Giuliani peddles debunked "China drilling off Florida" myth
By Steve Benen Wednesday Jul 02, 2008 7:00pm
About a month ago, as the debate over coastal drilling began in earnest, Dick Cheney pushed the rhetorical envelope a bit, telling the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that "oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We're not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government ... Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply. Yet Congress has said ... no to drilling off Florida."
It has been a common Republican talking point, but it's patently false -- the Chinese are not drilling off Cuba's coasts. The day after Cheney made the bogus claim, the V.P.'s office acknowledged that he was mistaken.
And yet, for some reason, high-profile Republicans can't stop repeating the claim that's already been debunked. Maybe conservatives have decided that they can't win a debate on energy policy on the merits, so misleading people about communists stealing our oil is the better strategy. Here's failed presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani talking to CNN's resident right-winger, Glenn Beck, Wednesday night:
Download | play 
Download | play (h/t Heather)
Giuliani: "You look at Cuba. Cuba is going to allow China to drill for oil within 80 miles of Florida. And Florida had a 300-mile limit. So in essence, we have China drilling for American oil."
Maybe it's my imagination, but it almost seems as if high-profile Republicans have been repeating the false claim more now that it has been debunked.
Looks like even Senator Norm Coleman is getting in on the fun.
TPM has been keeping track of all the examples, and there are some real doozies in there. Some Republicans have altered the myth a little -- I think Giuliani is the first to suggest that the Cubans and the Chinese are taking our oil -- but they're all repeating a charge that isn't remotely true. Either they don't know what they're talking about, or they know the claim is false and repeat it anyway. At this point, it's hard to know which is the case.
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They're counting on the following responses from the American public:
1. See! Toldja them Chinks are in league with Fidel! Friggin' MSM!
2. But what if it's TRUE? We don't want proof to come in the form of an oil rig ...
3. Aaaaaaah! It's TERRORISTS! We have to protect ourselves!
Truth? Truth was mugged and left to die in an alleyway on 9/11 ...
If you repeat the lie often enough the lie becomes the truth.
Not scary enough, Rudy. Throw in a few '9-11's next time. Oh, and the communist Chinese oil workers - how about GAY communist Chinese swarming off of the coast of Florida? Drilling OUR oil, clad in cut off jeans and tank tops, with techno music pulsating in the background. And once they've taken our oil - they're coming ashore - for our GUNS!
So is Giuliani on the Exxon payroll too?
Ron @ 2:
Got to catapult that propaganda.
Is anyone still listening to this guy? Good God, go away.
What the hell is Cuba doing in our waters?? Isn't this the more important question? Of course Giuliani drops the ball on this international power play by Cuba. Putting themselves in our waters. Damn it. This makes me bitter.
Shadowgm Hussein @ 1:
Too funny!
Figures TRudy made this comment on the Glenn Dreck Show. Turds of a feather...
THE __________ ARE COMING TO TAKE OUR ___________.
A. Terrorists, Freedoms
B. Chinese, Oil
C. Immigrants, Jobs
D. Gays, Traditions
E. All of the Above
(I left the Martians and the Zombies out, but they're on the list the moment they start conspiring with Cuba.)
Maybe Chinese and Cubans are drilling
Floridian whores
Do they have any any younger than 55?
I can't drill 55!!!
the gop does not know the truth.
it's unimaginable that an entire party
and especially bush and cheney
are nothing more than a bunch of
F#CKING LIARS.
is this the new
conservative christianass-suckers ball way of holding onto
the twice stolen office in the executive branch?
The wingnuts might want to be careful what they say or the Chinese just might cut off their allowance.
See .. the high oil proces are the fault of the Democratic Congress ..
Those dam Dems won't let us extract the few more drops of oil we know are there ..
blah blah blah ..
Hidden message??
"It's not the republican bush cheney administration's FAULT that oil prices have gone threw the roof with no end in sight ..
"It's not the War in Iraq ..
"It's not the unregulated commodities trading ..
"It's not the failure to find alternative energy solutions ..
"It's not the MASSIVE debt to China ..
"It's not because our manufacturing base in bankrupt ..
"IT'S NOT THE REPUBLICAN'S FAULT."
.
.
.
.
got it?
Wasn't that the basis of a Simpson's episode? Is FOX now peddling storylines from cartoons?
Do you really think the Republicans would let something like "facts" get in they way of their twisted rhetoric?
