ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch

NewsBusters Double Standard on Political Motives

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:28:14 -0500

NewsBusters' Tom Blumer is shocked -- shocked! -- that anyone would impute a political motive on the part of Republicans who want to get rid of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Responding in a May 19 post to claims that "Republicans are eager to claim a trophy firing" in targeting Holder, Blumer insisted that the GOP is operating only on the purest of motives:

There are plenty of Republicans, conservatives, and a few on the left who would like to see Holder step down as Attorney General, not because they want a "trophy," but because no man in modern U.S. history and possibly all of U.S. history has so thoroughly politicized his office to the point of becoming his administration's policy enforcement arm, perverting the rule of law almost beyond recognition in the process. People who genuinely care about this country's deterioration as a civil society want Holder gone because his departure may stop or slow down the bleeding and may force out some or most of the truth he and his department have been hiding.

Blumer went on to whine that no evidence was offered that Republicans' anti-Holder operation is partisan -- but Blumer offered no evidence that Republicans' motives are as pure as the driven snow.

Since this is NewsBusters, you can be sure that someone was doing the very same thing Blumer was criticizing. That someone is Noel Sheppard, who just a few hours before Blumer's post went up was dismissing the idea that IRS scrutiny of tea party groups could be anything other than political:

"Can you see in your mind's eye a way that this might not have been political, that this was a misguided stupid way to sort, but that they didn't intend it to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party?"
So actually asked CNN's Candy Crowley of her guest Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) concerning the Internal Revenue Service scandal Sunday[.]
[...]
So Crowley actually thinks it's possible that this wasn't political?!?

Apparently, according to NewsBusters, Democrats operate only for political reasons, and Republicans care only about the country.

WND's Corsi Joins AIM's Kincaid In Defending Discredited Anti-Obama Filmmaker

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:14:12 -0500

Acuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid isn't the only right-wing writer pretending that Joel Gilbert hasn't been thoroughly discredited.

A May 16 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi is devoted to uncritically repeating Gilbert's claim that he's being harrassed by the IRS, which allegedly leaked financial information about him to a reporter. Neither Gilbert nor Corsi offer any evidence for this, of course, but Corsi does -- in an unusual act of journalism on his part -- obtain a response from the reporter in question.

Corsi reverts to form, however, by letting Gilbert claim that "I was targeted because ‘Dreams from My Real Father’ exposes Obama as a pathological liar. ... Obama intentionally obscured a deeply disturbing family background in order to hide a Marxist agenda, completely incompatible with American values. It was an unacceptable manipulation of the electorate and unquestionably the biggest scandal in American history.”

Needless to say, there's no mention of the work Loren Collins did in discrediting some of the major claims Gilbert made in his film. On the other hand, Corsi made no mention of the main claim Collins debunked -- that Obama's mother posed for nude pictures taken by Davis -- even though Corsi hyped that claim when Gilbert's film was first released.

Is this as close to a correction we will ever see from Corsi? Or is he so gutless that he won't admit Gilbert got it wrong lest it cause his entire birther conspiracy to crumble?

MRC Stays Silent On How Right-Wing Austerity Argument Has Been Discredited

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:39:17 -0500

Last month, a study by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff claiming that a country's economic growth becomes impaired when its debt level exceeds 90 percent of gross domestic product was discredited by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, who looked through Reinhart and Rogoff's data and found selective exclusion of data and a coding error.

You wouldn't know it by reading any website operated by the Media Research Center -- as with its blackout on the racially charged work of ex-Heritiage Foundation researcher Jason Richwine, the MRC has simply refused to tell its readers about the discrediting of Reinhart and Rogoff.

It's doubly odd because the MRC approvingly cited Reinhart and Rogoff's work a month before the debunking. A March 13 TimesWatch item by Clay Waters highlighted a quote fromRogoff in a New York Times article on federal budget issues that "eventually made room for dissenting 'right-leaning' views."

The MRC has been obsessed with attacking other media outlets for failure to cover stories it deems important, i.e. Kermit Gosnell. But what moral authority does such criticism have when the MRC does the exact same thing it attacks others for doing?

