MRC Denies That Anti Abortion Videos Were Dishonestly Edited, Influenced Planned Parenthood Killings Topic: Media Research Center
Melissa Mullins devotes a Jan. 21 MRC NewsBusters post to a screed against Teen Vogue for daring to write about Planned Parenthood's response to a anti-abortion group's secretly recorded videos. She bravely clings to her anti-abortion talking points, even in the face of reality. For instance, she writes in one of the "bias" points against the Teen Vogue article:
Bias #2: Calling the people behind the videos of conducting a “malicious smear campaign.” That in itself is incredibly subjective, but the truth is not.
Bias #3: Claiming the videos were “heavily edited in an effort to claim employees of Planned Parenthood sold “baby parts” for profit.” Were the videos edited? Yes – for brevity…however, the complete and unedited videos are online, stating the same as the shorter videos. Besides, you can’t put words into someone’s mouth when it’s on camera. Hey Teen Vogue – have you seen the videos? Or are you claiming ignorance like the Democrats who refused to watch the videos?
In fact, it's been amply documented that the edited videos do not accurately reflect the reality that's contained in the "complete and unedited" versions. In other words, they're not "the truth" at all.
Mullins then wrote:
Bias #6: Blaming an attack on Planned Parenthood that killed three people as a "devastating result" of these videos. This is absurd. It’s almost the same as saying the Matrix movies caused the Columbine school massacre.
Given that the shooter in the Planned Parenthood killings, Robert Dear, reportedly talked of "baby parts" upon his arrest -- a phrase that has been a key component of the MRC's promotion of the Center for Medical Progress' secretly recorded anti-abortion videos -- it's pretty safe to assume that the videos played some role in inspiring the shooting.
We're not aware that Mullins has criticized her publisher for repeatedlyblaming the Southern Poverty Law Center for a gunman's attack on the Family Reserach Council headquarters despite no evidence the gunman had any contact with the SPLC beyond looking at its website (which did not exhort anyone to violence).
Mullins concludes by ranting that "a magazine which targets teenaged girls is spoon-feeding them biased garbage such as this." So what's Mullins' excuse for her peddling of biased garbage?
WND Ridiculously Portrays NYC Blizzard Travel Ban As 'Martial Law' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily tried to make things sound as scary as possible in a Jan. 24 article:
It’s the nagging fear many have about our government: what would happen if martial law was declared? New York City just found out, at least temporarily.
Eleven states as well as Washington D.C. declared states of emergency in the wake of the massive record-breaking snowstorm which blanketed the East. But New York City went a step further. Governor Andrew Cuomo imposed emergency measures that seemed to many to be like “martial law” in New York City by ordering all people to stay inside under police enforcement. He issued an absolute travel ban for anything that is not an emergency vehicle.
Of course, a travel ban during what WND admits is a "massive record-breaking snowstorm" is nothing at all like martial law. As WND later admits, the ban was instituted so the streets could be clear of those massive, record-breaking amounts of snow.
And the travel ban had its intended effect: it helped New York City to reopen its roads quickly despite the record snowfall. "Because we put the travel ban in, Sanitation was able to get out there and plow as well as they did," Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
WND also might want to read up on the definition of martial law, which is usually applied in times of governmental chaos, such as a coup or a military takeover, and is usually accompanied by the suspension of civil law and civil rights. Needless to say, none of that happened in New York; ergo, there was no "martial law" there.
If there's anything close to martial law happening in the U.S. right now, it's the militia takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. But WND doesn't want to talk about that for some reason.
MRC Cheers RNC Dropping NBC From GOP Debate, Silent On RNC Dropping National Review Topic: Media Research Center
The right-wing Heathering of Donald Trump in National Review -- starring the Media Research Center's very own Brent Bozell -- has had consequences ... but the MRC won't talk about it.
Nowhere on NewsBusters -- the current front page for most MRC activities -- is it mention that the Republican National Committee dropped National Review as a sponsor of an upcoming GOP presidential debate.Bozell has apparently issued no statement on the removal he helped provoke -- none that his organization saw fit to reprint, anyway.
Ironically, this is the same debate from which the RNC bounced NBC as a sponsor just a few days before -- and the MRC couldn't have been happier about that development.
Bozell rushed out with a statement praising the decision to drop NBC, huffing that "it makes no sense to continue to allow committed left-wingers in the media to decide the nominee of the Republican Party," citing "the dreadful performance by CNBC’s moderators at the Republican debate in October." MRC apparatchik Dan Gainor added, "Serves 'em right!"
