Earlier this year, we detailed how CNSNews.com repeatedly and baselessly suggested that the Obama administration demanded that an "IHS" symbol (a monogram derived from the Greek letters for Jesus) be covered during a visit by Obama to Georgetown University, despite the utter lack of evidence that there was ever a specific demand from anyone to do so.
Months later, CNS is still pushing that bogus story. A Dec. 17 article by Nicholas Ballasy and Edwin Mora claims that, in purported contrast to Obama's visit to Georgetown, "Obama has spoken at a number of venues while standing or sitting in front of other prominently displayed symbols and monograms that were not covered up and that thus received national exposure and publicity thanks to the president. These have included the monogram for the American Medical Association (AMA), the monogram for the AARP, and the symbol of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s most prominent gay rights organization."
Unmentioned by Ballasy and Mora: It can be presumed that speeches at which the AMA and AARP logos were displayed likely had something to do with the content of the speech. Obama's speech at Georgetown, however, was about the economy, which does not dovetail with religious symbols.
As before, Ballasy and Mora are still suggesting that the Obama administration specifically demanded that the IHS be covered up -- and again, no evidence is presented to support the claim.
This obsession with a manufactured slight shows just how desperate Terry Jeffrey and CNS are to smear Obama.
UPDATE: Indeed, Obama's speech at Georgetown was a policy speech on the economy, not targeted directly to a Georgetown or religious audience.
Kessler Still Obsessed With Rev. Wright Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler has long been obsessed with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, repeatedly using him as a way to attack Barack Obama, even as he has hidden Obama's criticism of Wright's more inflammatory remarks.
Kessler's obsession surfaces yet again in a Dec. 16 Newsmax column, in which he insists that, "In my view, Obama’s 20-year association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. told us everything we needed to know about how he would govern."
So obsessed with Wright is Kessler that he regales how he tried to shop the articles he wrote about Wright for Newsmax in early 2008:
As chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax, I began doing stories about Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ and its so-called Black Value System on Jan. 7, 2008, with “Barack Obama’s Racist Church.” The stories continued until mid-March, when the mainstream media finally began exposing Wright and his connection to Obama.
Beginning with the first story, I sent the Newsmax pieces and later a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed on the subject to key reporters, editors, and television producers at major news organizations. A reporter for one of the networks told me she could never pursue such a story.
“The media love Obama,” she said. “If you want to do a critical story about him, you are considered by the network to be biased.”
The problem here is that Kessler is likely hiding his motive for doing promoting this story. He wants us to think that he's being a responsible journalist trying to alert the world, but the more logical explanation is that Kessler -- who demonstrated his anti-Obama bias throughout the 2008 campaign -- was pushing an attack on Obama that he hoped would get him on TV.After all, Kessler was complaining just before the election that Republicans weren't using Wright against Obama to his satisfaction -- hardly the sign of a responsible journalist.
Remember also that Kessler, after months of bashing John McCain in order to promote his preferred candidate, Mitt Romney in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries (remember that creepy profile of Romney's wife?), quickly changed his tune after McCain clinched the nomination and became a committed McCain fluffer, portraying previously negative attributes as positives.
All of which makes it a bit rich that Kessler is complaining that "if the media had done the job the First Amendment envisioned for the press, Obama would not be president today." Kessler's work for Newsmax is largely bereft of evidence that he genuinely cares about journalism. Indeed, we're still waiting for Kessler to address or correct his longtime -- and since debunked -- claim that death threats against President Obama have increased 400 percent over threats against President Bush.
Molotov Mitchell vs. The Facts Topic: WorldNetDaily
Molotov Mitchell devotes his Dec. 16 WorldNetDaily video insisting that "the facts mean nothing to liberals" and that they "make stuff up to get their way." He ends his video by asserting that "liberal research isn't research," adding, "So the next time you hear some hokey liberal 'research,' I want you to pay close attention to the researcher."
We can't help but think that's directed at us. After all, we've detailed how Mitchell has his own issues with the facts. Indeed, just a couple of weeks ago, he chose to believe a convicted murderer's claims over that of law enforcement (and said convicted murderer's previous statements on the issue) regarding the death of Matthew Shepard. Of course, Mitchell has never contradicted anything we've written about him.
