Paul Ryan is a "chart guy"--but not necessarily a smart guy.

I keep hearing this vacuous sound-bite from the right (though it could just as easily come from the left): "We don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem."  The phrase is intended to dismiss calls for higher taxes, since we can get by with what we have--we just need to spend less.  This may very well be true, but it must be proven (or, at least, discussed rationally).  Simply asserting it, as Paul Ryan did again today, does not make it true.

It is always dangerous to compare household budgets to federal budgets, but the point I am making is so simple that there is little risk here.  If I do not have enough to pay my bills at the end of the month, I should not necessarily conclude that I need to work a second job.  If it turns out the expenses I cannot cover are gratuitous, I may decide to cut back on those presumed luxuries (here I have a spending problem).  If I cannot afford food, however, the problem requires a different solution (here I have a revenue problem).  You should see, at this point, the problem--without discussing the precise spending I am doing, no chart will allow me to draw any other conclusion than that there is a discrepancy between my income and my spending.

Lack of evidence is evidence of nothing.

The Petraeus scandal and the Benghazi affair are both still unraveling.  They are both extremely important stories, no doubt, having foreign policy as well as national security implications.  It may turn out that the White House mishandled one or both.  Nevertheless, there is no evidence of such malfeasance or incompetence as yet.  This does not prevent the GOP from creating certain conspiracy theories prior to the presentation of any evidence.  At first, they presented arguments from coincidence, not realizing that that is a self-defeating argument--if it were a coincidence, it cannot have been an orchestrated conspiracy (look up the definition of coincidence).  But it seems certain commentators are taking it down a notch.  Why look for evidence when a lack of evidence will work just as well. 

In logic, we call this an appeal to ignorance--the attempt to use lack of evidence as evidence.