George Lakoff's advice for Democrats in Don't Think of An Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate continues to be the focus of much discussion within the left-of-center blogosphere. In the last week, while Perrspectives took Lakoff to task, Matthew Yglesias praised Democratic efforts to stop President Bush on Social Security as an example […]

In the wake of November?s disaster for Democrats, liberals and progressives of all stripes have been seeking guidance and comfort in the work of cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff. All the rage among Democrats, his book Don?t Think of An Elephant has introduced the term ?framing? into the daily lexicon of political animals. For […]

For the raging right, National Public Radio is the poster child for liberal bias in the media. From Accuracy in Media and the Media Research Center to the National Review and Bill O'Reilly, NPR (or "National Palestine Radio" to its detractors), is the bete noir. How very surprised, then, they must have all been while […]

On the same day that the North Korean announcement of its nuclear weaponry put the Bush administration on the defensive, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got a double-dose of blowback from her 9/11 dissembling. First, the release of a previously classified report by the National Archives shows that the FAA had been warned repeatedly of […]

Over at Donkey Rising, Ruy Teixeira analyzes the raw data from the final NEP 2004 exit poll is search of an explanation for John Kerry's defeat. Not surprisingly, he concludes that "It's the White Working Class, Stupid." That is, Democrats not only got clubbed again by the GOP among working class white men (by 30% […]

During the February 3rd segment of the Abrams Report on MSNBC, part of the discussion focused on President Bush's surprising and vocal support for DNA evidence funding during the State of the Union address. Abrams and his guests seemed mystified as to why President Bush, a man who presided over more executions than any other […]

From the perspective of public policy and narrative, President Bush's 2005 State of the Union Address brought few surprises. But for sheer chutzpah, President Bush reached new heights. 1. The Social Security Shell Game As expected, Bush focused on Social Security privatization. Also as expected, he continued the selective use of numbers to create the […]

Once in a rare while, tectonic historical change occurs with the span of only few days. The dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall heralding the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, was one of those watershed moments. And for many Americans, the events of the last 10 days of January, with the Rice confirmation, the […]

With President Bush and the GOP launching an all-out campaign for their misguided Social Security privatization plan, Perrspectives has assembled a library of resources to help you evaluate the pluses and (endless) minuses of the Bush proposal. The Perrspectives Social Security Document Library includes the Republicans' cynical game plan, the Trustees' 2004 Report, the 2001 […]

Among the many sub-plots to watch for in Wednesday's State of the Union address will be President Bush's appropriation of the words "freedom" and "liberty" for his agenda and the GOP. As we've written before, the Republicans have dominated American policy debates through their manipulation and control of language. Whether through message discipline or superior […]