CNS Portrays Trump Tax Cuts As Budget-Buster As Partisan Debate Rather Than Actual Fact Topic: CNSNews.com
Last week, we detailed how CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey fretted about the rising federal budget deficit and debt while failing to mention the fact that a Republican-promoted, Trump-signed tax cut played a big role in increasing the deficit this year.
This was followed by an Oct. 17 article by Susan Jones that was only slightly less dishonest in approaching the subject. Jones uncritically let Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spread the blame for the deficits, even though it's his party that's currently in control of the White House and Congress:
The total national debt increased by more than a trillion dollars in Fiscal 2018, reaching $21.5 trillion at the end of September; and the FY '18 budget deficit was almost $779 billion.
Although the situation is "very disturbing," it cannot be blamed on Republicans alone, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Bloomberg News on Tuesday:
It's driven by the three big entitlement programs that are very popular – Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. That's 70 percent of what we spend every year. The subject we were just discussing, the funding of the government, is about 30 percent of what we spend.
There's been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those programs. Hopefully, at some point here, we'll get serious about this. We haven't been yet.
McConnell said the opportunity for entitlement reform existed during the Obama years, when for six of those years, Republicans controlled either one or both chambers of Congress.
"I talked to President Obama about it a number of times," McConnell said. "It would have been the perfect time to do it. Think of Reagan and Tip O'Neill coming together in the early 80s to raise the age for Social Security. It took it out of the political arena and made it possible for it to be successful... unfortunately, it was not achieved."
Democrats blame the Republican tax cuts for ballooning the FY 2018 deficit, and they consistently resist any attempt to trim entitlements.
In fact, there are three main drivers of the current deficit: The Trump tax cut, military spending and entitlement spending.
Also, note how Jones framed the idea that the Trump tax cuts blew a hole in the deficit as a partisan debate by complain that it's what Democrats say rather than an undisputed fact. Well played, Susan.
Over the past few months, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah's column has consisted almost entirely of either begging for money from readers to keep WND alive (and ranting about the internet "cartel" purportedly conspiring to put him out of business) or promoting his new book about the Bible. He hasn't even written about Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination despite originally opposing it because Kavanaugh was a part of Kenneth Starr's investigation that he deemed insufficiently vengeful against the Clintons.
Farah dipped a toe back into column-length political screeds in his Oct. 25 piece complaining that Democrats are bullying President Trump and playing the "fascism card." And as usual, he's spreading lies. Like this claim:
Already we’ve had real, potentially lethal violent attacks from actual Democratic campaign operatives – one designed to wipe out a group of Republicans believing they could still hold baseball games with their “colleagues.” One, Steve Scalise, the majority whip, was nearly lost. Another senator, Rand Paul, is still dealing with a vicious physical attack.
The man who shot Scalise, James Hodgkinson, was not an "actual Democratic campaign operative" -- actual Democrats where he lived had never heard of him -- nor was Rene Boucher, the man who attacked Paul over a yard-waste dispute, not politics.
Farah concluded his column with this rant:
Americans are being bullied into keeping their mouths shut. Most of us don’t like unpleasantness like this. They avoid cities for lots of reasons – they’re controlled by Dems, which means they are not controlled. We’re all losing our liberty.
Now the Honduran storm troopers are here. What else can we call them?
Meanwhile, we have Dems ready to drop ICE if they are able to take power.
This is insanity.
We’re losing our country.
Wait, what? The migrant caravan arching through Central America attempting to reach the United States to seek asylum are "storm troopers"? Where did that come from?
Farah's intemperate rant looks even worse when you consider that two days later, a man killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in no small part because he was angry that Jews were allegedly aiding immigrant refugees in the caravan, whom he called "invaders."
Maybe Farah should just stick to begging for money and plugging his book.
MRC Writer Criticizes NY Times Obit Of Conservative, Doesn't Disclose Man Gave Money to MRC Topic: NewsBusters
Clay Waters complains in an Oct. 15 NewsBusters post:
Monday’s New York Times obituary by Robert McFadden for American beer pioneer William Coors (of the brewing company that carries his name) violated the usual tasteful norms for an obit, starting with the headline and the text box: “William Coors, Ultraconservative Leader Of Brewery Based in Colorado, Dies at 102.” The text box: “A chairman’s speeches were often labeled racist, sexist and homophobic.”
