Sunday, September 23, 2018

Faulty Reasoning Candidate of the Week: Senator Patty Murray D-WA


Faulty Reasoning Candidate of the Week is Senator Patty Murray, Democrat, of the state of Washington.  Murray appeared on Sunday’s Meet the Press  with host Chuck Todd. Todd asked for Murray’s opions about the allegations  made by Christine Blasey Ford regarding Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.  This writing is not to discuss the allegations, but to focus on Murray’s weak thought process when answering Todd’s question.

Before asking for her opinion with regard to Ford’s credibility, Todd played two opposing political clips, one of them at odds with Ford’s allegations, the other in sync with it.

When Todd then asked whether Ford could be believed, Murray used some very specious reasoning.  “Well, if a person calls in and says their car is stolen, no one questions that.” 

That’s patently false.  But it’s what a senator in the U.S. Congress professes to believe, and such fecklessness  and/or sophistry scares me.    Senator Murray’s presumption might apply to persons as privileged as she is, but in large part, an allegation of car theft is routinely questioned by authorities in terms of its credibility.

 False reports of car thefts are common.  Criminals pay other criminals to have their cars stolen to collect insurance money. There are many other reasons for false reports of car theft, and authorities have just as much right to question such claims as they have to question Christine Busey Ford’s as yet unfounded accusations of Brett Kavanaugh.

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