Aaron Klein Just Can't Quit Ahmed Yousef Topic: WorldNetDaily
Despite the failure of his previousattempts to smear Barack Obama by promoting apparent endorsements of Obama (and Joe Biden) by a Hamas official, Aaron Klein goes back to the Ahmed Yousef well one more time, using a Nov. 5 WorldNetDaily article to quote Yousef, "Hamas' chief political adviser in the Gaza Strip," as saying that Hamas "is drafting a letter of congratulation to be sent tomorrow directly to Obama."
As before, Klein buries the fact that Obama has condemned Hamas as a terrorist group far down in the article.
It appears that Klein is using Yousef like an automaton, playing that particular key on his mighty Wurlitzer whenever he feels the need to link Obama to terrorism. Is Yousef aware he's being cynically used by Klein?
And thus, Klein's hatred of Obama will continue to burn brightly for the next four to eight years, even though his (and WND's) brand of fact-free smears masquerading as "reporting" has been repudiated by Obama's win.
Along with Tim Graham, P.J. Gladnick has a key component of NewsBusters' Heatherscrew, ostracizing anyone not sufficiently, slavishly dedicated to the right-wing agenda. The latest victim is Philadelphia radio host Michael Smerconish.
In a Nov. 4 post, Gladnick gets all snippy about "conservative" (the scare quotes are Gladnick's) Smerconish's endorsement of Barack Obama, channeling right-wing blogger Brian Maloney's baseless assertion that Smerconish did so only to please his corporate bosses and to gain greater exposure in the form of his show expanding to Washington, D.C.
Gladnick called Smerconish's endorsement "self-serving" and "career-enhancing," adding ominously, "It's all part of the Faustian bargain. Selling your soul comes with a huge price tag as Smerconish will find out."
And Smerconish won't get to hang out at the mall with Gladnick anymore, either.
During the Cold War, the communists always claimed that we were foolish to worry about them trying to conquer us militarily. They said there was no need for that because they had the intent and the patience to take us over through an internal revolution. The conquest of America was not to be accomplished with bullets but with ballots.
We should have listened. But we didn't, and soon the most powerful political office in the world will be handed over to an avowed socialist. This morning, in some fetid corner of hell, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Joe Stalin are toasting each other.
Morris Tries to Spin Obama, Dem Landslide Topic: Newsmax
Dick Morris attempted a bit of quasi-liveblogging of the election at Newsmax. He was trying to spin away Republican losses and the Obama landslide, which got more strained as the night went on:
8:09 p.m.: "If you look at Virginia and Kentucky, it looks like a narrow McCain victory. If you look at Florida and Indiana, it looks like a big Obama win. All four states have less than a quarter of the vote in, so we can't jump to conclusions. ... On Senate races, Sue Collins' win in Maine is important. That indicates perhaps that the Dems won't reach 60 votes."
8:41 p.m.: "With McCain doing better than expected in Kentucky and Virginia, and perhaps in Georgia, it looks good for him. But Florida is the fly in the ointment."
8:52 p.m.: "One thing is clear at this point: The polls were wrong!!! Obama may still win, but he is not winning by the margins the polls predicted. In state after state, it is obvious that McCain is doing better than predicted. ... Until we see how McCain does in North Carolina and Florida (he has to win both to win the election), we cannot see how the race will go nationally. But it is clear that this is no blowout as the polls had predicted."
8:58 p.m.: "Fox News and Newsmax report that exit polls are 5 points to 10 points more pro Obama than the actual vote. This election could be very, very close."
9:25 p.m.: "It would appear that Obama is going to win, although not by the margins that had been predicted."
9:37 p.m.: "So at this point my guess would be, just projecting out, that you will obviously have a Democratic gain in the Senate. They also picked up Virginia. But I do believe it’s not going to be a 60-vote Senate. I think it will be a 56- to 58-vote Senate. That of course means you are going to have a strong Democratic majority and Republicans will have a hard time mounting a filibuster, but you can’t actually count it out. I think the Democratic gains in the Senate are less than their optimists had predicted."
WND Still Can't Let Go of Obama Birth Certificate Myth Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Nov. 4 WorldNetDaily article is yet another in the series of articles on Philip Berg's lawsuit claiming Barack obama's birth certificate is fake without mentioning the fact that WND previously reported that Berg's lawsuit "relies on discredited claims" and that "A separate WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic."
