Farah Raises the Stakes on His Lie Topic: WorldNetDaily
Declaring that he's "raising the stakes" in the manufactured controversy over Barack Obama's birth certificate, Joseph Farah claims in his Nov. 21 WorldNetDaily column that he is "personally sponsoring a petition campaign right here at this Internet news source, to all controlling legal authorities to determine Barack Obama's eligibility for the presidency under Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution and to use all of their persuasive powers to make this information freely available to the rulers of this country – we the people." Farah writes:
I tell you all this because despite the shroud of secrecy over the birth certificate issue, there are some organizations out there insisting it is all a tempest in a teapot – that the issue is settled, that the birth certificate has been released, that Obama has been determined to be eligible by some mystery authority.
One such organization, Factcheck.org, characterizes any who question its assertion that this matter is settled as conspiracy mongers. But, as for me, when it comes to matters as important as the Constitution of the United States, I do not accept the opinion of armchair researchers.
Of course, Farah does not mention that one of the "mystery authorities" that has previously determined Obama's birth certificate to be authentic and that lawsuits claiming that Obama wasn't born in the United States "rel[y] on discredited claims" is ... WorldNetDaily.
Farah claims his goal is to "demand accountability," but who will demand accountability from Farah for repeated making claims he knows are false because his own website contradicts them?
NewsBusters Still Has Tunnel Vision on Newspaper Woes Topic: NewsBusters
The Media Research Center continues its tunnel-vision interpretation of the state of the newspaper industry with a Nov. 21 NewsBusters post by Tom Blumer, who chortles at the declining value of New York Times Co. stock (he denigrates the Times as "Manhattan's quaint little alternative newspaper"), accuses the Times of "insufferable bias," then claims: "Yours truly and many others saw deep trouble ahead for the Times as early as the summer of 2005 if the paper didn't stop its Bush-deranged, standards-compromised march towards the cliff."
What "yours truly" is referring to is a post by Blumer on his BizzyBlog in which he rants against the Times for covering the leak of Valerie Plame's identity by Bush administration officials, which Blumer designated as "Nadagate," "non-scandal about which I refuse to blog in detail" with "main players, whose full names I refuse to type. It appears obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury is "nada," as far as Blumer is concerned.
Nowhere in either post note what actual media analysts do when discussing declining newspaper circulation: the paradigm shift from print to online and the growing commoditization of news.
Blumer's suggestion that the Times' problems are solely attributable to its alleged liberal bias is a politically motivated interpretation unsupported by the facts.
Brennan Misleads About Global Warming Again Topic: Newsmax
We've noted that Phil Brennan's Nov. 19 Newsmax column falsely claimed that the earth has cooled over the past decade. Turns out he misled in another way too.
As part of his argument that "Global warming is a fraud," Brennan quoted a Nov. 13 London Daily Mail article featuring a claim that global warming might be blamed on "falling -- rather than climbing -- levels of greenhouse gases," featuring the statement: "Lead author Thomas Crowley from the University of Edinburgh and Canadian colleague William Hyde say that currently vilified greenhouse gases -- such as carbon dioxide -- could actually be the key to averting the chill." But Brennan didn't quote the part of the Dail Mail article that warned against using the study to dismiss the threat posed by global warming: (h/t Media Matters):
Professor Crowley said the stark findings do not mean we should stop fighting warming.
But he urged: ‘Don’t push the panic button.’
‘There’s no excuse for saying “we’ve got to keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,”’ he told Reuters.
‘Geologically it’s tomorrow, but we have lots of time to argue about the appropriate level of greenhouse gases.’
Further, the Wired Science blog reported that Crowley said that by continuing to emit greenhouse gases at the current levels, "[w]e're creating a situation at least as dangerous, only going in the opposite direction." Agence France-Presse and National Geographic News also quote Crowley warning against using the study to claim that greenhouse gases aren't a danger.
