[QUOTE=chalsall;342061]IMO, you would be well advised to learn some patience.

One of my favorite authors had one protagonist say to another: "Suffer fools. Then make them suffer.

Sound words.[/QUOTE]
They may possibly be sound words in some contexts, but I don't think this is one of them. I see neither impatience nor foolishness here.

The well-known verbal art of "spin doctoring", especially when taken to extremes, is a form of dishonesty - that's why it's so beloved by propagandists and demagogues of all stripes. Cheesehead has always been very quick to point out such misleading verbiage when it's perpetrated by the agents of Satan, conservatives. He has repeatedly demonstrated his extreme political biases, such as in this very thread, where he provides lengthy documentation which he claims shows no anti-conservative bias in the recently broken IRS scandal. Even when confronted with very obvious tendencies conveyed by the very same numbers in his so-called "evidence", along with the overwhelmingly similar conclusion reached by the allegedly -liberally-biased mainstream media, he refuses to even admit the possibility that he is wrong. Even when the head of the DOJ attempts to "respond" via the Kafkaesque tactic of inviting representatives of the U.S. media to a discussion of press freedom [u]which he insists be off the record[/u], Cheesehead still refuses that maybe, just maybe, we are dealing with more than mere lapses of judgment.

I suggest that anyone who fails to recognize the extreme spin-doctoring represented by the above [i]The Daily Beast[/i] piece is afflicted by similar perceptual biases. Seriously, "missteps" represented by the IRS targeting? (And how would you characterize the AP spying scandal, Cheesehead? I can't help but notice you've been rather silent on the latter, likely because you hasn't yet found a suitably biased piece attempting to whitewash it). How about "flagrant abuses of IRS rules" (IRS scandal) and "violations of constitutionally guaranteed press freedoms?" (AP scandal). That is verbiage more representative of the way the major press outlets - and not just AP - characterize it. Not that you'll ever see Cheesehead ever provide links and long-winded monologues to *those* kinds of "honest" pieces.

And let's be clear - this is coming from an erstwhile supporter of Obama. I went so far as to donate $1000 to his 2008 campaign.

Oh, look, more "missteps"! Or would this represent more "Carteresque incompetence"? Mayhap another "hapless attempt to shield the president"? We need suitably benignity-indicating verbiage here. Help us, o great NeoLib spinmeisters!

[url=thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/302863-irs-fails-to-meet-senate-finances-info-request-deadline-]IRS fails to meet Senate Finance's deadline for documents on targeting[/url]
[quote]The IRS will not deliver documents requested by top Senate Finance Committee members on the agency’s targeting of conservative groups by Friday, committee aides said.

Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), had asked the IRS for a wide range of information in a May 20 letter – 41 questions in all.

The senators’ requests included details of any communication between the IRS and White House officials about the singling out of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status. In the letter, Baucus and Hatch asked for the agency to answer by Friday.

“It’s disappointing that the IRS failed to produce any of the documents requested by the committee,” the press offices for Baucus and Hatch said in a joint statement. “This is an agency that revolves around making the American taxpayer meet hard deadlines each and every year when they file their taxes, oftentimes penalizing those that are late.”

“The IRS needs to do much better,” the statement added.[/quote]

I'll withhold criticism for now -- they might just be trying very hard to comply with requests for lots of documents and/or hard-to-locate documents. The jab is funny but not a reasonable comparison.

Possibly so, but if they were genuinely having a hard time complying with the request, they could easily have at least communicated that to the Finance Committee. The article mentions no such communication.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;342168]The well-known verbal art of "spin doctoring", especially when taken to extremes, is a form of dishonesty - that's why it's so beloved by propagandists and demagogues of all stripes.[/QUOTE]Is it also why you show us no evidence to support your challenged assertions, despite repeated reminders?

[quote]Cheesehead has always been very quick to point out such misleading verbiage[/quote]... but you're strangely [strike]slow[/strike] immobile when asked for evidence to distinguish your assertions from fantasy.

[quote]He has repeatedly demonstrated his extreme political biases, such as in this very thread, where he provides lengthy documentation which he claims shows no anti-conservative bias in the recently broken IRS scandal.[/quote]I've previously requested that you quote my actual words, or at least be accurate in summarizing, when attributing ideas to me ... but you won't do that.

Instead, you use fantasy phrases such as "extreme political biases" without factual justification rather than confine your accusations to reality.

- -

As to "lengthy documentation which he claims shows no anti-conservative bias":

I made no such claim. (Readers, note the telltale: Ernst doesn't quote my actual words making that claim; he only writes a false paraphrase. Quotes would be evidence; paraphrases are not evidence.)

I claimed that the document showed several things, but at no time have I made the unqualified claim that the document shows no anti-conservative bias. I have denied that certain particular parts of the document, cited by you and others as evidence of anti-conservative bias, actually constitute such evidence.

