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Saturday, November 2, 2013
NewsBusters Still Pretending Redskins Name Change Is A 'Liberal' Cause
Topic: NewsBusters

Paul Bremmer devotes an Oct. 28 NewsBusters post to bashing New York Times sports columnist Bill Rhoden for saying that a name change for the Washington Redskins "has to start with us in the media," declaring this to be "liberal activist journalism":

Wow. Rhoden actually wants legislation to compel the Redskins, a privately-owned venture, to change their name. That would be government coercion on the level of ObamaCare. But as it stands right now, it’s up to owner Daniel Snyder to change the name, and he has said he doesn’t want to change it.

To those who follow the liberal media, it’s not news that they are fans of political correctness. But it’s a little jarring to hear a journalist talk as if it is the media’s job to force political correctness onto one particular organization, possibly under penalty of law. What happened to just reporting on the facts?

[...]

This was not the first time Rhoden mixed sports with liberal activism. Last December, he expressed his wish that the NFL would ban its players from owning guns. In April 2011, he called for the NBA to suspend Kobe Bryant for Game 1 of a playoff series after Bryant mouthed the “gay F-bomb” at a referee.

Following what is apparently Media Research Center policy, Bremmer failed to mention  that one prominent advocate of changing the Redskins name is not a liberal at all -- he's conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer, whom the MRC honored with its “William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence” in September.

If we were as careless with the English language as the MRC, we could say that it was censoring this relevant fact.

Why is the MRC so afraid to tell  its readers about Krauthammer's advocacy for changing the Redskins name? Perhaps because it would then have to admit it's not a "liberal" issue.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:22 PM EDT
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We all know about the way these people squander our tax dollars on White House galas and African safaris, but until the recent shutdown, I wasn’t aware of the size of the personal staffs with which they surround themselves. Barack has a staff of 1,701 – 90 of whom merely look after his living quarters. For purposes of comparison, Queen Elizabeth’s Buckingham Palace is 12 times larger than the White House, but she somehow manages to make do with a crew of 800.

Mrs. Obama has 16 personal assistants at her beck and call. That’s more people than George Washington had in his entire administration.

The question that comes to mind is: Where do I sign up for the revolution?

-- Burt Prelutsky, Oct. 15 WorldNetDaily column

Are any more accusations against President Obama allowed, or have we reached and breached the quota? We’re told, even by former close friends of the administration, “This is the most secretive … the most arrogant … the most self-serving … the most lying” … etc. “… administration in history … in memory … I’ve ever known.”

If it’s not too late, I’d like to add that this administration is the most ham-handed administration in history.

-- Barry Farber, Oct. 15 WND column

Segue to 2013. The founders could never have imagined the “long train of abuses and usurpations” that have been inflicted on American citizens in just the past five years alone. Of course, the power holders in Washington would have us believe that the victims of their abuses and usurpations are part of a small, fringe conspiracy group stoking the fires of discontent. But nothing could be further from the truth.

It is the government’s own policies that guarantee a never-ending stream of ”crises.” And as we approach November 2014 – and, more important, the spring/summer of 2016 – any one of these phony government crises could be used as an excuse for Barack Obama to become the third U.S. president to invoke a sedition act. Which, in turn, could conveniently be used as an excuse to ”postpone” elections in 2014 – or, more likely, 2016 – for ”security reasons.”

-- Robert Ringer, Oct. 16 WND column

Hardly anybody who has gone through the public education system since 1960 is part of a well-educated generation. As proof, you only need to take a look at Obama. He is a prime example of the shoddy product we’ve been turning out – a know-nothing with a colossal amount of ego.

[...]

Finally, Obama, who can’t keep his nose out of any controversy, so long as he thinks it will play well with his infantile base, let it be known that he thinks the Washington football franchise should no longer call itself the Redskins because, I suppose, there are three or four Indians who claim to be personally offended.

If I owned the Redskins, I would tell the schmuck in the Oval Office that I’ll change the team’s name when he changes his because I am personally offended that the president of the United States is named Barack Hussein Obama.

