Peasel Prattle: Practical Examples of Fallacious Reasoning

Here’s the six-step method of argument as promoted by Rich Peasel in commenting on one of my previous posts:

(1) Preview with poisoning the well.

(2) Start with a glaring self-contradicting, circular argument.

(3) Follow by a nice non-sequitor. Make a false, grandiose assertion spiced up with a little false dichotomy.

(4) Throw in another non-sequitor. Declare another “fact” which is not only irrelevant, but isn’t a fact.

(5) Red herring: Then distract by a rant.

(6) Conclude with a sweeping generalization which includes a complete mischaracterization of what the blogger originally said.

So, let us begin with Peasel’s poisoning of the well:

Karen, Karen, Kar-en! Give up for you can never win a argument against famous prattle Peasel – especially without evidence. Again no evidence that the VA, TRICAREVA, OR CHAMPVA is not bureaucratic – no evidence except the moron logic used daily on the ONBC (Obama National Broadcasting Corporation).

Yes, Peasel must have a monopoly on the truth, like all conservatives do. Fox News, Heritage and IBD would never lie, misrepresent or exaggerate. Besides that, anyone who doesn’t agree with him….is a liberal moron. Great way to start.

According to Karen’s logic, the bankrupt Post Office is not bureaucratic since mail carriers are the same whether working for the government or for UPS or FX.

Other than the fact that I never made this statement, it clearly does not follow—it’s a non-sequitor. A non sequitur is an argument where the conclusion is drawn from premises which aren't logically connected with it. Even reversing the negatives does not make this comprehensible: the Post Office IS bureaucratic because mail carriers are NOT the same as those who work for UPS or Fedex. Is Peasel making the claim that because mail carriers receive a pension they are therefore bureaucratic?

The reason the Post Office is bankrupt is because in 2006, the Republican congress gave it a "poison pill" and mandated that it must fully fund (75 years of!) its pension liability; if UPS or Fedex had been required to do this, they would have been forced into bankruptcy as well. Nevertheless, his statement makes no sense at all.

That’s interesting Peasel mentions the Post Office, because I thought he was in love with the constitution and the founding fathers:

The United States Postal Service (also known as USPS, the Post Office or U.S. Mail) is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, where Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general.

The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters.

Peasel follows with false equivalency by virtue of Kaiser Health News: that difficulties in increasing government efficiency is evidence of bureaucracy.

According to Kaiser Health News, we have evidence that the VA is bureaucratic. “Congress also appropriates funds annually for the VA to provide health care services to eligible veterans. Since demand is often greater than available resources, veterans assigned to higher priorities are enrolled first with the possibility that those in lower priorities may not receive care. While funding levels for the VA have increased in each of the President’s budget requests, the proposals assumed that management efficiency initiatives that would save money without compromising access or quality. However, these savings have failed to materialize, resulting in a funding shortfall.”

The “evidence” actually tells a different story: Republicans blocked such efforts prior to Obama. When Bush was president, he stacked the VA with political cronies, such as former RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson, who, as VA Secretary, defended a budget measure that sought major cuts in staffing for health care and at the Board of Veterans Appeals, slashed funding for nursing home care and blocked four legislative measures aimed at streamlining the backlog of veterans' benefits claims.

WaC Files: Red Herring Rich

When my fellow car-poolian from the 1990’s Richard Peasel began to spew right-wing talking points at me during our drives to and from work, he’d often do it with silly distractions. It looks like he hasn’t changed in all that time. There’s facts and there’s background; but he was good at distorting facts and dismissing background by using the distractions. In this case, where Peasel “anonymously” commented on my Grading PolitiFact Liberal-Style “Bureaucratic Bungling” review of a statement by Mitt Romney, there was a lot of the same. He actually sent me four comments like this. This time, however, he can’t get away with it.

It appears as if he never read my post or read the link to PolitiFact’s ruling. He just jumped out there with a bunch of bullet points of what he thinks is the difference between private sector and governmental productivity, presenting me with a false dilemma (“bureaucrats and freedom”) and making the absurd claim that “this” is Accounting 101. Then there were the implicit personal attacks on my education, which have nothing to do with the ruling.

