[ Posted Friday, August 31st, 2007 – 12:02 UTC ]
Last week we all had a lot of fun here posting entries to a contest the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was running for a bumpersticker slogan for Democrats to run on next year.
Because of the wildly enthusiastic response, I am running another slogan contest this week. But this week, we have a much more important contest to run. Don't worry, though -- it should be just as much fun to enter!
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[ Posted Thursday, August 30th, 2007 – 13:16 UTC ]
We continue today looking at the Democratic candidates for President, and what they would do about Iraq. Part 1 of this article ran yesterday, and covered Richardson, Obama, Kucinich, and Gravel. Continuing in reverse alphabetical order, today we examine Edwards, Dodd, Clinton, and Biden.
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[ Posted Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 – 13:34 UTC ]
[ Posted Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 – 03:24 UTC ]
With the most important debate of the whole year (and possibly the whole war) teed up and ready to begin in Congress in the next few weeks, I thought it would be a good time to do a summary and analysis of what all the Democratic candidates have to say on the subject of Iraq. Many of these candidates, it should be noted, are still sitting Senators and Representatives, and therefore have both the duty and the responsibility to participate in the debate in Congress.
They should be relishing the opportunity, since it will be a rare chance to show actual, tangible leadership. Which is definitely a requirement for the job of President of the United States.
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[ Posted Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 – 13:01 UTC ]
There are some important questions which need to be addressed in the upcoming Iraq debate in September, but they seem to be flying under everyone's radar (so to speak): When will the Iraq Army get the heavy weaponry it will need to defend the country against its neighbors? When will Iraq get tanks, helicopters, and airplanes? Which advanced models should they have? And how many of each should they have?
These are important questions, and they are ones which nobody seems to be asking, at least no one that I am aware of. What is striking about this omission is that this subject is one of the few rare issues about Iraq that is not time-dependent, and non-partisan. It does not matter whether you think the "surge" is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or (conversely) whether you think our President is a complete moron who can't tie his own shoes right -- because the question remains the same: When we leave Iraq (whether that is next month, next year, or ten years from now), what equipment should we leave behind for the Iraqi military to use?
Because this is the rarest of the rare in the Iraq debate -- an issue which has no real partisan slant to it -- you would think that both parties would be loudly talking about it in an effort to divert attention from the rest of the Iraq mess. But either the question has just not been considered by politicians and military leaders, or they're doing a bang-up job of not telling us about it. I honestly don't know which scares me more.
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[ Posted Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 – 06:00 UTC ]
[ Posted Monday, August 27th, 2007 – 16:18 UTC ]
The next few weeks are going to be critical for the debate on the future of the war in Iraq, and for the future of Iraq itself. Because everyone knows this, the spin doctors are sharpening their tools and trotting out their market-tested phraseology in an attempt to frame the debate before it even begins. While I will be addressing other phases of the situation in upcoming articles, today I want to focus only on the perceptions that are being filtered out to the public, and how effective their influence currently is. We've all been told how important "framing the issue" is, so I want to examine the framing so far.
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[ Posted Saturday, August 25th, 2007 – 21:56 UTC ]
Yesterday, I ran a bumpersticker slogan contest here, in order to help the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with their own campaign slogan bumpersticker contest.
Nah... actually, I ran it just because I thought it would be fun.
The results were overwhelming. In one day there were almost 150 posts. Narrowing these down to a list of winners was extremely hard, due to the fact that almost all the entries were excellent.
The only thing about the contest which disappointed me was there was absolutely no blatant attempts to bribe the judge. Oh, well... maybe next time.
The judging panel consisted of me and my wife. Our cat decided tiebreakers.
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[ Posted Saturday, August 25th, 2007 – 06:00 UTC ]
[ Posted Friday, August 24th, 2007 – 16:44 UTC ]
"Immature humorists borrow.
Mature humorists steal."
-- attributed to Mark Twain
While I consider myself neither a humorist nor mature, I've always like that quote, and it seemed an appropriate witticism to open with. Because I'm about to blatantly steal someone else's great idea. Tim Grieve, who writes the War Room blog at Salon, is the author of this great idea.
He recently drew attention to the fact that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (the guys in charge of getting more Democrats elected to the Senate next year) are actually running a campaign bumpersticker contest over at their website. You can enter a slogan (40 character limit) that you think would be the best bumpersticker to use in order to get Democrats elected. (I'm not making this up -- feel free to go to their site and enter a slogan, if you wish.)
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