Facts or not?

After discussing both pathos and ethos, now we are moving on to more of a definite concept, logos. I for one think that nothing is more powerful than the use of facts. Facts are undisputed and can’t be argued against. If it were able to be argued against, it would be referred to as a theory. People can argue for things based on their theories or things they believe to be true, but there is no way to deny the validity of factual arguments. However, don’t mistake that with factually based arguments. There are lots of ways to twist facts to make them in favor of what you want them to say.
For example, someone wanting to base an argument off statistics might only select one number out of a large group of numbers. That one number could portray a different picture than the larger group of numbers portray when presented together. I guess this would go along with misquoting people. The five million dollar rich comment made by John McCain has been jumped all over by Obama and Biden. Of course, they don’t really take the quote with the context, but rather have simply quoted the one negative line. Watching the video, it is clear that McCain said it in a joking tone and that almost instantly after saying it, said something about how he would be given a hard time about the comment. It is something he obviously should not have said, but it is still somewhat of a twisted fact to only quote that one line. I am sure that the McCain camp has done the same thing to Obama, but I just don’t know of any examples.
I have gone off on a little tangent here, but it does bother me how many people present facts without presenting the whole story. It is important as the book also points out to always be a careful listener/reader. It is easy to take the lazy approach and just assume that the facts being presented by whomever are portraying the whole story, but too often they are not.