[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

Alex's answer was the correct one.

the table of cities and mayors is not used as a causal argument.

At that national black republican association website, they make claims like this:

Click here for a Boston Globe investigation with an article and video produced by Scott LaPierre about poor blacks condemning Obama for funding dilapidated slum projects in Chicago with tax payers’ money. Obama's friends and associates profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

which is neither causal nor correlational.

And the only causal argument I see at that website is one about democrats and the housing mess,

Democrats created the mortgage crisis by forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn't afford them. Click here to view a video that shows the Democrats covering up the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac scam that was at the heart of our economic crisis. Franklin Raines, a financial advisor to Obama, walked off from Fannie Mae with a $22 million dollar severance package.

which (right or wrong) isn't really correlational, either.

So unless I'm missing something, then the assumption that someone making a correlational argument must also be making a causal argument is the most egregious correlation/causation confusion in the discussion.