The DavidCyrus Blog of Wisdom

Limbaugh Logic: Saying WMD's Exist = Existence of WMD's

Limbaugh's June 16th essay certainly highlights some shocking atrocities from Iraq. He prominently displays graphic torture and disfigurement photos, apparently to marginalize the Abu Ghraib prison photos. Classic fallacy in logical argumentation: two wrongs make a right, or in layman's terms, "How can humiliation, abuse, and accidental deaths be wrong, when amputation and torture is so much worse?"


Here's a cut-and-pasted example of how Limbaugh supports his statements:

"You know, they're finding weapons of mass destruction all over the Middle East now. (story | story | story | story) They're finding remnants of Saddam's weapons."

At first glance, you might think that Limbaugh has located four unique and relevant sources that prove Saddam's missing WMD's are showing up throughout the Middle East. If you take the time to review the four stories that Limbaugh provides as back-up to his commentary, you find that none of them mention the discovery of any weapons of mass destruction. Three articles come from a single source: WorldNet Daily. Feel free to peruse the site and judge for yourself whether it truly represents "free press". One article is over three years old, which should make any reader doubt its validity in supporting the discovery of weapons "now". The remaining story is erroneously linked to the "breaking news" page of a different website, and no longer displays a story dealing with WMD's, but probably intends to link to this article. As a whole, the articles simply state that intelligence sources have reported that Iraq WMD's were shipped to Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. No actual stockpile of usable WMD's has been found in Iraq, nor has another Middle Eastern county acknowledged receiving them.

Point Number One is, of course, Limbaugh backs up his statements with the same level of "intelligence" and innuendo that got us into the Iraq debacle. But point number two is, if we are going to believe that Saddam has distributed WMD's throughout the Middle East, why would we even suggest that our invasion of Iraq has been a valuable strike at terrorism? Wouldn't it make more sense to believe that the war took the Iraqi WMD's and scattered them to all manner of people who now have nothing to lose from their use?

Battling Efforts to Censor Documentaries

It's Saturday. Are you looking for a valuable project to start off your weekend? How about joining the email campaign to support the showing of Michael Moore's new documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11"?

"Email campaign?" you say. "Why would there need to be a campaign to distribute the movie?" Perhaps you believed that once Miramax settled issues with Disney (their corporate parent) about even allowing for the release of the movie, the battle was done; Miramax would simply distribute the film as summer movie fare.

The good news is that, for the most part, the movie will be distributed in an acceptable manner in late June. However, while the distribution is being hailed as "Nationwide", it is only opening in about 1000 theaters. Summer films typically open in more than 2000 theaters. "The Day After Tomorrow" opened in over 3400 theaters. In fact, the most recent movie I could find that opened in less than 1500 theaters is "Breakin' All the Rules" starring Jamie Foxx (Remember that one? I didn't think so). Or how about Bobby Jones, Stroke of Genius? Opening week is almost always the biggest week in a movie's box office tally, so the more theaters a movie opens in, the better chance it has to create a large box office turnout.

(As a footnote, a different documentary, "Super Size Me" about a man who eats nothing but McDonald's fast food for a month, is doing pretty good in its limited release of less than 200 theaters.)

In any case, some of the problems in getting Fahrenheit 9/11 into additional theaters is an email campaign that calls the movie "Anti-American". One such site that promotes writing letters to various theater points of contact is Move America Forward, which contains an email list of theaters planning to show the movie.

If you have some free time, please send a note of encouragement to these theaters for resisting the efforts to censor a movie prior to its release.

FYI, the addresses at National-Amusements have a spam filter, probably rejecting any emails with the term "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the subject line, and the address listed as "info@manntheatres.com" is no longer a valid address.

Below is a sample email you can use/modify to send to the theaters:

Subject: ~ ! Heartfelt Thanks ! ~ ...for Supporting Freedom of Speech

Content: Dear Supporter of American Freedoms,

You may be getting hundreds of disparaging comments about your theater's presenting the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11", but let me be one of the voices who say:

"Hurrah!" Congratulations on your support for a controversial movie! By keeping this movie in the theaters, we let the American people pass our own judgment on it, rather than censoring it prior to release. You have my utmost respect for resisting one of the largest censorship campaigns in recent history.

Microsoft Patents the "double-click" !

In what has to be one of the most obvious thefts of public domain knowledge, U.S. Patent 6,727,830 grants Microsoft Corporation the exclusive rights to launch applications with a double-click. Their patent application was filed in 2002, approximately twenty years after Apple was using double-clicks to start applications (a concept that Apple, no doubt, stole from Xerox PARC.)