You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2006.
Kit Jarrell comes out in favor of the murder of civilians:
If it comes out that those Marines did kill women and children, I will still support them.
Cao goes one better… she advocates genocide:
We need to kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.
Their justifications? “Terrorists are everywhere.” “This is a case of us fighting for our very survival…”
This is what unreasoning fear can do to humans: turn them into conscienceless bedwetters who can justify, even encourage, any atrocity at all — just so long as their own safety is assured.
- Ira Winkler, a former NSA analyst, nails the real concerns about the NSA’s lawless activities:
Fundamentally, this is an issue of law. FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was established in 1978 to address a wide variety of issues revolving around Watergate, during which a president used foreign intelligence agencies to collect data on U.S. citizens. As part of FISA, the NSA has to get warrants to analyze and maintain collections of data involving U.S. citizens… The president claims that the process of getting those warrants—of complying with the law—is too time-consuming. Normally, that would sound like simple laziness, but the reality is that the program is so large that they would need an army of lawyers to get all the warrants they’d need to be in compliance with FISA. But the law is the law. No president has the right to pick and choose which laws they find convenient to follow.
“No president has the right to pick and choose which laws they find convenient to follow.” What a concept. Why, one wonders, does the ultra-right in this country find this so hard to understand?
- Michelle Goldberg, author of the recently released Kingdom Coming, describes the dangers of Christian nationalism and offers ways to combat its spreading influence on the American polity:
One way for progressives to build a movement and fight Christian nationalism at the same time is to focus on local politics. For guidance, they need only look to the Christian Coalition: It wasn’t until after Bill Clinton’s election exiled the evangelical right from power in Washington that the Christian Coalition really developed its nationwide electoral apparatus… In conjunction with local initiatives, opponents of Christian nationalism need a new media strategy… Much of what media strategists need to do simply involves public education. Americans need to learn what Christian Reconstructionism means so that they can decide whether they approve of their congressmen consorting with theocrats.
- Amnesty International has launched irrepressible, a campaign for information freedom. Among other tactics, the campaign provides a simple way for webmasters to undermine net censorship by publishing censored material directly on a web site.
- From TPMmuckraker we learn that Amir Taheri, the liar who invented the fairy take that Iran would force Jews to wear yellow badges, was invited to the White House as an ‘expert’ on Iraq:
Q Can you give us a readout on the President’s meeting this morning with the Iraq experts?
Ye gods and little fishies… is it any wonder that this administration is destined to go down in history as one of the most incompetent ever in the history of America?
MR. SNOW: Yes. Oh, my goodness, I forgot to bring the list. But actually—do you have the list, Fred? Yes, it was an interesting meeting. What you ended up having was—I’ve got all the names but one written down here. We had Wayne Downing, Barry McCaffrey, Michael Vickers, Amir Taheri, Fouad Ajami and Raad Alkadiri.
Over at Cao’s Blog, Cao has found a simple way to deal with uncomfortable questions: Pretend they were never asked.
Cao claims that criticism of the Iraq war will "insure more American deaths". I challenged her to show us how, exactly, this works:
What I am seeking is this: a clear, direct, easily verified explanation of the mechanism by which words of criticism here result in dead US soldiers there. Can you show me exactly how that happens?
This, apparently, is a really difficult question… so difficult that Cao is desperate to avoid it. So she simply deletes it. Go look... it’s not there any more. You’ll find it only on the mirror of the page captured before Cao decided that she wanted to cut and run from the discussion.
Not all radical right-wing bloggers are intellectual cowards — but it certainly seems that many intellectual cowards are radical right-wing bloggers.
How droll. Justin H. accuses Iran of spreading war propaganda — when only a few days ago, he was helping to spread war propaganda himself, by publicizing the utterly false claim that Iran intended to force Jews to wear yellow badges.
It seems that, to be an ultra-rightwinger like Justin, one must be devoid of both a sense of irony and a sense of shame.
It is astoundingly easy to prod a radical right-wing blogger into making a complete ass of himself. All you have to do is point out the facts, and the baseless accusations and outright lies start flowing like water.
Case in point: Jay Stephenson. He posted a screed yesterday, in which he excoriates the ACLU for daring to point out that the collection of telephone calling records by the NSA is a violation of the law. In the course of his tirade, Jay made the following claim:
To this point, each and every legal scholar who has looked at the program has agreed that no laws have been broken.
