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Thursday, November 24, 2011
WND Defends Anti-Gay Activist (And Finally Admits Uganda Law Would Kill Gays)
Topic: WorldNetDaily

When Uganda proposed a draconian anti-gay law that would have permitted the death penalty for mere homosexuality, WorldNetDaily largely ignored it -- except for Molotov Mitchell, who endorsed it while denying that it contains a death penalty for mere homosexuality.

No WND "news" article addressed the law at the time; besides Michell, there were only two mentions of it. One was from anti-gay activist Robert Knight, who simply described the proposed law only as "criminalizing homosexuality" -- in fact, homosexuality is already criminalized -- and is focused on the New York Times for criticizing the proposed law and those who allegedly inspired it, such as anti-gay activist Scott Lively, because the "dare to tell the truth about homosexuality." Knight did concede that the law is "seriously flawed" and "overreaches," but he doesn't admit the death penalty stuff.

The second article was from Lively himself, who ranted about how "lavender Marxists" are "murderers" who "have fixed their malevolent gaze on Christian Uganda." He made no mention whatsoever about the proposed law, let alone the death penalty stuff, which he seems to be justifying by portraying gays in Uganda as "murderers."

It's been nearly two years later. The proposed Uganda law has stalled, though discussion of it has recently been revived in the country. Meanwhile, WND has mounted a defense of Lively, who has worked with legislators and anti-gay activists in Uganda (and is author of the disredited, WND-promoted gay-bashing bnook "The Pink Swastika").

An Oct. 15 WND article by Drew Zahn focused on a brick thrown through a window at a school where the anti-gay group Americans for Truth about Homosexuality was to give an award to Lively.While running to Lively's defense, Zahn also tacitly admits for the first time at WND that the proposed Uganda law would execute gays for being gay:

The press release claiming responsibility for the attack on the Christian Liberty Academy even blamed Lively for murder:

"In 2009, Lively and other American homophobes spoke at a conference in Uganda called 'Exposing the Truth About Homosexuality and the Homosexual Agenda,'" the release asserts. "This conference stirred the anti-gay atmosphere that already exists in Uganda, a country with laws that punish homosexual acts with up to 14 years in prison. As a direct result of this conference, participants have drafted a bill that, if passed, would increase the sentencing for homosexual acts to life sentences and execution and make it a legal responsibility to report homosexuals in the community.

It continues, "On Jan. 26, 2011, Ugandan gay rights activist David Kisule was murdered after being outed in a newspaper ad that listed names and photos of queer people in the community as a part of an anti-gay campaign that is a result of Scott Lively's visit."

The GLN took up a similar complaint about Lively's time in Uganda in a letter to prominent Chicago pastor Erwin Lutzer, urging Lutzer to decline speaking at the AFTAH banquet because Lively and LaBarbera allegedly "support violence [against homosexuals] outright."

Lively, however, made public a letter to LaBarbera in which he countered claims about fomenting "hate" and "violence" in Uganda:

"I am a Bible-believing Christian who abhors violence against anyone, and has never advocated violence or hatred against homosexuals," Lively asserts. "During my 2009 trip [to Uganda] I also addressed members of the Ugandan Parliament in their national assembly hall. My advice to the MPs regarding the law they were contemplating but had not yet drafted was to focus on rehabilitation and not punishment. I urged them to become the first government in the world to develop a state-sponsored recovery system for homosexuality on the model we have in the United States for alcoholism.

"In contradiction to my advice, a few months after the seminar an MP introduced a bill to criminalize homosexuality," he continues. "The terms of the bill were harsh, as is very common in African countries, including capital punishment. … I do not support capital punishment for any sex crimes, let alone simple homosexuality, which I view as a treatable behavioral disorder, and so I opposed the bill. I was nevertheless accused in the international media of not only endorsing the bill, but of advocating for it."

Zahn made no mention of Lively's earlier description of gays in Uganda as "murderers." Plus, Lively is a little biased on the subject, meaning that his claims should be seen as defensive rather than an unbiased account of what he actually did in Uganda. Zahn makes no effort to contact anyone in Uganda for their view of what Lively told them.

