WND Still Waging Losing Battle Against Wikipedia Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has long waged battle against Wikipedia, a battle marked by a serious misunderstanding on WND's part about how Wikipedia works.
That fundamental misunderstanding continues in a Dec. 30 article by Chelsea Schilling detailing all the upsetting things that have been posted about WND and editor Joseph Farah on their respective Wikipedia pages.Schilling describes it as a "Wikipedia campaign of hurling smears at WND's founder, Joseph Farah." One of those claims is that Farah was called a "noted homosexual" -- and we know how touchy Farah is about anything regarding Teh Gay. (But Farah's anti-gay paranoia didn't keep WND from publishing Molotov Mitchell's gay-baiting smear, did it?)
There is, however, one little hitch to Farah's pending litigiousness: There's no evidence of the existence of a "Wikipedia campaign" against Farah or WND. Wikipedia users -- not any official operator of Wikipedia -- are the ones who made those changes and, therefore, should be the primary target of a libel lawsuit.
Nevertheless, Farah comments further: "Wikipedia has now demonstrated a long pattern of defamatory attacks on me and my work. We are very close, I believe, to being able to make a strong libel case against this phony 'free encyclopedia' viewed by hundreds of millions of people." Again, Farah should be directing his ire at those users, not Wikipedia itself.
the funny thing is, WND has previously defended such behavior. A June 16 article by Bob Unruh complained that a federal prosecutor, citing death threats, was seeking "newspaper readers who participated in a forum about a tax protest case" -- even highlighting an ACLU chapter's statement that it "always fought for the fundamental right to engage in anonymous political speech and we want to protect the rights of anonymous commenters."
Really, what those anonymous Wikipedia editors are doing is nothing more than political speech protected by the First Amendment. If newspaper commenters -- and death threat-hurling WND commenters -- are protected, why not Wikipedia? If Wikipedia is to be held responsible for the actions of its commenters, shouldn't WND be getting a visit from the Secret Service right about now?
Farah has no libel case because he has no evidence that Wikipedia itself or anyone directly employed by it has a policy of deliberately or recklessly maligning WND or Farah -- unlike, say, the case Clark Jones had against WND, which WND abruptly settled after seven years of litigation.
Further, the fact that WND lies about or libels people -- mostlyPresidentObama, but the list of WND's victims includes us as well -- seemingly on a daily basis also pretty much negates any whining about libel by WND, not to mention highlights the rank hypocrisy of WND's little anti-Wikipedia jihad.
Whether the individual far-left zealot in America is stupid, deluded or evil, the end game shall play out in the same manner: It will result in a society in which an unproductive, mediocre, larcenous few squeeze everyone else for their profit and pleasure.
Our current president is one of those few. This is indeed sad, for, in addition to the groundbreaking nature of his presidency, Barack Obama is obviously a gifted man. He could have actually accomplished something meaningful with his life; instead, he has dedicated that life – from early on, mind you – to destroying the greatest nation, and people, that has ever come along.
Can you think of a greater evil?
[...]
I do not advocate extreme measures. However, if Americans who have recently become aware of how deeply imperiled we are, and those who shortly will be, do not dedicate themselves to utterly disenfranchising the political left over the next five to 10 years, they will, in a very short time, become impossible to extricate without the expenditure of force, blood and lives.
Molotov Year of Hate Ends with Smears, Gay-Baiting Topic: WorldNetDaily
Molotov Mitchell caps off his year of hate by beginning his supposedly humorous Dec. 30 WorldNetDaily video of 2010 predictions by stating that "the loonies took over the asylum" -- accompanied by an image of President Obama in Joker makeup -- and "Democrats have climbed into their Zeros and are planning to kamikaze into our health care system."
He then offers the following as predictions:
"In the middle of a joint session speech, Nancy Pelosi's face will finally snap like a rubber band." (Accompanied by the on-screen text "Botox Overdose.")
"Barack Obama will finally show America his birth certificate." Followed by: "WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah will expose this birth certificate as a forgery created by a lovesick and obsessed Chris Matthews."
"It will come out that Obama has been a homosexual all along. No one will be surprised."
Interesting that Mitchell considers schoolyard-level gay-baiting to be an acceptable form of adult political discourse. But then, if you'll recall, Mitchell has endorsed the execution of homosexuals. Put two and two together, won't you?
