DontEatTheFigs
Rookie
- Jan 29, 2009
- 5
- 1
- 0
- Banned
- #1
FALLACIES ABOUT POLITICS
When I began posting in these forums, I found myself shooting down the same fallacies over and over and over. So I began writing down my responses, so I could just cut and paste the answers to these bogus assertions. Here are the most popular whoppers.
Clinton ignored the terrorism problem!....Nope. He repeatedly ordered his generals to come up with an op plan to attack al-Qaida. After a number of refusals they finally gave in. In the resultant air strike, Clinton came closer to nailing bin Laden than Bush ever did.
Democrats are the party of racism!...Nope. That might have been true half a century ago, but when LBJ committed the Democratic party to civil rights, the southern racists quit the Democratic party and joined the GOP. They are now the GOP base, in fact.
Global warming is a hoax!...Nope. If it is a hoax, then known leftists like Bush, Schwarzenegger, Exxon and Fox are part of the evil plot, because they all admitted Gore had been right all along. And if the warming isnt bad enough, air pollution kills two million people prematurely each year, around the world.
We should leave health care alone because we have the best system in the world!...Not even close. Our system is inefficient, costs twice as much per capita, and doesnt cover 40-50 million people. The market had its chance and failed; the only reason we havent fixed it yet is the illegal insurance oligopoly, their lobbyists, and their paid hoors on Capitol Hill. But this time they wont have businesses on their side.
America wants government off their backs!...Hogwash. Fritz Hollings told a story about a Korean War veteran who went to college on the GI Bill. He bought his house with an FHA loan. His kids were born in a VA hospital. He started a business with an SBA loan. He got water from the TVA and then from a project funded by the EPA. The mans children participated in the school lunch program and went to college on government-guaranteed student loans. His parents farm got its electricity from the REA and had its soil tested by the USDA. His fathers life was saved by a drug developed by the NIH, and the family was saved from financial ruin by Medicare. When the man's house was damaged by floods, he drove on the interstate to an Amtrak station and took a train to Washington to apply for disaster relief. Then one day, he got angry about taxes and federal spending and wrote a letter to his congressman demanding that the government get off his back!
The Second Amendment asserts that anyone can have a gun!...Sorry. You need to read all the Constitution, including Article II, which states that a militia only includes people taking orders from the president. The Supreme Court recently ruled that that applies to anyone, rather than just the National Guard, but they have the power to do that under Amendment Nine, not Amendment Two.
FALLACIES ABOUT GAYS
Gays will disrupt the military!...Wrong! Theyre already in --you just dont know it. We heard this disruption argument when Truman integrated the army half a century ago, and it proved itself to be bogus. Right now the military has so much trouble recruiting and retaining, that they are putting guns in the hands of drug addicts, criminals and the mentally challenged --you really think that is less dangerous than recruiting gays who are actually qualified to serve?
Gays, by trying to join together in the institution of marriage like everyone else, are actually trying to destroy the institution of marriage!...Yeah, this one is so stupid that it pretty much refutes itself.
Government must stay out of the civil union issue!...Impossible. There are too many laws and regulations on the books, that depend on marital status. Benefits are the big issue, but there are also medical decisions, child care and custody, adoption, tax liability, bankruptcy, prenups and alimony, property, wills, condo laws, the works. Government is already involved whether you like it or not.
FALLACIES ABOUT ECONOMICS
FDR botched the Depression!....Nope. Fox News and two college professors have been peddling this rubbish. But even Republicans like Greenspan and Milton Friedman admit FDR saved the country by saving the banks. When he cranked up the New Deal policies, unemployment dropped like a rock; conservatives pressured him to cool it, and unemployment went up again; he cranked up the policies again, and unemployment dropped again.
Unemployment was not steady during the Depression. It dropped from 25 percent to 14 percent when FDR launched the New Deal. It spiked back upwards when conservatives pressured FDR to back off on the New Deal in 1937. When he stepped on the gas again, unemployment dropped from 20 percent to 4.
