I never disputed anything about whether quoting Fey instead of Palin is doing Palin a “favor”.
I only disputed two points: first, I contend that Palin as you quoted her and Fey are both equally grammatical in what they say. Far from cherry-picking, I was able to identify subjects, verbs, etc. (which is an extremely crude test for grammaticality but it was your own idea) in every single sentence that you quoted and attributed to Palin. Can you please concede this point?
Second, I contend that being able to see Russia from a specific house in Alaska is an exaggeration of the weaker claim of being able to see Russia from some unspecified place(s) in Alaska. Can you please concede this point?
I think this isn’t merely one of the many examples of “Lefty nutjobs might believe this, but I’ve never heard of anyone who does” that this thread is filled with, I think this is actually a misstatement of what lefties DO know, believe and say: The right to bear arms was and is specifically about a citizen’s MILITIA, not Joe Sixpack’s personal desire to stockpile weaponry.
Of course citizens have a right to bear arms, otherwise the 2nd amendment is pointless air; the conditions, circumstances and purpose are what’s disputed. It seems clear to the people who know how to read English and have no desire to own guns personally that the 2nd amendment was very specific and clear in its language, not at all vague.
Of course, there have been a lot of Supreme Court rulings on this topic, and that’s of course a whole other thread. I’m just talking about “leftwing falsehoods” and the right to bear arms:
I would argue (For all the good it does me) that it’s very convenient for the courts to have come to the conclusion that the second and first amendment both protect the rights of individuals. Our forefathers were not slapdash in the writing of our foundation document. They made mistakes but I really dont’ think they were confused about this one.
[ul]
[li]FIRST:[/li]Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
[li]SECOND:[/li]A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
[/ul]
And if you read the other 8 it is glaringly obvious that the only way in which anyone is ever segregated into a special class of citizen that is not necessarily every citizen is by being designated as a soldier of some kind. Everything else just as obviously applies to every citizen (assuming they are white, of course.:P)
[ul]
[li]Second: A well regulated Militia,[/li][li]Third: No Soldier shall,[/li][li]Fifth: except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia,[/li][/ul]
All to say: it is itself a falsehood to state that the assertion that the “right to bear arms was never meant to extend to private citizens” is a falsehood.
The interpretations over the years have been in favor of the gun fans. But I think if we could raise the dead and ask, they’d tell us that the reference to a militia had a purpose, and that purpose was to limit the possession of guns to people who had been trained in their use and were part of a citizen’s militia.
And for the record: I hate guns and I think it’s a little bit sick that so many people love them so much, seeing as the only purpose they serve is wound and kill living things - I can understand the desire to have one for protection, perhaps, but the fetishizing of weaponry is grotesque to me, as is the fact that the ready access to guns leads to so many suicides, accidents and heat-of-the-moment murders.
Having said that, I don’t have any big hardon to change the gun laws, because it’s far too late. Guns are a part of American life, unfortunately. But it sure would be nice, now that the gun nuts have won in the big picture, for the gun nuts to act as aggressively and stridently to educate and protect people’s rights not to be victimized by guns as they have aggressively and stridently acted to protect their right to have them.
I’m not sure what you’re granting for the sake of argument when you’re asking for a cite. But FWIW, there’s some discussion of the math issues in the CBO estimate at: Checking the Math on Health Care - The New York Times
See also some of the linked articles for further discussion.
I don’t know what you mean with this.
Actually if you ask me it is that. But as it happens that’s not my “implicit claim” here, nor is it particularly relevant. The CBO estimate is the basis for the notion that the HCR bill does not add to the deficit, and the idea that the HCR bill does add to the deficit is being presented as ignorance or stupidity. My entire claim, explicit and implicit, is that this idea is not ignorant or stupid.
Then you shouldn’t be arguing about doing so being an indicator of ignorance or willingness to spread a falsehood, should you? That’s what this thread is about.
If it will make you happy. Will you in turn concede that what Fey said gets to the heart of the matter (see above) better than what Palin said?
See above. This thread is about trying to find “left-wing falsehoods”. You have not only failed to find any, you’ve had to resort to a claim that taking the Congressional Budget Office seriously counts as one.
My comments in this thread have not been about finding any, but about what type of “left-wing falsehoods” would be equivalent to the “right-wing falsehoods” in the other thread.
As previously noted, I’ve not made any such claim.
Oh goody! Some actual examples to play with! (not to discount the others offered thus far, but I just found these first).
