It was three hours long. The horror, the horror. Eleven republican candidates trying to out-conservative each other and appeal to the right wing base of their party resulted in lots of crap flying into the homes of any CNN viewers who tuned in to the Republican Debate last week. Chris Hayes stated that they “could literally spend the entire show fact-checking the debate,” Here are three examples he gave, from least offensive to most offensive:
• Carly Fiorina: “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” Not so, according to Sarah Kliff, Vox reporter and columnist. Kliff says what Fiorina was describing was “pure fiction.” Kliff examined the entire 12 hours of videotapes purporting to show Planned Parenthood engaging in selling fetal body parts for profit and the scene Fiorina described was not there. Fiorina was talking about stock footage, which was edited into the the videos. It wasn’t even filmed at Planned Parenthood.
• Jeb Bush said, “When it comes to my brother, there’s one thing I know for sure. He kept us safe.” This earned the biggest applause of the debate. However, there has also been much debate about the truth of his statement. It is objectively not true, although liberals have been left to do the contradiction. The “mainstream media” has punted on this one. The question this raises is: Will Bush 3 recycle his brother’s policies of pre-emptive war? Lengthy occupations? Torture (“enhanced interrogation”)?
• Marco Rubio claimed that “nothing” the US can do will change the climate or the weather. He claimed that climate policy will “destroy our economy,” and “make America a harder place to create jobs.” And, “America can’t act alone to solve climate change.” Why make it a choice? America is not acting alone. Other nations have committed themselves to working on the problem. And further, Rubio has said that the US provides global leadership in other areas, such as military engagements, so why not on climate change?
It’s bulls**t! It is very difficult to pick apart any of the lies because they all require research. According to Alberto Brandolini, Italian software developer, “The amount of energy necessary to refute bulls**t is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”