And Molotov being Molotov, he doesn't play straight with the facts even when he's accusing others of lying. For instance, he makes a big deal out of claiming that "our troops discovered roughly 500 metric tons yellowcake uranium last year just south of Baghdad," citing MSNBC and CNN to support the claim, which he says contradicts the liberal insistence that there were no WMDs in Iraq.
But the MSNBC (actually, AP) article he cites tells a different story -- it's about about the removal of yellowcake from Iraq, not the discovery of it. (The link he provides for the CNN article he cites does not work.) In fact, the article states: "U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall [in 2003] that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns." And it was not even discovered by U.S. troops then; as the article states:
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
Further, yellowcake is not WMD; the uranium located within must be first extracted and refined, then enriched to weapons grade. As even Newsmax concedes, what little nuclear capability Iraq had was dismantled after the first Iraq War, had only achieved low-grade enrichment of 1.8 tons of it, and the technology Iraq had to enrich it was buried for years in the garden of the physicist who ran Saddam's weapons program.
In other words, Iraq did not have anything resembling the capability to do weapons-grade enrichement of uranium after 1991. Parts buried in a garden do not equal capability.
It also wouldn't be Molotov if he didn't engage in a little gay-bashing. He claimed that "lesbian anthropologist" Margaret Mead "fabricated an entire culture taht allegedly promoted rampant promiscuity in her book 'Coming of Age in Samoa,'" adding that "bitter old lesbians still cite her research to this day, even though it's been throughly debunked by other anthropologists and even the outraged Samoans themselves."
That's an apparent reference to Derek Freeman's book attacking Mead's claims. But Mitchell's version of events doesn't appear to square with the facts either (shocking, we know). According to Wikipedia:
After an initial flurry of discussion, many anthropologists concluded that the truth would probably never be known, although most published accounts of the debate have also raised serious questions about Freeman's critique.
First, these critics have speculated that he waited until Mead died before publishing his critique so that she would not be able to respond. In 1978, Freeman sent a revised manuscript to Mead, but she was ill and died a few months later without responding.
Second, Freeman's critics point out that by the time Freeman arrived on the scene Mead's original informants were old women, grandmothers, and had converted to Christianity, so their testimony to him may not have been accurate. They further allege that Samoan culture had changed considerably in the decades following Mead's original research, that after intense missionary activity many Samoans had come to adopt the same sexual standards as the Americans who were once so shocked by Mead's book. They suggested that such women, in this new context, were unlikely to speak frankly about their adolescent behavior. Further, they suggested that these women might not be as forthright and honest about their sexuality when speaking to an elderly man as they would have been speaking to a woman near their own age.
Further, according to Wikipedia, Freeman's own research "documented the existence of premarital sexual activity in Samoa."
What Michell said about "hokey liberal 'research'" goes double for his own, since he seems determined to prove time and time again that right-wing research -- and his especially -- isn't research.
WND Uses Hate Group's Research Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 15 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh cites "tresearch [sic] by staff and volunteers for Mass Resistance" to make more questionable accusations against Kevin Jennings -- this time, that "teachers in the state were offered professional credit for attending a now-infamous 2000 seminar in which students were instructed in lewd homosexual practices."
Unmentioned by Unruh: the controversial workshop in question was one of more than 50 workshops held during the seminar, which would more than justify the awarding of professional credit.
Also unmentioned by Unruh: MassResistance is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Shapiro Smears the Hell Out of La Raza, Obama Nominee Topic: CNSNews.com
Ben Shapiro spews numerous false and misleading claims in his Dec. 16 column, published by CNSNews.com and WorldNetDaily. Many of them are related to the National Council of La Raza -- including the false assertion that el Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, a statement urging Hispanics to "[reclaim] the land of their birth," was a "founding document" of NCLR.
Shapiro also falsely smears Mari Del Carmen Aponte, a former NCLR board member whom President Obama nominated to be U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, as "an alleged former spy for Fidel Castro." In fact, the FBI cleared Aponte of allegations that she had been recruited as a Cuban spy.
CNS' Jeffrey: Obama Supporters Are Young, Poor Heathens Topic: CNSNews.com
A strategist casting a cold eye on the Gallup poll tracking President Barack Obama’s job approval rating might be tempted to give our president the following advice: Sir, you need more unmarried, unchurched, poor and inexperienced Americans.
[...]
For the week of Dec. 7-13, Obama’s overall approval was 49 percent, with some groups rating him significantly higher than that and some rating him significantly lower. Among people who seldom or never go to church, Obama did relatively well. Fifty-three percent said they approved of the job he is doing. Among those who go to church monthly or nearly weekly, 53 percent approved. But among weekly churchgoers, only 42 percent approved.
