the DC Shuffle

From The Hip

August 19th, 2008 · No Comments

When I started the DC Shuffle over a year ago, my intention was to write pieces that were well-informed, neutral in tone, and factually accurate. What I wanted to do was remove the top heavy political spin that I saw in most political blogs. Any difference in opinion on so many blogs is met with either denigrating ad-hominem attacks, blanket statements that are based on a minor event, emotional arguments, and a whole host of other fallacies.

The problem I ran into in my effort to remove the spin is that I also largely removed my voice and perspective. In addition, investigating source material that verifies the facts in most posts takes a whole lot of time. I will continue to strive to keep my arguments factually grounded, but I’m going to begin writing opinion pieces that are based on facts and experience without necessarily doing the legwork to find the source material and hyperlinking to it in my piece. For this reason, these types of posts will be categorized as being “from the hip”.

Feel free to challenge me on a post and I will do my best to find the source material to back it up if necessary. If I’m wrong, I will certainly admit to it. I’m not as interested in being right as I am in being truthful.

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Political Euphemism Glossary- New Entry: Energy Recovery

August 3rd, 2008 · No Comments

The political euphemism glossary, which is non-partisan and being built gradually, is a catalog of the tools, words, and phrases used by political minds to shape how we think or worse, lull us into such a complacency we fail to critically think at all.

The next euphemism to enter the complete glossary is below. Click on the phrase below for the political definition and description.

Energy Recovery

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→ No CommentsTags: Euphemism Glossary · Political Language

What Patriotism Is and Is Not

February 28th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Patriotism isn’t about colored ribbons or bumper stickers on your car. It isn’t about waving a flag or chanting “U-S-A” at a sporting event. It certainly is not about wearing an American flag pin on your lapel. These are all pleasing symbolic displays of patriotism, but they are not patriotism in and of itself.

Feeling patriotic is not the same as being patriotic much like having feelings of love is not the same thing as being loving. Saying you support the troops is not the same as doing something to support the troops. Being patriotic is about what you do, not what you feel.

It is patriotic to:

pay your taxes
perform jury duty
vote
serve in the military
serve in the Peace Corps
serve in the government
volunteer in civic organizations
engage in peaceful dissent
correct your country, when it’s wrong
support and defend the Constitution
exercise your constitutional rights
prosecute those who break the law
defend those accused of breaking the law
seek justice in the courthouse instead of the street
immigrate legally into the country

It is unpatriotic to:

use positions of public trust for personal gain
engage in rumor and gossip political campaigns, bereft of facts
place party politics before country
make political spectacles out of the minor offenses of the opposing party
block or minimize investigations into the major offenses of your own party
ignore the spirit of the law while abiding by the letter of it
suppress voter turnout
character assassinate those who don’t agree with you
pardon the legal offenses of those who support you
question other’s patriotism because they don’t have the same political beliefs
undermine the Constitution
deny other’s their constitutional rights
place profit ahead of national interest
lie under oath

Both of these lists could be much larger, but I’m sure you get the idea. Symbols of patriotism are important, but acts of patriotism are what really matter. It’s the difference between style and substance. Which one do you care most about?

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→ 1 CommentTags: Constitution · Democrat · Election · Patriotism · Republican

Smearing with Patriotism

February 26th, 2008 · 3 Comments

There is an internet campaign making the rounds via email and blog claiming that Barack Obama is unpatriotic. One claim is that he’s actually a Muslim and that he was sworn into the Senate on the Koran. Another claims that he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And yet another claims he is a racist Christian. And finally, that he refuses to wear an American Flag lapel pin. One of these claims is true.

He is not Muslim, much less a member of the strictly orthodox Wahhabi sect as one email has alleged. He was sworn into the senate on his own personal Bible. Senator Keith Ellison from Minnesota, however, is Muslim and was sworn in on a Koran owned by Thomas Jefferson. Being Muslim has no more bearing on patriotism than being Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, or Atheist. In a country founded on freedom of religion, the charge itself is unpatriotic.

Apparently he will not only say the pledge, but feels comfortable leading the Senate in the pledge on live cable television. No lack of patriotism there.

A racist Christian perhaps? Again, no. The church he belongs to may be pro-black but apparently not anti-white. Since when has being proud of your heritage become unpatriotic? If it is, we need to cancel all the summertime ethnic pride parades and festivals. Need to kick St. Patrick’s day to curb also.

He does, however, refuse to wear an American flag lapel pin. He told an Iowa television news reporter that such symbols

“became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism.” He added: I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and, hopefully, that will be a testimony to my patriotism.”

