Some folks over at RightNation.us don't like the idea that we've exposed Jerome Corsi's fake documents. Rather than addressing the evidence, they're attacking us. One choice comment: "Krepel's mother was inseminated by the same leaking colostomy bag that Paul Krugman's and Michael Moore's were. Must have been some party."

Stay classy, guys... 

Posted by Terry K. at 4:18 PM EDT

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Barack Obama is ahead in the polls. WorldNetDaily's lies about Obama aren't taking hold. What's an Obama-hater like Aaron Klein to do?

Why, fire up the ol' Mighty Wurlitzer and play the Ahmed Yousef key, of course!

Yousef, if you'll recall, was Klein's go-to guy earlier this year when he needed an quick and dirty Obama smear. The "senior Hamas official" appeared with Klein on John Batchelor's radio show, where he said that he hoped Obama would get elected. Klein inflated this into an "endorsement" of Obama by Hamas, making sure to downplay Obama's actual opinion of Hamas -- that it should be isolated until it recognizes Israel.

But it's getting late in the campaign, and Klein needs a little October surprise. So he's getting the band back together for another appearance on Batchelor's radio show, this time to slime Joe Biden. From Klein's Oct. 19 WND article:

In an exclusive interview tonight, a senior Hamas official heaped praise on Sen. Joe Biden, calling him a "very nice" person and a "great man" whose record "speaks volumes" and who can be counted on by the terror group to engage in the "right policy" toward the Middle East.

During the interview with WND's Aaron Klein and WABC Radio's John Batchelor, the Hamas figure also expressed hope regarding Sen. Barack Obama's "vision for change," announcing Hamas will send Obama a letter of congratulation "the moment he will win the election."

Ahmed Yousef, Hamas' chief political adviser in the Gaza Strip, called Biden a "very prominent figure when it comes to the politics of the region."

It's not disclosed until nearly the end of Klein's 22-paragraph article that both Obama and Biden have previously criticized Hamas.

This raises even more questions about collaboration between Yousef, Klein and Batchelor. As he did earlier, Yousef just happens to pop up regularly on Batchelor's show, with Klein as a co-interview, to advance Klein and Batchelor's partisan anti-Obama agenda. Klein seems to want his readers to believe this is not a coincidence.

Are Klein and Batchelor working with Yousef to clear his remarks? Would Yousef be allowed to appear on the show if he didn't endorse Obama and Biden? Indeed, there appears to be a working relationship with Yousef that Klein and Batchelor have not disclosed.

Perhaps Klein should concentrate on reporting the news instead of manufacturing it -- and fully disclose the nature of his relationship with Yousef. 

Posted by Terry K. at 2:42 PM EDT

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An Oct. 19 NewsBusters post by Dave Pierre criticized Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks for writing that Barack Obama's words were "enthusiastically ripped out of context" by the McCain campaign when he remarked in 2007 about the need for more troops on the ground in Afghanistan so that the U.S. military is not "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians." Pierre asserted that "nothing was taken out of context," then linked to a YouTube clip of Obama saying the words. But the clip is only 12-seconds long -- the very definition of taking someone out of context.

Pierre's own quoting of Brooks takes her out of context as well. Pierre cuts off his excerpt of Brooks' column after the words, "

Not exactly eloquent, but Obama's fundamental point is unassailable," hiding from his readers what Brooks wrote next, which put Obama's words in their proper context:

With so many U.S. troops bogged down in Iraq, our troops in Afghanistan are spread dangerously thin. As the Afghan insurgency picks up steam, overwhelmed U.S. ground troops increasingly call in close-air-support bomb attacks. These airstrikes are, in turn, far more deadly for Afghan civilians than U.S. ground attacks, for the simple reason that while a soldier can usually tell the difference between an unarmed child and an insurgent, a bomb dropped from thousands of feet can't. So far this year, at least 395 Afghan civilians have been killed in NATO airstrikes, and the civilian death toll from NATO airstrikes is up by 21% over last year.