The first bullet points, on the definitions of private sector productivity, are okay for the most part. I have no disagreement with them, except for “This process in turns creates profits enjoyed by both labor and owners.” Yea right, by the labor. Who is he trying to kid. Tell some 99 per centers that. Or people laboring for FoxConn in China. He also does something which is just plain silliness: although a lot of right-wingers suffer from this woefully wrong assumption. That is that liberals hate profits and wealth (“(ugh) profits, or (yeck) wealth”). I recall from our travels that he actually believed that liberals can’t be rich. I wonder what Warren Buffet (#3) or Bill Gates (#1) would say about that.

The second set of bullet points, on governmental productivity, is restricted to differing definitions only of bureaucrats; in other words, he makes the erroneous, typically right wing false equivalency that government worker = bureaucrat. The point of my criticism of this PolitiFact ruling on Romney was that most of these people hired were, as noted, part of the VA and military, tending to the needs of wounded soldiers returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was PolitiFact’s point as well for rating the claim Half True (emphasis added):

But Romney referred to those government workers as bureaucrats. This is a loaded term that obscures what most of the new employees actually do. Merriam-Webster lists as one of its definitions of bureaucracy: "a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation." That may not bring to mind doctors and nurses caring for wounded veterans or border patrol agents. When we examine the largest areas of growth, we find it is in national defense, veteran care, anti-terrorism and border security.

Finally, while Romney makes it sound as if this is solely Obama's doing, congressional Republicans and Democrats have approved increases in those areas. If President Obama is responsible for this growth, he had a lot of help from members of Romney’s own party.

Are doctors, nurses and healthcare aids doing the same thing in the government as they do in the private sector? Are they “writing laws, regulations, ordnances, and rules to define a conduct, action, or control by a bureaucratic authority”? No, they’re doing the same in the government sector as they did in the private sector: their jobs, to give medical assistance, administer drugs or therapy…to save lives.

The VA (Tri-Care) is the only real “government takeover” of healthcare in that the doctors are directly hired by the government. While for some strange reason (by Peasel) Tri-Care is very popular, let’s say the government did away with it and hired an outside contractor to administer medical assistance to wounded vets. The doctors, nurses and practitioners would be doing the same thing they did before, only they would be privately employed. In other words, their productivity would be there regardless of who employed them. Or if they hired private security as border patrols: are not the private security guards and those employed by Homeland Security doing the same thing?

WaC Files: Light Bulbs Re-Charged

(WaC means "What a Crock" which more quickly summarizes the object of these critiques.)

Well I’m glad to see I haven’t scared off my former coworker Rich Peasel when I decided to start reviewing and replying to letters he had published by the Flint Journal, which seemed to occur roughly once a month. This time it took six months, so he caught me a bit off guard.

When I recently posted a piece on PolitiFact’s doing too many statements about light bulbs, recommending that they “turn off that light”, I assumed I’d be doing it too. Unfortunately, Rich has bought into the light bulb myths and decided to expound on them this time, along with his usual petty grievances about Democrats who waste pennies while he ignores pounds wasted by Republicans.

Anyway, let’s get started with his latest ode to outlandishness:

I just read in the Flint Journal Sunday paper of July 10 that Sen. Stabenow is planning another pie-in-the-sky investment of taxpayer dollars. Yep, the good senator is going to spend $2 billion to develop a car battery that will run 500 miles on one single charge, like the Volt. Wow! Just think, this electric car will last forever.

If it takes eight hours to charge the Chevy Volt at home for 30 miles of driving time, why, it would only take a mere three weeks to charge your car for 500 miles. This 500-mile-per-charge vehicle should last between 30 and 50 years. How could such a vehicle ever wear out sitting your garage and eating electricity for three weeks a month in order to have enough energy to carry you out on the open road for 10 hours driving time?

Okay, where does it say that it would take three weeks to charge a car and where does it say it will last between 30 and 50 years? I’ve carefully read the Journal article and found more details at Stabenow’s senate website, and I can’t find anything or anyone who makes these claims. So unless Peasel can prove this by citing sources, I’m thinking there is no proof, and this is merely hyperbole: “A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect” although most readers, especially those afflicted with right-wing insanity like him, would take it literally. I’m sure that’s his intent.

