Today's Wildcat Mailbag features a rebuttal to my Tuesday letter by none other than Rachel Wilson, the controversial anti-war protester who has become known for stunts such as handcuffing herself to the administration building (Google search). Electrical engineering senior John Brody then comes to my defense quite well, but only against the first rebuttal of two from yesterday's mailbag.

Also interesting to note is that the second rebuttal of two came from Jonna Lopez, the former director of the ASUA Pride Alliance.

I sent a rebuttal early in the morning yesterday, so I would expect to see it in there tomorrow. Did those who wrote these rebuttals actually examine my letter more than once?

I did mention that ASUA didn't invite Sen. Kennedy or Amy Goodman, right? Didn't I?

Isn't this what ASUA promised us when they touted the $15 Student Activity Fee last semester? More speakers and big names? It seems that we have that capability without forced taxation of students, even if ASUA isn't sponsoring all of them.

Right back at-cha. Boo-yah.

I haven't said it on this blog yet, but I'll say it now. I'm against a possible draft should the issue come up. The fact that there's a draft means that the military simply isn't paying fair market value for labor. And frankly, this is some damn important labor we're talking about. You want troops? Convince potential recruits to come in, not to be forced. While initiating a draft can be an important tool for the President in a national crisis, I suspect that a draft won't make any things better as of right now.

But it seems that Iraq the Vote is at it again. Cox and Forkum's latest cartoon post includes a link to Power Line, which reveals more on their activities.

Oh yes, we're non-partisan here at Rock the Vote, aren't we?

UPDATE: The following is my own transcription of their audio ad, whose link was on their draft issue page.

[light party hip-hop in background]
MAN: I just got this sweet job doing promotions. And hopefully in six months, I'll get to know enough people to start my own thing! WOMAN: That's if you don't get drafted first. MAN: Drafted? WOMAN: Drafted. For the war? MAN: Will they do that? FEMALE NARRATOR: The draft: one of the many issues that could be decided this election. Register to vote now at RockTheVote.com.

I suspect this was just the audio for the video, but my OS won't play the .mov file as of right now. Still, this is stupid and completely partisan. It boggles my mind that this organization gets to work with government on multiple levels, even so far as to have their logo on a voter-registration form box I found in the Yuma MVD office. It's sick.

Notice that I didn't use "Moore" to replace "more." I am so sick and tired of that pun. I think FATMAN works much better.

But why did I say Moore, not FATMAN? Well, there's another Moore in today's Mailbag, in this case Heather Moore of People Eating Tasty Animals, otherwise known as PETA.

In addition are two pieces on the FATMAN invite. One is a direct refutation of Moore by journalism senior Patrick McNamara (there may be hope yet for the media!), and the other is a criticism of the Associated Socialists of the University of Arizona by your not-so-humble coorespondent.

And let's not forget the great Laura Keslar's latest column, this one being on cultural education at UA.

And to top it off, I actually agree with today's editorial. Today is a good day.

As promised...

For those of you outside the University of Arizona, you should be aware that there has been controversy recently over the president of the university deciding to cancel the main graduation ceremony for all undergraduates this December as a result of the tradition of tortilla-throwing. He claims that it's offensive to Hispanics. Fortunately, he reinstated the ceremony, but only under the condition with the Associated Socialists of the University of Arizona, otherwise known as our "student government," that students will behave.

Previous "At the Movies" post:
The Mechisto Candidate

I'm late on this one, but others have picked up on some of it. Chris Veck has his analysis of the Moore invitation and Laura Keslar found that Ted Kennedy will speak the day after. The College Republicans in response are calling upon the University to bring a conservative speaker. Their president writes on their listserv:

The ASUA is bringing Michael Moore to our campus on October 11th, using $27,500 of student funding to pick up the tab. That's right, your money is going to pay for Michael Moore to come to our campus, and spew hatred and lies about President George W. Bush. There was a pathetic attempt to get a conservative speaker of similar name recognition, however, it is evident that ASUA has no intention of taking the right steps in allowing students to hear both sides of the issues. And to make matters worse, the Law College is sponsoring Ted Kennedy the next day, a remnant of the Kerry Edwards Farewell Tour. We cannot allow such liberal pundits to go unmatched by conservative speakers! PLEASE COME TO THE COLLEGE REPUBLICAN TABLE BY NOON TOMORROW, AND SIGN OUR LETTER TO GET SEAN HANNITY, ANN COULTER OR BEN STEIN TO THE U OF A CAMPUS, AND ALLOW THE CONSERVATIVE VOICE TO BE HEARD!!! We will be delivering the petition to President Lykins[sic] and President of ASUA Alistair Chapman at 12:30 pm!

