FactCheck.org has a new "viral" email story in their "AskFactCheck" section that's about an ABC News story from a while back.
And it's prime evidence of Obama Derangement Syndrome. According to FactCheck, when they first hearing about this story, where some construction being done on bridges in America is being farmed out to Chinese contractors rather than American companies, the issue was simply that the work wasn't being done by American contractors.
And, for sure, that's an issue at times. States have to determine if it's in their best interest to hire an American company at a greater cost or if it's better to save a lot of money by outsourcing some of that work and/or materials supplied to a road building project.
But the issue here is what later happened to the screeds sent to FactCheck.org.
According to them, this has nothing to do with Obama. Nothing whatsoever.
The first distortion happened within days.
So, how did Obama get blamed for the decisions by state agencies and for state projects that, in at least one case, didn’t even use federal funds? The answer is a textbook lesson in how information gets distorted when emails go viral.
We looked at the nearly 100 emails we received on this subject and found that Obama wasn’t mentioned at all in the first few emails. Typical of the emails we received shortly after the ABC News report aired was this one from Oct. 11, 2011: “I just got an email regarding Diane Sawyer on ABC TV stating that U. S. Bridges and roads are being built by Chinese firms when the jobs should have gone to Americans. Could this possible be true?”
The answer: Yes, it’s true. End of story, right? Wrong.
Days later, emails started to appear in our inbox that claimed ABC News reported that Chinese firm were receiving stimulus funds to build U.S. bridges — even though the broadcast news story didn’t mention stimulus funds at all. (The report did include a clip of Obama delivering a speech on the need to rebuild America’s bridges and put Americans to work, but said nothing about the president’s $830 billion stimulus bill.) Still, we received emails such as this one on Nov. 4, 2011, that included this erroneous claim language: “Stimulus money meant to create U.S. jobs went to Chinese firms. Unbelievable….”
And then in a spate of recent emails to FactCheck, the vitriol increased a bunch.
This year, Obama’s name started to surface in the subject line of such critical emails — raising the attack on the president to yet another level and perhaps ensuring the email will be even more widely circulated. Since Jan. 17, we have gotten more than a dozen emails with the subject line, “ABC News on Obama/USA Infrastructure,” often preceded with the word “SHOCKING” in all caps.
The emails increasingly contain harsh language about the president. Since Jan. 11, 23 emails carried this added bit of Obama-bashing: “I pray all the unemployed see this and cast their votes accordingly in 2012!” One of those emails — a more recent one from Feb. 8 — contained this additional line: “Tell me again how Obama’s looking out for blue collar guys. He cancels pipelines, and lets Chinese contractors build our bridges…”
As FactCheck.org explains, it was state transportation and road construction officials, and not Obama, who decided to spend taxpayer money to build bridges and use Chinese contractors for some aspects of those projects.
Rightwingers don't care about the truth. People with Obama Derangement Syndrome will believe anything that makes Obama look bad, without questioning it.
It sucks that there are so many people who don't seem to care about the truth - people who don't respect facts because it would destroy their preconceived notions.