Waters also complained that "McFadden stubbornly kept the focus on liberal outrage, not the Ivy League chemical engineer who had an inventive and successful career building the company." Curiously, Waters did not dispute the accuracy of those claims -- perhaps because the obit lays out in detail the evidence to support them.
Waters failed on another count: He didn't disclose that the Media Research Center, which publishes the blog on which his post appeared, has reportedly received funding from the Castle Rock Foundation, which was backed by Coors money.
Seems like an important conflict of interest to report, yet Waters failed to do so.
MRC Latino Keeps Insisting That Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Works Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long defended the discredited, potentially harmful practice of gay conversion therapy -- and lately, it's been the MRC's Latino division pushing it. Let's go back and review an item we overlooked at the time.
An Aug. 14 MRC Latino piece by Morela Scull complained that viewers of a CNN en Espanol segment on conversion therapy "were subjected to only one point of view on the issue" of England banning the practice, asserting that a ban on conversion therapy "limits the freedom of speech and worse yet, the option of offering its citizens a therapy that many believe – and confirm – works." Scull wrote:
According to an expert on the issue of homosexuality, Quentin L. Van Meter, MD, the ban is in fact an assault on freedom of speech and regrettable for homosexuals who can benefit from the therapy, particularly those who voluntarily want to undergo conversion therapy, because their condition will be ignored, and their ailments shifted aside, attributed to “social stigmatization”.
Van Meter is so anti-gay that he canceled his membership in the respected American Academy of Pediatrics because it advocated against stigmatization of LGBT youth. He has since become involved with the decidedly less respected American College of Pediatricians -- a right-wing group of anti-gay physicians -- where he signed a position statement attacking transgenderism as "gender ideology" and "an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body and it should be treated as such."
Nevertheless, Scull goes on to write:
Van Meter contends that the issue has escaped the realm of science and has become a political affair orchestrated by powerful lobby groups to silence doctors and scientists who sustain that voluntary conversion therapy can help address deeper underlying issues (often related to adverse childhood events) such as depression and anxiety that many homosexuals face and which can be worked through by using therapy. Dr. Van Meter pointed out critical studies regarding homosexuality such as those carried out by Dr Lawrence S. Meyer and Dr. Paul R Mc Hugh or Dr. Kenneth J. Zucker, PhD.
We've previously highlighted how McHugh is an anti-gay researcher whose work has been discredited. Scull linked to a paper co-authored by McHugh and Mayer in a Christian-oriented journal, which critics note is highly biased toward confirming their anti-gay beliefs; for instance, they reference only one of six studies in the peer-reviewed literature of the past 16 years that employ proper probability-sampling methods, which happens to be the one with the lowest estimate of genetic influence on sexual orientation. The link Scull supplied for Zucker is about treatment for children with gender identity issues, not homosexualilty; Zucker deviates from the greater psychiatric community in advocating conversion therapy in failing to differentiate between gender identity and sexual orientation.
Scull also complained that the CNN en Espanol commentator "also used the tired scare tactic of claiming that the methodology for receiving conversion therapy includes raping girls so that through sexual intercourse they can be 'corrected', a sensationalist remark that Dr. Van Meter explains may have existed a century ago; today it is based on psychotherapy." In fact, corrective rape occurs throughout the world even today, and she provides no evidence of a scientifically valid, replicable psychotheraputic approach to conversion therapy that does no harm to the client.
Scull concluded by whining that banning conversion therapy is "a ban that, in essence, threatens freedom of speech, a right that all media owe their existence to." That same freedom of speech also exposes how unnecessary, ineffective and potentially harmful such therapy actually is.
WND -- Which Pushed Hillary Impeachment Before She Could Be Elected -- Fears Kavanaugh Impeachment Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Oct. 7 WorldNetDaily article complained that "Democrats and the Washington Post teamed up" to plot the impeachment of newly installed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, huffing that "The headline on the story in the Jeff Bezos’ paper said it all: 'With Kavanaugh confirmed, impeachment could follow. Here’s how.'" The article added that "Of course, impeachment proceedings would be contingent on Democrats regaining control of the House, where impeachment charges must begin."
