stevendedalus stevendedalus

Right Wing Gems

▼

Right Wing Gems

from JoeUser Forums

Representative S. King of Iowa.“My wife lives here with me, and I can tell you … she’s at far greater risk being in Washington, D.C., than the average civilian in Iraq.” 

Bill O’Reilly said that if he were president of Iraq, he would run it “just like Saddam did.” And as President of Iraq, violation of curfew, he said, “You’re on the street” [after curfew] “you’re dead. … shot between the eyes.”

Neal Cavuto on NSA surveillance: “Yes, it is not great to necessarily hear they’re collecting our phone records, but it’s a heck of a lot better than collecting our remains.”

Cheney: “There’s no question that at times” [the government] has overdone it” [keeping secrets].

Coulter: Asked about word association for Murtha, she responded, “fragging.” meaning in soldiers’ lexicon — killing one’s commander.

Tony Snow: Claims Bush never connected Saddam with 9/11!

Source: The Progressive [naturally]


Copyright © 2006 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: July, 29, 2006.

http://stevendedalus.joeuser.com

politics
12,499 views 27 replies
Reply #26 from PolMach Forums Top

DC - 35.8 per 100,000 source: FBI stats Link
Baghdad - 95 per 100,000 source: Brookings Institute Link
US - 5.5 per 100,000 source FBI stats: Link
Iraq - 27.5 per 100,000. source: King based on Pentagon statistics


I don't agree it was an attempt to mislead for this reason and this reason alone, we have troops all over Iraq, not just in Baghdad, and the point he was making (and made very well) is that you're more likely to lose your life due to violence in DC than you are in Iraq, period.


You're still comparing two totally different populations (urban area with whole country). By your analogy, you should still be comparing Iraq with the US and not DC. To put it linearly, you say it should be counted as all of Iraq based on the fact that we have "troops all over Iraq." But then you are comparing it with a person being killed in one urban area, DC. But we don't just have citizens in DC, we have citizens over the whole US (just as we have troops all over Iraq). Therefore, since we have troops over a whole country in Iraq, we should compare it to the citizens in the whole country of the US.

And it's definitely not confusing or misleading in my mind. Let's break down the whole argument for you. I realized that the Rep was talking about two different scales, researched the full statistics with references to put the proper scales together, posted them in a linear fashion comparing a capitol with a capitol and a country with a country and left it at that. In SAT form, this is what I wrote:

DC citizen is to Baghdad citizen as Iraq citizen is to the US citizen (i.e. citizens of city to city vs country to country).

Let's make a simpler analogy to drive the point home. Imagine you are in a school district (A) that has an average GPA of 3.6. The GPA for all students in the state (B) is 2.6. A 2nd state (Y) has a GPA of 3.1. However, there is one district (Z) with a GPA of 2.0. By King's analogy (and your agreement), you would say that state B has a better education system because district A has a greater GPA than state Y! That's why it's important to ensure that the scales are equivalent.
Reply #27 from PolMach Forums Top
I didn't find his use of the English language confusing.


First, I'd like to note that I never say that it's a confusing use of the English language (see reply 5 ).

It's not meant to be confusing. As a person with a degree in the applied sciences it's easy for me to read through what Cheney is saying and comprehend what he is saying. The tactic of conflating here is not meant to be an exercise in reading comprehension. It is, however, an exercise in oral comprehension. When a person is making oral statements, you don't see the punctuation. You do, however, hear the sentences as they are strung together. The goal is to juxtapose two separate ideas in order to push one agenda. I'm sure you could imagine a threshold where a certain proportion of the population will then indeed mix the message as they listen to the interview. After all:

Reply #9 By: Moderator Draginol - 7/30/2006 12:10:42 PM


If people are getting confused then one should put the blame on our poor public schools for not teaching basic reading comprehension to students.


It's then a matter of those people using word of mouth to people who did not hear or read the original text to forward along the 'mixed' message. As Dr Guy says and I agreed,
In the end, that is what politicians are best at. All of them.
. An interesting study of how word of mouth phenomenem occur can be found in Gladwell's "The Tipping Point."
ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.