WorldNetDaily held a phone-in teleseminar on Nov. 19, featuring Joseph Farah, David Kupelian and Jerome Corsi. They're still clinging to their various misleading and/or discredited stories -- Corsi and Farah on Obama's birth certificate, Kupelian on how gays are evil.
Corsi repeated his claim that "Obama brought Odinga to the United States three times, and through his donors raised a million dollars for Odinga." In fact, as we've detailed, the documents Corsi has offered as evidence of such a donation are obviously reproductions of a document discredited by PolitiFact months ago.
Corsi also rehashes another baseless smear -- that Obama was responsible for halting his press conference in Kenya where he was to announce his purportedly blockbuster claims against Obama: "It was no surprise I was giving the press conference. The government in favor of it. Odinga and Obama were not in favor of it."
Corsi then moved on to the non-controversy about Obama's birth certificate:
And I was dispatched twice to Hawaii. We've hired some very, very top private investigators. And again, these birth certificate documents are sealed. So you simply cannot get the original documents.
In Kenya, I was regularly told by people who knew, even as they witnessed Obama's birth in Kenya. They've given testimony and affidavits to that effect, but I wasn't permitted to see any. And the original documents the Kenyan government is not releasing.
[...]
My conclusion is the documents are being hidden. They are not being released. And I think that's something the American people ought to be dramatically concerned ... before the inauguration.
That's a sentiment echoed by Farah:
It is amazing to me -- think about this, folks -- that the biggest scoop any news organzation could have had during this campaign and after this campaign prior to this inauguration wouldbe to get a legitimate copy of Obama's real birth certificate. This is a man who pledged to come into the presidency and bring a new openness to government, and the biggest state secret in the United States today is where was this guy born.
Of course, neither of them noted that WND found Obama's birth certificate to be authentic and that lawsuits claiming that Obama wasn't born in the United States "rel[y] on discredited claims."
Kupelian noted that he "wrote this book about evil and about how evil is sold to America. You know, in my opinion we bought a whole truckload of it by electing Obama."
He continued in an anti-gay rant:
So atheism is -- has been becoming more and more militant and just -- as I say, a week after the election you have these ads going up. The gay-rights folks are just going wild now because they had one loss in California with the Proposition 8 over same-sex marriage. They're so emboldened by having, you know, the wind at their back with Obama and you have Pelosi and Reid in Congress that they're just going nuts now. They're in this sort of the new era of intolerance. We have them, you know, attacking and intimidating little old Chrisitan ladies with crosses and breaking into that church in, where was it, Wisconsin. And you know, it was reminiscent of what they used to do years ago before they really got in their -- I talk about in The Marketing of Evil, is they said, "We can't do these wild and crazy antic type of demostrations like ACT-UP used to do back in the '80s," where they'd go into St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and throw condoms up in the air and grab the consecrated hosts, you know, the wafers and throw them to the ground and stem on them and just terrorize these parishoners in this major Catholic church in New York City. They figure that's bad for their image, so they cleaned up their image -- the whole book "After the Ball" was written to say, "Look, knock that stuff off. Put on a three-piece suit, get on TV, be mainstream, talk about your cause, and you will get homosexuality mainstreamed."
Well, now, it seems like almost they're regressing because, you know, when the -- you know, when the Republicans were in power, when they feel -- to whatever degree is true, there's a conservatism, you know, there's a certain amount of power to that, that they have to be careful. But now, it's almost like it's been unleashed, the dark side of these people has been unleashed, and they're -- I mean, if you've seen if some of the YouTube videos, they're really -- this doesn't seem like America. It seems like some of the videos -- to me, if you look at these old '50s biblical movies where you have Sodom and Gomorrah, and they're taunting and terrorizing these, you know, the righteous people. And that's what it looks like what's walking through the streets of San Francisco and other cities. There were protests in all 50 states over this, you know, the passage of Proposition 8. So we've got all this kind of stuff.
