Post 80 and some of my favorite posts.

This will be my 80th post.  Looking back has been sort of painful.  I never professed to be a good writer, and since I don't make any money doing it, I also don't have the time to edit like I should, and sometimes my point doesn't get across.  But then there are times when I hit it just right.  Here are some of my favorites.

Female talk show host offended by Feminist Columnist Offended By Carly Fiorina Run

This is one of my favorites. Nothing like seeing Dana write something and smack her down with an easily proven fact:

...archives failed to turn up a Marcus column excoriating the ascension of a community organizer.

Try the search term, "Ruth Marcus Obama Inex-" and Google will actually finish that word for you, and the second page holds a link for you:

The Audacity of Nope 

Blam!

Right gets it wrong on honors night

This was one of my earliest works. It took me very little time to look up some information and report it like it was. There was no success shaming going on, and the reaction caused by the allegation was a classic case of the right freaking out about nothing.

Bowe vs Andrew or apples vs oranges

Comparing Bowe Bergdahl with Andrew Tahmooressi, someone captured by enemy combatants with someone who committed a crime in another country, is just plain stupid.

I've read a lot of stupid things...

Dana takes on Southern Democrats, and claims they disarmed Martin Luther King Jr. in her book. Turns out she's wrong, King disarmed himself.

Fox debates and the Christian Bully

Poor Jessica Erlich. You gotta have a tougher skin when Dana's cornered by the facts. Dana not only got Jessica's voice to start shaking, but gloated about it on the air.  When you have no facts, attack!

Wrote the book on it

God bless Nomiki. She tells it straight. I hope Jessica was watching and taking pointers. This was my most read post, more than doubling what was in second place. I think it was because Nomiki retweeted it.

Did Governor Walker step in it, or was he misquoted?

It's funny how the guy you back is just misquoted, then you go on to misquote the guy you don't like.

The Garland experiment

Do you want to see Dana debating Melissa Harris-Perry (Harris-Lacewell) circa 2010? Of course you do! And I use it to contradict some things Dana said on her radio show at the writing of the article. Sometimes Google just serves up the nicest things if you ask it right.

The Garland Experiment II: The Notorious JJP

Judge Jeanine Pirro says it all, with a smugness Christ would have loved. But I found a contradiction in her statement, that the first amendment is not negotiable. Another post where Google was truly my friend.  Special thanks to David Pakman for running with this story and mentioning me by name.

Not the sharpest crayon...

Dana takes us on a ride where she examines a Samantha Bee video on gun control. It's obvious she didn't watch it.  It's like shooting ducks in a barrel in how I pick off Dana falsehoods in this one.

Well, that's 80. When will there be an 81? We shall see. I can't say for certain I'm done with it, but it may be a while before I post again.

Not the sharpest crayon...

I had an errand to run for lunch Wednesday, and I wound up listening to Dana. My ears perked up when she mentioned Samantha Bee.  I love me some Samantha Bee.  When I watch her new show on TBS (Mondays at 10:30pm EST), I can't help but think of her as a Liberal Dana, only funnier, and less mean.

Dana had a few choice words for Miss Bee (wait... wiki Samantha Bee... she married Jason Jones? They have two kids? How did I miss this?) I mean Ms. Bee.  You see, Bee made a video that made fun of the NRA:

Dana doesn't like that (and by Dana doesn't like that, it probably means the NRA told Dana not to like that). Dana made about 13 minutes of the most terrible argument about this video, and you can listen to it below:

Bee's video was about how she wishes she could buy the Eddie the Eagle mascot costume from the NRA, but it is so highly regulated by the NRA, an organization that has gone to deregulate, and continues to push deregulation of guns, she can't purchase it.

Along the way, she points out all the loopholes in gun law that allow people to purchase firearms, rather easily.  And it looks like she's skirting a few laws to do so, and she says at the beginning of the video that it is all real. How did Dana attack the video? Poorly... it's almost as if she never watched the it. Here's Bee turning pages with a gun and, oh my, is she:

She's got her finger on the trigger! The Dana I know would have lost her mind over that! There is no way she watched the video. Which is why I believe Dana's argument falls flat.

There is so much to unpack from this 13 minutes I may not be able to do it justice. Dana started by saying Bee wasn't the brightest/sharpest crayon in the box.  She states Bee wasn't funny, was just a bit player on the Daily Show (Dana, they call them correspondents, and Bee was the longest running one in the history of the show). Dana thinks Bee has less of a top lip than she does and looks like Grimace from McDonalds. All of this is fine, Dana has a right to her opinion. But it's also an Ad Hominem attack, which is one of many losing arguments. One has to wonder why she relies on it so heavily. Even a first year journalism school dropout knows better... oh, that's right.

She then has to devote minutes on how bad Trevor Noah is as a replacement. The argument she makes with Noah is that she doesn't like it when foreigners come to our country and tell us about the second amendment. Guess Dana missed the fact that Bee is also a foreigner, she's from Canada. This is hard to miss, since she is white and does not have an accent.

