Posted by Tina
This is an old story that Jack has written about before on Post Scripts. I post it today for Chris’s amusement and derision:
An area that extends up to eighty miles north of the Mexican border has been designated as too dangerous for Americans to enter because of incursion into the area by drug and human smugglers and runners coming up from Mexico:
Another way to put it would be that the United States has effectively given a piece of Arizona to Mexico. True or false?
Tina: “Another way to put it would be that the United States has effectively given a piece of Arizona to Mexico. True or false?”
Completely false.
First of all, it doesn’t follow that if a section of land is closed off to American citizens, that it has been “given back to Mexico.” That doesn’t track at all.
Second of all, you didn’t even accurately characterize FOX News’ claim. The anchor here didn’t stop at saying that the “United States” had given land to Mexico. She reported that “critics say the administration” was to blame, and did not mention that those critics were wrong, because the closure was done in 2006. Unless your theory involves time travel, it’s not possible to pin this on the Obama administration, because that administration didn’t exist yet. And yet the FOX Nation headline read, “Obama Gives Back Major Strip of AZ to Mexico,” and dozens of conservative bloggers took up the story and blamed Obama–including, apparently, you and Jack.
Finally, here’s a statement from the Fish and Wildlife service explaining how exactly you were fooled.
http://fishygov.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/mediaadvisory-borderrefugeopen-62010.pdf
“Several media outlets have been inaccurately reporting that a massive stretch of the US border at
Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) was recently closed. Buenos Aires NWR in
southern Arizona has not been closed to the public. Nearly 5-years ago, a very small portion of the
Refuge closed to public access due to public safety concerns. However, the remainder (97%) of the
refuge’s 118,000 acres is open to the public for recreational activities such as hiking, camping, birdwatching, and seasonal hunting.
Recent news items further falsely stated that the closure extends from the border 80-miles to the
north. This distance is far from accurate. On October 6, 2006 roughly 3500 acres, or 3% of the
Refuge, was closed to public access due to human safety concerns. At that time there was a marked
increase in violence along the border due to human and drug trafficking. The closed area extends
north from the international border roughly of a mile. A notice of the closure, including a map
has been on the Refuge website since 2006.
At this time there are no plans to reopen this southernmost 3/4-mile wide portion of the Refuge.
However, since 2006 the Refuge has experienced a significant decline in violent activity in the area
thanks to ongoing cooperation between the US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Customs and
Border Protection. The Refuge will reopen the area at such time that it is determined to be safe for
visitors.
Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuges placement along the international border with Mexico
within the Altar Valley of southern Arizona provides a unique opportunity to protect remnants of a
fragile desert ecosystem and to provide refuge for some of the regions most imperiled species of
plants and wildlife. Since its establishment, refuge staff have diligently worked to protect species
such as the masked bobwhite quail and the Sonoran pronghorn, as well as to offer meaningful
public recreation opportunities.”
Thank you for bringing this story to my attention, Tina. I was wrong to single out Jim Hoft in our previous discussion. Clearly the problem is bigger than one man. There is an entire misinformation/propoganda campaign, sponsored by a major news corporation, and the lack of ethics and standards of truth and decency represented by this corporation permeates almost the entire conservative blogosphere.
Luckily I did find one conservative blogger who was honest enough to admit that he was wrong when he first reported on this story, after hearing about it on FOX News. He wrote to the Buenos Aires NWR to ask why this closure was happening, and got this response:
“Thank you for writing. The news coverage is out of proportion and a great misunderstanding. The Fish & Wildlife Service is working to correct the situation. We were not consulted about the television or other coverage.
The refuge is open as always. Erroneous information came out on Fox News and this has led to expansion of misinformation in Web blogs.
The southernmost half-mile of the refuge has been closed to the public and refuge staff since 2006 so that Border Patrol can be unimpeded in their patrols. It also helps ensure public safety to not be in that area right along the border, just in case. There is less immigrant traffic along the southern boundary of the refuge now as a result of the 12-foot fence. There is some drug traffic in the mountains to the east of the refuge. But we are seeing fewer impacts from immigrant traffic than before the fence.
The closure involves 3500 acres, which is 0.02% of the refuge. The remainder of the refuges 118,000 acres is open to the public . . . . Hiking, camping, bird-watching, hunting . . . as usual. The refuge is definitely open and no additional closures have been instituted since 2006. Likewise the Arivaca Lake and Ruby Road areas are open as always.
Border Patrol is doing a lot. Numbers of agents have doubled since 2006. The amount of immigration through the refuge is down by at least half due to the border fence. The Sheriffs Dept. has a peripheral role. Most patrolling is by Border Patrol or refuge law enforcement officers.
We thank you for your concern. Youre welcome to visit!”
ttp://fishygov.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/fox-news-giving-part-of-u-s-to-mexico-erroneous/
Notice that this organization was not even consulted by FOX News. Shouldn’t FOX News have called or wrote to the NWR before they ran the story? They claim to be a news organization! That’s their job! To verify facts before reporting them. But instead they misinformed their viewers with a bogus story. If their effort was to inflame the base and push a narrative rather than report the facts, then it worked. I’m not aware if they ever retracted their story.
Wouldn’t you agree that FOX News failed in their duty to give their viewers accurate information in this instance?
Ironically, Tina, this incident does prove one of the points you were trying to make: bloggers can and do dig up information that some journalists won’t, and they can correct errors and falsehoods promoted by professionals in the media. The blogger I cited is a good example of that: he did his research and found the facts, when a national news organization wasn’t willing to do that. Jim Hoft, and others like him, are not good examples of that. And you, Tina…well, you were duped. You fell for a lie and you shared it with your readers. You didn’t have to do this. You could have searched for better sources than FOX News, and had you done so, you would have found that this story was false and had been debunked years ago. But I suspect you chose not to dig further than you did because this story fit your narrative of a weak, accomodating President Obama, and that made you want to believe it. An understandable impulse, but one you have to fight against if you really want the truth.
If this were one or two piddly little blogs posting this story, I’d be amused. But when taken in the context of the massive amount of misinformation being peddled, and all of the Americans who believe it without question…I am livid.
Hippie Leftist and your damned “Facts!”
We don’t CARE about facts!
Regarding Chris’ latest livid and logorrheic rant, it is an example of exactly what I have come to expect from hyperbolic, overblown, pseudo-intellectual, ideological progressive activists who rely upon Media Matters for information to fuel their histrionic, indignant, and condescending narratives.
While the Fox News story was inaccurate the fact remains that large sections Arizona have been deemed unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers. Regardless of that particular story’s inaccuracies, the facts remain. Facts that Chris, evidently, is uncomfortable with because they do not serve his need to strut his disdain for people who are rightly very concerned about illegal immigration and drug activity.
(By the way, Fox News corrected the story to note that 3% (~ 3500 acres) of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge had been closed and considered dangerous because of “violence along the border due to human and drug trafficking.”)
Here are some of those facts. I will not bother to cite them, they are easily obtained with a few web searches. If you are too damn lazy to go look them up for yourself, drop dead.
The federal government posted signs along a 60 mile stretch of interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers.
“Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona.” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.
Sheriff Paul Babeu asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border. What he got were 15 warning signs. (By the way, by law the National Guard cannot arrest illegal entrants and drug smugglers. They can only observe and report.)
As a result of the 15 signs some people naturally assumed some areas were closed (to anyone but the most sucicidal), so a jerk from the BLM came out to say that the signs were meant to warn the public of “potential illegal activity” and that the areas were not actually closed by the federal government. I am certain just about any jackass (save a few progressives) can figure this out. Here is how to interpret it if you have a problem: “Not closed but you could get killed, stupid.”
By 2010 more than 28,000 people had been killed in Mexican drug wars and that violence has crossed the boarder and that number keeps rising. This is of major concern to Arizona public safety officials.
Visitors Ironwood Forest National Monument, a 129,000-acre federal parkland in the Sonoran Desert, are warned to be mindful of illegal immigrants within the park. “Visitors should stay safe by avoiding contact with persons exhibiting suspicious behavior or engaged in dangerous activities. Drive with caution and look for fast-moving vehicles and pedestrians on back roads.”
And here I thought the grizzly bear in Yellowstone could be a problem.
That is enough for now. There is plenty more, but this should be sufficient, no?
Chris: “First of all, it doesn’t follow that if a section of land is closed off to American citizens, that it has been “given back to Mexico.” That doesn’t track at all.”
Exactly how much of our land should we effectively give over to Mexican drug lords before we citizens have a right to expect federal action, Chris?
Exactly how long should land ownners be expected to put up with dangerous people crossing their land, threatening the lives of their family members, and trashing the land before the federal government does something about this ILLEGAL activity?
EXACTLY WHEN will green leftist who can’t stand the thought of a single plastic bag leaving the confinement of the local garbage company truck begin to have a more appropriate fit over the miles of human waste and garbage (not to mention dead bodies) left in the wake of human trafficing criminals?
Exactly how much longer will the Democrat Party allow the murders, robberies, destruction of property, and high medical and social services costs that states must deal with and endure before they will quit pandering to Latinos for votes or smearing their opponents with lies and work to solve these problems?
“The anchor here didn’t stop at saying that the “United States” had given land to Mexico. She reported that “critics say the administration” was to blame, and did not mention that those critics were wrong, because the closure was done in 2006.”
The administration she was referring to was the Bush administration. This report happened in 2006. The word “effectively” was used meaning that the report did not claim we had in fact given land to Mexico only that we might as well have sinjce we allow criminal activity and restrict American use.
The signs warning Americans of the dangers were put up and did warn Americans…that is a fact. If you can’t get the absurdity of this there is no point in discussing the issue, Chris.
“Wouldn’t you agree that FOX News failed in their duty to give their viewers accurate information in this instance?”
No I wouldn’t. The information they gave at the time (2006) was accurate. The person they interviewed is a law enforcement officer who deals with border issues and illegal crossings.
Your source asked Fish and Game (2010). F&G deals with campfires, how many fish a camper might take from the streams on a given day, and whether he has the proper license…or why he has littered the area! Such egregious infractions will quickly result in the “criminal” being written up and fined heavily.
There is a sense of proportion and good old common sense that is missing here, Chris.
“And you, Tina…well, you were duped. You fell for a lie and you shared it with your readers.”
And you Chris didn’t bother to notice a very important word, effectively, before going off on a silly rant. You followed up with “proof” from a government office that is not as closely involved with illegal immigration or drug trafficing issues as the sherrif being interviewed in the FOX clip and in a different year. How accurate is your information to the year 2006.
Also you assumed, I guess, that Obama was named in this report but clearly he was not, and would not have been, since it was from 2006.