-- Burt Prelutsky, Oct. 22 WND column

Most of the true conservatives I know are supporters of the U.S. Constitution. Most of them agree that long before he duplicitously swore to uphold, protect and defend that Constitution, Barack Obama repeatedly disparaged and rejected it. Among these conservatives are many who would welcome Obama’s resignation or removal from office. Their hearts respond favorably to politicians who have in recent weeks alluded to the fact that Obama’s abuses of power constitute impeachable offenses, for which he and his collaborators should be removed from office. 

-- Alan Keyes, Oct. 24 WND column

If you think that America will escape its slide from the current Black Camelot dictatorship, down through despotism and into totalitarianism without a free and vigilant press on at least one side of the political aisle, you are fatally mistaken. You and your entire NSA buddy list are headed for the same accommodation the Soviet KGB provided those they marked as enemies of the state: Prison, torture, confession and death. Evil destroys. That is what it does.

-- Craige McMillan, Oct. 25 WND column

I have been broadcasting for 31 years and writing for longer than that. I do not recall ever saying on radio or in print that a president is doing lasting damage to our country. I did not like the presidencies of Jimmy Carter (the last Democrat I voted for) or Bill Clinton. Nor did I care for the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush. In modern political parlance “compassionate” is a euphemism for ever-expanding government.

But I have never written or broadcast that our country was being seriously damaged by a president. So it is with great sadness that I write that President Barack Obama has done and continues to do major damage to America. The only question is whether this can ever be undone.

-- Dennis Prager, Oct. 28 WND column

I’ve been persuaded that Barack Obama’s domestic policy agenda is designed to do one thing – foster chaos and crisis.

Knowing his relationship with ACORN and the agenda of the Cloward-Piven strategy behind it, nothing else makes sense. It even explains why his promotion of a national health-care strategy was designed to fail.

Most Americans still can’t conceive of the notion that a president of the United States would actually want to promote policies that could never work in the conventional understanding of the word “work.”

But if your ultimate goal is greater and greater state control of the population and the economy, which Obama’s ultimate goal surely is, then it all begins to make sense.

-- Joseph Farah, Oct. 28 WND column

“[T]technology that seemed cutting-edge in 2008 now seems painfully anachronistic,” writes Peterson. “Obama was reportedly ‘befuddled’ during an attempt to call a volunteer from an iPhone during the 2012 campaign.” This is the same sibilant, stuttering fool whose supposedly brilliant oratory skills collapsed the moment he stepped out of range of a teleprompter. This is the same classless, arrogant jerk who gave world leaders DVDs that were formatted for the wrong region and an iPod loaded with his own speeches. This is the same haughty, clueless dolt who promised to have 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015. This is the same petulant, defensive idiot who believed erecting a monstrously overpriced website to sell government-ordered insurance would somehow magically result in “affordable health care.”

-- Phil Elmore, Oct. 30 WND column


Posted by Terry K. at 9:16 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, November 2, 2013 9:17 AM EDT
Friday, November 1, 2013
CNS Botches CPI Computation To Make Obama Look Bad
Topic: CNSNews.com

Ali Meyer sure came up with an arrestingly parsed number in an Oct. 30 CNSNews.com article:

Since Ben Bernanke has been in control of the Federal Reserve, inflation has increased 43%  more under President Barack Obama than George W. Bush, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Meyer details how she came up with that number:

When Bernanke first took control of the Federal Reserve in 2006 while Bush was in office, the annual average CPI for all urban consumers was 201.6. When Bush left office in 2009, the annual average CPI rose to 214.537, a 6.4% increase.

Since that time, while Obama has been in office, inflation has increased by 9.14%. The most recent CPI data, released on Oct. 30, 2013 finds that the October average for CPI is 234.149.

The percentage increase from 6.4% to 9.14% is 42.81% or, rounded, 43%.

But Meyer appears to have credited Bush with the average CPI for all of 2009, despite the fact that he left office on January 20 of that year. According to the CPI data Meyer cites, the average CPI for 2008, the last full year of Bush's presidency, was 215.303, making that gap somewhat smaller and making the comparison somewhat more honest.

To make the numbers even more honest, Meyer should have started her Bush timeline in 2005, when the annual CPI was 195.3. Under that computation -- from 2005 to 2008 -- inflation increased 10.2% under Bush, bigger than the number Meyer attributes to Obama.