It was the Republicans who created the boom in the 1990s!...Wrong. Clinton did it with a stimulus package which every Republican opposed.
Democrats caused the financial crash!...Nope. The crash was caused by 30 years of Republican deregulation, culminating in Bushs effort to destroy the SEC, fire whistleblowers, kowtow to lobbyists. Even leading Republicans admitted it.
FALLACIES ABOUT BUSH
Here are a few of my favorites:
There were no attacks on U.S. soil, on Bushs watch!....Nice try, no cigar. First of all, 911 counts, because he ignored warnings. Second, terror attacks killed thousands of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians in Iraq , and many others in terror attacks around the world. The notion that only U.S. civilians inside the 50 states count, is absurd. Its cherry picking.
Anyone who questions Bushs actions is a traitor who doesnt support the troops!...Wrong! Holding the president accountable isnt just a right, its a responsibility. Especially an obvious crook like the last one. And any time Obama comes within a hundred yards of a military issue, the caterwauling starts again -- Obama is disrespecting the troops!! More nonsense.
Bush didnt do anything to warrant impeachment!...Wrong! He didnt do anything as dreadful as, say, oral sex, but, even setting aside the innumerable violations of federal law such as the illegal exposure of Valerie Plame, Bush did violate the first three Articles of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Read on:
Article I: violating Congresss prerogatives by lying to them to get us into a war, blackmailing them into funding unnecessary troop deployments, defying subpoenas, using illegal signing statements and administrative actions,
Article II: perverting the executive branch into a partisan political weapon, illegally prosecuting Democratic politicians and firing Democratic attorneys, directing government offices to spread dishonest political propaganda, failing to uphold Article II responsibilities by keeping or financial system safe or enforcing product safety laws, sending thugs to disrupt officials from counting votes while screaming dont count the votes!, and trying to convert the Vice Presidency into a fourth branch of government with no oversight.
Article III: violating the prerogatives of the courts by defying orders to preserve emails and concealing evidence.
Bill of Rights: the Big Ten dont just apply to U.S. citizens. So that brings us to illegal spying and secret prisons and torture, and keeping innocent people behind bars indefinitely. So much for Republican values.
When I began posting in these forums, I found myself shooting down the same fallacies over and over and over. So I began writing down my responses, so I could just cut and paste the answers to these bogus assertions. Here are the most popular whoppers.
Clinton ignored the terrorism problem!....Nope. He repeatedly ordered his generals to come up with an op plan to attack al-Qaida. After a number of refusals they finally gave in. In the resultant air strike, Clinton came closer to nailing bin Laden than Bush ever did.
Democrats are the party of racism!...Nope. That might have been true half a century ago, but when LBJ committed the Democratic party to civil rights, the southern racists quit the Democratic party and joined the GOP. They are now the GOP base, in fact.
Global warming is a hoax!...Nope. If it is a hoax, then known leftists like Bush, Schwarzenegger, Exxon and Fox are part of the evil plot, because they all admitted Gore had been right all along. And if the warming isnt bad enough, air pollution kills two million people prematurely each year, around the world.
We should leave health care alone because we have the best system in the world!...Not even close. Our system is inefficient, costs twice as much per capita, and doesnt cover 40-50 million people. The market had its chance and failed; the only reason we havent fixed it yet is the illegal insurance oligopoly, their lobbyists, and their paid hoors on Capitol Hill. But this time they wont have businesses on their side.
America wants government off their backs!...Hogwash. Fritz Hollings told a story about a Korean War veteran who went to college on the GI Bill. He bought his house with an FHA loan. His kids were born in a VA hospital. He started a business with an SBA loan. He got water from the TVA and then from a project funded by the EPA. The mans children participated in the school lunch program and went to college on government-guaranteed student loans. His parents farm got its electricity from the REA and had its soil tested by the USDA. His fathers life was saved by a drug developed by the NIH, and the family was saved from financial ruin by Medicare. When the man's house was damaged by floods, he drove on the interstate to an Amtrak station and took a train to Washington to apply for disaster relief. Then one day, he got angry about taxes and federal spending and wrote a letter to his congressman demanding that the government get off his back!
