Big Sky Cairn

Lamnidae makes an interesting point about Roy Brown asking for debates from Hollywood Brian Schweitzer. Brown asked for 18 debates - and Lamnidae wondered why he didn’t ask for more.

She’s got a point. 18 is a pretty arbitrary number.

But then, so is five - the number of debates that Schweitzer countered with. One could just as easy ask, why five debate? Why not one? Or zero?

I will say this. For the voter, more debates are better. Debates flush out issues, focus the campaign on stated positions and allow people to make literal side-by-side judgments of the candidates. While I understand the impetuous impetus of an incumbent to deny their opponent a stage from which to boost name recognition, it’s usually not something they brag about and asking for more debates is usually not something that is considered smart ground for an attack.

The suggestion that poor Schweitzer just can’t fit it into his busy schedule is also pretty ridiculous considering he’s raising campaign money in San Francisco, New York or some other state almost every weekend.

Schweitzer is feeling the heat: two non-races at the federal level that were supposed to grab the headlines evaporated and now he finds his race - and his worthy opponent - the big ticket race in the state. He’s never been challenged by the media so the prospect of having to explain his policies in a hostile environment has got to be daunting. I’d be a little nervous to debate Roy Brown too - especially considering the focus on energy policy (drill, drill, drill!).

Consequently, remember in The West Wing when liberal paragon Jed Bartlett wanted more debates and it was his challenger that fought for fewer? Interesting how the liberal writers of that show suggest that debating less is somehow a platform of conservatives and not of incumbents from both parties.

It wouldn’t be right to say “new” since I think these blogs have been around for awhile, but MT Pundit is back with a new crew of authors, cranking out some sweet material - complete with attributions of authorship this time.  I’m assured that young Hagen is not involved in the project and is in fact no longer in Montana.  Head over and give them a read.

The University of Montana College Republicans - a brave group of young people with a keen understanding of the herd mentality - have a new author or two as well.  There’s some really good stuff over there, and hopefully with their introduction to the blogs we can get some right-wing activism going in the old blogosphere.

Oh, and I’m taking bets on which site will be called “astroturf” first by the left (the line is 2:1 for MT Pundit) and who will be the first to levy that accusation (5:1 for Wulfgar; 7:1 Mark T; 15:1 Jay; 250:1 for glass-house-Lamnidae).  The term “astroturf,” by the way, is lefty-speak for “please don’t read that right-leaning blog because they regularly kick my ass and I’m embarrassed.”

At the same time that Montana Democrats are going after Republicans for a lack of unity, Democrats are dealing with a split personality of their own resulting from a long, drawn out primary between two powerful candidates.

As their presumptive nominee shifts into General Election mode, he’s also going to be moving to the political center, which will alienate a lot of the wing-nuts who gave him the edge over Clinton. That’s going to create even more rifts within the Democrat Party.

Now, I’m not one to claim that McCain is a perfect conservative candidate either. In fact, I think there are plenty of Conservatives in Montana who frankly don’t like him. So I find myself agreeing with something that Wulfgar wrote:

It is my opinion that it is well passed the time for Democrats to wake up to few realities. No candidate will embody everything you want and more. The realities of politics are not such that each person gets what they want. Seemingly since Ronald Reagan, Americans have carried a national delusion that our President needs to be just like us, and give us everything that we ask for, or that person is unworthy of our support. Our sense of individualism appears to overridden our reason, at which point all we have to hang onto is our idealism. That is a national zeitgeist custom made for Republican victory and service to those most well heeled to manipulate that idealism. The reality is that we are not special little snowflakes. We won’t get everything we want, and our desires for ourselves cannot trump the good of the country as carried out by the candidates we elect. Speaking personally, I don’t want politicians who ‘feel my pain’. I want politicians who will do something about it … for all of us. Those are the people to whom I will give my whole hearted support.

Wulfgar hits the nail on the head, but he describes a bipartisan problem. Republicans are just as guilty of expecting their candidates to agree with everything they believe and unforgiving when necessary differentiation occurs.

The trouble is, the reality that we are not all beautiful or unique snowflakes (thank you Tyler Durdan) flies directly in the face of the GOTV efforts that are aimed at convincing every single voter that their vote and their vote alone is the most important in a given election. That’s one of the great fetishes of Democracy - the delusional belief that each vote matters against the sheer mathematics of a large-scale election.

The lesson to learn is that if one’s political ideologies are outside of the main stream, one must accept the fact that short of shifting the populous as a whole, no candidate can match those ideologies and get elected at the same time. That’s advice that I can use, and it’s also advice that Wulfgar should heed himself.

On behalf of your contributors here at Big Sky Cairn, I Cody hereby challenge a Montana blogger to an online debate of the Resolution:

Resolved: Architects of U.S. foreign policy should be subject to international justice.

I will take the Negative (disproving the resolution or the case presented by the Affirmative). The debate will be hosted here - I’ll give whomever agrees a guest account to post with.

The debate will be structured with specific “speeches” that are governed by word-limits. Each”speech” will be posted as a stand-alone post, tagged as “Debate” and identified in the subject line.

