Just Say No ... to innuendo, fallacy, and folks like Jack Kelly

The time has come for us to reject arguments that are laced with innuendo and supported by fallacies, regardless of what the conclusion is or who is making them. We have to focus on addressing one another with arguments that are clear, are supported by real evidence, avoid personal insults, address the issues, and are easy to understand and respond to. We have to demand that politicians, columnists, pundits, mailmen, and baristas give us these kinds of arguments. We have to visit people like Jack Kelly, whoever he is, with ridicule, derision, and censure when they offer us arguments like the one he does under the title of “The many reasons Obama might not seek re-election.” (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1110/jkelly111510.php3)

I’m not sure there is an actual conclusion in here, but there is plenty of innuendo and fallacy. The idea that Obama might not seek re-election seems to have been invented, because there is no evidence offered up for it. The whole article seems to have been concocted out of thin air. Mr. Kelly calls Biden a buffoon and Obama lazy (“The gossip from supposed insiders is that he doesn’t like the job very much (it involves more work than he’s used to).” He offers no support for this slander either. He alludes several times to the ‘fact’ that voters found all of Obama’s policies repugnant, but offers no support for that generalization. He says he is being compared to Richard Nixon, but doesn’t say how. He says working class whites won’t vote for Obama, but doesn’t offer any support for that contention or any details at all. Most importantly, he seems to overlook the fact that Obama isn’t the first president to watch his party lose partial (or total) control over Congress (Reagan and Clinton are in this group). He makes the cardinal mistake of assuming that the political landscape will remain unchanged over the next two years, which given the last two years seems a little naïve.

The bottom line is that: Jack Kelly isn’t interested in solving a problem; Jack Kelly is interested in ridiculing democrats; and thus, we (people who like logic and reason) shouldn’t be interested in Jack Kelly except to force him out of publication.