{"id":1886,"date":"2007-09-06T15:55:17","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T19:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2007-09-06T15:55:17","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T19:55:17","slug":"a-chiffonade-of-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=1886","title":{"rendered":"A Chiffonade of Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was amused by the juxtaposition of these two statements:<\/p>\n<p>First <a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/archives\/052449.php\">David Kurtz writes<\/a> about Bush:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It's no surprise that this President is not one to test his beliefs and conclusions against the facts, neither the old facts nor the newly emerging facts. In the strange twilight of the Bush Presidency, the new revelation about what the President was briefed on and when about WMD falls into that category of things we thought we knew but for which we lacked all of the hard evidence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thirty minutes later, on the same site, <a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/archives\/052453.php\">Josh Marshall<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>...it is a classic case of presupposing the result in the methodology itself.<br \/>\n...<br \/>\nYou decide that the 'problem' is 'sectarian violence' -- not an improbable analysis in itself. Then you systematically devise a manner of counting that cuts away all sorts of carnage and mayhem that doesn't fit within an extremely narrow interpretation of the 'problem.' And voila, things are improving.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So... Bush is unwilling to allow new facts to influence his thinking; the DoD is presupposing the favored conclusion while carefully assembling facts which only support that conclusion; and \"we\" have known Bush's mental state, but just needed the facts to prove it. <\/p>\n<p>Doesn't anyone know how to arrive at conclusions based purely on facts, or do we all do the math backwards ?<\/p>\n<p>Let's let Josh Marshall sum up:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The truth is that once you take a screwdriver and saw to the numbers smart people can come up with a lot of ways to fool others and themselves, in many ways all the more so if the people doing the counting have a highly articulated theory behind their reasoning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Right. Except replace \"numbers\" with \"facts\" and \"counting\" with \"talking\". And, I'd use a sharp kitchen knife for a chiffonade, not a screwdriver and saw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was amused by the juxtaposition of these two statements: First David Kurtz writes about Bush: It's no surprise that this President is not one to test his beliefs and conclusions against the facts, neither the old facts nor the newly emerging facts. In the strange twilight of the Bush Presidency, the new revelation about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}