Sen. Stabenow’s $2 billion investment equates to just over $100,000 per job creation, but this is better than the quarter of million dollars per job the president has spent just to save jobs. In fact, Sen. Stabenow should be complimented since she is spending slightly less than what a typical banana republic spends to create jobs (when Americans gives a banana republic foreign aid to spend).

Well he may not have to go far if his Tea Party extortionist buddies have their way, as we will be a banana republic. Yes, the stimulus wasn’t sufficient because Obama foolishly appeased the Republicans by making a large part of it a tax cut, which did absolutely no good as stimulus. Just like it did absolutely no good under Bush.

You have to appreciate the generosity of Sen. Stabenow spending hundreds of thousands to create a job with our money. When the greedy, stingy automobile industry uses their own money, they only spend a few thousand for every job they create. Or for example, Apple’s introduction of the I-pad created more jobs in China than President Obama created during his Summer of Recovery at less than a fraction of a fraction of a trillion dollars.

Yep, in China….any idea why they don’t make them here, Rich? Is that the Democrats’ fault too? The problem with Rich’s statement about companies only spending “a few thousand for every job they create” is that the research and development often does cost billions, so often that they rely on government research. And this $2 billion is exactly for that, grants for research and development. Or something developed by the government is then transferred to use by industry.  Good example is the Arpa-net, a government communication system that eventually became the internet. You know, Al Gore’s invention (ha ha, I'm just kidding!).

When Dummies Forget Why They Have Handlers (Part 1)

Click here for Part 2 of When Dummies Forget Why They Have Handlers - Sentence Structure with Sarah Palin

Notes: (as written by Mock the Dummies author, changed only for style and links)

Most of the lines uttered by the wild-wigged dummy are taken word for word from an error-ridden letter to the editor submitted by birther, Donald Trump. The notes below will focus specifically on the punctuation and grammatical errors, with italics to emphasize the improper phrasing. The notes will also provide links to other included utterances made by America’s most famous birther.

1. Gail Collins, a liberal columnist in the New York Times, wrote a vicious article calling Donald Trump a birther:    Donald Trump Gets Weirder, New York Times, April 1, 2011

2.  Now the dummy will respond:  Donald Trump Responds, New York Times, April 8, 2011

3. Even before Gail Collins was with the New York Times, she has written nasty and derogatory articles about me. / Before she was she had. It should be past tense so the tenses match.

4. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level. / “They are not.” Not “they is not.” / … Who has written? / Me has. / … Her word usage is coming from you. / No. / But isn’t that what you just said with your modifier?

5. There is a very large segment of our society who believe that Barack Obama, indeed, was not born in the United States. / Believes. / Huh? / The segment believes. Segment is singular. / I said segment of our society. / That’s still singular.

6. His grandmother from Kenya stated, on tape, that he was born in Kenya and she was there to watch the birth.

False. Yawn.

7. His family in Honolulu is fighting over which hospital in Hawaii he was born in – they just don’t know.

False. Yawn.

8. He has not been able to produce a “birth certificate” but merely a totally unsigned “certificate of live birth” – which is totally different and of very little significance.

False. Yawn.

9. … there are no records in Hawaii that a Barack Hussein Obama was born there--no bills, no doctors names, no nurses names, no registrations, no payments, etc.

False. Yawn. Ad nauseam.

But wait. Why don’t we know the nurses names?!!! It’s a conspiracy!!!

10. As far as the two notices placed in newspapers, many things could have happened, but some feel the grandparents put an ad in order to show that he was a citizen of the U.S. with all of the benefits thereto. / Two notices – Multiple. Ads. / … Put an ad where?

11. I’m a really smart guy. I was a really good student at the best school in the country.

12. Had this been George Bush or almost any other President or Presidential aspirant, they would never have been allowed to attain office, or would have been thrown out of office very quickly. / He or she.  Not they.

13. In other words, they would become the hottest writer since Watergate, or beyond. / “they” can’t become “a writer”; They can’t become the hottest writer since Watergate because Watergate wasn’t a writer; “hottest” is a way to describe a Miss America contestant not a journalist; and when you end a sentence with “Watergate, or beyond” you sound like Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story.

