Pelosi Logic

A summalogica follower recently sent in the following Nancy Pelosi quote to Dr. Logic.  Dr. Logic will review every submission and decide whether or not to do the analysis.  If analysis is done, Dr. Logic will publish the analysis on this site.  Please send all submissions to Drlogic@summalogica.com.  Here is the quote:

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

When this was submitted, the Doctor thought that it must have been quoted out-of-context.  The quote comes from,
“Pelosi Remarks at the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties.” You can read the entire speech here. The paragraph preceding the quote reads,

“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other.  But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket.  Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.”

Because I’m sure this was said off-the-cuff, after all, no speech writer would be this careless, I will ignore its issues.  Now that you have context, here is the quote, again:

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

Logic is but a small part of why this is disturbing.  The “fog of the controversy” is hardly the reason that “we need to pass it [healthcare legislation] to find out what’s in it.”  She is hoping that it is a box of chocolates and you never know what you are going to get…but it is chocolates and not guano, she will assure us.

Speaker Pelosi’s logical error is the Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc fallacy. Her assumption that the “fog of controversy” is the cause of the people’s inability to know what’s in the legislation shows her arrogant detachment from true causes.  The arrogance comes from the previous paragraph where, in condescending clairvoyance, she venerates the virtues of the measure that she can see clearly, even “very very” clearly, but that we, the fogged, the governed, will be unable to see.  Such is the condition of the governed.

Speaker Pelosi is correct in saying that, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” The true reasons are that 1) it is a convoluted quagmire, a complex colossus of cryptic conundrums.

“Senate bill weighs in at 2,074 pages

In the Battle of the Health Bills, the Senate wins out, bulk-wise – weighing in at 2,074 pages.  The House health reform bill was a mere 1,990 pages when introduced.  That means the Senate bill — like the one in the House – runs more pages than War and Peace, and has nearly five times as many words as the Torah.  The table of contents alone is 14 pages.”

The second reason is that, no matter what, there will be vast, unintended consequences.

What if it were precisely the controversy that is lifting the fog of over 2000 pages and unknown consequences?

Dr. Logic does not care for politics.  He wishes to expose and educate all who suffer from logical angst without regard for party, preference, or persuasion.  Please submit the statements you wish to analyze to drlogic@summalogica.com

Reid’s Rhetorical Roast and Why Washington Needs a Logic Lesson

By way of introduction, Senator Bunning is standing in the way of passing a temporary bill that would keep unemployment and other benefits active for a temporary period of time until a permanent measure can be passed. There was a previous vote for a procedure called PAYGO which would require that any bill that required funding would have to be paid for instead of being passed on to our future, that of our children and that of our grandchildren in the form of deficit spending and greater debt. Most of the drunken sailors and prostitutes in the house and senate agreed, probably out of political expediency, that the PAYGO idea at least gave the appearance of spending restraint and voted in favor. When the temporary bill came up, Bunning held their feet to the fire and invoked the PAYGO requirement. It was not well received. Here was dad taking away the credit cards that had been maxed out. The spoiled teens cried, “have you no heart?”

Because I cannot find a transcript of the exchange, I have included a time line sequence for the events as they occur in the video. Please pause the video when each time point arrives and read the discussion for that time point. Of special note, Reid, compared to Bunning, is a far superior orator, but logic is another matter. Reid is strong on pathos and ethos. If logos were king, Reid would have to be drawn and quartered.

9:10 — Red Herring Fallacy. He is deflecting the argument from whether or not there is a violation of PAYGO to “He made it personal.”

9:32 — Modal Scope Fallacy. The argument is that, “Any bill that receives 70 senate votes must be non-partisan. This bill received 70 votes, therefore this bill is non-partisan.” The problem occurs in the first premise. Bunning just got through explaining that a very partisan bill may get some republican votes, in this case around 9 out of 40, due to a political move by Reid called cloture. The logical problem is the scope of the implied word “any,” and in the definition of non-partisan. In the narrowest scope of non-partisan, one Republican vote is enough to receive the ‘non partisan’ label. In the broadest definition, non-partisan would imply significant (probably better than 50%) buy-in from both parties. Reid obviously chose the narrow scope and in so doing committed the modal scope fallacy.