In fact, at the time Obama made his statement, the Associated Press reported: "A check of the facts shows that Western forces have been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents have been killing civilians."

So: Obama is right, Brooks is right, and Pierre is not just wrong but dishonest by pretending he's offering the full context of Obama's (and Brooks') words while hiding the full truth. 

Posted by Terry K. at 1:34 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, October 20, 2008 1:35 PM EDT

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The new issue of WorldNetDaily's Whistleblower magazine has the theme, "The Day the Media Died." It's ostensibly about how "America's 'mainstream media' have finally, during 2008, dropped the façade of fairness and impartiality" -- a rather hilarious argument from a "news" outlet that never bothered with the pretense and tells outright fabrications to its readers.

Indeed, the entire issue appears to be an in-kind contribution to the McCain campaign (like much of WND's news coverage). Among the featured claims:

The pregnancy of Sarah Palin's teen daughter is national news, as is the presence in the Alaska governor's mansion of a tanning bed (which Palin paid for herself). But Obama being mentored and nurtured for years by terrorists (William Ayers), communists (Frank Marshall Davis) and America-hating racists (Rev. Jeremiah Wright), which helped shape him into the most left-wing, America-blaming, radically pro-abortion and tyrant-appeasing presidential candidate in U.S. history, is not news.

[...]

"It doesn't matter how dangerous the reality of Obama is – a hardcore leftist whose intended tax-and-spend policies would, experts say, plunge American into a full-bore depression," said WND Managing Editor and best-selling author David Kupelian. "It doesn't matter how surreal and creepy his campaign gets – enlisting sheriffs and prosecutors to intimidate voters, exploiting children into singing 'Obama's gonna lead us' songs stunningly reminiscent of Chinese Maoist indoctrination. The mainstream press ignores it all, because, very simply, they just really want Obama to be president."

Of course, at WND, it's a steady diet of Obama sleaze, hate, lies, and fake documents while refusing to report anything negative about McCain. And Kupelian curiously fails to mention his own partisan affiliation -- he has endorsed McCain, and WND's news coverage is a direct reflection of that endorsement.

In other (italicized) words, WND ignores all negative news about McCain because, very simply, Kupelian just really wants McCain to be president -- making a mockery of boss Joseph Farah's claim to support "none of the above."

Kupelian is also quoted as saying, "By pushing so unashamedly and openly for Obama, the Old Media are throwing away what little is left of their credibility." Given that Kupelian's own website is outright lying about Obama, how much credibility could he and WND possibly have?

Which makes Kupelian and WND setting themselves up as moral arbiters of media behavior so roll-on-the-floor hilarious -- that is, if it wasn't so utterly dishonest and pathetic.

If a "mainstream media" outlet lied as much as WND, it would have died a painful death a long time ago. Yet WND remains in business. Where's the justice?

Posted by Terry K. at 9:12 AM EDT

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An Oct. 19 WorldNetDaily article by Jay Baggett features a case involving anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley, a fringe candidte for governor in Georgia, being charged with obscenity for carrying around a campaign sign displaying the head of an aborted fetus. But Baggett whitewashes Horsley's background, though not as much as a 2003 WND article that, as we detailed, airbrushed all controversy out of Horsley's behavior.

Baggett wrote:

Horsley is perhaps better known for operating the "Nuremberg Files" website in the late 1990s that featured names of abortion practitioners. He was accused by abortion advocates of inciting violence for crossing out names of doctors who had died or who had been killed.

His website featured prominently in Planned Parenthood vs. American Coalition of Life Activists, despite the fact the defendents did not own or operate the Nuremberg website and its actual owner, Horsley, was not a named party in the case. Nonetheless, the Portland, Ore., pro-life activists were hit with a judgment of $109 million for creating "Deadly Dozen" posters on which the names of 12 abortion doctors were listed.

