RCL#4

For this RCL post I will be analyzing the logic of the organization Mother Jones.  Mother Jones is a non-profit news organization that is extremely progressive in there views.  Their progressive liberal leaning seem to be on display everywhere on the website, from the article selection, to article title and on into the actual material in the articles. They cover everything from politics to food.  As I was searching for a organization to feature in this post I came across many that represented something I disagreed with.  Unfortunately, even though I disagreed with what they were saying these organizations where not to ripe with fallacious arguments and logic.  Or it just was not so blatant.

Mother Jones on the other hand is like a liberal hub of all news presented with a slant that makes my blood boil.  I consider myself to have a moderate view on most issues but the few I have a staunch stance on such as abortion, gun rights and being pro-police officer where being all-around hated on by Mother Jones.  I immediately knew I had found the organization that I would enjoy looking for fallacies in there arguments.

The first article I will analyze “Americans are GorgingThemselves on Cheap Meat” by Jenny Luna appears to be a simple health article, nope.  It is a disguised article on why eating beef is not bad for your health but for the environment.

1) The article opens by saying, “While the Dutch and other nations are advising consumers to cut down on red meat, and it’s estimated that Americans will eat more beef this year than we have in the last decade.” The operative words are advising and estimated.  The Dutch government simply is advising that does not mean that the people of Denmark will eat less meat.  The writer compares an advisory statement to an estimate.  Then later says the Netherlands advises their population to eat no more than 0.9lbs of red meat a week.  Followed by the fact that it is estimated that the US eats 53.4lbs of red meat a year that is really close to the advisement from the Netherlands.  But the yearly total was included to the make the number look bigger. Also, you need to compare apples to apples not apples to oranges.  So why did the author not include what the estimated total consumption of meat in the Netherlands is?  An advisement number means nothing, the US Government could advice the population to eat no meat and nothing would change.  This article uses weak logic and contradicts itself throughout by bring up facts that hurt the argument.  This article is ripe with the fallacy of missing the point.  While also promoting the site progressive agenda by arguing that cows are bad for the environment. 

  

2) “Conservatives Just Lost a Big Weapon Against the AbortionPill” The title of the next article is a logical fallacy in itself. There are multiple fallacies at play such as false dichotomy, red herring, and slippery slope.  The false dichotomy fallacy comes up because it is saying conservatives have just lost and abortion has won, without even going into the argument.  Red herring is what the title is, conservatives are never again mentioned in the article, only in the title to make it appear that a changing of a label on a birth control pill is a blow to conservative, because it makes it more affordable.  The last on is a slippery slope and a weak one at that.  The fact that a two-thirds reduction in the dosage on a birth control pill results in birth control being cheaper and conservatives losing.  The rest of the article simply plays of the fallacies in the title.

If you look through Mother Jones website the articles linked commonly have a common denominator which is supporting the progressive agenda.  It only makes sense that the news outlet that is funded under the umbrella of the Foundation for National Progress.  You cannot fault the group polarizing the news, it gives more sites and organization a niche to cater to.  If all the news sites reported unbiased information there would only need to be one source. 

RCL3: Persuasive Essay

Thesis:

Careerism in politics has had many negative affects on the function of the United States governing system; at the heart of its problem is the divergence of the representative’s interest and constituent’s interest.

Justification for this topic:

I want to focus my persuasive essay on how careerism in politics has many negative affects and in particularly, how it affects the relationship between the constituents and their representatives.  The reason I was initially drawn to this was through some articles I came across recently.  Of course, you cannot just read one article and take it for the 100% truth, so I did further research and was able to find similar ideas and supporting facts across a range of sources.  This has led me to my position of being against career politics. 

This topic is one that fly’s under the radar for a lot of people, so I do not know of any major misconception about it.  The only misconception would come form the cliché statement that ignorance is bliss.  That is another reason I am interested in this topic, because it is not so main stream like, gun rights, social equality...etc.  As the writer it is more fun to present material to an unbiased audience, which can only be done when the material being presented in relatively unknown. 

I have some roughly worded potential topics form my paper below.  There is some much material that could be covered a challenge will be deciding what my most potent topics are and focusing on those, while also having to consider what set of topics will work well to promote logical progression and flow through my paper.

Potential Topics:

1. How the current system promotes career politicians

2. How effective can elected individual be if their income is dependent on their government positions?

3. How they can be influence by PAC's and Lobbyist

4. Low voter turnout in state and local elections almost ensures the incumbent re-election. (Presidential election is an exception to the lobbyist and PAC influence)

5. Entering politics should be because of a passion to change and help better the US, not to just have a long lucrative career.

Book Citation:

Katz, Alyssa. The Influence Machine: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Corporate Capture of American Life. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Print.

CI#4: Presidential Candiates

The 2016 Presidential primary race is coming towards its close.  The voting has started and the fields have shrunken. The question that remain are not about who the democratic nominee will be, the odds have always been in Hilary Clinton's favor, she has all but secured the nomination. The question is will Donald Trump win enough delegates to avoid a contested convention? 

For Donald to secure the primary he has to secure a total of 1237 delegates at the moment he has 673. That leaves another 664 for him to win uncontested.  The other two republican candidates are gaming for a brokeredconvention.

One of the three remaining candidates is John Kasich.  Kasich is the governor of Ohio and until the primary in Ohio, he had not won a single state.  By staying in the race he was able to slim beat trump in Ohio, which deprived trump of 66 delegates.  While Kasich does not even have a mathematically possible shot at securing the nomination even if he wins every delegate left available he will continue to run.  This is in an attempt to take delegates away from Trump. 

Kasich is considered the last establishment candidate in the republic race.  The establishment hates Ted Cruz but they also hate trump.  It is a strange mix of individuals left and republican elites do not know what to do.  It seems kind of cheap for Kasich to stay in the race when his only goal is to try to force a brokered convention. 

A brokered convention is when Republican Parties delegates decide who will be the nomination.  This is how a normal election works, but in the brokered election delegates are protected to change who they vote for from what the people they represent have already decided.  It is a vary complicated process apparently the party rules transcend the states rules so delegates do not have to follows the states decision once there is a contested convention. Delegates can even vote for someone who was not even running the primary, for example the name Paul Ryan has come up for a potential nominee if there is a brokered convention.  

These contested conventions have happened in the past but usually when there are two candidates who are neck and neck, not when there is just one candidate that everyone is trying to stop.  It would surely be political suicide for the Republican Party to deny trump the nomination if he continues to clearly be the front-runner but just falls a few delegates shy of the magic number.  

It is surely a strange election cycle this year on both sides.  While the political elites of the country do not like Trump the people have shown they support him more than the other candidates.  Even if there is brokered convention I think the establishment will just bite there tongue and go with Trump.

There is not much going on for the democratic side except for the fact of how much support Bernie Sanders has managed to gather.  It is clear he will not be the nominee but it still raises question will Bernie’s supports rally to get politicians like Bernie in office, or is this a short lived phenomenon.  This same question can be asked about the Trump phenomenon.  Has he actually changed the Republican Party or is he just running at the perfect time and was in the perfect position being a reality TV star and well known across the nation?

There is still a lot of drama to be had in this election cycle, but as the primaries just keep rolling it will be interesting to see if established politicians will start to embrace Trump or continue there Hail Mary of an attack against his everything.