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:30:51 -0500

But what does Obama care? As I’ve said elsewhere recently, he’s not black, anyway. He’s half-a-Kenyan whose commie wacko mother’s family owned slaves. And I would support the arguments of those who assert Obama’s forebears on his father’s side were slave traders.
[...]
I offer two final thoughts. One is that I would bet a good cigar the only reason Obama is with us today is because abortion wasn’t legal when he was born. The other is when he closes his eyes in this life and opens in the next, he and Margaret Sanger can share eternity in the fires of hell discussing what a wonderful job her progeny are doing.

-- Mychal Massie, April 29 WorldNetDaily column

Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t.
How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy.

-- Christopher Monckton, May 7 WND column

This lack of moral courage on the part of politicians is why redistribution of wealth has long been an accepted part of our modern socialist fabric. All the Kenyan Kommie wants to do is move things along at a faster pace.

-- Robert Ringer, May 8 WND column

In 2008, a lifelong Marxist named Barack Obama had the good fortune to run against Sen. John McCain and an economy wrecked by George W. Bush who actually admitted, just months before the election, that he was abandoning the free-enterprise system to save the free-enterprise system. Obama, too, disguised his vicious anti-Americanism with the help of an equally vicious anti-American and unprincipled media, and won.
Obama has been “blaming America first” ever since. It’s what he does. He’s never responsible for anything that goes wrong. He’s in his fifth year of blaming all of America’s ills on his predecessor – and getting away with it because of a compliant and virtually state-run media.

-- Joseph Farah, May 8 WND column

Welcome to the endgame, America. Judgment has arrived. We will take the world’s illegal immigrants, on the off-chance they may someday pay taxes. Obamacare death panels will soon set up shop in America’s nursing homes. “Yes, we know you were promised Medicare, but there is no money. We aborted those children. No taxpayers, no money. No money, no treatment. Sorry. Next!”

-- Craige McMillan, May 10 WND column

Here’s a question for you. What do the Obamas have in common with the boot-strappin’ Appalachians and the bearded hillbilly “Backyard Oilmen” of the Discovery Channel reality series set in south central Kentucky?

The answer is nothing. The Appalachian and hillbilly Backyard Oilmen worked to get where they are; they love America; they’re honest, God-fearing men, and they respect one another. None of those attributes describe the Obamas.

-- Mychal Massie May 13 WND column

For one thing, we know Obama likes spending time with his daughters, especially when the taxpayer is picking up the tab. Next, anyone who saw him sink only two of the 22 shots he took on Easter Sunday knows he is Buster Keaton’s equal when it comes to physical comedy. And, finally, after spending four years pulling the strings of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Charley Rangel, Henry Waxman and Jay Carney, he has already put in more time with puppets than Burr Tillstrom, Jim Henson and Mr. Rogers, put together.

-- Burt Prelutsky, May 14 WND column

We keep hearing that the Benghazi scandal is only in its early stages, and that when all the facts come out, it could bring down the Obama administration. Scary stuff, eh? Well, I have news for you: It doesn’t matter how much more information comes out – including information that leads directly to Barack Obama – there will be no serious consequences to the biggest political cover-up in modern American history. Please quote me on that.

-- Robert Ringer, May 16 WND column

If Barack Hussein Obama is not impeached, we need look no further than the rising power of political correctness for the reason.

-- Tom Tancredo, May 17 WND column

There’s just one difference between ["Casablanca" character Capt. Louis] Renault and Obama.

In the end of the movie, Renault turns out to be a good guy. Even though he is playing ball with the Nazis and doing their bidding in “Casablanca,” that’s not where his heart is. I don’t hold out much hope that Obama is going to turn himself in for his high crimes and misdemeanors. Nor do I hold out much hope he is going to reform and become a defender of the Constitution and those previously mentioned American principles.

He’s made it clear to those of us who are awake that he despises the American way.

He hates pretty much everything it stands for.

So isn’t it time for all good, decent, patriotic, God-fearing Americans to demand he leave office at once or be impeached?

-- Joseph Farah, May 17 WND column

Make no mistake, America. The mob has its foot on your throat. The 2012 election was a raft of Chicago excrement, spread over the entire country and oozing out of its institutions. Mitt Romney needs to have a talk with the ghost of his father some evening over a few too many alcoholic beverages and a good Cuban cigar. Then he needs to call a press conference and demand a new election. Let’s see if Obama’s 32 percent majority elects him a third time.