“But when taken in the context of the massive amount of misinformation being peddled, and all of the Americans who believe it without question…I am livid.”
I suggest you take that livid position up with the President of the United States…he is a MASTER at fooling the public with lies and misrepresentations…he was particularly deceitful when he spoke about the law passed by the state of Arizona.
Si Senor, gracias!
I welcome your clear headed contribution to this discussion, Zed.
Our little leftist friends are very nit picking until it comes to their own. Obama’s pandering remarks about the Arizona law were way off base. Chris doesn’t seem to mind that.
The pictures that Jack posted showing the destruction to the land should be giving someone on the (green) left an earth shaking conniption fit but the ground has not rumbled nor the walls shook to my knowledge.
I was thinking today that maybe Arizona and other states could ship the illegals they “temporarily detain” to Washington DC…just bus them up to 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue and let em go. A dream, I know, but there must be some way to get the attention of our leaders.
Tina: “just bus them up to 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue and let em go. A dream, I know, but there must be some way to get the attention of our leaders.”
Heard sheriff Arpaio on the radio today say he was “going to deal with them,” but declined to say how. I thought the same thing about dumping them in DC and out of AZ. Problem solved!
When I was involved with contract negotiations I learned the other party was very willing and highly motivated to work toward solving a problem when the problem became theirs.
By the way, at 0:15 this particular video that Post Scripts has linked to does identify the strip (~ 3500 acres) of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge that was closed and said dangerous.
So why is it that Chris savages an inaccurate Fox News story that was corrected the very next day way back in 2010?
Why is he so “livid”?
Duh. Because he is a silly and tedious demagogue like all progressives.
Tina: “The administration she was referring to was the Bush administration. This report happened in 2006.”
Really? That’s funny, because the ticker at the bottom of that video says “Pres Obama continuing his Gulf trip.”
The video you posted was from 2010, Tina. I don’t know why you are claiming it was from 2006 or where you got this information, but it is false.
You need to get much better at verifying your information before you post it. I pointed out that you made false claims, and then you responded with yet more false claims. It is embarrassing.
The date stamp on footage they were using was from 2006 leading me to believe the reporting was also from the Bush era. I missed the crawl at the bottom. I guess you missed the date stamp.
Funny, I’m not embarrassed at all. I made a mistake. People do that sometimes.
I notice you didn’t bother to respond to any of my questions. I think these are legitimate concerns that most Arizona citizens have and it would be interesting to know how someone as particular about detail as you seem to be would answer them.
Here they are again so you won’t have to scroll back so far:
1. Exactly how much of our land should we effectively give over to Mexican drug lords before we citizens have a right to expect federal action, Chris?
2. Exactly how long should land ownners be expected to put up with dangerous people crossing their land, threatening the lives of their family members, and trashing the land before the federal government does something about this ILLEGAL activity?
3. Exactly how much longer will the Democrat Party allow the murders, robberies, destruction of property, and high medical and social services costs that states must deal with and endure before they will quit pandering to Latinos for votes or smearing their opponents with lies and work to solve these problems?
I left out the green question. You have never seemed like a radical green to me so I don’t expect you to answer for them.
You know, I thought Outraged!’s comment was unfair at first, but looking at the rest of these comments, I see my judgment was premature. He basically predicted of all the responses I’ve gotten so far.
Tina: “I notice you didn’t bother to respond to any of my questions.”
You didn’t bother to address any of the false claims you made in this article, but you expect me to answer your questions, which were irrelevant to the truth or falsity of your claims? Weird. But don’t worry, I’ll get to them.
First, let’s go back. I wrote:
“First of all, it doesn’t follow that if a section of land is closed off to American citizens, that it has been “given back to Mexico.” That doesn’t track at all.”
You quoted this, and responded:
“Exactly how much of our land should we effectively give over to Mexican drug lords before we citizens have a right to expect federal action, Chris?”
Notice how your response doesn’t address the portion of mine you quoted at all, and instead changes the argument. You didn’t start off by saying that the land was “effectively give(n) over to Mexican drug lords.” You said it was effectively given to Mexico. Do you really not see the difference between those two assertions? Mexican drug lords =/= Mexico. “Given to Mexico” means, obviously, given to the country of Mexico, or at the least, the Mexican people. Not Mexican druglords. So, to again answer the question posed at the end of your article: your claim that “Another way to put it would be that the United States has effectively given a piece of Arizona to Mexico” is completely false. That is not in any way a rational characterization of these events.
But even the claim that it was “effectively give(n) over to Mexican drug lords” is false. The United States still controls this land, and according to Fish and Wildlife service and the NWR itself, border enforcement officers are doing their job there. The land has not been “given” to anyone if border enforcement controls the area. It isn’t like drug lords are being given free reign there. They are being dealt with. Maybe not as aggressively as you want them to be, but clearly they have not been “given” anything.
So that brings us back to your question:
“Exactly how much of our land should we effectively give over to Mexican drug lords before we citizens have a right to expect federal action, Chris?”
Well, the answer is obviously zero. Zero land. And that’s exactly how much of our land we have effectively given to Mexican drug lords: zero.
And yet, federal action is still being taken to stop the drug lords there. According to NWR, they’re doing a good job. From their response to the conservative blogger I linked to above:
“Border Patrol is doing a lot. Numbers of agents have doubled since 2006. The amount of immigration through the refuge is down by at least half due to the border fence. The Sheriffs Dept. has a peripheral role. Most patrolling is by Border Patrol or refuge law enforcement officers.”
Now again, you may believe that the Feds could do more than they are currently doing, and you may have rational reasons to hold that position. But you have no rational reason to conclude from that that they have given the land to Mexico, or to Mexican drug lords, or to Ron Mexico, or whatever your original claim has morphed into now. I hope that answers your first question.
You also ignored another falsehood you wrote in this article. You wrote, “An area that extends up to eighty miles north of the Mexican border has been designated as too dangerous for Americans to enter…” But as the sources I cited prove, the area that has been designated this way is nowhere near that large. Please correct the error.
“Exactly how long should land ownners be expected to put up with dangerous people crossing their land, threatening the lives of their family members, and trashing the land before the federal government does something about this ILLEGAL activity?”
No one should have to put up with this. But again, the federal government is doing something about it, so your question doesn’t really make sense. And I have to ask…were you as angry about federal government inaction when Bush was president? Why didn’t this site write about the closure of this land when it was first done in 2006? Why do you think FOX News failed to report on the situation until four years later, when Obama was in office, and then falsely claimed that the Obama administration was responsible, even though it was done before he was in office? Why did conservative blogs, including this one, pounce on the story after that without getting the facts, and continue FOX’s mistake of blaming Obama?
“Exactly how much longer will the Democrat Party allow the murders, robberies, destruction of property, and high medical and social services costs that states must deal with and endure before they will quit pandering to Latinos for votes or smearing their opponents with lies and work to solve these problems?”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. President Obama has spent more on border enforcement, and deported more illegal immigrants, than any president in history. He has also focused efforts on violent offenders. Last I checked, he was a Democrat.
“The signs warning Americans of the dangers were put up and did warn Americans…that is a fact. If you can’t get the absurdity of this there is no point in discussing the issue, Chris.”
What’s absurd is you trying to divert attention from the falsehoods you wrote in this article, Tina. I know about the signs and the warnings. It is terrible that this situation exists, but that doesn’t justify your exaggerations and falsehoods. I mean, if the situation is so bad (and I think it is), then why do you feel the need to exaggerate it? Why say things that aren’t true in order to scare and inflame people? Why make a headline with the phrase “Mexican Takeover,” when nothing even remotely similar to a Mexican Takeover has occurred? Call me old-fashioned, but I believe a headline should be honest, and not sensationalist garbage designed to get more traffic to your site. The Mexican drug lord problem IS a serious situation. But how can you expect your opposition to address your concerns seriously, when you yourself are muddying up the discourse with ridiculous lies? You trivialize the problem when you make false claims about it. You become like the boy who cried wolf.
“No I wouldn’t. The information they gave at the time (2006) was accurate.”
As I have pointed out, the video is not from 2006. You admit that now. So now that you realize that this report was conducted when Obama was in office, years after the area was proclaimed dangerous for American citizens, do you acknowledge that FOX News behaved irresponsibly by accusing the Obama administration of having closed the area? Do you acknowledge that FOX News acted irresponsibly for not contacting the officials that actually run this spot of land to verify their facts before they ran the story? Do you acknowledge that the claim that any land was “effectively given to Mexico” bears no resemblance to reality, and is a falsehood that should not have been stated by an anchor on a national news program? Do you acknowledge that the FOX Nation website acted irresponsibly by claiming explicitly that the land was given to Mexico by Obama? Do you acknowledge that the conservative blogosphere acted irresponsibly by perpetuating this lie, when they could have easily done a small amount of research and found out that it wasn’t true?
If you do not acknowledge these facts then I have no choice but to conclude that you have no standards of truth-telling whatsoever as long as a story fits your preferred narrative.
“The person they interviewed is a law enforcement officer who deals with border issues and illegal crossings.”
The conservative blogger I cited says you’re wrong about this too:
“I thought something was a little wonky when FOXs source was the Sheriff of Pinal County, Paul Babeu, and not the Sheriff of Pima County Clarence W. Dupnik. Buenos Aries National Wildlife Refuge is in Pima County not Pinal.
Babeu and his deputies do not patrol the border. They are all north of Pima Country and only walk the border in Sen. John McCain political ads.”
http://fishygov.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/fox-news-giving-part-of-u-s-to-mexico-erroneous/
“Your source asked Fish and Game (2010). F&G deals with campfires, how many fish a camper might take from the streams on a given day, and whether he has the proper license…or why he has littered the area! Such egregious infractions will quickly result in the “criminal” being written up and fined heavily.”
Are you serious? They are in charge of the strip of land in question! You’re really arguing that because they don’t have the power to deal with violent crime, they don’t know what they are talking about? And that a sheriff from an entirely different county knows more than they do? That makes no sense.
“There is a sense of proportion and good old common sense that is missing here, Chris.”
I wholeheartedly concur, only it’s missing from you. You are the one blowing things out of proportion and making outlandish claims of a “Mexican Takeover” that only exists in your fevered imagination. You are the one lacking the common sense to realize that posting falsehoods is wrong, no matter what the cause or larger “point.”
“And you Chris didn’t bother to notice a very important word, effectively, before going off on a silly rant.”
