The Big Lie
Readers will recall Randy Kuhl’s absurd claim that he found a plan to lower the price of oil by $2 a gallon (in which he seemed to confuse barrels with gallons) and the mailer that “communicated” these ideas to the general public. It looks like Congressman Kuhl was not content with these misrepresentations; now he’s talking about imaginary oil fields. Here he is in the Corning Leader (via F29th with a hat-tip to reader Elmer):
Kuhl disputes that notion saying that while tapping into places such as ANWR would take several years, areas do exist where oil could be reached and refined in a matter of months.
It’s not clear what he’s talking about. If such fields exist and are sufficiently large that they might impact oil prices, how come no one else knows about them? Are they underneath Keuka Lake?
But Randy was by no means the most egregious Republican prevaricator this weekend. John McCain claimed earlier today that he would be able to balance the budget within a few years if elected president. Here’s a sample of what professional economists and economic writers had to say about that: link1 link2 link3. Their conclusion: he must be joking.
But the problem is that McCain isn’t joking about his balanced budget fantasy nor is Randy kidding about his magic plan to cut the price of oil in half. The plans are a joke, but both pols are serious about promoting them nevertheless.
Why is this? Why is it that a candidate for an important office would decide to put out information that was verifiably false? Part of the answer to this is that they can. The media does a poor job of fact checking in general, so there’s not much incentive to tell the truth. The other answer has to do with a the Big Lie principle, put forward by a rather notorious right-winger who shall remain nameless here. The Big Lie is a whopper so immense that the public finds it difficult to believe that any public official “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”.
That sums up Kuhl’s and McCain’s bamboozlement here quite well.
It’s not clear what he’s talking about. If such fields exist and are sufficiently large that they might impact oil prices, how come no one else knows about them? Are they underneath Keuka Lake?
What an embarassment he is.
massaforcongress.com
Get out of the way Randy - let a real man do it.