Greyness to me is human fallibility, incomplete information, and conflicting principles. Personally, I'd like at least a rudimentary way of approaching these problems before we get there instead of trying to justify our desired results at the time of conflict.

1.) Lambert has every right to 'question' Caro. His blog.

2.) I have every right to 'question' Lambert's opinion.

Isn’t that when we should be MOST critical rather than must gullible?

*ah holy crap the internet just went down*

*ah holy crap it's back*

I'll simply point to Lambert's recent post about that prayer note, and highlight that the same 'source' for that post, also sourced that wanking Obama pic.

PB 2.0

would be a very fine requirement for a functional PB 2.0.

just sayin'

Bad facts make bad law.

Seemed appropriate to bring this version of the saying up in light of what's being discussed. FWIW, in my experience, it's true.

those that might be considered extraordinary that lead to a ruling that is bad law because it's designed around the extraordinary facts.

An example - guy murdered 21 people and they found their bodies cut up under his basement. The search is iffy. A court is likely to find a way to say the search was good because it's not going to want to let a serial murderer go. As a result, the court may create bad law - that is a ruling that under a "better" set of facts (one that didn't involve a serial murderer), the court would never make. It does this because it's shaping its ruling to fit the facts rather than what's the right answer under the law. Then, of course, you're stuck with it in later cases where you're not dealing with a guy who cut up 21 people. The search standard applied to the murderer is going to now apply to everyone.

Bad facts = bad law.

Hopefully that's clear.

So, I backtraced the sourcing, just like I did the Israeli stories, and, unlike that case, found nothing.

I trust you Lambert. ;)

read:no you didn't.

I answered this is the last thread, so will repeat here:

"A win based on truthiness may deliver short-term gains, but will lock truthiness in as the proven best means to win. And nowadays, a cultural “lock-in” like this is nearly impossible to dislodge.

With this accomplished, NONE of our values, NONE of our most cherished objectives, can then be effectively achieved.

'If the truthiness relies upon the exclusion of some facts, does it become a lie?'

Yes. Indubitably, yes. Ethicists would be unanimous on this point."

i'm more comfortable with bd blues's line of thinking. it gives me hope of sunshine.

"truthiness", i'll hazard,is a kind of sneaky use of language to imply a statement about reality without saying that statement outright. it is designed to exploit the ignorance or the gullibility of the other person(s).

one engages in truthy speech in an effort to either deceive another or to manipulate another by making a statement(s) that is not necessarily true but gives the appearance of being true and is likely to be thought true by the other person.

note: truthy statements do not HAVE to be false - just designed primarily to deceive or manipulate, rather than convey "truthful" statements.

1) if i employ truthinss to deceive, then, for example, i might use it to protect myself, as in:

"thank you aunt gladys, i had two piece of pie and they were exceptional."

(the piece i cut, which i cut as small as i could make it, fell in two. the taste was exceptionally gross.)

2) truthiness used to manipulate might be exemplified by

- prez g.w. saying "sad hussesin may have weapons of mass destruction. if he does have wmd, and if he employs them, he might be able to attack and kill xxxx of my fellow americans."

note this set of statements are not true-or-false statements. in fact, all are conditional statements.

this kind of statement would have been DESIGNED to arouse security fears in others - to encourage those others to use their imaginations to make into simple true/false statements what was originally just a very sly set of conjectures.

i'm told that in teevee sitcom writing there is something called like-a-joke.

truthiness is a twin of like-a-joke, e.g., like-the-truth.

when employing the device of like-a-joke, writers write a scene with a non-joke that appears close enough to a joke to be considered one (they would do so because a real joke eludes them).

the actors do their lines as if the script contained a joke.

the idea, i presume, is that the audience will laugh as if something funny had been said or done, though neither the writers nor the actors intended to convey an actual joke.

Your sourcing for that original post was as anonymous as that of the letter.

An 'unnamed' Obama representative is who Ma'ariv sourced, and the 'spokesperson' for Ma'ariv is also not named in the article.

With a third, uninvolved paper as cannonfire's source.

You barely walked it back in that 'update' of yours.

You have your 'opinion' and I have mine.

Two separate stories, different quotes, same substance, in newspapers

Two quotes from the same anonymous source, Lambert.

Proof of what exactly? Both papers are supposedly quoting the same person.

To your other 'point'... your anonymous sourcing > Caro's anonymous sourcing?

Now I Got it.

i cannot follow your thinking here, except to say that it reminds me of a politician deflecting attention.

chronology:

at 18:40 i wrote:

[what is this "truthiness" of which you speak.
Submitted by orionATL on Thu, 2008-07-31 18:40.

i’m more comfortable with bd blues’s line of thinking. it gives me hope of sunshine...]

at 18:42, lambert wrote:

[ your comfort, Orion, will always be our first concern.
Submitted by lambert on Thu, 2008-07-31 18:42.

Not.

You say I twist your words when I restate them, but never explain why.

Standard tactic: Lose a point, ignore it, throw out a new one, move on. I must say I’ve seen the tactic more elegantly practiced than on this thread by the truthiness brigade...]

why, lambert, did you respond to my post of two minutes earlier by ignoring it completely

while dragging in a reference to an exchange you and i had had at four hours earlier - at 14:17 and 14:25.

you had plenty of time in the interim to address that earlier matter.

why did you ignore my comment at 18:40.

increasingly, lambert, i observe you employing rhetorical tricks to avoid directly arguing with your commenters, while accusing them of missing the point or refusing to address the issue at hand.

somethings a miss in all this, lambert. only you know what it is.

but what i know for a fact is that yours is not the behavior i expect of an intellectual leader.

why, in your comment of 18:42, did you ignore my comment at 18:40?

why, lambert, did you respond to my post of two minutes earlier by ignoring it completely,

while dragging in a reference to an exchange you and i had had at four hours earlier - at 14:17 and 14:25?

you had had plenty of time in the interim to address that earlier matter.

this seems like evasion - and political ducking and dodging - to me.

your quiver, lambert, seems only to include sarcasm.

sarcasm can be amusing and clever,

but you don't seem to understand that it is not a substitute for sound argument.

where is your sound argument,lambert?