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Bingo! another fallacy

Students make game of mapping candidates' errors in logic

Election 2008

October 16, 2008|By Stephen Kiehl , stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com

Bingos haven't been hard to come by this fall. Bradley said Palin has been a gift to anyone looking for logical fallacies in arguments. But he's nonpartisan in his approach: "Some could say the entire Democratic campaign platform is guilt by association," he said, referring to the party's tactic of linking McCain with the policies of President Bush.

In an earlier debate, Obama said McCain voted for "three George Bush budgets." Obama was also guilty of using a straw man argument - attributing to your opponent an oversimplified and easy-to-defeat view - when he said McCain believed that "if we remove all regulation, prosperity will just rain down."

For his part, McCain has used hyperbole, saying that America is "the greatest force for good in the entire history of the world." And he used "appeal to emotion: friendship" in his repeated use of the phrase "my friends" at the Town Hall debate.

FOR THE RECORD - An article in Thursday's editions misquoted McDaniel College adjunct philosophy professor Anne Nester. The quotation should have read, "Whoa! 'Class warfare!' Anybody got dysphemism? Appeal to fear, anyone?"
The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.

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No surprise, then, that Heron had crossed off every box on his card by the end of the night.

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