Zahn also rehashes Lively's baseless insistence that the murder of Ugandan gay activist David Kato was "unrelated to the passions surrounding the Ugandan bill," repeating his defense that Kato's death was "turned out to be a crime of passion by a male prostitute whom Kato had bailed out of jail and taken to be his houseboy." In fact, as we've noted, Ugandan police have offered no evidence to back up that explanation, and some have noted that police may try to cover up a motive of homophobia in Kato's death to protect the Western aid upon which the country relies.

(A man was convicted and sentenced earlier this month in Kato's death, but one obverver of the trial thinks the killer was set up to murder Kato for being gay and that he thought if he established a homosexual sex demand, he would be treated leniently.)

Since then, two WND columnists have directly defended Lively against any association with hostile conditions for gays in Uganda":
  • An Oct. 16 column by anti-gay activist Linda Harvey asserted that Lively was "falsely accused of advocating harm to homosexuals in Uganda."
  • A Nov. 18 column by professional gay-hater Matt Barber depicted Lively as "a pro-family advocate who, in recent years, has been falsely maligned by leftist groups and media-types like Rachel Maddow, for supposedly supporting the death penalty for homosexual behavior – a patently false charge."

Of course, neither mention Lively's depiction of gays in Uganda as "murderers." 


Posted by Terry K. at 3:38 PM EST
Updated: Monday, November 28, 2011 12:17 AM EST
CNS' Jeffrey Spews More Venom At Michelle Obama
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've already detailed CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey's abject hatred for President Obama and his wife. Jeffrey keeps up the venom in his Nov. 23 column.

Jeffrey kicks off the hate with the inflammatory headline "Is Michelle Obama Bad for Kids?"  and opening with the question, "Will Michelle Obama's efforts as first lady help or hurt American children and the nation in which they live?" You know that Jeffrey's hatred of the Obamas will drive him to answer that in the negative, and go negative he does.

Jeffrey rehashes the hoary myth that an education bill Barack Obama supported as an Illinois state senator would "mandate" that sex-education classes "begin in kindergarten." Jeffrey didn't mention that the bill called for age-appropriate sex education, not the kindergarten orgies Jeffrey was implying.

Jeffrey also misled by claiming that the law would "strip all mention of marriage from the state's sex-ed classes." Actually, according to SIECUS, it would have stripped references to marriage from the state sex education code. Further, Illinois law alread mandates that schools muct teach “honor and respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage.”

Having peddled that misinformation, Jeffrey then goes off on a morality rant:

A little reported section buried in the massive Obamacare legislation authorizes grants to states and organizations "to carry out personal responsibility education programs." The issues these programs are authorized to teach about include "dating, romantic involvement, marriage and family interaction" and "parent-child communication."

What kind of marriages and families do you think Obamacare grantees will teach children about?

Once American public schools - which had children only part of the day, and starting only when they were 5 years old - worked with parents to teach children the same basic values they learned at home: Love God, love country, love family, know the history of our nation and civilization, aim to become a hardworking, self-sufficient individual.

Little, itty-bitty babies who eat "family-style" meals at government-funded centers will not only learn government dependency but also the false morality that will keep them there.

If Jeffrey is going to so blatantly mislead about the president due to his hatred, is he really the person from which to take advice about morality?


Posted by Terry K. at 1:41 AM EST
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Noel Sheppard Offended by Accurate Headline
Topic: NewsBusters

We already know that NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard is shocked by things that aren't shocking. Now's he offended by accurate headlines.

From a Nov. 21 post:

Are there no limits to where leftwing media members will go to bash Republicans?

On Monday, the Huffington Post actually published a front page article with the headline, "Michele Bachmann Pours Water For Men At GOP Primary Forum In Iowa":

Sheppard's post is accompanied by a video that shows, yes, Bachmann pouring water for men -- her fellow Republican presidential candidates -- at a recent forum. Sheppard called this "charming," adding: "Maybe with all the children the Congresswoman has, she's used to acting as hostess."