If there were not a class of citizens in this country who go to church every week, a majority of Americans would still approve of the job Obama is doing.
Obama also did very well among the unmarried. Fifty-nine percent approved of the job he is doing. Among married people, however, only 42 percent approved.
If marriage could be eliminated in this country—leaving only the never married, the divorced and the cohabitating—a majority of Americans would still approve of the job Obama is doing.
Similarly, younger people were far more likely than older people to give Obama a positive rating. Fifty-nine percent of Americans 18 to 29 said they approved of the job he is doing. But only 50 percent of those 30 to 49 approved, only 48 percent of those 50 to 64 approved, and only 40 percent of those 65 or older approved.
If everyone in this country were under 30, a majority of Americans would still approve of the job Obama is doing.
[...]
Many Americans who are not among the married, churchgoing or prosperous today, would in the normal course of things become those things tomorrow. In this free country, younger people tend to grow older, get married, prosper and, in many circumstances, find their way back to church if they have strayed from it.
A bigger welfare state such as Obama envisions where more people are dependent on government and where the industrious must bear a greater financial burden to support the government will make it harder for all our children to live the American dream—and join the demographic categories that disapprove of the job Obama is doing.
Column on Continetti Book Topic: The ConWeb
For a little non-ConWeb-related reading, we have a column up at Media Matters reviewing Matthew Continetti's book "The Persecution of Sarah Palin."
WND Now Merely Misleading About Jennings Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has a history of lying about Kevin Jennings, so it looks like progress when WND merely misleads about him.
Bob Unruh does the latter in a Dec. 14 WND article, highlighting a claim that a "teacher who attended a 2000 sex seminar in Massachusetts at which public school students were taught deviant techniques such as 'fisting'" now claims that "the project was the idea and product of the man who now serves President Obama as chief of the Department of Education's Office of Safe Schools."
What Unruh (following in the footsteps of Gateway Pundit, which first reported the claim) doesn't mention: The teacher has no actual evidence that Jennings knew of the specific content of the workshop in question.
Unruh also fails to mention that when Jennings was made aware of the workshop's contents after the fact, he criticized it.
Further, Unruh highlights claims made by the anti-gay group MassResistance without noting that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers it to be a hate group.
WND Columnists Unhappy That Lesbian Elected Houston Mayor Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's not a surprise given its far-right, anti-gay agenda, but WorldNetDaily's columnists are not taking the news that a lesbian was elected mayor of Houston very well.
I would like to take a point of personal privilege (to use parliamentary terms) and address the pastors of Houston, of Texas and of the nation on what happened last Saturday in our runoff election for mayor and several city council positions. First, I will let the victor speak for herself on the nature of the outcome:
"This election has changed the world for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community. … just as it is about transforming the lives of all Houstonians for the better."
So stated Annise Parker, lesbian mayor-elect of Houston, Texas, after 54 percent of the 16 percent of voters who cared enough to show up declared that her private moral life and radical agenda to redefine family was irrelevant. Eighty-four percent didn't care enough.
I have to first of all ask forgiveness of the rest of the country on behalf of those in Houston who were entrusted with choosing godly leaders and failed to do so. As I have stated often, the first responders in that line are the churches who profess Christianity and adherence to the Bible as our authority. We let our position on the wall be breached by the enemy.
As Houston elects its first openly gay mayor, and headlines are made that this is some kind of historic occasion, I remember the way every major media source in the world trumpeted Obama's election – even though he is one of the most destructive public figures ever to take office. And, this gives me peace in perspective.
We cannot thwart all the doings of the devil, nor should we imagine that we can – for it is not God's plan that this should be possible. Discernment – knowing right from wrong – will not always result in the ability to right wrongs.
However, on the other hand, disappointment must never result in compromising of principles and ignoring of God's Word or will. Thus, the media celebrates Houston's mayor, while we understand, as is it written in 2 Timothy, that if she remains a homosexual, she will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
[...]
As I can attest, the homosexual sin is one that can easily be seen clearly. And, in seeing clearly, it is easy to repent and move on from that temptation. Plenty of good, healthy organizations (Exodus International, NARTH, Courage) offer spiritual and secular support to people wishing to move on from a temptation-filled life of homosexuality. Houston's Mayor Parker could easily do the same, were she interested in such a choice.
