Help! I need right-wing talking points!

Hey, everyone.

I'm planning to submit a column to a progressive publication in the format of a myth/fact piece. I want to provide concise, factual rebuttals to right-wing talking points about a variety of subjects. Can you guys tell me what sort of repeated right-wing talking points you've been hearing lately? They can be about anything- evolution, Vietnam, Iraq, torture, taxes, religion, whatever. I just need some talking points to debunk like they're WMDs. Any related quotes you might have heard from the talking heads (the news-twits, not the band) would be really appreciated. Thanks! :)

Evolution (Intelligent Design):

Right-wing Talking Point: Intelligent Design is not religion, it's an alternative scientific theory to the baseless theory of evolution.

Actually: If Intelligent Design is not religion, then why did Pat Robertson equate a community voting against the teaching of Intelligent Design in their schools to "voting God out of their community" and then warned them not to ask God for help if ever suffering a natural disaster?

Also, to construct a thourough rebuttal, there needs to be a chronolog with each talking point dealing with each of the RW talking points as they have dissembled over time, e.g. Reasons for going to war in Iraq.

Because the talking points are "moving targets", and the chronology will show the successful rebuttals that have already refuted the original talking points, triggering the need to invent new talking points.

... according to the logical fallacy they represent and the degree to which they're "reality-based" regardless of whether they're logically relevant.

For example, the vast majority of Iraq talking points are mere "straw men" since the sole legitimate casus belli was an "imminent threat" - and some possibility of threat anywhere from one to five years in the future is anything but "imminent."

RWTP: The American people are not concerned about this case and since Fitzgerald indicted Libby on Perjury and Obstruction, that proves he has no case.

Actually: Polls show the American people DO care about the outing of a CIA agent, but the Republican talking heads think they can tell Americans what they care about. And the reason Fitzgerald indicted Libby on Perjury and Obstruction is because his Libby's alleged lies to the grand jury prevented Fitzgerald from getting to the bottom of the leak case. Therefore, all Fitzgerald could do (so far) was go after the lies. Fitz did his best to explain this with a baseball analogy (throwing sand in the Umpire's eyes) but apparenty, Republican luminaries are too stupid to understand him. And I suppose the Government's case against Capone was only a witch-hunt because they only got him for tax-evasion and not racketeering, smuggling, and murder?

anything that they want to cover up, hide and ignore. On one of the Sunday morning shows yesterday, I heard one of the right wingers (can't remember who, at the moment)say that the American people aren't interested in the reasons that Bush took us to war in Iraq, either. They are just interested in looking forward.

Let's see: LIE: "The democrats had the same pre-war intelligence as the administration did." LIE: "Valerie Plame was not covert." LIE: "Criticizing the Iraq war is bad for troop morale." (See Sidney Blumenthal for a debunking of that one.) LIE: "The law under which Ronnie Earle's grand jury indicted DeLay did not apply at the time DeLay committed the crime, so it wasn't a crime." (How funny--the judge in the case disagreed.) LIE: "The other day, the democrats voted against Murtha's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq." No they didn't--they voted against repukelican Duncan Hunter's insulting sham parody of Murtha's resolution. LIE: "We need a constitutional amendment that says marriage can only be btw one man and one woman." Yeah, right--we need to have the federal government/courts involved in all domestic relations cases, which are currently the last bastion of state influence (with the exception of child support, where the feds have already horned in.)

Remember Bill O'Reilly last year? "The secularists are on the run!"

that I've ever seen. Next to Bush, that is.

If we concatenate a good canonical list of lies and replies, it would actually be a good resource and reference work.

He can if he's an OIL MAN!!! But, since he stands to astronomically increase his own personal wealth if oil prices skyrocket, he WON'T help fight skyrocketing oil prices. He likes them.

LIE: "Homosexuals will be damned for eternity." Answer: Do you mean all homosexuals, or just those who are not true-believer members of the republican party?

LIE: "Pedophiles are the greatest danger to our children." Nope--there are far more military recruiters than there are pedophiles, and they use the very same tactics that pedophiles use.

LIE: "Large personal injury suits and jury awards have ruined this country and have harmed honest businessmen." Bullshit--follow any such suit past the jury stage and see how the award is almost always severely reduced by the appeals court. Or overturned. Or never collected by the plaintiff b/c the corporate entity has "asset protection" specialists who keep people from executing judgments against it. Also check out how just about every idiot who bitches about this is ready to sue any one who "injures" him/her, at the drop of a hat. (See: Rick Santorum.)

RWTP: The theory of global warming requires "more study" (and more, and more, and more) before we should act on it. We don't want to do anything that would hurt our economy (like signing the Kyoto Treaty) without fully understanding the issue.

Actually: Most actual real scientists (who aren't funded by Exxon) have studied the subject to their own satisfaction that global warming exists and is at least partially caused by human activity. As far as this cautious attitude to study the issue more in order to save our economy, how is it that the Republicans never wish "more study" on the theory of tax cuts for the rich before passing them again, again, and again, despite the evidence that they hurt the nation's economy (but not Exxon shareholders and executives, and hence Republican contributions)?

Answer: The repuke sheep fear, above all, a man whose existence is only halfway proved, of whom there are only maybe two (alleged) photographs (ever notice how when they speak of "Zarqawi", they always show the same fuzzy photograph?), who apparently can re-grow an amputated leg, and who can come back to life after being blown up.

They also fear a man whose kidneys were so diseased that he required dialysis, whose obituary appeared more than once in the newspapers, of whom we KNOW a FALSE video was produced right b/f the 2004 election, and who was originally financed and embraced by Americans so that he could help drive our enemies, the Soviets, out of Afghanistan. And it has never been proved that this man even masterminded 9/11.

Also see Keith Olbermann's handy correlation chart, which showed that bad news for Prethident Bush usually results (coincidentally, of COURSE) in another "terror" alert.

RWTP: We need to leave the option open to torture prisoners in order to save innocent people from terrorist attacks. And people who oppose these measures want to coddle the terrorists, the very people who killed Americans on 9-11.

Actually: Anyone who has expertise on the issue in Washington (including torture-recipient John McCain) knows that torture does not produce good information. It only produces what the torture victim thinks the torturer wants to here in order to stop the abuse. If a prisoner who has been claiming innocence (and is) the whole time but has been enduring beatings, humiliation, rape, etc. all of a sudden says "I know of an Al Qaeda plot to kill Americans," then guess what - the torture will stop while the torturer says: "Tell me more, you terrorist scum."

And, people who oppose torture don't want to coddle terrorists, there's just that little quirky possibility that not everyone picked up by the military is a member of Al Qaeda. The Army's own report on Abu Ghraib showed that perhaps MOST of the prisoners inside had NOTHING to do with terrorism and yet we tortured them. 2+2? Hmmm .... Oh, yes - that means we tortured innocent people. And if that's not unamerican, then nothing is.

Seemed like a non sequitor to me, until I thought about it. And they had to evacuate the NYC subways because of a suspicious soda can. And they're still coming out with the same empty phrases: "we have to fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here." This sounds sounds to me like a direct challenge. When the news is bad, create a frightening distraction. Bird flu seems to be he current favorite. And don't forget, John Kerry is "French.":crazy:

for example, the Iraq War:

"We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"

"We've got to stay the course" vs. "cutting and running"

Those examining the stated rationales for going to war are engaging in "revisionist history"


etc. etc.