Farah also added:
I'd also like to say hello to all my friends on this call from the George Soros-backed Media Matters organziation and other similar groups that are listening in without any doubt, and I can't wait to see my remarks transcribed tomorrow on your websites.
Well, Mr. Farah, we're glad to oblige (even though we're not doing this for our employer). After all, we wouldn't want you to think you and your employees wouldn't be held accountable for the lies you peddle as truth -- yet another of them being the suggestion that George Soros funds Media Matters.
Parker Gets Heathered Again Topic: Media Research Center
Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker has been a previous target of heathering by the folks at the Media Research Center for not strictly adhering to right-wing ideology. They're not done withher yet.
A Nov. 19 column by Brent Bozell rips her writing for the National Review, baselessly claiming that Parker criticized Sarah Palin in order to get on TV:
Another victim of the alleged decline of civility at NR was columnist Kathleen Parker, who we’re told received 11,000 nasty e-mails, “one of which lamented that her mother did not abort her.” Were NR readers upset with Parker, who spent the autumn months building a career in commentary on MSNBC by beating Palin like a pinata at a grade-school birthday party? You betchum.
What [New York Times reporter Tim] Arango did not document was the “erudition” in Parker’s salvos against Palin. She first earned brickbats with sentences like "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself." Then when people criticized her, she penned a column comparing her conservative critics to Soviet thugs: “Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.” Parker also wrote a column suggesting McCain picked Palin because he was dazzled and/or aroused by her beauty, and compared the ticket to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
By making a big deal out of Parker's deviation from the "party line" -- where it is verboten to say anything bad about Palin -- Bozell is proving Parker right.
P.J. Gladnick picked up the thread in a Nov. 19 NewsBusters post:
Suddenly popular Kathleen Parker is continuing on her new shtick: pretending to be conservative while bashing conservatives. Her latest effort in this gig is this Washington Post column titled, "Giving Up on God." As you can see, it resembles the fake "advice" that liberals often give to Republicans but in this case it is coming from somebody supposedly conservative. So let us now watch Parker with her latest bid to remain popular with the Georgetown party set[.]
[...]
Yes, sacrilege will earn you plaudits from your newfound liberal friends but don't expect to continue fooling people into thinking that you are conservative. That ship sailed weeks ago.
[...]
Does anybody else out there picture Parker giggling to herself as she thinks up the latest snarky shots to earn her brownie points from her liberal audience?
[...]
The liberals are sure to show you the door if you ever write like an authentic conservative again.
Who appointed Gladnick -- or anyone else at the MRC -- to be the arbiter of who is an "authentic conservative"?
John Ziegler's Newest Project (And His Potty Mouth) Topic: The ConWeb
We've previouslyreported on John Ziegler's film purporting to prove that the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11" is being censored by "the left," and its false claim that the miniseries told the "real history" of events leading up to 9/11.
It appears that Ziegler is embarking on a new project: portraying Obama supporters as uninformed idiots. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com detailed how a Zogby poll commissioned by Ziegler contains misleading statements and is, for all intents and purposes, a push poll. Ziegler didn't take too kindly to the criticism -- "I should not have expected much from the followers of a false Messiah virtually installed by an adoring media" -- and demanded an interview with Silver.
Which Silver did. He then posted the transcript of it, which shows Ziegler to be a foul-mouthed thug. Not to mention discrediting his own "documentary" with his hostile anti-Obama bias.
Brennan Still Falsely Claiming Earth Is Cooling Topic: Newsmax
In his Nov. 19 Newsmax column, Phil Brennan once again insists that "global temperature rises peaked around 1998 — and the world has been cooling ever since."
As we've repeatedlydetailed when Brennan has made this claim, while 1998 is the warmest year on record, overall global temperatures continued have continued to rise in the ensuing decade.
