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Most folks probably have some conservative friend or relative who sends right-wing chain emails their way. Hopefully, people know the vast majority of these political myths and urban legends are nonsense.
But Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry seems to struggle in this area, and apparently believes myths with no basis in fact. PolitiFact flagged this gem yesterday:
…Perry said at a New Hampshire house party that the Obama administration has made life more difficult for oil companies in Louisiana and Texas while being overly generous to energy projects in other countries.
“This president goes to Brazil and delivers $2 billion to that country to help them with their offshore drilling projects,” Perry said. “What are they thinking?”
Are Republicans still talking about this? I remember writing an item setting the record straight more than a year ago, after having seen it debunked two years ago.
According to the right-wing chain-email that made the rounds, President Obama loaned $2 billion to a Brazilian oil company to drill for oil in Brazilian waters, to benefit China. As part of the story, Obama reportedly roped in George Soros as an investor.
In reality, a Brazilian oil company, PetroBras, received a loan from the independent Export-Import Bank, approved by appointees of the Bush/Cheney administration. Soros is part of the project, but his investment came in 2008 — months before the Export-Import Bank agreed to make the loan.
The Export-Import Bank agreed to the loan, by the way, in large part because PetroBras agreed to use U.S.-made oilfield equipment and services on the project.
What Perry said, in other words, wasn’t even close to the truth. He’s just repeating some odd story he heard, as if it were accurate. It’s not.
Also note, this isn’t the first time. Campaigning in Iowa, Perry also complained about a new regulation that would require farmers to get commercial drivers licenses if they drive their tractors across the road, which is a common myth in GOP circles, but which is also false.
Reality has a tough enough time in the face of conservative urban legends that spread like a virus; Rick Perry obviously isn’t helping. Worse, the fact that he struggles to tell the difference between fact and fiction doesn’t speak well of his critical thinking skills, either.
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Not Anonymous on September 02, 2011 11:21 AM:
http://gizmodo.com/5836741/anonymous-roars-back-with-3gb-leak-of-texas-police-chief-emails
Texas - proof that God has bad days too.
biggerbox on September 02, 2011 11:22 AM:
When trying to appeal to right-wing voters, truthiness is far more important than truth.
I don't think much of Perry's critical thinking skills, but I don't think it's fair to assume he's even tried to use them. The people he's appealing to would rather hear him repeat the folk tales they all love, and he's happy to oblige.
Thinking he's doing anything else, like trying to talk about facts and making real policy proposals, is an obsolete assumption about how campaigns are run.
ckelly on September 02, 2011 11:26 AM:
Perry reminds me of a monkey, flinging shit around to see what sticks. My apologies to monkeys everywhere.
By the way, when Craptcha uses Greek, Cyrillic, and Hieroglyphics how are we supposed to type that in?
Schtick on September 02, 2011 11:27 AM:
The whole problem with this innertube thingie is that the lies work. As I was reading this I thought of the Ollie North/Gore bullshit that was passed around for a few years, then the whole John Kerry didn't see any combat in Viet Nam and gave himself a medal crap. It works. These morons believe it. I get pissed and tell them not to send me this lying shit and check it out first at snopes.com. That doesn't work either.
crapcha....hebrew?
T2 on September 02, 2011 11:29 AM:
Two things about Perry that should be clear by now: He's not real smart (look at his college grades at TAMU) and he doesn't mind knowingly lying at all. This is a recipe for exactly what we're getting from Rick Perry...lots of ill-informed statements or demonstrably false statements that he proudly presents as fact, even if someone has already told him they were not true.
Texas Aggie on September 02, 2011 11:30 AM:
While it is true that Goodhair has no critical thinking skills to mention as has been abundantly demonstrated by his failed attempt at governing, it is sort of superfluous to suggest that it ever occurred to him that there is a difference between fact and fantasy. His absolute devotion to some of the most extreme religious beliefs makes it clear that he doesn't distinguish between the two concepts.
DisgustedWithItAll on September 02, 2011 11:31 AM:
I can't believe Mr. Benen is under any delusion that a right-wing myth being completely and utterly debunked has anything to do with anybody accepting the myth is wrong. The wingnuts just dismiss the debunking. They denigrate the debunker. The examples are too numerous to mention, but consider:
- who caused the fiscal trainwreck
- AGW,
- efficacy of the ARRA,
- who caused the downgrade,
- .......
Folks, the wingnuts don't inhabit reality. They just don't. They're down the rabbit hole, for sure, and it's damned scary. Don't believe it. Go look at the comments in the columns from Eugene Robinson and Barney Frank.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bush-and-cheney-remind-us-how-we-got-into-this-mess/2011/09/01/gIQAboXFvJ_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-senate-refuses-to-consider-obama-nominees/2011/09/01/gIQA2AkJvJ_story.html
(Captcha is now presenting "words" upside down and backwards. For crying out loud.)