Unfortunately for Jay, this claim is false. In the comments, one Jason Sonenshein correctly noted that George Washington University Law Professor Orin Kerr doesn’t appear to conclude that no laws have been broken, and cited a set of recent posts on Eugene Volokh’s site as evidence. Read the rest of this entry »
In a recent post entitled 26% of People Polled by CNN are Nuts, Justin H (the ‘Real Teen’) claimed that
The Terrorist Surveillance Program only tapped phone lines between terrorists and another party, one of which had to be outside of the United States.
I asked a simple question in the comments to that post:
How do you know this, RT?
The answer?
No one has evidence otherwise
Let’s set aside for the moment that Justin has since deleted this exchange (he has a very low tolerance for inconvenient questions that ask him to produce facts —which is why you can see the exchange only on this mirror of the page). His answer is ludicrous on its face, since it is impossible for Justin or anyone else to know if anyone in the entire world has evidence that contradicts any given claim. Read the rest of this entry »
- A guest editorial that ran on Joan Cole’s site a few months ago is still relevant today — perhaps moreso than when it was published. William O. Beeman of Brown University reminds us that the United States Instigated Iran’s Nuclear Program 30 Years Ago:
Even those who admit that the United States helped start Iran’s current nuclear development claim that two factors make a difference in how Iran should be treated today as opposed to the 1970’s: Iran’s concealment of nuclear energy development activities in the past and President Ahmadinejad’s remarks on Israel.
What White House officials never tell the American public is that President Ahmadinejad’s remarks have little or no connection with any probable action on Iran’s part regarding Israel (or “the Zionist regime” to be strictly accurate regarding his reference). President Ahmadinejad has no effective power in this area, and his remarks aren’t even embraced by Iran’s clerical leaders. His remarks are widely understood as a clumsy attempt to pander to his own right-wing base in an attempt to shore up his faltering power within the Iranian government.
However, the second proposition is equally specious. It is fruitful to examine the now conventional wisdom that Iran had “regularly hidden information about its nuclear program” etc. as if this in and of itself was proof of a nuclear weapons program. Of course, it is not, although many breathlessly cite it as the principal smoking gun.
- Yay! Iraq has a government! Of course, that government cannot feed the country’s children (via Deltoid):
Roger Wright, UNICEF’s Special Representative for Iraq, lamented that children were confirmed as the major victims of food insecurity. “The chronic malnutrition rate of children in food insecure households was as high as 33 per cent, or one out of every three children malnourished,” he stated. Chronic malnutrition affects the youngest and most vulnerable children, aged 12 months to 23 months, most severely. “This can irreversibly hamper the young child’s optimal mental and cognitive development, not just their physical development,” he said. Acute malnutrition was also of concern, with nine per cent of Iraqi children being acutely malnourished. The highest rates (12-13 per cent) were again found in children aged under 24 months.
- Nick Matzke tears "intelligent design" advocate Nancy Pearcey a new one, showing how ID truly is just thinly disguised creationism.
- The Internet has given millions a public voice — and opened new opportunities for legal shenanigans when someone takes exception to what’s been said. The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse “will catalogue cease and desist notices and present analyses of their claims to help recipients resist the chilling of legitimate activities (as well as understand when their activities are unlawful)”.
Over one hundred years ago, the philosopher and novelist George Santayana warned us that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. The radical right-wing blogosphere has again demonstrated just how forgetful — and easily duped — they truly are.
The Canadian newspaper National Post published a story on 19 May 2006 entitled "Iran eyes badges for Jews". (Clicking that link will show you an empty page; the National Post has deleted the story. The text of the story has been mirrored at IranPressNews.) The story claimed that
a new law passed by the Iranian parliament… would require the country’s Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.
The story was picked up by several popular right-wing web sites, including Drudge Report and NewsMax. Within mere hours, the meme had infected right-wing blogs like H5N1 in a flock of Asian chickens. The predictable reaction followed: calls to nuke Iran, comparisons to the Nazis, yada yada yada. The overall import was that Iran was the Third Reich reincarnated, and that waging war upon Iran was both inevitable and righteous.
