100 facts and 1 opinion

[godfry n. glad]

An interesting article

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=facts

godfry

[Nil Desperandum]

Yeah, I read that.

We need to print out that .pdf file and stick it under all the windows of cars in a parking lot.

Holy shit.

I'm going to go do that!!

[viscousmemories]

Excellent article, godfry. Thanks for the link.

[Cool Hand]

Hmmm.....Mr. Legum uses a definition of "fact" that is closer to that used by lawyers than one by a disinterested reporter or an opinionated editorial writer. Many of his facts contain a large dose of spin and editorial beyond the actual facts themselves.

This one, for instance, is an absurd bit of editorializing and insinuating.

12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America," President Bush continued his monthlong vacation.

This "fact" implies that the President personally reviewed the memo, which may or may not be the case. It implies further that as a result of reading the memo, the President knew that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil was imminent and that he could have taken specific measures to prevent it, but did not. Even further, it implies that his vacationing was callous and reckless. The writer is essentially saying that Bush fiddled while New York burned.

I would retitle his article "100 Bits of Spin and 1 Bit of Irresponsible Hyperbole Unfitting of a Serious Journalist."

Cool Hand

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Cool Hand

This one, for instance, is an absurd bit of editorializing and insinuating.

12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America," President Bush continued his monthlong vacation.

This "fact" implies that the President personally reviewed the memo, which may or may not be the case. It implies further that as a result of reading the memo, the President knew that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil was imminent and that he could have taken specific measures to prevent it, but did not. Even further, it implies that his vacationing was callous and reckless. The writer is essentially saying that Bush fiddled while New York burned.

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't see how the insinuation in any way renders the statement itself non-factual.

I would retitle his article "100 Bits of Spin and 1 Bit of Irresponsible Hyperbole Unfitting of a Serious Journalist."

You start by saying "Many of his facts contain a large dose of spin and editorial beyond the actual facts themselves." but conclude that all 100 of the facts are "bits of spin"? That strikes me as closer to irresponsible hyperbole than that article. Assessment of the editorial nature aside, can you provide some evidence that any of the 100 items on that list are not facts?

[godfry n. glad]

Here's my opinion:

I think this is but a paltry statement of ineptitude and maliciousness of the current administration. I personally think that it is insufficient that this president should be elected out of office, he should be impeached and stand trial in the Senate for his actions as the commander-in-chief of this country.

This country is not now a democracy, it is a kleptocracy. Our government was stolen fair and square.

And, this, ladies and gentlemen, is what you get when you allow a drunken frat boy to steal the country and drive it into a ditch.

What did you expect? It's not like it's a surprise, is it? I mean, Molly laid it all out for us.

'Nuff said.

godfry

[livius drusus]

Number 7 struck me as shady. It equivocates, setting up Cheney's terrorists hung out in Iraq insinuations in counterpoint to the 9/11 commission's findings that the government of Iraq had no involvement in the WTC attacks. The two things are not the same at all. Besides, iirc Cheney's made actual statements about Iraq's was directly connected to 9/11. Legum was sloppy and went for the more famous quote even though it was basically a non sequitur.

[Cool Hand]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

You start by saying "Many of his facts contain a large dose of spin and editorial beyond the actual facts themselves." but conclude that all 100 of the facts are "bits of spin"? That strikes me as closer to irresponsible hyperbole than that article. Assessment of the editorial nature aside, can you provide some evidence that any of the 100 items on that list are not facts?

I don't mean that his "facts" do not have a basis in truth. I mean that his facts contain more than facts. They contain editorial spin. Here's an example.

1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.

For the sake of argument, I'll leave eveything else in that one "fact" alone and concentrate only on the writer's phrase "a war of choice." What is a "war of choice?" That isn't a factual term. It's editorial. Its meaning and truth value are open for debate. As such, it isn't a cold, hard fact. It's spin.

Even the writer's title is spin. By calling his 100 bullets "facts," he implies that the information contained in them is firmly established and indisputable. My example above is but one instance of that's not being the case. There are many others. Some of his "facts" contain more spin than others.