-- Craige McMillan, May 17 WND column

Holder is a shrewd operator; how else could a person so corrupt continue to serve as attorney general of the United States of America? But, by his own actions, he is a perfect partner for President Obama. The two of them are criminals and must eventually and swiftly be brought to justice before they succeed at destroying this country. I will seek their indictment before a Citizens Grand Jury in Ocala, Fla., but the official organs of government must also be held to account. Congress must do its job despite the ongoing fraudulent criminal investigation of the Obama-Holder Justice Department. Short of this, the American people must rise up and themselves take care of legal business as they did in 1776! The die is cast!

-- Larry Klayman, May 17 WND column

MRC's Bozell Gloats Over Cancellation of Gay-Themed Shows

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:55:00 -0500

Brent Bozell is positively giddy that some TV shows with gay themes are getting cancdeled:

The annual network list of canceled primetime shows cannot be pleasing to the progressives who measure shows based on their cultural and political usefulness. "TV Will Be a Lot Less Gay Next Year," the commissars complained at Slate.com. They counted 11 canceled shows that featured regular gay characters.

That bothersome thing called the market: why must it get in the way!

CBS's gay sitcom "Partners" lasted six episodes and was canceled shortly after Barack Obama's victory. NBC's "Smash" only featured four regular gay characters, but it couldn't keep anyone watching. The most prominent victim was "The New Normal," Ryan Murphy's NBC sitcom credited by many leftists with paving the way for America's growing support for the gay agenda — and helping with Obama's reelection.

Bozell then makes a very bizarre statement: "Murphy is in bed with Obama, as it were." Bozell claims this refers to Murphy creating allegedly pro-Obama episodes in the shows he has created,but it could very wall also be a sly reference to the sleazy rumors around Obama's sex life right-wingers like Jerome Corsi like to spread.

This follows one of Bozell's MRC employees similarly dancing on the grave of "The New Normal," and it fits right in with the MRC's anti-gay agenda.

Is WND Selling David Barton's Discredited Book From His Stash?

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:36:26 -0500

Several months ago, the publisher of David Barton's book "The Jefferson Lies" pulled the book from the marketplace because of growing concerns about its factual veracity. In the wake of the withdrawal, Barton bought 17,000 copies of the book.

Ever wonder what happened to all those books Barton bought? It appears that some may be popping up at WorldNetDaily.

WND not only didn't tell its readers about the controversy regarding the book's accuracy, it continued to sell the book at its online store. Now, WND is making a new push to sell the book -- while telling a blatant falsehood in the process.

A May 17 WND article proclaims:

Thomas Jefferson stands falsely accused of several crimes, among them infidelity and disbelief. Prominent historian David Barton sets the record straight in the hard-hitting book “The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson”.

It’s so hot and so politically incorrect, the publisher pulled it from the shelves of every bookstore in America.
But the WND Superstore has plenty of copies and is making them available to you so you can know the truth about one of America’s founding fathers.

No, the book was not pulled by its publisher (Thomas Nelson, which if you'll recall was WND's original partner for its book division) for being "politically incorrect"; it was pulled because it is factually inaccurate.

And where did WND get those "plenty of copies" it claims to has? Given that Thomas Nelson has not distributed the book for months, the one place WND can get its hands on plenty of copies of Barton's book is from Barton himself.

WND's online store continues to list the book as a Thomas Nelson product despite the fact that Nelson has disavowed itself from the book through withdrawing it from the market.

Would the Better Business Bureau be interested in WND knowingly selling a flawed product and misrepresenting how it's obtaining the product for sale? We shall see...

MRC Shutting Down TimesWatch

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:35:13 -0500

The Media Research Center has announced that today is the final day for its TimesWatch blog:

The Media Research Center will be consolidating products and, as a result, TimesWatch posts and the TimesWatch Tracker will be rolled into our other sites and e-newsletters.

TimesWatch Tracker e-mail subscribers will receive their last edition on Friday, May 17. Starting on Monday, May 20, TimesWatch Tracker subscribers will automatically begin receiving the MRC’s CyberAlert e-mail which will include the New York Times’ liberal bias in its mix of daily documentation.

