Reminder to self: This is the Internets

As is my habit, I dropped in on a liberal blog for a bit of discussion.

More properly, I dropped in to ask a question, since a statement at the blog hinted at the existence of some sort of rigorous statistical treatment of PolitiFact.

No luck with that, but the ensuing exchange was entertaining for its tendency to match the pattern of response I often see at liberal blogs (attack and "other" the interloper).

Attempts to answer my question quickly devolved into attacks:

I’m just a “liberal,” Bryan, not somebody who’s ironically set himself up as yet another arbiter of truth.

I tried to make the point that pretty much anybody who writes for public consumption is an arbiter of truth at some level.  That also drew attacks, such as the following:

“Anybody who says things that they expect to be taken as true is an arbiter of truth at some level.”
If you can’t understand the difference between saying, “It’s my opinion ___ is true” and “We have determined ___ is objectively 87.4634626324% true through quantitative, scientific analysis” there is seriously no [****]ing hope for you.  For the sake of the pedestrians in your neighborhood, I hope you don’t drive like you think.

What discussion eventually took place revolved around the purpose of the PolitiFact Bias blog and whether there was truth to Sarah Palin's statement about Obama's "death panel," with the latter eventually touching on an example referenced in a column by Don Surber.

Perhaps the funniest moment came from the threat that my comments would be accessible via Google:

I’m just content to be diverting you from your ever-so-important quest. Which appears to be to make Politifact a right-leaning factchecker. Put it this way: If it was, I seriously doubt you’d be bothered. Deny that if you will
Add to that the fact that Google will neatly catalogue your repeated obfuscations and kneeslapping logic fails on this thread alongside your name and I’m a pig in clover.

People can find the argument using Google?  Who knew?

"Obfuscations," so far as I can tell, is a code word for reasoning the writer does not agree with, and "kneeslapping logic" is essentially the same thing.  The blog community made no serious attempt to find problems with my logic, but rather engaged in something akin to a systematic fallacy of appeal to ridicule.

Those interested in the exchange as a case study can find it here.  Profanity warning.