Further, Meyer's use of annual averages obscures the fact that according to the CPI data, CPI numbers under Bush actually peaked in July 2008 at 219.964. By December 2008, as the recession set in, that had dropped to 210.228. The monthly CPI numbers didn't approach that 2008 again until December 2010. So Meyer is rather perversely crediting Bush with recession-caused deflation -- which seems like an ugly way to praise Bush for lower inflation.

But, hey, it doesn't matter if Meyer's numbers are accurate or relevant. They make Obama look bad, and that's all that matters at CNS.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:12 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, November 1, 2013 8:15 PM EDT
Gay Derangement Syndrome, Erik Rush Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Then we have the mantra of eternal persecution. Regardless of the subgroup (liberals have spawned many in their quest to culturally balkanize us), leftists have developed a positive genius for claiming that their political opponents are somehow persecuting them in standing by their convictions, or for merely having an opinion.

Take the gay lobby, for example. In this case, “persecution” of homosexuals has come to mean refusal to capitulate to any and every demand they make. Acceptance of their lifestyle, which they claimed to desire, apparently was not enough. Now, anyone who does not raise their hand and swear a solemn oath as to the equivalency of same-sex unions to opposite-sex unions, the “normalcy” of homosexuality and the right of militant homosexuals to have just as much input into the development of grade-school curricula as anyone else falls prey to the ire of the gay lobby.

How, I wonder, did homosexuals become such a powerfully vocal, potent and disproportionately affluent minority while they were being so terribly persecuted?

The answer is that they weren’t, and they aren’t. Their current quest for the right to “marry” is about controlling thought and persecuting those with whom they do not agree. Once again, it’s projection. Ironically, this agenda isn’t being driven by the gay guy you work with; it’s being driven by the same leftist machine that exploits blacks and other groups with the orthodoxy of victimization.

-- Erik Rush, Oct. 30 WorldNetDaily column


Posted by Terry K. at 5:40 PM EDT
MRC's Bozell Makes Himself Ken Cuccinelli's Campaign Flack
Topic: Media Research Center

Brent Bozell uses his Oct. 30 column to serve as the campaign spokesman for Republican Virginia governor candidate Ken Cuccinelli (even though such explicit partisan advocacy probably runs afoul of the Media Research Center's nonprofit status). And like any good campaign hack, Bozell twists facts and peddles distortions to the benefit of Cuccinelli and the detriment of his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe.

Bozell huffs that "McAuliffe is running a transparently, viciously anti-Catholic campaign all over television, trashing Cuccinelli as a woman-hating extremist for backing proposals that line up with Catholic church teachings on abortion, contraception, and divorce. Any reporter with fifteen minutes to kill can discover that." But shouldn't Cuccinelli be aspiring to be the governor of all Virginians instead of just the Catholic ones. And what moral authority does Cuccinelli have to impose his religious agenda on those who don't share his religion? 

Bozell continues:

In the D.C. area, TV viewers are inundated with McAuliffe ads where the Democrat claims “Ken Cuccinelli tried to ban common forms of birth control.” Women echo: “Even the pill! Even the pill!” Then four people echo, one after the other, he’s “way too extreme for Virginia.” McAuliffe supporters in the “NextGen PAC” even accused Cuccinelli of “wanting to eliminate all forms of birth control.”

Cuccinelli has never supported a bill or taken a campaign stand for banning contraceptive pills, and McAuliffe knows it. In 2007, then-state Sen. Cuccinelli supported a “personhood” bill that simply stated “Life begins at the moment of fertilization.” Abortion advocates have twisted that simple sentence into some kind of church invasion of the state.

Note the word-twisting going on there -- Bozell is denying an accusation nobody has made. Nobody said that Cuccinelli "supported a bill or taken a campaign stand for banning contraceptive pills." But Bozell is hiding the fact that the "personhood" bill Cuccinelli supported could have had the same effect. PolitiFact broke down Bozell's evasive claim when Cuccinelli himself made it:

While he’s never cast a vote on legislation that explicitly restricted birth control options, Cuccinelli for a decade has been one of the strongest anti-abortion voices in Virginia. He’s supported personhood bills that recognized life as beginning at the moment of conception or fertilization and bestowed human embryos with legal rights. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says such legislation could outlaw birth control pills and other forms of contraception that prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a uterus.

