Freepers aren't happy with Snopes.com debunking their bullshit smears - accuse a liberal bias.

[jefferson_dem]

Classic. I wonder if snopes should launch a page debunking this stupid freeper tin-foily charge.

Snopes covering for Obama?
Modern Conservative ^ | Christopher Cook

Posted on Sunday, July 27, 2008 9:46:01 AM by connell

Most have now heard about the emails from soldiers in the field who were less than impressed by the fact that the Obamessiah failed to grace them with his holy presence. We posted on it yesterday.

Well, one of the first emails to travel around the net has now been "recanted" by the sender. The email itself was genuine, but now he is asking that people stop sending it around and posting it. He said it was meant only for his family.

The odds are good that what happened was that it got around, and since his name was attached, he caught a load of flak from his superiors. Military people are not supposed to show political preferences openly. Even though 75-85% of them are conservative, they're not supposed to let anyone know.

Snopes, of course, has used this as an excuse to discredit the entire theme of Obama's failure to visit the troops.

Concrete Bob has been communicating with Blackfive, and together, they are staying on top of the subject.

That Snopes would bend over backwards to defend a Democrat candidate should not come as any surprise. They've done it several times before.

Over the last few years, we (and others) have kept track of a few of these instances. We feel confident that a complete survey of Snopes' entries would reveal much more. In the meantime, read these articles and posts and add them to the list of evidence showing a left-leaning bias Snopes.

...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2052060/posts

[redqueen]

1. Well they're right. Facts do have a liberal bias.

Honestly it's hard to imagine how stupid one has to be in order to be able to believe the BS these freeper types do.

[Muttocracy]

15. library and liberal sound awfully alike

facts cannot be trusted.

:tinfoilhat:

[liberal N proud]

2. They can't spread lies so it is liberal bias

They never seem to fail at framing the media or any one telling the truth as liberal

[SOS]

34. And it is a lie

"On Sunday he (Obama) ate breakfast with American troops in the United States coalition headquarters in Kabul."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/politics/20cnd-obama.html

[fasttense]

3. Republicons don't let the facts get in the way of their insults and smears. n/t

[Major Hogwash]

4. Recommended.

I hope they gag on the facts.

[janx]

5. That is funny.

"Concrete Bob has been communicating with Blackfive, and together, they are staying on top of the subject."

:rofl:

[Muttocracy]

14. a little funny, a little creepy

:tinfoilhat:

[Mabus]

16. Translation

Blackfive took a laptop over to Concrete Bob's house. Concrete Bob's mom said that this is the first time that CB has asked her if it was okay to have a slumber party since he was in high school - some 40 years ago. Blackfive's mom gave him $10 and he and CB are going to order a pizza, play World of Warcraft all night! During lulls in the game, they'll alt-tab to the browser and check Drudge's website for their new marching orders.

[Faygo Kid]

6. Freepers get their science from Limbaugh and theology from Coulter.

There is nothing - no fact whatsoever - that deters them from drowning in the pool of their ignorance.

That is why they are pliant puppets of Faux and the rest, comfortable in their abysmal indifference to truth, and Bushbots to their last breath.

Useful idiots, I think the phrase went.

[The Doctor.]

17. No, 'harmful' idiots. If people with the sport's fan mentality about politics

would get the fuck out of politics, all politicians would begin to be held accountable to the people.

These fuckers treat politics like the two "sides" are sports teams, and as fans, they are supposed to 'support' their team and defend them no matter what. When they go after a Democrat with lies, they consider it a 'legitimate' attack and view the defenders as 'doing their duty'. So in turn, when someone, anyone points out malfeasance by a Republican, they automatically assume the accuser is a 'liberal', and begin mounting a defense/counter-offensive REGARDLESS of the veracity of the claim. They simply see it as 'playing the game' or 'doing their duty'. They do, of course, still believe they are right because "Our team is NUMBER ONE!!", and to them, that transcends (or precludes rather) any notion of right or wrong, or even any critical investigation of the public interest.

You'll see it on sites all across the web. As far as they're concerned, anyone, Libertarian, Green, Independent... anyone who criticises a Republican must therefore be a "Liberal", regardless of how often that person criticises Democrats as well. For the most part (yes, not all of them are complete idiots, just most of them), they must keep things simple and polarized by putting people and issues into small and diametrically opposed categories. They do this because they simply do not possess the mental apparatus to reconcile conflicting, but not directly opposed concepts. They cannot tolerate ambiguity, so they must keep things nice and simple in order to deal with concepts;
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story?coll=la-home-center

Thus the need to view politics in an 'us vs. them', 'with us or against us' mode... the sport's fan mentality.