Of course, neither Bozell, for all its ranting about the purported bias of the CNBC debate, never provided any actual, objective evidence of it.
Given how vocal the MRC was about the RNC kicking out NBC, it's surprising that it's been utterly silent about the RNC's booting of National Review. Apparently, Bozell and Co. doesn't want to risk provoking the RNC any further.
And it's more than just affirmative action, it's propaganda. And you're trying to, well, create -- I mean, for instance, if in the movies, you have blacks who are always going to be leading scientists and physicists and they're the judges and they're the -- you know, Morgan Freeman, he's played both the president and God. Funny he wasn't cast as Moses during the 10 Commandments, I knoticed that. You know, you create these very unrealistic expectations when you have a society in which that same minority group is too much involved in drugs and, you know, they're not performing well, but yet you're going to wind up with expectations not just from them but from the population at large to see them in large numbers in professions in which under current circumstances they're certainly not likely to be entering in any large numbers. And so it skews expectations and then makes things like, you know, Black Lives Matter or #OscarsSoWhite, it makes them seem more plausible because you've created this, you know, unrealistic fantasy world, which is what Hollywood is.
Jada Smith is upset because her husband, Will Smith, didn’t win an Oscar for his movie “Concussion.” I’ve got an idea for you, Jada. Why don’t you make movies for yourselves?
Why can’t these blacks stop blaming whites and work on their character and craft so they can make movies that are worthy of recognition?
The only color Hollywood and the academy care about is green. Spike Lee, Jada Smith and other blacks complaining about being snubbed by the academy need to make better movies. Period.
According to reports, 60 percent of movie profits come from the foreign market, and movies starring blacks don’t do well overseas. The studios are in business to make money, so you can’t blame them for not casting more blacks.
In America, when you put out the best the marketplace will reward it. I don’t see a lot of Sidney Poitiers these days, or any great black movies worthy of the price of admission, let alone an Oscar.
Blacks are not being overlooked due to their race; they’re not winning Oscars because their work doesn’t stand out, and their movies don’t make money.
Blacks are taking the easy route and complaining and protesting to get their way. This is a continuation of the age-old war between Booker T. Washington’s “earn your way” and W.E.B. Dubois’ “agitate” to push your way in. These spoiled blacks are just repeating what Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter and other race hustlers have done successfully. They know that white liberals – who make up the bulk of Hollywood – will cave as they always do.
The path of least resistance for Spike Lee, Jada Smith and other angry blacks is agitation. Working on your craft and steadily getting better takes work – and who wants to do that?!
The problem with most black Americans today is that they feel entitled to have things handed to them. They’ve been told that white folks owe them, so when things don’t go their way, they cry “discrimination.”
“Shut up and act!” is what these spoiled brats should be told.
Will and Jada Pinkett own a production company called Overbook Entertainment. On their site, they tout that their company has "generated more than $3.0 billion dollars in worldwide box office receipts and even more in home video sales." Spike Lee's net worth is estimated at $40 million; his movies have grossed almost $400 million. Oprah Winfrey has her own media empire, and her net worth is an estimated $3 billion. Why can't these people pool their resources and cultivate talent instead of moaning about being excluded by whites?
They can't do it because most blacks cannot work together; they're jealous and distrustful of one another. They have a spiritual and moral deficiency because most haven't been raised in stable two-parent homes. The overwhelming majority of them haven't had good fathers.
-- Jesse Lee Peterson, Jan. 24 WorldNetDaily column
Last week, the Media Research Center joined other anti-abortion groups in demanding that "the media" cover the annual March for Life, even though it offered no evidence that other annual protest marches get the kind of coverage it demands, or that the march itself does anything inherently newsworthy. MRC chief Brent Bozell is quoted as saying:
After last year’s media blackout of the March for Life, the networks owe it to their viewers to meaningfully and accurately cover Friday’s march. The media have covered all manner of protests in our nation’s capital no matter how large or small, but they refuse to cover hundreds of thousands of peaceful marchers advocating for the unborn. We will raise our voices on behalf of these precious children and let the media know that they must cover the march. If the media want to retain any shred of credibility, they will give the March for Life and other life issues the full and fair coverage they deserve.
But does the MRC "news" division, CNSNews.com, demonstrate the kind of "full and fair coverage" of abortion it demands from "the media"?
