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Originally Posted by bunjamin
Do you usually rely on the person quoting a statistic to provide that context? When Bush says, "My oppenent voted to raise taxes ten million times," or Kerry says, "Bush underfunded education by 20 trillion dollars," do you expect an aside from them explaining the origin of those "statistics"? Maybe an omnibus explaining the full implications of every factor related to the situation in question?
I regard pretty much any statistic I hear or read with a healthy skepticism. If I care enough about it I research and provide my own context. If not I forget about it.
Questioning the validity of the information provided is a good thing. Accusing someone of intellectual laziness when you've made no effort to provide any of the many contributing numbers you say would serve to make this a worthwhile discussion is hypocritical at best.
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I guess my expectations are unrealistic in your mind then. After all, why would it occur to anyone to actually understand the graph they are using to begin a thread like this?
It's painfully obvious to anyone that looks at the graph for more than a split second that the data is questionable since, here we are in October of 2004 and this graph is showing PROJECTED data for 2003.
Go ahead and check the archives bunjamin and you will see that I have done more than my share of research to disprove horrendously bad distortions of facts. Some that were blatant partisan bullshit.
If you think the discussion before the graph's accuracy was worthwhile then I guess we have little to discuss. Discussions based on incorrect and distorted data have little relevance, IMO.