My take on each (as a certified “liberal”:D): - The Obama campaign was mostly financed by small donors
It was. Now, if the statement were changed to read “mostly financed by small DONATIONS”, it would be a fallacy. Obama himself misstated the situation at one point in exactly this way, the misrepresentation (inadvertent or otherwise) resting upon the crucial distinction between “donations” and “donors”:
“The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks donations at its Web site Opensecrets.org, figures that 34 percent of the donations that Obama raised and reported as of Feb. 20 came from donors who gave $200 or less. …What Obama probably meant to say is that 90 percent of his donors gave smaller donations, and that’s likely true. A total of 81,637 persons have given donations to the Obama campaign that exceeded $200 and thus had to be itemized. Since the Obama campaign says that more than 1 million donors have given in total, it would follow that more than 90 percent of them gave smaller amounts. But that’s not the way Obama put it.” - The Citizens United decision changed the law on whether foreign corporations can spend in US elections
It did. Well, sort of…the wordage here is just imprecise enough that this statement could easily be construed as either true or false. CU did not set some new precedent allowing, for the first time, contributions to political campaigns by foreign corporations, but it certainly DID “change the law” on HOW MUCH and HOW they can spend in U.S. elections.
“a “super PAC” — a new type of political committee that can accept contributions in unlimited amounts from individuals, unions and corporations. The FEC began allowing these new groups after the U.S. Supreme Court’s January decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission loosened restrictions on corporate and union spending in elections. -The insurance companies were making record profits in recent years
They were. Now, if this statement were changed to read “Insurance company profits in 2009 (or even possibly 2010) made record profits”, THEN it would be incorrect, since their reported profits were less than some previous quarters during 2009. But the phrase “in recent years”, as in, the last decade or so, renders this statement perfectly true. http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/05/27/health-insurance-profits-soar-as-industry-mergers-create-near-monopoly/
“Profits at 10 of the country’s largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007, while consumers paid more for less coverage. One of the major reasons, according to a new study, is the growing lack of competition in the private health insurance industry that has led to near monopoly conditions in many markets….These mergers and consolidations have created a marketplace where a small number of larger companies use their power to raise premiums—an average of 87 percent over the past six years—restrict and reduce benefit packages and control and cut provider payments.”
“When President Obama said at his July 22 news conference that health insurance companies were making record profits “right now,” we thought he might have insider access to corporate earnings data….In general, the health insurance industry did poorly toward the end of 2008 and in the first quarter of 2009, so record profits weren’t likely in the second quarter.
Obama was right about one thing: Health insurance premiums have gone up. The average premium for a family with employer-sponsored insurance rose 5 percent from 2007 to 2008, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and has more than doubled since 1999. Figures for 2009 haven’t been calculated yet.”
**- Medical costs constitute a substantial portion of the debt in over half of bankruptcies (or, bankruptcies involving medical debts are on the rise) **
They do and they are. By virtually all accounts. This is one of the more recent studies to find as much:
“Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007, and most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report that will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine….Woolhandler and her colleagues surveyed a random sample of 2,314 people who filed for bankruptcy in early 2007, looked at their court records, and then interviewed more than 1,000 of them. They concluded that 62.1 percent of the bankruptcies were medically related because the individuals either had more than $5,000 (or 10 percent of their pretax income) in medical bills, mortgaged their home to pay for medical bills, or lost significant income due to an illness. On average, medically bankrupt families had $17,943 in out-of-pocket expenses, including $26,971 for those who lacked insurance and $17,749 who had insurance at some point.
Overall, three-quarters of the people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance, they say.” - Hollow point bullets are only used by people who want to inflict maximum damage
This one is too speculative to prove or disprove…it requires some supernatural insight into the state of mind and intention of all those “people” and what they “want”. - The new AZ immigration law allows people to be stopped by police because they look Mexican
This one I grant you as perhaps being one many on the left MIGHT fall for. If the DO, they deserve to be bitch-slapped for sloppy reading comprehension and/or ignorance of the actual legislation in question. I personally don’t know anyone who believes this. The common complaint is that the law allows people who are detained for any other reason AND look Mexican to be asked to provide proof of their immigration/residency status (a requirement NOT likely to be universally applied to everyone who has some encounter with law enforcement.) - Scalia and Thomas never disagree when their vote matters
Um, they virtually “never disagree” regardless! Both have almost perfect records of voting along “conservative” lines. This source has some informative graphs, and also includes an instance of their NOT voting in tandem:
“Scalia and Thomas both voted 100% politically conservative in the anti-discrimination cases….As for the “cultural issues” cases, Scalia and Thomas again voted 100% politically conservative…On law & order, Thomas was again 100% politically conservative. Scalia, however, broke ranks in one of the cases…a case concerning the much harsher sentencing for crimes involving crack cocaine versus powder cocaine (the ratio under the federal guidelines is 100 to 1 !), Scalia broke with Thomas. He voted with the liberals to approve a crack crime sentence well below that 100 - 1 ratio…In the "political process cases, both Scalia and Thomas were again 100% politically conservative….And speaking of overall. Thomas’s voting in these 4 categories combined was 100% politically conservative. (The math was not difficult.) Scalia’s was 93%. (What a liberal!)”
Overall, while this statement also requires some speculation and can’t really be answered with complete objectivity, given the record to date, it’s pretty logical to conclude that it is more likely true than a fallacy. - A chernobyl-style meltdown is possible with current nuclear technology
Finally, there may be those who believe this, I’ve never encountered them. Most I know, including myself, have other reservations about nuclear power production, including the feasibility and safety of transporting and storing the waste, radiation releases on a smaller but still harmful scale, and the costs involved to rate-payers in the commissioning and decommissioning of nuclear power plants vs. the costs of alternative “green” sources.
