Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Lie of the Year








Below are a couple of the more hysterical right wing blogs that foamed at the mouth over this non-epidemic.

It appears that these boneheads on the right were hoping that some sort of medical armageddon would descend on the US so that their hatred of President Obama, whom they blamed for the "epidemic," would grow even more rancid than it already was.

None of their hoped-for catastrophes happened.  

One person in Texas died, and that person was infected in Africa, not here. The nurses at the hospital in Dallas, where the one fatal case was treated, contracted the disease because of inadequate protocols practiced at the hospital.  None of it had anything to do with President Obama, but that didn't stop the hysterics from the flame-throwing spittle-fleckers.

What this teaches us all is to never believe what you hear or see on FAUX NOOZ and on many of the more rabid right wing blogs whose only purpose is to stir up fear, unrest, and especially hatred toward President Obama.  These people have been wrong on so many issues, i.e., BENGHAZI!!!! and just recently EBOLA!!!  Why would any rational person take these low-information nutcases seriously? 


LIE OF THE YEAR, THE RIGHT WING HYSTERIA OVER EBOLA!





For PunditFact, the biggest lie of 2014 dealt with Ebola... but it couldn't be narrowed down to just one lie. PunditFact combined a series of misstatements -- or outright fear-mongering -- about the Ebola virus. 


 President Barack Obama: An Ebola outbreak is a situation that brings a dire sense of necessity and purpose, but it’s nowhere near as complicated as -- say -- reforming Medicare. So Obama did the smart thing: Kept his head while everyone around him was in the process of self-decapitation. Obama opted to calmly stick with the experts, imposing no draconian quarantine conditions or counter-productive travel restrictions, and let medical professionals do their jobs.

8 Conservative Ebola Freakouts That Blamed Obama


While the Chicken Littles on the right were running around like headless poultry screaming EBOLA!, President Obama was a paragon of calm and rationality.  There was no epidemic in the U.S., but the crazy right wingers were determined, no matter how many lies it took them to spread, to make EBOLA! into a life-threatening disaster for the United States.  They overreacted the same way with BENGHAZI!  And they were wrong about that, too.  For these yahoos, it's all disaster all the time, even when it isn't, because OBUMMER!

Will the right wing ninnyhammers admit they were wrong again?  Yeah.  When Sarah Palin wins the Nobel Prize in Physics.

30 comments:

Infidel753 said...

Extreme right-wingers have a bizarre fascination with the apocalyptic. It's something I see on fringe sites all the time. Anything that can remotely be taken as a sign that law and order are about to break down into some Mad-Max anarchic nightmare, they grab onto eagerly. Maybe it's due to the religious fascination with the End Times, or a longing for the end of a civilization that's growing too complex for them to cope with and inexorably evolving away from the simple monocultural model they cling to.

Maybe the more mainstream right wing has a touch of it too. I'm sure you're correct that, on a conscious level, it's all about the desperate casting about for some disaster that can be blamed on Obama.

Of course it never occurred to any of them that a sudden medical crisis would highlight Senate Republicans' irresponsibility in keeping the post of Surgeon General vacant for so long.

Anonymous said...

No, Benghazi.

Anonymous said...

Is there a prize for "Porno Queen's Smut Hut" of the year? Or for her several scolecophagous fanboys?

Dave Miller said...

Maybe we should have a Lying Right Wing Blog Post of the year award.

Nothing on the comments, let's just stick to the post, which presumably, a person has time to fact check before hitting publish.

I'm guessing a few of us would nominate a certain blog that published a post containing a lie condemning Pres Obama that even FOX News retracted as untrue.

Of course we were banned for pointing that out as the blogger said he didn't care about our truth.

Dave Miller said...

Anon... I saw another post/comment thread today lamenting that nothing came out of Benghazi/IRS/Fast and Furious/Ft Hood/NSA/etc, etc, etc....

Also, I can't believe all of the fanboys are more than about 2 people with multiple personalities... A sort of Cyber Cybil Disorder...

I'm sure it is in the DSM somewhere...

Clearwater, Florida said...