Oh, yes–they’ve only “effectively” given land to Mexico. That makes it better! Except they haven’t done even that. The land is still under the control of the U.S, not only effectively, but totally. The FOX Nation headline didn’t say “effectively,” anyway, nor did Jim Hoft or most conservative bloggers who reported on the issue. That you did so only makes your article slightly less dishonest than theirs, but it is still extremely dishonest. Not to mention “silly.”
“You followed up with “proof” from a government office that is not as closely involved with illegal immigration or drug trafficing issues as the sherrif being interviewed in the FOX clip and in a different year.”
It doesn’t matter which office is more closely involved with illegal immigration or drug trafficking issues. Your claims were not about those issues in general, they were specifically about a piece of land within Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Now you’re telling me that the people who run Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge are not a good source of information for determining whether Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge has actually closed it’s entire park from American citizens, and given its land to Mexico. You are saying that a better source of that information is a sheriff from an entirely different county than Beunos Aires NWR. That is insane. It shows that you judge sources based mostly on whether they confirm your beliefs.
“I suggest you take that livid position up with the President of the United States…he is a MASTER at fooling the public with lies and misrepresentations…”
Ah, the old “they do it too” defense. I am so sick of that, Tina, I could scream. Live up to your alleged principles and take some personal responsibility for once, instead of trying to deflect blame onto other people. Obama may be the biggest liar in the world, but he did not make you write false information in this article. You chose to do that yourself.
“I missed the crawl at the bottom. I guess you missed the date stamp.”
I didn’t miss it. The date stamp was only on the footage of people jumping the fence, which lasted for about twenty seconds. Why would I conclude from that that the entire report, which does not include any date stamp, took place in 2006?
“Funny, I’m not embarrassed at all. I made a mistake. People do that sometimes.”
If that were the only mistake you’ve made in this article, I could see why you’d have this attitude. Given the colossal failure of this entire article and your subsequent defense of it, you should be embarrassed for the many false claims you have put forward here.
“…it would be interesting to know how someone as particular about detail as you seem to be would answer them.”
Yeah, I guess I’m “particular” about details such as who was president, when people are blaming Obama for something that happened under Bush. I’m also particular about claims that there is a “Mexican takeover” going on when, in fact, nothing like that is happening. I’m just irrational that way!
Zed: “Regarding Chris’ latest livid and logorrheic rant, it is an example of exactly what I have come to expect from hyperbolic, overblown, pseudo-intellectual, ideological progressive activists who rely upon Media Matters for information to fuel their histrionic, indignant, and condescending narratives.”
Oh, hi there! I thought you sounded familiar. It’s nice to see you too. No one else can combine such a boundless supply of creative insults with a total inability to respond to anything I’ve actually written. How have you been?
It’s funny that you criticize me for “relying on Media Matters for information,” when in the only comment I had written so far on this article, I quoted a conservative blog. But this isn’t the first time you’ve leveled that same exact criticism against me right after I’ve cited a conservative blog, so I’m not surprised. I am finally starting to become amused, though.
“While the Fox News story was inaccurate the fact remains that large sections Arizona have been deemed unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers. Regardless of that particular story’s inaccuracies, the facts remain. Facts that Chris, evidently, is uncomfortable with because they do not serve his need to strut his disdain for people who are rightly very concerned about illegal immigration and drug activity.”
And now I’m confused. I’m glad you acknowledge that the FOX News story was inaccurate, but you seem angry that I payed so much attention to the inaccuracies. Was I supposed to only respond to the facts you wanted me to respond to, while ignoring all of the inaccuracies? Why should I do that? The very headline of this article was inaccurate. Usually the headline contains the main idea, the primary issue that the writer wants people to respond to. And then the writer asked me, specifically, a question, indicating that that was the main thing she wanted me to respond to. I answered that question as best I could. Should I have ignored the question and just commented on the problems of immigration in general? Would that have satisfied you?
I’m “uncomfortable” with the fact that drug smugglers have made Arizona unsafe only in the sense that everyone should be uncomfortable about this, because it’s a terrible situation that needs to be stopped. I think you are implying that I have a political reason to feel uncomfortable with this situation, but I don’t. I think it is serious and I think the federal government is trying to address it, but there is probably more they could do. We’d probably disagree on exactly what methods to use, so I won’t get into that.
But I’m also uncomfortable with people who would politicize and lie about the situation in order to demonize their opponents. FOX clearly was trying to pin the closure on the Obama administration, and used false and outlandish claims to do so. “Giving land to Mexico?” Sorry, that never happened, effectively or otherwise. It doesn’t help anyone when issues like this are politicized and lied about. This is a serious problem and should be addressed seriously. “Egads! It’s like they are just giving land to Mexico, and Obama is responsible!” is not a serious response to the problem. It’s an ignorant one, and should not have been given credence on a national news organization, and then repeated by the right-wing blogosphere.
“(By the way, Fox News corrected the story to note that 3% (~ 3500 acres) of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge had been closed and considered dangerous because of “violence along the border due to human and drug trafficking.”)”
Well, that’s nice. Did they also correct their error in saying that the Obama administration was responsible for the closure? Did they correct their error in saying that the land was effectively given to Mexico, when it is still under U.S. control and monitored by border enforcement?
“Here are some of those facts. I will not bother to cite them, they are easily obtained with a few web searches. If you are too damn lazy to go look them up for yourself, drop dead.”
This type of hostility is really unnecessary. No one indicated that they were unwilling to look up this information for themselves, and already you’re telling them to drop dead. I know it’s hard for you, but try to be civil.
Peggy: “Heard sheriff Arpaio on the radio today say he was “going to deal with them,” but declined to say how.”
He might have meant that he would have a group of his officers murder them in prison for no reason, since that’s how his department has dealt with prisoners before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl9H5dL2w1E
“his officers murder them in prison for no reason.”
Well for gosh sakes Chris, you’re really starting to become a nitpicker! Since when do we NEED a reason to murder inmates? We don’t need no stinkin reasons, do we?
Apparently not, Jack. The man in the video was unarmed and had been taken out of handcuffs. He was surrounded by at least ten police officers. He clearly had mental and emotional problems, but was not on drugs or drunk and made no threatening gestures before being attacked. And yet one of the officers thought it wise to taze him multiple times, even though officers are taught that this can be lethal to some individuals. This was a textbook case of excessive force, and according to the coroner’s report, it led to the man’s death. This didn’t need to happen, and yet it is not the first time something like this has happened in one of Arpaio’s cells.
Chris the following are the only things worth my time:
“…were you as angry about federal government inaction when Bush was president?”
YES!
“Why didn’t this site write about the closure of this land when it was first done in 2006? ”
We did! I don’t know the exact dates without going back through the archives…Jack posted the picture of the sign. He has been doing reports about illegal entry into our country and the mess that it creates and the crime associated with it for quite awhile.
“Why do you think FOX News failed to report on the situation until four years later…”
What makes you think they didn’t? Partisanship? Your own slavish defense of Obama? Hatred for Bush or FOX?
“…and then falsely claimed that the Obama administration was responsible”
The situation has not improved. Obama is now the leader of our nation. He IS responsible.
Obama blames Bush (or something else) for everything. Once again your complaints about taking responsibility would be better directed at him.
“But as the sources I cited prove, the area that has been designated this way is nowhere near that large. Please correct the error.”
The entire state of Arizona has become more dangerous because of the drug smuggling and human trafficking activity coming up from Mexico. The strip along the border has been deemed “off limits” to Americans BUT the warnings to Americans posted on signs is not limited to that srip along the border. That is as far as I will go in “correcting” what I have written. Now that I have some time I will offer some links of my own for our readers to consider:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/31/signs-in-arizona-warn-of-smuggler-dangers/
http://www.news9.com/story/16904402/drug-and-human-trafficking-violence-making-its-way-into-oklahoma-city
Homeland Security agrees:
http://www.abchs.com/ihs/SPRING2012/ihs_articles_cover.php
TITLE: Tourist Warnings from the BLM in AZ (Did you ever think you would see the day?)
Posted by Jack on June 28, 2010 8:53 AM| 10 Comments
TUCSON – Warnings are out in parts of Arizona warning alerting you of possible danger.
The Bureau of Land Management is putting up signs, along Interstate 8 between Gila Bend and Stanfield.
Kathy Pedrick from the Bureau of Land Management says the signs went up because of recent incidents along the border south of I-8.
She says, “there was a Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy shot at, there’s been some homicides recently with some of the smugglers.”
The signs warn the public they could encounter smugglers or individuals who may be armed.
Gilbert Meehl believes the signs are a good idea especially for those who aren’t familiar with the area. He says, “those who pull off the road from another state to take their picture with a cactus and they travel down one of these roads, there’s no telling what they can run into.”
The signs also warn people to stay away from trash, clothing, backpacks and abandoned vehicles.
Officials say the reason the area has become such a hot bed of activity because it’s close to the interstate, and smugglers can get drugs and people into vehicles and then quickly head off to Phoenix or San Diego.
The signs also warn people not to confront anyone looking suspicious and to call 911 instead.
Chris: “prisoners”
Correction, prisoner unless you have proof of more.
While the death of this man is very regrettable and it looked like more officers were there then needed I’d like to hear the audio, see the whole video and have a jury find them guilty before you or anyone else say it was murder.
I know, Arapio could claim EP with his officers just like Obama did with Holder over the KILLINGS of Boarder Guard Brian Terry, Special Agent Jaime Zapata and hundreds of Mexican civilians.
All three men swore an oath to uphold our laws. Difference is Arpio IS trying to do his job according to those laws while Obama and Holder have indicated they wont because they dont like them and without going through Congress will change them at will to meet their needs.
Chris, One killing could be an accident, but there is NO justification for the hundreds of lives lost because of F&F.
New outlaws plague Arizona desert refuges
By Tom Kenworthy, USA TODAY – 2006
CABEZA PRIETA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ariz. Roger Di Rosa, standing atop a high ridge overlooking a broad basin and the Growler Mountains beyond, recalls what this protected area was like nearly 30 years ago when he did his first tour here in the Southwest’s Sonoran Desert.
“You could go out and not see another person for a week,” says Di Rosa, who now manages the sprawling U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge that covers an area the size of Rhode Island.
PHOTO GALLERY: Border issues changing U.S. parks
There’s no longer a shortage of people here or on other federal land that makes up 43% of the 1,900-mile boundary with Mexico. Aggressive crackdowns along the border in recent years in places such as San Diego and El Paso have pushed illegal immigrants and drug smugglers into remote desert areas in southern Arizona.
As a result, employees from park rangers to biologists are dealing more with the effects of illegal immigration, instead of protecting wildlife and helping visitors.
Last year, 205,231 illegal immigrants were apprehended on Arizona border lands managed by the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management, according to Di Rosa.