Here's another example:

15. The Bush Administration underfunded Nunn-Lugar--the program intended to keep the former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states--by $45.5 million.

The Bush Administration has not funded anything. Congress controls the purse strings of the United States. Congress and only Congress can fund any government project. Therefore, blaming the President for underfunding any item is disingenuous. It is more accurate and truthful to claim that Senator Kerry and his colleagues underfunded it.

How about the rhetorical buzzwords "former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy" and "hands of terrorists and rogue states?" Don't both phrases contain spin calculated to persuade the reader, rather than to inform her? Can you really categorize his statement as purely factual? He implies clearly that President Bush is at fault for not safeguarding the U.S. from a possible nuclear threat from terrorists or "rogue states." He presents this implication as fact. That is supposed to be a fact apart from his "one" opinion. Hell, I didn't go to journalism school, and even I can tell you that professional journalists with integrity do not present facts as facts in such a willful or reckless manner.

Do you see why I claim the writer's facts are spin?

Cool Hand

[Dingfod]

If it had been written south of the equator, would it spin in the opposite direction?

[livius drusus]

100 Facts and 1 Really Big Coriolis Effect.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

Number 7 struck me as shady. It equivocates, setting up Cheney's terrorists hung out in Iraq insinuations in counterpoint to the 9/11 commission's findings that the government of Iraq had no involvement in the WTC attacks. The two things are not the same at all. Besides, iirc Cheney's made actual statements about Iraq's was directly connected to 9/11. Legum was sloppy and went for the more famous quote even though it was basically a non sequitur.

I don't know. I think in context Cheney's saying Iraq was Al Queda's geographic base of operations was a deliberate attempt to imply a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Queda. So the commission's finding that there was in fact no operational relationship seems relevant to me.

[livius drusus]

He didn't say Al Qaeda, though; he just implied it, and in a slippery enough manner that he could weasel out of any direct comparisons. Unfortunately it's too late and I'm too lazy to look them up, but I know Cheney has made far more definitive claims about Saddam Hussein's connection to Al Qaeda and 9/11 than a reference to terrorists operating in the geographic area.

[Cool Hand]

VM,

How about this as containing more editorializing than fact?

"72. The Bush Administration gutted clean-air standards for aging power plants, resulting in at least 20,000 premature deaths each year."

Jeebus, this guy is disingenuous. It's clear that he intends his reader to conclude that the President is responsible for killing 20,000 people a year. That's not a fact at all. It's hyperbolic, rhetorical nonsense.

That's my beef with this guy and his piece. He claims it contains 100 facts and One Opinion. Instead, it contains bits and pieces of data with a basis in fact, heavily seasoned with liberal slant and disingenuous rhetoric, and one over-reaching hyperbolic theme presented as the only opinion in the whole piece. The guy is simply lying by claiming that his facts are facts and that his piece contains only one opinion. That's not journalism.

This guy isn't a reporter. He's a DNC presidential campaign operative.

Cool Hand

[viscousmemories]

Okay Cool Hand, I see what you're saying and I agree. I only meant that it seemed that despite the obvious slant of many of the statements I didn't see any that were plainly non-factual. But yeah I think the examples you've provided make your case well.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

Okay Cool Hand, I see what you're saying and I agree. I only meant that it seemed that despite the obvious slant of many of the statements I didn't see any that were plainly non-factual. But yeah I think the examples you've provided make your case well.

I vigorously disagree.

1. No fact exists independent of a theory/explanatory context. This is perfectly acceptable journalism.

2. Despite a couple of dubious choices of phrase, the facts are indeed facts and the opinion is thoroughly justifiable.

All blow-by-blow details to be supplied tomorrow (in my time zone, actually, later today).

[Cool Hand]

Originally Posted by Blake

I vigorously disagree.

1. No fact exists independent of a theory/explanatory context. This is perfectly acceptable journalism.

2. Despite a couple of dubious choices of phrase, the facts are indeed facts and the opinion is thoroughly justifiable.

All blow-by-blow details to be supplied tomorrow (in my time zone, actually, later today).

