Graham's False Sex Scandal Equivalence Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham takes time out from HeatheringDavid Brooks to draw a false equivalence between sex scandals in an Oct. 17 NewsBusters post. In it, he complains that the sex scandal involving Democratic Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney has received only a fraction of the media coverage of the sex scandal of the man he replaced, Republican Mark Foley. But Graham downplays Foley's offenses and pretends both scandals are the same.
Graham states Foley's offense only as "sending sexual Internet messages to Congressional pages." He fails to acknowledge -- even though he reprints a 2006 transcript pointing it out -- that there was a larger issue of Foley's history of behavior toward the (teenage male) pages and whether House Republican leadership knew about it and did anything to stop it, which ratchets up the scandal quotient.
Mahoney, meanwhile, is caught in the arguably dime-a-dozen scandal of paying off a (female adult) mistress who threatened to go public about the affair and of apparent involvement involvement in multiple other affairs. Sleazy? Sure. But not as sleazy as cruising for teenage boys and the Repubican leadership trying to cover it up.
If you'll recall, Graham's fellow MRC employees at NewsBusters and CNSNews.com endeavored to distract their readers from the Foley scandal in 2006.
WND's Amnesia on Obama's Birth Certificate Continues Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Oct. 16 WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling reported on "a second lawsuit challenging Barack Obama's 'natural born' citizenship."
Schilling apparently doesn't read her own website (much like fellow WND employee Drew Zahn), because WND debunked the claim that Obama's birth certificate is fraudulent back in August. For Schilling's benefit, here's the relevant section:
A separate WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren't originally there.
As we asked about Zahn: Is Schilling really that stupid, or is she so dishonest that she will lie to her readers in order to smear Obama?
The amnesia (and stupidity) spreads to Hal Lindsey, who makes the mistake of reading the website that publishes him -- except for the part that answers the question he raises. Lindsey makes this convoluted logical trainwreck:
Besides, FactCheck.org says it examined the Obama birth certificate and claims it is genuine.
But FactCheck.org is owned by the Annenberg Foundation, which links to Bill Ayers, which links to Barack Obama, both of whom held seats on that board – which then calls FactCheck.org's objectivity into question.
Needless to say, Lindsey fails to mention that Walter Annenberg, the source of the funding behind FactCheck.org and the Annenberg Challenge, was a prominent Republican.
The Lead Heather Targets David Brooks Again Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters' lead Heather, Tim Graham, has let loose the Swatch dogs of war again upon conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks.
In an Oct. 15 post, Graham bashed Brooks as an "increasingly fraudulent 'conservative'" (translation: he won't robotically regurgitiate McCain talking points), though he did relent a bit and concede that Brooks "tried to be generous at the end and say the 'landscape has been so biased against McCain.'"
Graham bashes away further on Brooks in an Oct. 16 post for committing the offense of speaking the truth that Barack Obama handled the debate attacks from John McCain well and that McCain didn't cause enough damage to significantly alter the campaign. That's not how Graham saw it, of course; he sneered that "Brooks was digging McCain’s campaign a grave" and did a "gush for Obama."
Brooks is so not gonna be invited to Graham's next party.
CNS Article on Obama Tax Plan Is Lacking Topic: CNSNews.com
An Oct. 15 CNSNews.com article by Matt Cover claiming that "Barack Obama’s plan to cut taxes on 95 percent of taxpayers would effectively increase government spending" is missing a few things.
Cover credits the claim to "the non-partisan Tax Policy Center," but the only direct quotes the article attributes to anyone at the center are definitions of two Obama tax-related proposals. All conclusions Cover reports are paraphrased, which makes it difficult to go back to the source and figure out from exactly which TPC report Cover is getting his information. (the most recent came out Sept. 30.)
Note that Cover calls the Tax Policy Center "non-partisan." He might want to check with upper management for guidance on that, since his ultimate boss, Brent Bozell, criticizes the media whenever they do that. In a Sept. 30 column, Bozell complained that "reporters and columnists touting Obama are repeatedly citing numbers by something called the Tax Policy Center – and you’ll never hear that this is a project operated by two liberal-Democrat think tanks."
Also missing is any mention of the TPC's analysis of John McCain's tax plans -- for example, it has noted that McCain's plan to lower capital gains taxes would mostly benefit those with income of $600,000 a year or more. Or would CNS have to state that TPC is "liberal-Democrat" if it did?