Nope. CNS' abortion coverage is heavily slanted to the anti-abortion side, with pro-choice views -- when they're not being censored completely -- attacked and given no opportunity to respond to those attacks. CNS' runup to the March for Life was particularly telling. For instance:
In a Jan. 19 article touting a poll climing that "rhe vast majority of Americans, including those who label themselves pro-choice, favor restrictions on abortion," Lauretta Brown not only failed to obtain any pro-choice response to the poll, she failed to disclose that the organization that commissioned the poll, the Knights of Columbus, identifies itself as an anti-abortion group and, thus, has an interest in commissioning polls that reflect its views on the subject.
A Jan. 20 article by Barbara Hollingsworth touted a doctor "who bought out an abortion practitioner 16 years ago is now using the abortionist’s own instruments of death to deliver a pro-life message." Hollingsworth made no apparent effort to contact a pro-choice activist to respond to the claims the doctor made.
A Jan. 22 article by Susan Jones uncritically repeated David Daleiden's claim that his secretly (and possibly illegally) recorded videos of Planned Parenthood officials were not "edited to mislead." Jones ignored extensive evidence that Daleiden's videos were, in fact, deceptively edited.
A Jan. 22 article by Melanie Hunter repeats Carly Fiorina's anti-abortion attacks at the March for Life, including referring th "the horrific truth of the Planned Parenthood videos." Hunter sought no pro-choice response to Fiorina's remarks, and she, like Jones, ignored evidence that the videos are deceptively edited.
A Jan. 25 article by Jones quoted a Republican member of Congress smearing Planned Parenthood as "child abuse incorporated." Jones made no attempt to contact Planned Parenthood for a response.
The only article CNS published amid its March for Life coverage was an unbylined Jan. 22 article noting President Obama's statement on the Roe v. Wade anniversary. It carried the biased headline "58,586,256 Abortions Later--Obama Celebrates Roe v. Wade: It Affirmed Freedom."
If the MRC's own "news" coverage of abortion is so wildly biased -- something it has historically been -- what moral authority does it have to demand that other, more legitimate news outlets fit its coverage to the MRC's whims.
We've written CNS asking these questions. We'll post a response if CNS provides one.
WND Portrays Trailer Park Owner As Victim, Hides His Impending Payday Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh writes in a Jan. 16 WorldNetDaily article:
The city of Palo Alto, California, wants a court to dismiss a lawsuit opposing its demand that the family owners of a mobile home park pay some $8 million for permission to close it down.
Lawyers for the park owners say they are just asking for the “courthouse doors [to] remain open for people, like the Jissers, to make their case when the government wrongfully takes their property.”
As WND reported, the Pacific Legal Foundation filed the case on behalf of the owners of the Buena Vista mobile home park. The owners want to close their business, but with a local median housing price of $2.46 million, the city demands that the tenants be compensated so they can find another place to live.
“No one should be forced to carry on a business that they want to close,” said PLF Attorney Larry Salzman in a statement. “The city is treating the Jissers as an ATM to solve a problem they didn’t cause – the lack of affordable housing in Palo Alto. That’s not just wrong, it’s unconstitutional.”
Since Unruh cares about telling only one side of the story, that of the Jisser family and their attorneys -- a statement from city officials is relegated to the very last paragraph of his article -- he leaves out pertinent facts.
Like the fact that the Jissers do not, in fact, have to close the trailer park -- they could sell it as a going business. But he has rejected offers to do so. In fact, city and county officials offered to pay the Jissers $39 million for the trailer park, but the familyrejected it, blaming a lawsuit filed by trailer park residents.
It appears the Jissers want an even bigger payday. The plot of land could fetch as much as $55 million for redevelopment into market-rate housing, according to the Wall Street Journal -- more than enough for the Jissers to pay that $8 million to his former tenants and still make more than they would by selling it intact.
The fact that the Jissers are simply choosing between a big payday (if they let their tenants stay) and an even bigger one (if they kick them out) does not fit WND's anti-government narrative. And Unruh is nothing if not a loyal spouter of WND's right-wing talking points.
The ConWeb Censors How Badly Benghazi Movie Tanked Topic: The ConWeb
We've detailed how the ConWeb plugged the heck out the new film "13 Hours," about the attack on Benghazi, and praised it for functioning as "rightwing propaganda." But the ConWeb won't tell you one key thing about it: how well it did at the box office.
That's because it didn't.
In its opening weekend, "13 Hours" -- which cost $50 million to make -- made just $19.2 million, despite having the action-film credentials of Michael Bay behind it and despite a wide opening on more than 2,300 screens. This past weekend, the film took in just $9 million. That does not bode well for the prospects of making back its production costs.
