really well (we averaged about 250 views per day!). The Cenk event capped off the week perfectly.

In many ways, the Cenk Uygur event was the defining re-launch of Lefty's Last Cry. When we look back on the day, years from now, I think we will all agree that it truly made us proud to be lefties. We got a wonderful snapshot with Cenk to help promote his bid for the 10pm slot on MSNBC (seen above). I encourage you all to join the Facebook group and help Cenk. For all of our writers, AKA 'Lefty's Comrades', let us take a moment and look back on our inaugural gathering. This is where it all began, baby.

With Love and Leftiness,

Henry Vasquez