CNS Hides Facts on Crisis Pregnancy Centers Topic: CNSNews.com
A Dec. 30 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr -- who called Harry Reid a baby-killer last week -- offers a sadly unsurprising one-sided view of a new Baltimore law ordering crisis pregnancy centers to post a sign stating that they do not provide or give referrals on abortion or contraceptives. Butin focusing only on anti-abortion activists' reaction to the law, Starr ignores facts that contradict their claims.
Starr quotes one activist as saying, "These centers are among the few places that women in Baltimore can get medically accurate information to make a truly informed choice when facing a life changing and difficult decision about an unplanned pregnancy," adding that they "present the truth about all of the options available." But that doesn't appear to be true.
A 2006 report by the office of Rep. Henry Waxman found that when 23 random crisis pregnancy centers were called, 20 of them wrongly tied abortion to breast cancer or infertility or mental illness. And a 2008 report by NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland found that every one of the 11 pregnancy centers it visited in Maryland offered up some piece of false information; in once center, a male counselor locked the door and acted "controlling and intimidating."
Then again, such facts might get in the way of Starr wanting to smear someone else as a baby-killer.
WorldNetDaily is clearly not ready to tell its readers about Orly Taitz's shoddy lawyering in her birther cases. But it appears to be still interested in (selective) reporting on her doings anyway.
A Dec. 28 WND article by Bob Unruh states that Taitz wants to move one of her cases to a court in Washington. Unruh doesn't mention that Taitz has been accused of suborning perjury in the case -- even though it seems like something that would need to be addressed before any change of venue is granted. As we've previously noted, the judge in the case has taken the accusation seriously.
Unruh also doesn't mention that the judge from whom Taitz is seeking the change of venue has fined Taitz $20,000 for her repeated frivolous filings in the case.
Further, Unruh ignores statements by former Taitz ally Charles Lincoln, who not only accuses Taitz of shoddy lawyering but also hints at an apparent deeper personal relationship with the married Taitz -- even though they were published several hours before Unruh's article was.
In other words, WND is still protecting its readers from the full truth about Taitz, even though it's highly relevant to the case -- after all, WND is slavishly following Taitz's diktat not to report on negative information about her. So what else is new?
I could not help but smile to myself when I got a gander at Barack Obama’s vile White House “Christmas” ornaments. Many of them were defiled with images of history’s most evil men, including the murderer of untold millions and cultural executioner Mao Tse Tung.
And it was hard not to laugh when Michelle Obama tried to explain the decadent ornaments away. She and Barack were unaware of the images, she said, as the ornaments were decorated and sent to them from her various groups (clearly groups of a seditious and conspiratorial nature).
An ornament depicting Ronald Reagan, discovered later in a photograph, was supposed to render the Mao ornament insignificant. But it really changed nothing: if someone has a picture of Reagan in his office, does it make it OK for him to have a picture of Hitler too?
This type of ugliness is not new. Obama’s cultural pollution is no accident.
He uses his brand to market the most destructive and cancerous ideas in human history. Obama uses proxies to get the most noxious narrative into the national dialogue, the daily workplace, and the minds of our youth.
(By "many" ornaments being "defiled," Geller actually means one. And the Mao image is actually an image of Andy Warhol's painting of Mao, which means Geller, like other right-wingers, doesn't understand pop culture.)
WND Misleads About Jennings Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has a longrecord of spreading lies and distortions about Kevin Jennings. Add another one to the list.
A Dec. 24 WND article by Bob Unruh makes a big deal out of Jennings allegedly calling Jerry Falwell a "terrorist." Unruh eventually gets around to explaining that Jennings was responding to Falwell's assertion that Mohammed was a terrorist, but then goes on to suggest that Falwell never called him that, only that Falwell called him "a violent man, a man of war."
In fact, as Media Matters points out, Falwell did indeed say in a 2002 "60 Minutes" interview, "I think Mohammed was a terrorist." Nowhere does that statement appear in Unruh's article.
Will NewsBusters Admit It Falsely Smeared Baucus? Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters caused a stir this week with a Dec. 27 post by P.J. Gladnick that essentially accused Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of being intoxicated in delivering a speech on the Senate floor. Smearing a Democrat, of course, is catnip for right-wingers like Matt Drudge.
The problem? At no point does Gladnick offer any evidence to support the claim. Nevertheless, Gladnick offers a pre-emptive dismissal of any response from Baucus' office as a lie:"Do you really expect a candid response? And who in the Baucus Senate office will reply? His military affairs aide, Captain Morgan?"
But hey, why let a little thing like lack of evidence stand in the way of smearing a Democrat?