No to Hannity, no to Coulter, yes to Stein. I love Ben Stein.

But as a sidenote, isn't this exactly what ASUA promised when they started that Student Activity Fee fiasco last semester? We have Amy Goodman (who is coming this Sunday), Michael Moore, and Ted Kennedy all in the space of less than one month! The lack of oversight over diversity of opinion here is both predicted and inevitable considering the people who are running the show and the types of speakers they promised us last year. During the town hall meeting in which ASUA touted the fee, they mentioned a few, the only remotely-conservative figure of whom was Alan Greenspan. The rest included Michael Moore, Bill Clinton, and Janet Reno. The reasoning? They wanted people who were "sensitive to both sides" considering that this is an election year.

ASUA is talking out of both sides of their mouths.

EDIT: Turns out that we do have some conservative speakers. Well, kind of. THEY BOTH LIVE HERE. I just had to rescind my letter to the Wildcat in order to rewrite it to include this information, but think about it. Kennedy and Moore vs. Kolbe and Hardy. Which names are bigger?

Try these and see how effective my Google bombing really is. Muahahaha. Laura thinks I'm evil.

1. Search "mega fix cashill" (no quotes) on Google (third page) and MSN (#9!).
2. Google for "worst congressman" (no quotes) and Raul Grijalva is #2.
3. Google for "worst former president" (no quotes) and Jimmy Carter is #1.
4. Google for "worst former president" (WITH quotes) and the Factor comes out as #7 and #8!

Victory is mine! As for "miserable failure", uh, I'm working on it. But Jimmy Carter is still #2 and Michael Moore is #3.

This is rare. I'm not attacking the Wildcat for not publishing one of my letters, reason being that I submitted two really near each other before they had the chance to publish the first, but they did publish the second, and the first is on the assault-weapons ban expiration which has plenty of supporters in the Mailbag today. So here it goes.

Mike Padilla's editorial cartoon of 14 SEP, while well-intentioned, falls short at examining the issues behind the recently-expired assault-weapons ban.

First, the stereotype does not accurately depict the typical American outdoorsman. Having such a character in a new comic entitled "Vern's Saloon" would be incredibly funny (all that was forgotten was a can of Coors Light), but using it to make a political statement only leads to a logical fallacy.

Moreover, the argument falls when one considers how difficult hunting deer would be with an "assault weapon," as the expired ban in no way affects deer-hunting rifles. The rounds fired from such weapons as AK-47's (7.62x39) and the UZI (9mm) still don't compare with that of the typical .30 caliber deer rifle. Moreover, deer are notorious for being able to detect threats, making the philosophy of "one shot, one kill" much more important. No semi-automatic weapon will ever serve such a purpose.

I'm not going to attack Mr. Padilla's character for the stereotype, as he is well-intentioned. However, the logic of drunk NASCAR fans pumping deer with lead from semi-automatic weapons falls short.

Today's edition also features Laura's latest. If you ever thought LBJ's "War on Poverty" was ineffective, just wait until you hear what Chirac and Ignacio have up their sleeves. (At least for Chirac, it's not deodorant. ;-) )

My Site Meter (see bottom of right-bar) is reporting a crapload of hits from those searching for Jack Cashill's "Mega Fix" all because I mentioned his new documentary. So not only will I get more hits for it just by posting this message, but I'm here to tell you that IT'S NOT HERE. It's here.

Wondering how this can be? Searching of "mega fix cashill" on MSN puts The O'Hara Factor at #9!. Maybe I should Google Bomb it and milk this thing!

Mega Fix. Muahahaha.

The Wildcat has published another letter of mine. I'm really liking this concept of not being banned.

EDIT: Wait a minute. Didn't I send another letter about Mike Padilla before the one published today? Hmph. I'll put it here later.

Apologies to my readers. It's been about two or three weeks since Michael Badnarik visited the University of Arizona and I still didn't have time to inform you on what he said. But here it goes.

Additionally, I wasn't aware that Badnarik was not only visiting a lecture hall in the ILC at 6:00, but he also gave a speech in front of the Old Main Fountain at 5:00, so I missed the latter. Blame the College Libertarians if you like. Did any of you see that dumb poster. Let me describe it for you. On the top, it stated "Mike likes it" along with a large, lower-case "liberty" emblazoned across the top third of the flyer tilted up. Below was this really ugly photograph of a caucasian whose exact race I couldn't even point out at all. Man the guy was ugly. On top of the man's black suit was a thickly-outlined black font with white fill. You could never read it without trying somewhat and none of the text would ever catch your eye just walking by. They did it to themselves. I thought it was some sort of play, so I ignored it. Nonetheless, here's the recap of the 6:00 event, which extended until around 7:00.