Jim H from Indiana on September 02, 2011 11:34 AM:
What are these "facts" you speak of? And would a Repug even know -- or care -- what they are? /sarcasm
c u n d gulag on September 02, 2011 11:36 AM:
And here I was thinking that PetroBras was Obama's secret funding for fake breasts, you know, since 'the brothers' like women with big, well, for lack of a better word 'Repbulicans' - that's a synonym for boobs, right?
Also, PetroConservative, for fake booties, because 'the brothers' like big asses.
Sheeeesh...
withay on September 02, 2011 11:44 AM:
"There's many a man hath more hair than wit."
Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors
Equal Opportunity Cynic on September 02, 2011 11:44 AM:
By the way, when Craptcha uses Greek, Cyrillic, and Hieroglyphics how are we supposed to type that in?
It literally doesn't matter. You could type anything for that word. ReCAPTCHA gives you one real CAPTCHA word (the one with the squiggly line) and one scanned in from some book that the OCR couldn't handle. You're saving someone the work of manually fixing their scans.
sceptic on September 02, 2011 11:46 AM:
he struggles to tell the difference between fact and fiction ????
I don't think he struggles in the least to tell fact from fiction.
TooManyJens on September 02, 2011 11:54 AM:
"Worse, the fact that he struggles to tell the difference between fact and fiction doesn't speak well of his critical thinking skills, either."
Maybe he can't tell the difference, but it's at least as likely that he just doesn't give a shit. The important thing about the anecdote is that it can be used to further his goals, and the truth of it is simply irrelevant.
stormskies on September 02, 2011 11:59 AM:
Within this crap is the even sadder crap that many the corporate pundits are trying their best to pretend and represent to their viewers that Perry is actually a serious candidate who actually have a chance of becoming President because Obama is so weak ......
davidp on September 02, 2011 12:04 PM:
I can't see much of a downside for Perry or any other GOP candidate relying on lies like this. The woman who spoke up at McCain's rally in 2008 presumably still believes that Obama is a Muslim terrorist. She and the millions like her just want to hear this stuff repeated endlessly. For them, such red meat stories are a litmus test for a candidate's conservative values and patriotic character. If Romney, for example, was to argue at a GOP debate that the party shouldn't be spreading lies, it would cost him votes with the base, so he'll keep his mouth shut. We know what they think about the reality-based community.
Hedda Peraz on September 02, 2011 12:04 PM:
You have your facts, and we have ours.
And ours are more believable.
David Clayton on September 02, 2011 12:31 PM:
Can't put my finger on it just now, but somebody had an interview yesterday with I/E bank members. The $2B wasn't a loan, it was a loan guarantee; Petrobras more recently landed a loan under the guarantee in the $500M range. Where does that $500 million go? To U.S.-based businesses for supplies and services.
Steve M. on September 02, 2011 12:35 PM:
Reagan did this all the time, and we elected him twice. We're not a very reality-based country
Rick Massimo on September 02, 2011 12:46 PM:
The truth or untruth of it means nothing. He throws 15 false "facts" out there; four or five get fact-checked; one or two of the fact-checks get widely read by people who don't already know that he's an America-hating blowhard liar. So 13 or 14 "facts" get injected into the Very Serious, Mainstream political discourse.
Multiply this by 30 years and you get the entire conservative movement in the U.S.
TCinLA on September 02, 2011 12:55 PM:
Worse, the fact that he struggles to tell the difference between fact and fiction doesn’t speak well of his critical thinking skills, either.
But does show he's a "good Republican."
Zorro on September 02, 2011 2:18 PM:
Worse, the fact that he struggles to tell the difference between fact and fiction is clear proof of his qualifications for the most powerful office in the world, as far as the GOP is concerned.
There, fixed that.
-Z
ohhenery on September 02, 2011 3:17 PM:
Rick Perry wears petro bras to breakfast.
(Mitt Romney sells derivatives in his underpants.)
Miss Capri on September 02, 2011 3:22 PM:
Really, conservatives especially, need to stop with the chain letters and start debunking them instead, including those that come from the far-right and from the left.
http://cbcf.groupsite.com/post/the-mission-of-chain-smashing-and-what-got-it-started
http://cbcf.groupsite.com/post/why-chain-letters-are-so-bad
T-Rex on September 02, 2011 4:20 PM:
How Reaganesque. When he starts describing plots of old war movies as though they actually happened, the GOP will fall to their knees and worship him as the Second Coming.
John Davis on September 03, 2011 10:06 PM:
The conspiracy theory about Brazilian oil and Soros was explicitly cited as a motivation by Byron Williams, the gunman arrested on his way to shoot up the Tides Center and the ACLU office in July 2010.