But Horsley didn't just "cross out names of doctors who had died or who had been killed"; as Salon wrote, those "Deadly Dozen" posters -- which also included the doctors' home addresses, their social security numbers, and the names of their children and where they went to school -- appeared on Horsley's website.HOrsley also posted thousands of photographs and videos of patients, clinic workers and clinic defenders as an apparent attempt at intimidation.

Further, contrary to Baggett's assertion that Horsley's website was not linked at all to the group at the center of the lawsuit, Salon stated: "The now defunct American Coalition of Life Activists morphed into the aboveground political apparatus of the violent Army of God -- with Horsley as its most prominent front man. Indeed, the Army of God Web site celebrates Horsley as 'A Hero of the Faith.'"

None of this information appears in Baggett's article.

Baggett also fails to mention that Horsley's actions were condemned by none other than anti-abortion activist and WND favorite Alan Keyes. From Salon:

Horsley clearly expected a sympathetic reception from the uncompromisingly pro-life Allen Keyes. But he was in for a painful surprise. After reminding viewers, "I don't think that there's a stronger advocate of the pro-life position in America today than I try to be in everything that I do and say," Keyes went on: "But I want to tell you quite bluntly that I think that what you are doing is wrong, that it's harmful to the pro-life movement, that it represents the kind of tactic that will disgrace and discredit what we are trying to do, and that it involves a tactic that, because it disregards what ought to be our own principle of care and concern for life, is actually contrary to the truths we're supposed to stand for. And I want to say quite bluntly on behalf of the pro-life movement itself, I wish you'd stop it."

Stunned, Horsley began by praising his host's godliness, saying, "You represent to me a man who's blessed my soul." But then he fired back, saying, "I think you're ignoring the fact that these people are going to kill God's children ... a woman who goes and kills her baby is involved in some degree of homicide and she's going to be punished. And we can pretend she's a victim, but the reality is she knows what she's doing. And God knows she knows what she's doing. And we've got to start acting like that's the truth or else we confuse people."

Keyes countered: "I believe deeply in the injunction 'Speak the truth with love.' And love means that you don't endanger somebody, that you don't approach them in a way that will actually possibly bring harm and grief upon them because, in your self-righteousness, you think you're the instrument of God's punishment ... I think the question of conscience and punishment ought to be left in his hands."

Horsley started to reply but Keyes cut him off. "[W]e must not unleash greater evils in what we do to stop the evil we're looking at," Keyes said. "And if we go forward in a way that suggests we're declaring some kind of physical war on people, then the end result will be a worse situation, and we'll be to blame for it."

Horsley denied he was doing what Keyes accused him of, but Keyes insisted Horsley's actions were "going to hurt" the pro-life movement.

One would think that such information would be relevant to WND readers. But then, WND has some peculiar ideas about journalism.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:22 AM EDT

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Following David Letterman's mention of John McCain's links to domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy during McCain's appearance on Letterman's "Late Show" Oct. 16, one would think it would have gained mention somewhere on the ConWeb.

One would be mostly wrong.

Newsmax,NewsBusters, CNSNews, the Media Research Center and Accuracy in Media all maintained silence about Letterman's mention. WorldNetDaily didn't mention it either, but an Oct. 17 column by token liberal Bill Press detailed Liddy's dirty deeds without noting Letterman.

WND editor Joseph Farah, meanwhile, spent Oct. 17 guest-hosting Liddy's radio show -- not a surprise given his and WND's cozy ties to the domestic terrorist.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:27 PM EDT

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NewsBusters keeps up its Heather campaign against David Brooks with an Oct. 18 post by P.J. Gladnick:

The New York Times "House Conservative" seems to know his place. Pretend to be a "conservative" while advancing the liberal agenda of getting Obama elected (along with slamming Rush Limbaugh). Should the "House Conservative" veer from that path, he will find his invites to exclusive Manhattan parties, where they probably now express "strange new respect" for Brooks, dry up along, perhaps, with his job.

Would Gladnick continue to be allowed to write at NewsBusters if he didn't write stuff like this, attacking fellow conservatives who deviated even slightly from right-wing dogma? We wonder...