Cuccinelli’s wording also allows him to gloss over a vote he cast in 2003 against legislation that would have specified contraception does not constitute an abortion.

Bozell also wrote:

In another ad, McAuliffe trashed another of Cuccinelli’s Senate proposals: “2008: Ken Cuccinelli writes a bill to give Virginia among the most extreme divorce laws in America. If Cuccinelli had it his way, a mom trying to get out of a bad marriage, over her husband’s objections, could only get divorced if she could prove adultery or physical abuse or her spouse had abandoned her or was sentenced to jail. ” In another ad, a woman claims “He tried to change Virginia’s divorce laws to prevent women from getting out of a bad marriage.”

This is why people despise political ads. McAuliffe’s painting Cuccinelli as if he had proclaimed his biggest goal in life was to prevent women from divorcing abusive husbands. Cuccinelli offered a bill against no-fault divorce, but it was gender-neutral and designed to make it tougher for parents to get divorced quickly. Childless spouses were unaffected.

"Studies show that the dissolution of marriage has long term negative impacts on children and those marriages that last for five years are much more likely to go the distance,” he wrote. “For this reason, the state has an interest in marital preservation.” Here again, the media and the feminists justify these wild exaggerations by noting Cuccinelli is friendly with “father’s rights” activists. Men have rights when it comes to their children? Horrors!

Bozell leaves out some important facts -- namely, that as the Washington Post pointed out, "under Virginia’s current law, there’s no such thing as a quickie divorce." The Post continues:

McAuliffe’s ad, designed to take advantage of a gender gap in the race, emphasized the impact of this shift from the perspective of the woman. For instance, here’s what the state of Virginia says about proving adultery: “Proving adultery is very fact-specific. The evidence must be strict, satisfactory and conclusive that the other spouse did in fact engage in sexual relations with another person.” So if a no-fault divorce is not available, that’s the burden that a woman wanting a divorce would need to climb if Cuccinelli’s proposal had become law.

Bozell also portrays the "father's rights" movement that supported Cuccinelli's proposed elimination of no-fault divorce as some benign group. According to the Post, Cuccinelli's proposal won support from one specific father's rights activist, Stephen Baskerville.

If that name sounds familiar, it should. In September, we noted that WorldNetDaily was promoting a speech by Baskerville at the homeschooler-friendly Patrick Henry College, where he criticized  “the system of unilateral and involuntary divorce, government’s purpose-built mechanism for dismembering families, seizing control over the private lives of innocent people and their children, summarily confiscating property,and criminalizing the embodiments of the hated ‘patriarchy’: fathers.”

One blogger reported that Baskerville used his speech to engage in denialism of basic concepts like rape, child abuse and domestic violence, and was "eavy on 'bitches be lying' and light on scripture."

The "father's rights" movement is a part of the men's rights movement, and it is mostly driven by "divorced men angry that their ex got custody of the kids, and now they have to fork over money to support them."

It seems that Bozell is so concerned about flacking for Cuccinelli that he has no idea what he's arguing in favor of. Or maybe he does, and he actually supports the retrograde "father's rights" stuff.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:36 AM EDT
Molotov Mitchell Joins WND's Fainting Trutherism
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Molotov Mitchell is a birther, so why wouldn't he believe that a woman who fainted during an Obama speech was staged?

Indeed, ol' Molotov was ranting that very thing in his Oct. 29 WorldNetDaily video:

The fainting woman has become part of Barack Obama's schtick, if you will, a subtle homage to Elvis Presley perhaps, because nothing says you're loved by the people like women fainting at the sound of your voice.

I searched on YouTube and found five other incidents where Barack Obama had had a fainting person interrupt one of his speeches. But that doesn't mean that it's necessarily phony. What is strange is how he knew to turn around just as she was fainting.

Look at this video. How does he know that she's fainting? Is his messiah sense tingling? I mean, look, the guy on the right doesn't even see her falling, yet Barack Obama, a little focused on this important speech, he somehow knows that she's fainting without even facing her. And he doesn't just notice that she's falling, he turns around just in time to catch her. Again, the guy next to her can't even do it.

