Recently in Issue Framing Category

What is America? How should America be defined?America is the idea and the fact of a strong federal government over the lesser powers of the states as written in our United States Constitution. The Constitution was in many ways a response to the corruption and incompetence of state legislatures during the years of the Articles of Confederation. America is Emancipation and the victory of freedom over states rights treason in our Civil War.America is the expanded economic freedoms and...

One area where conservatives have passed us in the the area of anecdotes. Nearly all of them have some story they want to spin to help their campaign. People left of center and way out their left like facts and figures. The problem is that people in the middle and slightly right of middle have abandoned the idea of facts for the most part. Tell them a good story and they are sold. The problem...

I had a unique opportunity to observe a fascinating process that perfectly illustrates why we're where we are as a nation. I attended an American Idol open call audition in another city this year as an observer. For those who aren't familiar with what their audition process is, I'll share some info. We arrived very early in the morning the day before the open call with our photo ID and proof of citizenship in...

People that get paid to analyze politics have fancy titles for these types of things. I am a simple man with a but a bachelors in political science (and masters in counseling). So, I'm not as adept at talking about these things. However, it has occurred to me that Obama (and Democratic Congress) have an uphill battle to clime. I call it proving a negative, but those that are more learned than me can call...

I am a racist. I admit it. I can't stand so many of these old(er) white men who sit on their asses collecting a paycheck they don't deserve while people under them with no power or authority, but a heckuva lot of responsibility for P&L, lose their jobs as a direct result of what the old(er) white man did or didn't do.I can't stand the fact that in Corporate America, it can be a...

One of our newer readers (at least in terms of comments) challenged my budget proposals and offered some new and interesting suggestions. I say they were interesting because they were well thought out, but they deserved some attention. I thought about replying to them directly, but decided to use the concept as a jumping off point. This is going to be one of those audience participation kind of things. The concept of the sacred cow...

In my continuing series on set issues I thought I would make my way over the information and how it has changed. Many of us have used the phrase (or had the phrase used on us) "you are entitled to your own opinions, but you aren't entitled to your own facts." That seems simple enough and yet a cursory look around the political and academic landscape indicates that this doesn't seem to be the case...

One of our dedicated readers, Rockheadedmama, offered us a list of ten conservative principles that no one could disagree with. Of course, she did it to illustrate how deceptive the language could be. I thought I would jump off of that illustration with one of our own. I am presenting a portion of this song by Roger Waters (with Pink Floyd for their final album as a quarter). I will then break it down into...

About a week ago, Eljefebob wrote a piece about conservatives wanting to "starve the beast." The notion was that if government could no longer afford entitlement programs then entitlement programs would have to die. It was a brilliant plan because no one would argue for killing social security, medicare, or medicaid on their own. Thus, they could cut programs without directly opposing them. Brilliant. When Ronald Reagan (architect of starving the beast) entered office, he...

This appeared on CNN's Crossfire in 2004. Not much seems to have changed. We're still grossly partisan as a nation (or at least the politicians are), and the media are still hacks."I'm not your monkey" ... Jon Stewart, I love you.As you know, CNN cancelled Crossfire in January of 2005 -- more info in an interesting follow-up piece here: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/01/4509.ars" ... most major media outlets, have a long way to go before the thinking public truly respects...