Right Wing Media Tries To Get Obama In Earthquake Gaffe, Fail
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Hot Air, Drudge, etc. are attacking President Obama for discussing an earthquake in 2006 that caused Hawaii to get disaster assistance. The righties insist that Obama made up the earthquake. The problem is the earthquake happened.
There was even a federal disaster proclamation from some George W. Bush guy.
Sometimes righties, just before you hit “publish”, do a Google. It won’t hurt. I promise. For now, at least.
29 Responses to “Right Wing Media Tries To Get Obama In Earthquake Gaffe, Fail”
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The views on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect the views of my employer, Media Matters for America
© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
“I DON’T CARE IF MY HEADLINES ARE ACCURATE. MY FEDORA TELLS ME OBAMA’S A COMMUNIST LIKE THE SUNGLASSES IN THE MOVIE THEY LIVE”-Matt Drudge
But, but, but— Hawaii isn’t a real state . . . . . .
their false reality keeps them happy.
The state was obviously just faking the quake in order to get soshulist statist mooney.
Mr. Willis..I think you are being extremely disingenuous and dissembling…for several reasons. First of all, the earthquake in HI did not cause any deaths nor major injuries, so there was no healthcare emergency.
There is no longer a health emergency in Louisiana due to Katrina as Obama claimed as the reasoning for the hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for that state.
Again..given that as the rationale, why then were TX and MI ignored? There were many injuries and deaths and much destruction in both those states.
I am afraid the President made yet another serious gaffe -or lie, as most would cliam-and the attempts to pretend otherwise are just silly
Today, on a very special episode of the Rush Limbaugh Show, Rush imitates the tremors of Hawaii and accuses the state of faking it…
Doocbag on Fox & Friends questioned “What earthquake?” this morning just to let you know the right wing misinfotainment machine is still working overtime.
This post is inaccurate. The Hot Air post says “In fact, the last earthquake in Hawaii to cause any deaths at all was in 1975, and two people died.”
That is correct. I do not understand why Oliver repeatedly distorts other views, when he can actually make a fair case against the true claim (does it really matter whether there were fatalities?). This is yet another example.
That’s weird, at the same Hot Air post, the sentence immediately preceding the one you cite reads, “There was no earthquake, and Obama is just totally clueless, as usual.”
Sorry Buzz. There was an earthquake. Look it up.
What the…? Oliver did not distort anything here. The jackass at Hot Air said that Obama made it up. But the earthquake did happen.
What the fuck are you talking about?
You completely missed my point. I acknowledged that there is a fair case again saying no earthquake happened. That makes the distortion all the more baffling.
To directly address your point though, are clarifications, even in the next sentence, just completely irrelevant?
Not according the the primary media arm of the modern Republican Party or any of its many, many other appendages. Obviously. Thanks again for helping them out.
The biggest LOL comes later in the post, where Jesse writes
“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”
Wow. No self-awareness there at all.
sorry, my mistake, that was sassy Cassy, the queen of the double-wide trailer.
WHAT distortion?
“The righties insist that Obama made up the earthquake.”
does not agree with
“In fact, the last earthquake in Hawaii to cause any deaths at all was in 1975, and two people died.”
I think I am not being clear enough here. I understand that you see the opening statement saying Obama made the whole thing up as the end-all be-all. And that isn’t completely unreasonable. I am suggesting that your take the high road, I suppose, and get down to the finest detail and clarification of the claims being made, rather than over-simply or brush them aside.
Doing that only serves as yet another tangent to the core issue, about whether an earthquake happened at all, with which I actually agree with you. In other words, you are allowing the debate to become semantic, rather than substantive.
*slams head into desk*
Look, man.
The whole section, directly copied from the Hot Air site.
“Apparently, there was a devastating earthquake in Hawaii that we all somehow missed.
Oh, wait, no. That’s right. There was no earthquake, and Obama is just totally clueless, as usual. In fact, the last earthquake in Hawaii to cause any deaths at all was in 1975, and two people died.”
And you are meaning to tell me that the statement “There was no earthquake, and Obama is just totally clueless, as usual” actually means “There was an earthquake.”