Forbes thinks that one reason the film is tanking is that it's "trapped by its inherently political origins" and how the film was marketed to conservatives and the right-wing media outlets who praised it as a way to torpedo Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Remember the headline of Drew Zahn's WorldNetDaily review of the film was "How can Hillary possibly win after this?" Forbes adds: "In short, the film arguably wouldn’t have existed save for the controversies surrounding the 2012 terrorist attack, but it was the existence of said controversies that prevented the film from crossing over beyond the would-be converted."
You won't read any bad news about "13 Hours" in the ConWeb, however. WND, Accuracy in Media and NewsBusters have all censored news of the film's tanking. CNSNews.com published the usual Associated Press stories on weekend box office takes, one of which noted that the film "failed to make a large impact." But they were never given a link on the CNS front page, which means they may as well not have been published at all given how unlikely the typical CNS reader is to read anything on the site that didn't appear on the front page.
The film's flop hasn't stopped the ConWeb from promoting it, however. The Media Research Center's Tim Graham whined in a Jan. 18 NewsBusters post about how a Washington Post film reviewer told the truth about the film's political agenda. Even though that post was written after the opening weekend numbers came out, Graham made sure not to mention that his beloved film tanked.
That's ironic, because the MRC has a history of mocking paltry box office takes when they involve films they don't like.
WND Tries To Revive Clinton Body Count, Pretend It's Not Discredited Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we've noted, a key component of WorldNetDaily's plans to cover Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is to relive its '90s coverage of (Bill) Clinton scandals, however false and misguided that original reporting was.
A Jan. 17 WND article by Chelsea Schilling goes on a deep dive into one of these pseudo-scandals, claiming that "Women in Clinton’s past were targeted by the IRS and reportedly found themselves on death lists":
As WND reported back in 1999, during Linda Tripp’s two-day deposition with attorneys from Judicial Watch on Filegate issues, she mentioned a “list” that was given to her mysteriously.
While she believed the list was left at her workstation in the White House counsel’s office by her former friend Monica Lewinsky, the list originated with former WND investigative reporter David Bresnahan.
Known around the Internet as “the Body Count,” the list was a collection of names of people associated with Clinton administration scandals who died mysterious and often violent deaths. Bresnahan broke the story of the list during the summer of 1997 while researching his book, “Cover Up: The Art and Science of Political Deception.”
“I started looking into all the various deaths of people that were involved in various Clinton scandals,” Bresnahan said in 1999. “I started to investigate the entire picture instead of just one focused event.”
clintonsBresnahan’s list was the same list given to Tripp, as well as the head of the FBI and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to name a few.
“It was common discussion on radio talk shows,” Bresnahan said. “Every student of the Clinton scandals would run into the list.”
The list spread on the Internet and received extensive coverage on talk radio.
Bresnahan was able to construct such a lengthy list because he investigated all of the scandals surrounding Clinton.
“Nobody out there was putting it all together,” he said. “If you look at one scandal, you’ll find one dead guy. When you investigate all Clinton scandals, you find similarities, you find common tactics, you find common actions and you find dead people.”
Schilling makes sure to ignore the fact that Bresnahan's "Clinton body count" has been utterly discredited. As Snopes points out, the goal of the list was to play word games by portraying the deaths as somehow directly implicating a Clinton in causing it -- which there is no evidence: "The longer the list, the more impressive it looks and the less likely anyone is to challenge it. By the time readers get to the bottom of the list, they'll be too weary to wonder what could possibly be relevant about the death of people such as Bill Clinton's mother's chiropractor."
As Snopes, explains, "Any unexplained death can automatically be attributed to President Clinton by inventing a connection between him and the victim." For instance, one person on the list, former White House intern Mary Mahoney, was killed during the 1997 robbery of a Starbucks where she worked, along with two co-workers.Deaths by natural causes have also been thrown onto the list. Sn opes concludes:
One final question to ask yourself before falling for any Clinton Body Count list: If the Chief Executive was having people bumped off left, right, and center, why aren't Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp on this list? At the time of Mary Mahoney's death — a death this list hints was ordered by Clinton — neither Tripp nor Lewinsky were the high-profile household names they now are; they were complete unknowns. It would be another six months before information about them would explode into the news. If the President were in the habit of having those dangerous to his presidency put in the ground, why didn't he order these deaths?
