"All it takes is a Google search." Some of the most ridiculous right wing chain emails and hoaxes

[ck4829]

"Obama is resettling Hamas terrorists by the planeload in the United States!1111"

Forwarded email claims President Obama has funded a $20 million resettlement of Hamas refugees to the United States via H.R. 1388 (aka H.B. 1388), a bill supposedly passed 'behind our backs' in Congress.

Just one problem with this, HR 1388 does exist, it is The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, simply revised and reauthorized existing public service programs (such as AmeriCorps), increasing their scope and funding.

Interesting item: This chain email helped drive one of the members of the Hutaree militia in her rage against the government and almost war against law enforcement.

"There is a global DDT ban!!!11111"

In one their few shows of concern for foreign dark skinned people, right wingers like to portray Rachel Carson and other environmentalists as causing the deaths of millions of people because of their activism against the usage of DDT, putting them on par with Hitler and Stalin.

Problem with this is that while DDT isn't used in the United States, it is still used in other countries.

There is another reason why DDT isn't used all that much anymore. It's another thing that a lot of conservatives like to not think about, it's called evolution. Mosquitoes exhibiting resistance to DDT was fist noted in 1959.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/a/hr_1388_hamas_resettlement.htm
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/hutaree_member_angered_by_fake_hamas_bill.php
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241563901_eng.pdf

What about you? What chain emails have you received, what discussions have you been in, things you have heard, etc.; where you heard or read something that was so fantastic and false that you could debunk it with the fist result on a Google search and saw that every other source of info debunked what the right winger was saying?

[Mz Pip]

1. I'm sure I get most of them

and I debunk all of them. My cousin who is in his 70s can't seem to figure out how to google or how to check snopes. At lest he's receptive to the debunking and admits the folks that send him the stuff weren't the brightest bulbs in his class. He's still a right winger, though.

There is or was a Propaganda Debunking forum on DU but unfortuately it doesn't seem to be very active.

[SpiralHawk]

2. George AWOL Bush & Republicons want to give our ports to Dubai

Oh, wait, that one's true.

[abbeyco]

3. My Mom and Cousin send me all the RW junk

They're big rightie/tea-hadist types and never bother to check anything and pass it on, including me, with their "the world is ending, I hate the President, we're all gonna die" hype.

I've spent more time debunking all their bunk, so to speak, and sending back calm, rational responses to their hysterical postings. Whenever possible, I respond to all, or capture a bunch of emails of folks that are on the email chain, so that I can set them straight, too.

I've seen the DDT one, all the First Lady's employees (so many! compared to past First Ladies), all of Czars in the Obama administration, census garbage, you name it, I've gotten it from one or more family member.

I just send back links and hope they slink off to other chores after I've schooled them on their idiocy.

[jobycom]

4. My favorite is the one that recommends people not to use Snopes to check it out.

It's a whole email claiming that Snopes is a liberal web site and the writers are liberal activists who deliberately misrepresented one story that a friend of the email writer had personal knowledge of. So the email recommended truthorfiction.co, saying it was more objective and reliable than Snopes.

So truthorfiction.com debunked the anti-Snopes email on its own web site. :evilgrin:
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/s/snopes.htm

[LisaM]

5. I get tons of them

Most recently, one person is swamping me with rants against why the health care bill will fail. Another (the one who twice sent me the Hamas one) has been sending me a ridiculous one about how Bush went to Ft. Hood to visit soldiers in the hospital, spent four hours, eschewed all Secret Service protection, and only left when he was finally ordered off the base by Obama who, himself, refused to go to the hospital at all and only did a speech/photo op before speeding off. Most of this, of course, is blatantly untrue. Bush did go (though the thought of him doing anything for four hours is absurd, but he was not ordered off base by Obama, he didn't go unnannounced and unprotected (the email made it sound as if he heard the news, grabbed Laura, and hopped in the car), and Obama certainly did go to the hospital.

I found the debunk on Snopes (which included a picture of Obama at the hospital), and my friend refused to believe it! So I found another debunking on factcheck.org (the site Cheney referenced once in a debate) and he still won't believe it. This guy just hates Obama, but in particular, I've learned that he hates Muslims and thinks of all of them as terrorists. I always knew he was a rightwinger - he describes himself as Libertarian. But this ugly anti-Muslim streak has just surfaced since Obama was elected. He can't stand him and is one of those who thinks Obama is a socialist.

Before you ask why I am friends with him - he's in his 80s (he's the much older husband of a friend), fought in World War II, and has always been personally kind to me. I can generally ignore what he sends.

It's only right wing people who do this, too, I've noticed. They clearly are originating at some source, probably that Dick Armey group Rachel Maddow is alwsys exposing.

[elocs]

6. True, true. A google search would also answer a lot of the questions asked here

if the asker would just take the trouble to do it.

[MajorChode]

7. DDT was never the threat claimed by Rachel Carson and others

The US ban on DDT was always more about eco-hysteria than it was about actual science. Many countries followed suit, and the reason why it wasn't available in Africa had far more to do with the fact that manufacturers stopped making it than any claims of ineffectiveness. DDT is still a very effective tool against malaria which your own source describes, and yes the unavailability of DDT almost certainly caused the deaths of millions of people which is why the WHO reversed their position. Even the WWF, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club(which ironically was formed out of opposition to DDT) have reversed their positions on DDT.