In addition to Cabeza Prieta, several other federal properties along the border in southern Arizona Organ Pipe National Monument, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, the Coronado National Memorial and the Coronado National Forest have been hit with immigration-related issues that cut into the time being spent on park issues.
Each year, an estimated 35 tons of marijuana pass through the Coronado National Memorial, east of Nogales, Ariz., the park service reports.
At Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument run by the National Park Service, superintendent Kathy Billings says her staff spends about 75% of their time on border issues. Her park rangers, along with U.S. Border Patrol agents, detained nearly 8,000 smugglers and illegal immigrants last year and seized 8 tons of marijuana.
Because of possible danger to visitors, Organ Pipe has closed 90 miles of roads that tourists once used to view scenery and wildlife. A 30-mile iron fence costing $18 million was finished earlier this month along the border to stem illegal vehicle traffic.
System of ‘highways’
At Cabeza Prieta, which preserves habitat for endangered wildlife like the desert pronghorn antelope, illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico have created a vast system of “major highways” across wilderness, Di Rosa says. At any one time, there are several dozen abandoned vehicles on the refuge. Fires are normally a rare occurrence here, but 7,500 acres burned last year as stranded illegal immigrants set blazes to attract help as they struggled to survive in the heat. This year, 250 people overcome by the harsh conditions after crossing the border have been rescued on the refuge….
Poor Chris’ contrived, windy, pathetic and silly progressive rant over a single and subsequently corrected (on the very next day) Fox News story just got mega-swamped by ten tons of facts.
I would say the poor sap got suckered but good, except that I do not think that was the intent of Post Scripts. He just got caught up in his own carnard and hoisted by his own petard.
So it goes.
Jack, both stories you just posted are reasonable, fair and seem accurate. A story with the headline “Mexican Takeover of Arizona” is none of those things.
Tina, you crossed a line with this article and your unwillingness to admit it shows a lack of integrity and honesty on your part.
You wrote:
“The situation has not improved. Obama is now the leader of our nation. He IS responsible.”
Be that as it may, the anchor in the FOX News video claimed that Obama was responsible for giving the land away–not for being unable to take it back after Bush gave it away. She made no mention of the fact that this area was designated dangerous before Obama’s administration. In fact, she made it seem like this had just happened, as if it were a recent event, rather than one that happened a few years earlier. The FOX Nation website took that even further in their coverage of the story, and conservative blogs ran with it. There was also no mention in the video that border enforcement was operating in the area, because that would have undermined the assertion that the land was “effectively given to Mexico.” It seems obvious that there was an intentional effort made to include certain facts and leave out others, for the purpose of making the Obama administration look bad. This is dishonest, Tina, and it’s amazing that you can’t admit that.
Even the Buenos Aires NWR itself criticizes FOX News’ reporting on this issue, saying they reported “erroneous information.” They further critiqued the “misinformation in web blogs.” Do you think that Buenos Aires NWR is wrong in making these statements? Are they lying? Are they unqualified to speak about the land they watch over, as you previously implied?
You insist that I am critiquing FOX News over this story merely because of a pre-existing, irrational bias. You are wrong. My opinion of FOX News is a RESULT of the many, many failures in journalism in the network’s history. This is only one of them. It is part of a pattern of the network’s selective reporting, which is designed to fit a certain narrative. Now to a point, all media does this, but FOX takes it to an extreme in my opinion.
I have to ask, Tina, is there anything FOX News could do that you would see as unethical or wrong? Because it seems to me that this is yet another instance of you defending people simply because they support your political agenda. You consistently refuse to admit when anyone on your side says or does something wrong, no matter how bad the circumstances. I don’t think that’s rational and I don’t think it’s healthy.
I also have to ask once again: have you watched the video of the man who was killed in Arpaio’s prison, by one of Arpaio’s officers? I have asked you to do this several times and you haven’t indicated whether you have done so, or even if you intend to do so. I think you owe it to yourself to watch it so that you be can make more of an informed opinion on this instance and your overall impression of Arpaio.
Chris, maybe this is digressing, but one of the reasons AZ passed their own illegal immigration apprehension law was the risk to public safety in rural area where illegals are known to conducting illegal activities, i.e., murder, kidnapping, rape, robbery, smuggling weapons, drugs and other things. The activities were so dangerous and so prevalent in certain areas of AZ public lands signs had to be posted, saying it was unsafe and off limits to citizens.
Why do you think Phoenix is the second highest next to Mexico City for kidnappings? Is it because the Irish mobs have taken over?
There are so many illegals in Phoenix … where do you place a sign warning of kidnapping? But, at least they have signs posted in rural areas where help could be hours away.
You might think it is an outrageous thing to say that Mexicans have takeover AZ, but tens of thousands of Arizonans would think that is pretty darn accurate, even though Tina’s title was figurative and not meant to be literal.
Chris what she said is like saying street gangs have taken over Harlem or Hunters Point. That’s not literal take over, but figuratively speaking one could say that. Capicse’?
PS Why are you picking on Tina so much anyway? You really are being a picker of nits with her, how come?
Zed: “Poor Chris’ contrived, windy, pathetic and silly progressive rant over a single and subsequently corrected (on the very next day) Fox News story just got mega-swamped by ten tons of facts.”
It did? How? Are you talking about the articles posted by Jack? Because nothing in those contradicted anything I wrote.
But then, you probably didn’t read anything I wrote, so I guess I can’t blame you for not knowing that.
If you do have time, I hope you will answer the questions I asked you earlier. You mentioned that the FOX News story was corrected the very next day, but you only mentioned one correction for three errors. Again: Did FOX correct their mistake in accusing the Obama administration of being behind the “giveaway,” and inform their viewers that the land was actually closed years before during President Bush’s administration? Did they correct their mistake in calling it a giveaway to Mexico, when it was not?
Jack, I’m not “picking on” anyone. The claims Tina made were false. Period. Adding “effectively” into a sentence does not magically make everything OK. If I said that you “effectively” murdered elderly people, and then defended myself by arguing, “Hey, I’m just saying Jack believes in privatizing social security. Stop nitpicking!” I doubt you’d find my claims rational or my defense convincing.
Zed, since it’s clearly such a waste of time for you to read my comments and respond to the actual words I’ve written, maybe I can do you a favor and just write your responses myself from now on. It’ll be a fun Mad Libs game for me and it’ll save you a lot of time, most of which I assume is spent consulting a thesaurus.
Here’s my first attempt:
“Chris’s latest incoherent, slimy, disgusting, apoplectic Progressive bilge proves him to be such a mewling quim that he is not worth the sphincter of a vole.”
Hm, not that great, I’ll admit (and I have to admit I stole the “mewling quim” line from “The Avengers.”) You are truly inimitable, Zed, I’ll give you that much.
Chris: “A story with the headline “Mexican Takeover of Arizona” is none of those things.
Tina, you crossed a line with this article and your unwillingness to admit it shows a lack of integrity and honesty on your part.”
The line I crossed is yours to draw. I don’t have to agree it is drawn with the intent to serve a higher purpose.
I would agree that the title was poorly chosen. I would not agree that it reaches the level of purposeful deceit that your rantings and ravings suggest. I would also point out that your own postings are not always altogether accurate. I hope that in those instances I point out where I think you are wrong and why without treating you in a disrespectful manner or questioning your morals and accusing you of evil hidden agenda. I don’t operate that way.
Post Scripts has always been a venue for conversation and the exchange of information and ideas. It used to be a fun and pleasant place to talk about the events of the day and the things that concern us about our country and its government. Verbal sparring was playful rather than vindictive and demanding most of the time. I hope it can be that again.
As I am a self- regulating person I generally leave it to others to regulate themselves as well. I have already committed to doing a better job when posting. I acknowledge ahead of time that I am not infallible…I will endeavor to notice mistakes and correct them in future. I also will not run from a fight.
I feel an obligation to keep this blog interesting and lively but I realize I need to take more care especially when posting in a hurry so that our readers can chat when I have reason to believe Jack and I are both likely to be absent for a time.
“the anchor in the FOX News video claimed that Obama was responsible for giving the land away–not for being unable to take it back after Bush gave it away.”
As I indicated before…you took it that way…I didn’t. She was talking about the land being unusable by American citizens because of the dangers. Obama is given credit where credit is due simply because he is president but he is also held responsible for his policies and politics which I think is reasonable.
No one seemed to mind when Bush was being criticized similarly…you were only happy to pile on Chris. I continue to be astounded that so many people think Obama should be above criticism and balk when he is held responsible.
“My opinion of FOX News is a RESULT of the many, many failures in journalism in the network’s history. ”
But in my opinion it is colored and filtered through your own personal belief system and the facts as you have learned them from some other network or blog…which may or may not be accurate. Your attitude is that what you have found is absolute and the rest of us on the right, including Rush and FOX are ignorant children that you have some divine obligation to correct. I find that ridiculous.
I don’t object to your sharing opinions or the facts as you have found them and I don’t object to your sharing what you believe to be true. I DO OBJECT when you insist that it is absolute truth like God Himself has given it to you. I object when you attach some sinister intent to what I do and demand that I tow the line or else. I don’t respond well to that kind of bullying. Like a real bull, I will (fair warning) see red, dig in my heels, and refuse to bend when treated in that manner.
I saw the video. I agree with Peggy. There is no way to know what is going on without more information.
As far as Arpaio is concerned I think you should take your own advice and learn something about the man’s long history of service. There’s a lot of controversy and crazy politics going on in Arizona. I think there is at least an even chance that Joe Arpaio is being targeted for destruction for political reasons. He has been re-elected five times; he must be doing something that is appreciated by the law abiding voters of the county.
Zed, since it’s clearly such a waste of time for you to read my comments and respond to the actual words I’ve written, maybe I can do you a favor and just write your responses myself from now on. It’ll be a fun Mad Libs game for me and it’ll save you a lot of time, most of which I assume is spent consulting a thesaurus.
Here’s my first attempt:
“Chris’s latest incoherent, slimy, disgusting, apoplectic Progressive bilge proves him to be such a mewling quim that he is not worth the sphincter of a vole.”
Hm, not that great, I’ll admit (and I have to admit I stole the “mewling quim” line from “The Avengers.”) You are truly inimitable, Zed, I’ll give you that much.
Dear Chris,
I thoroughly enjoy reading your comments and I have responded to the words you have written, such as they are. What else could I respond to? Apparently you object to my response. Pity. Try again reading my criticism of your rants again, this time with feeling and introspection. It might help. I also suggest that you do not try to put words in my mouth, you haven’t them to spare outside of your extravagant locutions.