So Sheppard even concedes that the headline accurately reflects what was going on. So how, exactly, does it "bash Republicans"?

That's one of the great mysteries that we'll leave confined to Sheppard's fevered brain.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:38 PM EST
Les Kinsolving Whining Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily keeps up its longtime pattern of dishonesty about White House press secretary Jay Carney in a Nov. 21 article that once again suggests that Carney knew the question Les Kinsolving was going to ask and refused to call on him because of it.

WND has never, in its numerous accusations of the same, offered any evidence that Carney refused to call on Kinsolving because he knew what Kinsolving would ask. More likely, it's Kinsolving's history of right-wing hackery and raging homophobia that keeps Carney from rightly not treating Kinsolving like the real reporter he pretends to be.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:45 PM EST
Anti-Obama Book Is Too Crazy For Cliff Kincaid
Topic: Accuracy in Media

When noted crazy person Cliff Kincaid says something is too crazy even for him, that's worth noting.

In a Nov. 18 Accuracy in Media column, Kincaid takes apart Mondo Frazier's book "The Secret Life of Barack Hussein Obama," noting the author's dubious background and his reliance on conspiratorial muckraker Wayne Madsen, whom Kincaid calls a "propagandist for Russian TV who has been making the rounds alleging that Obama may be a secret CIA operative." Kincaid adds that "Such fanciful and easily discounted claims have the effect of diverting attention away from Obama’s communist and socialist connections, which is where the scrutiny should be applied."

And that, ultimately, is what Kincaid doesn't like about Frazier and his book, that he doesn't hate commies as much as Kincaid does, and that he ignores the real conspiracy of the staged financial collapse in 2008:

For whatever reason, the Frazier book diverts attention from the real story, which is—and has been—Obama’s ties to Communist Party operative Frank Marshall Davis, his childhood mentor in Hawaii, and the communist and socialist networks in Hawaii and Chicago which nurtured and sponsored Obama’s political career. These are the networks which have spawned the “Occupy” movement embraced by Obama. It is a movement that continues to get more violent over time but which ignores the role of Obama financial patron George Soros in the ongoing financial turmoil.

[...]

What’s more, how could a candidate with links to communists and terrorists like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn get to be president? One answer is that we have a loophole in our system that has been exploited by our media to allow a security risk to occupy the oval office. The major media abandoned their adversarial and independent posture and became cheerleaders for the Obama phenomenon. One part of the process was refusing to probe why a financial collapse was engineered just weeks before the 2008 presidential election.

So, actually, Kincaid's main point isn't that Frazier is crazier than he is, but that he doesn't share Kincaid's anti-communist obsession.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:21 AM EST
MRC Not Offended By Limbaugh's Racially Charged Remark -- Only That He Was Caught Saying It
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has long ignored or given a pass to Rush Limbaugh's most controversial and offensive statements. Limbaugh just made another one, and the the MRC is in defense mode once again.

On his Nov. 21 radio show, Limbaugh blamed Michelle Obama getting booed at a NASCAR event on her "uppity-ism." ABC did a report on LImbaugh's remarks.

Guess what the MRC is most upset by?

Brent Baker huffed in a Nov. 22 MRC item that "a blog post by a far-left group devoted to silencing Rush Limbaugh" for the ABC report, linking to a Media Matters audio clip (not a blog post) of Limbaugh's remarks. That's in line with the MRC's childish tradition of refusing to identify Media Matters by name in public. (Disclosure: that's where I work.)

Baker, however, offers no actual evidence that ABC's report was actually inspired by the clip. Indeed, ABC does not reference Media Matters at all in the report, and its clip of Limbaugh is taken from his video web feed, compared with the audio-only clip at the Media Matters website.

At no point does Baker criticize Limbaugh for making his racially charged statement -- only ABC is criticized for reporting on it.