Farah's Obama Amnesia Turning Into Hate-Driven Brain Rot Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his Nov. 19 WorldNetDaily column:
Next time you move to another state and need a new driver's license, try this: Refuse to produce the birth certificate or any other personal information required by the department of motor vehicles. Just explain that a facsimile of the required document is posted on your website and give the clerk the domain name.
Tell them: "I'm following the example of President-elect Barack Obama. If he didn't need to produce a birth certificate to establish his eligibility to be president of the United States, why would you require me to produce one to get a lousy driver's license?"
See if it flies.
Uh, Mr. Farah? Obama has produced a birth certificate. Your own employees have found it to be authentic. Your own employees have also found that lawsuits claiming that Obama wasn't born in the United States "rel[y] on discredited claims."
What the hell is wrong with you, Mr. Farah? Do you hate Obama that much that you are so willing to recklessly lie about him? Oh, wait -- we already know the answer to that.
UPDATE: Bob Unruh joins the list of WND amnesia victims.
Finkelstein Loves Eagleburger's Trashing of Dems, Silent on His Criticism of Palin Topic: NewsBusters
A Nov. 18 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein praises former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger for trashing Democrats:
At 78, Larry Eagleburger hasn't lost his fastball. Since leaving government, he might actually have added some MPH. Appearing on MSNBC this afternoon, the former Secretary of State in George H.W.'s administration warmed up with some rough words for Barack Obama and Christopher Hitchens . . . then absolutely rubbished Bill Richardson.
Finkelstein concluded: "Ay caramba! Good thing Larry was going easy!"
Curiously, we could find no mention by Finkelstein or anyone else at NewsBusters of Eagleburger's assessment of Sarah Palin as a potential commander in chief:
Asked by the host whether Palin could step in during a time of crisis, Eagleburger reverted to sarcasm before leveling the harsh blow.
"It is a very good question," he said, pausing a few seconds, then adding with a chuckle: "I'm being facetious here. Look, of course not."
Eagleburger explained: "I don't think at the moment she is prepared to take over the reins of the presidency. I can name for you any number of other vice presidents who were not particularly up to it either. So the question, I think, is can she learn and would she be tough enough under the circumstances if she were asked to become president, heaven forbid that that ever takes place?
"Give her some time in the office and I think the answer would be, she will be [pause] adequate. I can't say that she would be a genius in the job. But I think she would be enough to get us through a four year... well I hope not... get us through whatever period of time was necessary. And I devoutly hope that it would never be tested."
Given the fact that he was ostensibly campaigning for John McCain at the time, Eagleburger found himself making a painful walk-back of his words in a Fox News appearance the next day:
"You are witnessing something quite unique: a man who is about to talk to you while he has his foot in his mouth," Eagleburger said when asked if his NPR quotes had been taken out of context.
"I made a serious mistake yesterday. I was quoted correctly," Eagleburger said. "I wasn't thinking when i said it -- in fact, I was discussing foreign policy, and this was in that context, and I was just plain stupid, and if I had given the flim-flam artist Barack Obama some success with this I am deeply apologetic."
WND Doesn't Give Credit Where It's Due Topic: WorldNetDaily
You know how WorldNetDaily likes to complain when other news organizations fail to adequately credit it for news it reports? WND does the same thing too.
A Nov. 18 WND article by Alyssa Farah reporting on William Ayers' regretting dedicating a book he wrote more than 30 years ago to Sirhan Sirhan, states that it came about "when asked about the dedication at a book signing," later linking to a video of Ayers being asked about it posted at Breitbart.com without stating its source.
In fact the video was shot for Eyeblast.tv, the video site of the Media Research Center, by Kerry Picket and right-wing radio blogger Brian Maloney, as Picket states in a Nov. 18 NewsBusters post.
If WND can't properly source its claims, why should anyone give credit to WND at all?
