Recently in Issue Framing Category

Some of you know my stats: single mom, three amazing boys young men. Heck, I have my own YouTube channel with nothing but videos of their particular accomplishments in the arts, etc. so I'm a rather proud mom.My feelings this week have really run the gamut. I'm always proud of them, happy with them, exhausted because of them (LOL), and scared shitless that something will happen to them. How very mom-like, right? I have reason to...

Above and below are icons created by the campaign to reelect Houston Mayor Annise Parker.You can find these icons on the Annise Parker Facebook page.Does the Mayor's record warrant the use of the words you see in these icons?Of course---This is advertising. The Mayor wants people to donate and volunteer for her campaign.  She has every reason to make a pitch for people to come and help her out for the 2011 election.I'm glad that the...

I promise that I listen to sports radio trying to get away from politics. For me, it is a way to escape both work and politics (as they often coincide) on the way to and from work. Yet, here I am writing my second piece based on something I heard on sports radio. I'm sure this one was unintentional when it started on air, but both hosts went into a mini-tirade on both sides of...

I've never been a fan of raisins. There's just something about a so-called fruit that is all shriveled up and looks like dead bugs that has never appealed to me.   Over the years, raisins have become analogous with things that I have found annoying. I find it particularly annoying when a situation calls for bold, decisive action ... and in comes Mr. Stay Puft to handle it. You know what I'm talking about. You...

From Media Matters: At the height of the health care reform debate last fall, Bill Sammon, Fox News' controversial Washington managing editor, sent a memo directing his network's journalists not to use the phrase "public option." Instead, Sammon wrote, Fox's reporters should use "government option" and similar phrases -- wording that a top Republican pollster had recommended in order to turn public opinion against the Democrats' reform efforts. Journalists on the network's flagship news program,...

Here is a park in Houston called Our Park.This is a great name and an apt name for a city park.The parks are ours. Just as are the schools, the police department, the waterworks, the public streets, the libraries, and so on.All this going on about socialism.And yet, the common ownership of public assets is an American as Social Security and the U.S. military.Photo copyright Neil Aquino....

I have taught a lot of workshops over the years, and one of the components that I cover when I deliver a workshop on change management is something called the "Emotional Contagion Theory."In the March 2005 issue of The Journal of Applied Psychology, Richard Saavedra and Thomas Sy at California State University at Long Beach examined the effects of a leader's mood on a group. They took 189 volunteer undergraduates, divided them into 63 groups of...

I promise this isn't about sports, but sports was the impetus for this diatribe. I was discussing the Roger Clemens situation with other people online when the discussion disintegrated into a political discussion about the merits of Congress. I won't bore you with the facts of the case, so I'll boil it down to its simplest ingredients. Roger Clemens allegedly lied to Congress, so Congress has charged him with perjury. He was formally indicted and...

I got a safety inspection and emissions check today. The State of Texas mandates that cars get a safety inspection and that cars in high pollution counties get an emissions test.Government has the right to mandate people to do things in order to serve the public good. Government has that right even in Texas.Liberals and progressives should not be hesitant to assert this fact.A few fearful people will tell you that stuff like this starts...

Thanks to Shortstuff for the inspiration! Unlike many of the talking heads who now appear on various "news" shows, Edward R. Murrow was a journalist with integrity who not only fought for free speech, but for TRUTH in journalism as well. He once said at the RTNDA Convention in Chicago in 1958 to a group of fellow journalists: "It is not necessary to remind you that the fact that your voice is amplified to...