Selling an Ice Pop to an Eskimo

When in doubt, spend spend spend...

Misstatement of the Union - FactCheck.org

Misstatement of the Union - FactCheck.org

The President left out a few things when surveying the State of the Nation:

He proudly spoke of "writing a new chapter in the story of self-government" in Iraq and Afghanistan and said the number of democracies in the world is growing. He failed to mention that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan yet qualify as democracies according to the very group whose statistics he cited.

Bush called for Congress to pass a line-item veto, failing to mention that the Supreme Court struck down a line-item veto as unconstitutional in 1998. Bills now in Congress would propose a Constitutional amendment, but none have shown signs of life.

The President said the economy gained 4.6 million jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, failing to note that it had lost 2.6 million jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office. The net gain since Bush took office is just a little more than 2 million.

He talked of cutting spending, but only "non-security discretionary spending." Actually, total federal spending has increased 42 percent since Bush took office.

He spoke of being "on track" to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009. But the deficit is increasing this year, and according to the Congressional Budget Office it will decline by considerably less than half even if Bush's tax cuts are allowed to lapse.

Bush spoke of a "goal" of cutting dependence on Middle Eastern oil, failing to mention that US dependence on imported oil and petroleum products increased substantially during his first five years in office, reaching 60 per cent of consumption last year.

I missed the SOTU speech, myself. "I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob." Heh.

Big Surprise

Link:

WASHINGTON - The U.S. is at great risk for more terrorist attacks because Congress and the White House have failed to enact several strong security measures, members of the former Sept. 11 commission said Sunday.

"It's not a priority for the government right now," said the former chairman, Thomas Kean, ahead of the group's release of a report Monday assessing how well its recommendations have been followed.

"More than four years after 9/11 ... people are not paying attention," the former Republican governor of New Jersey said. "God help us if we have another attack."

There should be a poll. Anyone that didn't already think this 1 year ago shouldn't get to vote in 2006 and 2008. Just KIDDING.

Occasional Logic - Appeal to Authority

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy that follows a form similar to such:

• Person A is proposed to be an authority on Subject X.
  
• Person A makes a statment (Claim Z) that is about Subject X.
  
• Therefore, Claim Z is true.
  

The fallacy occurs when, in fact, Person A is not an authority on Subject X at all.

For example:

Joe: "As far as mechanical design goes, Ford is was better than Chevy."
Bill: "Why do you say that?"
Joe: "Phil Smith said so in an article I saw, and he's a lead engineer at NASA."
Bill: "But does he even know anything about cars?"
Joe: "No idea.. but he's an engineer at NASA and I believe him."

Phil Smith is proposed to be an authority on the subject of automotive engineering. In reality, Phil Smith is an engineer that specializes in fluid dynamics. He drives a Lexus and has nothing to do with mechanical design or the auto industry. As a matter of fact, he's never even performed his own oil change. He's far from an authority on automotive design.

Of course, there are many instances where a real authority on a subject matter can be taken seriously. In the example I stated above, if Phil Smith was actually a mechanical engineer and a veteran of the automotive industry, his claims might be taken much more seriously. Either way, the fact of the matter is that Joe's argument didn't rely on Phil Smith's background at all--it relied solely on his title as a "lead engineer at NASA". And that's an Appeal to Authority.

Common appeals to authority happen every day on television. For example, the "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV..." line. In this classic example of an Appeal to Authority, an actor that knows nothing about medicine sponsors a product. The producers of the commercial hope that you will confuse the famous face from TV with a real medical expert.

As long as you don't run with scissors....

Now I can once again feel free to clip my nails on a Boeing. Hooray!

But seriously, I think the ridiculously paranoid practice of not allowing things like screwdrivers and nail clippers on airplanes needed to be changed. As well put by one of the union representatives in the article, "A ballpoint pen in the hands of a terrorist is a weapon."

At the same time, critics of the revised security plan are unhappy:

"I have not spoken to a flight attendant at any airline that isn't outraged by this," said Thom McDaniel, president of Southwest Airlines flight attendants' union, Transport Workers Local 556. "They want to focus more on explosives, but they're not even mentioning that the biggest threat to commercial aviation right now is still the fact that most cargo is not screened."

He's got a good point.

Warm Day

Relatively, at least. Today hit a high of 67, which is pretty decent for the end of November. Although it isn't from today, here's a weekend pic of Micah enjoying some sunshine.


Not a bad shot considering it came from my cellphone.

Occasional Logic - Ad Hominem

I'm going to be posting tidbits of logic now and then under the title of Occasional Logic. I was going to call it Daily Logic, but then I'd have to commit to doing it every day, which I don't know if I'll be able to do. Plus, I'd probably run out of logic if I did it every day. (Pun intended.)

I'll be focusing on the common fallacies, at least for now. I'll be getting most of my info from wikipedia and adding some things here and there. Here's today's bit:

Ad Hominem

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin, literally "argument to the man") or attacking the messenger, is a logical fallacy that involves replying to an argument or assertion by attacking the person presenting the argument or assertion rather than the argument itself.

A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form:

A makes claim B;
there is something objectionable about A,
therefore claim B is false.


Here's my own example:

Joe: "...and therefore I believe the tires on your car are faulty."
Bill: "Well of course you'd think that, you work for a different tire company!"
Joe: "What does that matter? What about the reasons I gave you?"
Bill: "Your reasons don't count, you work for the competitor so you have to say my tires are faulty."

The fact that Joe works for another tire company shouldn't really come into play. If his arguments are sound then they should be able to stand on their own. In this case, Bill is automatically disregarding any possible argument made by Joe simply because of his employment. Argumentum Ad Hominem.

Feeling Safer Yet?

I think I'm going to start driving whenever I travel:

Nearly all of the cargo in the nation's aviation system goes unchecked for explosives, and policies aimed at thwarting cargo bombs on passenger planes are flawed, according to a government report due out Wednesday.

Terrorists could foil the government's strategy for keeping bombs out of cargo holds by meeting a few basic requirements that would allow them to put an explosives-laden package on a jet, the Government Accountability Office said.

I can understand how many people think going to Iraq was a good idea. I don't agree -- but I can understand their point of view. What I can't understand how anyone can feel that it makes us safer in contrast to focusing on issues like the above.

Hypothetically, say we found piles and piles of WMDs in Iraq and the whole world was overjoyed with our insistence of going there (which, by the way, I think we're all aware didn't happen. What do you do first? Prod the very enemy that you feel threatened by -- or put up a proper defense against their most threatened activities?

I always hear the weak argument "well you're never going to be able to totally protect yourself from terrorists, so you need to go after them". To me, that gets nullified by the opposite weak argument "well you're never going to be able to go out and catch all the terrorists, so you need to protect yourself at home".

Chicken or the egg. And all the while everyone else gets turned into an omelet.

Umm... We'll get back to you on that one...

Via statements made earlier this month in Panama, the prez made it very clear: "We Do Not Torture". I guess he didn't get the memo:

The US Senate voted 90-9 early last month to attach an amendment authored by Republican Senator John McCain to a defense spending bill that would prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in US custody. But the White House has threatened to veto the measure and has lobbied senators to have the language removed or modified to allow an exemption for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Not only is torture inhumane, but it generally doesn't work. Ask McCain himself, he knows firsthand.

Why do they have to attach things like this to other bills? Can't they vote separately for a spending bill and a no-torture bill? It should be "one issue, one vote".

SleepyCatBlogging

Micah is sleepy while I build the new blog. (It's pronounced "Mee'-kah" -- I'm aware that it isn't exactly phonetically correct, but what can you do.)