There’s just one little problem with the story: It’s not true. Read the rest of this entry »
- The ever-incisive John Scalzi cuts to the heart of the religious right’s zeitgeist:
I don’t see the religious schism as a right/left or conservative/liberal one, anyway. To me, what it appears to be is a schism between those religious people who are concerned with justice, and those who are concerned with power. The contemporary religious right is tremendously politically powerful, but it is almost wholly unconcerned about justice — it has political and social policies that explicitly abandon or punish those who do not share its worldview, and it has a worldview which is not notably compassionate or charitable, so that leaves out quite a lot. Promoting a discriminatory agenda, promoting ignorance in public education and promoting one’s religion above all others in the political arena is not justice in any moral sense of the word.
I think many of the religious people who are rebelling against the religious right’s agenda are doing so because they see the lack of justice in it; a lack of the charity and compassion and love that is explicit in the message of Christianity, for one, and in most other religions as well. And it’s not about political positions, per se. One may believe abortion is wrong, but be opposed to a political agenda that explicitly denies to the poor the access to family planning that the middle and upper classes have as a matter of course. One may believe that homosexuality is morally wrong but be opposed to the political agenda that works to have gay Americans permanently branded as second class citizens.
- David Neiwert explains, with extensive documentation, that we’ve seen the hysterical anti-immigrant "invasion" hysteria before:
The funny thing about all this is how closely it parallels the xenophobic hysteria that was raised almost exactly a century ago, during the initial wave of Japanese immigration. It was called the "Yellow Peril."
Prejudice against Asian immigrants had a long history, particularly against the Chinese. During the successful drive to exclude them—culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—popular prejudices of the nativist variety came into full play, such as a labor organizer’s screed warning of "China’s Menace to the World"...
- Those who advocate the teaching of “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution are committing the classic fallacy of the false dilemma. If we’re going to teach alternatives, shouldn’t we teach all the alternatives? David Brin cites four other explanations for the origins of life that surely deserve equal time in the classroom.
- Edmund Burke warned us that “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing”. You can do something to counter the hateful rhetoric of homophobia by supporting the Gay? Fine By Me campaign. Donate, or buy some T-shirts and help spread the idea that tolerance and inclusion is actually okay.
When Dan Paden falls in love with a straw man, he falls hard. Paden is the blogger who likes to pretend that David Niewert is somehow being hypocritical when he berates the radical right in the country for tolerating eliminationist rhetoric, but fails to condemn the same tactic on the left.
Of course, you can’t tell from Paden’s latest screed that eliminationist rhetoric is the bone of contention, because he has stopped using the phrase "eliminationist rhetoric" altogether:
Now, I realize that there is a lot of venomous rhetoric coming from certain quarters of the right, as well, and too few people on the right say so. My objection to Mr. Neiwert in this respect is not so much that he doesn’t serve as a watchdog for leftist venom — that’s not his job or his responsibility — but that it seems to me that he engages in the very behavior — ignoring nasty rhetoric from one’s own side — that he objects to in post after post. It certainly appears that he lambastes the right for behavior he duplicates. It’s hypocritical in the extreme.
David Neiwert has spent years documenting the use of eliminationist rhetoric by the radical right, and pointing out how the mainstream right ignores and slowly adopts that selfsame rhetoric. When you read Neiwert’s posts, it’s very clear that the rhetoric in question is far beyond “nasty” or venomous”. The right-wing rhetoric Newiert examines is called “eliminationist” for very good reason: as Neiwert defines it, “it describes a kind of politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination”.
Paden doesn’t dare use the term “eliminationist rhetoric” because to do so would highlight his fundamental dishonesty. Read the rest of this entry »
Justin H, the ever-mendacious ‘Real Teen’, is lying again:
We have been listening in on terrorists, and not the average American…
What utter hogwash. We know now that NSA has contracted with several telecommunications providers to monitor the calling patterns of millions of "average Americans". And we know that Bush lied when he claimed that "The program applies only to international communications. In other words, one end of the communication must be outside the United States".
These leaks, including the original leak regarding the Terrorist Surveillence Program, are unconstitutional and dangerous.
Well, golly, Justin… if it’s so dangerous to let the terrorists know that they’re being monitored, then why did Bush repeatedly reveal that we were eavesdropping on terrorist phone calls, months before the New York Times revealed the illegal NSA wiretaps?
Justin won’t answer. Facts don’t matter to wingers like him. He and his sort simply ignore inconvenient realities.
