Dan Lourie tries to refute Peter Arnone - letters to the editor

Peter Arnone wrote this, and Dan Lourie responds below. My comments are interspersed in bold.
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Arnone: Truly, the Democrat Party has been hijacked. Led by Barack Obama, we witnessed its Progressive/Marxist leadership and ideological bent in no uncertain terms at the recent DNC. All the “God bless America’s” couldn’t hide its loathing of traditional American values. The greatest con on earth? How else can one describe the convention? Rank and file members are clueless.

Spelled out in the Democrats’ most un-American platform ever, the “God” debacle will hopefully wake up the party faithful to the national catastrophe Obama’s godless administration is taking us. If ever vigilance and activism were called for, it is now. Never in our history has an adversary posed a greater threat. Never has our freedom faced the clear and present danger Obama poses. Historically, we have been a nation of unmistakable trust in God. For Obama and his dictatorial collaborators, “the government is the only thing we all belong to.” Sustaining and expanding their power and control is priority #1.

Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio nailed the Democrat agenda at the RNC: “These are tired and old big government ideas that have failed every time and everywhere they have been tried. These are ideas that people come to America to get away from.”

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Lourie: We assume that satirist Peter Arnone, a recurrent Chronicle buffoon, rants to entertain, given the absurdity of his fabricated claims, pathetically and transparently untrue (Ok, remember the standard Mr. Lourie sets for Mr. Arnone. Mr. Lourie is accusing Mr. Arnone of "fabricated claims, pathetically and transparently untrue." This means the burden upon Mr. Lourie is to identify and refute those fabricated claims. Let's see how he does.).

Or he simply lies, his delusional rhetoric failing to hide his candidate Mitt Romney’s incompetence (Mr. Lourie's first point is a tangent, unrelated to the matter at hand. Mr. Arnone did not mention Romney, let alone identify Romney as his candidate.),

his flip flopping, his dismissal of 47 percent of Americans as moochers (Another rabbit trail, again, unrelated to the matter at hand. But since we are here, let us be reminded that Romney did no such thing. Romney's remarks were regarding campaign strategy. He was discussing that people who pay no income tax are not going to be swayed by his campaign strategy of tax cuts. This seems simple and insightful. Also, the fact that Romney's statistic was accurate is rather inconvenient.).

During my participation in the Democratic convention, I heard no outrageous Arnone fantasies of “Marxist ideological bent,” “loathing of ... American values,” a “godless administration.” (Mr. Lourie's experience at the convention is a subset of everything that happened there. Since he could not know everything that happened, his particular experiences are incomplete, and for that matter, anecdotal. 

Further, since Mr. Lourie is politically Left, as a matter of course he would not admit - or perhaps, would not recognize - anything of a nature described by Mr. Arnone. Therefore, Mr. Arnone is not lying about anything. The worst he could be is mistaken about his opinion. This is a far cry from engaging in fabricated claims.)  

For that mendacity (i.e., lie), Arnone relinquishes any credibility (so we are left with the question, what lie did Mr. Arnone tell which causes him to relinquish his credibility?).

I did hear the recounting of a successful president keeping his promise to change our great nation back to its iconic morality, a nation caring for its less fortunate, guaranteeing equality for all citizens, using its resources wisely to ensure a safer, healthier, better educated, more economically viable future for all Americans (I'm sure he heard all of that. He probably ate it up. But none of it is relevant to the accusation. His experiences, as we have noted, are not comprehensive, they are off topic, and certainly, these assertions are a matter of debate themselves.).

President Obama ended the war in Iraq (Again irrelevant, but for the sake of argument, let us note that President Obama adhered to the Bush schedule. Let us also note that troops are still dying there and in Afghanistan, Gitmo is still open, and the President is still lobbing unmanned missile drones into the middle east, killing many),

saved the auto industry (Both GM and Chrysler declared bankruptcy after receiving bailout money),

worked to expand health care access to all Americans (Recent news shows that 6 million people will pay the no insurance penalty),

and began our ascent from the Republican legacy of recession with a recovery program already creating nearly three million jobs (Hmm, I thought it was 4 million. After first losing 7 million. And the recovery is noteworthy due to its anemia.).

It’s an extraordinary record of achievement for a first term (True. No other president has presided over such economic devastation, with no end in sight.),

despite the intransigence (Defintion: "Refusing to moderate a position, especially an extreme position; uncompromising...." This is an odd accusation, since that is what political parties do. We can only conclude that because Mr. Lourie defines compromise as going along with the unimpeachable positions of Obama and the democrats. Mr. Lourie makes an a priori assumption that democratic policies are correct, and as a result republican opposition must be intrinsically mistaken, evil, obstructionist, etc.) 

of Republicans sworn to destroy his presidency (it's somehow surprising to Mr. Lourie that the opposition party is actually opposing Obama? Really? Of course they want to stop him. The country is teetering on the brink, and someone needs to oppose him.).

I am proud of my president’s record (which of course he is free to do. Just as those who disagree with Obama are free to oppose).

(So, Mr. Lourie hyperbolically accuses Mr. Arnone of grievous prevarication but fails to identify a single one. Considering the severe, hyperbolic language Mr. Lourie employs, one would think that Mr. Arnone is a borderline ax murderer. But as we discovered, Mr. Arnone simply expressed his opinion, which of course may or may not be correct, and for that sin Mr. Lourie deems him worthy of crucifixion. 

But more to the point, I wonder if the reader has noticed a trend in the writers quoted here and elsewhere on my blog. To even the casual reader it would appear that Leftists like Mr. Lourie have difficulty with the logical progression of ideas, and even more difficulty in staying on topic and addressing the matter raised. It is this undercurrent of irrationality which is so difficult to respond to, since it comes in torrents and is pervasive whenever a Leftist enters the discussion. 

I am at loss to explain this phenomena.)