Focusing the discussion on the Bush Institute, NOT the Library - Opinion

Focusing the discussion on the Bush Institute, NOT the Library - Opinion

Welcome Back

Well, it's a new semester and many things have happened since elections. The Democrats passed their first 100 hour campaign promises, and there will be a whole post on that soon, but what's really important now is the Bush Library debate.

SMU has been named the finalist in the Bush Library selection and when all said and done the library will be joined by a museum and a conservative think tank, the Bush Institute. Many faculty have expressed their displeasure with the inclusion of the Bush Institute, as well as Methodist priests, but what about the students? The administration recently addressed the faculty's concerns but it was at a meeting that students were not invited to. Many students want the administration to join in an open discussion with us and the faculty, as well as members of the community, to address questions we have about the library and think tank,

It is my personal opinion that while I do not support President Bush and would much rather have a presidential library for a different and totally awesome president to grace the campus of the university that's going to hand me a bachelor's degree, we're getting the GWB one and it's still a presidential library which is pretty cool. However, what comes with it is not pretty cool in any way. The Bush Institute is a conservative think tank on which SMU has zero oversight. Universities are supposed to be non-partisan centers of learning. A place that doesn't drive others away. A conservative think tank will be partisan and will drive students, alumni and donors away. People will be less inclined to donate to SMU's academic endeavors just because the Bush Institute (and in some cases the Bush Library as well) sits atop the hill. It will be a magnet for protests, vandalism, and crime. Students won't feel safe walking in the south part of campus if they're worried they'll be hit by a brick that was meant for one of the windows of the Bush Library. Homeowners in the area don't want the library/institute here either for the same reasons, as well as increased traffic on small two lane roads.

Speaking of housing, this is a problem being caused by the GWB Library and Institute as well. SMU has already used imminent domain to take the homes of the University Gardens residents and the residents of the homes on Potomac Avenue (which runs from the stadium to where University Gardens used to stand behind the bookstore shopping center). What I know of the design for the Library/Museum/Institute is that it looks like everything else on campus (red brick, Jeffersonian design, pillars and domes) and it's absolutely enormous. It's a $500 million building, how can it not be enormous? In order to place this on the corner where University Gardens used to stand, SMU will have to tear down the shopping center with the ONLY place to buy textbooks and those homes it bought on Potomac, as well as the little strip of parkland between those homes and the shopping center. But more importantly for students, they will have to tear down the Binkleys. The Binkleys are student apartments. The only student apartments on campus. There's a lot of them-- many students live there. I'm not sure how many, but when they're torn down there won't be space for them in the dorms. A lot of international students live there, and they can't get apartments off campus. Being in Highland Park, apartments near campus are uber expensive-- much more so than campus apartments done through Residence Life and Student Housing. Does the University have plans to build more student apartments? The Binkleys, like University Gardens, are pretty rundown anyway, but that's still a large chunk of the student body that will no longer be able to live on campus.


Some links of interest:
www.protectsmu.edu A petition started by United Methodist Minsiters to prevent the library and institute from coming to campus.
bushlibraryblog.wordpress.com A blog by a fantastic faculty member about his and other faculty's perspective and concerns.

HAPPY NOVEMBER SURPRISE!

The New York Times' lead story is that President Bush, hoping to give leverage that Iraq actually had nuclear weapons, posted documents online that basically held a guide to making a nuclear bomb, which supposedly is how Iran got the ability to make a nuclear bomb.

And this will be front page above the fold in the morning. And this will be repeated in newspapers and 24 hour news stations around the world for the NEXT FIVE DAYS. Bye bye John Kerry story, hello Bush Administration screwed up Big Time story.


Election Prediction: Democrats win both the House and the Senate.

November Surprise?

