Brendan's blog

between a precipitous withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq that would plunge the region into chaos and ignite a bloody civil war, and the successful completion of a mission to restore stability to Iraq and leave it a free and independent nation?

Obama's dangerous plan of surrendering to al Qaeda:

Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Some pictures of Elliot at 2-3 months old. I blame him for my light posting recently =)

Quick reaction cross-posted from The Forvm ; you're welcome to comment there if so inclined

A truly moving, heartfelt, and gracious speech. Senator Clinton opened with stories of her supporters who have given so much to promote her campaign, then passionately called for support of Obama and laid out the reasons we need a Democrat in the White House: for boosting the economy, for reforming health care, for responsibly ending the war in Iraq. Finally, she looked back at how far women in US politics have come, and how her candidacy has helped make the path easier in the future for a woman to become President.

It's been a long and at times bitter primary, but it's also been a historic campaign and I'm proud to be a member of a party that has put forward such qualified and groundbreaking candidates for President.

Here . Card of course is no liberal, so it's interesting to see his take. Certainly feel free to weight the relevance or importance of his view as you see fit. Also I have to admit I'm posting this partially for Ender, since Card is most known as the author of Ender's Game ;-)

On Wright and what it means for Obama, he strongly condemns Wright's statements but agrees with Obama not disowning his friendship with the man:

What are they, and why? My top three (videos embedded below the fold):

1. Mosh (Eminem): incredibly detailed and powerful indictment of Bush, works on many different levels ending with an appeal to vote. (kid oakland commentary)

2. Yes We Can (Obama + various): the music emphasizes his lyrical cadence and makes his message both hip and dignified. (We versus I discussion)

3. The Clintons (HRC + Bill): spoof of the Sopranos finale, shows her lighter side while still making it clear that she calls the shots. (Bill's take at the time)

Welcome to the third formal debate hosted by Swords Crossed and open to multi-blog participation! Today we will debate whether the US would benefit from greater governmental control of health care. Our current hybrid system suffers from skyrocketing costs and piecemeal coverage. Both Democratic candidates have proposed expanding programs such as SCHIP and Medicaid and imposing more stringent regulations on private insurers. Will such steps lead to improvements in the efficiency and quality of health care in America, or will they backfire and make an already struggling system worse? Come share your opinion and your reasoning.

Click here to join the debate at cruxlux

Essays with useful background for this debate:
** Ideas for American Healthcare
** Must our final years be torture
** Medical Insurance, two personal tales
** Universal health care dead in CA: implications
** Health Care News on Clinics and Competition

More details below the fold

Edwards supporters should be proud of their candidate for running a strong campaign focused on the issues. They now must consider which of the remaining contenders deserves their votes, which candidate best matches the spirit of Edwards' platform. I believe Obama is the natural second choice; there are several concrete areas where he and Edwards split with Clinton.

The Democratic primaries are generally proportional for the pledged delegates, but there is a 15% cutoff at the district level for district pledged delegates and at the state level for at-large pledged delegates, below which candidates do not get any delegates.

Some resources that might be useful for a debate on the drug war, and a place for commentary on the debate or general discussion of this topic.

A recent Reuters/Zogby national poll for President gave the following results for the Democratic candidates (margin of error 4.7%):

Clinton 39%
Obama 38%
Edwards 9%

The dKos version (1/16/08):

Some random resources and excerpts for a debate on whether NASA should send humans to Mars.

Quick effort I tossed up on dKos . Not sure it's all that applicable to this crowd.

There's been a lot of calls lately for Nader to drop out. Well, he's not going to, and good for him. There's also been a lot of calls for his supporters to vote for Gore. Let this supporter tell you, it's ain't happening, no how no way. And let me tell you why.

Dennis Kucinich is the candidate of choice among far-left liberals due to his calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, for universal not-for-profit health care, for fair trade, and for repealing the Patriot Act. I think it is fair to say that the most radical anti-war activists and the most radical critics of income inequality in America are likely to back Kucinich if anyone. His populist message is, at first glance, most closely aligned with that of Edwards, who is also a critic of the "two Americas" and of our participation in Iraq -- Edwards does not go as far left as does Kucinich, but he probably goes farther than Hillary or Obama. One would think, then, that if Kucinich were inclined to support one of the front-runners, it would be Edwards -- as indeed it was in 2004. Not so, as it turns out.

Tlaloc argues quite convincingly that our current method of electing a President is flawed in at least two major respects: first, it values voters disproportionately, and second, it essentially disenfranchises voters who vote for the losing candidate within their state. I think that there are two reasonable counters to this argument:

This is a test of cruxlux , which Tlaloc brought to my attention. It looks promising in terms of formally structuring point/counterpoint discussion and allowing easy navigation through complicated and multi-level topics. On the other hand, it could be more cumbersome than it's worth. Anyway, here is a toy debate to play with the system and see what it can do and how easy it is to use. Lemme know what you think by clicking on the link.

I've been looking into the consequences of threatening sanctions and got interested in the back-and-forth battle between pharma companies and countries over drugs. For example, Brazil has managed to obtain AIDS drugs for cheaper by threatening to ignore patents (link ), but at the same time the US has been able to pressure Brazil to pay the companies by threatening trade sanctions (link ).

This is a summary of site statistics in October to date. To give a sense of proportion, I also tabulated these numbers for The Forvm, another site geared towards bipartisan debate. The Forvm gets ~5x more traffic but about the same number of posts/comments; their structure is a bit different, in that there are no editors, instead diaries can be voted to the front page. Lemme know if I can answer any specific questions. Note that SC's traffic has declined in October after rising for the past 8 months.

Just a friendly request that we all try to assume good faith in other posters, avoid personal insults, refrain from questioning patriotism or sanity or other qualities we no doubt all possess in abundance, and be careful with humor lest it be misunderstood.

Think of this as a bar, where you know the other people and enjoy cheerfully arguing while buying each other rounds.

Please also make a special effort to be nice to new posters, as we continue to grow the community.

Thanks folks, for continuing to make SC a great arena for debating events and ideas and a fun place to hang out.

Here are two interesting plots I made using data for all 50 US states collected from various sources.

More enforcement? Ignore unless directed at another commenter? Drop it as a relic of the old days that doesn't apply anymore? Careful use of asterisks? Try to voluntarily refrain unless it seems necessary for emphasis?

I think it helps promote civil discourse but I also think I'm one of the few who really cares anymore. I'm not interested in an ongoing struggle to censor honest expression. On the other hand I don't like the extreme cursing that occurs, for example, at dKos, and would prefer we not go too far down that path.

Whaddya think?