Those certain parts don't prove anti-conservative bias IMO, but they don't constitute the whole document. It's possible that other parts do show such bias -- I invite Ernst to direct my attention to specific examples. (But ... that would be posting evidence ...)

(Readers, some of you may see this as picky. But that's what sometimes has to be done to demonstrate the falsity of statements that depend on many small distortions to deceive you: take them apart piece-by-piece.)

[quote]Even when confronted with very obvious tendencies conveyed by the very same numbers in his so-called "evidence",[/quote]When you cite parts of the document as evidence to support your case, you don't put "evidence" in quotes.

[quote]along with the overwhelmingly similar conclusion reached by the allegedly -liberally-biased mainstream media,[/quote]If everyone you knew told you that jumping off a cliff wouldn't harm you, would you believe their overwhelmingly similar-to-each-other claims?

I think you've written (or at least agreed with someone else), in other contexts, that correlation is not causation. Why do you imply here that an overwhelmingly high correlation in the mainstream media necessarily means that their consensus is truth about the real world? In the case of a physics claim, surely you'd insist on a showing of causality in addition to correlation; why is this case different?

[quote]he refuses to even admit the possibility that he is wrong.[/quote]That's an example of how your statements about me cannot be trusted by readers.

I have frequently said that I'm willing to change my conclusion upon presentation of sufficient evidence to the contrary. I have practically begged you to present such evidence in this case ... but you don't.

[quote]Even when the head of the DOJ attempts to "respond" via the Kafkaesque tactic of inviting representatives of the U.S. media to a discussion of press freedom [U]which he insists be off the record[/U], Cheesehead still refuses that[/quote]Ernst,

I made no statement at all about that! I refused nothing about that!

(Readers,

See? [I]You cannot trust Ernst's statements about me. They are frequently just straight-out false, if not merely misleading.[/I])

[quote]maybe, just maybe, we are dealing with more than mere lapses of judgment.[/quote]Perhaps we are. Show us evidence, not more fact-free personal abuse, to support that claim.

[quote]I suggest that anyone who fails to recognize the extreme spin-doctoring represented by the above [I]The Daily Beast[/I] piece is afflicted by similar perceptual biases.[/quote]You may be correct. If you actually show us evidence to support that claim about [I]The Daily beast[/I], I might agree. But you haven't ...

[quote](And how would you characterize the AP spying scandal, Cheesehead?[/quote]I don't yet know enough about it to be able to justify a characterization one way or the other.

That you accompany your negative characterizations of the AP matter with fact-free rhetoric, but not factual evidence, is not persuasive that you're on the side of truth there. Actual, factual evidence could be persuasive ... if you were to deign to present some ... but (* sigh *) you don't.

[quote]I can't help but notice you've been rather silent on the latter,[/quote]See above.

[quote]likely because you hasn't yet found a suitably biased piece attempting to whitewash it).[/quote](Readers: Is that evidence ... or yet more personal abuse without factual foundation?)

[quote]How about "flagrant abuses of IRS rules" (IRS scandal) and "violations of constitutionally guaranteed press freedoms?" (AP scandal).[/quote]From where do you quote those? Unlike some folks, I want to see the complete context before I decide what short phrases refer to.

Oh, wait. Actual links to sources for those quotes would be ... [I]evidence[/I].

[quote]That is verbiage more representative[/quote]If you were in my place, how would you verify that those quotes were actually "representative", let alone more so?

Would you go to original sources to check the actual verbiage there for yourself?

[quote]of the way the major press outlets - and not just AP - characterize it.[/quote]... according to your assertion. Are you afraid I'd actually fact-check your assertions?

[quote]Not that you'll ever see Cheesehead ever provide links and long-winded monologues to *those* kinds of "honest" pieces.[/quote]"pieces"? The pieces to which you just referred in preceding sentences? I don't see _your_ links to them (though I do see your monologue).

[quote]And let's be clear - this is coming from an erstwhile supporter of Obama. I went so far as to donate $1000 to his 2008 campaign.[/quote]Do you intend for your readers to accept that as evidence that you were completely accurate and truthful in your assertions about me, the DOJ/AP scandal, or the IRS scandal? Care to post an image of your receipt for the $1000, with an explanation of how it implies your truthfulness about anything else?

Spent the weekend indulging your nanoquoting fetish, I see ... man, you need professional help.

[url=www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334736/IRS-employee-congressional-interviews-tea-party-targeting-Washington-DC-wanted-cases---I-sent-seven.html]IRS employee in bombshell congressional interviews about tea party targeting: 'Washington, DC wanted some cases ... I sent seven'[/url]
[quote]Interviews with IRS employees have established that the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service was engaged in targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for unfair levels of scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
...
A [House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform] spokesman sent MailOnline partial transcripts of two interviews with unnamed IRS workers about the agency's actions in early 2010, on whose testimony Issa based his bombshell statement.

