I balance out driving a gas guzzler by only having man-powered boats!

This entire topic is typical of the last year...one wingnut spouts off about something that he is making up out of thin air...one media member picks it up and runs it...ten pundits pass it around to their readership (also a bunch of wingnuts) who accept it as gospel without doing one iota of fact checking.

Those wingnuts organize a protest (ala TeaBaggers), and make signs with poorly spelled words...and gather around to protest the nonexistent issue.

The protest is picked up by the news, and then they run it as actual news, rather than as the half-baked protest about nothing perpetuated by fear-mongering partisans that it is.

A few cooler heads prevail and spread the actual facts of the situation, which, not surprisingly, bear little resemblence to the original story being peddled by the fear mongers.

A half ass retraction on page 48 below the fold, that virtually no one reads soon follows.

The fired up TeaBaggers, against all facts and logic, now cling to the story as hard as they cling to their guns and bacon, continuing to spread it.

Even if they accept that the actual story they are fear mongering about is false, they just skip right past it and say "well, it could happen!", and then continue to protest the nonexistent threat as if it already had happened.

While neither major party has a great track record with disseminating the truth, it's awfully clear which of the two employs this method of "political discourse" far more often than the other.

Fish on...

Todd