Initial Presentation

After his initial speech, he seemed very appealing. He started off by saying that by the end of the presentation, "There will be no doubt where I stand on an issue." Great. No flip-flops. I'm liking this so far; it's about time. Yes, I'm accusing the president of the same thing that Kerry's been doing, though admittedly to a lesser extent. He made the definition of libertarianism clear. "We are not liberals," "We are not conservatives," and "I will offend both sides," were among the notables of what he stated. I won't go over the whole lecture over libertarianism, as that's easy to find on the Internet, but it was nice to see that he was making himself clear that he had his principles and that he wasn't going to budge from them in order to satisfy the crowd.

Badnarik even made his position on marriage clear, and this is the part in which he had me convinced. I may be ultra-conservative among my peers, but I'm with him on the issue of government-regulated marriage. Bottom line: government does not belong in marriage. Some things he noted that I didn't know before were:

• Marriage licenses did not exist when the United States declared independence.
• Marriage consisted of a ceremony combined with writing the couple's names in their bible to signify the done deal.
• Marriage licenses were originally instituted in order to prevent interracial marriage.

That only solidified my position as I've stated before on the Factor. We don't need the government telling us whether we're married. Like other things in which the government interferes too much, the government needs to get out of this one.

Question time

Now it was time for the grilling. Badnarik in his introductory speech vaguely mentioned "national defense," as just that. Defense. In other words, we keep at bay and don't base ourselves around the world. It didn't even sound fine and dandy on September 10th, so why now? In addition, Badnarik had just mentioned marriage, and the Navy Times had just reported that Germany just legalized fraternization as long as it doesn't occur during working hours. Now I really don't want Germany on our side anyhow. We'll kick their butts if they ever oppose us anyhow, so I'm not concerned about it. There's reason to be concerned that Badnarik would implement a similar policy in the United States Armed Forces, so I asked him about that first.

Badnarik replied that it wasn't his job to regulate sexual conduct, almost mirroring German policy. While Badnarik did say that he would go after servicemembers should such activity affect job performance, he accordingly convinced me that he is not qualified to lead the War on Terror. Even after being reminded that the commander-in-chief holds such authority to regulate such conduct and being asked regarding the possibility of inappropriate contact between officers and enlisted personnel, Badnarik replied "The answers don't change just because you don't like them." Applause from parts of the crowd of 70 followed.

I tried to get more questions in by getting back in line, but others wanted their turn, so I was asked to leave the line and wait for others to be able to ask their questions. Maybe the ASUA official, who will remain nameless, was just afraid of me after having met me during the 2004 ASUA election campaign back in April and May. I would have asked how he expect to keep American sea lines of communication open if there are no U.S. Naval forces nearby to protect them. The concept of a "held back" national defense is flawed. The reason for our success in defense is that we're always able to fight our wars somewhere else. This is why terrorism is such a dangerous threat, as it threatens to bring the fight home as it did on September 11th. Had we not based a U.S. Pacific Fleet in and around the Hawaiian Islands back in 1941, would Japan have attacked California? Sea basing, forward presence, and power projection are impossible under Badnarik's policy, and it is for this alone that he will not receive my vote.

I commend Mr. Badnarik for his courage to come to the University of Arizona campus. When it comes to people in the Arizona Daily Wildcat complaining that the Republican and Democratic candidates aren't visiting the university, please take note that Michael Badnarik came! Despite being convinced that he is genuinely concerned about us, I still can't vote for him for the above reasons. Let's make sure that whom we choose has a vision for what we have to do abroad, not just here.

He unfortunately had to skip the conventions according to the email, but Evan Maloney's Brainwashing 101 is now available for streaming playback.

I want a DV camera...

I'm currently reading Beyond Iraq: The Next Move by Michael D. Evans.  What a book.  This one isn't just politics.  This is really getting me to thinking.

I do wonder how the end times have something to do with what's going on in Iraq right now. The tearing down of Saddam's statue. The plundering of a museum holding 7,000 years of Babylonian history. Coalition forces battling the forces of Saddam. There must be something here.  Take a look at Isaiah 21:6-9.

6 For thus hath the LORD said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.
7 And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed:
8 And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights:
9 And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.

And take a look at Zechariah 14:12.

And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.

Sounds like a nuclear attack to me.  Something's going on here, and we're in the middle of it.  Keep your eyes open.  There's something going on.  Somewhere, God's going to make me use this.  I can feel it.