WND Lies About Another Obama Official Topic: WorldNetDaily
Chai Feldblum and Kevin Jennings aren't the only Obama administration officials WorldNetDaily has told lies about.
A July 11 WND article by Drew Zahn asserted that John Holdren, the administration's science czar, "advocated ... compulsory abortions in the U.S." in a textbook he co-wrote in the 1970s. In fact, Holdren was merely repeating a claim that compulsory population-control measures, including abortion, "could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society"
Even the right-wing Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid found that to be an egregious distortion of the facts, pointing out that "while Holdren can be criticized for including this reference to compulsory abortion, it cannot be said, strictly speaking, that it is necessarily his view."
Nevertheless, WND continued to push the false claim. A July 25 column by Matt Barber assertedd that "Holdren has advocated ... forced abortion," a statement uncritically quoted by Bob Unruh in a July 31 article. A Sept. 8 column by Janet Porter asserted that Holdren "wants forced abortions."
A Sept. 21 article by Jerome Corsi tried to spin the lie. After noting that PolitiFact pointed out that "the authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control. Clearly, nowhere in the book do the authors advocate forced abortions,"Corsi adds: "A close reading of 'Ecoscience,' however, shows the authors clearly stated their acceptance of abortion as an effective population-control technique." But "acceptance" is not the same thing as advocacy.
Still, in an Oct. 10 article, Corsi wrote that Holdren "advocated abortion as a means of population control."
One of WorldNetDaily Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein's favoritesources is David Ha'ivri, currently a spokesperson for the Samaria Liaison Office (aka Shomron Liaison Office), which appears to be a group that speaks for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. What Klein repeatedly fails to do in his WND articles is that Ha'ivri is a Kahanist sympathizer -- a right-wing movement whose political parties, Kach and Kahane Chai, have been outlawed in Israel for inciting racism. When given the opportunity, Ha'ivri refused to condemn a plot by Jewish extremists to detonate a bomb outside a Palestinian girls' school. None of that association with terrorist organizations -- which the U.S. considers the Kahanist movement to be -- kept WND from giving Ha'ivri a prominent space as a "letter of the week."
WND uncritically quotes Ha'ivri again, in an Oct. 11 WND article by Samuel Sokol (presumably working under Klein's direction), as speaking for a group of "Jewish pilgrims" visiting the tomb of Joseph in the West Bank town of Nablus. Sokol doesn't acknowledge the term "West Bank," sticking with the right-wing Jewish terminology of "Samaria," and also insists on calling the town Shechem, merely "known to the Arabs as Nablus."
Sokol's article carries the dateline "Shechem, Israel," even though the town has officially been known as Nablus since, oh, the seventh century, and the status of "Samaria" as an official part of Israel remains in dispute.
Apparently, nobody is ever supposed to say anything bad about Glenn Beck -- even if it's the truth.
NewsReal's David Swindle takes us to task for daring to defend reporting pointing out that Beck's claim that his mother committed suicide is at variance with the facts, which show that the cause of her death is at best inconclusive. His professed problem with it is that it delves into Beck's personal life, which should be off limits in political debate:
If the question of whether she died by suicide or by accident is in doubt (which is all you might be able to establish) then it’s awfully sick of you and MM to choose the answer which makes Beck out to be a liar. I mean you do see how this is really distasteful and unnecessary and how a reasonable person could call this a smear? The circumstances of someone’s mother’s death is in doubt and you accuse them of lying about it in order to illicit sympathy from people and further their career? You really hate Beck that much? Because it seems to me that if you just disagreed with his arguments then that’s all you’d do. You’d refute his arguments (which is fair game.) But instead you choose to dig into his past to try and destroy him personally.
1) No "choice" was made to "make Beck out to be a liar." All that was done by Media Matters is highlight reports showing what the official investigation into Beck's mother's death and what Beck himself has said about it. There are discrepancies, and Swindle doesn't refute that.