Considering that the shortest distance between Cuba and FL is 90 miles, and the distance from Miami to Havana is 228 miles, I find it very very very hard to believe that Florida ever had a 300 mile limit.
Blue Buddha @ 17:
Cuba belongs to Florida.
You didn't know that?
MountainMan23 @ 14:
Its not the economy.
Its not the the world's hatred towards us.
Its not the jobs.
Its not the shrinking middle class.
the life lessons of caddyshack...........
[to Ty, about Judge Smails] If he bothers you, I'll take care of him. What you've got to do is cut the hamstring on the back of his leg right at the bottom. He'll never play golf again, because his weight displacement goes back, all his weight is on his right foot, and he'll push everything off to the right. He'll never come through on anything. He'll quit the game.
No one is allowed to be more batshit crazy than Rudy. If there are offshore claims by both Cuba and the USA it is normal to split the difference regarding the open ocean between the two. Rudy would appear to be claiming Cuba itself, as well as Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and more than a few other island nations.
MountainMan23 @ 18:
Well, if the oil under Cuba belongs to Florida it sure means that Cuba belongs to Florida. "In essence." Time to invade!
There is nothing "hard" about it at all. They know the truth and are LIARS! They know Wolf or Hannity or O'liely aren't going to call them out. They get called out on sights like this and that's fine with them. We aren't the target for these co-ordinated lies. It's for their base of low information, mouth breathing, buy it like it's two-for-one, idiots. You know, the 28%'ers, which is a depressingly large number.
Global Citizen @ 21:
Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and more than a few other island nations?
Oh my. This is going to get ugly fast. Do you see how these Republicans do not see the repercussions of their small talk. Now Rudy has Florida in a war with half the Caribbean. The fucker.
This isn't even the whole lie (though Giuliani hints at it).
I saw a rant on a financial website last week that accused the Chinese of "slant drilling" from Cuba's coastal waters all the way across the Gulf to US territory, stealing US oil.
It is not physically possible to drill underground for 50 - 100 miles, or even a small fraction of that distance. These people are idiots.
They said it more than three times. That makes it true.
I have no doubt they'll have as much luck reversing this lie as the Obama campaign has had stopping that 'secret muslim' rumor.
Linkie no workie
Like their role model Goebbels, the "big lie" technique is still a Faux News / Bush league favorite. It isn't designed to be believed, as many commenters above have pointed out. It's intended to implant the "drilling offshore will fix it" deep in the TV news viewer's emotions, where cognition studies say it'll start making them turn their backs on reality.
Meanwhile, the automakers keep saying they just can't make money selling small fuel-efficient cars while Honda was the only auto maker showing a sales increase (because they made small, fuel-efficient cars). The sad thing is, Detroit really believes small, fuel-efficient cars = the Doom That Came to Sarnath.
i can't bring myself to watch the video....i can't stand these two. the both of them are assholes. beck has all the answers and giuliani....opportunistic
According to the linked McClatchy article:
"Cuba's state oil company, Cupet, has issued exploration contracts to companies from India, Canada, Spain, Malaysia and Norway, according to diplomats."
I don't think those companies plan to explore for oil only to satisfy their curiosity. Rather, there is a good chance that oil rigs will spring up within a hundred miles or so off Florida in the not so distant future. Isn't that something we should be worried about?
Guliani is an idiot. That ain't news. But his point, that more offshore drilling is likely, is news. The post implies otherwise. In fact, if I had only heard Rudy's blather I would be better informed than if I had only read this post (the comical confusion over territorial waters and their extents not withstanding.)
joeedugan @ 3:
but i have a chinese made ak47 , will they take that too? the bastards!
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Hello,
Its Rudee Ghouliani, who gives a flying fck WHAT he says. He is done, finito, finis. Bye, bye rudee.
Stick a fork in him boys.
Did anyone watch that video? I can't listen to either of those assholes alone, both at the same time would cause me to projectile vomit all over my beautiful Mac,...
I'd like to know more about the oil recently found in North Dakota: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/10/ndoil/.
.. maybe it's a good thing the link is broke ..
Essentially, Republicans are bullies. They're daring us to call them liars.
Ok - YOU'RE A BUNCH OF LIARS.
That wasn't so hard.
Fact free rhetoric on CNN, What a ToolFest!
The truth murdered on national TV
The Exxon has been drilling us,in the ASS.That is not a myth my friends.
CNN stands for Crappy News Network.Glen Beck is German for,man who likes drag queens.