Somebody needs to reassess their priorities.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:15 AM EST
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
NEW ARTICLE: Terry Jeffrey's Conflict-of-Interest Conflict
Topic: CNSNews.com
The CNSNews.com editor-in-chief has been pushing for Elena Kagan to recuse herself from Supreme Court deliberation over health care reform -- while being silent about a bigger problem with a conservative justice. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 3:21 PM EST
MRC Frets Over "Pro-Gay Pop-Aganda"
Topic: Media Research Center

The professional prudes at the Media Research Center's Culture & Media Institute have always hated gays, to the point that saying anything at all nice about them is, in CMI's view, no different than "propaganda."

Paul Wilson does exactly that in a Nov. 15 CMI article denouncing Jessica Lowndes' song "I Wish I Was Gay":

Lowndes' single is part of a larger trend of gay themes being used in contemporary music. The Huffington Post notes that 'gay themes are quickly becoming a ubiquitous element of contemporary pop music.'

Female musicians in particular are promoting homosexuality and bisexual behavior. Pop star Lady Gaga is notorious for her advocacy of homosexuality, and included homosexual themes in songs such as ''Born This Way.'' Singer Katy Perry explored bisexual themes with her 2008 song ''I Kissed a Girl.'' X Factor competitor Simone Battle recently released a song and music video titled 'He Likes Boys,' which expressed a girl's unrequited desire for gay guys.

While the trend of increasing homosexuality in pop songs is certainly worrisome, Lowndes' latest propaganda effort would probably draw more of a following if her singing were competent. 

So not hating gays makes you "notorious"? That's the MRC's anti-gay mindset in a nutshell.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:09 PM EST
WND's Klein Rehashes His Previous Bogus Smears of Kagan
Topic: WorldNetDaily

When Elena Kagan was nominated as a Supreme Court justice, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein hurled a slew of false and misleading attacks on her. Klein's sliming ultimately went for naught, as she was confirmed easily.

Now that the Supreme Court has taken up the constitutionality of health care reform, Klein is rehashing many of those bogus attacks.

IN a Nov. 20 WND article, Klein claims that "a closer look at Kagan's academic writings and previous work history paints a picture of a woman who strongly supports court intervention." But he supports that mostly by repeating his earlier discredited sliming.

Klein asserts that Kagan "once helped shield Saudi Arabia from lawsuits filed by families of 9/11 victims seeking to target countries and leaders who helped finance al-Qaida." In fact, as we detailed, the federal government has long barred such lawsuits if the country being targeted has not been designated by the State Department as having provided material support for terrorist groups, which is the case with Saudi Arabia.

Klein also attacked Kagan for praising retired Israeli Supreme Court justice Aharon Barak, whom he declared was "one of the most extreme liberal activist high court justices in history." Klein asserted that Barak "famously ruled numerous times in favor of the Palestinians and against the IDF" -- without explaining why ruling in favor of Palestinians is inherently a bad thing -- and that Barak's rulings regarding a security fence "were blamed for scores of terrorist infiltrations from the very areas where Barak had stopped the fence from being built."

Klein offers no evidence to back up that claim. Further, Barak is on record as taking security into consideration in bulding the fence. Israeli National News reported:

To those who criticize the security fence, claiming that 'the damage outdoes the good', Barak responded: "Similar statements are made by others – one could call them the Israeli left – against the involvement of the High Court in matters pertaining to Judea, Samaria and Gaza. They say that the court overstepped its authority, viewing its ruling as negative. Why? Because most petitions are rejected, and they allege that this "legitimizes the occupation", and that therefore it would be best not to involve the court. I am of the opinion that this would be the most grievous of errors. The percentage of rejected petitions from Judea, Samaria and Gaza – is the same as the percentage of rejected petitions from inside Israel. The situation for Palestinians in the region would be far worse if it weren't for the High Court."

 

Klein's assertion that Kagan "shows strong beliefs for court intervention in speech" is contradicted in the very next paragraph, in which he quotes Kagan as favoring the "uncoerced disappearance" of certain types of offensive speech.