2) Obviously, Beck himself is the only one who can answer questions about the discrepancy. But does Swindle really think that such a shameless entertainer as Beck is incapable of enhancing a tragedy for sympathetic effect?
3) Swindle accuses us of "dig[ging] into [Beck's] past to try and destroy him personally." As if that has never been done by conservatives looking to attack liberals. (See Clinton, Bill.) But really, how exactly does this little incident "destroy him personally"? Further, Beck has made the claim publicly on numerous occasions, which opens it up to public scrutiny.
It seems to us that Swindle is opposed to any criticism of Beck. After all, his boss, David Horowitz, has embraced Beck as "the most eloquent, fearless and effective warrior standing between Barack Obama and a collectivist state." But Horowitz himself is embracing personal attacks as well: Just four months after declaring that smears such as "Manchurian candidate" were beneath substantial criticism of Obama, Horowitz called Obama that very thing.
Ultimately, this is small potatoes and hardly the worst thing Beck has done (the top of that list is likely ridiculing the wife of a rival radio host for having a miscarriage). But the fact that Swindle is in full defense mode over such a relatively minor indiscretion tells us that Beck is now a priority of the Right as someone who must be protected at all costs -- just like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
Note to Farah: Obama Increased Troops in Afghanistan Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his Oct. 11 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah writes about how President Obama "told us during last year's presidential campaign that troops needed to be redeployed from Iraq to the 'real' front in the war on terrorism – Afghanistan," but is now "mulling ... over" Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendation for a even larger U.S. presence in Afghanistan. "Isn't this exactly what Obama said he wanted to do more than a year ago?" Farah adds. "Maybe it's that Nobel Appease Prize?"
But Farah hides the fact that Obama did, in fact, increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by approximately 20,000. Farah writes that Obama "has only modestly increased U.S. forces in Afghanistan," but that's misleading; the additional troops Obama ordered earlier this year increases the number in Afghanistan by nearly 50 percent.
Only in Farah-speak would that be considered "modest."
We already know how WorldNetDaily's self-proclaimed mission to "serve as a watchdog on government - to expose corruption, fraud, waste and abuse wherever and whenever it is found" is a sad joke. It cares about "corruption, fraud, waste and abuse" only when the person doing it is a Democrat -- Republicans get a free pass. WND is proving it again with the case of John Ensign.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Republican Sen. Ensign had an affair with a staffer whose husband was also on his staff; Ensign admitted to the affair after a possible blackmail attempt by the husband. Ensign doubled his mistress' salary while the affair was going on, and her son received payment from an Ensign-controlled poltical entity. It was later revealed that Ensign tried to find a lucrative job for the husband after the affair was revealed at companies on whose behalf Ensign's staff repeatedly intervened with federal officials.
Also revealed in this was a shadowy, secretive group of Christian politicians -- many of whom have been involved in similar moral and ethical transgressions -- that Ensign is linked to.
But you won't read anything about this in an original WND news article. The only news article found on the Ensign scandal in WND's database is from WND at all but, rather, linked to Fox News.
That level of interest would seem to indicate that there would be a similar desire among readers for news of this scandal. But WND has decided otherwise.
Why? Perhaps because Ensign is a Republican; perhaps because of the C Street angle, which would have put a bad light on Joseph Farah's fellow Christian evangelicals.
Whatever the reason, WND is afraid to tell its readers -- but not afraid of violating its own mission.
UPDATE: Another Republican scandal you won't read about at WND: growing evidence that Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry is obstructing an investigation into whether the state executed an innocent man, whose execution Perry signed off on.
WND Lying About Chai Feldblum Topic: WorldNetDaily
On top of playing guilt-by-assocation with Obama appointees, perpetuating falsehoods about them is something WND likes to do as well.
An Oct. 5 WND article asserted that Chai Feldblum, Obama's nominee to become commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, "praised polygamy" -- a charge repeated in an Oct. 10 article. In fact, Feldblum did no such thing, despite WND's attempt to twist words.