But then, Schilling's job isn't to do actual reporting (something at which she fails miserably); her job is to write what WND wants told and not to dig too deep into it. That's how she stays employed at WND.
MRC's Bozell Leads Conservative Heathering of Trump Topic: Media Research Center
National Review's issue dedicated to denouncing Donald Trump is, in effect, a mass Heathering. And who should be in the middle of that but a guy who runs an organization dedicated to Heathering anyone who deviates in the slightest from right-wing orthodoxy, Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center.
Indeed, Bozell's anti-Trump rant in National Review shuns Trump because he doesn't "walk with us":
A real conservative walks with us. Ronald Reagan read National Review and Human Events for intellectual sustenance; spoke annually to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Young Americans for Freedom, and other organizations to rally the troops; supported Barry Goldwater when the GOP mainstream turned its back on him; raised money for countless conservative groups; wrote hundreds of op-eds; and delivered even more speeches, everywhere championing our cause. Until he decided to run for the GOP nomination a few months ago, Trump had done none of these things, perhaps because he was too distracted publicly raising money for liberals such as the Clintons; championing Planned Parenthood, tax increases, and single-payer health coverage; and demonstrating his allegiance to the Democratic party.
We conservatives should support the one candidate who walks with us.
That's some textbook Heathering right there. It's only in the bio blurb that it's noted Bozell has endorsed Ted Cruz, who is apparently "the one candidate who walks with us" to which Bozell was referring.
This effectively marks the MRC's shift from quietly hands-off on Trump to actively opposing him. We've documented how the MRC refused to follow up on Trump's accusation of media bias against him in the Fox News-hosted debate, but w as much more amenable to echoing Ted Cruz's bias accusations.
Now that Bozell has gone public with his anti-Trump Heathering, the MRC itself is becoming more anti-Trump. A Jan. 24 post by Curtis Houck highlights now National Review editor Rich Lowry "blasted Republican strategist Alex Castellanos for coming out as someone who’d accept Trump as the GOP nominee after his attempts to seek alternatives (i.e. a moderate, establishment candidate) failed and 'your donors wouldn't go with you.'" While Houck noted National Review's anti-Trump issue, he failed to disclose that his boss contributed to it.
A Jan. 23 NewsBusters post by Tom Johnson highlights "left-leaning pundits commenting Friday on National Review’s anti-Donald Trump editorial and symposium" pointing out that conservatives helped create the rise of Trump, but he also failed to disclose that the publisher of NewsBusters was a key player in that "symposium."
Ex-Newsmax Reporter Kessler Is Still A Trump Sycophant Topic: Newsmax
We documented how Ronald Kessler, then with Newsmax, was an enthustiastic promoter of Donald Trump's presidential ambitions during the 2012 presidential campaign -- while failing to disclose he was a good friend (or at least a sycophantic hanger-on) of Trump, having slobbered all over the guy in a 1999 book he wrote on Palm Beach's social scene.
Now Trump is actually running for president, and Kessler remains a loyal sycophant.
The headline of a piece Kessler wrote for the gossipy British tabloid the Daily Mail -- "Truffle and ricotta ravioli, surf & turf, Trump's own bubbly and Secret Service agents struggling to open bejeweled clutch purses to search for weapons: My New Year's Eve dinner (and other good times) with Donald Trump" -- is as overstuffed as the article itself, dripping with praise for Trump as he lovingly documents the "black-tie New Year's Eve party, which my wife Pamela Kessler and I attended at Mar-a-Lago, his club and Florida home in Palm Beach":
First came hors d'oeuvres and champagne on the terrace overlooking the pool, always heated to 78 degrees, like the second pool right on the ocean.
Cocktail shrimp, stone crab claws, cold lobster, oysters on the half shell, sushi, and caviar dished onto blini were among the offerings.
After that, the guests swanned over to the ballroom for dinner and dancing. No one would be hungry for dinner, which included truffle and ricotta ravioli and filet mignon and scallops. The bubbly: from Trump's own Charlottesville, Virginia vineyard.
If Donald had wanted to invite them, he could have attracted some of the biggest celebrities in the country to the bash. But the guests were club members and old friends.
Donald's family, including nine-year-old Barron, sat with him watching the rocking event band, Party on the Moon.
Kessler went on tell how "Like a proud maitre d', Donald went around greeting guests and posing for photos with his stunning wife Melania," repeat unsubstantiated allegations about Hillary Clinton's relationship with the Secret Service, quotes Trump emplpoyees about how awesome he is, then took a potshot at President Obama before fawning over Trump one more time:
In his book 'Dreams From My Father', Barack Obama admitted that as a community organizer, he got some asbestos removed from some pipes in one Chicago housing project but accomplished little else.