14. We believe the letter includes the following punctuation errors:

          bestsellers), is

          Ms. Collins’s advice

          For some reason, the press protects

15. "You can tell Obama did the second book himself because it read like it was written by somebody of average intelligence with a high school education." (Donald Trump, April 8, 2011)

16. RELEASE THE GMAT SCORE ON THE WHARTON APPLICATION!

We at Mock The Dummy take the position that a person who makes these basic errors in grammar and punctuation could not pass Wharton’s rigorous admissions standards.  We demand that Donald Trump (or Wharton Business School) release the application, including the GMAT scores.  The topline number will not be sufficient. We demand release of the long-form GMAT score, which includes separate math and verbal scores. Mock The Dummy take the position that a person who makes these basic errors in grammar and punctuation could not pass Wharton’s rigorous admissions standards.  We demand that Donald Trump (or Wharton Business School) release the application, including the GMAT scores.  The topline number will not be sufficient. We demand release of the long-form GMAT score, which includes separate math and verbal scores.

BNV Kvetchable Moments

A recent post at Jeff Dyberg’s “BewzNewznVewz” (BNV) appears to be another baseless complaint about the PolitiFact (PF) selection machine. He needs to keep his day job as a PolitiFact Bias cheerleader and Facebook whiner (as well as the one where he gets his actual income, if he has one, since probably no one would pay him for this). His post did raise an issue with regard to PolitiFact’s being “forced”  to make the supposedly biased selection of statements in order to avoid "poor reflections on Obama.” He termed it a “teachable moment” of PF’s “subtle bias.” But is it?

As part of those  reflections, it should be noted that Obama has received 50 False and Pants on Fire rulings, 10 full flips, and 41 promises broken on the "Obameter" from PolitiFact.  That's just over 100 poor reflections.

Anyway, Dyberg begins with a listing of PolitiFact’s principles as to how it chooses statements:

Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones…..

In deciding which statements to check, we ask ourselves these questions:

Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.

Is the statement leaving a particular impression that may be misleading?

Is the statement significant? We avoid minor "gotchas"’ on claims that obviously represent a slip of the tongue.

Is the statement likely to be passed on and repeated by others?

Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?

He tries to make a case that recent statements by Dennis Kucinich concerning the constitutionality of Obama’s actions with regard to Libya are so “significant and noteworthy” that they should have been rated for PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter.

The issue is that during the same week this rating was published, Kucinich was making the rounds on news networks suggesting President Obama has committed an impeachable offense by launching military strikes in Libya without Congressional approval…

The amount of readers asking if Kucinich was being accurate when he very publicly and repeatedly accused the Commander in Chief of violating the United States Constitution by unilaterally engaging in a very unpopular and violent military action, and therefore may be subject to impeachment, was apparently nil.

The truth is that PolitiFact isn't rating the obvious Kucinich blurb because it would force them to confront an issue that reflects poorly on Obama.

First off, this issue was addressed twice, one of which Dyberg admits to: on March 23 with a “Full Flop” ruling on Obama.  It was also the topic of a ruling of Half True on Charlie Rangel who stated on Fox News “Franklin Roosevelt (was) the last president to come to the Congress to ask for permission to engage into war."

Peasel Prattle: Welfare for Rich

When I began this post, a response to Richard Peasel’s commentary on my  post of January 5, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to how he started it, since it looked like his standard cynical claptrap. I had pretty much easily refuted all his claims, but in review, this statement gave me a bit of pause:

Karen, I see a lot of pretty charts above, are you trying to dazzle me with your bean counter brilliance, or baffle me with your BS….your graph explanations leave a lot to be desired.

It turned into a bewildered pause when I saw the end of his comment, a long stack of monthly dates. Why? Because the purpose of a graph is:

To ILLUSTRATE numerical data, thus making it easier to understand.

To represent the data Graphs give a visual representation of progress (or regress) and they are much quicker and easier to grasp than a boring stack of numbers. 