But I’ll grant it to you as an apparently provable fallacy some on the left might buy into.
But as far as I can determine, based not upon pre-existing bias but on facts I am able to locate, most of this list represents statements which are actually TRUE or could easily be construed as such due to the iffy wording involved, but which those on the right see as “myths” embraced by the left. As such, it actually says more about common right-wing fallacies than left-wing ones.
ETA, I do not watch either Fox OR CNN…I do listen to my local progressive talk radio, and have done examinations of media coverage/left and/or right biases.
Heh, well at least no one can come in and say that liberals don’t believe those points, as you’ve demonstrated that not only do you believe them, you actually think you have evidence to support these falsehoods.
For each point you’ve either offered an unreasonable reading (i.e. “funded by” is not talking about where the money came from, “recent years” means last decade, “always” means “often”) – which could be fixed by minor adjustments in the text, if I were so inclined – or you’ve offered a citation which doesn’t prove the statement true (i.e. your Citizens United and bankruptcy citations).
Oddly, though you seem to be aware of factcheck, you seem unaware that half of my points were taken directly from that site. Anyway, if you really want to dig into each point, you’ll have to PM me in a week when I’m back from vacation.
Ummm, it looks to me like Interested Observer took your post apart point by point, totally owning you. All of his responses are directly on point. He even made critical distinctions of fact that might have leant SOME credence to what you said, if the overwhelming preponderance of evidence had not been on his side. (I.e., the point about health insurance company profits dropping in 2008-2009, though they were rising at an incredible rate in the first seven years of the decade.)
Actually, it’s not speculative at all. The statement as posited is the truth, with a caveat. If I am placed in a position where I must use my firearm, of course I want to inflict maximum damage. I am not obligated to look out for the well-being of an attacker. I will use the force necessary to stop the attack, and by God hollow-point bullets do quite a good job at that by expanding to a larger size, dumping all of their energy into the attacker, and increasing the likelihood of incapacitation via blood loss, organ injury, or of simple overt pain.
Here’s the caveat: hollow-point bullets are also good for the public at large precisely because they expand and dump all of their energy into the target. An analogy: as you are driving down the highway, stick your hand out the window. Start with your hand in a fist. Not much resistance, is there? It’s very compact and cuts right through the air. Now open your hand. If you’re not careful the resistance will push your hand back and hurt your arm, so much is encountered. That is roughly analogous to what happens with bullets. Hollow-points encounter resistance following expansion and as a result rarely leave the body of the target (out of a handgun, ballistically much different from rifles).
The point is that because they do not over-penetrate they are far less likely to exit the attacker’s body and hit someone or something in the distance, which is always a possibility that must be considered.
The interesting thing is that this has become a talking point for gun control advocates. The use of hollow-point bullets benefit the victim of an attack and all the people around them in the terrible event that they might have to defend themselves with deadly force. And somehow this is bad? I don’t get it.
You’ve listed, or perhaps created, a number of instances of sloppy phrasing only, not of fundamental opposition to the truth. Your calling any of them “falsehoods” on a par with, oh, “Saddam had WMD’s” is as pure an abuse of false equivalence as this board ever sees.
You really don’t get that guns are not always used defensively? Or that they are very often seized from the victim and used against them, or are often used in domestic disturbances or other escalating arguments that would not result in death if they weren’t so handy? That somehow baffles you? You’re better than that, aren’t you?
Those objections are ancillary to the discussion at hand. You’re raising boilerplate gun control arguments, and those are not what was at issue with my response, hollow-point bullets were.
No, those objections are irrelevant because they don’t deal with the specific topic of hollow-point bullets. I’m not doing gun control debate #8675309 because you want to change what it’s about, and not incidentally wreck the thread for anything else, the usual result of a gun control hijack.
Stick to hollow-points and we’ll talk. Otherwise, I’m out.
For the record, I did not approach ANY of the statements from a pov of belief…I did a little research on each before reaching a conclusion.
The exact wording of a statement such as those used in polls and studies is VITAL. Not only can subtle changes in wording completely alter the meaning, but it is known to influence responses; even IF the literal meaning of two statements is identical, the way in which they are phrased or even the ORDER in which they appear on a questionare can result in significantly different results (and several of your statements conveyed literally different meanings that what you obviously intended them to).
Perhaps I take too many exams with tricky questions in which the presence or absence of a single word renders an otherwise true statement false and vice versa, but I take such variations at face value…I don’t assume a statement or question means anything other than what it actually SAYS/reads. That approach has served me very well.
I don’t feel any burning desire to delve any deeper into the proposed list…I think we’ve said pretty much all that needs to be said on the matter. I guess it just goes to show that there are times when the left and right can’t even agree on the FACTS, even when using the same sources.
(not to discount the others offered thus far, but I just found these first).
