On Friday, Jay Stevens spent the majority of a blog post exploring Rep. Denny Rehberg’s alleged vote against mothers. On Saturday, I responded to Stevens post by explaining how parliamentary procedure works and pointing out that the bill in question passed unanimously. Now, Stevens has taken to his blog to claim that I missed the point of his original post. But his newest argument doesn’t hold much water.
Stevens’ Friday post was 247 words long. (Yes, I counted.) The majority of his post, 224 words of it (a full 91%), was spent criticizing Rehberg for a supposed vote against mothers. The last 23 words expressed this rhetorical gem:
“Yes, I realize this was just a gambit to delay a vote on mortgage relief for homeowners…but that’s not much better, is it?”
Stevens is now using that measly 23 word phrase to argue that his original post was about homeownership and the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008. Talk about burying the lede.
If you want to write a post discussing homeownership and the subprime crisis, feel free. There’s plenty to talk about. Like how the bill in question would allow bankruptcy judges to renegotiate the terms of individual mortgages. Or how according to the Congressional Budget Office H.R. 3221 will increase direct spending by $4.8 billion over a 10 year period and decrease revenues by $21.5 billion during the same time frame. Let’s talk about the effect this crisis is having on the economy and how everyone from the homeowners, to the banks, to the government needs to shoulder their fair share of the blame.
But Stevens didn’t talk about any of that. Instead he spent over 90% of his post berating Rehberg for a non-existent vote against mothers and then when the fallaciousness of his argument was exposed, he claimed that the post was really about homeownership. A post cannot be defined by 10 percent of it’s content, and therein lies the “truthiness.”
Posted in Uncategorized | | Write a Letter to the Editor
Kate, the only one’s trying to redefine the posts are you and your Dextra brethren. Though both Jay and I find it amusing as all get out that it appears that Dennis hates his mommy, the real crime is that House Republicans are *wasting our time and money* to obstruct the dutiful business of the people’s representatives. That is precisely what Jay’s post is about. It’s rather telling the lengths you folks will go to to defend Rehberg in his efforts at doing a poor job for the electorate.
When did Jay argue about the “dutiful business” of the people?
The majority of his argument was that Rehberg’s vote on the motion to reconsider was a vote against mothers. He then ended it with a scant rhetorical bit about procedural motions not being better than voting against mothers.
If he wanted to make the argument about procedural motions being wrong the centerpiece of his post then he should have spent 90% of his verbage talking about that and left out the useless and incorrect nonsense about the Mother’s Day bill.
Kate ~ Might that be “Lead”?
I thought it should have been Lead too, but it turns out, for media purposes “Lede” is correct! Learned something today!
“Lede” is journo-speak. Or so I hear.
The word is not in the dictionary like so many other stupid constructions used by journalists.
Wolf,
How many times did the 110th congress waste our time and money by all those anti war bills? Bills that hadn’t a snowballs chance in hell in passing. Take a minute to compare Denny’s approval rating with the congress as a whole. Keep slinging it, it ain’t gonna stick.
stet, I think it is in the dictionary. Here too.
‘Pus, I think another matter for you to consider is that Jay has a bit of a track-record going after Rehberg for his votes and positions when he doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about. In that case, I think Kate’s tutorial is both useful and informative.
Maybe you should tell Jay to start running his posts by someone here at Big Sky Cairn before he clicks “Publish.” It’s quite time consuming to correct his errors after-the-fact.
Uhhh, Swede, we’re in the 110th Congress. The anti-war bills have all faced veto or Republicant obstruction as is evidenced by the bullsh!t Mom’s Day bill in question. Do try again.
And Dennis only has the approval rating he does because people like Kate will willfully ignore his waste of the people’s money and time. I thought I’d made that clear, but apparently not. Dennis *wasted* your time and money. That much should be obvious. But the folks ’round here won’t care. They like Dennis, as you apparently do, so they will forgo their beliefs in government responsibility … as long as they get to keep Dennis.
Woo … hoo.
Wolf, the 110th started waaay back in 2007. As of the end of 2007, your new Democrat majority had wasted time on at least 40 anti-war votes that they knew were going nowhere. Friendly tip: If you’re going to be condescending to someone, at least get your facts in a line first.
Oh, I see your reasoning, the Dems were too stupid to count on toes and fingers to figure out if they had a winner, not once but several times. Then in all their delisions of grander, thought old W would wake up some morning as some throw back peacenic and sign on the bottom line. 109 or 110, no differance to me, Congress knows exactley what will pass and what won’t, and which symbolic actions feeds coffers. Critizisum of Denny’s action on this obsure bill is a poorly veiled attemp to disguise the inability of a Dem majority house to acclompish anything, or in your words, act responsibly.
It doesn’t matter how many anti-war votes there were. Give us credit for trying to get us out of Bush’s war for oil and trying to save our troops.
Hey John, you got credit, 20% congressional approval credit. But its the thought that counts, right John.
Yes, it would be much better if the Congress never voted on the war and only funded it, and you guys would make fine little dictators.
Wiley: It ain’t in Webster’s.
[…] Sometimes, I read blog posts and they just confuse me. They make an argument or a claim and then use it to support a completely unrelated conclusion. […]