The Second Amendment asserts that anyone can have a gun!...Sorry. You need to read all the Constitution, including Article II, which states that a militia only includes people taking orders from the president. The Supreme Court recently ruled that that applies to anyone, rather than just the National Guard, but they have the power to do that under Amendment Nine, not Amendment Two.
FALLACIES ABOUT GAYS
Gays will disrupt the military!...Wrong! Theyre already in --you just dont know it. We heard this disruption argument when Truman integrated the army half a century ago, and it proved itself to be bogus. Right now the military has so much trouble recruiting and retaining, that they are putting guns in the hands of drug addicts, criminals and the mentally challenged --you really think that is less dangerous than recruiting gays who are actually qualified to serve?
Gays, by trying to join together in the institution of marriage like everyone else, are actually trying to destroy the institution of marriage!...Yeah, this one is so stupid that it pretty much refutes itself.
Government must stay out of the civil union issue!...Impossible. There are too many laws and regulations on the books, that depend on marital status. Benefits are the big issue, but there are also medical decisions, child care and custody, adoption, tax liability, bankruptcy, prenups and alimony, property, wills, condo laws, the works. Government is already involved whether you like it or not.
FALLACIES ABOUT ECONOMICS
FDR botched the Depression!....Nope. Fox News and two college professors have been peddling this rubbish. But even Republicans like Greenspan and Milton Friedman admit FDR saved the country by saving the banks. When he cranked up the New Deal policies, unemployment dropped like a rock; conservatives pressured him to cool it, and unemployment went up again; he cranked up the policies again, and unemployment dropped again.
Unemployment was not steady during the Depression. It dropped from 25 percent to 14 percent when FDR launched the New Deal. It spiked back upwards when conservatives pressured FDR to back off on the New Deal in 1937. When he stepped on the gas again, unemployment dropped from 20 percent to 4.
It was the Republicans who created the boom in the 1990s!...Wrong. Clinton did it with a stimulus package which every Republican opposed.
Democrats caused the financial crash!...Nope. The crash was caused by 30 years of Republican deregulation, culminating in Bushs effort to destroy the SEC, fire whistleblowers, kowtow to lobbyists. Even leading Republicans admitted it.
FALLACIES ABOUT BUSH
Here are a few of my favorites:
There were no attacks on U.S. soil, on Bushs watch!....Nice try, no cigar. First of all, 911 counts, because he ignored warnings. Second, terror attacks killed thousands of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians in Iraq , and many others in terror attacks around the world. The notion that only U.S. civilians inside the 50 states count, is absurd. Its cherry picking.
Anyone who questions Bushs actions is a traitor who doesnt support the troops!...Wrong! Holding the president accountable isnt just a right, its a responsibility. Especially an obvious crook like the last one. And any time Obama comes within a hundred yards of a military issue, the caterwauling starts again -- Obama is disrespecting the troops!! More nonsense.
Bush didnt do anything to warrant impeachment!...Wrong! He didnt do anything as dreadful as, say, oral sex, but, even setting aside the innumerable violations of federal law such as the illegal exposure of Valerie Plame, Bush did violate the first three Articles of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Read on:
Article I: violating Congresss prerogatives by lying to them to get us into a war, blackmailing them into funding unnecessary troop deployments, defying subpoenas, using illegal signing statements and administrative actions,
Article II: perverting the executive branch into a partisan political weapon, illegally prosecuting Democratic politicians and firing Democratic attorneys, directing government offices to spread dishonest political propaganda, failing to uphold Article II responsibilities by keeping or financial system safe or enforcing product safety laws, sending thugs to disrupt officials from counting votes while screaming dont count the votes!, and trying to convert the Vice Presidency into a fourth branch of government with no oversight.
Article III: violating the prerogatives of the courts by defying orders to preserve emails and concealing evidence.
Bill of Rights: the Big Ten dont just apply to U.S. citizens. So that brings us to illegal spying and secret prisons and torture, and keeping innocent people behind bars indefinitely. So much for Republican values.