Two days later, another WND article tried to shoot down the idea:
Democrats who vowed to impeach Brett Kavanaugh even before he was sworn in as associate justice of the Supreme Court will have to contend with the Constitution, points out Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz.
Kavanaugh could not be impeached on the grounds of the accusation by Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault 36 years ago, because it pertains to alleged actions as a private citizen, Dershowitz explained in an interview with Fox News.
Further, he said, the Constitution would not “permit using the laws of perjury, which are very tough.”
Dershowitz also believes Democrats would pay a high political price.
WND has previously expressed similar concerns about impeachment talk against President Trump. But as we've noted, WND was promoting the idea of impeaching Hillary Clinton in May 2015, a year and a half before the 2016 election, and just a couple days before the November 2016 election, WND was touting how "If Hillary Clinton wins the election Tuesday, a prominent Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee says there will be an immediate move to impeach her before she can even be sworn into office Jan. 20."
So, yeah, WND is once again being just a tad hypocritical on impeachment talk.
MRC T-Shirt Proves Misinterpreting Its Trump Coverage 'Study' Is The Goal Topic: Media Research Center
We'verepeatedlyhighlighted how the Media Research Center's tally of the "liberal media's" purportedly "negative" coverage of President Trump is utterly bogus:
It focuses only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and completely ignores the cable news networks including Fox News.
It pretends there was never any neutral coverage of Trump; in fact, neutral coverage is explicitly rejected even though that's arguable the bulk of news coverage, dishonestly counting "only explicitly evaluative statements."
It fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story.
It never fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others.
Needless to say, the MRC's latest tally of "negative" coverage is pretty much the same. Rich Noyes writes in an Oct. 9 post:
In four weeks, Americans go to the polls for the midterm elections that the news media are casting as a referendum on the Trump presidency. Over the summer, the broadcast networks have continued to pound Donald Trump and his team with the most hostile coverage of a President in TV news history — 92 percent negative, vs. just eight percent positive.
And the MRC was tickled to death that Trump retweeted the MRC's results, to the point that MRC "news" division CNSNews.com devoted an article to it.
Also needless to say, Noyes once again can't be bothered to make the full data public, and he clings to his absurdly narrow definition of "coverage" that is almost certainly constructed to make such results preordained and designed to be misinterpreted and extrapolated as an indictment of the entire "liberal media."
That last point is not a bug, it's a feature -- and the MRC is effectively admitting it. In an Oct. 18 email, the MRC's political activity arm, MRC Action, touted how "MRC Grassroots Army" members can by a T-shirt to "make a festive statement during elections week" falsely extrapolating the coverage study results. It states: "Liberal Media Coverage of Trump in 2018: 91% Negative."
If the MRC didn't intend for its studies to be misinterpreted, it wouldn't be selling T-shirts that misinterpret them.
Five Years Later, Kathleen Willey Still Wants You To Buy Her A House Topic: WorldNetDaily
For years, Kathleen Willey has been trying to cash in on her brief infamy on the fringes of the Clinton years, claiming that Bill Clinton sexually assulted her in the White House. In 2007, WorldNetDaily published her factually flawed memoirs, and WND has dutifully reported all the times Willey has begged Clinton-haters to give her money to pay off her house.
In 2013, Willey claimed she was "fighting through a maze of refinancing pitfalls and money shortfalls to stabilize her life" and peddled the discredited story of "the mysterious jogger sent to threaten her, and his Clinton connection." That crowdfunding campaign raised a mere $4,495 of an $80,000 goal.
Willey gave it another shot in 2016, when WND let Willey use its mailing list to an accountant who claimed that "It’s shameful that Bill and Hillary are worth over $250 million while Kathleen has fallen behind in her mortgage." The goal this time was to raise "$100,000 to bring her mortgage current to at least stop the foreclosure of her home and hope to raise $386,000 to pay it off entirely," ominously adding: "Time is very short. Kathleen will be evicted from the home she loves in nineteen days." The campaign has since been deleted, but last time we checked, $6,344 had been raised.
