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To: Awgie
I get 2-3 of these emails per week. I can't keep up with it. Maybe some of you would like a shot

Turn it around on him -- make him document and support each claim and implication, with citations to primary sources. And note that Michael Moore, Air America, some random email he received from liberal moonbats, or CNN/ABC/NYT/etc. are *not* "primary sources".

In the attempt, he'll learn a lot about the unreliability of his *current* sources (due to spin, incompetence, and dishonesty), and at the very least, it'll keep him out of your hair for a while.

If you really want to drive him nuts, play it not like you're challenging him or attempting to dispute his claims, make him think you're genuinely interested in learning more and/or telling others about these "revelations", but you need more documentation before you can go forward with them.

If he manages to document some of the small details (e.g. no-bid contracts), send him back out to research whether that's an unusual arrangement in cases such as that, etc. You can keep him busy forever this way. Remember that on any item or claim, the important questions (borrowed from the excellent book, "How To Lie With Statistics") are:

1. Who says so?
2. How does he know?
3. What's missing?
4. Did somebody change the subject?
5. Does it make sense?

Hold Bob's feet to the fire until he answers those questions for *each* of his many assertions and implications.

In short, don't just reply with a length, "is not!" Walk him through how to be a critical thinker on his own material.

19 posted on 03/20/2006 1:27:30 PM PST by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon
Thanks for the excellent advise. If I had as much time on my hands as he does, I'd actively counter the details. But I'm in school full time and working. Ironically, he is constantly singing the "blues" and the "sky is falling" BS while he reaps the benefits of a great economy. To his credit he has built a nice business for himself, has a great lifestyle yet whines incessantly about the coming doom. And of course that doom is coming because republicans and Christians and evil corporate types are in control. He's so predictable.
29 posted on 03/20/2006 1:49:20 PM PST by Awgie (truth is always stranger than fiction)
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