Draft (politics)

In elections in the United States, political drafts are used to encourage or pressure a certain person to enter a political race, by demonstrating a significant groundswell of support for the candidate. A write-in campaign may also be considered a draft campaign.

Political history of draft movements

The movement to draft Dwight D. Eisenhower

Movements to draft five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower to run as a candidate for President of the United States appeared in both the Democratic and Republican parties in 1948 and again during 1951. Eisenhower did his best to ignore them, but Henry Cabot Lodge entered Eisenhower in the 1952 New Hampshire Republican primary without the general's authorization. Eisenhower won all the Republican delegates and defeated Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, who had campaigned intensively in the state, by a vote of 50% to 38%. Eisenhower told a reporter, "Any American who would have that many other Americans pay him that compliment would be proud or he would not be an American", and announced his candidacy the next day. He defeated Adlai Stevenson — himself drafted as the Democratic nominee — in November 1952.

Draft

Draft or draught may mean:

Watercraft dimensions

Selection processes

Entertainment

Draft (sports)

A draft is a process used to allocate certain players to sports teams. In a draft, teams take turns selecting from a pool of eligible players. When a team selects a player, the team receives exclusive rights to sign that player to a contract, and no other team in the league may sign the player.

The best-known type of draft is the entry draft, which is used to allocate players who have recently become eligible to play in a league. Depending on the sport, the players may come from college, high school or junior teams or teams in other countries.

An entry draft prevents expensive bidding wars for young talent and ensures that no one team can sign contracts with all of the best young players and make the league uncompetitive. To encourage parity, teams that do poorly in the previous season usually get to choose first in the postseason draft, sometimes with a "lottery" factor to discourage teams from purposely losing.

Other types of drafts include the expansion draft, in which a new team selects players from other teams in the league; and the dispersal draft, in which a league's surviving teams select players from the roster of a newly defunct franchise.

Conscription

Conscription, or drafting, is the compulsory enlistment of people in a national service, most often a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1–8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.

In China, the State of Qin instituted universal military service following the registration of every household. This allowed huge armies to be raised, and was instrumental in the creation of the Qin Empire that conquered a large area of what is now China in 221 BC.

Conscription is controversial for a range of reasons, including conscientious objection to military engagements on religious or philosophical grounds; political objection, for example to service for a disliked government or unpopular war; and ideological objection, for example, to a perceived violation of individual rights. Those conscripted may evade service, sometimes by leaving the country. Some selection systems accommodate these attitudes by providing alternative service outside combat-operations roles or even outside the military, such as Zivildienst (civil service) in Austria and Switzerland. Most post-Soviet countries conscript soldiers not only for Armed Forces but also for paramilitary organizations which are dedicated to police-like domestic only service (Internal Troops) or non-combat rescue duties (Civil Defence Troops) – none of which is considered alternative to the military conscription.

Politics (poem)

"Politics" is a poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats written on May 24, 1938. It was composed during the time of the Spanish Civil War as well as during the pre-war period of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in Germany. The poem hints at the political situations of Rome (or Italy), Russia, and Spain, but ultimately discusses topics more relevant to private human interaction rather than public, or political situations. The poem never mentions Germany or Hitler, despite the fact that the "war and war's alarms" surrounding the poem's creation arose from fears of Germany's aggression rather than Italy's, Russia's, or Spain's. Many versions of the text exist: the original typescript of May 1938, the first typescript with hand-written corrections dated August 12, 1938, as well as a final "Coole Edition" of the poem dated June 29, 1939, which was not published until it was included in Last Poems in 1939. Yeats intended for the poem to be printed last in the collection, as an envoi to "The Circus Animals' Desertion", and while a debate as to the true order of the poems has continued since 1939, "Politics" was the last lyric poem Yeats wrote and remains the final work printed in all posthumous editions.

Politics (film)

Ricky Gervais Live 2: Politics is the title of a performance by British comedian Ricky Gervais. It was filmed at the Palace Theatre, London, United Kingdom in 2004.

External links

Stargate SG-1 (season 1)

The first season of the military science fiction television series Stargate SG-1 commenced airing on the Showtime channel in the United States on July 27, 1997, concluded on the same channel on March 6, 1998, and contained 22 episodes. The show itself is a spin off from the 1994 hit movie, Stargate written by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. Stargate SG-1 re-introduced supporting characters from the film universe, such as Jonathan "Jack" O'Neill and Daniel Jackson and included new characters such as Teal'c, George Hammond and Samantha "Sam" Carter. The first season was about a military-science expedition team discovering how to use the ancient device, named the Stargate, to explore the galaxy. However, they encountered a powerful enemy in the film named the Goa'uld, which is bent on destroying Earth and all that oppose them.

Ratings Success

The 100-minute premiere "Children of the Gods", which aired on July 27, 1997 at 8 p.m, received Showtime's highest-ever ratings for a series premiere and ranked as the highest-rated original movie to premiere on Showtime in 3-1/2 years at the time. The show got a 10.5 rating in Showtime's approximately 12 million U.S. households, which equaled approximately 1.5 million homes in total. Season one regular cast members included Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks, Christopher Judge and Don S. Davis.