This is getting ridiculous. A while back, Dick Cheney said that China was drilling off the coast of Cuba in an effort to push drilling legislation. Turns out he was wrong - and he came out and said that. Since then, 11 more Republicans have repeated that lie. Here's the latest: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/yet_another_republican_has_pus.php This one slipped our attention at first, but it turns there was yet another Republican who continued to push the China-Cuba Oil Myth even after Dick Cheney retracted it: Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama. By our count, this makes 12 Republicans who have continued to push the story. In a guest op-ed for the Opelika-Auburn News published on June 16, Rogers wrote: In December 2006 Congress passed, with my support, a bill that partially expanded drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But there is still a large area that is off limits to U.S. companies. Since then, you may have seen China has signed an agreement with Cuba to drill for this oil. That's right: China has set up shop off the coast of Florida and is using oil our country could readily use instead. Rogers' Congressional office has not responded to our requests for comment. It makes you wonder about these guys (not Republicans in general, but these 11). Are they all just ignorant of the facts, or do they knowing push the lie and have no qualms with it?
Your Brain Lies to You By SAM WANG and SANDRA AAMODT FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way. The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don't remember how you learned it. This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true. With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls. Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like "I think I read somewhere" or even with a reference to a specific source. In one study, a group of Stanford students was exposed repeatedly to an unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that Coca-Cola is an effective paint thinner. Students who read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports (rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice), giving it a gloss of credibility. Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it. In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were presented with two pieces of evidence, one supporting and one contradicting the claim that capital punishment deters crime. Both groups were more convinced by the evidence that supported their initial position. Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke — or about a presidential candidate. Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to "stop the smears," the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize that Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more effective to stress that he embraced Christianity as a young man. Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a replication of the study of students' impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs. In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that the opposite interpretation may be true. In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes's ideal. Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, and Sandra Aamodt, a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, are the authors of "Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/o...em&ex=1214798400&en=55e3196d3a7018e0&ei=5087
"I did not have sex with that woman.... Ms. Lewinski." Let's see: once before the Grand Jury, another time before the nation, and lastly before Hillary-- bet she called him on it!
He didn't have to make this a Republican thing... but he did-- in the thread title. Just having some fun and keeping it real!
But it *is* a Republican thing. This involves 12 Republicans (if you include Cheney). It's not like it's a mix of Republicans and Democrats repeating the lie. Given that Congress is fairly mixed, the fact that they are all Republican is fairly significant - it can't be attributed to random chance. That said, it doesn't apply to ALL Republicans, of course.
Ah, but that thread title seems kind of all-inclusive... People are way lazier than we give them credit for. I don't think this is any kind of conspiracy to promulgate a falsehood, do you?
Certainly true - I should have labelled it more specific than "Republicans". This is what I'm curious about. It's just a strange thing to be so factually wrong about. All of these people heard Cheney's first claim of this, but none of them heard the correction? Or any of the following corrections each time it was brought up again? But at the same time, it's silly to think they are coordinating to spread a lie too. All in all, it's just a really weird phenomenon to me.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/09/news/economy/oil_cuba/index.htm Yes, I know it hasn't happened yet, but if there is oil in that area of the Gulf, it is in the plans. It's really disingenuous to yell about the lie and ignore the truth when they are similar.
Duly noted, weslinder. But once they've been corrected you would think they would want to clarify with the meat of this article. This wouldn't be nearly so troubling if the current admin didn't have such a long, storied history of repeating things they knew not to be true in hopes of convincing the American people. Right now there are people in pockets all around this country that believe the Cheney "misstatement" to be the truth. And that is exactly how they want it. The enormous number of people who have believed for years that Iraq was involved in 9/11 - in fact that this was a proven fact - was not an accident. This isn't either. It is a tactic.
Interesting - I'd hadn't seen this. The article is from 2 years ago - did anything ever come from that?
As best I found, piecing together as much as I can from the web. Chinese company Sinopec has one oil lease in Cuba-controlled Gulf waters, 70 miles from Key West. The famous "50-mile lease" is owned by Respol, and in 2004, they called it not commercially viable. I have no clue whether it is viable at $140/barrel or not. Currently, China has permission to put up to 36 rigs in that lease, but they certainly won't put that many. All of this was reported in 2006. More recently, China has denied any offshore Cuban leases, and have only done onshore seismic testing in Cuba. No clue whether that is true, or China playing coy. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/2/1543/23452/652/545495 What I think: The leases reported in 2006 are true, and there is oil there. It requires deepwater rigs, and Sinopec doesn't have the technology yet, and probably would have trouble licensing it for a politically sensitive spot like that Cuban lease. The underreported part of the story: If Sinopec does decide to drill on the lease themselves, and not subcontract, it is a disaster waiting to happen. Their environmental record is horrendous, they've had operations shutdown by China and Gabon for major environmental damage.
LOL at this one.... Just do a lexus~nexus search and I am positive you can find "politicians" of all kinds telling lies on a daily basis. Its not reserved for one party or the other On the mention of national security......Bill Clinton reached the pinnacle when he sold guidance systems to the Chi-coms and also took political contributions from the same. Both of which are acts of treason. I"m out!