"Where Uncle Sam would once go out and do some good, help people rebuild while fostering independence and prosperity at home, he now staggers around the family home, nervously looking out the windows and cuffing around his family, the only people still fearful of him, and the only people left on the planet he can still bully."

Perfect description of a right wingers reaction to changing demographics and cultural attitudes, which they've feared since the Civil Rights era. Their world is fading and they see it as the death of America, others see it as a rebirth. Religion will eventually lose its stranglehold and rationality will prevail. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but that is coming sooner rather than later.

The reaction to ebola is only one symptom of their pant-wetting fear of change, they were sure Amerika would be brought to its knees by a pandemic. Yes, they were wrong, and yes they will face every crisis with the same stupid fear and irrationality.

Ducky's here said...

This one has been quietly filed. Admission that the medical authorities were capable and that Obama was not trying to infect every Red state in the nation won't be forthcoming.

Yes Dave, they're also still harping on Benghazi. Your guess is as good as mine and probably includes a good deal of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Right now a good question for the left is whether there is any change coming out of the police violence demonstrations.
I hope we move towards a procedure that replaces the grand jury and generates some accountability.
If that movement happens count on misdirection from the Roger Ailes/Rupert Murdoch noise machine.
Because rabies media means never having to say you were wrong.

BB-Idaho said...

Dave, nominations are still open for the Equine Posterior Achievment Award although several excellent candidates have been nominated.

Shaw Kenawe said...

"Maybe it's due to the religious fascination with the End Times, or a longing for the end of a civilization that's growing too complex for them to cope with and inexorably evolving away from the simple monocultural model they cling to." --Infidel753

That's pretty much what they whine about day after day after day -- what they perceive as the destruction of their fantasy that was never America.


@Anon 12:25 Benghazi was a big lie 2 years ago. This year it's the right wing's hysteria over ebola.


@Anon 1:17, that blog has descended into depravity territory. Lisa gets hits by the dregs of the internet and she thinks she's popular because she has something intelligent to say. LOL! She allows bigots, racists, and sock puppets to fill her comment section, thinking she's "relevant."

Dave, Lisa's fanboy bigots have several identities that make her believe she has quite the following, when in fact three people give a damn about her Smut Hut. So sad.

Suffer Dude, you nailed it. Change made them lose their minds--what was left of them, anyway.

Ducky, the demonstrations on police brutality may force changes, and we know what the extreme right hates more than liberty is change.

BB-Idaho, are there any white supremacists who make fun of President Obama's daughter on the Horses Ass nomination list? If not, I know some really excellent Horses Ass candidates. Guess where you can find them.

Doctor Tomato said...

Merry Christmas from the Smut Hut.

Infidel753 said...

It's curious that people who claim to be super-patriots have so little confidence in America's resilience that they think the country is doomed because of one or two cases of an extremely-hard-to-transmit virus -- or, for that matter, because the occasional customer-service 800 number offers Spanish as an option. I think we're rather tougher than that.

Dave Miller said...

Ducky, I wonder why we can't seem to get independent review boards past the more conservative folks...

In theory, they would never agree that a liberal group could investigate themselves, obviously think Benghazi, so why do they assume a conservative group like the police can do so?

It truly is all part of a belief that they are the only true God fearing people out there...

Dave Miller said...

Duck, you're a film guy... I've seen Fury, Inglorious Basterds and a few other war flicks the last few years... They all seem to call into question the conclusions of a certain blog on the subject...

Am I wrong? I'd drop her a note but she's told me she's right even if her facts are not totally true...

Dave Miller said...

Speaking of lies, fairness would call on us to remember that it was Pres Obama who won the prize last year with his "you can keep your insurance" quip.

But I wonder how conservatives will handle the economic crash in Russia as it draws near. In the 80's, the fall of the USSR was specifically attributed to St Reagan...

You think as Putin continues his rule over a receding Russia that any credit will flow towards Pres Obama as it did for Reagan?

Josh said...

For me, the biggest lie every single year is Bill O'Reilly's fake "war on Christmas," where he does his damnedest to malign every single individual in America who doesn't celebrate Christmas.