Dana says Bee is not funny. But I can think of 10 funny things Bee has done for the Daily Show, while stuff like Dana's Jobs for Jihadis, Proud Conservative Attending a Flashy Hollywood Awards Show, and #RACETOGETHER STARBUCKS look like a high school sketch show in comparison.

Dana finishes up stating the video makes no sense. Eddie the Eagle is a trademark, you can't buy a trademark.  Owning a gun is a natural right. It is a complete non-sequitur. Um, say what? Does Dana even know what a non sequitur is? You know:

1. If A is true, then B is true.
2. B is true.
3. Therefore, A is true.

Bee is saying A is non deadly but regulated by the NRA, B is deadly, but the NRA is trying to deregulate it.  How is that a non sequitur? It is a funny premise, and since this is a comedy show, it fits right in.

Dana states that Bee has never purchased a firearm. She can tell, and those who haven't purchased a firearm look like a child trying to put a circle into the square hole in a shape sorter. How ever could her staff had let her make such a stupid argument? Here is another reason I think Dana didn't watch the video, because in it, Bee is shown buying guns.

My mind is blown. I seriously don't know what to say. To bring this whole terrible argument home, there was so much else wrong in this segment. Like Greg, the producer from DC that is just now allowed to talk, stating that the Daily Show comes on during the day when he worked. Dana tried tearing down the argument about how it's easier to buy a gun than Sudafed by going on a rant about how hard it is to buy Sudafed.

One of the reasons I stopped listening to Dana regularly is because I just got tired of the same old spiel. This segment not only illustrates that, but also how I believe Dana is spread too thin. She's still got her radio show, she's got the TV show, she does talks, and speeches, and writes books, tweets constantly, and at the end of all that, she still has a husband and two kids who I am sure get all the attention they need from her as well. And with all this on her plate, she's been making big mistakes like this. This article was too easy to write, like shooting fish in a barrel.

She still has an expanding media empire, though. And her devoted fan base can't see the error of her ways. Which says a lot about republicans in this day and age, doesn't it?

Do they deserve $15 an hour?

Recently, I heard Tony Katz on the WIBC morning show tell us that fast food workers did not deserve $15 an hour because he saw one McDonalds drive in worker be rude and let someone else hold the door open while looking at her phone.  Think about that for a second, one employee out of thousands.  One instance out of millions a day, and he is using that to justify his political position that people do not deserve a $15 an hour wage.

The reason I thought about this now, is that I was at a Hardees yesterday, and it was pretty busy for a Sunday.  The staff worked flawlessly in getting people in and out.  I didn't see anyone loafing.  Do they deserve $15 in my eyes? Yeah, I believe they do. Should they have that $15 taken away from them by someone who is for one moment inattentive on the job?  No, they should not.

Making blanket assertions about a group of people? Well, that's business as usual for conservative politics. Again, as long as it is what the listeners want to hear, forget the truth.

Games People Play

Night or day, you just can't stop it.  So, how have you guys been doing?  Things have been fine here. The football season ended, and I just could not pick back up listening to Dana, and I feel better for it.  Alas, I had the radio station on in my car when I went to lunch today, and this spewed out:

Just when I thought I had gotten out, they suck me right back in. There is so much wrong with this. The story is about a transgender man who went to an all male barber shop to get a haircut. He was refused because they do not do women's hair, and they do not even let women into the shop. They are, "too much of a distraction".

What follows from Dana, Kane and a caller are a bunch of false equivalencies. It all boils down to the right to refuse service. To Dana, Kane, and a caller, you should be able to run the business as you see fit. Want to refuse service to someone, have at it. There are other barber shops, and besides, this is your hair, you should do what is right to get it right. To Dana, for this woman, that involves going to a great clips.

That argument falls flat on its face, because this is not about forcing someone to cut your hair. It is about ending discrimination. Judging by her current, short cropped haircut, she has someone that has been cutting her hair. If any discriminated class of people, whether black, white, male, female or gay didn't get protection thanks to the courts, we might see a whole lot more bigotry than this,

They made a comparison about taking your Dodge to a Honda dealer. I have personal experience  with this, and would it blow your mind to know I have seen Mitsubishis serviced at Buick dealers, Hondas at Chevy dealers, and even Dodges at the Honda dealer, even when there was a Dodge dealer just next door. Wanna know why? Because the guy who purchases a new Buick will get it serviced at the Buick dealer, and will probably buy an older car for their child, but still get it serviced at the Buick dealer because he likes it there, he knows the people. And the Buick dealer will gladly service the older Mitsubishi because it is good business.


And no, if a manager at a Walmart "doesn't like you" he cannot tell you to leave. That is, unless he tells everyone he does not like to leave, or he has another reason, like he does not like you because you shoplifted, or you were fired for bad performance. As long as he is uniform on his denial, and he is not denying due to discrimination, then he does have a right to refuse service.

Because when you go through the process of opening a business, and you offer a public service, you cannot just deny service to someone because you do not like them. If everybody were allowed to do that, we may as well start segregating water fountains. Because you certainly could hear similar arguments in the 60s that Dana espoused int he video above.