Show me the money, Giuliani. I wanna see an oil platform 60 miles off the southern Florida coast. Prove it or shut up.
Ron @ 2:
This is part and parcel of how modern Republicans campaign. They parrot with remarkable discipline.
It does not matter how clearly or how often a half-truth or an outright lie is debunked. The Republican of the day will simply repeat the lie as though its rebuttal has never been uttered. They're so good at it, it merits study. What actually goes on in their heads? Not the top people who orchestrate the talking points, but the seemingly infinite number of parrots they have on talk radio and television.
Once they had an army of disciplined parrots impervious to reality, they began playing the ref -- they went after the media, calling it liberal and biased. The "liberal media" meme itself then became one of their parroted lies. The result? We all know it -- in order to appear neutral, the media refrains from being objective. Ultimately, we're sinking into a world where major news-people no longer subscribe to the idea of an objective truth -- there's only a balanced platform for all "opinions." (Except on conservative media, where, of course, they simply parrot talking points.)
The members of the Bush Administration simply took the next step in our grand descent. They didn't simply campaign on lies and half-truths. They governed on lies and half-truths. Enough of them, including the big schmuck at the top, believe their nonsense, and since there's no objective reality anyway, they claim with straight faces that everything is dandy, regardless of how badly they fuck up.
If the transformation of John McCain from conservative-with-reputation-for-being-maverick to sheerly-contradictory-babbling-fool-with-no-discerable-beliefs is any indication, any Republican influence on government at this point threatens to complete a bridge to 1984: No reality but what Big Brother tells you, which can change at any instant, but still demand your belief.
Anyone really surprised that Captain 9/11 can parrot the China-drilling-off-Cuba assertion? If it feels true, or will help get them elected, it is true. And that's that.
China is drinking our milkshake! They're drinking it up!
Guilliani is a De-Bunk-O artist.
Yup, Giuliani's a liar all right. It became obvious during the Republican Convention when he got up and tried to convince us all that, on 9-11 when he watched people jump to their deaths out of the wrecked towers, his main thought was, "Thank God George Bush is our president!" Yeah, sure. If he can lie about the worst day in his city's history to score a cheap political point for the worst president in history, he can lie about anything.
More blathering from a power-mongering, self-reverential, neo-con bagman and shill who has the morals of an alley cat. And the balls.
Rudy is just mad that we have been letting Iraq drill our oil all these years.
WTF??
I mean Jeebus on a pogo stick. Everyone knows this is bullshit, I KNEW it was bullshit the second that I heard it.
The only thing I can gather is that there are enough stupid fucks and people that don't pay attention, that they will believe it..
Karen @ 42:
For the university crowd, you can thank those Gitanne smoking, solipsists, nihilists and relativists who conned a whole generation of students and of academics into the quagmire known as post-modernism. Those shitheads never did understand the western world's contribution to knowledge, the scientific method. EVERYTHING to these regressive word merchants is a narrative and, worse, a meta-narrative. No reference points, no facts, no physical laws, no truth. Enter Mussolini, Pol Pot, Tricky Dick, the Bushies and just about every pop culture "star" out there to name a few. Ignorant and malevolent shitheads.
Clearly Giuliani shouldn't have nautical matters referred to him. I'm not sure where the territorial waters exist for Cuba (as they, and Florida's, would have to be rather small in that area, due to international sea lanes going through), but Cuba hasn't even bothered to explore its potential offshore oil access, other than a very poor crude that is tapped in some wells near the coast that they use for domestic purposes. If they did, more than likely it would be Venezuela, not China, who would be investing in the area. Either way, its all a mute matter; territorial waters are territorial waters. I know the US hasn't signed the Law of the Sea treaty yet, but Jesus, even they wouldn't argue that they could just drill in someone else's waters.
What? Have you actually READ any postmodern thinkers? Like Baudillard? Or Deleuze? Frankly, so many people yammer on about post-modernism, and people haven't even read the fucking texts, that they end up sounding like dolts when they finally start talking about it. How anyone, after reading any post-modern philosopher, can walk away thinking "Yes...this is an endorsement of right-wing reactionary politics" is beyond me. Simply yammering on about the loss of "truth" isn't enough; universal truth hasn't been a relevant subject in philosophy since the existentialists overthrew it in the same way the Enlightenment overthrew the yoke of "God's Word". It is not good enough to merely assert that something is "the truth"; it has to be proven, fought for, argued.