And notice how he speaks to her, saying "I got you" by turning his face toward the microphone so everybody else can hear what he's saying. Why doesn't he say "I got you" to her? And then notice after the whole thing's over how he goes back up and waits in silence for his people in the crowd to go ahead and initiate the applause. Totally phony!

WND has already been promoting this little conspiracy theory, so we shouldn't be surpised that Mitchell would join the fun.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:17 AM EDT
Thursday, October 31, 2013
MRC Is Still Defending Dick Cheney
Topic: Media Research Center

Brad Wilmouth takes us back into time in an Oct. 29 Media Research Center item:

On Monday's PoliticsNation, MSNBC host Al Sharpton bizarrely devoted his regular "Nice Try" segment to Dick Cheney denying that he and Wyoming Republican Senator Mike Enzi are "fishing buddies," which the former Vice President did on Sunday's ABC This Week during a discussion of daughter Liz Cheney's bid for the Senate.

As he mocked the former Vice President, Sharpton managed to bring up the Iraq invasion and repeated the false assertion from the left that Cheney had claimed Iraq should be invaded because an Iraqi agent met with one of the 9/11 hijackers. Sharpton: "Is Cheney finally admitting that a 9-1-1 bomber didn't meet with an agent of Saddam Hussein? Cheney used that meeting to justify the Iraq invasion even though it didn't happen."

Sharpton was alluding to a series of edited clips from four interviews the former Vice President gave on NBC's Meet the Press which liberal entities like MSNBC promoted in 2004 to make it appear that Cheney had claimed that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

In reality, in each case, Cheney was answering a question from then-host Tim Russert about whether there were links between the 9/11 hijackers and Iraq. The then-Vice President informed viewers that a Czech intelligence agent had claimed that he observed one of the 9/11 hijackers meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, but also noted that there was debate whether the account was true.

Well, if Cheney couldn't prove it, why repeat the claim in the first place? Shouldn't Cheney have waited until the claim was definitively proven before repeating it in public?

As Wilmouth noted, Cheney made the claim four different times, which seems to indicated that there was an agenda behind doing so -- namely, justifying U.S. involvement in Iraq. And Cheney was still repeating it even after it had been all but discredited. Doesn't that indicate a pro-Iraq War agenda as well?

The evidence seems to indicate that Cheney wanted to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks. Wilmouth, however, seems to want to take refuge in Cheney's disclaimers to ignore the fact that if such disclaimers were necessary, Cheney should have never made the claim public.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:48 PM EDT
WND's Maloof Recruits Another Obama-Hater To his Anti-Obama Conspiracy
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Michael Maloof apparently thinks he has something going with his conspiracy theory that Preident Obama is systematically removing military commanders, despite the utter lack of evidence to back up the claim. Maloof has found another dupe -- er, supposed military expert to sign on to the conspiratorial claims made by crazy birther Paul Vallely:

President Obama is aiming a “wrecking operation” at the U.S. military, according to a former Defense Department official who was reacting to a WND report about his dismissal of nine generals and flag officers so far during his second term.

[...]

Frank Gaffney, founder and director of the Center for Security Policy and former Undersecretary of Defense for the Reagan Administration, cast his lot in with Vallely.

“President Obama is engaged in a wrecking operation on the U.S. military particularly, and under the guise of ‘fundamentally transforming America,’ doing what he can to remake society in his image,” he told WND.

Get “Court Disaster: How the CIA kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack.

Gaffney said he believes Obama may be attempting to install military rule or martial law as part of his plans, saying, “One of the issues that has been raised by colleagues of mine who are serious students of national security policy and practice is that a way of accelerating the transforming of America would be essentially dispensing with our constitutional form of government under the rubric of ‘emergency measures,’ martial law, a military shutdown of our society.

“Does the wrecking operation of the military have something to do with that particular purpose?” asked Gaffney.

Gaffney answers his own question by claiming the existence of an ongoing “purge.”