Matthew Vadum's Idea of A Beatdown Topic: Capital Research Center
The Capital Research Center's Matthew Vadum has attacked us in an Oct. 15 post, calling us "mendacious masochists" and a smear site" for pointing out a false claim he made regarding Barack Obama's relationship with ACORN and goes on to say we "should do some research for a change."
Actually, we did do our research. But Vadum didn't address what we actually said.
If you'll recall, we were pointing out that Newsmax's Lowell Ponte cited Vadum as his source for claiming that Project Vote was "ACORN’s voter mobilization entity" at the time Obama worked for the group in 1992 -- language lifted almost verbatim from Vadum's CRC report on the subject -- when in fact Project Vote was not a part of ACORN in 1992.
In his blog post, Vadum cites another report that he says "makes it abundantly clear that ACORN and Project Vote were partners in the voter registration drive led by Obama." But that's a different claim than the one we were addressing.
We never claimed that ACORN didn't play a role in the Project Vote operation Obama was a part of in 1992. We are taking issue with Vadum's claim that Project Vote was "ACORN's voter mobilization arm" in 1992. As ACORN itself stated, "At that time, Project Vote had no more connection to ACORN than it did with dozens of other national and local organizations with which it partnered on local registration drives."
Where's Vadum's evidence contradicting that? We see none. And his insistence that it's an "invented claim" doesn't count because he doesn't back that up either.
Vadum thinks he issued "another good beating" upon us. That presumes he did so the first time (which he didn't).
If this is Vadum's idea of a beatdown, about all we can say in response is: Thank you, sir, may we have another?
From an Oct. 16 Newsmax article by Ronald Kessler:
If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will endanger the country by making us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence tells Newsmax.
Obama “would so weaken our security forces that I personally believe that we would be in much greater danger of terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad,” says Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo. “I’m very much concerned, because he’s shown weak judgment throughout his career. Throughout his campaign he has taken one position after another that just doesn’t make sense in fighting the war on terror.”
What Kessler doesn't tell you: Bond is the Missouri chairman for John McCain's campaign, so it's no surprise that he would harshly attack Obama -- indeed, it's his job.
Jerome Corsi has the same problem CBS had on the subject of documents.
Like CBS' memos regarding President Bush's National Guard service, Corsi's memos purported proving that Barack Obama had a close relationship with Kenya's Raila Odinga and donated money to his campaign are clearly not original and may be competely fraudulent.
But even though Corsi so far is standing by his Obama docs, he dismissed the CBS docs:
In an Oct. 5, 2005, WorldNetDaily column, Corsi referenced "the forged documents story that brought Dan Rather down from his lofty chair as CBS News anchor."
In a Sept. 28, 2007, WND article, Corsi wrote: "CBS News initially stood by its claims in the face of widespread accusations – brought first by bloggers – that early 1970s documents used in the story to discredit Bush were forgeries, created with a modern word-processing program."
But Corsi's documents are at least as "forged" as the CBS'. And like CBS, he is treating them as accurate, even "authenticated," even though you can't authenticate a fake.
In an Oct. 17 WND article, Corsi again insists that his documents have been "verified" -- even as he continues to offer nothing to support that "verification" but obviously fake documents.
Jack Cashill declares Barack Obama an anti-Semite in his Oct. 16 WorldNetDaily column.
Why is Obama an anti-Semite: Because he mentioned Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz in a speech criticizing the runup to the Iraq war.
Cashill thus baselessly buys into the argument that anyone who criticizes the neoconservatives who got the U.S. into the Iraq war is automatically an anti-Semite because a number of the most prominent neocons are Jewish.
Cashill claims that Perle and Wolfowitz's names in 2002 were "two names in common parlance only on the hard left" and singling them out was "the kind of intelligence that Obama could have gotten only from his pals in Chicago's unrepentant radical community." Uh, no:
In March 2002, Wolfowitz sat down for a lengthy interview on PBS' "Newshour with Jim Lehrer," and the New York Times Magazine did a lengthy profile of Wolfowitz in October 2002.
In an appearance on the July 11, 2002, edition of the PBS series "Wide Angle," Perle said: "Saddam is much weaker than we think he is. He's weaker militarily. We know he's got about a third of what he had in 1991. But it's a house of cards. He rules by fear because he knows there is no underlying support. Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder. Now, it isn't going to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either."