I look forward to your analysis and argument, Blake.

In the meantime, I have looked into our esteemed Mr. Legum. It seems that my lawyer detector was working earlier, as he is in fact a lawyer working as the Deputy Research Director for a liberal think tank called the Center for American Progress. He serves in the same capacity at the political action committee named American Progress Action Fund. He's not a journalist. He is a left-wing politico who has written many op-ed pieces published on the web.

One of Legum's sources--in fact the very first one he cites--is his own think tank's website. It is not the only time he cites that website as his fact source. In effect, he cites himself as the source for some of his facts. That is not an acceptable practice in journalism. So much for his disinterested facts.

Here's a link to the center's website introducing Mr. Legum.

Center for American Progress--Judd Legum

I don't begrudge Legum's right to speak his mind. I am irritated at his calling his thinly veiled rant "100 Facts and 1 Opinion," however. It is deliberately misleading. That he subtitles the piece "The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration" makes the matter even worse. His "facts," to the extent that nearly each of them contains editorial slant, are most definitely arguable. Legum simply undermines his own credibility by ostensibly claiming to be objective in the title.

I sense that any further discussion of this topic in this thread is going to revolve around the meaning of "fact" in this context.

If you grant Mr. Legum license to insert blatant left-wing editorials into his "facts," then you must also grant Bush and his right-wing supporters a similar license. Here's an example of the mess you invite by doing so.

"In 1994, One Year After The First World Trade Center Bombing, Kerry Proposed An Amendment To Cut Intelligence Budget By $6 Billion Across The Board."

That, too, is a fact, using Legum's apparent definition of "fact." It's unfortunate for Mr. Legum and Senator Kerry that it comes from the georgewbush.com website, but when you define facts as broadly as Legum does, you have to accept right wing editorializing as well. Otherwise, you are simply engaging in self-delusion.

It should be obvious that the above statement about Kerry's proposed amendment, when juxtaposed with the "one year after" clause, implies that Kerry is soft on terrorism. I submit that said statement is no less a "fact" than nearly any of Legum's 100 "facts."

Let's call a spade a spade, shall we? Legum's "facts" are partisan rhetoric.

Cool Hand

[ApostateAbe]

The biggest problem is that it cites news articles rather than the primary sources.

[Cool Hand]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

Here's my opinion:

This country is not now a democracy, it is a kleptocracy. Our government was stolen fair and square.

godfry

Godfry,

Get over it. This whole sour grapes thing from Democrats was beaten to death and beyond four years ago. Had the result been that Gore was determined to have carried the electoral college vote, then Republicans would have claimed Gore stole the election. Neither is a principled positition. They are equally partisan and biased.

Making outrageous claims like "our Government was stolen" and using rhetorical labels like "kleptocracy" seriously detract from your credibility in this argument. You could be James Carville for all I know. Your statements in this post sound indistinguishable from the kinds he makes. Carville is as objective as Rush Limbaugh. Is either likely to be a persuasive advocate for his cause in a thread like this?

Cool Hand

[ApostateAbe]

I think Cool Hand is right about this.

40. The Bush Administration turned a $236 billion surplus into a $422 billion deficit.

Sources: Fortune, dfw.com

Not a fact, and that is the disadvantage of citing secondary sources instead of the primary sources. There was never any surplus in the federal budget. What they really meant was a projected surplus, meaning the surplus that would be there after the economy kept going at the rate it went within a short period of time. But that is meaningless, since the year 2000 marked a sharp growth in investment, which was a bubble that popped directly afterward (thus the ".com" crash).

If you are going to have an article titled "100 Facts and 1 Opinion," then it pays to cite the primary sources that directly support your facts (government websites, scientific surveys, interviews, etc) and separate the biased spin and loaded words from the facts. Otherwise, I have to do it myself, and I don't have the time.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by Cool Hand

Godfry,

Get over it. This whole sour grapes thing from Democrats was beaten to death and beyond four years ago. Had the result been that Gore was determined to have carried the electoral college vote, then Republicans would have claimed Gore stole the election. Neither is a principled positition. They are equally partisan and biased.