WND's basis for the claim is that Feldblum signed a petition that urges "Legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households and families – regardless of kinship or conjugal status." Among the several types of relationships listed in the petition are "Households in which there is more than one conjugal partner."
WND cherry-picked this statement to assert that Feldblum, in the words of the Oct. 5 article, "signed a manifesto praising polygamy." But the petition, like Feldblum, does no such thing -- it merely lists "Households in which there is more than one conjugal partner" among other types of relationships for which legal recognition should be provided.
So, WND's key attack on Feldblum is a complete lie. Why are we notsurprised?
WorldNetDaily, it seems, just can't decide how it feels about scaremongering predictions.
An Oct. 9 article by Jerome Corsi ridicules White House science czar John Holdren for having once predicted that "1 billion people will die in 'carbon-dioxide induced famines' in a coming new ice age by 2020," which could be avoided if "the government mandated urgent measures to control population, including the possibility of involuntary birth control measures such as forced sterilization."
But an Oct. 10 article by Bob Unruh approvingly cites the same kind of fearmongering:
Gerald Celente of TrendsResearch.com, says people right now should be bracing for "the greatest recession" which will hit worldwide and will mark the "decline of empire America." Crop failures could be among the minor concerns.
"Here we are in 2012. Food riots, tax protests, farmer rebellions, student revolts, squatter diggins, homeless uprisings, tent cities, ghost malls, general strikes, bossnappings, kidnappings, industrial saboteurs, gang warfare, mob rule, terror," he writes for a quarterly publication that is available through subscription on his website.
Oh, wait, we see now why Unruh gives this a pass -- Celente is blaming all this on Obama:
Now comes his forecast for a global depression and for the United States, "Obamageddon."
Unruh probably wouldn't be reporting Celente's predictions if a Republican president was in office.
WND Still Lying About Hate-Crimes Bill Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Oct. 9 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh repeats one of WND's treasured lies about the proposed expansion of hate-crime laws to cover gays -- that it also "protects pedophiles."
Unruh uncritically quotes the American Family Association as claiming that since "sexual orientation" nowhere is defined in the law, "this law will give pedophiles, voyeurs, and exhibitionists special protections, which is why the bill has correctly been called 'The Pedophile Protection Act.'" In fact, as we've detailed, "sexual orientation" is already defined by federal statute as applying only to "consensual homosexuality or heterosexuality," so there is no need to do so again.
Unruh went on to claim that "Attempts by Republicans to add amendments stating 'pedophilia is not protected as a sexual orientation' were blocked by House Democrats." Unruh failed to report that, as we also detailed, such an amendment is superfluous because the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 specifically excludes pedophilia, thus precluding protection for pedophiles from the hate crimes bill.
Unruh also repeats claims that "Politically incorrect thoughts about homosexual behavior will result in enhanced criminal sanctions under this law" and will "this would be the very first governmental and societal disapproval of a sincerely held religious belief, held by a majority of Americans, namely that homosexual behavior is immoral" without noting that the bill states that "Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the Constitution," which would include the First Amendment protection for freedom of religion.
Unruh lies about something else as well in referencing opposition to the bill by a group "founded by former U.S. Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, who was involuntarily removed from the U.S. military after he prayed 'in Jesus name.'" In fact, Klingenschmitt was removed for disobeying an order that he not appear in uniform at media events or political protests.
Erik Rush Endorses Censorship Topic: WorldNetDaily
Erik Rush writes in his Oct. 8 WorldNetDaily column:
The left's convoluted logic and specious contentions vis-a-vis First Amendment provisions for free speech can no longer be allowed to stand. If Congress shall make no law, and has made no law, no one's rights have been violated. Whatever measures the populace takes to curtail the actions of dissolute entertainers and public servants are also protected, so long as they are nonviolent.
And it is time that those measures be taken. Americans must begin to act toward the preservation of a reasonably decent, moral environment, in similar fashion as they have begun to act toward the preservation of their liberties.