And to make it an anti-gay trifecta, Les Kinsolving weighs in (though not on the mayor):
A nearly one-half page ad in USA Today is a wonderment of cover-up. Its 15 separate sentences describing this denomination are each preceded by the national Episcopal Church symbol, or coat or arms.
Not one of these 15 statements even mentions the prime reason why this denomination – to which so many of this nation's Founding Fathers belonged – has lost 1.5 million of its members since the 1950s.
Not one of these 15 statements, under the banner headline "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You," even mentions this denomination's General Convention's decision to support both same-sex marriage, as well as self-announced and practicing homosexuals as bishops and other clergy.
[...]
If the Episcopal Church were in fact upholding the Bible – as this expensive USA Today ad claims – this denomination would never had torn itself apart by endorsing sodomist matrimony and ordinations, which are repeatedly condemned in the Old and New Testaments.
When you're devoting your column to endlessly restating your argument, you've failed as a columnist.
That's pretty much what Jerome Corsi does in his Dec. 14 WorldNetDaily column:
Watching the Senate press last week toward passage of President Obama's universal health care, my Red Alert is forced to contemplate whether a socialist agenda is intending to bankrupt the United States with trillion-dollar social-welfare programs there is no way the country will ever be able to afford.
[...]
In "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," I clearly established that Barack Obama is trained in the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" methodology of lying to voters to disguise a true intent to transfer wealth from the "haves" to the "have nots."
But as we watch President Obama expand the social-welfare state to an unprecedented level, the question is this: Is Barack Obama silently pursuing the Cloward-Piven strategy with an intent to destroy private-enterprise capitalism itself?
[...]
Could it be that President Obama intends to bankrupt the USA in order to destroy free-enterprise capitalism itself?
[...]
s President Obama intentionally placing so many on the government dole, including the inclusion of illegal aliens in Obamacare, because he wants to bankrupt the United States to destroy the private enterprise system, following the lead of the leftist radicals that employed the Cloward-Piven strategy to bankrupt New York City in the 1970s?
Beyond the needless repetition, Corsi's column is little more than a greatest-hits of Obama conspiracy-mongering, punching all the usual tickets -- ACORN, Cloward-Piven, even George Soros.
And it would be Corsi if he weren't getting facts wrong; he claims that Project Vote, which Obama worked for in 1992, was "an ACORN effort to register voters nationally." In fact, as we've repeatedly detailed, Project Vote was not affiliated with ACORN in 1992.
Is Newsmax Bothered By Geller's Hateful Obama Smears? Topic: Newsmax
While Pamela Geller has mostly behaved in her Newsmax column, she's gone wild on her own Atlas Shrugs blog, viciously and falsely smearing Obama as a Nazi and anti-Semite:
Obama is pressuring Jews to "evacuate" from parts of Israel? And what Warsaw ghetto does the muhammadan president have in mind? I think I am gonna hurl.
The Jews will not go. The Jews will not submit to this century's nazis and Mansourian poser. No way, bloodsuckers. Not again. Never again.
It's as if the floodgates of hell have been thrown open. The moratorium on the holocaust is officially over and all the savages are free to incite, hate and destroy. Clearly those "Kick a Jew" days discussed here and here in schools are part of this growing evil Evil unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.
After its experience with John L. Perry calling for a military coup against Obama and Pat Boone calling for a "tenting" of the White House, is Geller really the kind of columnist Newsmax wants to have? Or is Newsmax willing to allow Geller to be as disgusting and hateful as she wants on her blog as long as she tones it down for her column?
WND Still Lying About Hate-Crimes Law Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 13 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh is devoted to baselessly accusing the recently signed expansion of federal hate-crimes law to gays of resulting in "witch hunt[s]" and "the Spanish Inquisition." We know it's baseless because Unruh quotes Canadians -- who are apparenly unfamiliar with the actual details of the U.S. law -- making this accusation.
Of course, Unruh himself gets the law wrong too, falsely claiming that it "cracks down on any acts that could be linked to criticism of homosexuality or even the 'perception' of homosexuality." In fact, the bill does nothing of the sort, focusing on "speech, conduct or activities consisting of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act of violence." It specifically states that "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), including the exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment and peaceful picketing or demonstration" -- a clause Unruh and his WND coworkers have repeatedly failed to report to their readers.