I’ve been to Phoenix to visit a family member several times, and I noticed the bad attitude of the illegals there. Sheriff Joe is right to be tough on crime. I still felt safer in Phoenix than I’ve felt in places like Seattle or Los Angeles.
Since the Post Scripts comments section seems to be a battleground of sorts between reasonable government, realistic taxation, pro-business folks versus one or two lunatic fringe progressives (one in particular) I thought I would present the following piece from the “Cognitive Policy Works”, a progressive “think tank”. It is, unintentionally, both hilarious and very serious in revealing the progressive mindset in all its fervent and tortured glory.
We need to know who we are dealing with here if we are to understand the never ending stream of progressive gibberish and animus.
Enjoy!
http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/blog/2012/06/22/the-real-reason-conservatives-always-win/
Me: “the anchor in the FOX News video claimed that Obama was responsible for giving the land away–not for being unable to take it back after Bush gave it away.”
Tina: “As I indicated before…you took it that way…I didn’t.”
But there’s literally no other way to take it, because that is exactly what she said.
Shannon Bream:
“Critics say the administration is, in effect, giving a major strip of the Southwest back to Mexico.”
Aside from the three lies in this sentence I have already pointed out (The Obama administration didn’t do it, there’s no “major strip,” and nothing was given back to Mexico in effect or otherwise), Bream’s coverage also includes lies by omission. She heavily implies that this closure is a recent development, and never mentions that it actually happened a few years before. She mentions criticism of the Obama administration, but not criticism for the administration that this actually happened under. There are only three possible reasons this was done: 1) incompetence, 2) intentional deceit, or 3) both.
If this were an isolated instance I might just go with 1), but it’s not. There are way too many other instances of FOX skewing the news in a way that puts the Obama administration in the worst light possible to think that this is anything else but intentional. Bream could have done a legitimate story on the signs, on the danger of this area of land, and she still could point out legitimate criticism of Obama’s handling (or lack thereof) of the problem. But instead, her reporting actually UNDERMINED legitimate critiques of the Obama administration by damaging FOX’s credibility. This is a pattern for FOX. John Stewart elaborated on this pattern on his show last night, explaining how the network has become the “FOX who cried wolf.” He went on to say to the network, Your outrage repertoire has been so overused as to render justified outrage meaningless.”
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/tue-june-26-2012-seth-macfarlane
Tina: “But in my opinion it is colored and filtered through your own personal belief system and the facts as you have learned them from some other network or blog…which may or may not be accurate.”
In this instance I linked to a conservative blogger. That blogger cited the authorities responsible for the land that FOX misled people about. I directly quoted those authorities, who explicitly criticized FOX News and other conservative outlets for misleading the public on this issue. Are you saying that the facts I presented from the people in charge of the land are inaccurate? I asked you earlier, do you think the authorities were wrong to criticize FOX News? What could their motivation be for doing that, unless FOX News’ coverage really was deceptive?
“I saw the video. I agree with Peggy. There is no way to know what is going on without more information.”
Tell me, what more information do you need? The video clearly shows wrongdoing in my opinion.
It’s not enough to just say that there’s not enough information or that something is taken out of context. You need to explain what kind of circumstances could ever make those actions acceptable.
I mean, do you think the prisoner may have had telekinesis or some kind of superpower, and was about to use it on all ten guards before he was attacked and tazed? Because that’s the only circumstance I can see that this might be acceptable. Excluding that possibility, it is obvious to an objective observer that the prisoner posed no threat and the officers used excessive force.
But Tina, every time I have pointed out an instance of excessive force to you, you have either ignored it or defended the officers. The UC Davis pepper spray incident was one egregious example. You have never condemned police brutality before and I suspect you never will. I hope you can prove me wrong some day.
“I think there is at least an even chance that Joe Arpaio is being targeted for destruction for political reasons.”
Do you also think there is an even chance that Arpaio’s ridiculous birther investigation is targeting Obama for destruction and political reasons? Or do you really think that’s about principle?
Zed, when I ask you a bunch of specific questions and you don’t answer a single one, then I don’t see how you can say you’ve adequately responded to what I’ve written, or claim surprise that I’m not satisfied with your response. Any “introspection” on my part would be no substitute for actual dialogue, so I’d appreciate it if you’d just answer some of the questions I asked you. Namely, these two:
Did FOX also correct their error in saying that the Obama administration was responsible for the closure? Did they correct their error in saying that the land was effectively given to Mexico, when it is still under U.S. control and monitored by border enforcement?
Zed, I’ve never heard of Cognitive Policy Works, but their analysis is interesting. Can’t say I’m entirely convinced, though. I’ve never been one to attribute political phenomenon to evolutionary psychology. It seems like a slippery slope. For instance, I’ve seen a lot of people on both sides imply that conservatives and liberals are just wired differently. I don’t like that idea and I don’t think the evidence is that persuasive. And I think it distracts from the issues.
Speaking of revealing, though, the Texas GOP platform came out this week. I found many of the policy suggestions appalling: privatize social security, teach abstinence-only education, implement regressive taxes while scaling back and even eliminating many taxes on the top 2%…but nothing that unexpected. However, one portion really got my goat:
“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the students fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
As a concerned citizen and future teacher, I find this very alarming. The Texas GOP is coming right out and saying they don’t want critical thinking skills taught, because they “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs.” Like that’s a bad thing! Of course students are going to have their fixed beliefs challenged; that’s a healthy part of education. A crucial one, in fact. Kids need to learn to consider many different ideas and evaluate them critically. Usually honors and AP classes focus on critical thinking skills. It’s not about “behavior modification” or forcing them into one political philosophy. My teachers never did that. But they did teach me the logical skills necessary to consider a wide variety of different views. They taught me how to challenge my fixed beliefs. Sometimes this led to me disagreeing with my parents, but isn’t that a part of life? Isn’t that sometimes a natural result of true education?
I worry for teachers and students in Texas if the GOP manages to crack down on critical thinking. Republicans in that state have already done a number on the education system, especially the history program. The school boards are very politically driven and it seems to me they are trying to promote a conservative agenda in schools, and don’t want kids exposed to any information that might contradict this agenda. They also say they oppose “multicultural” classes. Arizona has already managed to ban classes on multiculturalism by falsely claiming that they promoted the overthrow of the U.S. and racial division, even thought the students in these classes were more academically successful than their peers. I would hate to see this happen in any other state. Students deserve to be exposed to a variety of cultural perspective, and to take that away from them is to deprive them of educational opportunities.
I am just wondering if anyone on this blog agrees or disagrees with the Texas GOP’s position on critical thinking skills.
Chris you have sited John Stewart as someone credible to criticize FOX. This renders your own evaluation meaningless.
I think anyone who takes every word literally that is uttered on any of these magazine style news channels is setting themselves up to be either angry all the time or incredibly confused. These programs discuss news events but they include a great deal of opinion and discussion. FOX and Friends, for instance, is no different from the Today Show which has never been any friend to conservatives/Republicans. “News” is slanted to make us look ridiculous, wrong, and stupid on these shows. Our leadership is portrayed very badly. Until FOX came along this passed as truth because there was no other point of view offered on the magazine style news forums.
The conversational style of the 24 hour a day talk-fest was created as an entertainment venue and was never intended to be considered hard news. I think most people realize that opinion and off handed remarks are part and parcel of these shows and if they want hard facts they will have to do some searching on their own.
If you don’t like FOX turn it off but don’t assume that everyone who watches FOX takes away from the programing exactly what you do.
If my point in posting this video had been to place all the blame on Obama and accuse him of actually turning over a swath of Arizona territory to Mexico I would have made that the title of the post and had a lot more to say about him and his policies. I also would have used language that didn’t include the word “effectively”. Obviously the only period for which Obama could have responsibility for conditions in Arizona is during his time as President (Although we could look back at his voting record if there was applicable legislation from his time in Congress).
I am willing to criticize FOX and conservatives but I would prefer to do it when I choose to and not when it is demanded of me. I reserve for myself the same freedom of thought, experience, and choice that I extend to others. You are given a forum here to object to this video and Shannon Breams take on the subject. Your haughty belligerent insistence that I see this as you do and agree with your assessment is insulting and offends me more than this video ever could.
The people in Arizona, and in other areas across the country are deplorable. I think that, and the fact that nothing substantial is being done about it, is the important point in this video. I think the fact that Democrats will not acknowledge or discuss it honestly is a related larger point as is the fact that they turn every attempt to discuss it honestly into an opportunity to play the race card.
I meant it when I said, “I will not spend more time on this insanity. I have continued only to make clear that I did not take from this video what you have taken from it and to offer a few points about my intentions going forward.”
Kristen…thank you for sharing your experience of Phoenix and Sheriff Arpaio.
You’re right about Seattle and Los Angeles. They are points along what we call the I-5 corridor which runs the entire length of the west coast. It is definitely a drug corridor where the cartels have established footholds in the cities and even small towns.
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment
The report places in print the types of criminals that law enforcement officers around the country must deal with on a near daily basis. Critics of Joe Arpaio don’t seem to want to include this information in their analysis.
Politics trumps reality on the ground, particularly in those states like Texas, Arizona, and California that have had to deal with these problems often without assistance or cooperation from the federal government.
Chris writes: “Zed, when I ask you a bunch of specific questions and you don’t answer a single one, then I don’t see how you can say you’ve adequately responded to what I’ve written, or claim surprise that I’m not satisfied with your response.”
Dear Chris,
Has it ever occurred to you that your questions (many of which are rhetorical or trivial) are not worthy of an answer? Why the heck should I give a hoot about answering a barrage of questions from a self-aggrandizing, verbose, over-wrought, condescending, pseudo-intellectual snob like you? You seem to think the questions you ask are as important as the rest of your tedious and diffuse gobbledygook.
Sometimes, Chris, no answer is an answer and is the best answer (which now it seems especially so where you are concerned).
Do you ever listen to yourself? Try reading the mountain of noise you have posted in this one comment section and try a little introspection.
I have said everything I need and care to say on the subject of the Fox story, the situation in Arizona, and the Obama administration’s policy lunacy for now. Take the time to read my posts again, you should find all your answers there.
Go pester someone else with your steady dribble of drivel and demands, pal, because I am not going to bite into your tedious and boorish progressive circumlocutions. I prefer my meals light, tasty, and nourishing.
By the way, progressives are all about being on the fast track for their brand of “social evolution”. As for “critical thinking”, since you seem to be so lacking in this regard I don’t see how the so called “Higher Order Thinking Skills” have helped you any.
