Monthly Archives: April 2012

General discussion

Bad opinions

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In the category of "general" today we have twenty examples of "bad opinions" from the "bad opinion generator" at "The Week."  No argument on their badness.  Only I question whether they're "opinions" or not.  Some, nay most, of them are horrible predictions:

"Albert Einstein (the little boy) will never amount to anything." 

Others are just likely false propositions:

"This virus [AIDS] is a pussycat."  

So maybe it would be helpful to sort these into categories: wrong predictions, wrong evaluations, false propositions, etc.  Categories make lives easier.  

Contradictions

How the Rich Saved Democracy

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Did Ross Douthat just jump the shark? Yes:

With the Republican primary season winding down, it’s time to celebrate two heroes of participatory democracy, two champions of the ordinary voter, two men who did everything in their power to make the ballot box matter as much as the fundraising circuit.

I speak, of course, of Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess.

Adelson is the casino billionaire whose super PAC donations enabled Newt Gingrich to upset Mitt Romney in South Carolina and give him a scare in Florida. Friess is the investment manager whose super PAC donations enabled Rick Santorum to prolong the race through February and March. Both men are controversial; both have been cited as prime examples of the corrupting influence of great wealth on our politics. But both did more than anyone else to prevent the Republican primary from turning into a straightforward “money talks” affair.

Adelson and Friess, in a paradoxical judo move, have somehow preserved popular democracy and prevented the Republican primary from turning into a "money talks" affair by giving sh*tloads of money to two candidates who, unlike Romney and his "sturdy donor base," can't raise money via popular methods. 

Argument from Inconsistency, Specious allegations of fallacy

Odd inferences

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I don't see the relation between "unarmed black teenager is shot under puzzling and racially charged circumstances" and "black people shoot each other all of the time," but apparently it's become quite a thing.  George Will has even jumped on the bandwagon (via Crooks and Liars):

WILL: Well, precisely. I mean, this is why we have what's called due process. We have institutions that are juries and grand juries and prosecutors who are supposed to look at the evidence and come up with the answer.

The root fact is, though, Mr. Jones, that about 150 black men are killed every week in this country. And 94 percent of them by other black men.

And this is — this episode has been forced into a particular narrative to make it a white-on-black when "The New York Times" rather infamously now decided that Mr. Zimmerman was a white Hispanic, a locution (ph) that was not — was rare until then, and I think they abandoned by Friday.

The funny thing is that Will's researchers must have looked up that little factoid.  It certainly does not clarify the puzzling circumstances around this case: namely, the fact that someone stalked a skittle-bearing teenager on his way home , described him as suspicious, shot him, and walked away claiming, among other things, that he stood his ever moving and stalking ground.  I don't know what happened, it seems odd.

But I suppose the implication is that one is inconsistent if one isn't shrieking with rage over the other murders.  Which people are, anyway. 

Here's a question.  If one hasn't remarked on the 150 or so black men who die every week violently, is one enjoined from being outraged by the Trayvon Martin slaying?