“Increasingly of late, there is effectively a purge going on of people of faith from the U.S. military, a social engineering of the institution of the military between homosexuals and women in combat, the evisceration of the military’s training resources and in some cases, senior leadership. Could you at some point get to a point where that military was willing to enforce martial law against the people of the United States under circumstances less than national emergency?

“It’s a conversation we ought to be having,” he said.

“When you look at the assaults on the Constitution Obama is engaged in, when you look at the assaults on the military Obama is engaged in, at least it is a scenario [martial law] that could both explain what he is doing and … what he has in mind,” Gaffney continued.

He contends, “The American people don’t want any part of where Obama is taking us, despite the fact they have elected him twice, but I believe that’s mostly because they are not aware of how truly radical and subversive Obama’s agenda is.”

Maloof didn't mention that Gaffney is such an Obama-hater he thinks Obama may still be a Muslim, so  he's hardly an objective or reliable source. But then, forwarding objective or reliable sources is not Maloof's intent, is it?


Posted by Terry K. at 8:13 PM EDT
MRC's Bozell Goes Mind-Reading to Bash NBC, Doesn't Understand What 'Censor' Means
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center issued this press release on Oct. 29:

In a bombshell report for NBC News.com, NBC News senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers found buried in the 2010 Obamacare regulations language predicting, “A reasonable range for the percentage of individual policies that would terminate is forty percent to sixty-seven percent.” Myers’ reporting shows that Barack Obama knowingly lied to the American people for more than three years when he regularly insisted that those who like their current health insurance would be able to keep it under Obamacare.

Yet, according to an analysis from the Media Research Center, this massive, deliberate breach of trust was worthy of only 21 seconds of coverage on NBC Nightly News, buried at the end of the show’s fourth story, with no follow up on Today. ABC and CBS completely censored Lisa Myers’ discovery with not one single second of coverage on either their morning or evening programs.

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell reacts:

“Barack Obama lied to the American people – repeatedly and with a straight face – every time he insisted that those who like their current healthcare could keep it under Obamacare. And he’ll keep lying to the American people because the liberal media refuse to hold him accountable.

“NBC News, whose own reporter found the language in Obamacare proving Obama knowingly lied to the people for over three years, gave this bombshell revelation a pathetic 21 seconds of coverage on Nightly News. There was no follow-up on Today. In other words, NBC News buried their own reporter to protect Obama.

 “This sends a clear message to the American people. As far as the liberal broadcast networks are concerned, when Barack Obama lies, it’s not news. What would Richard Nixon have given for a press corps this corrupt?”

The MRC does not know what "censor" means. If something was reported, it was, by definition, not censored.

Choosing not to report something others have reported is not censorship.

Failure to play up a story to the extent Bozell wants a story played is not censorship.

Failure of a news outlet to play a story to the extent Bozell wants it played across all of its platforms is not censorship.

Failure to acede to a right-wing activist's demands -- or any activist's demands -- is not censorship.

Second: How does Bozell know that "NBC News buried their own reporter to protect Obama"? Does he have any reporting to back up this assertion? Or is he just doing a bit of mind-reading?

The fact that Bozell insists on describing as "censorship" a failure of media outlets to give in to his ideological demands exposes the bullying nature of his anti-media crusade.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:53 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: If Jack Cashill Had A Book To Promote
Topic: WorldNetDaily
The WorldNetDaily columnist takes a break from Obama conspiracy-mongering to portray Trayvon Martin as a criminal and George Zimmerman as a civil-rights martyr. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 9:40 AM EDT
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
TruthRevolt's 'Exclusive' May Not Be So Exclusive
Topic: Horowitz

Ben Shapiro declared in an Oct. 28 TruthRevolt item: "Exclusive: PolitiFact Defends 'Half-True' Rating on Obama's Insurance Lie." Shapiro doesn't explain what is so "exclusive" about his post.

That would bed important to know, especially since NewsBusters also issued an Oct. 28 post by Matt Hadro with a similar headline: "What?! PolitiFact Says Obama's 'You Will Keep Your Health Insurance' Promise Is Still 'Half True'."

Unlike NewsBusters, TruthRevolt does not list the time of day its items are posted, so we don't know which post came first. But if the TruthRevolt post appeared after NewsBuysters, it would be really embarrassing -- not to mention dishonest -- to portray it as an "exclusive," especially since it contains nothing that wasn't in the NewsBusters post.