I pity your future students. If you teach them to think and write like you, that will be a tremendous disservice. They will not be getting a teacher, they will be getting an aggressive progressive activist blow-hard. Imagine a devout Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or whomever having their belief systems attacked and deconstructed by some arrogant progressive twit all in the name of “critical thinking”.
Let the progressive jerks who run the universities handle that and leave K-12 kids alone. They have their hands full just learning the rudimentary and they don’t need people like you to “teaching” them how to, supposedly, “think critically”.
Perhaps the best path to “critical thinking” is not the exalted progressive vision of “Higher Order Thinking Skills” but rather someone who actually teaches students how to think critically without trying to indoctrinate them into a narrow, secularized, moral-relativist progressive utopia.
I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that is the primary concern of the Texas GOP, not your narrow and prejudiced interpretation of it.
“Perhaps the best path to “critical thinking” is not the exalted progressive vision of “Higher Order Thinking Skills” but rather someone who actually teaches students how to think critically without trying to indoctrinate them into a narrow, secularized, moral-relativist progressive utopia.”
Well I’ll be knocked down!
Strawman: “Well I’ll be knocked down!”
Well then, stand up and defend yourself and your ideas, I am not the Wizard Of Oz and this ain’t Kansas. Nor is it an introduction to classical logic and rhetoric 101 at Chico State.
Yeah, I know, if you only had a brain.
Sing it with me …
“Well then, stand up and defend yourself and your ideas…”
That is what I do in nearly every comment I write on this website, Pie. It’s no use with you. No matter what I say or how I say it, you always respond with nothing but insults.
I think the questions I asked you were valid. You asked me why I was angry with FOX when they corrected themselves the next day. But you only mentioned one correction, and there were other errors. So I asked if they corrected those too, and you responded by telling me that my questions were stupid and not worth responding to. (And yet you can’t resist responding…)
And then you went on to insult my teaching ability, based on nothing but ignorant strawman arguments that bear no relation to what I do or who I am. You have no reason to claim that I would “attack” the religious beliefs of any of my students, or attempt to “indoctrinate” them into anything. No reason whatsoever. I have already explained that that is not what critical thinking is about. It’s about getting kids to consider a wide range of points of view, and to get them to understand how to defend their own positions using logic.
This is a skill that you have not demonstrated when talking to me, otherwise you’d provide something other than baseless attacks. You can’t back up your claim that I would denigrate my student’s beliefs and indoctrinate them, because you have no evidence for this claim, because there is no evidence. It doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t stop you from making the claim anyway, because you are a hateful, intolerant person.
Chris, we’re waiting to hear what you think on the Obamcare decision.
Regarding the strawman fallacy charges from Strawman and Chris:
Nonsense. A couple people here need to review their fallacies. A good start would be review the false charge of fallacy fallacy and the appeal to authority fallacy. (I find Chris’ appeal to authority fallacy here good for a chuckle.)
I stand by my statement, “Perhaps the best path to “critical thinking” is not the exalted progressive vision of “Higher Order Thinking Skills” but rather someone who actually teaches students how to think critically without trying to indoctrinate them into a narrow, secularized, moral-relativist progressive utopia.”
The rest of my interaction with Chris has been a valid critique of his diffuse and long winded rants about an erroneous Fox News story (which was subsequently corrected). It makes me shiver that this rabid progressive activist may one day actually be entrusted to teach children. What follows are but a few highlights of my reasoning –
My very favorite Chris quote in this thread:
“There is an entire misinformation/propoganda campaign, sponsored by a major news corporation, and the lack of ethics and standards of truth and decency represented by this corporation permeates almost the entire conservative blogosphere.” The hysterics and hyperbole is literally dripping off that line. It, in fact, inspired my above rejoinder about how progressives are HOTS to trot.
After Chris called Tina and Jack dupes and they subsequently presented Chris with more information about the situation in Arizona I also chimed in. Much of that was ignored.
Chris goes ballistic Shannon Bream reporting, “Critics say the administration is, in effect, giving a major strip of the Southwest back to Mexico” and calls it “three lies”. Now there is some progressive “critical thinking” for you. That almost made me cringe. What, there are no critics saying that? If there are no critics saying that, it would be lie, not three. Chris’ lack of comprehension is also startling.
Then there are all the little side trips to add to the bluster. The diligent refuge staff fighting to save a fragile eco-system and the masked bobwhite quail and the Sonoran pronghorn. (I almost got a tear in my eye.)
Clearly, Chris, like every other progressive demagogue I have ever read or met has it in for Fox News. A self actualizing stereotype that fits the stereotype.
Yeah, just what we need in the classroom.
Pie Guevara, you suggested I would denigrate my student’s religious beliefs in the classroom and attempt to indoctrinate them into my political point of view. I would like to see specific, direct evidence to support that accusation. Insults are not evidence. Calling me a “progressive demagogue” is not evidence. Evidence would be direct quotes from me regarding how I think education should be conducted. If you can’t find this evidence, then you need to man up and admit that your allegation is bogus. Put up or shut up.
“Nonsense. A couple people here need to review their fallacies. A good start would be review the false charge of fallacy fallacy and the appeal to authority fallacy. (I find Chris’ appeal to authority fallacy here good for a chuckle.)”
When did I make an appeal to authority, Pie? The only thing I can think of that you might be talking about is my citation of the Buenos NWR and Fish and Game’s correction of FOX’s reporting. But citing expert opinion as part of one’s case is not, in and of itself, a fallacy. This site, Fallacy Files, explains this pretty well:
“We must often rely upon expert opinion when drawing conclusions about technical matters where we lack the time or expertise to form an informed opinion. For instance, those of us who are not physicians usually rely upon those who are when making medical decisions, and we are not wrong to do so…
…To sum up these points in a positive manner, before relying upon expert opinion, go through the following checklist:
–Is this a matter which I can decide without appeal to expert opinion? If the answer is “yes”, then do so. If “no”, go to the next question:
–Is this a matter upon which expert opinion is available? If not, then your opinion will be as good as anyone else’s. If so, proceed to the next question:
–Is the authority an expert on the matter? If not, then why listen? If so, go on:
–Is the authority biased towards one side? If so, the authority may be untrustworthy. At the very least, before accepting the authority’s word seek a second, unbiased opinion. That is, go to the last question:
–Is the authority’s opinion representative of expert opinion? If not, then find out what the expert consensus is and rely on that. If so, then you may rationally rely upon the authority’s opinion.”
I think the authorities I cited pass all of these tests. Fish and Game and Buenos Aires NWR are, obviously, the best people to ask about whether or not the land has been closed, when this situation began, and whether the land has been given to Mexico (I’m sorry–“effectively!”). This is not a question that could be sufficiently answered without at least consulting at least one of these sources, in my opinion. And while these sources may be somewhat biased, in the sense that they have an interest in portraying a positive image of the refuge to the public, it doesn’t seem logical for them to mislead on these issues, since they have a greater interest in making sure that the public is not killed by Mexican drug lords.
Interestingly, the authority that FOX News and later Tina cited–Sheriff Babeu–fails the third test, because he is not an expert on the refuge.
Furthermore, I did not say that because NWR and Fish and Game made a certain claim, then it must be true. In fact, I explicitly asked Tina if she had a counter-argument to their claims. I asked her why she did not take the word of these sources when they criticized FOX News for their coverage of the issue. That’s an invitation for further discussion, not an assertion that My Authority Knows All and Cannot Be Contradicted. And it is an invitation that Tina declined, as she did not answer this question even after I asked it twice.
I’ll ask you the same question: why do you think my sources were insufficient?
Note: I don’t expect you to actually answer this question, I just want to make it clear that I am not making an appeal to authority fallacy. If you have any actual reasons for not thinking that Fish and Game and the BANWR are valid sources, then I am all ears. If you’re just going to respond with more attacks, go ahead, but you’re not proving anything by doing that.
“What, there are no critics saying that? If there are no critics saying that, it would be lie, not three.”
Pie, the “critics say” or “some are saying” ploy is a transparent one that FOX uses all the time in order to provide plausible deniability. I guess you could argue, if you wanted to, that Bream wasn’t actually lying. She just reported on lies that some had been circulating, and then made no effort to determine their veracity before sharing them with the rest of the world.
I will point out that, even if you believe Bream was not technically lying, the network still lied. The headline on the FOX Nation website that week read, “Obama Gives Back Major Strip of AZ to Mexico,” without the qualifier “critics say.” The website is run by FOX News. (To their credit, the page was eventually taken down, but no correction was made.)
On a final note, I think anyone who accuses a stranger of trying to “indoctrinate [students] into a narrow, secularized, moral-relativist progressive utopia,” while making zero attempt to back up that accusation, might need to do a little self-reflection before accusing someone else of “hysterics” and “hyperbole.”
Whoops, forgot to link to the website:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html
A Little Bit Of Deconstructing Chris
While Chris’ criticism of the Fox News story for its grotesque failures is largely correct, the story is actually beside the point. It was just the vehicle for an extended rant. What follows are a few selected deconstructions from a mountain of noise.
Chris: “the FOX Nation headline read, “Obama Gives Back Major Strip of AZ to Mexico”
Chris evidently missed this not very subtle lie from Media Matters. The “headline” “Obama Gives Back Major Strip of AZ to Mexico” was a tag from YouTube uploader countryboy1949, not a Fox News headline. The actual Fox News headline was “U.S closes park land along Mexico boarder to Americans”.
Later Chris responded to a comment from me, “It’s funny that you criticize me for “relying on Media Matters for information,” when in the only comment I had written so far on this article, I quoted a conservative blog.” Chris, your misstatement about the headline is how I knew you sourced Media Matters.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006160058
Chris: “There is an entire misinformation/propaganda campaign, sponsored by a major news corporation, and the lack of ethics and standards of truth and decency represented by this corporation permeates almost the entire conservative blogosphere.”
Fallacy of association – This fallacy ignores the fact conservative blogs (like most news driven blogs) source a myriad of news organs.
While I find the the hyperbole and paranoid hysteria here a particular treat, on what statistical evidence does Chris base his opinion? I speculate that Fox News is probably no more inaccurate and likely faces no more ethics problems than any other news organ, but a nefarious force on a misinformation/propaganda campaign to corrupt and pollute the conservative blogosphere?
Chris: “Border Patrol is doing a lot. Numbers of agents have doubled since 2006. The amount of immigration through the refuge is down by at least half due to the border fence. The Sheriffs Dept. has a peripheral role.
The borrowed “Doing a lot” is some throw away fluff, doesn’t mean much but it sounds nice.