The MRC was silent about whether TimesWatch writer Clay Waters would remain with the company.

The very concept of TimesWatch was always a dubious proposition. Its stated goal was "documenting and exposing the New York Times' liberal political agenda," solely by cherry-picking 10 or so items out of the hundreds of pieces of original content the Times generates per week, thus failing to provide any sort of comprehensive content analysis. But such analysis was never the goal -- spreading the meme that the Times is hopelessly liberal was.

It didn't help that Waters' idea of "liberal bias" at the Times involved things like complaining that the Times referred to conservatives as "conservatives" or that it told the truth about something about which he would rather not have the truth told. And Waters' contribution to research is to measure bias on political scandal stories by how far up in the article a person's political party appears, not size and placement of the article -- ridiculous methodology even by the MRC's low standards.

What may have actually doomed TimesWatch, was that even the cherry-picking couldn't hide the fact that the Times was not as slavishly liberal and Waters and the MRC would have you believe. In a 2010 column, then-Times public editor Clark Hoyt conceded that the the Times' editorial pages skew liberal then added:

But if The Times were really the Fox News of the left, how could you explain the investigative reporting that brought down Eliot Spitzer, New York’s Democratic governor; derailed the election campaign of his Democratic successor, David Paterson; got Charles Rangel, the Harlem Democrat who was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, in ethics trouble; and exposed the falsehoods that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, another Democrat, was telling about his service record in the Vietnam era?

Waters' incredibly lame response: "Of course, as the Times is always reminding us, the Republican Party has been decimated in the Northeast in recent years, meaning the region is dominated by Democrats, meaning most political scandals will involve Democrats."

Such lameness may have gotten too embarrassing for even the MRC -- it certainly didn't fall over itself promoting TimesWatch in recent year -- so it was time for TimesWatch to go.

WND Laughably Claims SPLC Is 'Linked to Domestic Terrorism'

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:30:31 -0500

Bob Unruh writes in a May 14 WorldNetDaily article:

An organization that for 30 years has promoted religious liberty, championed the nation’s foundational Judeo-Christian values, worked to protect marriage and defended human life is challenging Duke University to keep its reputation unsullied by avoiding an entanglement with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was linked to domestic terrorism through a recent court case in Washington.
Officials with Traditional Values Coalition wrote a letter to Duke President Richard H. Brodhead and Provost Peter Lange after it was revealed the school agreed to take the archives of the SPLC and store them.

How is the SPLC linked to "domestic terrorism"? Not for anything it did or any act of violence it committed. Unruh eventually gets around to explaining: Floyd Corkins, who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council headquarters, claimed to have gotten information on anti-gay groups from the SPLC's website. That's it.

If that's being " linked to domestic terrorism," then anti-abortion group Operation Rescue is even more closely linked to domestic terrorism through its actual physical contact with Scott Roeder, who murder abortion doctor George Tiller.

Unruh uncritically repeats the TVC's attacks on the SPLC and its false claim that the SPLC's "hate group" designation for the FRC and other anti-gay groups is used "to label anyone with whom they disagree on biblical morality. ... “If you are pro-life, if you oppose gay marriage, if you stand up for religious freedom … you’re counted among the hate groups."

In fact, the SPLC has explained:

The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.
As the SPLC made clear at the time and in hundreds of subsequent statements and press interviews, we criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins’ words, that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” — an utter falsehood, as every relevant scientific authority has stated. An FRC official has said he wanted to “export homosexuals from the United States.” The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.

Unruh also fails to mention the TVC's conflict of interest: It's also on the SPLC's anti-gay "hate group" list for repeating many of the same lies about homosexuality that the FRC does:

In 1985, Sheldon suggested forcing AIDS victims into “cities of refuge.” In 1992, columnist Jimmy Breslin said that Sheldon told him that “homosexuals are dangerous. They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual.” Sheldon later denied that he made the comments, but his website today includes strikingly similar language: “[S]ince homosexuals can’t reproduce, they will simply go after your children for seduction and conversion to homosexuality.” Elsewhere, it claims that “[t]he effort to push adult/child sex … is part of the overall homosexual movement.”
The TVC also asserts that “it is evident that homosexuals molest children at a far greater rate than do their heterosexual counterparts” — a falsehood based on conflating male-male molestation with homosexuality. Gays, it says, molest children at “epidemic rates,” adding: “As homosexuals continue to make inroads into public schools, more children will be molested and indoctrinated into the world of homosexuality. Many of them will die in that world.” With regard to LGBT teen suicides, TVC, under the headline “Homosexual Urban Legends,” claims that “[t]he cold, hard fact is that teens who are struggling with homosexual feelings are more likely to be sexually molested by a homosexual school counselor or teacher than to commit suicide over their feelings of despair.”