In a pernicious example of selective quoting, Klein asserted that "in her undergraduate thesis at Princeton, Kagan lamented the decline of socialism in the country as 'sad' for those who still hope to 'change America.'" In fact, she did no such thing; her thesis simply explored historical questions about socialism, and at no point did Kagan portray herself as a socialist.

Klein also claimed that in a 1996 paper, "Kagan argued it may be proper to suppress speech because it is offensive to society or to the government." But that's another highly selective quoting of Kagan's work. In that very same paper, Kagan said that government "may not restrict" speech "because it disagrees with ... the ideas espoused by the speaker."

Klein even asserts -- without providing any evidence whatsoever to back it up -- that "Kagan was also heavily involved in promoting the health-care policy of the Clinton administration."

Klein has never reported fairly or accurately about Kagan. There's no reason to think he would start now.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:02 PM EST
CNS Tries to Justify Booing of Michelle Obama
Topic: CNSNews.com

In a Nov. 21 CNSNews.com article, Matt Cover bizarrely defends the booing of Michelle Obama and Jill Biden at a NASCAR race, since after all NASCAR fans are conservatives who liked George W. Bush:

First Lady Michelle Obama was booed at a NASCAR Race in Miami, Fla.,  on Sunday, after she appeared with Second Lady Jill Biden to give the traditional “Gentlemen, start your engines!” command to begin the race. In contrast, when President George W. Bush launched a Daytona Beach NASCAR race in 2004, he was cheered by the crowd.

Some liberal media outlets, including the Gawker Web site which first reported the story, were critical of the booing against Michelle Obama, with Gawker calling it an “ugly reminder of how personally some have taken the political divisions in our country.” YahooSports derided NASCAR fans as “disgusting bozos” and “redneck fools” over the incident.

However, that NASCAR fans are largely conservative, and thus probably are not Obama fans, should not come as a surprise. In 2004, many of the sport’s top drivers publicly endorsed President George W. Bush for reelection.

Cover offers no evidence that Gawker is a "liberal media outlet."


Posted by Terry K. at 10:32 AM EST
MRC's Graham Angry That Truth About Right-Wing Emails Are Exposed
Topic: NewsBusters

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham just can't stand it when the hate and craziness of the right wing is exposed for what it is.

Graham's target in a Nov. 20 NewsBusters post is a Washington Post article by Paul Farhi highlighting how the vast majority of political email chains come from the right, and that President Obama has been the subject of most of them, and many of those are misleading or false.

Graham began by challenging the premise:

Farhi quoted Ari Fleischer as the only feint toward conservatives or Republicans in the piece but Fleischer wasn't quoted challenging the Farhi thesis. How scientific is Snopes, for example, in "turning up" false political e-mails? Do they rely on tips, and sent by whom? Can a "nonpartisan" site be an easy mark for partisan sources?

Graham is also put that "Farhi links to that Soros-funded group run by David Brock." How immature is Graham that he can't refer to Media Matters by its proper name? (Disclosure: I work for that Soros-funded group run by David Brock.)

While Graham concedes that "Wacky e-mails making demonstrably ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims about Obama are despicable" -- not that the MRC has any demonstrated record of debunking said emails -- he complains about the "familiar liberal media-elite thesis" that "The 'gatekeepers' have lost their power to dominate, meaning the lies run wild now, when they never did when the liberam [sic] media dominated."

But the lack of a dominant media is exactly what Graham and the MRC want. The MRC online store is replete with T-shirts and bumper stickers that read"I Don't Believe the Liberal Media" and "Impeach the Liberal Media." And if the MRC was really interested in media outlets that were truly fair and balanced, its CNSNews.com wouldn't be such a respository of right-wing hackery, would it?