Again, it appears that TruthRevolt is simply aping NewsBusters. So if it's merely duplicating the content of others, what is its purpose, other than to further the David Horowitz cult of personality?


Posted by Terry K. at 9:58 PM EDT
WND's Maloof Tries to Create Conspiracy Over Dismissed Military Commanders
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Michael Maloof writes in an Oct. 28 WorldNetDaily article:

President Obama this year alone has fired some nine generals and flag officers, on top of at least four similar dismissals during his first term, suggesting that a purge may be the real reason behind the removals, which are being described as cases of personal misbehavior.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, claims it is part of Obama’s strategy to reduce U.S. standing worldwide.

“Obama is intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged,” he charged.

Duty personnel seem to back up this concern, suggesting that the firings are meant to send a message to “young officers down through the ranks” not to criticize the president or White House politics.

“They are purging everyone, and if you want to keep your job, just keep your mouth shut,” one source said.

Notice that Maloof cites only one on-the-record source for his speculation, someone who is not only "an outspoken critic of the Obama administration" but a crazy birther as well. His anonymous "duty personnel" are worthless if they can't step forward and back up their allegations.

Maloof is simply stringing together unrelated incidents to cobble together an anti-Obama conspiracy -- and he gets some of his facts wrong in the process. He writes:

In one case, U.S. Army Gen. Carter Ham, who commanded U.S. African Command when the consulate was attacked and four Americans were killed, was highly critical of the decision by the State Department not to send in reinforcements.

Obama has insisted there were no reinforcements in the area that night.

But Ham contends reinforcements could have been sent in time, and he said he never was given a stand-down order. However, others contend that he was given the order but defied it. He was immediately relieved of his command and retired.

Again, Maloof quotes no on-the-record sources. Contrary to Maloof's assertions, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has testified that due to a lack of "real-time informaton" about what was on the ground in Benghazi, "the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation." And Gen. Martin Dempsey has said that it is "absolutely false" that Ham was relieved of his command over Benghazi; his departure was "part of routine succession planning."

Maloof thinks you should trust his black-box anonymous sources and his crazy ex-generals over people who were actually directly involved in the incidents -- but he won't tell us why. That's a big reason right there not to trust anything Maloof has to say.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:44 PM EDT
Shocker! MRC Finally Discloses Bozell's Link To Catholic Group (One Of Them, Anyway)
Topic: Media Research Center

Tim Graham devotes an Oct. 25 NewsBusters post to expressing his unhappiness that, according to something called Catholic Education Daily, a class at Georgetown Law School "will have students working with a pro-abortion rights advocacy organization." (Apparently, Graham believes that some law students should be kept in the dark about certain aspects of the law for ideological reasons.) Graham concludes his post by noting:

PS: Catholic Education Daily is a publication of the Cardinal Newman Society. MRC president Brent Bozell serves on its board.

As near as we can tell, this is the first time anyone at the MRC has disclosed Bozell's right-wing Catholic activism to its readers. As we documented in 2009, CNSNews.com, the MRC's "news" division, had never disclosed Bozell's link to the Newman Society in four years of stories citing the group and promoting its dogmatic agenda.

On the other hand, the MRC has yet to disclose in its items on the Catholic League that Bozell is also on that organization's board of advisers.

So, hey, Tim Graham, you've made a good first step in doing the ethically correct thing in disclosing a conflict of interest. Now, try spreading the word to your colleagues so they can behave ethically too.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:24 PM EDT
Colin Flaherty Confuses Race-Baiting With Being A 'Student of Racial Violence'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Colin Flaherty begins his Oct. 27 WorldNetDaily article by calling himself a "student of racial violence." Is that what they're calling race-baiters obsessed with purported "black mob violence" these days?

Flaherty makes his race-baiting agenda all too clear in the article by mocking the idea of white people rioting, calling it "the Holy Grail: often talked about, but so rare, some doubt it even exists." He then cites an incident in Delaware that he dismisses as not being up to snuff:

ABC national news could not decide if it was a riot or a near-riot, but it did report students destroyed at least one garbage can, and others walked on a few lawns. Other network affiliates in Philadelphia breathlessly followed suit.