Willey is still at it, and WND is still acting as her promoter. An Oct. 8 article played up Willey's de rigeur hatred of the Clintons before launching into the hard sell, this time with an assist from another professional Clinton victim, Juanita Broaddrick:
Just a few days ago, supporters started a GoFundMe page for Broaddrick, who promptly asked them to shut it down.
But when she found out Willey needed help, she jumped right in.
“My friend, Kathleen Willey, is about to lose her home. While the Clintons make millions through criminal activities and crooks like Strzok, McCabe, etc. raise hundreds of thousands through gofundme – she is struggling. Please read & contribute if you can,” she wrote.
Willey wrote on Facebook: “Dear FB friends. I believe in the power of prayer and I am in great need of them. My mortgage company has told me that they will be arriving at my home on November 5. With the help of the sheriff, they will remove everything in this house and put it all in my driveway. 21 years of my life. They will put my beloved animals in a shelter. What will my 1 little, blind Liam do without me. What will I do without them? I have nowhere to go. Nowhere. Please, please pray for me. I don’t know what will become of me. I need all of you. I can’t imagine living in a shelter, which can be very dangerous. Thank you for your prayers.”
On GoFundMe, a campaign in her name had raised nearly $20,000 of a $50,000 goal on Monday.
Things have changed a bit since then: At this writing, the campaign's current total is at $36,850, but the goal suddenly jumped to $250,000.
Of course, the article didn't mention the two previous crowdfunding campaigns or what happened to the money that was raised, or how she made it past the 19-day eviction deadline in 2016.
Such is the life of someone still trying to cash in on her 15 minutes of infamy.
CNS Editor Compains About Growing Budget Deficit, Censors Trump Tax Cuts That Caused It Topic: CNSNews.com
CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey makes some not-so-surprising omissions in a couple of recent articles on the federal budget.
An Oct. 1 article complained that "The federal debt increased by $1,271,158,167,126.72 in fiscal 2018." He went on to complain:
The $1,271,158,167,126.72 in debt accumulated in fiscal 2018 made fiscal 2018 the eighth fiscal year in the last eleven in which the debt increased by at least one trillion dollars.
The $1,271,158,167,126.72 increase in the federal debt was also the sixth largest fiscal-year debt increase in the history of the United States.
The federal government collected a record $1,683,537,000,000 in individual income taxes in fiscal 2018 (October 2017 through September 2018), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.
However, the federal government also ran a deficit of $778,996,000,000 during the fiscal year, according to the statement.
[...]
Despite the record amount collected in individual income taxes in fiscal 2018, overall real federal tax revenues in fiscal 2018 were lower than in any of the previous three years. In fiscal 2018, total tax collections equaled $3,328,745,000,000, according to the Treasury statement. That was less than the $3,446,613,230,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars) that the Treasury collected in fiscal 2015; less than the $3,415,674,450,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars) collected in fiscal 2016; and less than the $3,390,373,210,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars) collected in fiscal 2017.
While the federal government was collecting more income taxes from individuals in fiscal 2018, it was collecting less from corporations. Total corporation income tax collections in fiscal 2018 were $204,733,000,000. In fiscal 2017, they were $303,811,700,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars). In fiscal 2016, they were $313,233,700,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars); and in fiscal 2015, they were $364,738,790,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars).
However, two words are missing from each of those articles: Trump and Republicans. The Republican-controlled Congress passed, and President Trump signed, a tax cut bill earlier this yea, which cut government revenue, presumably cut the amount in taxes the government collected from corporations that Jeffrey laments and, yes, blew up the deficit.
By contrast, just like with unemployment numbers, Jeffrey had no problem calling out by name when writing about federal deficits during his administration. For instance:
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Playbook On Kavanaugh Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center knew what it had to do as a Trump loyalist: Defend Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination and denigrate the women who accused him of sexual misconduct (and bury the fact that a key witness used to work for the MRC). Read more >>
Obama-Deranged Mychal Massie Blames Obama for Craziness Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Mychal Massie has been suffering from Obama Derangment Syndrome for years now. It's so bad that less than a year ago he had to make up the fact that Larry Sinclair was dead to resuscitate Sinclair's fraud that he had gay sex with Obama. (Sinclair is very much alive, and also a convicted criminal.)