UPDATE: Brent Baker keeps up Graham's childish refusal to identify Media Matters by name in a Nov. 22 NewsBusters post, blaming "a blog post by a far-left group devoted to silencing Rush Limbaugh" for an ABC report on Rush Limbaugh sliming Michelle Obama by blaming her "uppity-ism" for being booed at a NASCAR race. Baker links to a Media Matters audio clip (not a blog post) of Limbaugh's remarks but offers no actual evidence that ABC's report was actually inspired by the clip. Indeed, ABC does not reference Media Matters at all in the report, and its clip of Limbaugh is taken from his video web feed, compared with the audio-only clip at the Media Matters website.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:31 AM EST
Updated: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 10:53 AM EST
Monday, November 21, 2011
WND's Washington Is Not Comparing Obama to Hitler, But...
Topic: WorldNetDaily

... yeah, he's comparing Obama to Hitler, no matter how much he denies it. From Ellis Washington's Nov. 18 WorldNetDaily column:

Desperate people do desperate things. What would you do for your daily bread? How low would you go for gainful employment? What religious, ethical or constitutional principles would you disregard to allow the government under a demagogue leader, a cowardly Congress and corrupt courts to enact policies and laws that in effect steal money from one group of people (the so-called "rich") and give the stolen trillions of dollars to others who didn't earn it and don't deserve it (the so-called "poor") all in the name of the grand, failed Marxist polices repackaged as redistribution of wealth, "fair share" and social justice?

The Weimar Republic (1919-33) and the German people made that fateful decision on Jan. 30, 1933, when they elected the genocidal megalomaniac Adolf Hitler and a few months later gave him dictatorial powers. Will America make that same fateful decision on Nov. 4, 2012, by re-electing President Barack Obama? While I am not equating Obama to Hitler, I am making the legitimate philosophical distinction that liberal fascism (e.g., progressivism) – a worldview by which both leaders governed, under the Democratic Socialist Party and National Socialist Party, respectively – has by design driven society into global, political anarchy and economic catastrophe, which continues to this day.

Can President Obama force 300 million free American citizens into a concentration camp euphemistically called government-controlled health care under the "Individual Mandate" by 2014 or face severe tax penalties? If so, then are we truly still free citizens endowed by God with unalienable rights under natural law, or are we in essence de facto, voluntary slaves to an ever-evolving, ever-expanding leviathan State called the federal government under positive law?

Don't even bother with the pretense, Ellis. We all know you want to compare Obama to Hitler like your WND buddies.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:11 PM EST
Will MRC Apologize For Trying to Link WH Shooting Suspect To Occupy Movement?
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Kyle Drennen wrote in a Nov. 17 NewsBusters post how some media outlets had reported that authorities "searched the Occupy DC protest camp" for evidence that alleged White House shooter Oscar Ortega-Hernandez had spent time there, adding in bold, "NBC, ABC, and CBS left that fact out of their evening and morning coverage of his arrest."

Drennen also wrote that some in the media were "thrilled with the idea" that the Occupy D.C. protest had "rules and regulations," adding, "One wonders if Ortega-Hernandez filled out such a document if he did spend time in the encampment."

Just one problem: As Salon's Alex Pareene points out, no one has turned up any link whatsoever between Ortega-Hernandez and the Occupy movement.

You might recall how the MRC was apoplectic that some tried to link the shooter of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to right-wing causes -- MRC chief Brent Bozell declared, "Shame on the reporters and media outlets that entertained these outrageous accusations and who are now responsible for spreading the lies."

Any chance the MRC feels similar shame at perpetuating a link it has no evidence to support to the point that it will apologize for doing so? Doubtful.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:31 AM EST
WND's Mercer Likens Liberals to Holocaust Deniers
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Ilana Mercer is unhappy that views she doesn't agree with are presented to her on Fox News. She kicks off her Nov 17 WorldNetDaily column: by insulting those liberals she doesn't agree with:

The one parallel universe is represented on Fox Business by the likes of Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne and others.

Skinner is a Democratic talk-show host. The description is self-explanatory. Heldman is a professor at Occidental College whose considered opinion is that "the "private sector" put us in "the economic position we are in." Heldman, who resembles the popular caricature of Marie Antoinette, calls regularly for the heads of business people. Dowdell is one of many fast-talking Democratic strategists to plump for every imaginable assault on private property issued by Washington. Sibilia is a successful CEO who – in his monumental ignorance of the benefits that redound to society when "both capital and labor are … permitted to make their own free choices" – is demanding that corporations "be designed for the common good." Erika Payne, among other evils, is the author of what Jonathan Alter of Newsweek endorsed as "a blueprint for a progressive conspiracy to help save the country."