9:42 — Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc. Reid assumes the cause of the receipt of 70 votes on the mentioned bill is that the “bill will do great things for America.” This one is practically laughable. There are so many political maneuvers and back room (enter the prostitutes) deals in the senate, that a bill may receive 70 votes and only be good for, say, Senator Byrd’s state and bad for the rest of the country, but because Byrd was able to cut deals, a bill passes. For a review of Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc, see the following video.

10:00 — Red Herring. Although Bunning opened the door on this one, Reid is evading the core argument and issue which is adherence to PAYGO.

10:31 — This is not a fallacy, but it is Reid’s second slip in which he starts to call it what it is, ‘partisan,’ then corrects himself.

10:43 — Red Herring. The bill Reid mentions is not the one that Bunning has the PAYGO issue with.

10:58 — Denying the Antecedent. Reid’s argument is, “If Y votes for Z, then Y will want to abide by Z. Bunning did not vote for Z, therefore, Bunning does not want to abide by Z. The form is,

If p then q

Not p, therefore not q.

11:30 — Red Herring. Reid is trying to deflect and distract the matter at hand which is, “Should PAYGO apply to the temporary bill in question?”

11:42 — Straw Man Argument/Red Herring/Poisoning the Well/Tu Quoque. I have to admit the masterful rhetorical Reid move here. For the last 2 – 3 minutes he has set up a straw man argument in an attempt to discredit (well poisoning), by distraction (red herring), by saying that Bunning is a hypocrite too (tu quoque). I did not know until this video just how good Reid is at pathos and ethos. I stand in disgusted awe (akin to discovering a six ft high pile of elephant dung “dude, you gotta see this!”).

11:49 — Another classic rhetorical ploy. Not sure what to call this one…but it works. He just got through calling Bunning a hypocrite then denies doing it.

12:09 — Red Herring. Bunning’s historical facts are not at issue here.

13:25 — Argumentum ad Misericordium/Argumentum ad Superbiam. Bunning is so typical of Republican offerings. The weight of logic is clearly on their side, but the presentations are pins and pokers. He had a great opportunity here to spank Reid and couldn’t or wouldn’t.

14:58 — Bunning undercuts his own argument here. He let Reid distract him from the issue. Here is my recommendation for Bunning, Bunning approaches the podium laughing and clapping. “Nice speech, Senator. You have talked about everything except the issue which is, “Do you plan on honoring your PAYGO vote for this bill or not? Wait, did I say ‘honor?’ I meant to say, will you be able to find the political expediency and enough excuses necessary to ignore PAYGO?”

15:49 — Red Herring

16:16 — Straw Man. Very nice rhetorical move. Reid repositions Bunning’s argument from, “There is a pattern of congressional behavior of passing bills then ignoring them. This one, due to its nature to control spending, will get ignored also. Therefore I will not vote for it.” To, “Bunning has acted as judge, and jury against the Senate by condemning the senators for acting badly in advance of their actions.” Interesting that Bunning was prophetic.

16:34 — Red Herring. What a partisan hack! Although he is right about Clinton and Bush, he just couldn’t resist furthering the deception that, somehow, current democrats care about paying down the debt that they have allowed to explode. I really have to chuckle.

16:56 — Tu Quque

Oh, a world without logical restraint. If it were not so damaging, it would make for great satire.

Greek Riots and Don Gale’s Deseret News Piece

The failure of liberalism and socialism is on display in Greece at the moment. They have created a behemoth entitlement public class that now faces the grim reality of vast cuts, layoffs and future pain. They are not at the end of their painful road yet. Things will get far worse before they get better. As you watch the following video, notice the American parallels. Notice where Greeks place the blame. Notice how many other countries are nearing crisis. Finally, notice deficit spending as a % of GDP. FYI, America’s is 10.6%. It was 1.2% three years ago.

Your Horoscope:

Pain and Suffering

Maybe I’m Chicken Little. G. Don Gale thinks so. He wrote an opinion piece for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mr. Gale has planted his head firmly in the sand…and his logic is bad. Here is the article with analysis.

Some of my best friends attend tea parties. They’re good people. I would never question their intelligence, their sincerity or their patriotism.

But they remind me of my father in his 90s. He didn’t like daylight saving time. We would invite him to dinner.

“What time?” he asked.

“Six o’clock.”

“Is that my time or dummy time?”

Dad was a good man. The best. I would never question his intelligence, or his sincerity, or his patriotism.