“Peripheral role” – When a Sheriff’s department must dedicate significant resources to deal with a steady stream of drug and human smuggling operations and the problems they cause it can hardly be called peripheral, but I won’t quibble over it. Chris’ intent and the effect here is to minimize the efforts of and the crime control challenges faced by the Sheriff’s department and marginalize any complaints.
Chris: “You know, I thought Outraged!’s comment was unfair at first, but looking at the rest of these comments, I see my judgment was premature. He basically predicted of all the responses I’ve gotten so far.”
Chris is sorely disappointed and so tosses out a little uninspired snark, no big deal.
Chris (to Tina) : “You didn’t start off by saying that the land was “effectively give(n) over to Mexican drug lords.” You said it was effectively given to Mexico. Do you really not see the difference between those two assertions? Mexican drug lords =/= Mexico.”
Fallacy of false dichotomy – Actually, the above is a relative of the false dichotomy, but that designation works well enough.
Now this is really nit-picky. While “handing over to Mexico” may be technically sloppy and depends upon the reader to fill in the blanks, it has the same thrust and conveys the nearly same meaning as “handing over Mexican drug lords”. The former is a bit more inclusive a sit it implies both drug lords and human traffickers.
Both phrases are mild exaggerations used to make a point and are not meant to be taken literally. Writers do this sort of thing all the time. The reader (if not a bone head progressive) is neither lied to nor deceived and should have no problem understanding the point being made. Here Chris is simply trying to wear Tina down with an absurd triviality (he also wears down anyone else trying to read such drivel.) Reminiscent of a petulant child Chris repeats this several times throughout the thread in order to exasperate.
Chris: “President Obama has spent more on border enforcement, and deported more illegal immigrants, than any president in history. He has also focused efforts on violent offenders.”
False argument. Spending money is not the same as solving the problem or a measure of effectiveness . (See “Obama stimulus” on the web.) Deporting more illegal immigrants than any other president in history doesn’t mean anything if they just come across again. Officials in Arizona are none to happy about Obama abandoning construction of the boarder fence.
Jailing violent illegal alien criminals is after the fact and hardly effective in reducing the flow. The flow of illegal aliens across the boarder has slowed since Obama became president, but there are a number of other factors affecting that flow that have nothing to do with boarder control, administration boarder policy, the amount of money spent, deportations, or the confinement of violent offenders.
… At this point Chris goes into a posturing, long winded brow beating of Tina that is just too tedious to parse again and bother with …
… He then goes on to rant and brow beat me, but that is to be expected given my comments and opinions of him. Again he pounds Fox some more and repeats the “giving land to Mexico” rant, as if anyone would actually misunderstand that exaggeration. He also flings out a few rhetorical questions…
Chris: “You insist that I am critiquing FOX News over this story merely because of a pre-existing, irrational bias. You are wrong. My opinion of FOX News is a RESULT of the many, many failures in journalism in the network’s history. This is only one of them. It is part of a pattern of the network’s selective reporting, which is designed to fit a certain narrative.”
Personal experience fallacy – In the absence of compelling evidence, statistical analysis, and comparative statistical analysis (with other news organs) Chris is obviously relying on his personal experience with Fox News stories to in order to draw a conclusion and create his own narrative.
Chris: “This [inaccurate reporting] is a pattern for FOX. John Stewart elaborated on this pattern on his show last night, explaining how the network has become the “FOX who cried wolf.” He went on to say to the network, Your outrage repertoire has been so overused as to render justified outrage meaningless.”
Appeal to authority fallacy – The most amusing bit here is Chris uses John Stewart as the authority to execute this particularly delicious example of the appeal to authority fallacy. As above in his personal experience fallacy, some compelling evidence and a valid statistical analysis might also be helpful. Thus far all that is proffered is Chris’ hunch and the opinion of a talk show host to support his contention that Fox is a misinformation/propaganda machine.
Chris: “Do you also think there is an even chance that Arpaio’s ridiculous birther investigation is targeting Obama for destruction and political reasons? Or do you really think that’s about principle?”
More rhetorical questions (and posturing). It should be pretty obvious to most readers that Obama targeting Arpaio with threats of lawsuits and Arpaio confirming Obama’s birth certificate were pure politics.
Chris: “I worry for teachers and students in Texas if the GOP manages to crack down on critical thinking. Republicans in that state have already done a number on the education system, especially the history program.”
The amusing thing here is that earlier Chris tried to accuse Tina of changing the argument in the false dichotomy fallacy noted above.
Tina: “Exactly how much of our land should we effectively give over to Mexican drug lords before we citizens have a right to expect federal action, Chris?”
Chris: “Notice how your response doesn’t address the portion of mine you quoted at all, and instead changes the argument.”
Chris: “Did FOX also correct their error in saying that the Obama administration was responsible for the closure? Did they correct their error in saying that the land was effectively given to Mexico, when it is still under U.S. control and monitored by border enforcement?”
More trivial rhetorical questions and inaccuracies – Fox did not say the Obama administration was responsible for the closure. (See Media Matters above.) Fox did not say that land was effectively given to Mexico, they reported, “Critics say the administration is, in effect, giving a major strip of the Southwest back to Mexico”. Chris has harped on these supposed Fox “lies” repeatedly in this thread, I guess he felt he just had to give it another go.
Well, I suppose I could go further, but this post has already exceeded the magnitude of a Chris post, and I certainly do not want to make a habit of matching his tedious volume. It has been fun exercise, sort of. The only real downside was that I was forced to endure, again, his barrage of progressive drivel. Obviously the poor fellow really, really hates Fox News. If he ever does manage to become a teacher, I really, really pity his poor future students, especially if any were to be so crass as to cite a Fox news story in a report on current events. (No doubt anyone who cite Jon Stewart or Media Matters will get a pass.)
Chris, if you wish to address me, please use my Post Scripts screen name.
Here we go again. First silly demands to answer trivial and rhetorical questions and now a silly demand for “evidence” and even more silly, trivial and rhetorical questions.
OK, Chris, I’ll waste a little more time and address some of your concerns, but at this point I really do not know why. You won’t like it, you probably won’t get it, and then will just prattle on as usual.
I base my opinions of you from what and how you write. That is the all the evidence I have and need to draw my conclusions. If you bother to read my deconstruction (which hasn’t yet appeared in this thread as I write this) you may notice that my opinion of you comes under the heading of the personal experience fallacy. But here is the crux, but I am not presenting a formal argument, I am not trying to make a case in a debate competition. I am merely giving my opinion of you and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts it is dead nuts accurate even if it does fail to pass the fallacy test.
As I see it, you perfectly fit the model of the modern liberal progressive demagogue. It is a model I am quite familiar with. Once the mold is set, it is fixed, which is the goal and intent of progressives and their student victims. It is my considered opinion that you are well into the fixed portion of the process. This is not the only model I am familiar with. Your type is as ubiquitous as the conservative demagogue. Ubiquitous in traditional news media, web media, blogs, and interpersonal everyday life.
In this thread you have attempted to make a very large, rambling, and diffuse case against Fox News, Tina, Jack, and conservative blogs. You have attempted to marginalize the very serious and continuing problems Arizona faces. You have also attempted marginalize Jack and Tina who are, rightly, very concerned with those problems. They graciously allow you to post here even when it is to their detriment and sometimes obvious exasperation.
You attempt to posture and pose all of the above as formal argument while at the same time failing miserably to actually pose a formal argument. You are so packed and couched in logical fallacies it is almost impossible to read what you write with emitting an audible groan. Perhaps if you were to cease this silly fraud it might be a little less painful for readers like me who have training in classical logic and rhetoric.
By contrast, I have more interest in political satire and irony than formal debate and, unlike you, make no attempt to pose as if I were actually making a formal argument in a judged debate contest to get a point score.
Moreover, when slapped back, you demand a formal response and start crying ad-hominem (or whatever other few fallacies you have learned or can remember) and demand that others rise to your standards. Suffice it to say, your “standards” have been often met at a level you yourself have set, although I have attempted to sink lower in this thread as a form of ridicule and satire.
Besides, it is sorta fun to get you all worked up into a haughty, holier-than-thou tempest. But then, I have always loved jack-in-the-box toys too.
So, this, Chris, is why I find you to be a tedious progressive demagogue. Sorry, but you just haven’t the chops to be anything else but, yet. Given your penchant for logorrheic and strident effluvia, I cannot see how your behavior here could ever manage to be suppressed in a classroom setting. That is just not going to happen.
To be accurate (not always one of your strong points, but you do manage a bit of accuracy on occasion), what I actually wrote above was –
Perhaps the best path to “critical thinking” is not the exalted progressive vision of “Higher Order Thinking Skills” but rather someone who actually teaches students how to think critically without trying to indoctrinate them into a narrow, secularized, moral-relativist progressive utopia.
I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that is the primary concern of the Texas GOP, not your narrow and prejudiced interpretation of it.
I enjoyed writing the above and yes, it is my opinion that you are well down that road and would bring into the classroom precisely what the Texas GOP finds objectionable. It appears that for them (I can’t say for sure, this is pure conjecture) parental rights and desires for a Texan child’s education and values-forming trump progressive desires to challenge those values under the guise of “critical thinking” and try and move them into the progressive model and mold. A possible paraphrasing of my conjecture might work like this, “Who the f*** do you think you are trying to impose your progressive values on my kid when what they need is to be learning is all the basics and history, literature and hard science curricula and our schools can’t even manage to teach that.”
In any case, Chris, you have as yet to demonstrate why I should form any other opinion of you, and you likely never will.
There is another reason why I have made some rather unflattering posts directed at you. It is because you simply pissed me off when you went off in rabid, progressive attack dog mode after Jack and Tina. Especially when they are typically so gracious, considerate, and patient with you.
For crying out loud, the post was an invitation! An invitation for your “amusement and derision”. But you couldn’t just go after the faulty story, you were determined to marry Jack and Tina to it with a bizarre, rapacious, long winded, far reaching. fallacy packed, conspiracy theory riddled rant. Once you saw your opening, you seized it and would not let it go. I’ll give you this, pit bulls could take a lesson from you. Have you ever considered becoming a fighting dog trainer? Either you are a natural or you are so infused with a such deep seated hatred for people of conservative leanings that you only appear to be a natural. Just in case you are not paying attention, that previous sentence is a false dichotomy. But, again, I only use it to make a point not present a formal argument.
I can’t say that I did not enjoy giving you a few bitch slaps in this thread. We all have our faults.
In the deconstruction section regarding …
Chris: “Border Patrol is doing a lot. Numbers of agents have doubled since 2006. The amount of immigration through the refuge is down by at least half due to the border fence. The Sheriffs Dept. has a peripheral role.