I remember last year, one of his biggest war stories was a store or a school or something (can't remember exactly) that was saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," and he called the people moronic, citing that America is a "Christian nation" and that "we" celebrate Christmas, and people should avoid those who say Happy Holidays.

Ebola I can somewhat understand. Out of everything the extreme right prepper circle gets up in arms about, an infectious disease at least makes sense. But to be told I'm moronic and anti-American if I don't celebrate Christmas--which I do, but beside the point--is, to me, the worst kind of lie every year: That there's a "war" to do away with a holiday.

But as far as Ebola specifically, another reason I can't really fault the hard right too much is that I doubt they posses the understanding necessary to deduce a real threat vs. a scare. Folks who can't explain the tides and who don't know how the moon got there and who think man rode on dinosaurs probably aren't the best at relaying information that necessarily has to be empirical.

Ebola kills. Ebola spreads. Therefore, Ebola's going to kill us all -- before of after global warming's tidal wives, I dunno.

Anonymous said...

Conservatives run around like scurrying rats in fear of terror, disease, unarmed black men, Muslims around every corner, in every movie theater, in every cafe? How and where does it STOP? Meanwhile, we continue to listen to them, and genuflect to their paranoia.

Ray Cranston said...

"Human groups are both more stupid and more selfish than individuals. They seem especially impervious either to rational or moral appeal, easily prone to self-deception and demagoguery, and apparently needful of the imposition of a power greater than their own power if they are to accede to any changes that cut against their own self-interest."

Perfect description of the extremists on the right. Just read their racist remarks during the Brown, Garner, Martin shootings. Then remember how they praised the thug Putin and admired him over their own president. Yeppers, stupid and selfish.

C. Johnson the 3rd said...

Lies? You want to hear about LIES?
Republicans only econonmic solutions are deregulation and cutting taxes for corporations/the wealthy.

Both of these methods do next to nothing to help the overall economy.
There is far too much conservative economic theory and its based on predictions Reagan made that have just not panned out in practice but since the conservative messiah said it they intend to keep trying the same failed economic ideas until they actually work. They're too thick to understand those ideas don't work.

Dave Miller said...

Josh, I can agree that at least the Ebola hysteria had its basis in a real problem, misguided as I believe it was.

I have good friends in law enforcement who were predicting over 39,000 US deaths and double that number of sick survivors.

Even honest libs would probably admit at least a little fear of the unknown in those early days of the outbreak.

Your words are very encouraging.

Especially so what you had to say about the "War on Christmas." Sadly, I cannot imagine many others of the more conservative bent would be eager to agree with you.

Dave Miller said...

Shaw... post this where you want, or not at all...

President Obama has taken huge steps to normalize relations with Cuba and almost immediately, the GOP has called it one of the biggest blunders in history.

Marco Rubio said this puts a price on every Americans head, recalling the never trade for spies and/or hostages meme.

Perhaps he does not remember past Presidents, including Ronald Reagan, all swapped spies and traded for the release of people convicted on both sides of the divide.

This is a good day for the US, and for President Obama... perhaps that speaks more to the reasons behind the GOP discord.

Shaw Kenawe said...

I heard that, too, Dave, and I agree this is a good thing. Why the right wingers are losing their heads over it is no mystery. Anything he's for, they're against. Simple.

But we have Communist China as our favored trading partner and yet continue to blockade anything to do with Cuba? Do Americans really see Third World Cuba as a threat to the U.S? And not China with its billion and a half people? Or is it because Cuba is only 90 miles away from the US and the commie haters can't stand the idea of a Communist nation, even a Third World nation that close to our shores?

I don't see Cuba as any sort of threat to the US.

Dave Miller said...

We get a spy back, and they get three... over 50 political prisoners in Cuba freed... a US citizen gets freed after 5 years... And the US image and influence in Latin America, long suffering because of the embargo, gets a jolt of good news.

The only reason we've continued this embargo is because Cuba can't fight back.

If we opposed Cuba on principle, we should also have an embargo on China, the largest Communist nation on the planet.