The author comes out and says there was no earthquake, and that Obama doesn’t have a clue. Then, he backs it up with a misleading fact, saying that there had been no earthquakes in Hawaii that have killed anyone since 1975. The problem is that Obama, as far as I know, never claimed that the recent quake killed anyone. Nor does the definition of “earthquake” depend on it resulting in fatalities.
So I repeat: What distortion?
“Buzz Killington has not committed a single rape in which the victim died.”
In other words, you are allowing the debate to become semantic, rather than substantive.
ROFLMAO.
Dude. Give it up.
Sigh… suit yourselves.
No, you’re right, Buzz. I’m wrong.
Let’s all burrow deeper into the finest details and clarifications of the claims being made by Hot Air.
You first.
Dude, you claimed that Oliver distorted the claims of Hot Air. I explicitly show you that Oliver did no such thing, and that Hot Air did in fact claim that Obama was “clueless”, and that “no earthquake” happened.
So… what distortion are you speaking of?
I am serious. I am not trying to get into a semantic argument. I want you to explain yourself.
I already did, but I’ll expand a bit: What difference does it make if people died or not? An earthquake is an earthquake, so saying there were no earthquakes, or that there were no earthquakes that caused fatalities, is stupid.
Is that really so absurd to say?
Is that really so absurd to say?
I’m going to go with yes. Especially after you accused others of focusing on semantics instead of substance.
Your whole point seems to turn on the qualifier “…the last earthquake to cause any deaths at all….” You couldn’t have zeroed in on a more irrelevant part of the Hot Air post.
Obama never said anything about people dying in an earthquake in Hawaii.
There was an earthquake in Hawaii in 2006 and Hawaii was declared a disaster area by president Bush. The language of the bill that has been dubbed the “Louisiana Purchase” makes additional benefits available to states recovering from such natural disasters:
http://mediamatters.org/research/201003180026
People don’t have to die in a natural disaster for a state or region to be declared a disaster area.
The language in the bill would cover Hawaii because of the 2006 earthquake.
Hot Air snarked: “Apparently, there was a devastating earthquake in Hawaii that we all somehow missed.”
Well, yes, they did miss it, apparently.
Accordingly, Oliver’s post is an accurate description of the Hot Air post.
It’s got nothing to do with how many people died or didn’t die during the 2006 quake. Hot Air acted as if the 2006 quake never happened.
They’re idiots.
So are you.
Of course, Buzz, you should feel free to keep burrowing deeper into the finest details of Hot Air’s post.
Surely the best way out of a hole is to keep digging.
Faffer, what you been eating this week and where can I get me some?
It seems to me that, even though the earthquake did not cause serious injuries, it still impacted the state’s budget; because the state had to repair damages caused by the earthquake, they had less money for their part of programs like Medicaid. That is why states that have President-declared major disasters need more federal assistance than states that have not had major disasters: they had unexpected demands on their revenues! And the state has obviously not had the money to rectify certain problems that the earthquake brought to light because similar problems have come up again (like, Oahu needs another power plant! When one goes down, they all get overloaded and go down, and it takes a day to get them all up again. This happened again in 2008 because of a damn lightning strike).
Also: do these people honestly think Hawaii is all sunshine and Hula girls? Natural disasters in Hawaii are no joke and can be much harder to recover from because we are the most isolated land in the world. Do they have any idea how dangerous the Pacific Ocean is? Hawaii has THREE active volcanoes, one of which has been erupting since 1982 and spews out poisonous gas which sometimes blankets the Big Island and travels up the state when the winds blow from the south. There’s also a dormant volcano on Maui that could conceivably still erupt and that also causes earthquakes all the time. This is not to mention the tsunamis–which will never again cause major loss of life because of the fantastic warning system we have now–but which could cause major property damage, impacting the tax base, people’s jobs, tourism, and all sorts of other things that will make it difficult for the state to pay its portion of medical programs, while putting more people in need of health care assistance. Actually, we learned that it could also cause sewage spills, so there is your explicit medical problem. Kauai has still barely recovered from Hurricane Iniki in the 90s–there weren’t many deaths, then, either, but the economic impact has been dramatic and long-lasting.
That’s not true, the cat didn’t make it.