#chain e-mails

How I love political chain e-mails. You know, the e-mails that are sent to you and 25-50 others from an uncle of yours named Bucky, which portrays a wild conspiracy of a politician being a martian from Neptune as being factual. I especially love such e-mails when they center around Barack Obama. All I can say is thank the Internet gods for Snopes.com. Snopes fact-checks these very e-mails and allows people such as myself to check on the e-mail's validity and report back to the sender of the e-mail and all its recipients. No, I haven't made too many friends doing this, but I just hope I've been able to positively influence at least one person to fact-check these darn things before sending it to half of the country and Neptune. Of course, I have run into a couple occasions where the sender of the chain e-mail has, upon receiving my fact-checking response, told me that Snopes is liberally-biased. Yeah, that again. I swear, if the source doesn't include Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or The Bible, some conservatives will claim that it's liberally-biased and therefore unreliable. Well, other fact-checkers have fact-checked this claim and guess what? It's false. Snopes is owned by two people - David and Barbara Mikkelson. Barbara is a Canadian citizen and can't take part in the voting process in the United States and David registered as a Republican in 2000, but didn't declare a party affiliation in 2008. What's that the recipe for? Yup - liberal bias!

So, just how accurate are these political chain e-mails? It depends on who they're about, but more times than not, they're to some extent false. After perusing the before-mentioned site - Snopes, I have to say some of the numbers are nucking futs. George W. Bush, who was president for 8 years, has 46 such e-mails being spread about him. Of those, 20 are true and 4 have yet to be determined on the level of truth they contain. So, anywhere from 43.5% to 52.2% of the e-mails concerning Bush are true. If we do the math, on average, 5.75 such e-mails were spread about Bush per year that he was president. This number is likely even a bit high due to the fact Bush has been out of office the past 3.5 years and some of these e-mails probably began circulating the web in that time-frame. Compare those numbers to Barack Obama. The guy has been in office for 3.5 years and how many political chain e-mails are circulating about him? 116. Of these, only 15 are true, with 97 being false on some level (77 completely false) and 4 have yet to be determined. So anywhere from 83.6% to 87.1% of these e-mails about Obama are at least partially false, with anywhere from 66.4% and 69.8% of them being completely false and only between 12.9% and 16.4% being true. If we do the math here like we did with Bush, we come to an average of 33.1 such e-mails being spread about Obama per year that he's been president. Let's put it another way - Bush is -70 compared to Obama on total political chain e-mails, yet is +4 on truthful e-mails about him. Like I said - nucking futs.

So, what are some of these e-mails that are being spread about Obama? Let's find out, shall we? I'll now list some of my favorites of the 77 completely false ones concerning him and give my immediate reactions to them to illustrate just how ridiculous they really are.

"Barack Obama has been endorsed for President of the U.S. by the Ku Klux Klan."

That's right, ladies and gentleman! The Christian White Supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed who would become the first African-American president in U.S. history! It's also been said that women endorse Ike Turner, gays endorse Pat Robertson and meteorologists endorse accuracy!

"The Book of Revelation describes the anti-Christ as someone with characteristics matching those of Barack Obama."

Right... ...because I remember the book of Revelation specifically mentioning the following: "Be forewarned, for this man - the anti-Christ - will deceive and destroy! Be on the lookout for a man who resembles the following - Tall and lanky, with big ears, a nice tan, a funny sounding name, who can't bowl worth sh*t. Amen."

"Barack Obama announces every time he claps a child in America dies from gun violence; kid in classroom tells him to stop doing that."

Actually, the child supposedly says, "Well, dumb*ss, stop clapping." Yes, a child between the ages of 6 and 11 called the President of the United States a dumb*ss and for some strange reason, it received no airplay on cable news or talk radio. That's about as ridiculous as former Vice President, Dick Cheney, going pheasant-hunting and shooting a friend in the face who obviously looked like a pheasant, before telling his friend, "What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you look so much like a da*n pheasant? Where's my Whiskey? Oh yeah, I've had it injected in my arm this whole time. Where's my beer? Oh, in my hand. This is what I call pheasant-hunting! Get up, you pansy!" Wait, I suppose that scenario may be a tad more feasible than the other...

"Photograph shows Barack Obama holding a telephone upside down."

This is how hip, intelligent people talk on the phone nowadays. It's the in-thing to do. When he attended the Ivy League schools of Harvard and Columbia, this was the one thing his professors were wary about. When they were asked about Obama, they responded with, "Well, he has a brilliant mind, one of the most brilliant minds I've ever taught. He also has a way with people and regardless of their differing viewpoints, of bringing them together. The one thing that has me a little worried, though, is he's yet to learn how to use the telephone. If he doesn't turn learn soon, it could cause him many problems down the line."

"Prophecy that a black man will inhabit the White House 'when pigs fly' ties Obama presidency to swine flu."

The day when I see pigs actually fly is the day I may start buying into some of these things. However, Vegas has just reported that the odds of this occurring are worse than of Cookie Monster blowing Elmo in an adult film, entitled, "Mmm... Let Me Bite Your Cookie!"

"Photographs show President Obama using teleprompters to talk to a group of elementary school students."

Obama is also known to use teleprompters when talking to his wife, kids or even when he's talking in his sleep. Teleprompters are a shadow to Obama much like helmets are to blind motorcyclists.

"Photograph shows a 'Welcome' sign in Kenya identifying that country as the birthplace of Barack Obama."

What the sign should really say is, "Welcome to Kenya - the birthplace of Barack Obama, who is currently the President of the United States of America. It's amazing that he fooled the people of that country saying he's from there when this sign has been up and about ever since he became a Senator of Illinois. Silly Americans." Yeah, Fox News will be all over that!

"The Obamas had their dog, Bo, flown in his own airplane to join them on vacation in Maine."

Not only did Bo have his own plane - he was the pilot! Spread the word - Bo flew a Boeing - and then say that four-word phrase ten times fast and see where that gets you!

"President Obama's November 2010 trip to India will cost U.S. taxpayers $200 million per day."

Considering it was a ten-day trip, if that number were at all accurate, it would total $2 billion - an average of $66,000 per person per day in this country. That's about as much as Mittens Romney makes per day. Oh, I'm being told that number is $57,000. Sorry, Mitt. My bad. You poor son of a gun, you. From this point forward, when asked what caused our country's deficit, you can answer by counting down the top three reasons: 3. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, 2. Wars in the Middle East and 1. Obama's trip to India.

"Barack Obama uses a Social Security number belonging to a man born in 1890."

Well, I think I can say for most everybody, even the most die-hard of Republicans, that Barack Obama looks pretty good for being 122 years old, doesn't he?

Sources

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/a/snopes_exposed.htm

http://snopes.com/politics/bush/bush.asp

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/jon-stewart-takes-on-mitt-romney-tax-return-video_n_1230530.html

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/kkk.asp

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/antichrist.asp

http://snopes.com/music/artists/bono.asp

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/phone.asp

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/pigsfly.asp

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/photos/6thgrade.asp

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/photos/kenyasign.asp

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/bo.asp

http://snopes.com/politics/obama/india.asp