So it's with no small sense of irony that the Obama-crazed Massie dedicates his Oct. 8 WND column to blaming Obama for the current era of political craziness. He starts off by insisting that Bill Ayers is "Obama's BFF" and ranting about 1960s radicalism. And the craziness begins:
Obama sycophants deny he is a creation of the aforementioned period. I argue this is the reason for his attempted deconstruction of America. It is also “the” reason he refused to make the single greatest unifying difference in American history. Obama used his skin color as currency or a bludgeon depending upon the situation. He could have in one speech ended the skin-color divide in America. Instead he spent eight years in the White House prostituting every opportunity to advance the idea that America is a racist nation. He used his skin color as a political weapon to silence and intimidate his enemies.
He could have single-handedly put an end to militant anarchy witnessed during Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. Instead he elected to exacerbate what was already a seething caldron of loutish neo-Leninist Mohocks who are committed to the overthrow of our constitutional government.
As president he manufactured a Cloward-Piven dystopia that was spread like an airborne disease in the classrooms of his neo-Leninist ideological fraternity kinsman who masquerade as college/university professors nationwide. This explains why Obama spent so much of his time giving speeches on college campuses and fundraising in Hollywood.
The students are gullible and already brainwashed by the teachers inculcating them with hatred and anarchism. Hollywood’s contribution has been to give Obama massive amounts of money while simultaneously producing movies and programs that are laced with depictions of overthrowing government.
Thus, in eight years of Obama as president and the two years since he has left office, we’ve seen rage, protest and anarchy on a scale not witnessed since the early 1970s.
When we examine the Christine Blasey Fords, the Julie Swetnicks, those like Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr, and former New York Times reporter Ali Watkins and her lover James A. Wolfe, who corrupted the constitutional process as a Senate Intelligence Committee aide, et al. – it’s easy to understand why Obama is responsible for the “deep state” and why the anarchistic zealots referred to as the mainstream “fake news” media all think alike and accuse alike.
Ergo, the answer to “where do crazies like Christine Ford and Ali Watkins come from” is: They are the progeny and/or creation of the culture Obama represents.
It's doubly ironic for Massie to rant about Obama having allegedly "used his skin color as a political weapon" when Massie himself has for years used his black-conservative privilege to get away with sounding like a white supremacist.
CNS Cheers Indian-Named Teams Losing on Columbus Day Topic: CNSNews.com
Michael Morris' Oct. 9 CNSNews.com blog post is a needlessly spiteful one, given that it effectively cheers the fact that three Indian-named sports teams lost on Columbus Day:
Three professional sports teams with Native American names, the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins, all lost on Columbus Day 2018, yesterday.
Two of the professional teams receiving losses on Columbus Day were Major League Baseball teams: the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves. Both have been eliminated from the playoffs.
The Cleveland Indians faced off against the Houston Astros in Game three of the ALDS. Prior to the game, Houston led the series 2-0. Houston would go on to take the series, roundly defeating the Indians 11-3.
The Atlanta Braves were defeated in game 4 of the NLDS by the Los Angeles Dodgers by a score of 6-2. The Dodgers won the series 3-1 over the Braves.
The lone professional football team receiving a loss on Columbus Day was the National Football League’s Washington Redskins.
The Washington Redskins were likewise defeated on Columbus Day. By a score of 43-19 the New Orleans Saints handed the Redskins another loss. The Saints improved to 4-1 on the season, while the Redskins fell to .500 at 2-2 on the season.
Last year, CNS published a column by Bill Donohue mocking the idea of redefining Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day because "No one really knows who, or what, an 'indigenous' person is" and because "the furor over Columbus ... is as contrived as it is baseless." It published another column, by Grazie Christie, claiming that criticism of Columbus represented "assaults on societal unity," and a third column, by Patrick Korten, declared that "Leftist attacks on the explorer are based on bigotry and lies."
Meanwhile, Morris' co-workers down the hall at the Media Research Center haveraged against the idea that the Redskins should change their name because it's a slur against Native Americans.