But the video tapes reveal a more tepid drama. Though this “riot” had major league numbers – with 3,000 students running, jumping, laughing and stopping traffic on the main street of this Newark college town – the violence, anger, hostility and criminality was strictly minor league, especially when compared with recent black mob violence.

Remember that Flaherty has different standards for white riots and black riots -- white riots come only in crowds of thousands, while Flaherty's "black mobs" include white people, Australian aborigines, and dogs.

Pro tip for Flaherty: If you're obsessing over "black mobs" and inflating their numbers to push a racial agenda, you're not a "student of racial violence" -- you're just a race-baiter.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:37 AM EDT
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
MRC's Bozell Is Still Offended That There Are Gays On His TV
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has always had issues with gays on TV -- i.e., its complaint that "Modern Family" commits the atrocity of letting you sympathize with gay characters. (The horror!)

MRC chief Brent Bozell, who we last saw in this particular arena dancing on the grave of "The New Normal," uses his Oct. 25 column to express outrage that gay characters are even allowed to be on TV while gay-bashers aren't:

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has issued a new report boasting that "TV hasn't merely reflected the changes in social attitudes; it has also had an important role in bringing them about. Time and again, it's been shown that personally knowing an LGBT person is one of the most influential factors in shifting one's views on LGBT issues, but in the absence of that, many viewers have first gotten to know us as television characters."

If network executives were honest, they'd be slamming this report. If. Haven't they routinely insisted that TV shows have zero effect on the audience? That's their constant mantra when defending sex and violence on TV. They're silent. They know exactly how much they influence.

GLAAD and The Hollywood Reporter commissioned a poll last fall that found in the past 10 years, about three times as many voters have become more supportive of "marriage equality" (31 percent) as more opposed (10 percent). When asked how television has influenced them, 27 percent said "inclusive" TV shows made them more "inclusive," while six percent were more "anti-marriage equality."

[...]

In the 2012-13 TV season, GLAAD found a record number of LGBT characters — 4.4 percent, or at least double their actual percentage of the population. Fox was honored for having these characters in 42 percent of their programming hours — although that wasn't enough for "Excellent" status, merely "Good."

[...]

They want children indoctrinated as well. GLAAD is also not shy when it comes to Teen Nick, Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel. Apparently, children also desperately need the propaganda of gay characters in 42 percent of programming hours. They're extremely happy with the liberalism of "ABC Family" and have relayed that Disney Channel executives promised GLAAD they will "introduce LGBT characters in an episode of its original series 'Good Luck Charlie' set to air in 2014, a first for the network." The first of many, they expect.

Here's the catch: Gay characters never face any real opposition to the gay agenda on these so-called "inclusive" programs. There is no measure of Orthodox religious inclusion and no real debates. The victory of the left is assumed without thinking. When a conservative character is created — like Ellen Barkin's "Nana" in "The New Normal" — it's a vicious cartoon, the kind that those "against defamation" folks deeply enjoy.

More ridiculous than Bozell's gay-bashing, however, is the MRC's response to criticism of it. TimGraham writes in an Oct. 27 NewsBusters post:

Brent Bozell’s latest culture column has spurred anger from the so-called Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The entertainment site Variety.com reports GLAAD advocate Wilson Cruz – who played a troubled gay teen on the ABC flop “My So-Called Life” in 1994 – found it “laughable,” “ridiculous,” and “misleading” for Bozell to ask for some kind of a debate on gay issues on TV, instead of the propaganda-fest we see routinely these days.

Borrowing the language of Orwell, Cruz said one-sided propaganda is “an accurate reflection of the American cultural fabric, which no longer accepts this kind of bigotry.”

Given that the MRC wants one-sided anti-gay propaganda of its own, Graham playing the "propaganda" card is hypocritical. And Graham offers no evidence to contradict GLAAD's claim that "the American cultural fabric ... no longer accepts this kind of bigotry." Of course, to do that, he would have to find a polling example outside the MRC offices, where the Bozell-enforced anti-gay agenda reigns supreme.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:46 PM EDT

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