Affirmative Constructive
3000 words max.
The Affirmative makes the case in support of the resolution.
The subject line should start with “1AC”

Negative Cross Examination of Affirmative
10 questions 400 words max
Response 600 words max
Posted as comments of the Aff Constructive, the Negative can ask up to 10 questions which the Affirmative must then answer.

Negative Constructive
3000 words
The Negative argues against the the Resolution.
The subject line should start with “1NC”

Affirmative Cross Examination of Negative
10 questions 400 words max
Response 600 words max
Posted as comments of the Neg Constructive, the Affirmative can ask up to 10 questions which the Negative must then answer.

Affirmative Rebuttal
1800 words
The Affirmative should reaffirm their case, staying within the bounds of discussion established by the Constructives and avoiding brand new arguments.
The subject line should start with “1AR”

Negative Rebuttal and Summation
2400 words
The Negative should make final arguments against the Resolution and summarize their position.
The subject line should start with “1NR”

Affirmative Summation
600 words
The Affirmative should summarize their position.
The subject line should start with “2AR”

A few more ground rules:

Editing of messages more than 20 minutes after their original posting is not allowed and will result in deletion of the messages.

For the sake of continuity and timeliness, each speech should be posted within 72 hours of the prior speech’s posting time. Time extensions, if necessary, should be requested via comments.

Debaters are free to quote evidence, although doing so counts toward the word limit. Hyperlinks are welcome, but material connected to the debate via hyperlink is not considered part of the “text” of the debate for purposes of rebuttal. In other words, you have to include the important points in the text of your argument.

The idea is a civil, but passionate discussion of a relevant issue. The format is based on a bit of a hybrid between several debate formats including Lincoln-Douglas, Policy and British Parliamentary Debate. If this goes well, I would encourage others to host similar debates.

So, who wants a piece of me? Any takers?

This is hilarious. Anna over at Left in the West has a post up about how impressed she is with the frank honesty of Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama otherwise known as The Great Messiah of Hope and Freedom. Anyway, here’s the passage that got her all hot and bothered:

In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine’s upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn’t want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.

“Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA “devastating” and “a big mistake,” despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? “Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don’t exempt myself,” he answered.

Did you catch that? The passage that Anna thinks demonstrates her man’s impeccable character is really about the fact that this man has no integrity and will say anything to get elected.

During the Democrat Primary, Obama veered Left to attract the votes from the people who were criticizing Clinton for moving to the center (ironically making herself more electable in the General). Now that he’s secured the nomination, Obama is going to try to move into that center ground that Hilary abdicates with her Fall back to the Senate. But as he does so, he’s also going to have to abandon a lot of that far-left rhetoric that got him the Nomination. All we learn from that passage is that Obama will lie to fit what he thinks his audience wants to hear.

Newsflash Anna: Being honest about the fact that you lie doesn’t make you an honest person.

[Update: Looks like Dave Budge beat me to the punch by a few minutes…]

OMG, OMG, OMG! Scoop Montana is back! The Scoop is back!

(I really like The Scoop, so I’m pretty elated that he is back.  Yes, I have a bit of a blog-crush…)

I got at least part of the story in my RSS Feed, but the page itself just has a picture and the word farewell. I understand her reason for doing it, but only hope she finds another way to keep blogging. Kit was one of my favorites. Good luck.

For the Alliance.

Update: Wulfgar notes that the page says “..and they lived happily ever after.”  My RSS feed was truncated and the post itself is no longer visible, but given Kit’s self-professed addiction to these here Internets, I share Wulfgar’s suspicion that she will, indeed, be back.  One can hope.

Oh noes. Wulfie is tired of bwogging!

But I am tired of blogging; almost Ed tired. It might just be the season. I don’t know. I had planned to give this up right after the primary. But, the best laid yadayada. I like the idea of engaging the PUMAs. I am not a sexist, and I clearly see their circular reasoning. To me, this is strangely … fun. All I’m asking of you, gentle reader, is not to expect too much too soon. I’ll get to it as I can.

I can understand a bit. It’s got to be exhausting being that mad all the time, but I have a feeling Wulfie’s not going anywhere. At least, not permanently. That is, unless he uses to free time he makes for himself to get out of the house and meet a nice girl (or maybe a fella?), fall in love, move out of the parent’s house and realize there’s plenty of things to be happy about in this great world of ours.

Stick with it Wolf. The Montana blogosphere wouldn’t be the same without ya. And, besides, I was finally starting to believe all those mean things you say about me.  You even had me wondering if Erik Iverson or Michelle Malkin were actually controlling my brain and giving me subliminal marching orders.

Seems like Roy Brown and Denny Rehberg hit a sore point with Governor’s Schweitzer’s supporters here on the blogosphere.

Here is a tip to our little fact challenged friend at Lamnidae, Governor Schweitzer asked Representative Rehberg to cosponsor a bill that the Governor later came out in opposition against. Trying to deflect from that basic fact is nothing more than obfuscation. The Governor changes his tune depending who he is talking to, it is nothing new really. The only difference is that this time Representative Rehberg called him out on his hypocrisy.

If you want a lie, here is one; “(Rehberg) voted against…higher pay for soldiers, and better health care for our veterans…” Both are demonstrably false (Notice the part about the 3.9% raise). But hey keep trying, maybe one of these days Lamindae will not post outright fabrications like they did with Erik Iverson’s salary and have continued to do since.