WND's Steve Stockman Conspiracy Theory Marches Along Topic: WorldNetDaily
For much of this year, WorldNetDaily has been trying to pretend that Steve Stockman -- a former Texas congressman who was so close to WND that it effectively served as his PR shop -- was convicted on 23 financial crimes as part of a "Deep State" conspiracy theory.
The latest attempt at doing so is an Oct. 9 article by Rachel Alexander, a writer at the right-wing website The Stream. She beings by ranting about how "The left believes you need to destroy the innocent to achieve a socialist paradise" and cleverly invokes a WND-published book to argue that "President Barack Obama ignored terrorists such as the Boston Marathon bombers" while also claiming that "Obama called both terrorists and Republicans the same thing – extremists." Then comes the conspiracy:
If that gets you upset, as it should, you need to know how the news media buried a story regarding how the FBI and Department of Justice suborned perjury and rigged a conviction of former Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas. In an explosive story that’s about to be released, a key witness in the trial, Ben Wetmore, lays out in detail how he was repeatedly threatened and pressured to change his testimony and asked to falsely claim he was running a spy network for Stockman. (As most liberals do, they blame others for what they are doing. Ironically, it was Hillary Clinton who hired a spy to snoop on the Trump campaign.) Wetmore was an attorney for one of the nonprofits Stockman was involved with. Prior to Trump, Stockman was on the top of Obama’s enemies list. (According to former government officials, Obama kept multiple enemies lists.)
Stockman was found guilty on 23 out of 24 counts earlier this year, mostly vague crimes that can be asserted against almost anyone, like “mail fraud” and “money laundering.” For example, Wells Fargo had a scandal after opening up bank accounts without customers knowing. Stockman was charged with money laundering and wire fraud for the bank’s wrongful maneuver! As Josef Stalin’s head of the secret police said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
Really, Rachel? "Almost anyone" can be charged with mail fraud and money laundering? Also, what Wells Fargo did was not mail fraud or money laundering; that was just plain ol' fraud against its customers. (Also, nice gratuitous Stalin reference.)
As far as the "explosive story" Alexander is breathlessly touting, no evidence of it has surfaced as of yet. Nor did she identify exactly which "former government officials" assert that "Obama kept multiple enemies lists."
Indeed, virtually none of the claims Alexander makes in her article are substantiated, and are basically all about trying to forward the paranoid "Deep State" conspiracy theory. It's telling of Alexander's lack of journalistic standards that she ends her screed with an appeal to Stockman's defense fund:
Stockman was targeted because he took on corruption within the Obama administration. He signed onto legislation to impeach then-Attorney General Eric Holder, announced his willingness to consider impeachment of President Obama, exposed Hillary Clinton’s violation of the Iran sanctions and called for the arrest of the IRS’ Lois Lerner for her contempt of Congress. Due to activities like this, he appeared on the Drudge Report in 2013 and 2014 more times than all of the members of the 113th Congress combined.
Some of the Deep State operatives Stockman took on are the same ones who are going after Trump. The president should pardon Stockman and let him go after those same bad actors. Many leading conservatives such as former DOJ attorney Sidney Powell, who wrote “Licensed to Lie,” are calling for his pardon. Stockman will be appealing his conviction.
Congressman Stockman’s colleagues warned him Obama was vindictive and not to take him on. Obama and the DOJ wanted to make an example out of Stockman. The Department of Justice is asking for a sentence of life in prison.
Steve Stockman is a true whistleblower and political prisoner. He stood up against Obama, and now we should stand with him. It’s time to right a wrong and stop the destruction of political enemies of the left. Visit DefendAPatriot.com.
Alexander's piece was also published Oct. 19 at the Christian Post website -- unsubstantiated claims, paranoid rants and all. Looks like the Christian Post has the same lack of journalistic standards as WND.
MRC Sports Blogger Hypocricially Demands Coverage of Pro-Trump Athlete's Complaint Topic: Media Research Center
Mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger Jay Maxson just hates it when athletes express political views a la Colin Kaepernick -- but if you're echoing the MRC's right-wing political agenda, you have free rein to pontificate, even if you were once been credibly charged with murder.