In contrast, Trump has amassed a fortune of $10 billion and employs 34,500 people. He didn't do that by being an idiot, a nut, or a bigot, some of the kinder terms that have been used to describe him.
Trump is running for president because he believes deeply in America. He symbolized that when he engaged in a protracted dispute with the town of Palm Beach over the American flag he erected on the front lawn of Mar-a-Lago on South Ocean Boulevard.
That's the kind of writing that ensures Kessler and his wife keep getting invited to Mar-a-Lago. Appropriate, since Kessler gave up being a serious reporter years ago.
(Photo: Ronald and Pamela Kessler with Trump, from the Daily Mail article.)
WND's Favorite Obama-Hating, Projecting Mind-Reader Is Back Topic: WorldNetDaily
Andrew Hodges is a self-proclaimed forensic profiler who purports to uncover "secret" confessions in President Obama's words through pseudo-scientific methods -- though it seems more accurate to observe that Hodges is just an opportunist who's projecting his own hate onto the president and try to make a little sweet right-wing coin in the process. Indeed, WorldNetDaily loves him and sells his Obama-bashing book.
Now, Hodges is back with more made-up revelations about Obama he purports to have gleaned from, well, who knows where. And WND is on it.
In a November article, Bob Unruh dutifully transcribed Hodges' displaced Obama-hate:
President Obama is revealing, through his Iran deal, a “destructive rage beyond belief” that should be alarming to the world because of its implication for the balance of nuclear-weapons power, according to a forensic profiler whose work includes the double-murder case against O.J. Simpson and the Natalie Holloway disappearance.
Andrew G. Hodges, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice, in a response to WND, cited Obama’s recent description of himself as an “uncaged bear” and his statement there’s “no telling what I might do.”
“He warns us he’s slipping mentally – his judgment impaired,” Hodges said.
[...]
Hodges explains Obama uses “three basic psycholinguistic maneuvers, all unconscious: denial, projection and use of key images which reflect his true intent.”
“Secretly his words tell us about his true psyche deep down.”
He cites a 2014 speech by Obama in which “he secretly confessed to hidden attacks on America driven by a deep inner madness.”
“Not a clinical madness but a ‘near madness’ – the disturbance of a secretly angry traumatized leader,” Hodges said.
Well, Hodges does know all about projection, doesn't he?
But wait, Hodges is not done projecting. Unruh does some more transcribing in a Jan. 10 article:
President Obama, despite his promises the U.S. “will not relent in the ISIS campaign” and his assurance that the world would not accept extremists’ attacks, such as that in Paris, actually is saying he is doing nothing of real consequence, “In fact, accepting the ISIS attacks as normal.”
“Indeed, he has constructed a new normal by failing to protect America, a stance which he has totally rationalized. In fact, he remains totally submissive to ISIS.”
The new comments come from Andrew G. Hodges, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice, in an email conversation with WND.
[...]
Hodges conclusion?
“We have an exceptionally weak president who is actually destructive in his passivity. He’s misguided and secretly terrified. These traits lie behind the smooth bluster of his powerless words. No one but Obama believes ISIS is the ‘JV.’ Again you can see Obama’s confession hidden in this key projection. Obama, not ISIS, is the true ‘JV’ – a pretend president who’s in way over his head when it comes to protecting America.”
Does the fact that Hodges keeps bring up projection mean he's secretly admitting he doesn't know what he's talking about and is just projecting his own Obama-hate and created this imaginary world of "thoughtprint decoding" to make up for his own career and personal inadequacies? Makes at least as much sense as anything Hodges claims.
The United States has approved the settlement of 483 Syrian refugees since the Paris terror attacks last November heightened concerns about potential security risks in the refugee admission program – and only one of them (0.2 percent) is a Christian.
One-quarter of the 483 Syrian refugees admitted into the United States since Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) terrorists attacked the French capital on November 13--125 of them--are men between the ages of 14 and 50.
The sole Christian among the 483 is identified in State Department Refugee Processing Center data as an adherent of the Greek Orthodox Church.
As he has previously, Goodenough ignores his own reporting and that of his fellow CNS reporters on why so few Christians have been admitted: the U.S. statistics are based on numbers from the United Nations, and Christian refugees tend to go through other agencies.Also, some Christians are not fleeing Syria because they feel safer under Bashar al-Assad.