Rush's declared motivation for censorship is to enforce "a reasonably decent, moral environment." Among the violations hecites of that enforced environment he wants to impose on America: "President Obama's new director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools is a radical homosexual" and "a high school in Virginia that is dispensing profoundly disturbing, sexually-deviant media of various types to its students."
If Rush had actually read the WND story to which he links to bolster the latter claim, he would see that the high school is not "distributing" the "media" (a book) in question; a teacher had loaned her personal copy of the book to a student, who then loaned it to another student, whose father went ballistic over it. Rush would also know that WND libeled the teacher by suggesting she wants to have sex with her students.
Rush also cited this example:
Cable TV's ABC Family Channel (the appropriateness of this name depends upon what one's particular meaning of the word "family" happens to be) features the popular show "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." This insidious fare showcases the shallowest troupe of middle-class, sex-obsessed high-schoolers one could dream up. Episodes of this program employ the words "sex" or the phrase "have sex" an average of 48 times. I counted.
We suspect Rush enjoy watching every filthy, disgusting frame of that show as many times it took to count every single instance of the word "sex" a lot more than he lets on here. And we also suspect it took him a lot of viewings to make sure his count was completely accurate.
Morris: Obama's Nobel Part of European Plot to Re-Colonize U.S. Topic: Newsmax
Whether it was rewarding Jimmy Carter for criticizing the Iraq war or supporting Al Gore in his crusade against global warming, the Norwegian parliament, which chooses the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, has sought to use the award as a political tool to influence American politics.
Its prestige and moral power make the prize a potent weapon with which to help steer the direction of the colossus beyond the seas that controls a quarter of the world's economy and most of its military power.
Now, the Norwegians have weighed in to support Barack Obama in his bid to reshape America so it looks more like, well, Norway, or at least like Europe.
[...]
The Nobel Prize is really Obama's payback for disciplining the unruly United States and taming it to be a member of the European family of nations. Europe wants to reverse the American Revolution and re-colonize us, and it sees in Obama a kindred spirit willing to do its bidding.
[...]
All this heavy lifting, this conversion of America into a European state, deserves a reward. And what is a more fitting one than to give Obama than the Nobel Peace Prize?
He obviously doesn't deserve the award for economics or, given his healthcare ideas, for medicine. But the Peace Prize expresses Europe's longing: to take back the nation its overly ambitious and uppity children founded.
Kessler Again Channels Jewish Attacks on Obama Topic: Newsmax
Over the summer, we detailed how Newsmax's Ronald Kessler had trouble finding a Jewish leader to properly channel his claims that President Obama is losing Jewish support, eventually settling on Morton Klein of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America.
Kessler goes back to that well again in an Oct. 8 Newsmax article, using Klein to claim that "Previously overwhelming support for President Obama among Jews is sinking fast." Kessler doesn't detail Klein's political leanings.
MRC Whitewashes Conservative Bible Project Topic: Media Research Center
An Oct. 6 MRC Culture & Media Institute article by Matt Philbin and Colleen Raezler describes a "Conservative Bible Project" only as an effort "to rid the Good Book of 'translational bias' and correct the 'lack of precision' in both original and translational language," then complained that liberals were "heaping derision on the effort."
But Philbin and Raezler failed to offer details on the extent to which the Conservative Bible Project wants to rewrite the Bible and, thus, offer the background to explain the liberal derision. From the project's main page:
As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[2]
Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]
Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."
As others have pointed out, guidelines 3 and 10 appear to conflict with each other. And it presumes that the Bible as originally written embraces no liberal principles, which the Conservapedia folks have yet to demonstrate.
But Philbin and Raezler detail none of this, noting only that the Conservative Bible Project is either "inspired or misguided" and sneering at any criticism of it.
WND's Washington Pens Another Love Letter to Savage Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ellis Washington sends Michael Savage another act of literaryfellatio -- Washington is Savage's "authorized biographer," after all -- in his Oct. 7 WorldNetDaily column, a mishmash of allusions and attacks based around the title of one of Savage's book, "Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder."