Tapscott Pushes Right-Wing Agenda Journalism at the Examiner Topic: Washington Examiner
The Washington Examiner has been piling up the right-wing hires of late, most recently Townhall.com's Mary Katherine Ham and NewsBusters' Matthew Sheffield. Is the paper heading in a rightward direction, where the editorial page already is under Mark Tapscott, late of the conservative Heritage Foundation? It would seem so.
Tapscott let the evil plan out of the bag a bit in an Oct. 29 blog post pondering where "the Right side of the Blogosphere goes post-election 2008":
The RightRoots must make a top priority of equiping vastly more of our sites with the reportorial and investigative skills required to dig up and present credible exposes, fact-based analyses and concrete news stories.
In short, we've complained about liberal media bias for decades, but now that the mainstream media is steadily being displaced by online media, many of us need to become ..... journalists, or capable of doing the online analogy of traditional journalism, particularly in its investigative phase.
To be sure, we've not been without some capacity in this regard. Right bloggers regularly break new stories and advance existing ones. But there are no Right blogs primarily devoted to gathering and breaking daily and investigative news in politics, public policy and related venues.
If we are to have decisive influence on the public policy agenda, we must wield a significant voice in shaping the daily media narrative about that agenda. That means being able to unnearth facts, figures and documents that break or advance important news stories.
In other words, it's time for the RightRoots to begin working to raise up a new generation of Right online reporters and editors who happen to publish on blogs and other sites devoted to doing what traditional print and broadcast outlets in the Mainstream Media have done for decades.
[...]
Also of interest here is the role of my present organization, The Washington Examiner and its web site, dcexaminer.com. We announced today that Matthew Sheffield is coming onboard to oversee a thorough-going redesign of the site that should make it one of the leading edge media sites bar none.
In other words, Tapscott is trying to position the Examiner as an outlet for right-wing information -- which would seem to undercut its basic mission as a source of local news and information for the greater Washington area.
Tapscott also touted organizations such as the National Journalism Center and the Phillips Foundation for their work in "training aspiring conservative journalists." But in doing so, Tapscott misunderstands the concept of modern journalism.
The term "conservative journalist" (like "liberal journalist") is something of any oxymoron: Once an ideology is placed before the journalistic mission, that mission ceases to exist as journalism. "Conservative journalism" is activism, not journalism. To see how this operates in a worst-case scenario, read WorldNetDaily.
In a comment, Tapscott adds:
You are right about MSM reporters, but they have perverted the practice of genuine journalism of the sort I am suggesting. I'm talking about doing journalism right, not as a tool of propaganda for any particular ideological view or candidates.
But by definition, conservative journalism -- which Tapscott indicates he wants to practice -- is a tool of propaganda for a particular ideological view.
So, as we've previously suspected, the Examiner is on its way to becoming the new Washington Times, at least if Tapscott has his way. Is that even necessary?
CNS to Auto Industry: Drop Dead Topic: CNSNews.com
It appears taht CNSNews.com wants to kill the U.S. auto industry just to punish its unionized employees.
A Nov. 18 article by Pete Winn quotes only opponents of a bailout, highlighting a claim by University of Michigan at Flint economist Mark J. Perry that it "costs over $73 per hour on average to employ a union auto worker."Winn quotes Perry as saying, "Is it right to tax the average worker making $28.50 to bailout workers whose labor cost is over $73 an hour?"
Winn fails to inform his readers that Perry has a right-leaning political agenda. he is a scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which Winn eupemistically calls "a free-market foundation" later in the article. On his blog, Perry has called a teacher pension plan in Michigan public schools a "pyramid scheme," headlined one post "Socialized Medicine Can Kill You" and suggested that Barack Obama's proposed raising of the highest marginal income tax rate from 36% to 39.6% is like a Depression-era tax hike from 25% to 79%.
A Nov. 18 article by Josiah Ryan highlights the views of "Congressmen-elect who were visiting the Capitol for freshman orientation" who oppose a bailout, at least until it's set up in such as way that "company management and autoworker union members ought to make sacrifices in terms of pay and benefit cuts."
