After November’s election defeat, the Republican Party sought to investigate how voters conceptualized the party and how that subsequently affected their voting strategies.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21835261
A 98-page all encompassing report labelled the Growth and Opportunity Project Report depicted the findings of Republican’s over the past few months. The party interviewed and polled 50, 000 people; all of whom stated similar view points on the party. Phrases such as ‘narrow-minded’, ‘party for the rich’, and ‘out-of-touch’ were the responses received. What the party is trying to do before the 2016 US elections, is improve the digital databases of users, reduce presidential debates in the primaries, and improve retirement packages for the middle-class who has yet to experience a substantive pay raise while CEO’s receive tens of millions upon retirement. Oh, and approve the Democrat’s immigration reform policy.

The Republican Party is attempting to appeal to a group of voters that they feel that they have lost, primarily gays and minorities. However, I find little correlation with the party’s reform strategy and their ability to sway minority and gay voters that are being more strongly enticed by the Democrat party (via the gay marriage legislation and the new immigration reform act giving citizenship to all illegal/legal aliens living in the US). Do you think these are sufficient reforms or do you agree that are lacking? Or should the Republican party pursue something along the lines of the BC Liberal Party in appealing to ethnic minorities?

Authors tend to implement fallacies into their pieces to distract the reader from the lack of sound reasoning or support that they have for their conclusion. One example of a logical fallacy is an ad hominem attack; where a persons characteristics are subjected to attack by an opponent and used as support for a faulty conclusion. An example of this is Forbes piece on Benazir Bhutto called “Power Dressing How women Use Fashion in Politics: How Bhutto used the Shalwar Kameez”.
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fk45eiedl/benazir-bhuttos-politically-charged-shalwar-kameez/
The author’s logic proceeds as Bhutto rejected the traditional women’s dress in Pakistan (the burka) and opted for the shalwar kameez. This led to her incarceration and exile. The author suggests that the reason for Bhutto’s political exile and detainment was her defiance of the traditional way of dress, not for her actions while she ruled as the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

An example of a rhetorical fallacy is an appeal to ethics rather than sound reasoning to support a conclusion. This article on abortions states that abortion is wrong because God says it is murder.
http://carm.org/abortion-wrong
The article doesn’t employ scientific evidence to support the author’s claim that abortion is morally wrong. Instead the author uses psalms from the bible to support the word of God as ‘support’ for why abortion is wrong. The Lord has said, “”You shall not murder,” (Exodus 20:13). The life that is growing within the mother is a child, a baby.” The author is appealing to religion or ethics to support a conclusion that does not logically follow from his logic. He states that a fetus in a womb is actually called a baby, cause the Lord says it is, and therefore if it is a baby and not a fetus a woman is committing murder by undergoing an abortion.

As a political science student I am tad ashamed to say that I don’t read Political Science blogs. If asked to name my favorite blog I would say Perez Hilton, though I don’t think his updates on the Kardashian’s qualify as American politics per se. So sorry for being a week behind here, but I had to read quite a few political blogs to figure out what kind of styles I liked and disliked.

After googling ‘Best Political Blogs’ and stumbling upon ajherra’s page listing dozens of blogs I began reading through some by category. I came to quickly discover that the partisan type blogs (conservative, grassroot, Democrat) were ones that I disliked. The Blog called Little Green Footballs is a conservativist political blog that links all issues to football jargon which ends up testing my knowledge of the sport and not so much informing me of each post’s purpose. In addition to the author’s football jargon I find that he writes in a very informal manner that again takes away from the effectiveness of portraying the message. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/

One political blog that I found stylistically appeasing was a blog called ‘Fivethirtyeight’, designed by a journalist of the NY Times to help readers of the journal sift through articles by condensing them into simplified to-the-point blogs. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/ 
I found that I preferred his non-partisan perspective on the posts on the upcoming 2016 presidential election, and the recent election of the new Pope. His writing is straight-forward, explicit with no subtle metaphors or tangled-American-partisan views making posts easier to peruse through. Though I don’t have a big interest in election mechanics, I found the author, Nate Silver’s, accounts of the papal elections and projected American elections basic and simple and thus able to hold my attention.