So…by saying he “sees a lot of pretty charts” and telling me that mine “leave a lot to be desired” then showing me a stack of about 60 months with an “index” as if he thinks it’s much easier to understand is not only disingenuous but oxymoronic. Oxymoronic because he’s essentially saying that HIS jumble of numerical data with off-point commentary is more easily understandable than my focused, easy to understand charts. Not only that, his data was incomplete, because the Misery Index is the combination of inflation and the unemployment rate. Rich only presented the unemployment rate. He probably did not want to mention the inflation rate, because at the end of 2008 it fell precipitously, and was actually negative in 2009, meaning there was no condition of 70’s stagflation (which would have allowed him to draw parallels between Obama and Jimmy Carter).

Nevertheless, here is a graph of Peasel’s data, more complete month-wise, and including the inflation rate:

Note that green line (inflation) dropped with employment.  The black line is where the Dems took Congress in 2006.

Peasel Prattle: Fish, Barrel, Shoot, Repeat

More from the WaC Files

A few months ago, I started the “What a Crock” part of my blog to spotlight a few people whose opinionated commentary compels me to occasionally challenge them. One of them was former co-worker and rabid right-winger Rich Peasel, who has found my blog and wrote me a nice *concise* 400-word diatribe in my comment area about my oh-so-lengthy 1,683 word response to a letter he had published by the Flint Journal back in September.

Rich is getting the royal treatment here, instead of just publishing his comments as comments, I’m going to do another lengthy post to respond, because unfortunately, that’s what it takes to plow through it. But that’s what “What a Crock” is all about. I call ‘em like I see ‘em.

So…let’s get started:

Wow Karen, Sorry I did not run across this blog earlier. It took you 5 pages and 1683 words to refute my 4 paragraphs in the Flint Journal. Maybe you should borrow the president's teleprompter to help in writing a concise blog.

Well, Rich, your stuff is not 100% bullshit, but a rich blend of manure from a wide variety of farm animals. I don’t need a teleprompter, however. Just a lot of Googling and quoting (including you) to make it abundantly clear that manure IS being spread. And I don’t need to be concise on a blog like this…but why don’t you do one yourself and we can see how concise YOU are?

You neglected to mention that the Republicans controlled Congress in the Bush years from 2000 to 2006 before the Democratic took over the Congress with Nancy Pelosi promising PayGo. From 2000 t0 20006 (or 6 years) , the Republican Congress increased the national debt 2.4 trillion. When the 110th Dems took control of the purse strings in 2006, they increase the national debt another 2.6 trillion in only two years. The Bush presidential years totaled 5 trillion in 8 years with two wars and less than 4% unemployment.

It should be noted that Peasel had made a previous comment with regard to a speech given by then-Senator Obama about the deficits being due to a “failure of leadership” by Bush, leading to his contention Obama does not “practice what he preaches.” But he doesn’t realize his contradiction: he blames the previous deficits on the Democratic congress, the current deficits on the Democratic president. His reasoning with regard to “the Republican Congress increase[ing] the national debt [*only*] 2.4 trillion” in six years as compared to the Democrats increasing it 2.6 trillion in two years uses the classic fallacy of “tu quoque” or “you too” argument. He also conveniently ignores the events leading up to the current fiscal crisis that is driving the spending (and no, it wasn’t just the Democrats who caused it). I wonder if a Republican congress would have done any better.

Lil White Lies: The return of Vince and Jules

Well, why did it NOT surprise me to find that Bryan White’s most ardent admirer gave his predictable slobbering approval to Bryan’s review of PolitiFact’s supposed “horrible work”(its recent "Lie of the Year" on the so-called "government take over of healthcare" in the 2010 healthcare reform)--

AFTER HOURS: As usual, Bryan White at Sublime Bloviations does a superb job addressing even more problems with the Politifact piece.

Best line:

"If dissatisfaction with the health care plan was such a big factor in the November elections then perhaps PolitiFact could have found a "Lie of the Year" that Democrats would be able to run on the passage of health care reform and/or keep control of the House of Representatives."

Oh that self-congratulatory let’s-pat-ourselves-on-the-back-over-and-over smugness raises its ugly head again! So….can either Jeff or Bryan find such a lie? Got any examples? I mean, it should be easy….shouldn’t it? Bryan does something here he accuses PolitiFact of, claiming it’s “an inaccurate claim…which suggests evidence will follow” and then not having any such evidence except to quote a survey from Bloomberg where the margin of error is enough to take the legs out of it.