Goodenough also waits until the final paragraph of his 19-paragraph to admit one other inconvenient fact: the Muslims are facing religious persecution as well, since ISIS is targeting them.
But in Goodenough's right-wing world, Muslims aren't real people and don't suffer real persecution, while Christians must always be put first.
After Ignoring Cruz For Months, WND's Corsi Pretends To Be A Reasonable Birther Topic: WorldNetDaily
Earlier this week, WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi did an interview with Alan Colmes on his FoxNews.com webcast (WND's headline oddly billed Colmes as a "Fox News star," even though he currently just does a radio show and the webcast, and he hasn't hosted a show on Fox News proper for years; then again, this is also the closest anyone from WND has gotten to Fox News proper in years, so it has to take what it can get). Corsi's still clinging to his Obama birther fantasies, suggesting that Obama's birth certificate is fake and that there was likely fraud involved in portraying him as a citizen.
Colmes then got to the key questions regarding Ted Cruz's eligibility, trying to pin down Corsi:
COLMES: So will you be going after Cruz the same way you went after Obama for not being born here--
CORSI: Well, I've already published this and made a point of it.
[...]
COLMES: You've been one of the most prominent writers about the Obama birth issue. Would you do the same if Ted Cruz is the nominee?
CORSI: I've already started.
COLMES: What are you doing?
CORSI: I wrote an article making the point I just made, that under Vattel standard --
COLMES: So you will go after Cruz -- you're no fan of the left, I know, but Cruz --
CORSI: -- Cruz is not a natural born citizen. We're going to have to expand the standard to get Cruz and Rubio, because Rubio has a problem...
It's only a five-minute interview, so not much gets covered. But notice how Corsi weasels out of how he has ignored Cruz birther issues until now, citing how he just "wrote an article" on the subject. That, presumably, is the one where he tries to cover for Cruz by uncritically citing a congressional research report on the issue that he previously attacked because it made the case that Obama (and, by extension, Cruz) is eligible.
If Corsi is just now getting around to covering the Cruz birther issue, he's either pretty lazy or willfully blind. Certainly he's been aware of the issue for years; he could have been reporting on it for the months that Cruz has been a presidential candidate. We pointed out last year that Corsi ignored eligibility issues when Cruz announced his candidacy and seemed concerned only that Cruz's wife had links to the "globalist" Council on Foreign Relations.
But let's be clear: Corsi and WND like Cruz, and he didn't want to make his eligibility an issue for fear of hurting his campaign. It's only because Donald Trump has turned it into an issue that Corsi and WND have finally gotten around to covering it -- and in a way that's completely opposite of their relentless birther attacks on Obama. Indeed, another Corsi article at WND complains that Trump is using the birther issue to drive Cruz off message.
More proof of this is in Corsi's Twitter feed. Even though, again, Cruz has been a presidential candidate for months, it's not until about Jan. 15 that he starts bothering to tweet about the birther issue, mainly to declare that "TRUMP WAS RIGHT" that it would come up and that (gadfly-ish) Democrats would file legal actions on the issue.
Corsi and WND never actually cared about the Constitution when applying birtherism to Obama; it was just another attempt to destroy him. They were determined to ignore Cruz birtherism until Trump made it an issue -- and effectively shamed them into covering it because it was all too noticeable that they were, in fact, not going to treat Cruz like they did Obama.
Corsi now has to pretend to care about the Constitution, calling for a definitive court ruling on what a "natural born citizen" is. Of course, if Corsi can't even accept that Obama's birth certificates are real, there's no point in him suddenly trying to look like a reasonable birther now.
Somebody Said Something Less Than Nice About Mark Levin, And The MRC Is ON IT Topic: Media Research Center
It's apparently part of the Media Research Center's business arrangement with Mark Levin that it defends him against anyone and everyone who voices any criticism of him, no matter how benign.
That would appear to explain this Jan. 18 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein:
Mark Levin is American media's most knowledgeable, passionate proponent of constitutional conservatism. No wonder Chris Matthews hates him.
On his MSNBC show this evening, Matthews slurred Levin as "one of the most distasteful human beings out there." Matthews' attack came in the context of commenting on the defense that Levin and Rush Limbaugh have mounted against Donald Trump's claim that Ted Cruz is "nasty."