I somehow erroneously deleted some information. Obama halted construction of the boarder fence and the claim that the immigration traffic has been cut in half by the fence is false. There are several other major factors contributing to the slow down of illegal immigration, one of which is the faltering US economy.
Zed, thank you for finally addressing the substance of my arguments.
“While Chris’ criticism of the Fox News story for its grotesque failures is largely correct,”
Thank you.
“the story is actually beside the point.”
Not really, it was the main point of Tina’s article. Her question to me was directly concerned with the truth or falsity of the report.
“Chris evidently missed this not very subtle lie from Media Matters. The “headline” “Obama Gives Back Major Strip of AZ to Mexico” was a tag from YouTube uploader countryboy1949, not a Fox News headline. The actual Fox News headline was “U.S closes park land along Mexico boarder to Americans”.
You may be confusing “FOX News” with “Fox Nation.” They are essentially two different branches of one website. As I have said all along, the “Obama” headline was on FOX Nation, not the news portion of the site.
The article has since been taken down, but many sites (yes, including Media Matters) have documented screenshots from the FOX Nation website showing that “Obama Gives Back Major Strip of AZ to Mexico” was indeed the headline. You can see the image here:
http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/20100616-fnbacktomexico.jpg
I guess you could argue that Media Matters doctored the photo, but I’ve never heard of them doing that before. Furthermore, many conservative websites cited the FOX Nation story directly and used the same exact headline, including Free Republic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2535417/posts
“Fallacy of association – This fallacy ignores the fact conservative blogs (like most news driven blogs) source a myriad of news organs.”
This is not an association fallacy. An association fallacy would be saying that, since FOX News is a bad source of information, and conservative blogs sometimes cite FOX News, conservative blogs are bad sources of information. But I didn’t say that. I leveled specific critiques and patterns of behavior against both FOX News and the conservative blogosphere. That’s different from saying that they are both bad merely because they are associated with each other.
“While I find the the hyperbole and paranoid hysteria here a particular treat, on what statistical evidence does Chris base his opinion? I speculate that Fox News is probably no more inaccurate and likely faces no more ethics problems than any other news organ, but a nefarious force on a misinformation/propaganda campaign to corrupt and pollute the conservative blogosphere?”
Zed, I think this story is representative of a pattern of behavior for this news organization. I didn’t provide “statistical evidence” because it wasn’t the main point of this thread, and I was not making a “formal argument” about FOX News, I was expressing my opinion. I admit I went on a tangent, but I think it was justified. I have seen statistical evidence that FOX News serves to misinform viewers, and I’ve presented it before in other discussions. I don’t have time right now.
“Chris: “Border Patrol is doing a lot. Numbers of agents have doubled since 2006. The amount of immigration through the refuge is down by at least half due to the border fence. The Sheriffs Dept. has a peripheral role.
The borrowed “Doing a lot” is some throw away fluff, doesn’t mean much but it sounds nice.
“Peripheral role” – When a Sheriff’s department must dedicate significant resources to deal with a steady stream of drug and human smuggling operations and the problems they cause it can hardly be called peripheral, but I won’t quibble over it. Chris’ intent and the effect here is to minimize the efforts of and the crime control challenges faced by the Sheriff’s department and marginalize any complaints.”
One problem: I didn’t say this, the NWR did. I was quoting them. My intent was not to minimize the magnitude of the problems in Arizona or the efforts of those who are trying to combat it. My intent was to show what those closest to this particular area have to say about the FOX News coverage.
“Fallacy of false dichotomy – Actually, the above is a relative of the false dichotomy, but that designation works well enough.”
No, it doesn’t. A false dichotomy would be to say that the claims “land was given to Mexico” and “land was given to Mexican drug lords” are mutually exclusive. I didn’t say that; I merely pointed out that they are two different claims. Just like “Bob has red hair” and “Bob smokes cigarretes” are not mutually exclusive, they are simply two different claims. If you move from one to the other and act like you’re saying the same thing, then you’re not making sense, and you have changed the argument.
But since neither argument was true, I think this is kind of irrelevant.
“Now this is really nit-picky. While “handing over to Mexico” may be technically sloppy and depends upon the reader to fill in the blanks, it has the same thrust and conveys the nearly same meaning as “handing over Mexican drug lords”. The former is a bit more inclusive a sit it implies both drug lords and human traffickers.”
It implies a lot more than that; it implies the entire country of Mexico. Meaning that Mexico, as a nation, would now own that land. To me that seems the only rational interpretation, but we may have to agree to disagree on that point.
Also, given that around this time, FOX was fear-mongering about La Raza and ethnic studies classes, accusing them of promoting returning U.S. land to the country of Mexico, I think it’s fair to wonder if they were intentionally trying to draw an association with their misleading claims about a land giveaway.
“Deporting more illegal immigrants than any other president in history doesn’t mean anything if they just come across again.”
Do you have any evidence that this is occurring in large numbers?
“Officials in Arizona are none to happy about Obama abandoning construction of the boarder fence.”
Some are, some aren’t. I could find a lot of officials and law enforcement officers in Arizona who think the border fence is a terrible idea. But given your overly broad interpretation of the appeal to authority fallacy, I’m surprised you think this argument is valid.
“Personal experience fallacy – In the absence of compelling evidence, statistical analysis, and comparative statistical analysis (with other news organs) Chris is obviously relying on his personal experience with Fox News stories to in order to draw a conclusion and create his own narrative.”
But I am hardly the only person to ever make these same accusations against FOX. I am not basing my impression merely on personal experience, but on the evidence I have seen. I also don’t ask you to agree with me or take my word on anything. There is plenty of evidence out there. I don’t have the time to get into it right now.
“Appeal to authority fallacy – The most amusing bit here is Chris uses John Stewart as the authority to execute this particularly delicious example of the appeal to authority fallacy.”
No. An appeal to authority fallacy has to mean more than “citing another person who agrees with you.” If that were automatically fallacious, then no one could cite anyone else, ever, in making any argument. That would be absurd.
A fallacy would be saying, “John Stewart is smart, and he said this, therefore he must be right.”
“As above in his personal experience fallacy, some compelling evidence and a valid statistical analysis might also be helpful. Thus far all that is proffered is Chris’ hunch and the opinion of a talk show host to support his contention that Fox is a misinformation/propaganda machine.”
Well, I also used the particular example showcased in this article as a representative sample. I haven’t focused on any other examples of misinformation from FOX in this particular discussion, but I have before. I think this does fit a pattern, but I don’t have time to get into that argument at the moment. I don’t ask you to take my word or John Stewart’s word. Surely you could find similar instances of misreported stories if you looked for them, and you’d probably notice that the misreporting almost always serves to promote one side’s political agenda.
“More rhetorical questions (and posturing). It should be pretty obvious to most readers that Obama targeting Arpaio with threats of lawsuits and Arpaio confirming Obama’s birth certificate were pure politics.”
Glad to hear you say so, though I disagree about the lawsuits directed against Arpaio; I think there is plenty of evidence that he has abused his power and mishandled crimes, and his department’s actions have led to the needless deaths of prisoners. But again, I don’t have time to get into that discussion right now and I’m not claiming to be an authority on this issue. I did post a video a few days ago that, in my opinion, shows shocking police brutality. So that’s one piece of evidence.
“The amusing thing here is that earlier Chris tried to accuse Tina of changing the argument in the false dichotomy fallacy noted above.”
As I explained, I did not imply a false dichotomy when criticizing Tina’s change in argument. And the situation was totally different; Tina changed her argument midway while acting as if she was saying the same thing both times, when she was in fact making two different claims. I acknowledged that I was bringing up a totally different subject. And I felt it appropriate to do so because you had just brought up an unrelated point about a progressive think tank in your previous comment. I honestly thought we were done with the conversation at hand.
“More trivial rhetorical questions and inaccuracies – Fox did not say the Obama administration was responsible for the closure.”
Yes, FOX did. Bream referenced critics of “this administration,” and heavily implied that the land closure had been done recently, under Obama’s administration. She never mentioned that the closure took place years earlier, so clearly she was trying to blame Obama. FOX Nation then followed up by explicitly blaming Obama for the closure in the headline.
“Fox did not say that land was effectively given to Mexico, they reported, “Critics say the administration is, in effect, giving a major strip of the Southwest back to Mexico”.”
Now that, in my opinion, is such a small difference as to qualify as nitpicking. The network offered no counterpoint to the anonymous “critics,” if they even existed before FOX ran the story. The intent was clear: FOX wanted the audience to take the word of these “critics,” even though they were clearly wrong, as a quick call to the NWR could have clarified.
“I really, really pity his poor future students, especially if any were to be so crass as to cite a Fox news story in a report on current events. (No doubt anyone who cite Jon Stewart or Media Matters will get a pass.)”
It would depend on what kind of assignment they are writing and the cited article in question. I would not have a blanket ban on FOX News, that would be unfair. If they are writing a fact-based report and relying on editorial content, such as that provided by Stewart, MM and a large portion of what is found on FOX, then I may have to clarify what counts as a good source. But regular news articles from FOX would most likely be OK.
Yep, I read the entire sophomoric screed. Never in my life have I read a piece that so completely and utterly misunderstands logical fallacies and the commission of such fallacies. One might as well write a piece asserting “The moon is made of green cheese because it is made of green cheese”. It makes about as much sense.
There is really no need to address any of this god awful mess bit by bit when one example sums all of it up quite neatly —
In regard to Chris’ personal experience fallacy …
Chris: “I am not basing my impression merely on personal experience, but on the evidence I have seen.”
To paraphrase, Chris just stated that he is not basing his case against Fox on personal experience, but on personal experience.
In the absence of real, detailed and well documented evidence, a statistical analysis, and a comparative statistical analysis between a broad spectrum of news organizations how can one say that Fox (News or Nation) is particularly egregious and come to the conclusion it is a merely misinformation/propaganda machine?
One can’t. Chris’ personal experience may be good enough for Chris, but in the absence of the above criteria, if Chris expects me or anyone else to take HIS word for it, he is only fooling himself while at the same time making a fool of himself.
I kind of suspected I was dealing with a complete idiot. The above proof does not give me any joy whatsoever.
Absolutely NONE.
Chris is truly a paradigm of the progressive. Parents beware. This fool may be teaching your children some day. If Chris is a normal product of universities that offer teaching credentials you can bet there are plenty of Chris polluting classrooms already.
I am not gleeful about this. I am not happy about it at all. In fact, I am disgusted. Chris’ professors have done him an extreme disservice and should be ashamed. But then, in all the evidence I have seen, progressives have no shame. Including Chris.
Chris gets an big, fat F-