- Does religious belief undermine one’s ability to think critically? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it must, but Stupid Evil Bastard has a great example of how it can happen.
- Steven Waldman’s essay “The Framers and the Faithful” cogently points out that both the Founding Fathers and evangelical Christians of the period were in agreement that separation of church and state was an essential principle:
Indeed, the one group that would almost certainly oppose the views of 21st-century evangelicals are the 18th-century evangelicals. John Leland was no anomaly. In state after state, when colonists and Americans met to debate the relationship between God and government, it was the proto-evangelicals who pushed the more radical view that church and state should be kept far apart. Both secular liberals who sneer at the idea that evangelicals could ever be a positive influence in politics and Christian conservatives who want to knock down the “wall” should take note: It was the 18th-century evangelicals who provided the political shock troops for Jefferson and Madison in their efforts to keep government from strong involvement with religion. Modern evangelicals are certainly free to take a different course, but they should realize that in doing so they have dramatically departed from the tradition of their spiritual forefathers.
And two books of note:
- The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster sets out the tenets of the fast-growing religion also known as Pastafarianism. It’s at least as good an explanation for the origin of life as that upstart "intelligent design". Jim Wynne reviews.
- 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right is a tutorial on the fine art of countering the radical right horseshit being spewed by the lapdog media, and getting real political debate underway. Hat tip to Daily Kos.
Ah, we can always count on Cao for a good laugh. She’s complaining about last December’s revelation of the illegal, warrantless wiretaps conducted by the NSA:
The press, however, thinks it’s above the normal US citizen, apparently, because Bill Keller of the New York Times makes the case by repeatedly defending his paper’s decision to publish last year’s articles on the NSA program’s intercepting communications from Al Qaeda… Does he really believe his paper can publish national security secrets regardless of espionage laws?
The right-wing meme that the Times somehow exposed a top-secret NSA wiretapping operation and tipped off the terrorists is completely obliterated by one simple, indisputable fact: George W. Bush, President of the United States, repeatedly disclosed that the US was routinely wiretapping international phone calls, and did so months before the New York Times published its story in December 2005. Read the rest of this entry »
Dan Paden at No Blog of Significance provides a near-textbook example of that hoariest of rhetorical scams, the bait-and-switch.
A few days ago, Paden made the following remark regarding David Neiwert:
Also on display again this week, as it often is, is his incredible double-standard regarding what he calls "eliminationist rhetoric." I’ll readily grant that there are too many inexcusable remarks passing as “humor” from the right — Mr. Neiwert does an excellent job of demonstrating that — but there are at least as many emanating from the left. But when it comes to the left, he plays a different tune: By golly, those crummy remarks from the left — well, it’s all the right wing’s fault. They started it. We only say those things ‘cause those racist right-wingers started it. We’re pure and saintly — unlike them.
Note what Paden is claiming: that the left uses eliminationist rhetoric as often as does the right. We need to be clear on the meaning of the phrase “eliminationist rhetoric”: It encompasses any commentary that suggests, or outright demands, that someone whose political views the speaker does not agree with should be attacked, beaten, imprisoned, or killed. David Neiwert has been relentless in documenting this sort of rhetoric on the right.
(I’ll note in passing that Paden’s claim that Neiwert plays a “different tune” about left-wing rhetoric is purest straw man. Neiwert has never said anything even vaguely resembling what Paden has fantasized.) Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Stephenson says there is no evidence of civil war in Iraq.
Yet: “Almost 1100 people were killed in Baghdad alone last month... Shi’ites say thousands of their community have had to flee their homes to escape threats by Sunni extremists.”
The only way — the only way — that Jay and others like him can make the claim that there is no civil war in Iraq is by ignoring the evidence, and ignoring it continuously and completely. They must practice ignorance that is absolutely impervious to reality, lest their fantasy world be invaded by uncomfortable, inconvenient facts.
It never ceases to amaze me that practitioners of this invincible ignorance always expect others to take their arguments seriously.
- Need something new to worry about? Terrorist attacks employing miniature unmanned flying drones are likely ‘unstoppable’.
- Shakespeare’s Sister has a cogent discussion of the dirty little secret of the so-called ‘pro-life’ movement. It’s not life that lies at the heart of their crusade; it’s sex...