In his prime, Dad would not have concerned himself with “dummy time.” He was busy with his work, his family, his many hobbies, being a good citizen and keeping informed about events of the day. But as he grew older, he grew more crotchety. He lost his companion of 60-plus years. His comfortable life unraveled a bit. He occasionally let slip long-dormant Marine language. And he began to complain about this and that — something he rarely did before. He came up with the term “dummy time” as a focus of his disenchantment with the way things were going.

In his best days, Dad would never have been part of the tea party movement. At the time, he railed against the John Birch Society, a tea party precursor. Logical Fallacy Watch:  The fallacy is the use of Guilt by Association. The burden of proof is on Mr. Gale to show how the John Birch Society is related to the Tea Party.

I don’t know what he might have done had tea parties come along during his crotchety years. In any case, I would not have considered him any less intelligent, sincere or patriotic.

I feel the same about tea party patriots. They’re intelligent, sincere and patriotic … but a little too crotchety. Anything they don’t like is “dummy time.” Logical Fallacy Watch: Weak Analogy.

A is like B.
B has property P.
Therefore, A has property P.
(Where the analogy between A and B is weak.)

In this case, A is the stupidity of daylight savings time and B is the stupidity of unprecedented deficit spending. Apples to apples Mr. Gale? A is merely annoying. B contributes to riots and hosts of other maladies.

One thing I do know is that Dad would have resented the tea party crowd for naming their movement after the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Dad was an amateur historian, and he took umbrage when modern pampered patriots compared themselves with patriots of the American Revolution.
Interesting that Mr Gale points out a weak analogy within one second of committing one.

I don’t know as much about history as my father did, but I share his resentment of comparisons to the Boston Tea Party. No one in the modern movement is risking his or her life … or even his or her Social Security benefits. They aren’t demonstrating against an oppressive foreign king; they’re demonstrating against their neighbors — the people of America who elect thoughtful citizens to represent them in Washington. Tea party believers are not complaining about taxes that support a distant king but about taxes that pay our soldiers, educate our children, build our highways, punish lawbreakers and subsidize protesters’ own health care protection. Logical Fallacy Watch: Straw Man Argument. A straw man argument restates your opponent’s position in a weakened form them attacks it. Tea party protestation is not about, “taxes that pay our soldiers, educate our children, build our highways, punish lawbreakers and subsidize protesters’ own health care protection.” It is about irresponsible, out of control spending that makes America vulnerable on several fronts and burdens our children and grand children with heavy debt so that we can maintain entitlement lifestyles. Every family in America now carries $500,000 in debt burden. Mr. Gale won’t be around to pay it, so why should he care?

It seems more appropriate to compare today’s tea parties with the Mad Hatter’s tea party in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Alice stumbles onto a tea party where the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and a Dormouse are perpetually at tea because it’s always six o’clock — tea time. The Mad Hatter’s watch tells only the day, but the watch doesn’t work because it’s stuffed with butter. The March Hare dips the watch in tea and plays tricks with the English language. Today’s Mad Hatter is a voice on the radio. His watch is stuck on 1910 because it’s stuffed with vitriolic corrosion. The March Hare is the speaker of the day, playing tricks with language and spouting mostly nonsense. And the Dormouse is the gullible footstool — poked and prodded by the hatter and the hare into believing tales more fictional than factual.

Alice, of course, is the intruder … which means everyone who disagrees. When she makes a comment or asks a question, the radio mad hatter tells her to be quiet, just as the original Mad Hatter insists, “Then you shouldn’t talk,” simply because Alice begins a sentence with: “I don’t think …” At that point, Alice gets up and leaves the perpetual tea party. But as she looks back, she sees the Mad Hatter and the March Hare trying to stuff the Dormouse into the teapot. Not a logical fallacy, but hilarious! It describes so many Liberal/Socialist aims. “The debate is over on climate change.” “All that needs to be said on health care has been said.” Mad Hatter for sure.

So what are we to make of these modern tea parties? Not much … except to hope the Mad Hatter and the March Hare don’t succeed in stuffing the Dormouse into the teapot. After all, the Dormouse is a friend of ours – intelligent, sincere and patriotic.

I’m still too involved with life, family, friends and education to focus much attention on “dummy time.” And despite what the Mad Hatter of the airwaves may say, that doesn’t make me less intelligent, sincere or patriotic than my tea party friends.

I happen to agree with some of Mr. Gale’s assessment of talk radio Nyquil, but his tea party assessment reminds me of another adorable piece of fiction, Pollyanna.