Letters to the Editor
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It's Hard Work
being the Dilettante in Chief.
The only Game He Got is a toxic, lexically and syntactically mangled roster of equal parts Straw Man, Red Herring, False Dilemma, ad Hominem attack, and Wishful Thinking fallacies.
The man is pathetic.
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Straw Men, Indeed
I can't help thinking that, after all the times the Democrats have let Bush steamroll them, that "straw-men" isn't a bad characterization of his opposition.
But Bush was just getting started. He said he has a message for "people" who say that the blessings of liberty should only be "for one group of people": You -- whoever you are -- are "denying the basic rights to others."
Erm, denying rights to detainees is YOUR position, PotUS.
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Bubble Boy Fallacy
Tim, you rightly draw attention to Ms. Loven's article, but then you give in to the temptations of another rhetorical fallacy, The Bubble Boy Excuse:
Of course, it’s possible that the president doesn’t know. It’s hard to tell what gets into his bubble — or up to his “perch,” as he described it before he thought better of it today.
True, Bush’s words almost never match up with the reality on the ground, and increasingly don’t even jibe with what he has said before - but that is not an excuse, it’s just more examples of just how much the administration has been able to control the exact rules of the debate.
Now that at least one person in the mainstream press has proved that she can think critically and point out an obvious rhetorical ruse used by these guys to manipulate the debate - and one with such an evocative name - the Dem and left-of-center taking pundits must start invoking it at every opportunity. “But that’s a Straw-Man fallacy, Chris. No one on our side of the isle wants that…” should become as common a phrase on Hardball as “Some say…” is in Dear Leader’s speeches.
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safety in the north
Did you hear him talk of how the al Queida had been vanquished from that northern city and did he mention it was once under complete control of our allies the kurds, In the no-fly zone. What's with that if al-Quedia was bushies enemy why after 9/11 didn't he carpet bomb it, he never showed the slightest qualms of doing that to the Afganis damn the collateral damage
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Hey, did you guys see this?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11927856/
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Open and Honest Discussion?
Does this gentle?man even remember what honesty is? According to him Eyerak is a success story not a disaster in the making. As a so called born again Christian his moral values are among the lowest observable. Anybody who does not agree with him should be Guantanomoed, thou shalt not disobeye thy king, wouldn't that be nice? Democracy Bush style comes to damn close to Fascism: Do as I say, not as I do seems to be the Leitmotif! How could the United States deteriorate to this level?
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If he only had a brain...
It is almost tempting to recast all of them, and instead of calling Cheney "Darth Vader," dubbing him, the "Tin Man," Rumsfeld, the "Cowardly Lion," and Bush, of course, the "Scarecrow."
But that would mean I was an optimist and thought they had the potential for acquiring knowledge from self-reflection, as well as the capacity to change. Unfortunately, in this instance, I am not and I don't.
Instead, each reflects his fatal flaw back onto the rest of us-- their critics.
But maybe an SNL skit... after all, humor is one of the few weapons we still have at our disposal, and few things are sharper than a well-placed barb...
What if Dorothy's saga did not have a happy ending? Remember the two guys on the roof trying to outdo one another with their gory tales? Just imagine what Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion as Bush, Cheney and Rummy might do and say in that scenario!
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W's Audience
Enough: He's only speaking for his base, to support his crumbling base. He's speaking to neither the majority of Americans or any othr part of the world. Let's have and keep a little perspective here....