Unruh quotes numerous critics of the law but no supporters. WND editor Joseph Farah as expressed his support for "getting other points of view," "interviewing those with whom you disagree," and "representing honestly the opinions of others," but this edict may apply only to reporters who write about WND, not to those who work for it.
CNS Columnist Plays the Nazi Card Topic: CNSNews.com
A Dec. 10 CNSNews.com column by Bob Parks ("the video producer for the Media Research Center ... and the editor of the blog 'Black & Right'") plays the Nazi card by referencing the "Final Solution":
Can you imagine the horror if it were implied that the cute little white girl in the video was going to have to give up her life so others could live the way they were accustomed? Can you imagine the outrage if the unborn children of the Upper West Side or Pacific Palisades became fair game because it was considered "the most effective way to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic global warming"?
Sorry, but that will never happen because white environmentalist liberals deem themselves more worthy of survival than any Hollywood celebrity accessory. The children of the Third World are worthy of their pity, but as Rachel Carson cared more about her environmental pet project (which has needlessly sentenced millions of black and brown children to a diseased death every year since 1972), the United Nations and climate change activists care more about being right.
[...]
While they hobnob around Copenhagen in gas-guzzling limousines, enjoy only the finest chow and booze, we need to remember what their ultimate goal is: Environmentalists consider their Final Solution to be based on science, but it's really all about them. It always has been, and what are a few million dead black babies if the environmentalists get to save the planet so they can rule it?
Parks even headlined his column "COP15's Final Solution."
A Dec. 9 AIM column by John W. Howard, in trying to warn that the federal government is after you cites previous examples of government interference:
Then they came for the tobacco companies. Knowing that seizure of the vocabulary will frame the terms of debate, they applied their favorite derisive sobriquet: Big Tobacco; as if "bigness" itself were somehow inherently discrediting. If I may indulge in a short digression, bigness does not come from failure but from success. It is the left's project to punish success wherever it is found. It is, after all, a fundamental element of their philosophy. Life to them is a zero sum game. Success for one can only be bought at the expense of the failure of another. Success, then, is the enemy, especially if it is economic success. Bigness, then, as the symbol of extreme success, must be disqualifying to claims to virtue. Indeed, that very bigness equates with evil (unless, of course, it is government bigness).
Whatever its shortcoming, tobacco is a product that is legal. Those of us who do not smoke often find its by-products offensive, but the truth is that millions of people around the globe find pleasure in its use and the only people it generally harms are those who voluntarily use it. (Some of us believe the film industry is significantly more destructive on a broader scale than any tobacco product could be.) "Big Tobacco" employs millions and has added billions to our economy. "Big Tobacco" has given hundreds of millions to support charitable organizations throughout the world, single-handedly saving a number of cultural institutions in the United States.
Howard never gets around to explicitly stating just what that "shortcoming" of tobacco is: it kills people.
Howard does aver that the tobacco industry is "a business that traffics in death, as the left's caricature would have it," albeit only to bash fellow businessmen for letting that unpleasant death stuff stand in the way of defending tobacco.
Questions 'From the Right'? Not At NewsBusters Topic: NewsBusters
The boys at NewsBusters regularlygetupset when an interviewer questions someone "from the left" -- that is, forwards supposedly liberal talking points in his or her questions. But what happens when a questioner asks questions from the right?
Pish-posh -- it seems that, according to NewsBusters and its Media Research Center parent, there is no such thing.
A Dec. 12 NewsBusters post by Jeff Poor highlights how Fox News hosts Neil Cavuto and Gregg Jarrett badgered two Republican congessmen about why they didn't do anything about supposedly excessive earmarks in the budget bill pass over the weekend. Did Poor criticize Cavuto and Jarrett for hitting the congressmen "from the right"?
Of course not. He claimed it debunks one of "the favorite talking points that often comes from Fox News detractors" that the channel "is somehow an organ of the Republican Party."
Gee, where would people "somehow" get that impression? From watchingFox News, perhaps?
Poor's suggestion that questioning Republican congressman from the right disproves the fact that Fox News is a Republican shill is laughable -- in fact, it only reinforces the impression. After all, Anita Dunn said that Fox News was "a wing of the Republican Party," not the entire party.
And what wing would that be? The movement conservative wing -- the same wing that NewsBusters and the MRC embraces. Maybe that's why Poor and his colleagues don't recognize questions "from the right" when they see 'em.