That, presumably, was immediately forwarded to Levin by the folks at the MRC. So we get a follow-up post by Tim Graham -- it apparently required a top MRC official to do this -- detailing Levin's (lengthy) response to Matthews, which includes the witty repostes "I find him to be a puke" and "This guy’s a nobody. He’s stuck on MSLSD his entire career."
So it seems "American media's most knowledgeable, passionate proponent of constitutional conservatism" has a bit of trouble handling criticism. Not that it's an obstacle to the the MRC's contractual love affair with him, of course.
How non-seriously is WorldNetDaily taking the issue of Ted Cruz's eligibility? It published a column mocking Cruz birthers.
Matt Barber took a break from hating gays to do said mocking in his Jan. 15 WND column:
Stinkin’ Canadian. Dang feriner, conspirin’ to come over here and replace our delicious, crispy, all-American bacon with that floppy, communist, Canadian crap. And Budweiser? Like your Budweiser? Forget it. If he’s elected, it’s nothing but that skunky Molson swill for you, my friend. Football? Banned. It’s all sticks, pucks and missing teeth from here on out. A wall on the southern border? ISIS? TB-infected Mesicans and Central Americans? Ha! A mere diversion. Trump needs to build that wall up north to keep commie Canucks like Ted Cruz out of the White House.
He’s gaining on The Donald, you see. And so finally the question of his eligibility to serve as our 45th U.S. president is fair game. Oh, sure, Ted grew up in Houston, Texas. And, oh, sure, his mother, who happened to be over the border in Canada when Ted was born, is a U.S citizen, herself born in Wilmington, Delaware, which, oh, sure, automatically makes Ted a U.S. citizen from birth. But, hey! I, the guys down at the Elks Lodge with their pocket constitutions and whatnot, and Donald Trump, who, with his own political self-interests in mind has suddenly flip-flopped on the subject, all disagree. Ted Cruz is ineligible to serve as President of the United States based upon our extreme-minority take on the phrase, “Natural-born citizen.”
For that matter, and based upon our own arbitrary and narrow definition – I know, it’s not defined in the Constitution, but derpity derp derp anyway – some might suggest that, rather than being grandfathered in, and to be fair to future generations, eight of the first nine U.S. presidents should have been ineligible to serve as well. Since they were all born as British citizens in the British colonies, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, et al., should have been, one and all, constitutionally ineligible.
Sure, the world’s on fire and America is spiraling down the global toilet bowl of life, but before we start worrying about tertiary issues like “national security,” “the economy” or “illegal immigration,” I, The Donald and the boys down at the Elks Lodge want – nay, we demand! – that Ted Cruz be immediately arrested, tagged in the ear and bussed back to Calgary posthaste.
And then, let’s get about the business of impeaching (posthumously, of course. Whaddya think, we’re idiots?) James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson and the rest of them shifty immigrants already mentioned above, before we hold even one more debate.
Imagine WND running a column by one of its stable of right-wing columnists mocking Obama birthers between 2007 and 2014. Actually, you have to imagine it because it didn't happen. We don't recall Barber weighing in on the subject of eligibility before -- hating gays takes a lot of time, after all -- and he makes sure not to mention Obama in his column.
Oh, and Barber is completely wrong that the first nine presidents are ineligible to serve. The Constitution -- article 2, section 1 -- specifically grants presidential eligibility to those who "a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution," which covers "James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson and the rest of them shifty immigrants."
And since he asked: Yes, we do think Barber is an idiot.
Melissa Mullins devotes a Jan. 21 MRC NewsBusters post to a screed against Teen Vogue for daring to write about Planned Parenthood's response to a anti-abortion group's secretly recorded videos. She bravely clings to her anti-abortion talking points, even in the face of reality. For instance, she writes in one of the "bias" points against the Teen Vogue article:
WorldNetDaily tried to make things sound as scary as possible in a Jan. 24 
The right-wing Heathering of Donald Trump in National Review -- starring the Media Research Center's very own Brent Bozell -- has had consequences ... but the MRC won't talk about it.
Jada Smith is upset because her husband, Will Smith, didn’t win an Oscar for his movie “Concussion.” I’ve got an idea for you, Jada. Why don’t you make movies for yourselves?
Last week, the Media Research Center joined other anti-abortion groups in 
Bob Unruh writes in a Jan. 16 WorldNetDaily 
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National Review's 
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CNSNews.com's Patrick Goodenough has cranked out 
Earlier this week, WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi did an interview with Alan Colmes on his FoxNews.com webcast (WND's headline 
It's apparently part of the Media Research Center's 
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