Unruh doesn't seem to find the truth very interesting -- but then, WND is not paying to tell the truth, is it?

Newsmax Deceptively Promotes Its Web Traffic

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:39 -0500

Newsmax touts in a May 13 article:

Newsmax Media, a leading independent publisher, has announced that its flagship website, Newsmax.com, has reached the No. 1 position in comScore’s News/Politics category.

Of the 61 million Americans comScore tracks seeking political news across all digital platforms, more than 13 million monthly unique visitors turned to Newsmax.com's political sites, exceeding such competitors as HuffPost Politics and Fox News Politics in March.

See what Newsmax did there? It's comparing its entire site against parts of other websites. But Newsmax has a "politics" vertical as well, the traffic which the article does not see fit to break out despite the fact that it would be a much more direct comparison.

Newsmax also has dedicated sites for world news, financial news and health stuff, but Newsmax does not indicate whether traffic for those sites are counted as part of Newsmax's overall total.

WND Promotes Anti-Muslim Fearmongerer

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:44:59 -0500

Anita Crane writes in a May 8 WorldNetDaily article:

A noted specialist on Islamic law and ideology from the Center for Security Policy, who has been cited as an expert for the Pentagon, says a coalition of Islamists and Marxists is working to destroy the United States.

The comments come from Stephen Coughlin, a lecturer for leading Department of Defense institutions such as the Naval War College, Marine Corps HQ-Quantico and for the FBI. Coughlin is a retired major in the U.S. Army reserves and was assigned to USCENTCOM, with a military intelligence specialty.
His assignments included the Pentagon’s National Military Joint Intelligence Center, the National Security Council’s Interagency Perception Management Threat Panel and the intelligence staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so he has the credentials required for such assessments.

Crane doesn't mention the fact that Coughlin has been criticized for the rabidly anti-Muslim content of those Department of Defense presentations.

Wired reported that according to attendees of one Coughlin presentation, the take away was that "Islam is out to take over the world and there is no such thing as a loyal American Muslim." Wired also wrote:

During a presentation at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2010 — in which he shared a stage with Spencer and Geller — Coughlin asserted that the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the geopolitical organization of Muslim nations, has a “ten-year plan” to make “defamation of Islam a crime” worldwide. One of his briefing slides read, “The SILENCE in the mainstream media on this DIRECT ASSAULT is DEAFENING! — not just on speech — but on thought itself!!” Coughlin’s 2007 master’s thesis at the National Defense Intelligence College claimed that President George W. Bush’s reassurance that the U.S. was not at war with Islam had a “a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine by effectively placing a policy bar on the unconstrained analysis of Islamic doctrine as a basis for this threat.” In 2008, his Joint Staff contract wasn’t renewed after a staffer for Gordon England, then the deputy secretary of defense, raised concerns about his work.

Crane doesn't mention any of that, but she does slavishly regurgitate Coughlin's attacks on Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, whom he dismissed as "a protégé of 'Rules for Radicals' author Saul Alinsky" who "wasn’t allowed in the United States because he was on the terrorist watch list."

In fact, Ramadan -- who has repeatedly condemned terrorism -- had his visa revoked because the Bush administration cited tenuous ties between Ramadan and a charity later linked to Hamas as a justification for revoking his visa, and, it seems, for criticizing Bush administration policies. Due to that visa revocation, Ramadan was unable to take the position he had been hired for as a professor at Notre Dame, a school not exactly known for its Islamic radicalism. State Department officials have since said that Ramadan is not seen as a threat to the United States.

Despite all this, Crane still wants us to believe that Coughlin is a "noted specialist on Islamic law and ideology." Instead, it seems that Coughlin is a specialist in anti-Muslim fearmongering.