Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid uses his Nov. 20 "AIM Report" to rehash his conspiracy theory that the financial crisis was created to elect Barack Obama:
If you examine the polling trend, McCain was moving ahead of Obama by mid-September. One poll, the Rasmussen poll, had McCain over Obama every day from September 12-17. McCain evened up the race again on September 23, after Obama had taken a lead, but it was Obama all the way after that.
The crisis, which is continuing and could get far worse, was man-made. It was not a natural disaster like an earthquake or a hurricane. And it is a fact that President Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who worked for a Democratic firm, Goldman Sachs, and has very close ties to Communist China, is the one who convinced Bush on September 18 to publicly demand hundreds of billions of bailout dollars from Congress.
This is when McCain began falling in the polls. That’s apparently because McCain, like Bush, is a Republican, and he was blamed by Obama and the Democrats for the Republican policies that were said by the media to have produced this crisis.[...]
A hedge fund operator such as George Soros, who was convicted of insider trading in France, is known to make money from the collapse of national economies and currencies. He was labeled “The Man who broke the Bank of England” because of his financial activities against the British currency. Did he break the U.S. economy?
In addition to the usual suspects -- Paulson, Soros -- Kincaid adds economist and Obama supporter Joseph Stiglitz: "Stiglitz, a financial contributor to Obama’s presidential campaign and major backer of the national Democratic Party, is in a perfect position to guide the transition into a global socialist economy."
Kincaid once again repeated the discredited claim that "Obama’s Global Poverty Act" obligates the U.S. to spending $845 billion to fight global poverty. As we've repeatedly pointed out whenever Kincaid makes this claim, the bill has no funding mechanism, doesn't commit the U.S. to a targeted level of spending, and doesn't give the United Nations the power to impose a tax on the U.S.
In another section of the report, Kincaid served as self-appointed arbiter of who is and isn't right-wing enough:
I find that the media are populated by many “conservatives” who are not really so conservative. This category includes the Fox News cheerleaders for the Wall Street bailout, such as Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer and Bill O’Reilly, and columnists David Brooks (New York Times), Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal) and Kathleen Parker (Washington Post Writers Group), who ridiculed Sarah Palin because she doesn’t read the New York Times. As we strive to correct the liberal media bias, we have to keep the conservative media honest as well. We need new conservative media voices.
On the other hand, Kincaid is pretty much unique among right-wingers in criticizing Karl Rove: "It’s true that he helped elect Bush two times, but considering what happened on November 4, isn’t it about time for somebody in the media to ask him some pointed questions about what he built and why it didn’t last."