One of those interviewees said it was 'impossible' for a few IRS agents to have orchestrated such widespread partisan targeting on their own...
...
'Did [your supervisor] give you any indication of the need for the search [for tea party groups], any more context?' one IRS witness was asked in a closed-door interview.

'He told me that Washington, D.C., wanted some cases,' came the reply.

The employee, who said he or she was evaluating 40 such applications for tax-exempt status from conservative organizations at the time, said 'some went to Washington. D.C. ... I sent seven.'[/quote]
Would any of our UK readers [if we have any who are masochistic enough to read this thread] care to comment on [i]The Daily Mail[/i]'s journalistic reputation? The above would be a bombshell, if true, so I'll await independent confirmation (not to be confused with [i]Independent[/i] confirmation, to pun another UK paper).

You'd be well advised not to trust anything you read in the Daily Mail without confirmation from reliable news sources. Sensation, plus pandering to a conservative political agenda, are more important than factual accuracy in that newspaper. I am no longer a UK person, but my opinion can be viewed in the light that the gutter press such as the Daily Mail (and The Sun, The Daily Star and The Daily Express) were indirectly responsible for my leaving that country.

PS I am one of those masochistic enough to be reading this thread, and I am a little disappointed that you didn't take up cheesehead's points which sound to me like a fair rebuttal of what you wrote earlier. (Then again, I'm just as biased as The Daily Mail, so don't take any notice of what I think is fair and what isn't!)

Addition to my preceding post:

[QUOTE=cheesehead;342392]
[QUOTE=ewmayer;342168]Not that you'll ever see Cheesehead ever provide links and long-winded monologues to *those* kinds of "honest" pieces.[/QUOTE]

"pieces"? The pieces to which you just referred in preceding sentences? I don't see _your_ links to them (though I do see your monologue).[/QUOTE](addition) When someone requests that I show links to some article, I make the effort to do so.

- - -

Readers,

Of course, what Ernst probably meant there was that he wants me to provide links and commentary to articles that support his side of the argument (AKA "*those* kinds of 'honest' pieces").

Yes, I'm sure that Ernst would be delighted if I assisted him in laying out his side of the argument in addition to mine, especially in view of his record of providing his own evidence.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;342428]Spent the weekend indulging your nanoquoting fetish, I see ... man, you need professional help.
[/QUOTE]Readers,

Ernst doesn't let up in his effort to distract you from noticing that he doesn't provide evidence to support his false, dubious or exaggerated claims and personal abuse.

I've been informed by a third party that Ernst's "nanoquoting" term (which he's never defined, so that he can use it as just a vague disparagement) refers to my style of interspersing my response with quotes of what I'm responding to.

Would anyone prefer that I adopt his style, which I think can sometimes be more susceptible to misunderstanding than mine? I [I]could[/I] try posting in a somewhat different style, so we'd see whether that were an improvement.

In some other forums, what I do is a common style. Ernst is only the second or third person to complain about it in the 15+ years I've been using it. (Note: I'm giving Ernst the benefit of the doubt that his "nanoquoting" disparagement is equivalent to a straightforward complaint.)

[QUOTE=cheesehead;342470][...]I've been informed by a third party that Ernst's "nanoquoting" term (which he's never defined, so that he can use it as just a vague disparagement) refers to my style of interspersing my response with quotes of what I'm responding to.

Would anyone prefer that I adopt his style, which I think can sometimes be more susceptible to misunderstanding than mine? I [I]could[/I] try posting in a somewhat different style, so we'd see whether that were an improvement.

In some other forums, what I do is a common style. Ernst is only the second or third person to complain about it in the 15+ years I've been using it. (Note: I'm giving Ernst the benefit of the doubt that his "nanoquoting" disparagement is equivalent to a straightforward complaint.)[/QUOTE]
My initial reaction is that I like, and have always liked, the clarity which your style gives.

The only thing I might mention is that sometimes your habit of taking [I]everything[/I] up which has been said can lead to over-lengthy posts with a certain amount of repetition. (That repetition is not always evident, just sometimes.) The lengthiness, in particular, can be a bit of a conversation-stopper. So I think you could do well, sometimes, to concentrate on certain parts of other people's posts and let the rest go unchallenged, despite the reduced content which that entails, simply in the interests of keeping the forum a place of discourse rather than dissertation.

Disclaimer: I say the above as a passive reader, one who has rarely if ever really engaged with you in debate. I think that's because I typically personally agree with what you write on many different issues, which rather stifles things in comparison with what happens when people disagree with you. ;-) Those who get involved in lengthy tussles with you will undoubtedly have a wildly different viewpoint from mine.