Pun Salad

Madonna may fantasize about blowing up the White House. But I am fantasizing about replying to thousands of blog articles, tweets, and Facebook posts with: "Your logical fallacy is tu quoque".

• One more shot at our nation's ongoing epistemological nightmare from Reason's Jacob Sullum: "Alternative Facts' Cannot Hide Trump's Petty Dishonesty"

  The ongoing spat about the size of the audience at Donald Trump's inauguration, in itself a trivial issue, is significant because it highlights the new president's vanity, pettiness, lack of discipline, and casual disregard for the truth. Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway took that last character flaw to a new level in a Meet the Press interview yesterday when she described White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's verifiably false assertions about attendance at the inauguration as "alternative facts."

  If you feel compelled to respond to that with something about "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan", fine, but see above: your logical fallacy is tu quoque.

• Or, I should say, may be tu quoque. At NR, David French uses the issue to offer free (and very good) advice: "Don’t Shred Your Credibility for Your Tribe".

  Our politics is devolving into the pathetic spectacle of liars indignantly calling out liars for lying. Rule-breakers are outraged that other rule-breakers break rules. Norms that could be violated with impunity for “social justice” can’t be violated for “nationalism.” We stick with our tribe, through thick and thin — through truth and lies.

  Our tendency toward tribalism is probably innate and unavoidable. People who think they're free from it are deluding themselves. But step one is recognizing it for what it is.

• Also at NR, John Fund relates Obama’s Final Whopper as President. (Soon to be followed by "Obama's First Whopper as Ex-President", but let's not get ahead of ourselves.) The issue is Voter ID, Obama's attempt to link it to Jim Crow, and his claims that (1) voter fraud is negligible, and (2) no other "advanced democracy" requires ID.

  Fund observes, sensibly, that nobody knows how widespread voter fraud is, because Democrats do their darndest to thwart any efforts to measure it. But Obama's claim about Voter ID's absence in other countries? "Demonstrably false."

  All industrialized democracies — and most that are not — require voters to prove their identity before voting. Britain was a holdout, but last month it announced that persistent examples of voter fraud will require officials to see passports or other documentation from voters in areas prone to corruption.

  Also worth noting is Fund's conclusion:

  Which is precisely why it’s so disappointing to see Barack Obama use it to raise baseless fears that voter ID is a racist form of voter suppression. Even as he leaves office, the president who promised to unify us is continuing his level best to polarize and divide us.

  Obama's methods of "racial healing" will continue, in other words.

• Also at NR, Kevin D. Williamson on "Our Unimaginative Politicians, and the Need to Stop Rewarding Them". His immediate topic is political bloviating on wealth and the economy, but his bottom line is more general.

  We’ve just had a weekend of political rioting after progressive-leaning and Democrat-affiliated celebrities and public figures called for, among other things, a military coup d’état to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States and the imposition of martial law. But after the hysteria dies down — and it will die down — we’ll still be back where we were before: a prosperous, stable, healthy nation with some very serious problems that need addressing, and that cannot be addressed until we learn how to speak and think about them intelligently and until we — we citizens — demand that our leaders do. And that means, among other things, that we forgo rewarding political and media figures with money and power for peddling lies and stupidity. A politician is like any other dumb animal: He’ll do what gets him fed and avoid what gets him whipped. And lament “the system” as much as you like, we citizens still control both the carrot and the stick.

• At Patterico, "JVW" makes note of a WaPo article: "Shocking Development: Throwing Money at Troubled Schools Doesn’t Seem to Accomplish Much"

  Which most clear-eyed folks have known for decades. But this is a new data point, and it only cost $7 Billion-with-a-b to get this extra smidgen of confirmation. Quoting the WaPo:

  The money went to states to distribute to their poorest-performing schools — those with exceedingly low graduation rates, or poor math and reading test scores, or both. Individual schools could receive up to $2 million per year for three years, on the condition that they adopt one of the Obama administration’s four preferred measures: replacing the principal and at least half the teachers, converting into a charter school, closing altogether, or undergoing a “transformation,” including hiring a new principal and adopting new instructional strategies, new teacher evaluations and a longer school day.

  The Education Department did not track how the money was spent, other than to note which of the four strategies schools chose.

  Yet another thing to remember when Democrats blather about Betsy DeVos's "lack of qualifications". This is what happens when the "qualified" people have been in charge for eight years.

  Also commenting on this is Nick Gillespie, who uses it as a springboard to advocate for school choice. Video:

  Adds Gillespie: "Extra credit if you can guess what letter the asterisk is for." I got it, did you?