Making outrageous claims like "our Government was stolen" and using rhetorical labels like "kleptocracy" seriously detract from your credibility in this argument. You could be James Carville for all I know. Your statements in this post sound indistinguishable from the kinds he makes. Carville is as objective as Rush Limbaugh. Is either likely to be a persuasive advocate for his cause in a thread like this?

Cool Hand

Cool Hand:

Well, Mr. Limbaugh, what makes you think I'm a Democrat?

If obvious truths about our government being stolen are "sour grapes" to you, I could just as well determine that you just don't give a shit about how our country is run. I believe that the fact that the Supreme Court acted outside its constitutional bounds and selected the current president is evidence that this country's highest offices are tainted. If you don't agree, then fine, don't. But it seems you don't care.

And... The last president we had was impeached and tried for not being forthright about an illicit blowjob. This president gets away with lying to the American public about involvement in the Middle East and siphoning off millions in tax revenues so that the rich can get richer. With your attitude, why do YOU even bother to vote....your vote doesn't count and you don't care.

Oh, wait... I think I see a trend, here....

godfry

[Blake]

Well, I've been too busy today to finish going through the 100 facts and writing my promised post, so I will have to beg patience until tomorrow.

In the meantime, I think all one really has to do to verify that the 2000 election was stolen is to read Bush v. Gore (which, incidentally, none of the five majority justices had the balls to sign), including the dissents, particularly while bearing in mind that it overturned the perfectly sensible decision of the Florida Supreme Court to recount all the votes. Their decision may not have perfectly followed the law, but it certainly was equitable. (See more handy context here.) However, there's plenty more evidence that it was stolen long before December 2000. (See also Tennessee.)

[Dingfod]

Hell, I didn't even care if the end result was Bush wins when all the votes were counted, I just wanted them to count all the fukken votes. I want my vote to be counted, you hear that, you stinking Republicans? escue me, I'm PWI,,, deriosuly.

[Cool Hand]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

Cool Hand:

Well, Mr. Limbaugh, what makes you think I'm a Democrat?

If obvious truths about our government being stolen are "sour grapes" to you, I could just as well determine that you just don't give a shit about how our country is run. I believe that the fact that the Supreme Court acted outside its constitutional bounds and selected the current president is evidence that this country's highest offices are tainted. If you don't agree, then fine, don't. But it seems you don't care.

And... The last president we had was impeached and tried for not being forthright about an illicit blowjob. This president gets away with lying to the American public about involvement in the Middle East and siphoning off millions in tax revenues so that the rich can get richer. With your attitude, why do YOU even bother to vote....your vote doesn't count and you don't care.

Oh, wait... I think I see a trend, here....

godfry

Heh heh. Well, I called you James Carville, so I suppose it's fair for you to call me Mr. Limbaugh.

For the record, I think Limbaugh is a big, fat blowhard. He does not present facts at all. If you understood how much I dislike the guy, you wouldn't be calling me him.

On the other hand, it is simply disingenuous to claim that the Supreme Court acted outside its bounds. The Florida Supreme Court proceedings were a sham, and the whole searching in vain for hanging and pregnant chads in order to count them as votes thing was a mockery of the voting by secret ballot.

I don't know how you can infer that I don't care. What I don't care for is how the Democrats made a big issue out of counting every vote when so many of the votes they wanted to count simply weren't clearly marked as votes one way or the other. Ambiguous votes aren't votes at all. If the voters are too stupid to mark their ballots clearly, then their "votes," such as they may have been, don't deserve to be counted. Let's not forget that the Democrats cherry picked the counties they wanted recounted so that they were heavily Democratic counties. I don't see how anyone could seriously believe that Democrats were interested in fairness. They were interested in winning, period.

The hanging and pregnant chads searches we all saw on TV were positively absurd. You can't invent comedy better than that. That's no way to select a President.