As might be expected given his other concurrent conspiracy theory, Cashill drags William Ayers into it, calling him "no garden variety anti-Semite" and baselessly asserting he has a "fondness for Islamic Jew-haters."
Is Joseph Farah proud of that fact that he has sunk so law as to publish fabulists like Cashill in his failing effort to bash Obama? Is Farah's death wish for the company he has spent the past decade building that strong?
Aaron Klein Repeats Lie About Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein repeats his claim in an Oct. 16 WorldNetDaily article that "Obama's campaign last week falsely claimed ACORN was 'not part of' Project Vote, but the organization's incorporation papers, obtained by WND, show Project Vote is a trademark name whose parent company is registered at the same New Orleans address in which ACORN and multiple ACORN affiliates are housed."
But again, as he did the last time he made it, he does not back up his assertion with any actual evidence that the incorporation papers support his assertion that Project Vote was not part of ACORN in 1992, when Obama worked for the group. That the two share an address now is irrelevant to whether they were closely affiliated in 1992.
Perhaps Klein can post those incorporation papers so we can all have a look.
Indeed, Klein offers no evidence whatsoever that ProjectVote and ACORN were as closely affiliated in 1992 as they are today. He further fails to quote ACORN's own statement on the issue:
In 1992, Obama ran a successful voter registration drive in Chicago for Project Vote which helped 150,000 people register to vote. At that time, Project Vote had no more connection to ACORN than it did with dozens of other national and local organizations with which it partnered on local registration drives. In 1994, over a year after Obama left Project Vote, ACORN and Project Vote began working much more closely together.
Most reporters would consider it to be important to include a statement from ACORN -- Klein doesn't. He's too busy working for the McCain campaign by regurgitating its talking point that ACORN is involved in "numerous, massive voter fraud scandals."
Klein then twists a Obama campaign spokesman that Project Vote and ACORN were not as intertwined in 1992 as they are today by claiming that it "directly contradicts the Obama campaign's 'Fact Check' claim that ACORN was "not part" of Project Vote.
No, it doesn't. The question at hand is not whether ACORN took part in Project Vote activities in 1992 -- both Obama and ACORN have said that took place. The question is whether Project Vote was a subsidiary of ACORN in 1992 in the way Klein repeatedly asserts. Klein offers no evidence to support the claim.
So Klein is lying again about Obama -- nothing new for him.
Rep. Smith Cites Discredited Media Bias Study Topic: Accuracy in Media
In an Oct. 14 Accuracy in Media blog post attacking what he calls Time magazine's "latest example of biased campaign coverage," Rep. Lamar Smith writes: "Time magazine’s bias existed well before this presidential campaign; a 2005 UCLA study found that Time’s coverage ranked well to the left of the average American voter."
Smith is apparently referring to a study by UCLA's Timothy Groseclose and the University of Missouri's Jeffrey Milyo. But as Media Matters detailed, the Groseclose-Milyo study's measure of "bias" -- the frequency with which various think tanks and advocacy organizations were cited approvingly by the media -- is so problematic that its findings are next to useless. Further, both Groseclose and Milyo have previously received grants from right-wing think tanks -- which is reflected in the study's bibliography, which cites the usual right-wing suspects such as the Media Research Center and AIM but no scholarly research on the subject of media bias.
Then again, taking refuge in such dubious claims -- as well as shilling for the McCain campaign, which he does here by enthusiastically defending its "Country First" slogan as "clearly meant to emphasize his decades of military and civil service" -- appear to be the whole point of Smith's mini-war on "liberal bias."
Will Corsi Retract His False Documents At Teleseminar? Topic: WorldNetDaily
As part of his recovery from his (not so) "traumatic abduction" in Kenya, Jerome Corsi will host a teleseminar at 6 p.m. Eastern time today to discuss his claims about Barack Obama and Kenya's Raila Odinga.
As we've detailed, the documents Corsi has thus far supplied to support his allegations of direct Obama links to Odinga are either apparently fraudulent or blatantly fraudulent.
His claims that he "authenticated" these documents fly in the face of the simple fact that you can't "authenticate" a fake.
Will anyone ask Corsi during the teleseminar about these fraudulent documents? Will anyone be allowed to ask questions at all? Will Corsi admit his documents are fraudulent?
We shall see. What little credibility WorldNetDaily has a news source is riding on it.