Dana falsely states this is about protected classes of people by saying not everybody can be a protected class because if that was true, then nobody could be one. But this is not bout protected classes, because everybody in California is protected against discrimination.

At the end, Dana starts talking about how Helen Keller was a bigot. She is flummoxed that someone who could not see could have a racist heart. Let us forget for a second that Keller was the daughter of a man who used to own slaves. Nothing I have read says she was a bigot, and quite to the contrary, she fought bigotry. She was unto herself a protected class waiting to happen. She is part of the reason every restaurant must have a braille menu. The only crime Keller may have with people in Dana's crowd is that she was a socialist. Edison? Well yeah, he was a jerk, just ask Tesla.

This is the kind of lowest common denominator politics that has driven me away from the show. There are those who are drawn to it, much the same way they are driven to Trump. They do not care if it is true, as long as it is what they want to hear. It is the red meat for their radio ear. They can keep it. At least until the next time I go out for lunch and forget to turn the channel.

Is it Fisking time again already?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Using a CDC investigative study as fact, and siting Hitler

The CDC was given the go-ahead to begin studying gun violence in America by the Obama administration in 2013. It would be the first time since 1997 they would be funded to do so.  Instead of just going willy nilly into the fray, they put together an investigative study where they gathered many studies to use as a base point to conduct studies.

To Dana, however, it is an opportunity to parrot the same tired 1995 study, but claim it is now the CDC's numbers.  Yes, that old Kleck and Gertz study claims 2.5 million occurrences of defensive gun uses annually, but it is too old, and not very good, as I've pointed out before.  Other studies looked at by the CDC are magnitudes lower than the Kleck and Gertz study, but even they may be flawed, since it is very hard to get an accurate count of it, since it is not something that is officially reported.

Dana also points out that there was gun control under Hitler, and look how that turned out. Nothing like invoking Godwin's law to try to win an argument. Here's the problem with that statement.  After World War I, Germany signed a treaty that banned gun ownership in the country.  It wasn't until after Hitler came to power that this ban was lifted.  Sure, Jewish people were not allowed to have guns, but that's not your typical gun control, and otherwise Hitler loosened gun control in Germany, giving German citizens the "God given" right to own guns.

That's not something Dana would like you to know. And most people who listen to Dana will continue to do so in ignorance to the truth.  I'd hate to invoke Godwin's law myself, but you know Dana, Hitler had a pretty good propaganda arm, too.

A few thoughts on Colorado and San Bernardino

Last week, in the midst of the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting, Dana several times dismissed it as a bank robbery gone wrong, even after Chase bank, and police said there was no shooting there.

She never walked back that claim, even going as far as just saying he was in a shootout with police and took sanctuary in the Planned Parenthood.  Most disturbing about what was said, however, was that it should be okay with people on the left because no clinic workers were hurt due to enhanced security, even though murders were going on there (the abortions, not the shooting.)

The idea that the Robert Dear case was an act of domestic terrorism has been floated, even by Mike Huckabee.  Even if this isn't the case, Dana is basically giving comfort to a criminal who killed 3, including a police officer, mother of two, and combat vet who is a hero that saved lives that day, and injured several more.  Comfort, because the people he attacked are people she's attacked.  Maybe she's covering because she feels a little bit culpable?  Probably not, as you will see in a minute.

Fast forward to the San Bernardino shooting.  Before we knew the identity of the shooter, or when they were still thought to be white assailants, Dana was still giving comfort to criminals, this time because some on the right were calling for tighter gun laws.

I saw on Dana's Facebook page a short blurb the night after the assault that the name of the assailants had been revealed.  She only posted what they were, and didn't speculate on their Arabic origins, but judging by the comments on those posts, many minds had already been made up.  Even before we had a motive, they were Muslim, thus they were terrorists. even though as of this writing it is being investigated as an act of terrorism, we still don't know a motive.

In the following days I noticed another disturbing thing from Dana.  Since neighbors had some suspicions saying he saw several middle eastern men visiting, but didn't want to call police for fear he would be called racist, Dana feels if you see something, say something (although she's not alone in this).  Dana is basically saying that you need to racially profile your neighbors, and said this shooting was all the PC social justice warrior's fault. Sorry, Dana, the shooting is still the fault of the shooters, but please tell us how that phone call to police would have gone?

So Dana is just fine attacking Muslims, or Planned Parenthood, and consequences be damned.  We will have more idiots shouting down Muslims stating they are all terrorists.  We will have more attacks on Planned Parenthoods.  But Dana won't be to blame, and will downplay any incidence, even with evidence that proves false.

Another disturbing thing I realized recently when Dana was going on a rant about solar, and how bad it is, is that she is no longer reading ads for a solar company.  Imagine that for a minute.  If she thought solar was bad all along, why read ads stating it was a great alternative? And did she hold back on saying solar was bad while taking money from the solar industry? Did she attack the solar industry because they stopped giving her money? Ah, who am I fooling, Dana's above this sort of behavior.  And as long as she's feeding red meat stories to those who will eat them up, stuff like this won't even be questioned. Nothing to see here, carry on.