Sidebar: Tortilla Trolling

From the What a CROCK Files

When you come across a repeating comment in a thread, it tends to make you wonder if the person posting is "for real" or just a troll. One poster on the PolitiFact Facebook page, by the name of Al Diaz, who I have long thought to be a bit trollish, recently repeated a comment about his heritage. He wants everyone to know, apparently, that poor Al came from an impoverished background, picked himself up by the bootstraps, and now is a successful (Republican, of course).....well, he doesn't say anything about his degree of success here. He just seems to think his meager beginnings somehow allow him to ridicule anyone else for having that infamous "entitlement mentality"--even when the other comments don't even allude to it.

On October 16 he proclaimed: “As you can see, my name shows I am hispanic. I wasn't born in this country. You want to see ...poor people? I'll take you to the mountains of Northern Mexico. You will see what is like to eat rotten beans, old tortillas and animal crackers."

Sidebar: Clone Wars

From the What a CROCK Files

Jeff Dyberg is a regular Facebook PolitiFact (PF) commenter and one of Bryan White’s attack rats (4-b), a more humorous, casual, self-revealing Ayn Rand Libertarian /Objectivist . He seems to appear at opportune times on behalf of Bryan, when he comes up against solid debate opposition in a thread, and often will link to Bryan’s blog in his comments, one time even posting that if you are new to the PF Facebook page, Bryan’s Sublime Bloviations is its “instruction manual.”

A few days ago he made some comments to the effect that PF’s rulings were “inconsistent” on ruling claims that had “No evidence.” However, taking a good look at these rulings, one can see that PF’s conclusions were all reasonable, had some basis in fact, and were not inconsistent.

He first took issue with a Half-True ruling on Obama’s statement that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was receiving foreign contributions.

Peasel Prattle: Flint, Fear and Flux Capacity (Updated)

From the What a CROCK Files

This starts the first of my series of reviews of the “Letters to the Editor” (of the Flint Journal) by one Richard Peasel, former co-worker and co-car-pooler, who is also a rabid right-winger.

This particular letter, published October 1, is SO chock full of lies, distortions, and misrepresentations, I just don’t know where to begin! So I’ll take it step by step.  Peasel uses a rhetorical device which would be described by Bryan White as "concrete examples" which is nothing more than a nice bullet list of lies, distortions and misrepresentations.

Has columnist Andrew Heller borrowed the president’s teleprompters to parrot the president’s speech inaccuracies, or does Andy have a shorter memory than the average American (Sept. 10 column regarding people with short memories voting Republican)?

I could not find the Andrew Heller column to which Rich refers, and assume it means people have short memories with regard to George W. Bush’s record the last eight years before Obama was elected. Like all those things that started with Bush that contributed to the deficits: Bush’s tax cuts, his Iraq/Afghanistan wars, his Medicare Part D, his financial crisis, his bailouts…..or did Rich forget? Because they’re definitely not Obama speech inaccuracies, they’re….FACTS. The financial impact of Bush’s activities is enumerated later in this piece.

Peasel Prattle: A Primer

From the What a CROCK Files

My voice in politics got its start back in 1994 when I was in a car pool with a guy named Rich Peasel who seems to have one retirement hobby of writing letters to the Editor at the Flint Journal, which get published, on average, of about once a month. His letters evoke controversy because he is unabashedly very right wing on every talking point conservatives espouse. His writings are so to extremely the right they are almost silly, so I can understand why they are published (often the Flint Journal will publish letters in response to his). He thinks he is a writer; however, he’s admitted to me he’s tried to parlay it to the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, but he hasn’t gotten too far. About the only thing I take exception to is the way he behaves (because, to put it mildly, he’s a tad hypocritical in his actions, which is my biggest complaint about most of the right wing fanatics I have come in contact with in my life.)

He was pretty well versed in his politics back in 1994, and he looked forward to doing the touché on me almost every day. However, with the advent of the internet and its “fricking Google it,” commentary, social networks and blogs, it has leveled the playing field for me a great deal. I did not have a quick wit and the “Jeopardy” type answering ability for person to person verbal exchanges back then, but today I can fairly quickly cite references and write cogent rational responses to right wing rants, such as those he exposed me to back then.