In weighing democracy and capitalism on peace I fall into the Gartzke camp where I do believe that capitalism has a greater impact on peace maintenance. It is the anarchic forces of the global capital market by state and non-state actors that subconsciously integrate the world into a perceived liberal economic order decreasing incentives for war. In this time period, under capitalism, territorial acquisition is rare to non-existent, capital is mobile and easily transferred away from victor’s hands, and the financial/monetary risk of militarized dispute is evidently rising. With little perceived gains from militarized dispute regarding economics, I do find myself persuaded by Gartzke’s article.

However, I do believe the case of the hegemon, like in Oneal and Russett’s article, provides an exception or point of weakness to the argument. A hegemon can still stand to financially benefit from militarized dispute primarily through the manufacturing of military equipment. Two other factors are oil and drugs. Every war that America has participated in/initiated in the past couple of decades involves oil or drugs. Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait. A hegemon will engage in militarized disputes and break this capitalist notion of a liberal economic order leading to peace if these two perceived natural resources provide sufficient temptation. In this case, a hegemon may value the benefits of oil and drug control as sufficient rewards for engaging in militarized dispute and its associated financial costs. Thus, similar to Oneal and Russett’s article, the hegemon does provide resistance to these theories of international peace.

As today may or may not be the final day for elections of a new pope, the newly elected pope will be bestowed two titles and two sets of responsibilities. First, he will be in charge of the 1.2 million Catholics worldwide; but secondly he will be the Head of State for the Vatican City. I will admit that I was unconsciously unaware of the dual responsibilities of the pope. While watching BBC this morning and they were interviewing from the St. Peters Square, they brought up the dual title subject. My initial reaction was that a pope is not a legitimate or a good figure to assume responsibilities on the world stage. I view the pope as isolated, having a narrow-minded perspective of the world, and largely biased. Mainly this stems from his devotion to Catholicism. However, then I began thinking of how Islamist fundamentalist states would also have this narrow-minded perspective of the world due to their religious beliefs. But I still didn’t equate them with the pope.

I guess where I am going with this post, is that I am weary of a pope having an equal voice and vote in the UN (on the upcoming Syria discussions and votes for example). If someone wants to support the pope as an equal to other Head of States I would like to hear other arguments.

If anyone has suggestions on TV shows to start watching I need some. My residence recently denied me from watching Slice, and Suits ended a month ago. I do not like vampires or zombies which grealty limits the amount of applicable TV shows for me. Help!

While reading Gerring, Bona, Barnat and Moreno’s piece on economic growth I found myself wondering whether Schumpeter’s minimalist definition focused on i) competition, and ii) elections, was conducive to testing for economic growth in democracies and dictatorships. The authors rationalize their definition choice by stating that competition over votes is more likely to affect a country’s economic growth performance. And secondly that we should continuous graded measures of democracy over dichotomous ones. It seems that Gerring, Bona, Barnat and Moreno believe that Schumpeter’s definition is best at capturing the length and duration of leaders due to the transparency and legitimacy of the electoral method. Therefore, clearer competitive elections–> stability in office durations–> stability and projected economic growth.

Is this a fair model to assume from Schumpeter’s definition? Or would a different democratic definition serve to better capture democratic components relative to economic growth matters. Thoughts?

A red card against Manchester United’s winger and Cristiano Ronaldo playing against his former team Manchester United, made for an exciting and controversial game. Clearly politics and dispute isn’t just restricted to jurisdictional administrations.

Hugo Chavez’s recent death has sparked many threads on whether Venezuala can return to its free and fair liberal democratic state pre-Chavez. However two main questions take center stage. Will the current Vice President Maduro lead the country for the next thirty days and win the upcoming elections in April, or will the opposition leader for the Centrist party (Capriles) assume power and re-model Venezualan economics, politics and social landscape. We can hypothesize that Chavez’s socialist policies of extending political rights to the marginalized poor could potentially secure the continuing of the socialist regime. Yet it could also cause the poor to secure their rights in a democratic forum.

After the shock waves of Chavez’s death begin to calm, world and regional leaders, activists, citizens and many others will begin to assess the pros and cons of the Chavez regime employing arguments for and against socialism and democracy. Time will tell whether Chavez’s dictatorship governance can continue to prevail in Venezuela if his contributions to the nation and Latin American region prove substantive. And whether the United States will play a part in the upcoming unfolding Venezuelan political decisions.