The philosophical filth spewed by such characters – almost nightly on freedom-promoting programing, no less – is that government can spend and lend to good effect; that it can tax without discouraging and disrupting production; and that our overlords in D.C. can regulate "better" (read energy-squandering) industries into being by steering capital and labor away from bad (energy-efficient) industries (oil and gas).

You expect such illusionary presentations in the liberal media. But those whose fidelity is to reality, the founders' Constitution, and the natural laws of economics should not have to vie for precious seconds with central planners and thieves-by-proxy on magnificent libertarian programs like the John Stossel show or the Judge's "Freedom Watch."

Mercer declares that "there is but one economic reality": that government is bad and its spending is worse. Anyone who doesn't agree with that is just like a Holocaust denier.

No, really. She did indeed go there:

The truth is that truth is immutable, never relative. The little truth there is in mainstream media should not be diluted or presented by its adherents as dueling with untruth.

The above Fox News fixtures no more represent truth or promote it than does your average Holocaust denier.

With an exception: Libraries have long since engaged in a robust debate as to how to classify Holocaust-denying literature. While admirably advocating for unfettered free access, Professor of Library Services John A. Drobnicki has suggested moving Holocaust denial out of the History section in U.S. libraries and closer to the "Bigfoot books," so that Holocaust denial's Dewey Decimal designation is with "hoax materials."

Indeed, hacks are not historians. Although the dueling-perspectives panel format would suggest it is – the economic bunk spewed by the likes of Skinner, Heldman, Dowdell, Jeffers, Sibila and Erika Payne is no version of the truth, but a perversion of it.

Mercer also believes that Michael Vick had the right to do whatever he wanted to with his dogs, so maybe she isn't the best judge of what truth is.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:26 AM EST
Updated: Monday, November 21, 2011 10:27 AM EST
AIM Lets Cliff Kincaid Out of the Attic
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Since Accuracy in Media created the Center for Investigative Journalism last year and named Cliff Kincaid to run it, Kincaid has largely been absent from AIM's regular website, popping up for the occasional right-wing rant.

AIM seems to have let him out of the attic, though, and he's been quite prolific over the past week.

In a Nov. 15 column, Kincaid complained that during a recent Republican debate, CBS' Scott Pelley "maneuvered two Republicans, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, into defending the Obama Administration on one of the most important and sensitive foreign policy issues—killing American citizens abroad." Why? Because leftists have criticized the policy, that that could have been used against him as a wedge issue. Instead, Kincaid laments, "An issue the Republicans could have used against Obama, in order to alienate the President from his left-wing political base and illustrate his power-hungry manner, was taken off the table."

The next day, Kincaid published a column explaining the previous one:

My column about Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney endorsing President Obama’s premeditated murder of an American citizen working for al-Qaeda was designed to make the point that the Republican candidates had fallen into a trap laid by Scott Pelley of CBS during last Saturday’s debate. Gingrich, who has made criticism of the media a hallmark of his resurgent campaign, should have sensed the trap. Instead, he fell into it, along with Romney.

One reader missed the point about the media and responded, “Despite all the harm this president has done, it is not wrong to support him when he is right.”

But Obama was wrong before he was “right.” He came into office opposed to the use of executive power in this manner. This is the point that Pelley ignored in his question to the Republicans but which should have been central to the discussion.

Again, Kincaid lamented: "Gingrich and Romney had the opportunity to put the Obama Administration on the defensive over a policy that its top officials opposed before Obama took office. They blew it. Obama has to be breathing a sigh of relief."

In a Nov. 17 column, Kincaid was upset that "President Obama is being portrayed as a 'peace through strength' Ronald Reagan Republican as he travels abroad" and that Obama's speeches on his Pacific tour were insufficiently hateful of China.

Perhaps it's time to send Kincaid back to the attic.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:27 AM EST

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