Right-wing lies about Gabrielle Giffords
Last summer's visit to the family homestead was replete with political nonsense, as I have already recounted elsewhere. However, I didn't relate one incident that seemed redundant and less significant at the time. Now I think otherwise.
As he is wont to do, my father bombarded me with supposed examples of left-wing stupidity, all of them borrowed from hate media outlets like Fox or talk radio or randomly forwarded extremist e-mails. One of them involved “a stupid congresswoman from Arizona.” (Yes, it was Gabrielle Giffords, but Dad did not remember her name at the time.) He chortled as he reported that this dumb Democrat wanted our troops to use knives and rocks to “stab and club” the enemy in the war on terror so as to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Bombs and bullets are so environmentally unsound, don't you know?
“That's ridiculous,” I said. “No one ever said any such thing.”
Dad's hair-trigger temper flared up.
“I saw her say that on video!” he declared.
“I don't believe you,” I said.
He quickly decamped to his computer to find the proof (just as he had earlier in the morning when he trotted out the “Obama is a Muslim” canard). He slipped away quietly to do something else when he couldn't find what he wanted. I was spared the time-wasting exercise of pointing out (yet again) that he was either misinterpreting something or getting suckered by a clumsy video cut-and-paste job.
The incident passed without further comment, but I did a tiny bit of Google research when I got home and shared the information with my father:
Date: August 15, 2010But Dad wasn't really very interested. This is what I got in return:
There's an interesting contrast, Dad, between what you thought Congresswoman Giffords said to General Petraeus and what she actually said. Perhaps you got your information from Glenn Beck, who played just the clip where she's asking about energy sources and Beck mocks her for asking the general about "sustainable energy".
Beck clip
When you see a more complete clip, however, it shows that Giffords wanted to know if the army's facilities had sufficient alternative resources in case their supply lines were threatened. It's not a silly question when you include the part where Giffords mentions that "supply lines have been increasingly threatened either by enemy action or through international crises," the part that Beck left out. Here's the whole thing:
Gifford clip
You'll see that Petraeus takes the question entirely seriously, and not just because he's trying to be polite to the congresswoman. He has a good answer about reducing power consumption at the army bases and improving the efficiency with which they use their supplies.
This is why Snopes.com labels the original story mocking the congresswoman as false. So does TruthOrFiction.com.
And here's what Giffords herself says about protecting our military's "umbilical cord":
Gifford campaign post
By the way, where's the part where Giffords asks the general to reduce carbon emissions by using knives and clubs instead of guns and bombs? It's nowhere to be seen. Looks like a made-up quote being passed around on the right-wing blogs as propaganda. Google demonstrates that lots of people have reprinted this claim as if it's true, but YouTube has no clip of her saying it and there's no congressional record showing that she said it. Under the circumstances, it looks like a lie.
I thought you would be interested in knowing that.
-Z-
I did not get that from beck because I am seldom home when he is on. I heard a news clip on radio.What can you do about that kind of bone-deep ignorance, prejudice, and misinformation? Perhaps nothing, but I gave it one more try:
I know that liberals are elite and feel that they should control the country because we do not know how. however the Idea that the redistribution of wealth is not a Marxist ideology can not be denied. and that is what is going on. He spent much of his youth in Indonesia as a Muslim and I'm sure taught to hate America because that is what they do. and with a name like he has anyone facing reality should realize that he is not one of us.
He has a law degree, that does not impress me, a part time senator, a commune organizer. These are not qualifications to run the country, he never ran a business or managed anything.he is completely inept But he knows that he wants to change this country for a capitalist to a Marxist and for that he is doing a good job. Behind closed doors and back room deals. What happened to transparency and all the openness that we were promised and all I hear are lies and more lies, I guess the end justifies the means, I'm familiar with that too. Some Liberals are starting to see the light I hope you do too.
Best wishes always.
I'm merely pointing out to you that a lot of your information is based on falsehoods. That should give you pause.Predictably, my rebuttals had no impact at all. Soon thereafter he sent me the e-mail that called me a liar and created the breach that remains to this day. For Mom's sake, we operate under a flag of truce, but I am firmly resolved not to waste any more time trying to talk sense to an irrational right-wing extremist.
The notion that Obama hates American is really ridiculous. He didn't work so hard to become the nation's leader because he wants to be in charge of something he despises. He's spent all of his time in office so far trying to clean up the mess left by his predecessor, and it hasn't been an easy task. He spend part of his youth in a predominantly Muslim country. That's hardly the same thing as spending it "as a Muslim." One of the schools he went to in Indonesia was a Catholic school. That doesn't make him a secret Catholic either. Or does it? Maybe Protestants should be frightened.
The scare tactics about Marxism are also pretty absurd. The bar sure has been lowered for being considered a socialist these days. The one industry temporarily taken over by the federal government during the big recession was the automobile industry. Though not many people are talking about it, that rescue worked just fine, the auto industry paid back its loans, and the companies are being run by their own boards of directors again instead of by some federal "czar" (as the news media likes to call them). That's pretty lousy Marxism, to let an big industry get away like that.
-Z-
In closing, here's an illustration from a fringe-element website in Arizona. Its politics are so far out that a moderate like Giffords is deemed worthy of being depicted as an Obamanoid-communist dunce. Nice work, jerks.