Dan Gainor's Nov. 18 CNS column is mpore explicit in his desire to kill the auto industry to spite the United Auto Workers:
[I]t has little to do with saving Detroit and a lot to do with helping out the Democratic Party’s political machine. The chief recipient of this deal isn’t the companies, it’s the union. A bailout of Detroit would secure that the Big Three continue to fail and pay exorbitant sums to thousands of union workers.
Mychal Massie slavers over Sarah Palin in his Nov. 18 WorldNetDaily column, padding her resume in the process:
She ended a multi-year stalemate over the financing and construction of a $40 billion cross-state pipeline that supplies cheaper natural gas to Alaskans and the lower 48 states. That single act alone did more to advance American energy independence than Biden, Obama or McCain can boast collectively. In her capacity as being responsible for the Alaskan National Guard, she authorized 521 missions that saved 200 lives.
Others offer a more reality-based view. Regarding the pipeline, the New York Times wrote:
Certainly she proved effective in attracting developers to a project that has eluded Alaska governors for three decades. But an examination of the pipeline project also found that Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success.
[...]
Contributing to the project’s uncertainty is Ms. Palin’s antagonistic relationship with the major oil companies that control Alaska’s untapped gas reserves.
Ms. Palin won the governor’s office in part by capitalizing on populist distaste for the political establishment’s coziness with Big Oil, and her pipeline strategy was intended to blunt its power over the process. Her willingness to take on the oil companies has allowed the McCain campaign to portray her as a scourge of special interests.
Now, though, she will need the industry’s cooperation if her plan is to succeed, and just this week, her office said she intended to reach out to the North Slope oil companies.
As Ms. Palin takes to the road to campaign with Mr. McCain, invoking the pipeline as a major victory, some Alaska lawmakers who initially endorsed her plan now believe it was a mistake. State Senator Bert Stedman, a Republican who is co-chairman of the finance committee, said that in its contract with the chosen developer, TransCanada, the state bargained away too much leverage with little guarantee of success.
“There is no requirement to lift one shovel of dirt or lay down one inch of steel,” he said.
The president commands National Guard troops whenever they're deployed in federal missions, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. State governors only command the guardsmen in operations inside their states, traditionally in response to disasters like floods and fires.
According to Alaska National Guard spokeswoman, Kalei Brooks, in the two years of Palin's term, the National Guard has run 521 missions and saved 200 lives.
Major tasks, Brooks said, have been fighting wildfires and providing standby security during two meetings, including the International Whaling Commission (PDF) meeting in May 2007.
But even in state operations, Palin has a limited role. For big or unusual events, Palin authorizes the National Guard's actions, but for most run-of-the-mill work, Palin isn't involved at all.
Brooks explained that the National Guard works with other state security and emergency services, which each cover different geographical areas of the huge state. Each agency has a set of agreements that authorize them to respond automatically in an emergency, without needing the governor's specific authorization every time hunters get stranded in swamps, or Swedish tourists get stuck in the snow.
And while McCain spokesman Tucker Bound was correct when he told CNN that Palin, "makes the decision as to how to equip, how to command the National Guard in Alaska," the federal government, not the state, provides all of their equipment and material.
Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker gets the Heathers treatement again at NewsBusters, this time from Mark Finkelstein in a Nov. 17 post:
Before a few weeks ago, I don't recall seeing Kathleen Parker much on TV. But tuning into Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show this afternoon, there she was. And when I got back from the gym and fired up my DVR of David Gregory's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?" Yup, Parker redux.
Let's see. What might possibly explain Kathleen Parker's sudden popularity on MSNBC? You don't suppose it could conceivably have anything to do with her September column calling on Sarah Palin to step down from the GOP ticket, do you?
Me-yow! Failure to strictly adhere to conservative orthodoxy continues to have a price at NewsBusters.