John Kerry may have botched a joke, but he hasn’t botched the election for Democrats. In response to the joke, news stations have been playing President Bush’s latest comments on Iraq, which happen to have been made this week in places such as Sugarland, Texas, where it’s likely that voters will reelect Tom Delay despite his resignation because they can’t remember the Republican write-in candidate’s name (which is hyphenated and difficult to spell). Bush’s remarks in these highly conservative districts are basically another version of his Stay the Course speeches without actually saying the words “stay the course.” These remarks are being shown all over the nation and will harm Republican candidates in moderate districts or districts that are against the War in Iraq. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from earlier this week says that 61% of Americans can’t see a victory in Iraq, 54% don’t think it was worth it to go after Saddam Hussein, and the majority of Americans want a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq. From the same poll, 36% of voters, the highest percentage, say that Iraq is the most important issue in the election. Americans are dissatisfied with the president, Congress, the War in Iraq, and with the direction the nation is headed. 52% of Americans polled by NBC/Wall Street Journal want Democrats to have control in Congress. Races are close in the Midwest and in typically Republican states, but in other areas the Democratic candidate has an overwhelming lead over their Republican opponent—Rick Santorum is polling around 30%.

The second most important issue to people in this election is jobs and the economy, followed by health care in third. In many states voters have the opportunity to raise the minimum wage in their state. Democrats are hopeful to drive out turnout with raising the minimum wage the way that Republicans were able to get out the vote with anti-gay marriage/civil union issues. Voters in the industrial area around Michigan and Ohio have been losing their jobs. The car industry is doing poorly. Manufacturing jobs are continuing to go elsewhere and there’s no end in sight. The federal minimum wage is not a living wage—which in 2001 was calculated to be around $11 an hour, minus health care costs. Health care and prescription costs continue to rise and the government isn’t doing anything about it.

Will this be an election that’s able to give Democrats control of Congress? Democrats need to pick up 6 more seats in the Senate and 15 more seats in the House to gain control. The polls are in favor of a Democratic Congress, but there are still a few more days left before the election. Karl Rove, the strategist behind President Bush’s two wins, is too calm and assured of a GOP victory for my taste. What does he have up his sleeve? What will be the November Surprise before Election Day? Will there be a November surprise before Election Day? Short of capturing bin Laden on Monday, is there anything that will stop the Democratic party?

I say the November surprise is that the Democrats will take back control of Congress.




Election predictions to come soon.

October Surprise

Surprise!!! So it seems that Mark Foley is this midterm election's October Surprise, or so sayeth the pundits on MSNBC. The whole thing is a bit frightening and chock full of irony to boot. Here you have a guy who was co-chairing the Congressional Missing and Exlpoited Children's Caucus, and he's the one exploiting the kids. It's a sick situation, and I worry for the safety of the pages, but I have to admit, it would have been amusing if Foley had walked into Chris Hansen's sting operation "To Catch a Predator."

I wonder who knew what and when. I can only guess, but I sincerely doubt that there weren't members of the Republican leadership who knew about this sitaution. They may not have had all the details, but if pages entering the program were warned to "watch out" for Foley, then someone should have raised these concerns. It's negligent and unfair to the pages not to investigate the sitaution. And if the sitaution was investigated, it begs the questions: when will anyone in Washington learn that anything you try to bury, will always come back to bite you in the ass?

On an amusing side note, I have to say, when I heard the words "October Surprise" in the context of Mark Foley, I pictured some kind of "Scandals of Washington" calendar, with Foley as Mr. October. I think Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and Scooter Libby would all be in there as well.

The larger issue is this: it's been a bad year for Republicans. Scandal after scandal, and efforts to distance themselves from the President may pay off for Democrats in the end. Whether people vote for the Democrats or against the Republicans is no matter. A majority in the House is a majority in the House, no matter how you slice it.

Now THAT'S apathy...

Is it too much to keep up with current events in college? People think they know something about politics now because they know that there's a candidate named Kinky. Wow. Like that's especially hard to remember.

My 90-year-old great-grandmother had a heart attack recently and is 80% blind... and yet she managed to watch the debates and come out with a clear opinion of every candidate. (Perry= liar. Kinky= Yosemite Sam. Bell= knows his stuff. Strayhorn= disappointing.)

So why should it be that hard for the average red-blooded (or perhaps blue-blooded?) SMU student to make a small effort? You didn't even have to watch it... just watching the news at some point since then would have caught you up.

Chris Bell totally pwned some n00bs at the gubernatorial debate

If y'all didn't see the gubernatorial debate on October 6th, you should go watch it on www.wfaa.com. It really is a good example of what candidates are serious about this race and which are not. Now, I've debated in college, and I've judged both high school and college debate, and I know how to be unbiased about deciding who "wins" a debate. Although I'm strongly biased towards Chris Bell, I'll try to keep this post, for the most part, unbiased-- except of course where I talk about how scary Rick Perry is.

