Gary, I agree with you in the main. Especially in reference to your first link, the quibble that has held up promotion seems to be rather trivial. I disagree that the second link you provided represents a topic that should have been promoted, however. It is literally incomprehensible. Whether the problem was the poster's ability with English or simply with expressing him/herself, there doesn't appear to be any merit in promoting something that is over the borderline gibberish.
In the moderators' defense in both cases, however, I would submit that they have a really difficult task trying to balance the promotion of marginal topics with the generally high quality of this discussion board. This difficulty quite properly leads occasionally to topics that should have been promoted but weren't. On the other hand, there has been little or no obvious reluctance to promote either controversial or contentious topics - rather the opposite. It is mostly a question of writing style and moderator judgement. Mistakes are inevitable, but overall the system has served to keep fairly high-quality.