He later told an audience during a campaign stop in Iowa:

“Somebody noticed I wasn’t wearing a flag lapel pin and I told folks, well you know what? I haven’t probably worn that pin in a very long time. I wore it right after 9/11,” Mr. Obama said. “But after a while, you start noticing people wearing a lapel pin, but not acting very patriotic. Not voting to provide veterans with resources that they need. Not voting to make sure that disability payments were coming out on time.”

It is true that Barack Obama won’t wear an American flag lapel pin. The question remains, is it unpatriotic? That depends on how you define patriotism. I’ll address that in my next post.

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→ 3 CommentsTags: Democrat · Election · Patriotism · Senate

Political Euphemism Glossary- New Entry: Support The Troops

February 11th, 2008 · 1 Comment

The next euphemism to enter the complete glossary is below. Click on the phrase below for the political definition and description.

Support The Troops

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→ 1 CommentTags: Euphemism Glossary · Iraq · Military · Political Language · War

Unbiased Election Debate Transcript Analyzer

January 31st, 2008 · 1 Comment

The New York Times has begun producing a useful debate transcript analyzer. The analyzer allows you to not only view the video and transcript of a debate, but also view how much time the candidates had to speak, how many words they said, and the order in which they spoke. This tool can be used on both Republican and Democratic debates that have occurred since December 12, 2007.

One really nice feature of the analyzer is that allows you to perform a word or phrase search of the transcript which visually identifies who spoke about that subject and when. You can even jump to a section of the video transcript where a particular subject is being discussed.

For those of you who feel the Times is a biased newspaper that can’t be trusted to be fair, I can assure you the analyzer contains no comment or analysis from the Times. It is an unbiased tool that you can use to dissect the transcript and reach your own conclusions- as it should be.

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→ 1 CommentTags: Debate · Democrat · Election · Republican

Reagan Library Republican Debate Analysis

January 31st, 2008 · 5 Comments

The Reagan Library Republican Debate finished just a couple hours ago and even though there were four candidates on stage, CNN’s Anderson Cooper was primarily focused on John McCain and Mitt Romney. Mike Huckabee twice made the point that he was not getting nearly as many questions asked of him as of the titular front runners. Cooper even cut off Ron Paul less than 30 seconds into his answers early in the debate while allowing other candidates plenty of time to expand on their answers.

The most tense portion of the debate occurred when McCain and Romney clashed over an old Romney quote about Iraq withdrawal timetables. Cooper read the quote to both candidates late in the confrontation.

Well, there’s no question that the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about, but those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone.

Romney was indicating that he supported a timetable for withdrawal but that it should be kept private, not publicly known, so the insurgency wouldn’t know what to expect or how long to wait it out. Both Romney and McCain distorted the quote to their advantage. Neither came out looking good though CNN polling indicated that undecided Republicans favored Romney’s reaction to McCain’s.

Romney was asked if the Republican party was weaker now than it used to be. He stated that he thought it was weaker but pointedly did not blame President Bush but rather blamed some amorphous entity called “Washington.” He conveniently ignored the fact that Washington D.C. was run by Republicans for the entire Bush presidency until a year ago.

The goal of this analysis is the same as it was when I analyzed the Republican candidates in their previous debates. I don’t evaluate the merits of the candidates’ answers because that’s for you to decide.

Because this analysis focuses on how well the candidates answer the question asked, I left out the couple times when Anderson Cooper would make a statement and then simply ask for a reaction. A candidate could burp and stare in response and that would qualify as a reaction.

I broke down the candidate’s responses into five categories and valued them accordingly:

4 points = clearly answered a direct question
3 points = clearly answered a question posed to another candidate
2 points = gave an empty answer to a direct question by discussing the subject without actually answering the question
1 point = gave an empty answer to a question posed to another candidate
0 points = Didn’t address the question subject at all

The Straight Talk Award for being the one most likely to give a clear answer to a question goes to…

Mitt Romney(77% likely)
Ron Paul (75%)
John McCain (64%)
Mike Huckabee (56%)

Mitt Romney earned the straight talk crown for the first time just squeaking by two-time winner Ron Paul.

The DC Shuffle Award goes to Mike Huckabee. This award is for the candidate most likely to give an evasive answer as measured by the number of times a question was either avoided or was given an empty, hollow answer.

The Penn & Teller Award goes to the one who is most likely to give the illusion of answering a question without actually doing so. I call them empty or hollow answers. And the winner is:

Mike Huckabee (44% likely)
John McCain (36%)
Ron Paul (25%)

The Buck Stops Here Award for never avoiding a question goes to everybody but Mitt Romney. He avoided the very first question about whether America was better off economically than it was eight years ago as if he couldn’t give an opinion because it wasn’t a reflection of his personal record. Very weak.