...Focus on the Family has a massive website, and when “rape prevention” is put in as a search term, the most relevant result (buried after a bunch of unrelated drug prevention crap) is an article about how abortion doesn’t make the pain of rape go away. When “homosexuality prevention” is put in, however, the results provide a plethora of information about how homosexuality is “preventable and treatable,” links to conversion conferences like Love Won Out, how to help children who struggle with “homosexual feelings,” etc.
These are the priorities of the “pro-life” movement, plain and simple. They have dedicated millions of dollars, and seemingly limitless time and effort, to eradicating the scourge of homosexuality, but provide nary a word on rape prevention. To them, a man who has consenting sex with another man is an atrocity deserving of endless resources, but a man who forces himself on a woman isn’t worthy of mention. - The Army is apparently so desperate to ship warm cannon fodder to Iraq that they have taken to recruiting autistic teenagers. (Another hat tip to Shakespeare’s Sister).
- With the nomination of General Michael Hayden for Director of the CIA, there are some hard questions to be asked. Somebody at the hearings better grow a set of brass cojones and ask them.
I mentioned on Saturday that General Michael Hayden, who is widely expected to be named the next director of the CIA, does not know what the Fourth Amendment says about search and seizure. Apparently, for some folks, this is a good thing. Go figure.
Justin H., the ‘Real Teen’ who can believes that murder is just peachy as long as he calls it ‘righteous’, also seems to believe that ignorance of the Constitution is a qualification for the CIA directorship:
Gen. Michael V. Hayden is the likely replacement for Porter Goss, and that’s probably going to spark an NSA fight. I say, bring it on.Let’s examine carefully just how much cluelessness Justin displays in these few sentences. For one, the warrantless wiretaps (aka the ‘Terrorist Surveillence Program’), are in fact not legal. Read the rest of this entry »The American people support the Terrorist Surveillence Program, and it’s completely irresponsible to call it an “eavesdropping program.” It’s a legal way of monitoring enemies of the United States, and if someone WITHIN the US is communicating with terrorists, they should expect to be listened in on. We need to maintain the security of the United States, and this program is perfectly legal.
- Gen. Michael Hayden, the likely replacement for Porter Goss as director of the CIA, does not know what the Fourth Amendment says. Crooks and Liars has the video.
- How to Exercise an Open Mind:
Simply put, all one needs to grow his or her brain is to do unique, random, different, and ridiculous things as often as possible. One hour of increased brain activity via thinking a lot or experiencing new stimuli can make you smarter, more energetic, more creative, and more sociable. Here are some of the endless numbers of activities that can stimulate your brain. The one key ingredient is to have an open mind.
- Fundies Say the Darndest Things! And the most pathetic. Many thanks to Stupid Evil Bastard.
“In san fransisco theres a protestant church thats especially for gays. I saw it on a reality t.v show called 30 days , and a straight protestant was debating with the gay pastor. The straight guy was firing bible veres at her ,and her only defence was “jesus loves every body”. The defence was pretty sad.”
“Gay males are men without chests. They have an aching void where their manly chest is supposed to be.”
“If evolution exists at all, it likely explains why there are big, small, round, long, green, red and green tomatoes. It in no way explains why there are tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and peppers. The explanation is salad.”
“Humans did NOT evolve from fish nor apes. It that be the case would we not be still transforming into other forms of ‘animals’? Fish are NOT animals… so therefore how in the world can a fish transform into a human?”
- Is it just me, or does anyone else think that new Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke bears an uncanny resemblance to Master Bra’tac of Stargate SG-1?
This is too cool… They’re Made Out of Meat is a film adaptation of the Terry Bisson story that inspired the name of this blog.
Thanks, Boing Boing.
Facts are a funny thing. They are conveniently made up out of whole cloth if reality doesn’t support one’s point-of-view. And poor, gullible Heidi over at ‘Euphoric Reality’ has been taken in by yet another collection of myths and distortions.
Recently, Heidi posted a list of ‘facts’ about immigrants that’s been making the rounds by that most reliable of sources, the viral email.
The following 10 facts have been pulled from the LA Times. We’ve posted them all at one time or another at ER or in the Blogburst.1. L.A. County has 10 million people. 40% of all workers in L.A. County are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.
2. Of the 10 million people in L.A. County, 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak only primarily Spanish. Of the 14 million people in California, 5.6 million primarily speak other than English.
3. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
And on and on. Ten of these ‘facts’ are attributed to an article in the LA Times… but Heidi rather sneakily links not to the LA Times, but to World Net Daily. In fact, no such article has be found in the 2002 archives of the LA Times.
How many of those facts can be confirmed? Exactly one — the number of Spanish-language radio stations in Los Angeles. The good folks at Snopes.com have shown that the rest are either distortions or unconfirmed allegations — not the ‘facts’ Heidi would like her readers to believe. (Hat tip to David Neiwert for bringing the Snopes article to my attention.)
Illegal immigration is clearly a serious problem. It deserves a serious national debate, but folks like Heidi are determined to pander to the worst nativist passions. She ill serves her country when she does so.
Apparently, to be a patriot, one has to be prepared to commit murder. Justin H, aka ‘Real Teen’, is unhappy that Zacharias Moussaoui did not get the death penalty. His solution to the problem? Someone should commit another crime:
Many Americans are unhappy with the jury’s decision in the Moussaoui case. However, the US criminal justice system is not designed to make everyone happy. Nor is it designed to inspire fear in terrorists, as Justin seems to want it to do. Our criminal justice system is designed to determine guilt or innocence, and in the case of guilt, to determine an appropriate punishment. This is exactly what it has done in the case of Zacharias Moussaoui.
Justin claims to be a Christian, but apparently believes that "Thou shalt not kill" was only a suggestion. It would seem that Justin sees laws, even the laws of God, as things to be obeyed only until he thinks they should be broken to satisfy the primitive urge for vengeance.
One wonders if Justin has ever been taught that the United States is supposed to be a country ruled by laws, not men. If ‘Real Teen’ ever finds himself in a position of power, we can all be sure that that principle will be the first to be ignored.
- This month’s Journal of Clinical Investigation carries an article entitled "Defending science education against intelligent design: a call to action". The paper explains why the fight against the so-called intelligent design movement is so vital — and better yet, explains what can be done. (via evolgen)
Scientists can no longer afford to let these challenges go unopposed. The wide gap between established facts accepted by scientists and the sentiments sampled in the polls reflects a failure of science education. For this, scientists, particularly those in academia, must take some responsibility. The remedies are educational and political and must involve scientists and non-scientists. Instituting an effective response does not require large blocks of time, nor need it involve debates with creationists: small actions can have large effects.
- Less than a century ago, dozens of people were sent to prison in Montana. Their crime? Criticizing the US government. The Montana Sedition Project documents the stories of men and women who were imprisoned for expressing their opinions.
- Emotions can be evoked by many things. The Saddest Thing I Own explores the ways that objects can convey sadness. (via MetaFilter)
- “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?” More than fifty years after his death, the words of Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi remain as relevant as ever. The Mahatma Gandhi Research and Media Service is an amazingly conprehensive record of Gandhi’s life and work. (via MetaFilter)
I’ve observed the use of logical fallacies in online discussions for some time now. While many of the fallacies have really nifty Latin names, I’ve found it odd that one of the most-used fallacies, the straw man argument, lacks such a name. I think I’ve come up with one: argumentum ad delusion.
Dr. Michael C. Labossiere tells us that
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.In short, the straw man fallacy is based on a lie. Sometimes the lie is subtle, sometimes not. In many cases, one looks at the argument being made and asks oneself in amazement, “Was this guy delusional when he wrote this?” Hence the name, argumentum ad delusion.
Here’s a recent example: yesterday, MSNBC reported that Valerie Plame, whose position as a CIA operative was exposed by the Bush administration in a clumsy attempt to strike back at her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had been part of a project to track the proliferation of nuclear materials into Iran. Crooks and Liars has links to the video of the report. Obviously, the Administration considered the quest to discredit Wilson to be more important than gathering intelligence on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
I decided to do a little research and see what the right-wing blogs were making of this. It took maybe five minutes to find a winger in full-blown delusional mode. Read the rest of this entry »
Heidi at ‘Euphoric Reality’ lacks the guts to say it in words… but she doesn’t have to. The picture she has posted on her blog today is stark, undeniable evidence that she believes that Hispanic immigrants are cockroaches.
The need to dehumanize others is naked racism at its ugliest. But it’s no worse than can be expected from Heidi and her kind.