WND Omits Other Side In Alleged Black Panther 'Intimidation' Topic: NewsBusters
A Nov. 4 WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling howled: "Armed Black Panthers blocked a doorway to a polling location and intimidated voters in Philadelphia, Pa., according to Republican poll observers." Schilling told only the point of view of those "Republican poll observers" as reported by Fox News, baselessly asserted that "one of many cases of intimidation against people who do not support Obama at Philadelphia polling sites," and made no attempt to tell the other side of the story.
Fox News and other conservatives on the Web are pushing hard on the story that two black panthers may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia.
But an Obama campaign volunteer who's been on the scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that there's been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. And a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said the two men aren't in any way affiliated with the campaign.
Fox News' story is right here. It says one of two black panthers on the scene was "allegedly blocking the door," says another was "holding a nightstick." and adds that "the concern was that they were intimidating people who were trying to go inside to vote."
But Jacqueline Dischell, the Obama volunteer, tells me by phone that that's false.
[...]
There was no fight, nothing," she says.
Fox News arrived on the scene at around that time and started interviewing people near the entrance. The building manager asked the Fox reporter to leave, she says, and he moved further from the entrance.
That's where things now stand. "There has been no fighting, no voter intimidation at all," she said.
Why are Schilling and WND afraid to tell their readers the full story?
UPDATE: Newsmax is afraid too: A Nov. 4 article by David Alliot also fails to tell the full story, taking the lazy way out by similarly limiting himself to regurgitating Fox News' version of events.
As we did in 2004, it's time for the Slant Count -- the tally of WorldNetDaily's Election Day bias, in which we count the total number of anti-Obama or -Democrat and pro-McCain or -Republican articles on the website today.
Kessler Whines That His Obama-Wright Smears Didn't Get Saturation Coverage Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler uses his Nov. 3 Newsmax column to complain that the media was "ignoring their obligation to report the news" by not giving what he considered to be sufficient attention to Barack Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
I began writing stories about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s mentor and former pastor, Jan. 7 with “Barack Obama’s Racist Church.”
[...]
During the next two and a half months, I wrote more than half a dozen stories disclosing new information about Obama and Wright.
[...]
Meanwhile, I sent the Newsmax stories to dozens of people I know in the print and broadcast media. In contrast to their interest in Joe the plumber’s background, no media outlet would touch the Wright stories.
Unmentioned by Kessler: He has long ago squandered any journalistic credibility he might have had through his biased (and occasionally creepy) opining for a blatantly partisan "news" outlet, and his entreaties to other news organizations were rightly ignored as the partisan motivations of a political activist.
Kessler concludes: "The media’s continuing coverup of Obama’s associations with radical hate-mongers like Wright is a shameful chapter in the history of American journalism." If he's so concerned about such associations, why doesn't he expose and denounce his own -- and his employer's -- associations with unrepentant domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy?
NewsBusters Misleads on Troopergate Probe Topic: NewsBusters
A Nov. 3 NewsBusters post by Terry Trippany promoted an Alaska Personnel Board investigation of Sarah Palin's actions in Troopergate, which cleared Palin of wrongdoing. "The report provides vindication for Sarah Palin who had claimed that Branchflower's investigation had been motivated by partisan politics," Trippany writes.
But Trippany fails to note that the probe was not as "independent" as Trippany portrays it. As TPM points out:
Of course, this was an investigation that Palin herself initiated, by filing an ethics complaint against herself. The three members of the Personnel Board are appointed by Palin, and she cooperated with the investigation.
By contrast, the only independent investigation into the matter -- which was conducted by the state legislature and with which Palin did not cooperate -- found that Palin had violated state ethics laws by pressuring subordinates to fire Mike Wooten, a trooper with whom she was embroiled in a family dispute.
TPM also points out that the new report claims that the original report misconstrued the available evidence and did not consider or obtain all of the material evidence that is required to properly reach findings. One key reason that the original investigation could not "obtain all of the material evidence" was that Palin refused to cooperate with it.
For those who are angry about "negative campaigning," watch Barack Obama as he gave an acceptance speech yesterday "congratulating" Senator John McCain for his effort. Notice Obama "scratch his face" with a single finger. I'll let you watch for yourself to see which one he used.
Think that was an accident? Think again: Watch while he did the very same thing when belittling Hillary just months ago.
With his words, with his actions and with his arrogance, Barack Obama brings a whole new meaning to the word audacity.
Rise up and tell him what you think today so the American people are not met with the very same gesture.
Think Progress reports on a Nov. 2 NewsBusters post by P.J. Gladnick claiming that an audio interview Barack Obama did with the San Francisco Chronicle -- suddently controversial because right-wingers are using it to claim that Obama wants to "bankrupt the coal industry" -- "has been hidden from the public...until now." In fact, as the Chronicle's Carla Marinucci points out, the entire audio file has been available on the Chronicle's website since January.