How can conservatives intellectually defend engagement with China and not Cuba? The answer? Simple politics.

The blogs are already saying that Obama is doing this because he is a Communist sympathizer... Was Nixon? Reagan? Bush? No, of course not, even though they dealt with, expanded business with, and worked for greater engagement with the brutal, human rights abusing, murderous regime of China.

We should award a special Liars Award of Merit to the people now critical of this... it is pure intellectual dishonesty.

Anonymous said...

It is about time US renews ties with Cuba. It will probably piss off some Cuban's in Miami but it has been far to long. Just imagine being able to buy Cuban cigars legally.

The whole hysteria over Ebola was just that, hysteria. Obama did the right thing by just ignoring the CDC and taking a I don't give a sh-- attitude. After all he has shown that a few American lives are not worth much and certainly not worth taking a stand on, unless of course they are minorities.

Shaw Kenawe said...

"Obama did the right thing by just ignoring the CDC and taking a I don't give a sh-- attitude."

No, Anon. The "I don't give a sh__ attitude was given by the hysterics who cared more about trying to blame Obama for ebola than the welfare of the American people.

Obama show immense caring by not enacting stupid quarantines and other hysterical travel bans, which were not, as has been shown, needed.


Anon: "After all he has shown that a few American lives are not worth much and certainly not worth taking a stand on, unless of course they are minorities."

Your whiney and extraordinarily bitchy attitude is noted. How on earth will you make it through the next two years? May I suggest a good dose of Milk of Magnesia every day to relieve you of much of what ails you?

You're welcome.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Dave "We should award a special Liars Award of Merit to the people now critical of this... it is pure intellectual dishonesty."

Those poor people are just not intellectually able to see the hypocrisy in condemning the Cuban thaw but accepting China as a favored trading partner. Their thinking is that China isn't REALLY a Communist society because they believe in doing business and making money, so they're not really commies. Their repression doesn't bother those people because they see nothing wrong with torture.

IOW, one sort of Communism is good and the other sort isn't because they say so.

Dishonesty? Yes. With a large dose of stubbornness and willful ignorance.

Ducky's here said...

It's also been revealed that the Pope was instrumental in facilitating communication.

Certain right wingers have just had it with Pope Francis after this.

Rubio is on the tube right now whining that Obama gave away the store. Well, tough noogies, Marco. It's long past time to move on.

Kudos to Obama.

Ducky's here said...

Duck, you're a film guy... I've seen Fury, Inglorious Basterds and a few other war flicks the last few years... They all seem to call into question the conclusions of a certain blog on the subject...
-----------
You must be referring to the mother ship.
Right now trying to whip the Holy Father into line with Teabag ideology is the order of the day.

But I did read her post on war films and felt it was predictably tunnel visioned. As I'd expect from that site, it is critical that realism be avoided.

You could make it an excellent thesis project to compare the war cinema of various countries.
Russia tends to focus on the sacrifice and brutality.
Japan spent a great deal of effort deconstructing Bushido but was never quite able to admit fault.

American cinema in films like Saving Private Ryan never really abandons the standard line.
CGI allows more graphic violence but I've never seen an American film that quite equals Klimov's Come and See.

War in the 20th Century
a recommended list:

Larisa Shepitko - Ascent
Rossellini - Rome, Open City
Andrei Tarkovsk - Ivan's Childhood
Masaki Kobayashi - The Human Condition
Kon Ichikawa - The Burmese Harp
Lewis Milestone - A Walk in the Sun
Anthony Man - Men in War
Andrzej Wajda - Kanal
Stanley Kubrick - Paths of Glory
Jean Renoir - Grand Illusion

It's a list that avoids any of the standard memes.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Ducky: "Certain right wingers have just had it with Pope Francis after this."

Yes, I know. I understand Ms. Prissy Pants is exceedingly NOT amused. LOL!

Good for Obama! He's certainly eating the GOP's breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

LOL!

Shaw Kenawe said...

I will NEVER forget "Rome, Open City."

Dave Miller said...

Ducky... you've just made my Netflix list a little longer...