The Supreme Court didn't select the President. It overrruled the Florida Supreme Court's order upholding a trial court's ruling that the votes in certain counties must by recounted, well outside the deadline for certification. I simply don't see the corruption on the part of the Court that you seem to imply must have taken place. That's clearly what those who claim the Supreme Court stole the election from Albert Gore imply about the Court. The Court consists of appointees from Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents. At least two of the justices are widely and consistently regarded as swing voters. How anyone with much knowledge about how the Supreme Court works can claim that they conspired together to rob Gore of the election is beyond me. There simply was no such conspiracy and no rigging of their decision.

No matter how many times Democrats bring it up, or how they try to spin it, President Clinton's lying under oath in a federal case is clearly perjury. He was sanctioned by the court for it and he was disbarred in Arkansas for it too. He can no longer practice law in the state of Arkansas because of it. That should be something the former President is ashamed of, not a rallying cry for Democrats to whine about how mean and unfair Republicans are for bringing it up.

Calling President Bush's justifications for proceeding with the invasion of Iraq lies is stretching the definition of lies. Using alternative grounds for justification after the fact when the intelligence the White House relied on turned out to be incorrect does not mean that the President lied. It means his intelligence was incorrect. A lie requires that the teller of it have an intent to deceive his audience and that he know the matter to be untrue at the time of his utterance of the lie. No one can claim with certainty that Bush lied about WMDs. The most one can say is that he was mistaken.

The business about taxes isn't a lie either. The figures being tossed about during the campaign from both sides all have a basis in fact, but they are each presented in a light most favorable to the proponent of the figures. That doesn't make them lies.

I'm not sure what you think my attitude is. I don't buy the rhetoric the Democrats use to attack the President and to make him seem like a lying frat boy who is interested only in helping his cronies get richer. That's bullshit. This President may not be the smoothest or most effective President ever, but the ridiculous attempts to blame the economy on him and to blame him for bin Laden's still being at large, and for the Arab world's apparent hatred for our county on the President reflects a fundamental dishonesty on the part of those claiming such things, or at least a gross misunderstanding on their part of the degree of the President's influence on those matters and how much of the current state of affairs he inherited from previous Presidents.

By the way, President Clinton's being impeached simply means that he was tried by the Senate for an alleged offense. Impeachment and trial in this context are synonymous. He was in fact acquitted. Again, it's not truthful at all for Democrats to claim that President Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob. The fact is that he was impeached for lying under oath in a federal case pending in a federal court. His untruthful testimony had a very real, tangible, and substantial impact on his pending case brought by the plaintiff Paula Jones. As the President of the United States, and as an attorney, his lying in his sworn deposition was disgraceful and self-serving, demonstrated a lack of integrity on his part, and was rightfully treated as a criminal matter.

Oh, and the reason I think you must be a Democrat is that you are making the same arguments they make so stridently, some of them for four years now. Most of the party members have moved on, but the James Carvilles just won't let go of the "stolen election" rhetoric. It's nonsense.

Your claim that you see a trend here with regard to what you think my views are is misguided. I don't think you understand my political views at all. I'm hardly a right winger. On the other hand, I try to maintain a comfortable distance from the absurd left-wing demogoguery that has dominated the Kerry campaign. For what it's worth, I don't buy much of Bush's rhetoric either. That doesn't mean by default I believe what the Democrats keep saying about him, however.

Cool Hand

[Cool Hand]

Originally Posted by warrenly

Hell, I didn't even care if the end result was Bush wins when all the votes were counted, I just wanted them to count all the fukken votes. I want my vote to be counted, you hear that, you stinking Republicans? escue me, I'm PWI,,, deriosuly.

Count all the fucking votes? Warren, that obviously begs the question of what is a vote. That was the issue. So many of the "votes" were so ambiguously marked, if one could really claim they were marked at all, that discerning a clear intent on the part of the voter was impossible to make with any reasonable degree of certainty. Don't you remember the television images of the counters so diligently holding the ballots up to the light to try to determine whether there was a hanging chad, a pregnant chad, or any mark at all which could be construed as a vote for one or the other?