Washington brings up Einstein and Galileo, noting that they "were intellectual giants who dwelt among the legions of mental midgets of their day, yet they ignored the cacophony of lesser men with duplicitous agendas and fulfilled the transcendent calling of their singular genius" and suggesting that Savage belongs in that pantheon. (Washington has already likened Savage to both Jesus and Prometheus.)
Washington goes on to beat us up with his brain byname-checking as many deep thinkers as he can, all in the guise of an attack on you-know-who:
The Greeks have Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; the Italians have Michelangelo and Pavarotti; the Jews have Moses and Einstein; the Germans have Beethoven and Liebnitz; the Danes the Vikings; the Dutch Spinoza, Rembrandt and Van Gogh; the French have Napoleon and Montesquieu: the English have Richard the Lionhearted and Winston Churchill – but who does Black America have? Double zeros … Oprah and Obama. Why? Because liberalism is a mental disorder.
Washington also sneaks in a slobbering endorsement of the book whose central concept he stole for this column:
All people of rational intelligence, despite your political ideology, must agree with the premise of Michael's 2005 book, "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder," for it is thoroughly based on reason, logic, morality and truth – in contrasts to every aspect of liberalism – from abortion to separation of church and state, from the IRS, NEA, SEC, ACORN, Federal Reserve, to lawyers for dogs, pigs and rats, welfare for freeloaders, activist judges gone wild, the Stalinist-controlled media who refuse to accurately report about our fascist president, etc.
Only Washington could possibly believe that Savage's vicious insults are "thoroughly based on reason, logic, morality and truth."
An Oct. 8 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh touts Floyd Brown's call to impeach President Obama. But Unruh failed to disclose his employer's connection to Brown.
Brown is the current head of the Western Journalism Center, which was co-founded by WND editor Joseph Farah. Further, WND began as a division of the WJC and later spun off from it as a for-profit operation. WJC's share of WND has been gradually transferred over the years to Farah, and it's unclear whether WJC still retains an ownership stake.
Unruh, however, fails to mention the WJC at all, let alone WND's connection to it. Instead, Unruh describes Brown only as a "political activist who was behind the famous Willie Horton advertisement that left Gov. Michael Dukakis' candidacy for president floundering and was among the first to sound the alarm on the need for Bill Clinton's impeachment says the United States."
Unruh also uncritically repeats Brown's evidence for impeachment, even though much of it is, speculative, misleading or discredited:
-- "Vindictively fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin, who investigated Kevin Johnson, a buddy of the president, for misuse of funds from an AmeriCorps grant." In fact, as ABC reported, Walpin had a history ofbeing "an ambitious and aggressive inspector general whose actions repeatedly offended officials fo the US Attorney's office, to the point that the Republican-appointee in the US Attorney's office filed an official complain[t] against the Republican-appointed inspector general." Further, Obama was acting on a unanimous request from the AmeriCorps board of directors that Walpin be fired due to questions about "his capacity to serve."
-- "When Obama said America is not a Christian nation." That's taken out of context; in fact, obama has said that "we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."
-- "When, in his book, Obama wrote of Muslims, 'I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'" That's also out of context. Obama wrote in his book "The Audacity of Hope" that "my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans" have shown him that "they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
-- "When the White House insisted the name of Jesus be covered before Obama could speak at Georgetown University." In fact, as we detailed, the White House requested only that Georgetown "cover up all signs and symbols" on the stage. There is no evidence that the Obama administration specifically "insisted the name of Jesus be covered."
Brown also shows himself to be unclear on the concept of democratic elections, asserting that "We're now in the middle of a bloodless coup." Unruh lets that one go by uncritically as well.
Now that Brown has once again demonstrated himself to be so utterly dishonest in his treatment of facts, how can he and his WJC -- which is embracing far-right conspiracy theories about Obama, just as it did under Farah when Clinton was the target -- possibly be taken seriously?