From an honest, unbiased standpoint, I think it's quite obvious which candidates were prepared for the debate. Rick Perry and Chris Bell were the only two candidates who came out looking like they were actually involved in the race. Kinky Friedman just kept saying the same jokes he memorized to say at SMU and at UT (and probably other colleges), and while I'm sure every candidate memorizes certain answers and phrases to say, there wasn't an audience for Kinky to make laugh and he didn't really answer most of the questions. The question he was able to ask to another candidate wasn't even something that was very important and was directed at the wrong person. While I'm a fan of more debate, if you only get one question, the strategic choice is not to ask Chris Bell what he thinks about Rick Perry refuses to debate more than once. Standing at a podium way too large for him (and too large for Strayhorn and too small for Bell and Perry) in between Bell and Perry, Kinky appeared to be small and clown-like in stature-- wearing a cowboy hat, duster, Texas Ranger pin, waving his cigar around, and swaying back and forth like most people who don't have training in public speaking do.

The only candidate who performed worse than Kinky was Carole Keeton-Strayhorn. Strayhorn repeated the same thing when answering every question-- she's going to put Texas and Texans first. I was waiting for Kinky or Bell to joke and say they were going to put Floridians first instead. She couldn't answer who the new president of Mexico is when asked, and disputed challenges of things she's done and said when the journalists on the panel had the quotes and facts in front of them. Her facial expression when confronted with a quote from the Houston Chronicle years ago was classic, and will probably appear on a YTMND sometime soon, along with Kinky Friedman's arm pumping and gun shooting movement towards Rick Perry.

Rick Perry, towering over his hobbit-sized podium, appeared to be some sort of giant, uncomfortable, very annoyed and bored monster. While well-coifed and looking nice in his grey suit, Rick Perry was absolutely terrifying. He suggested that not only should the death penalty, in it's current and horribly imperfect state, continue to be used for murders, but that it should be used for child molesters as well. It's not enough that Texas leads the nation in executions-- we're getting our ass kicked by China, so we better find some more people to execute. This is on top of his idea that 18 coal-burning energy plants will be good for the environment. I'm definitely excited about dying from the Black Lung. Coal plants did so well for England in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. While they'll lower energy costs, they'll raise health costs by more than Texans are saving in energy.

The only person with any common sense, the only person able to correctly answer a question given to them by the panel, was Chris Bell. Chris Bell has a great energy plan, a great education plan, a great health care plan, and a great border security plan. He had witty remarks and brought up the Magic Words in the opening moments of the debate-- reminding Texans of Tom Delay's ethics violations, refering to his "three Republican opponents," and commenting that it's not practical to think we could deport 11 million illegal immigrants when we couldn't even evacuate New Orleans. Chris Bell is smart, witty, has great plans for Texas, and he knows when the Battle of the Alamo happened. He was able to answer the questions and didn't frighten the hell out of me like Rick Perry did.

three cheers for Katy!!!

Ah, the birth of the SMU Democrats' blog

During a politically centered conversation over bacon cheeseburgers at Whataburger, SMU Political Science Symposium President Cynthia Halatyn suggested that the SMU Democrats should have their own blog, a la Burnt Orange Report, and thus, Blue @ SMU was born.

Wait... there are Democrats at Southern Methodist University? You bet there are. And we make up for our minority status at this Republican and Conservative minded institution of higher learning by being loud. Although it's hard to find college students that aren't apathetic about politics, our small band of liberals combats the right-leaning attitudes on campus and tries hard to get our message out to the student body.

This blog will serve as another tool to get that message out. We may not have the outside funding that the Young Conservatives of Texas' SMU Chapter gets to print and distribute their newsletter, but we have the power of the internet. It's not something all students can read in class instead of listening to their professors, because most of the liberal arts classes are held in buildings without wireless, but it is something that you can read while you're procrastinating in Fondren Library instead of studying for Professor Kobylka's midsemester exam. We can write more and more often with a blog than with a weekly four page newspaper, or with 500-700 word editorials in the 4 day a week campus newspaper.

This blog will cover our opinions on current political events, starting with midterm elections and the Texas gubanetorial race. So get ready, SMU, because the Democrats on campus just got a whole lot louder.