Logical Fallacies to be avoided in argument

From Sense of Events

Purdue: Logical vocabulary, logical fallacies, and other types of logos-based reasoning.
"Fallacies are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others."

Links to this post

  Fight the Power: The System  

 

  Everything Built on the Foundation of the Constitution

 

  Canadian Political Consultant / Commentator Warren Kinsella  

 

  Harpo & Co. - Fight the Power - Blogger

Republicans and Blacks

Thomas Sowell

 

"Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some time -- and, above all, some serious thought -- into how to go about doing it.

"Too many Republicans seem to think that the way to "reach out" is to offer blacks and other minorities what the Democrats are offering them. Some have even suggested that the channels to use are organizations like the NAACP and black "leaders" like Jesse Jackson -- that is, people tied irrevocably to the Democrats.

"Voters who want what the Democrats offer can get it from the Democrats. Why should they vote for Republicans who act like make-believe Democrats?

"Yet there are issues where Republicans have a big advantage over Democrats -- if they will use that advantage. But an advantage that you don't use might as well not exist." ... 

Distinguished person of the week

Jennifer Rubin

 

... "President Obama went to the Holy See hoping some papal popularity would rub off on him. But Pope Francis’s humility and pious devotion to his flock aren’t transferable, especially to a president so hostile to religious liberty back home. The White House made it seem like a meeting the DNC — lots of talk of inequality, spun the White House. The Vatican press office was having none of it and issued the following (making it seem more like oral argument at the Hobby Lobby case):" ...

Obamacare is an American Catastrophe

Warning Signs

 

... "A March 28 Associated Press poll revealed that only 26% of Americans support Obamacare, a point less than December 2013 and January 2014.

"The Republicans in the House of Representatives have voted more than 60 times to repeal or dismantle Obamacare. The Senate, namely Harry Reid its Majority Leader, has killed all efforts to address what is clearly a national catastrophe. When passed in 2009, not one Republican member of Congress voted for it. When it was passed, then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, famously said they had to pass the 2,700 page act in order to find out what was in it.

 

"In 2010, voters gave power in the House to Republicans, but the Senate remained under Democrat control." ... 

Valerie Jarrett Admits Pushing Obamacare to Hollywood Writers (Video)

The Gateway Pundit
"That’s why it’s called the Democrat-Media Complex. "White House advisor Valerie Jarrett is out in Los Angeles this week meeting with television and movie producers to encourage them to include favorable Obamacare mentions in their scripts." 

 

... “ 'You name it,” said Jarrett. “That’s part of why I’m in L.A. I’m meeting with writers of various TV shows and movies to try to get it into the scripts.” When Jarrett says “it into the scripts,” she’s referring to getting references to Obamacare, the president’s signature legislation, into the scripts of TV shows and movies."

White House looks to regulate cow flatulence as part of climate agenda

When flatulence is outlawed, only outlaws will have flatulence.

Daily Caller

"As part of its plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama administration is targeting the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions in their operations.

"This comes despite falling methane emission levels across the economy since 1990.

"The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020." (This would be laughable if not for this administration and it's oppressive regulations)
....

"Some of these methane emissions come from cow flatulence, exhaling and belching — other livestock animals release methane as well.

"“Cows emit a massive amount of methane through belching, with a lesser amount through flatulence,” according to How Stuff Works. “Statistics vary regarding how much methane the average dairy cow expels. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters a day…

Cow Flatulence Tax

2009: Op-Ed: Taxing Cow Flatulence is Butt of Many a Joke   'It has to be the most outlandish idea internalized then externalized so far, and is bound to be the butt of many jokes. A flat flatulence tax per head (excuse me, per petute) on dairy and beef cattle. It’s a hoot when cows toot from their petutes.

 

"G’head. Laugh. And while you’re laughing, make up your own jokes.

They’re proposing a tax of $50 per dairy cow; $35 per beef cow. Ah. You noticed the difference. Dairy cows are corn-fed and they’re allergic to corn, ergo more noxious methane expelled into the air. 

Russia May Threaten the Baltics but Estonia Knows How to Fight Back

The Foreign Policy Initiative

 "As president of a small Baltic republic that was occupied by the Soviet Union for more than four decades, Estonia’s Toomas Hendrik Ilves is all too familiar with the way Russia has treated its neighbors. For years he’s warned about the revanchist agenda and aggressive behavior of Russian President Vladimir Putin. And now that the world has seen the Kremlin’s reckless, ruthless actions in Ukraine and Crimea, influential leaders in the respectable salons of Washington, Brussels and other European capitals are starting to pay attention. Or, at least, they should be.

"What’s most threatening about Russia’s behavior, in Ilves’s view, is that “the old rules don’t apply.” But it should not have taken the invasion of Crimea to get that message across. The Helsinki Accords of 1975 were supposed to have established the territorial integrity of European nations, he says, and since Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia it’s been clear that Putin would just ignore them when he saw fit."

Latinos Teach Vital Lesson to Obama, Democrats: Lying Has Consequences!

Voice of Lillpop    "Obama’s wanton, wicked aversion to truth has even  alienated Latinos, until now one of the most loyal constituencies of the Democrat Party, owing to Obama’s  irresponsible flaunting of the rule of law, US sovereignty, US borders, and disregard for the welfare and well-being of American citizens, in deference to illegal aliens.

"As reported at the reference, Obama’s lying ways have boomeranged against the president and his Marxist health-care scam known as Obamacare:"

....Latinos, who are younger on average than the population as a whole and who make up more than 60 percent of the uninsured in California, will need to sign up for insurance in the state in droves in order to offset the costs of sicker, older people. The same holds true around the country: A third of all non-elderly, uninsured Americans are Latino, nearly 16 million in total.

