How We Want You to Read Our Blog

Hello again readers! At this point, based on feedback I think that it is a good time to explain how to read a blog. To help me do this, I will use a portion from my post The Issues! and break it down step by step.

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The War in Iraq: The War in Iraq refers to the United States military presence in the country of Iraq. This was the essential issue that decided the 2004 election: John Kerry was widely viewed as not having a strong strategy in dealing with Iraq despite his claims, and George Bush's platform was heavily invested in the American people allowing President Bush to "Finish the job" he started in 2003.

-- Alright, let's stop here and pretend you do not know where Iraq is. Being able to instantly identify Iraq on a map will help you to better understand other news reports you see or read about, so knowing where Iraq is located is very helpful. For this, refer to a map or the ultimate tool, Google.com. Knowing who John Kerry is will also be helpful to you, because as we draw closer to the November 2008 election, more references will be made to the 2004 election by news stations. Again, you can use Google.com to help find out who he is expediently. Now, back to the post.--

Based on frequent Gallup Polls, this issue has shown to be the most important to voters from the 2004 election all the way through to the current day, although this issue has declined in importance since January 1st. This issue is very important to voters because of the importance placed on the issue by the Bush Administration, the media, and the public itself. The continued military presence in Iraq means a decreased morale towards the war on the home-front, the earmarking of many billions of US tax dollars towards the war, and a decreased importance on the initial focus of the War on Terrorism, Afghanistan.

--Alright, another break. Again, say you do not know what a Gallup Poll is, it would be prudent to hit up Google.com to investigate and then go on the actual website.

For the second bolded portion, say you try to find out how we know that the issue has declined in importance since January 1st but you cannot find an answer. In this situation, we highly suggest emailing the author of the post to find out how they came to that conclusion. You can find the email of the author by first finding out who the author is, and then clicking on their name in the "Contributors" tab, then clicking "Email" under the Contact tab.

For the third bolded part, we will sooner or later have a "political terms" sort of glossary, and for something that sounds political, you can first refer to our glossary, and then to google or another site.

For the forth bolded part, you can refer to http://www.m-w.com/ for any terms you do not understand on the website, and then if that does not help you understand the sentence you can email the author for them to help explain the term in its proper context.
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In general, it can be said that all of the Presidential candidates favor a rapid pulling out of major military presence in Iraq, with the exception of Arizona Senator John McCain.

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--Now, I bolded this last part because this was an untrue assertion by the author (me) and a commenter pointed out my mis-fact in a comment, which is the last tip on reading this blog: if you see something that you know is untrue, point it out! The authors will attempt to fact check everything, but without a team of people helping us, some facts will slip through the cracks. The commenter did the right thing by pointing this out.

Alright, so to recap:
1) Use google.com to help identify terms/concepts you do not understand
2) If this does not work, email the author and ask for an explanation
3) If you see something that seems like a political term, check our glossary first, and then if it isn't there, email an author explaining what term you feel should be in there
4) Keep http://www.m-w.com/ handy for terms you don't understand at all, and email an author if you need further explanation
5) If you see something you know is untrue, point it out, either in a comment or via email.
6) One last thing: If you are reading the blog and do not see something that you think should be on the blog, email an author and explain what you think we should include, and why! We will take any and all suggestions into consideration.

Oh, and to find out who the author is, you have to look to the very bottom of the post: "Posted by Josh" in this case.