In apparent response, Gladnick updated the post to claim that the Chronicle "did not include any mention of Obama's willingness to bankrupt the coal industry which you can hear on the audio." Warner Todd Huston similarly chimes in: "[T]hese are really not 'months-old comments' in the strictest sense that we were all made familiar with Obama’s anti-coal comments back in January. Since January, the San Francisco Chronicle has steadfastly left these incendiary comments entirely out of its coverage."
Marinucci also calls out NewsBusters for previous offenses: "the shoddy Newsbusters blog has been caught in the past simply fabricating news regarding the Chronicle's coverage. Our paper has demanded corrections for their fiction, but to no avail." Indeed, we have also caught NewsBusters making numerous false and misleading claims that it has shown little interest in correcting.
Even many Republican strategists had written off GOP Sen. Elizabeth Dole's campaign for dead, but a new anti-atheist ad campaign has dealt an eleventh-hour blow to her Democrat foe, Kay Hagan. And the outcome of their tightening North Carolina race could determine whether Republicans can hold onto the power to filibuster a Democrat-majority agenda in the Senate.
One race that doesn’t look particularly close is that for the US Senate in the state. Kay Hagan has opened up a seven point lead over incumbent Elizabeth Dole, 51-44.
“Kay Hagan’s gained four points on her lead in the last week,” said [Dean] Debnam. “Clearly the Godless Americans ad backfired.”
Finkelstein: Calling Blacks 'The Other Folks' Not Racist Topic: NewsBusters
A Nov. 3 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein criticizes the New York Times' Paul Krugman for "impugn[ing] the party of Lincoln as 'a haven for racists and reactionaries.'"
The only evidence Krugman adduces in support of his Republican-are-racists slur is that GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia "observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that 'the other folks are voting.'” Where's the racism, given that 90+% of African-Americans are expected to vote for Obama and presumably for Chambliss's Dem opponent?
Finkelstein doesn't see the racist connotation of calling blacks "the other folks"? We're not sure how to even respond to that.
Obama has already proposed the creation of a homeland police force that will no doubt terrorize those in the "ultra-right" who will become the most vociferous and active opponents of his socialist regime. Hitler had a similar police force called the Gestapo – Geheime Staats Polizie or Homeland State Police – that terrorized the opponents of the Nazi regime.
In 1933 a majority of Germans voted for a demagogue who promised "change" and seemed to be the answer to their economic and national problems. None of those voters could have foreseen that 12 years later Germany would lie in ruins and be occupied by foreign armies.
The young followers of Barack Obama have been well indoctrinated in our public schools to accept slogans rather than actual substance. The Nov. 3, 2008, issue of Time magazine has an extraordinary picture of Obama standing before a huge rally of 100,000 people under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, with his right arm outstretched reminding one of the famous Nazi salute.
-- Samuel L. Blumenfeld, Nov. 3 WorldNetDaily column
UPDATE: Special bonus Obama derangement:
He favors a weakened America.
He would like to see America become more like the rest of the world – where freedom is rare and happiness rarer.
He would like to see America knocked down a notch or two in the eyes of the rest of the world, which envies what we have and who we were, if not who we have become.
He would like to see the world's playing field leveled – even if that means the ascendancy of a great totalitarian power and sworn enemy of liberty.
He would like to see Americans forced to hand over more of their hard-earned dollars to corrupt governments around the world.
That's what Obama wants. And, as president, he has made it clear he will do whatever is necessary to see his agenda fulfilled – including the disarming of America and Americans.
Barack Obama wants to institute a Civilian National Security Force, a vast militia not unlike Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a personal army. He knows he would need such a force to protect him and to enforce his will on Americans.
Americans will have not seen such arbitrary power used against them since the days of the Civil War when Lincoln put the Constitution in the bottom drawer of his desk and set about arresting anyone who opposed his policies to enforce the Union on southern States seeking secession. The moral issue was slavery. The Constitutional issue was states rights.
If you want to see another civil war, just wait for this new security force to come into being. Obama would need it because the concept of posse comitatus forbids the use of the U.S. military to enforce laws within the nation. An army of domestic followers of “the One” would fill that need, assuming that all other law enforcement agencies failed to resist such a horrendous plan.
In fact, as we detailed when WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah was peddling this same lie, Obama has never made such a claim. Obama specifically described the "civilian national security force" he proposed as "teams that combine agricultural specialists and engineers and linguists and cultural specialists who are prepared to go into some of the most dangerous areas alongside our military."
If Caruba had any sense of shame, he would retract this column.
