BP writing the cap-and-trade bill: Another right-wing zombie lie in the making?
June 15, 2010 11:51 am ET by Terry Krepel
We’ve previously written about zombie lies in the right-wing media -- claims long ago disproven yet still cited as fact. It seems there’s a new zombie lie in the making: the claim that the cap-and-trade bill was written by BP.
Several days after PolitiFact declared Sen. Mitch McConnell’s claim that BP wrote the energy bill sponsored by Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman to be false, Janet Porter was repeating it in her June 15 WorldNetDaily column:
What you may not know is that the BP candidate [Obama] will address the BP spill with a bill written by … BP!
No kidding. According to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., "a major part" of the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade/global-warming bill was "essentially written by BP."
What to do about the BP oil spill? Let's pound on the podium about it. Let's take some pictures about it. And let's … pass the BP-drafted tax bill for government control!
In fact, as PolitiFact explained, while BP was one of many parties who floated ideas for the bill, “saying that the senators listened to BP's case is not the same as saying that ‘a major part’ of the bill ‘was essentially written by BP.’ " Further, three major initiatives pushed by BP do not even appear in the current version of the bill.
Porter went on to quote from a June 9 CNSNews.com article that quoted McConnell claiming “BP actually helped write” the cap-and-trade bill. But that was merely a report on McConnell’s remarks, and no apparent attempt was made to verify what he said. To the contrary: CNS quoted Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe endorsing McConnell’s claim.
A search of CNS’ archives indicates that CNS has yet to report the fact that McConnell’s claim has been shown to be false.
Between right-wing columnists’ embrace of this false claim and the right-wing media’s apparent disinterest in correcting the record, we may have ourselves a new zombie lie in the making.
But in the black and white world of a rightwing utopia, everyone is either all good or all bad - that's why RightON rejects everything that might ever come out of Senator Barbara Boxer's mouth, for example - because he doesn't like her, he reflexively won't listen to anything she says.
And the rightwing is behaving the same way over this issue. Just because one portion of BP really mishandled the drilling of this well, which led to 11 deaths, incredibly devastasting ecological damage and amazing financial costs for the residents and businesses in the Gulf of Mexico and BP's shareholders, just because BP did a REALLY BAD thing, doesn't mean that there's nothing GOOD that BP can also do!
But the disease those on the right have, their black and white thinking, so poisons their minds that they can't understand this simple concept.
I guess that means unlimited Republican support for Cap'n Trade now, eh?