So it's predictably hypocritical for Maxson to demand that an athlete's MRC-friendly political views aren't getting enough coverage, as he did in an Oct. 13 post:
Retired football superstar Herschel Walker (second from right in photo) has expressed disgust with CNN for not firing Don Lemon, Bakari Sellers and Tara Setmayer after their "despicable" remarks about rapper Kanye West's (second from left in photo) White House meeting with President Donald Trump. The Washington Times and Fox News are among the very few covering this story, but most networks are ignoring Walker's remarks.
NewsBusters previously reported that on Tuesday's embarrassing segment of CNN Tonight West was deemed a mentally ill "attention whore" representing "what happens when negroes don't read. The CNNtrio also accused West of staging a “a minstrel show him in front of all these white people” at the White House.
[...]
Walker, who is African-American, does not fit the media narrative that Trump is a racist who hates blacks. Thus the chirping crickets across the board of left-stream media. The Washington Times, Fox News and Townhall.com, are among the very few reporting on the celebrity athlete's calling for the sacking of the CNN Tonight crew.
Maxson falsely suggests that the Washington Times, Fox News and Townhall are unbiased media outlets unlike his invented "left-stream media"; in fact, all have a right-wing bias, which explains why they would promote Walker's story (though we can assume that, like Maxson, they have a long history of dumping on athletes who expressed political views they oppose).
Maxson also merely alludes to one reason why Walker is so eager to defend Trump's meeting with West. He admits that Walker "played for the U.S.F.L.'s New Jersey Generals, a defunct team then owned by Trump, before playing in the NFL." He then went on to complain that "the liberal-slanted Atlanta Journal Constitution" had the temerity to point out that "Walker appeared on Trump’s reality TV show Celebrity Apprentice and was tapped by Trump to serve on the president's sports council." For some reason, this appears twice in Maxson's post, which tells us that the editing issues at NewsBusters that let Tom Blumer's white nationalist links slip through have apparently not been resolved.
Maxson concludes by stating: "On Fox Sports 1's Speak for Yourself program, Jason Whitlock and Marcellus Wiley said we've got to move beyond ridiculing people we disagree with." Of course, that's basically Maxson's job as an MRC sports blogger.
WND Makes A Big Deal About Changing Its E-Commerce Back End Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Oct. 9 WorldNetDaily article tries to turn a back-end software change into a big deal:
While the digital monopoly “Speech-Code Cartel” continues to squeeze the alternative, independent media – including WND, the original online news pioneer – journalism sites like WND are scrambling to survive in this hostile new online environment by reinventing themselves in many key ways.
As part of that reevaluation and reinvention, WND is leaving behind one of the super-giants of Silicon Valley – Oracle-Netsuite – in favor of a new e-commerce partner: Texas-based BigCommerce.com.
Although there may be a few hiccups along the way as the transition is completed, it’s time to introduce readers to the new WND Superstore – which will save WND money so it can remain a free, independent and influential media voice, not only in the news it reports and publishes, but in the books, movies and other products it offers to the public.
[...]
Today, WND takes one more step in its reassertion of independence and liberty with a new e-commerce site.
“We urge you to try it,” says Farah. “You may find this new store doesn’t recognize you as a past customer. We hope you will give us a little grace and have a little patience with us, because you are our lifeline in this titanic fight to slay these dragons, these billion-dollar behemoths, and to keep the promise of inalienable, God-given rights of free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and free elections alive.”
In other words: WND switched its e-commerce storefront software from NetSuite to BigCommerce because it's cheaper -- WND editor Joseph Farah doesn't even attack Oracle as part of the "cartel" trying to drive him out of business -- and for reasons Farah doesn't explain, WND couldn't transfer customer information from the old platform to the new one.
Judging by the Missouri address at the bottom of the store website, fulfillment for WND -- where the orders are actually picked, packed and shipped -- apparently continues to take place at a company called REKO Market Direct.
Meanwhile, we see that despite the software change, WND's store is still selling the e-book version of "No Campus for White Men," the book by Scott Greer it published in 2017, while Greer was writing white nationalist and anti-Semitic screeds under an assumed name for a racist journal. It's also still selling (albeit at the bargain-basement price of $2.99) the WND-published book "Why We Left Islam," the star attraction of which is Walid Shoebat, the self-proclaimed former terrorist turned "Christian Zionist" who has now gone full-blown anti-Semitic. WND still has yet to publicly address its relationship with Greer and Shoebat following these revelations. It still hasn't spoken publicly about Paul Nehlen, whose book WND published and heavily promoted before his white nationalism anda nti-Semitism became publicly known. WND eventually removed his book and an anti-Mulsim film he made from its store and scrubbed him from the WND Books website.