The Odious Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid

Peter Wehner  "MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough interviewed Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, asking him about the charge by Majority Leader Harry Reid that the conservative philanthropist David Koch is “un-American.” Scarborough asked Schumer whether he associated himself with Reid’s statement.

DonkeyHotey

"Senator Schumer began his answer by ducking and weaving, shifting attention from Reid’s claim to Schumer’s disagreement with the Kochs’ preferred policies.
....
"“ 'But, senator, can’t we have a disagreement about how charity is funded without calling somebody un-American?” Scarborough countered. He continued to press Schumer to answer his question. “Do you think David Koch is un-American?”
....
"I wonder if people quite appreciate how disgusting this all is. Here we have two Democratic senators labeling a private citizen as being “un-American” because that citizen is vocally advocating public policies they disagree with."
....
"Senators Reid and Schumer, small and mean men, are trying to usher in a new age of unreason. This is no time for those who oppose them to keep silent. Because we cannot escape responsibility for the result."
Emphasis added, TD

Condi Rice Blasts Obama on Weakness, Leadership

....

STEPHEN F. HAYES  "Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama’s ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world."
"Citing Bashar al Assad’s slaughter in Syria, Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, al Qaeda’s triumphant return to Fallujah, Iraq, and China’s nationalist fervor, she concluded: “When America steps back and there is a vacuum, trouble will fill that vacuum.”

 

"Rice – measured in tone, but very tough on substance – excoriated Obama administration policies without ever mentioning the president by name. She mocked the naïve hope that “international norms” would fill the vacuum left by U.S. retreat and blasted the president for hiding behind the weariness of the public.

One Doctor’s Viral Letter Exposes the Harrowing Reality of Obamacare’s ‘War Against Doctors’

"One doctor's viral letter exposes the harrowing Reality of Obamacare’s ‘War Against Doctors’ One voice speaking for all and it's terrifying."   Lucianne

Independent Journal Review   "In an address to the House on Wednesday, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks read aloud a letter sent to him by Dr. Marlin Gill of Decatur. The letter holds nothing back while detailing the excessive costs and regulations that Dr. Gill calls Obamacare’s “war against doctors.' ”  More here.

Dear Congressman Brooks,
 
As a practicing family physician, I plead for help against what I can best characterize as Washington’s war against doctors.
 
The medical profession has never before remotely approached today’s stress, work hours, wasted costs, decreased efficiency, and declining ability to focus on patient care.
 
In our community alone, at least 6 doctors have left patient care for administrative positions, to start a concierge practice, or retire altogether.
 
Doctors are smothered by destructive regulations that add costs, raise our overhead and ‘gum up the works,’ making patient treatment slower and less efficient, thus forcing doctors to focus on things other than patient care and reduce the number of patients we can help each day.
 
I spend more time at work than at any time in my 27 years of practice and more of that time is spent on administrative tasks and entering useless data into a computer rather than helping sick patients.
 
Doctors have been forced by ill-informed bureaucrats to implement electronic medical records (“EMR”) that, in our four doctor practice, costs well over $100,000 plus continuing yearly operational costs . . . all of which does not help take care of one patient while driving up the cost of every patient’s health care.
 
Washington’s electronic medical records requirement makes our medical practice much slower and less efficient, forcing our doctors to treat fewer patients per day than we did before the EMR mandate.
 
To make matters worse, Washington forces doctors to demonstrate ‘meaningful use’ of EMR or risk not being fully paid for the help we give.
 
In addition to the electronic medical records burden, we face a mandate to use the ICD-10  coding system, a new set of reimbursement diagnosis codes.
 
The current ICD-9 coding system uses roughly 13,000 codes. The new ICD-10 coding system uses a staggering 70,000 new and completely different codes, thus dramatically slowing doctors down due to the unnecessary complexity and sheer numbers of codes that must be learned.
 
The cost of this new ICD-10 coding system for our small practice is roughly $80,000, again driving up health care costs without one iota of improvement in health care quality.
 
Finally, doctors face nonpayment by patients with ObamaCare. These patients may or may not be paying their premiums and we have no way of verifying this. No business can operate with that much uncertainty.
 
On behalf of the medical profession, I ask that Washington stop the implementation of the ICD-10 coding system, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and replace it with a better law written with the input of real doctors who will actually treat patients covered by it.
 
America has enjoyed the best health care the world has ever known. That health care is in jeopardy because physicians cannot survive Washington’s ‘war on doctors’ without relief.
 
Eventually the problems for doctors will become problems for patients, and we are all patients at some point.

Signed ...

The Good Must Associate: Key Strategies in the Counterjihad Movement

Infidel Bloggers   "To prevail against orthodox Islam's relentless encroachment, we need to employ three essential strategies: gather allies, coordinate our efforts, and concentrate our forces at decisive points. Let me explain these in more detail:" ... Excerpts follow:

1. Gather allies. 
...If three of us demonstrate outside a mosque, and five hundred Muslims protest our demonstration, we will look like a small, unpopular fringe group and the Muslims will look like the mainstream majority opinion. This kind of thing has a psychological impact on anyone watching this on television because of the principle of social proof. But if five hundred Muslims demonstrate and ten thousand counterjihadists protest their demonstration, it sends an entirely different message to anyone watching on television or participating in the demonstration. Numbers count.

2. Coordinate efforts.
If there were a hundred thousand active counterjihadists, but each worked on different projects, we wouldn't accomplish much. But if most of us worked on a few central projects, those projects would be much more likely to succeed.

3. Concentrate force at a decisive point.
Many times in history, a military force was outnumbered and yet won the battle. Often it was because the principle of concentration of force does not require absolute superiority in numbers. It only requires a local superiority at a decisive point.

Edmund Burke once wrote, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."