Reinhard's 9/11 Article
I was really surprised by the David Reinhard article in Sunday's Oregonian, for two reasons.
1-It was not a remembrance of the World Trade Center attacks, connected to glorious praise for the invasion of Iraq.
2-It uses logical arguments, instead of blind asserions, and puts them together to make a valid point.
Sunday's article
This is the first time in the years I have been reading Reinhard's crap that I have seen him construct a column using mostly valid premises, and a minimal amount of disconnected bullshit.
Not being a partisan hack myself, I am denied the opportunity to go on with my stated purpose (that I will deconstruct all of Reinhard's articles, because they all are complete crap) without making myself look a fool.
Many partisan hacks, Reinhard included, do not mind looking like fools. They will blindly cling to their position in defiance of logic, evidence, and fact. It must be easy, being a hack.
Because it is tough, let me tell you, to make a blog based on debunking bad columns--and then have a decent column come out. Almost as a slap in my face.
Did he have this one ghostwritten? Or is he simply able to exercise some actual writing talent, because he is writing on a local issue? Perhaps with national issues, he is required by his corporate RNC masters to regurgitate talking points almost verbatim. (The examples of this are plentiful.) But with this local issue, there is no fax from headquarters with fifteen points he has to try to fit in, and he actually wrote something worth reading.
His focus in this article was not so much the issue (that Oregon should adopt the tougher California clean-air emissions standards for automobiles, instead of the weak federal ones) but how the issue was currently being acheived. Gov. Kulongoski used a line-item veto to omit a passage forbidding Oregon taking those standards on.
In laymen's terms, the Legislature forbid the DEQ from spending any money to make cars stop polluting any more than they already are. The governor said, "No, you can't do that." That is the issue that Reinhard focuses on, and it was effective, because it prevented him from having to argue the actual issue--that cars should stop emitting so many toxic gases.
Instead the issue of the article seems to be the governor's "power grab," and he makes it seem that the Governor is trying to make legislation, and that is a power reserved for the legislature.
Lest we forget, an executive of a higher branch of government is also engaged in a power grab. George Bush, Reinhard's wet-dream hero, has taken upon himself the power to declare war on any country he pleases. This was a power once reserved exclusively for Congress; but Reinhard doesn't yap when a Republican makes a power grab. Or when a power grab results in the infinite detention, without charges, of American citizens on American soil--let's not focus on power grabs like those, or the executive branch contravening the legislative branch on issues like personal liberty and due process. It is so much more relevant to examine the relationship between branches of government through the lens of environmental standards, isn't it?
Reinhard's hypocrisy aside, his Sunday article was surprisingly good rhetoric. But, good rhetoricians aren't necessarily right; sometimes they are just really good at convincing people that a false position is true. Reinhard is generally not even good at this; so, what gives? Who wrote it for him? Or, why did he decide to actually put some effort into this local issue? Is he in the car business, or what?
1-It was not a remembrance of the World Trade Center attacks, connected to glorious praise for the invasion of Iraq.
2-It uses logical arguments, instead of blind asserions, and puts them together to make a valid point.
Sunday's article
This is the first time in the years I have been reading Reinhard's crap that I have seen him construct a column using mostly valid premises, and a minimal amount of disconnected bullshit.
Not being a partisan hack myself, I am denied the opportunity to go on with my stated purpose (that I will deconstruct all of Reinhard's articles, because they all are complete crap) without making myself look a fool.
Many partisan hacks, Reinhard included, do not mind looking like fools. They will blindly cling to their position in defiance of logic, evidence, and fact. It must be easy, being a hack.
Because it is tough, let me tell you, to make a blog based on debunking bad columns--and then have a decent column come out. Almost as a slap in my face.
Did he have this one ghostwritten? Or is he simply able to exercise some actual writing talent, because he is writing on a local issue? Perhaps with national issues, he is required by his corporate RNC masters to regurgitate talking points almost verbatim. (The examples of this are plentiful.) But with this local issue, there is no fax from headquarters with fifteen points he has to try to fit in, and he actually wrote something worth reading.
His focus in this article was not so much the issue (that Oregon should adopt the tougher California clean-air emissions standards for automobiles, instead of the weak federal ones) but how the issue was currently being acheived. Gov. Kulongoski used a line-item veto to omit a passage forbidding Oregon taking those standards on.
In laymen's terms, the Legislature forbid the DEQ from spending any money to make cars stop polluting any more than they already are. The governor said, "No, you can't do that." That is the issue that Reinhard focuses on, and it was effective, because it prevented him from having to argue the actual issue--that cars should stop emitting so many toxic gases.
Instead the issue of the article seems to be the governor's "power grab," and he makes it seem that the Governor is trying to make legislation, and that is a power reserved for the legislature.
Lest we forget, an executive of a higher branch of government is also engaged in a power grab. George Bush, Reinhard's wet-dream hero, has taken upon himself the power to declare war on any country he pleases. This was a power once reserved exclusively for Congress; but Reinhard doesn't yap when a Republican makes a power grab. Or when a power grab results in the infinite detention, without charges, of American citizens on American soil--let's not focus on power grabs like those, or the executive branch contravening the legislative branch on issues like personal liberty and due process. It is so much more relevant to examine the relationship between branches of government through the lens of environmental standards, isn't it?
Reinhard's hypocrisy aside, his Sunday article was surprisingly good rhetoric. But, good rhetoricians aren't necessarily right; sometimes they are just really good at convincing people that a false position is true. Reinhard is generally not even good at this; so, what gives? Who wrote it for him? Or, why did he decide to actually put some effort into this local issue? Is he in the car business, or what?
posted by platon at 1:39 PM
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