The Put Up or Shut Up Award for never giving an empty answer was not earned by anybody. That’s truly a shame.

The Moderator’s Pet Award for being asked the most questions goes to:

Mitt Romney (13 questions)
John McCain (11)
Mike Huckabee (9)
Ron Paul (8)

Ron Paul got very little face time with camera not only because he was asked the fewest questions but because Cooper would either cut him off when he started to expound on his position or would quickly move on to the next question.

The list of candidate websites is here and the transcript of the debate is here.

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→ 5 CommentsTags: Debate · Election · Republican

Republican Candidness & Evasiveness on YouTube / CNN Debate

November 29th, 2007 · 3 Comments

Anderson Cooper, the moderator of the CNN/YouTube Republican debate, made a point of telling the candidates at the start that they were expected to address the questions asked and not drift off onto other subjects. “Americans put a lot of time into submitting these questions. We think they deserve direct answers. ” In that spirit, I analyzed the candidates’ ability to give a straight answer to each question during the debate.

The goal is the same as it was when I analyzed the Republican candidates in their third debate and the Democrats in their previous debates. I don’t evaluate the merits of the candidates’ answers because that’s for you to decide.

I watched the debate this time and made a point of only including questions that came from video or Anderson Cooper. The candidates were supposed to limit their responses to 90 seconds when answering direct questions and 30 seconds for other responses. That got blown out of the water on the first question when Giuliani started slinging mud at Romney over the issue of illegal resident aliens.

The candidates ignored Cooper’s reminders that their time was up the entire night. It got so bad that at one point I was reminded of the school teacher taking roll call in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” as Cooper kept repeating the word “time” in monotone to candidates who just kept speaking for as long as possible. Giuliani even got booed early on when he just wouldn’t stop.I broke down the candidate’s responses into five categories and valued them accordingly:

4 points = clearly answered a direct question
3 points = clearly answered a question posed to another candidate
2 points = gave an empty answer to a direct question by discussing the subject without actually answering the question
1 point = gave an empty answer to a question posed to another candidate
0 points = Didn’t address the question subject at all

I didn’t give any points for clearly taking a position on a question that nobody asked or was asked by a candidate of another candidate.

The Straight Talk Award for being the one most likely to give a clear answer to a question goes to…

Ron Paul(100% likely)
Rudy Giuliani (87%)
Fred Thompson (64%)
Mitt Romney (60%)
John McCain & Duncan Hunter (56%)
Mike Huckabee (50%)
Tom Tancredo (33%)

Ron Paul claimed his straight talk crown for a second time and this is the very first time any candidate has answered every question they were asked with a clear answer. That appears impressive but he also was only asked half the questions that were directly asked of Giuliani who was also very good at providing direct answers. The details were sometimes lacking a bit though.

The DC Shuffle Award goes to Tom Tancredo. This award is for the candidate most likely to give an evasive answer as measured by the number of times a question was either avoided or was given an empty, hollow answer. Tancredo performed remarkably poorly considering he was given the least number of questions to answer. He was actually twice as likely to give an evasive answer than a straight one. This is a huge change from when he won the straight talk award in the last Republican debate I evaluated. Is this a sign of a change in strategy for him or just a really, really bad night?

The Penn & Teller Award goes to the one who is most likely to give the illusion of answering a question without actually doing so. I call them empty or hollow answers. And the winner is:

Tom Tancredo (50% likely)
Mike Huckabee (38%)
Thompson (36%)

The Buck Stops Here Award for never avoiding a question goes to Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, & Ron Paul. All the other candidates avoided one question except for McCain who dodged two questions. An example of side-stepping a question is when Tancredo and Hunetr were asked about existing legal guest worker programs but both of them spoke about illegal immigration instead. They avoided even the appearance of discussing legal guest worker programs.

The Put Up or Shut Up Award goes to Ron Paul. This award is for never giving an empty answer. Not an easy award to earn.

The Moderator’s Pet Award for being asked the most questions goes to:

Rudy Giuliani (14 questions)
Fred Thompson (11)
Mitt Romney (10)
Duncan Hunter & John McCain (9)
Mike Huckabee (8)
Ron Paul (7)
Tom Tancredo (6)

Anderson Cooper did a pretty good job of moderating but he kept getting ignored by the candidates when it came time for them to end their response. The debate actually ran 15 minutes longer than scheduled because of it. He did well at keeping the candidates focused on the actual question though. He threw in a dumb question at the end from a Yankee fan asking Giuliani why he rooted for the Boston Red Sox in the World Series which I left out of the analysis.

