"Cite Your Sources"

Rational discussion. It's fallen to that.

Here is a comment from a McClatchy article on a change in military policy -

"viking51 wrote on 01/30/2010 05:57:27 AM:

Fiftycent,

Nonsense. Cite your Clinton budget numbers and cite where all the 100s of billions of defense dollars were diverted to social programs.

Your conclusion is not fact based but ideology based. If you can't (or won't) cite your sources demonstaraing your assertion, we know your full of BS."

First, note that Mr. viking51 doesn't spell-check. Nor does he remember from high school that there is a difference between "your" and "you're". He speaks for a section of America that lives in verbal land. And he wants factual facts.

Secondly, notice how generic his second paragraph is, how easy to cut and paste. In fact, his whole comment could become a template, good for use wherever bad ideas are sold.

Cite your sources. What is your evidence?