It's easy to call people like this 'deficient' or 'stupid', and in many cases that really seems true as complex concepts are simply beyond their ability to grasp, but it's just a function of their cognitive architecture.


If one of them read this, they would not investigate it's veracity, rather just call it a 'typical liberal attack' and dismiss it without understanding the point at all.

[SpookyCat]

30. Very good point, Dr.

I never made the leap and thought about it in those terms, but you're absolutely right. I think it goes hand in hand with the general arrogance of ignorance that has been going on for a long time now and reached its zenith with having an absolute imbecile in the WH.

This is also why it is so easy for them to "win" a debate, at least win to the uninformed viewer. If you are willing to flat out lie to score a point, unless I have printed out or can immediately play the video of the counter point right now, it looks like the Repub won. What I mean is, I may know that it is a matter of record that McCain has consistently voted against Veterans, but if he can say No I didn't and I can't immediately pull up documents to his record, he appears to "win" and the crowd pumps its fists and "whoots".

I see this even among some of my friends and family when I try to explain reality to them. I have no interest in sports at all so I hadn't seen the link. And I have no earthly idea how to combat this, because if I use facts and logic to counter these falsehoods, then I'm the elitist or I'm irrational or bleeding heart...etc...

Gives me a headache.

[The Doctor.]

37. It's very difficult. You have to meticulously, and quickly distill the discussion down into

'Right' and 'wrong'.

For instance; Habeas Corpus. It is completely wrong, on all levels, to deny the right of the accused to defend themselves. You and I know that, and we know why. Trying to communicate your profound understanding to them is virtually impossible because in their 'either/or' cognitive architecture each point you try to make must stand alone. To recognize how the interrelative factors describe how and why the right of every individual to defend themselves against accusations, especially those of the government, is absolutely crucial to maintaining civilization, one must be able to see how all the factors interrelate.

If you tried to explain that in full to most of these types, their heads might explode if you were successfull.

Instead, you have to get them to see the fundamentals in the little blocks of understanding they can weigh and judge.

How?

Ask questions. I'd love to tell you how to go about it, but we would each have our own 'style'. Unfortunately my 'style' tends to really infuriate these people. It might go something like this;

Me; "Is it ok to keep an innocent man in jail for years without ever trying him?"

Freeper; "Sure if it serves the greater good!"

Me; "How would keeping you in jail serve the greater good?"

Freeper; "But I'm not a terrorist."

Me: "Right, you're innocent, so putting you in jail without trial would not serve the greater good at all, right?"

(At this point, the disposition of the guy is crucial. If he's a complete moron, he'll realize that he's going to get into concepts above his head, tell you that you love the terrorists and you don't understand why we have to treat 'them' differently than we would treat Americans because Americans aren't terrorists and 'they' are. From there, one has to handle the branches differently. On this branch, we have to follow through with asking him if it's a good idea to find out whether someone is a terrorist or not so we can interrogate them and bring them to justice rather than wasting time, money, and resources interrogating the wrong people. The obvious answer is "Yes, we should make that determination." then; "Good, so we try them, and release the innocent so it doesn't cost us, and interrogate the guilty so it doesn't cost lives. You're absolutely right!"... and so on.)

With a more patient sort;

Freeper; "No, it wouldn't."

Then I would get into a line of questioning about what happens when we torture innocent people, whether that means they think we're civilized and so on.

Unfortunately, many of these people have established defense mechanisms for dealing with facts that lead them to draw uncomfortable conclusions contrary to what they've been programmed to believe. The primary defense mechanism is ignorance. Once you say something that they can use to label you a 'liberal', they just hammer on "You're a liberal" (as you said) and stop paying attention.

I've found the best possible way to get them engaged is to ask questions very carefully so that they either have to process the information they are indirectly being fed, or risk looking like they are incapable of answering questions.

I don't know if any of that helps at all, but I wish you luck with your friends and family.

:patriot:

[Ian David]

7. It is unfortunate for them that Reality has a Liberal bias. n/t

[Ian David]

8. The reason Snopes.com spends so much time debunking lies about Democrats...

... is because Repukes spend so much time CREATING lies about Democrats.

Republicans are, by their very nature, fucked-up lying Nazi assholes with no regard for facts, integrity, credibility, honor or responsibility.

[AspenRose]

33. WORD

:headbang:

I came up with an idea: For every time I hear some lie, smear or RW talking point that is blatantly untrue about Obama, I'm going to put change in my piggy bank. At the end of the month that money goes to the campaign.

Consider it a CHANGE THE SMEAR action plan.