If you want to know more about any of the candidates, their websites are here.

The analysis metrics for this debate are here.

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→ 3 CommentsTags: Debate · Election · Republican

NBC Democratic Debate Analysis

November 1st, 2007 · 2 Comments

I analyzed the Democratic candidates’ ability to give straight answers to questions during the NBC debate on October 30, 2007. I have done this before with the Republican candidates in their third debate and the Democrats in their second, third, and fourth debates. There have been a few debates between then and now that I unfortunately haven’t had time to analyze.

For those of you new to this blog, I don’t evaluate the merits of the candidates’ answers because that’s for you to decide. This is about getting candidates to answer the question that is asked instead of speaking around the issue or ignoring it altogether. I review the transcript and then break down the candidate’s responses into five categories and value them accordingly:

4 points = clearly answered a direct question
3 points = clearly answered a question posed to another candidate
2 points = gave an empty answer to a direct question by discussing the subject without actually answering the question
1 point = gave an empty answer to a question posed to another candidate
0 points = Didn’t address the question subject at all

I also don’t give any points for clearly taking a position on a question that nobody asked.

The Straight Talk Award for being the one most likely to give a clear answer to a question goes to…

Bill Richardson(88% likely)
Joe Biden (67%)
Bill Richardson & Dennis Kucinich (tie 73%)
Barack Obama (63%)
Chris Dodd (56%)

This is the first time Bill Richardson has won the straight talk award in a single debate even though his previous debate performances has made him the least evasive candidate overall.

The DC Shuffle Award is for the candidate most likely to give an evasive answer. An evasive answer is one where the candidate either talks around the question or ignores it altogether. Who was biggest shuffler this time?

John Edwards (64% likely)
Dennis Kucinich (62%)
Hillary Clinton (55%)

John Edwards also won the The Penn & Teller Award for being most likely to give the illusion of answering a question without actually doing so. This is a surprisingly poor performance for someone who had previously been one of the most candid debater. Did he just have an off-night or did he change debate strategy?

Dennis Kucinich seems to run hot and cold with his candidness with tonight being one of his more frigid performances while Hillary Clinton, for once, was not the most elusive debater. This doesn’t mean she’s being more candid as much as it means that others are being less. She consistently gives clear answers to less than half of the questions. If she’s speaking about illegal resident aliens getting New York state drivers licenses, it gets even muddier. Even the other candidates had no idea what she said.

The Buck Stops Here Award for never avoiding a question goes to John Edwards, & Chris Dodd. Edwards mouth was moving a lot tonight but not much was coming out. Chris Dodd received so few questions that he wisely never ignored any of them.

The Put Up or Shut Up Award for never giving an empty answer went to Bill Richardson. He didn’t talk around questions. He either answered it or ignored it entirely.

The Moderator’s Pet Award for being asked the most questions goes to:

Hillary Clinton (22 questions)
Barack Obama & John Edwards (14)
Kucinich, Biden, & Dodd (8)
Bill Richardson (7)

That’s right. The most candid presidential prospect on the stage was also the most ignored. NBC clearly favored the financial front runner by asking the most questions of Clinton. She received 50% more questions that the next two nearest candidates and more than three times the number of questions asked of the debate’s Straight Talk winner, Richardson. To be fair, some of the questions put to Clinton were opportunities to rebut charges made by other candidates. Nonetheless, NBC made it was clear that if they don’t consider you the front runner or at least a first tier candidate, you won’t be given much opportunity to speak. Mike Gravel wasn’t even invited to the debate despite having attended previous ones and still is actively campaigning.

Chris Dodd’s campaign produces a talk clock on their website to track the amount of time each candidate gets in front of the camera to illustrate the inequity of treatment.

Chris Dodd Talk Clock

To make matters worse, Tim Russert and Brian Williams wasted debate time for everybody with three extraordinarily pointless questions to ask a presidential candidate. As a matter of disclosure, I excluded these questions from the analysis.

Kucinich was asked if he had ever seen a UFO.
Obama was asked if he agreed with the Apollo 11 astronauts’ belief that there is life beyond earth.
Obama was also asked what his Halloween costume was going to be.

Fortunately Russert and Williams ran out of time before asking the candidates if they get in the shower before or after turning on the water.

If you want to know more about any of the candidates, all their websites are here.

The metrics for this debate are here.

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→ 2 CommentsTags: Debate · Democrat · Election