Posted by Terry K. at 9:48 AM EDT

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Would all schools in the U.S., under the muscle of an Obama administration, be forced to drill youth in the talking points of "gay" sex and gender–switching, calling it "justice"? Would Ayers' idea that America is an oppressive regime with way too much heterosexuality become a core tenet of your child's value system?

-- Linda Harvey, Oct. 13 WorldNetDaily column

Use Obama-Glo and you'll get a high paying job that demands virtually no hours per week, free health care, free abortions, free hurricane protection, free higher education, a cameo in a Tom Hanks movie, free tire inflation service so we can stop drilling for oil and free delicious and nutritious meals with zero trans fats delivered by an ex Fannie Mae executive in a hybrid car to your mortgage-free home three times per day!

[...]

And don't forget, if you order now, your name will be placed in the Obama-Glo sweepstakes. That's right, your kids and/or grandkids could win a chance to sing alongside the world famous Obama Youth in an upcoming production of "If They Could See Me Mao: The Musical" – coming soon to a public school classroom near you. (on-screen graphic: odds of winning = 99.9 out of 100)

What are you waiting for? Quantities aren't limited, so you should order like you should vote: early and often!

-- Doug Powers, Oct. 13 WorldNetDaily column

There's bamboozle and there's bamboozled – and then there is Barry Sotero, aka Barack Hussein Obama, the quintessential bam-boo-zuh-ler. But that notwithstanding, all indications are that on Jan. 20 of 2009, America's first Kenyan-American will be sworn in as president. To which I say, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," i.e., "let them eat cake" – because there sure won't be anything else of substantive fulfillment for Americans to enjoy. Voters are buying into his repeatedly vacuous mantra of "change" – and change they are going to get – but, excluding socialists, communists and Marxists, not a change they are going to be happy with.

-- Mychal Massie, Oct. 14 WorldNetDaily column

Beyond appointing a junior leftist like Ruth Bader Ginsburg or a younger version of abortion zealot Stephen Breyer to the bench, Obama promised to sign the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act" as the first thing he will do if elected. With one stroke of the pen, Obama's first act would strike down every state and federal law restricting abortion in all 50 states. That means no more parental notice, no more ban on partial-birth abortions, no more protection for any child – anywhere. Even infants who are born alive won't get protection from an Obama administration, as he led the charge in the Illinois Senate and voted four times against protecting infants who escape an abortion alive! 

-- Janet (Folger) Porter, Oct. 14 WorldNetDaily column

Obama was unquestioningly accepted as packaged – someone who was sincere, forthright and amiable in every way. The fact that he doesn't have the ghetto-jabbering syntax of a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton most assuredly did not hurt him. It simply hasn't occurred to whites (or blacks for that matter) that Obama could even approach being the monster a white man has the potential of being. 

-- Erik Rush, Oct. 16 WorldNetDaily column

Posted by Terry K. at 12:19 AM EDT

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How much does Aaron Klein hate Barack Obama?

He considers Muammar Gadhafi to be an authoritative, unassilable authority on Obama.

Klein really needs to seek professional treatment for his Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:41 AM EDT

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An Oct. 16 Media Research Center CyberAlert item (and NewsBusters post) by Brent Baker complained that "Democratic operative-turned ABC News journalist George Stephanopoulos made it a 'clean sweep for Barack Obama' as he declared on Nightline after Wednesday's third and final presidential debate: 'He has won every debate,'" adding that "Stephanopoulos has awarded all four debates this year to the more liberal candidate."

Baker fails to note that Stephanopoulos' opinion reflected that of the American public as indicated by post-debate polling, in which a plurality or majority also declared Obama the winner:

• Sept. 26 presidential debate: Obama 51%, McCain 38% (CNN); Obama 39%, McCain 25% (CBS).
  