To quote Sartre "Dostoievsky said 'If God didn't exist, everything would be possible." That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can't start making excuses for himself." If that statement is somehow an endorsement of reactionary conservative thought, it would be news to the world.
harley @ 5:
Actually, " A lie repeated may be accepted as fact, but the TRUTH repeated,becomes self evident."
So.... let the smack downs begin!!
I can't dare watch these two clowns.
In the same week Exxon managed to cut a deal about the devastation they caused in Alaska they want to do the same to Florida... and their friends in the Republican party are helping them at every step of the way; even by peddling the most obvious lies.
America we implore you to have a change of party in the White House.
If Glenn Beck and Rudy Giuliani talked about it, it must be reliable information.
Not.
AgentX @ 41:
They are actually drilling from off the coast of China...through the center of the earth. You see...those Chinese are really sneaky.
The oil industry already has 44 million acres worth of drilling leases in America that they AREN'T USING.
When they've drained those resources dry, THEN we'll talk about the 30 minutes worth of oil in ANWR.
But considering that there is 200 years worth of oil in the sands of Canada, and another 200 years worth in the Gulf of Mexico ALONE, I'm thinking that by that time we'll have come up with a cleaner way to power our lives.
THERE IS NO OIL SUPPLY SHORTAGE.
"Peak oil" is a myth that was created by Shell Oil in the 1950's to drive up the price (oil was worth less than the dirt it was under at the time) so that they could both profit off of the increased revenue, and finance the building of their nuclear energy division, which was just coming online.
The increase in price is due PRIMARILY to rampant market speculation and manipulation, thanks largely to the Enron Loophole, written by Wendy Gramm, Enron Exec and wife of Senator Phil Gramm who put the loophole into a bill at midnight, without consultation with any of the respective committees, thereby ensuring that it got signed into law without anyone being the wiser. Phil Gramm is of course, also.... wait for it.... John McCain's longtime political "friend" and senior campaign adviser on.... economics.
You want somebody to blame for high oil prices? Blame Shell Oil, Wall St., Enron, Phil & Wendy Gramm.
And be concerned that this is who is giving McCain economic advise.
Yet another reason NOT to vote for Grandpa McSame.
Same Bush, Different Day.
The reason why we need to move to renewable fuels is not JUST to clean up the environment, but also to get away from evil people like that.
28 percent is an awful lot of sheeple. These guys are devious liars feeding the flocks.
The GOPers sure are frntic getting their last-chance whoring in for the oil companies, aren't they?
Fear not, Oil Companies. I'm sure you guys will succeed at purchasing most of the Democrats in Congress, especially since most of them are already corporatist prostitutes. You'll barely notice even a blip in the speed that your gravey train rolls down the tracks on its biscuit wheels.
9/11, Drilling, 9/11, Drilling, 9/11, Drilling,9/11, Drilling,9/11, Drilling. Rudy, puhleeeze.
Sooo, I'll guess we'll be declaring war on Cuba and China now?? right??
It doesn't matter if the story has already been proved a lie. With the repigs/rethugs repeating it, the sheeple will believe it is true. After all, they heard it from 1-the networks, 2-the VP- 3 911 rudy. So it must be true. When the VP said it, the networks did not refute it, they never do.And the correction that the VP made a few days later(remember the short attention span of the typical american sheeple) doesn't matter, because the networks didn't report it, or if they did, they did not show the original lie. Any lies that are told by the repigs, esp. by st john who lies all the time- the video tape is there to prove his lies-but who never gets called on his lies. So the sheeple believe whatever st john says, and if a reporter says that well you said the exact opposite, and st john says no I didn't, and the reporter lets him get away with that, then the sheeple will believe that st john is being picked on by the "libral" media. Corporate fascism rules!
Jeez, how many things can Rudy get wrong in short piece? Even ignoring the drilling bit:
One, it's a 200 mile limit. Two, the limit doesn't belong to Florida, it belongs to the United States (individual states get jurisdiction out to 3 miles, I believe). Three, when countries are closer than 400 miles apart, the boundary splits the difference between them. This isn't something even Republican presidents have disputed.
With such a grasp of international law, how could Republicans have overlooked this man as presidential material?
Rachel Maddow reprised the whole story yesterday, under the rubric of GOP Message Discipline. Listen here.
They're drinking our milkshake? (that's the Rachel link, working)
None of the video links work.
links still busted
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