Farah Won't Admit McCain's (Or His Own) Link to Domestic Terrorist
Joseph Farah asks in his Oct. 15 WorldNetDaily column:
But, what if McCain had a similarly "tangential" relationship with some other terrorist bomber? Is it conceivable the man would still be in the presidential race? Or would the Big Media have drummed him out? I don't think there is any question about it. McCain would today be an asterisk in the history of presidential politics.
Farah fails to mention that McCain does have such a relationship with a domestic terrorist: G. Gordon Liddy.
Of course, Farah would have to admit his own relationship with the domestic terrorist Liddy. And we know that ain't gonna happen.
UPDATE: Especially since Farah is filling in for Liddy on his radio show tomorrow.
New Article: An Extreme Reversal Topic: WorldNetDaily
After years of avoiding describing right-wing Jewish extremists as, well, extremists, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein is suddenly tossing the word around. Read more >>
Corsi's Defense: Fake But Accurate Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerome Corsi peddles another dubious document in an Oct. 16 WorldNetDaily article, this time claiming that "when Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama visited Kenya on a "fact-finding" trip in 2006, he was carrying out part of a secret election strategy that also included exploiting divisive tribal tensions and ultimately taking advantage of rioting that left 1,000 dead."
Corsi links to a "strategy document" and asserts that he "has confirmed the authenticity of the strategy memo." But the link Corsi provides to the memo goes to a page on a public message board called Network 54. The page -- an expanded version of a document he previously cited as evidence that Obama gave "nearly $1 million" to Raila Odinga -- is entirely in HTML, which means that it cannot possibly be an original document, which he claims was "reported to have been smuggled out of ODM offices by Christian former-ODM officials."
It is impossible to authenticate an HTML document that began life as a "smuggled" hard-copy piece of paper. Corsi offers no evidence that the HTML page is authentic, nor does he explain who posted it or why it was posted on a public bulletin board.
Further, given that the original version of the "strategy memo" Corsi posted is clearly a fake re-creation, he can't claim authenticity for that version either.
As in his previous Obama-Odinga articles, all sources are anonymous. Remember what Corsi's boss, Joseph Farah, has to say about anonymous sources: that they're "usually quotes made up out of whole cloth to help make the story read better."
Corsi does take a stab at refuting evidence that an email purportedly written by Obama -- contrary to Corsi's claim that it shows Obama "backed ruthless foreign thug" Odinga -- showed that, according to Politico's Ben Smith, it "appear[s] not to have been written by a native English speaker." Corsi asserts that "a second similar e-mail WND published ... should not occasion any linguistic quibbles."
In fact, it does. The text of the second email read, "Thanks for contacting me about Mr Lippert through email. Contact him through mark_lippert.obama.senate.gov." The message is missing a period after "Mr" -- that missing period is standard British English -- and the email address lacks a "@" symbol. Further, as with his other documents, Corsi offers no evidence of the authentication he claims.
Corsi is essentially saying is that his documents are fake but accurate. Remember too that WND was on the side of the folks who who raised doubts about documents used by CBS to back up claims about President Bush's National Guard service. Indeed, an October 2007 article by WND columnist Craige McMillan declared that media outlets should adopt a consumer bill of rights, one suggested provision of which is, "'Fake but accurate' reporting has no place in our news room."
Apparently, it has a place in WorldNetDaily's newsroom.
'Reality Check' Unreality: MRC Ignores Schieffer's GOP Ties Topic: Media Research Center
An Oct. 15 Media Research Center "Media Reality Check" -- unbylined, but apparently written by Tim Graham, who has posted it under his name at NewsBusters -- asserted that CBS' Bob Scheiffer "clearly did not take pains to appear objective before" the the Oct. 15 presidential debate for which he will serve as moderator. The so-called evidence: Schieffer called Sarah Palin an "attack dog." It's not explained how that arguably accurate description of her role in the McCain campaign is not "objective."
The "Reality Check" also asserts that "Schieffer also failed the fair-and-balanced test in a review of the debate he moderated in 2004," adding: "It's easier for a pundit to call the Democrat the winner when the moderator’s questions lean strongly to the left."
Graham (or whoever wrote this) conveniently fails to mention Schieffer's Republican ties -- namely, that Schieffer has a personal relationship with Bush and his brother was a former Bush business partner. And, as TPM reminds us, Schieffer defended John McCain when Gen. Wesley Clark said that McCain's experience as a prisoner of war didn't qualify him to be president.