• Oct. 2 vice presidential debate: 46% Biden, 21% Palin (CBS); 51% Biden, 36% Palin (CNN).
• Oct. 7 presidential debate: Obama 54%, McCain 30% (CNN); Obama 39%, McCain 27% (CBS).
• Oct. 15 presidential debate: Obama 53%, McCain 22% (CBS); Obama 58%, McCain 31% (CNN).

So agreeing with Americans is evidence of liberal bias?

Posted by Terry K. at 9:44 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, October 18, 2008 11:15 PM EDT

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How utterly craven and desperate is WorldNetDaily to smear Barack Obama? It's lending what little credibility it has to promoting an almost assuredly nonexistent tape of Michelle Obama purportedly haranguing an almost assuredly nonexistent "news agency."

An Oct. 16 article (unbylined -- it seems that WND's own writers lack enough faith in API to actually put a name to this) parrots African Press International's claim that "the contents of the tapes if made public may change the political atmosphere in America for ever." Indeed, WND uncritically parrots everything API has to say, including its claim that Michelle Obama called API "because of a Nairobi contact that did not like the way API was covering Barack Obama using information collected from American media outlets. The Nairobi contact prevailed upon Mrs. Obama to talk to API."

While WND buries denials by the Obama campaign, as well as by National Review's Byron York, in the article, it ignores other views on the subject by its fellow right-wingers:

• "It smelled like seafood to us," stated Little Green Footballs.
• "Not sure how she would have found a number to call them with since they don't provide a contact number anywhere," said JammieWearingFool.
• "A simple search on a AllAfrica.com, an African news agency that aggregates hundreds of African newspapers that is based in Washington D.C shows that [API] were not mentioned anywhere," said the pro-Palin Change & Experience blog.

Further, an Oct. 15 ABC News post by Jake Tapper -- currently linked to from WND's front page but not strangely referenced anywhere in the WND article -- makes an important point: "The Obama campaign does not tend to directly engage fringe Web sitesmaking wild charges, and if they were to do so, they certainly wouldn't have Michelle Obama make the call."

Further, as Sadly, No! points out:

[T]here is no such thing as the news agency, African Press International. It is in fact an unbelievably cheap-looking Wordpress blog, operated by a pseudonymous person from God-knows-where, that steals daily news stories from the African Press Agency, strips the attributions from them, and substitutes its own name. This enterprise also features a phony charity impersonating an actual charity.

WND has displayed no evidence that it has ever made an attempt to investigate the background of API or "Chief Editor Korir."

Joseph Farah, Jerome Corsi and Co., we can easily assume, are most desperately praying to their God, hoping against hope that -- in the face of all signs they have most assuredly seen -- this story is even slightly true. Then again, it promoted the false "whitey" story too.

If, as it appears, it is a fake (not unlike Corsi's Kenya documents), WND deserves to be shamed out of the journalism business. Unless it thinks it can convince people that lies are the new "journalism."

UPDATE: Indeed, Corsi has been begging API to post the audio.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:17 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, October 18, 2008 9:20 AM EDT

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An Oct. 17 Newsmax article by David Patten promoted an ad campaign by the anti-Obama National Republican Trust PAC that will highlight Barack Obama allegedly "embrac[ing] the idea of giving driver’s licenses to any illegal immigrant who wanted one." The article is illustrated by a shot of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta's Florida driver's license and notes, "In the aftermath of 9/11, authorities reported that the 19 terrorists involved in the attacks had obtained 13 driver’s licenses, plus 21 federal or state-issued ID cards."

But Atta didn't enter the United States illegally; he arrived on a tourist visa, which he later applied to have changed to a student visa (during which time his tourist visa expired, meaning that he was technically in the U.S. illegally at the time of the attacks). That student visa application was approved in 2002.

Indeed, all of the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. legally on visas, though several had overstayed time limits, making them technically illegal at the time of the attacks.

Posted by Terry K. at 5:03 PM EDT

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Tim Graham takes time out from Heathering David 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.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:09 PM EDT

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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.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:31 PM EDT

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