[napi21]

9. I noticed at least ONE falsehood in that freeper statement. That

letter "from a soldier in Afghan. was sent to ME yesterday. I asked about it here on DU, and was referred to the snopes review. The freeper said the original letter was true..."His name was attached..." Well, the email I received had a different soldier's NAME sohwn as the author than did the one on snopes, and also different from some others on DU who also received the same text but different names.

I'm sure it pi**es them off that their silly email stories continue to be debunked, but so far, everything I've checked on snopes has had references included in their reasoning for declaring them true, false, or part.....

It's tough to always be proven WRONG!

[City Lights]

10. My aunt refuses to believe Snopes. She considers it "just another

opinion." :eyes:

[sniffa]

11. They're such a bunch of fucking retards

Seriously. I think they eat lead paint chips for breakfast.

[cliffordu]

26. Come on now, no need to be hatin' the short bus kids among us......

by lumping them in with the gutless shitsucking cretins that are the freepers.

[Joanne98]

12. They are soooo full of shit. LOL

[zbird]

13. My sister just used this talking point with me yesterday.

Now I see it is the current point du jour. She is apparently incapable of independent/critical thought, so I figured this point had to be coming from somewhere. Now I know.

[AllentownJake]

18. Interesting

The Freeper home page has no mention of McCain or pictures and is advertising a book by Bob Barr :rofl:

[rasputin1952]

19. The RW despises truth and feeds off of ignorance...

The reason they despise Snopes, or anyone else that seeks the truth is because they know that exposure to the light of truth is their damnation.

[grannylib]

20. Facts are rarely on the side of conservatives; hence, the "bias"

whine on the part of those proven to be liars, or at best, ill-informed.

[WillyT]

21. It Is True That “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” - Colbert

Link: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/30/reality-has-a-well-known-liberal-bias/

:evilgrin:

[EFerrari]

22. Beat me. lol

[Sparkly]

35. I was about to post that, too!

Never mind the Fact Fascists! Go with your GUT! :rofl:

[mzmolly]

40. HA!

And there it is!

[Kire]

23. the snopes article refers to something that happened in afghanistan

hence the title: "Barack Obama in Afghanistan"

most of the recent criticism about Obama is that he didn't visit wounded troops in Germany a few days later

[Qutzupalotl]

24. Side note: if anyone tells you "I've already checked Snopes and they confirmed this,"

check anyway.

[Hamlette]

25. Answer: "The difference between McCain and Obama: Troops are disappointed when Obama doesn’t visit."

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=10921

[Hamlette]

27. The author of the email asked it not be sent around because it was WRONG.

of course they leave THAT fact out.

"After checking my sources, information I put in that email was WRONG." (my emphasis) He also said it was intended only for his family but the freepers make it sound like that was the only reason he didn't want it passed around.

Snopes now covers 27 emails about Obama of which 2 are true (Bobby Kennedy saying we could have a black prez in 40 years and that Obama did not put his hand over his heart while the anthem was being played. All 25 other emails are false (take a gander, some vile stuff there, my "favorite most disgusting is a pic of Obama with his family with a made up caption, NONE of which is true (duh). It's racist and only possible because they have convinced so many people that the media is left wing and lies so you won't see this in the news.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/familyphoto.asp

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp

McCain's snopes page has 3 rumors, one is true and two are not proved (yellow light).

[depakid]

28. Reality has a liberal bias

That much is true....

[yardwork]

29. This was intended to be the next big swiftboat. It backfired.

The freeps can't believe that their toy got broken so quickly.

[Bobbie Jo]

31. Intelligent people piss them off to no end...

Facts..We don't need no stinking facts. :argh:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

32. These people need to get laid.

Jesus Christ.

[PatGund]

36. Come on.....

There's so many freepers, and only so many stalls in airport mens rooms.

[Kahuna]

38. Such idiots. They saw Obama on TV with the troops, yet one troop

sends a bullshit email and they believe that instead of their own eyes. :banghead:

[mzmolly]

39. LOL. It took them longer than I thought it would.

;)

[TankLV]

41. It is a well-known FACT the the TRUTH has a LIBERAL BIAS...it just "is"...

All conservatism has is LIES, INUENDO and SMEARS...

[Kat45]

42. Gee, since the left doesn't put out lies that smear and the conservatives do,

it would make sense that Snopes, a site that debunks myths, would mainly be writing about conservative lies. If the left put out similar smears, Snopes would also debunk those. But the left hasn't been doing that. Duh!

[margotb822]

43. Freepers are so ridiculous

They all talk about the military like they ever had the courage to join. Ha! Maybe if they back out of their dungeons and travel the world, they'll realize how small-minded and dangerous their fear-mongering is. Maybe...