CNS Managing Editor, Donohue Split on Catholic Cardinal's Links to Sexual Abuse Topic: CNSNews.com
There seems to be a bit of a split between CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman and CNS columnist (and friend of the Media Research Center) Bill Donohue of the Catholic League (where MRC chief Brent Bozell sits on the board of advisers) over Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who resigned his post as archbishop of Washington, D.C., amid questions about how he handled sexual abuse allegations against another cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, when both were in the Pittsburgh diocese.
An Oct. 12 article by Chapman highlighted Pope Francis accepting Wuerl's resignation, though he doesn't explicitly highlight the pope that appointed him to the Washington position, unlike what he did to another archbishop -- perhaps because it was Pope Benedict, beloved by conservatives like Chapman, and not Pope Francis, whom Chapman would like to tie to purportedly insufficiently Catholic behavior like not completely despising gay people.
Chapman noted that "Wuerl's name appears in the document [investigating sexual abuse among Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania] more than 200 times and the report shows that 19 abuse cases surfaced while he was Bishop of Pittsburgh. However, it also shows that in 18 of those cases he quickly removed the accused priests from ministry." He added that "Cardinal Wuerl and Cardinal McCarrick have been close friends for many years. Wuerl has been criticized over his denials that he knew anything about McCarrick's homosexual predation of seminarians, even though it reportedly was an open secret among priests in New York, New Jersey and Washington for decades." He also noted that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano's attack on the church for reportedly covering up for McCarrick "is also critical of Cardinal Wuerl."
Donohue, meanwhile, has staunchly defended Wuerl. In an August column published at Newsmax, he claimed that Wuerl was being "unfairly trashed," adding: I have known Cardinal Wuerl for 30 years, having first met him when I was a professor at a local Pittsburgh Catholic college, La Roche. I had the opportunity to assess his record during his first five years of service: it was meritorious, and it has only gotten better." He concluded: "Cardinal Donald Wuerl is a good man who deserves our commendation, not condemnation."
After Wuerl's resignation, CNS published a column by Donohue once again defending him, this time also attacking his fellow conservatives for calling for Wuerl's head:
Some argue that Cardinal Wuerl should be held accountable for the behavior of Theodore McCarrick, his predecessor in Washington. But Wuerl had no authority over McCarrick when he was abusing seminarians in New Jersey. Moreover, to blame Wuerl for McCarrick's refusal to abide by restrictions placed on him by Rome is similarly misplaced: No one at the Vatican ever asked Wuerl to be McCarrick's policeman.
The pressure on Wuerl to resign came partly from the left, but mostly from the right. Right-wing activist groups, along with normally level-headed conservative Catholic writers and pundits—this includes some priests—have led the way. The former are vindictive and lie with abandon. The latter approach this issue the way some in the “#MeToo” movement have acted.
[...]
He has become the scapegoat for Catholic conservative purists who are angry about the abuse scandal. Others are angry as well, but they do not approach this subject with childlike innocence. To be explicit, those who are familiar with the complex issues that the bishops have faced, and who do not insist that today's standards be used to judge decades-old cases, have a more mature understanding of the problem.
[...]
These carping conservatives love to take wide swipes at the hierarchy, patting themselves on the back for being so right. But purists are a problem in all institutions, and it matters not a whit what side they are on. Mr. Clean exists only in their heads.
Kudos to Pope Francis for being so kind to Cardinal Donald Wuerl.
Apparently, if you're Donohue's buddy, he gives you a pass on your questionable behavior.
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There seems to be a bit of a split between CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman and CNS columnist (and friend of the Media Research Center) Bill Donohue of the Catholic League (where MRC chief Brent Bozell sits on the board of advisers) over Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who resigned his post as archbishop of Washington, D.C., amid questions about how he handled sexual abuse allegations against another cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, when both were in the Pittsburgh diocese.