Come on, this wasn't a matter of counting all the votes. This was about the Democrats cherry picking some traditionally heavy Democratic counties and insisting that their official vote counts be artificially inflated by counting as votes for Gore what were rightfully declared to be non-votes. Furthermore, the deadline for certifying the official vote counts was extended and then passed again. The Florida Supreme Court tried to extend it again unlawfully by upholding the erroneous ruling of the trial court mandating an extension and a recount.

Cool Hand

[Cool Hand]

Originally Posted by Blake

Well, I've been too busy today to finish going through the 100 facts and writing my promised post, so I will have to beg patience until tomorrow.

No problem.

In the meantime, I think all one really has to do to verify that the 2000 election was stolen is to read Bush v. Gore (which, incidentally, none of the five majority justices had the balls to sign), including the dissents...[snipped for relevance to this point]

Actually, your comment about the justices not having the balls to sign the opinion is not accurate. The controlling decision in this case, the actual holding of the court, is a per curiam decision. That means "for the court." In such a decision, the entire court is deemed to be in agreement with it and the decision is "unsigned" simply because it is deemed to be the opinion of all the justices who were heard the case (I say that because occasionally one or more justices will recuse themselves, as Justice Thurgood Marshall did as a matter of course on all dealth penalty cases). Per curiam decisions carry more weight than those which are closely decided by a simple majority.

As odd as it may seem, even in per curiam decisions the justices may and sometimes do write separate concurring opinions, they may join other justices in their concurring opinions, or they may write separate dissenting opinions or join others in their dissents.

That is in fact what occurred in the Bush v. Gore case. Justices Scalia and Thomas joined Chief Justice Rehnquist in his concurring opinion, and Justices Ginsburg and Breyer joined Justice Stevens in his dissenting opinion. Furthermore, Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter each wrote separate dissenting opinions, and Justices Breyer, Stevens, and Ginsburg joined in Justice Souter's dissenting opinion.

The concurring and dissenting opinions are not law. They have the legal effect of mere commentary. The opinion of the court in this case is the per curiam decision. It is the only one which may be cited as binding precedent. Lawyers may certainly cite to the other opinions in briefs submitted to courts, but they must be identified as concurring or dissenting opinions so that it is clear that they are not the law of the land. Lawyers and judges refer to such opinions are being persuasive, not binding.

...particularly while bearing in mind that it overturned the perfectly sensible decision of the Florida Supreme Court to recount all the votes. Their decision may not have perfectly followed the law, but it certainly was equitable. (See more handy context here.) However, there's plenty more evidence that it was stolen long before December 2000. (See also Tennessee.)

Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? The matter before the Florida Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court was a legal matter, not an equitable one. It had to do with the trial court's authority under Florida law to order a recount of the votes in the manner in which it proposed and with the Florida Supreme Court's application of its own state's statute to the litigants' dispute in light of Constitution protections.

The Supreme Court held that the Florida Supreme Court effectively tried to circumvent the U.S. Constitution's prescribed method for determining how the President is elected, which can be found in Article II, Section 1, and that it violated the equal protection clause of Amendment XIV. The equal protection violation arose because the standards which the Florida Supreme Court endorsed for the recounters to use were not uniform from one county to the next, nor were they sufficiently spelled out so that they could be applied evenly and objectively within any given county. As the Supreme Court stated, "The problem inheres in the absence of specific standards to ensure its equal application. The formulation of uniform rules to determine intent based on these recurring circumstances is practicable and, we conclude, necessary." Florida had no such uniform rules in place to determine the voter's intent. Therefore, any determination that Voter X intended to vote for one candidate or the other was too arbitrary to pass constitutional muster.

Seven justices agreed with the holding that there were constitutional problems with how the Florida Supreme Court proposed to resolve the issue of the undercounted ballots and the voters' respective intents. The dissenters dissented primarily on the grounds that the Supreme Court should never have heard the case.

Cool Hand