Mark Finkelstein goes on in a Dec. 29 post to sneer at MSNBC's David Shuster pointing out, in a Twitter post, that Baucus "always speaks in a halting fashion."Finkelstein then follows up by making fun of MSNBC for referencing Baucus "in the same sentence with a variation on the word 'blasted.'"
Like Gladnick, Finkelstein offers no evidence to support his claim that Baucus was drunk (his end-of-post note that "Baucus wasn't blasted, and the parrot wasn't dead: 'e was just restin'" doesn't count).
Further, neither Gladnick nor Finkelstein have seen seen fit to report to their readers that Baucus has indeed respond to the smear (but Politico has). Wouldn't want those pesky facts to get in the way of a good smear, eh?
(P.S. We swear we saw at one point yesterday a Newsmax story on disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley bashing Baucus over this -- also reported by Huffington Post -- but it seems to have disappeared from the Newsmax website. Foley, if you'll remember, was a favorite of Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy until reports of Foley's dalliances with teenage congressional pages became public. Foley has since apologized for his remarks on Baucus.)
WND's Top Stories Largely Bogus, Misleading Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Dec. 28 list of its "top 10 stories of 2009" is a nice encapsulation of what is wrong with WND -- many of the stories on the list fall between manufactured and utterly fraudulent.
The top story on the list is WND's attacks on Obama's "czars." As we've detailed, the attacks -- led by Aaron Klein -- contain numerous false and misleading claims.
Two entries are devoted to Obama's birth certificate. WND's reporting on the subject is also laced with lies and deceit, and needless to say, nowhere does WND acknowledge publishing a fraudulent "birth certificate" without bothering to verify it first -- a serious breach of journalistic ethics.
The list also touts how "the fierce blonde behind some of the Obama eligibility lawsuits was profiled by WND" without mentioning Orly Taitz's history of shoddy lawyering -- which, of course, WND has repeatedlycovered up.
The WND list goes on to mischaracterize a Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism: "The 'extremists' were characterized as those who express concerns about illegal immigration, increasing federal power, restrictions on firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty. The report singled out returning war veterans as particular threats." In fact, the report did not portray all people "who express concerns about illegal immigration, increasing federal power, restrictions on firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty"; it merely pointed out that such issues were potential mobilizing agents for right-wing extremists.
WND also asserts that the report "was based on sources no more or less secure than Internet chat." In fact, it cited a 2008 FBI report that "some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups" -- not, as WND claimed, that all "returning war veterans" are "particular threats."
One self-serving entry on the list is the WND "pink slips" campaign. Unmentioned is that the 8 million pink slips it claims to have sent to Congress, when you divide it by the 535 members of Congress, means that just 15,000 or so people have paid WND $29.95 for the privilege -- which undermines the suggestion that this is any sort of mass movement.
CNS Ignores Evidence Health Care Reform Won't Add to Deficit Topic: CNSNews.com
A Dec. 29 CNSNews.com article by Christopher Neefus reports on poll results claiming that, among other things, "fewer believe health care reform is important enough to increase the deficit."
At no point does Neefus note that the Congressional Budget Office has found that the Senate's health reform bill will reduce federal deficits by $130 billion through 2019.
Klein Smears Rosenthal, J Street Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein continues his record of smearing both Obama anti-Semitism czar Hannah Rosenthal and Jewish group J Street by using a Dec. 25 WorldNetDaily article to falsely suggest they are "anti-Israel."
And what was so "anti-Israel" about Rosenthal, according to Klein? Little more than saying that "it was important that new and different voices need be heard regarding Israel in the American Jewish community" and stating that Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren "would have learned a lot" if he had participated in a recent J Street conference.
As per usual, Klein offers no evidence that J Street is "anti-Israel" that does not come from right-wing sources. And as per usual, Klein refuses to provide J Street an opportunity to respond to the accusation -- there's no evidence that Klein has ever made an effort to speak to a J Street representative.
A Dec. 28 NewsBusters post (containing the byline of "NB Staff" but, according to the URL, posted from the account of Rich Noyes) touts how "other journalists" have promoted the Media Research Center's (desperately lame) annual list of insufficiently conservative quotes. Missing from the post: any explicit admission of the conservative slant of most of those "other journalists."
The closest the post comes to admitting the bias of some of the writers is in describing the American Spectator's Quin Hillyer as "a judge of this year's awards and Denver radio host Mike Rosen as "longtime Notable Quotables judge." But if they're taking sides by working with a conservative organization to further its agenda, they're not exactly journalists, are they?
The post touts how "The Washington Examiner's "Yeas & Nays" column was first out of the box with the official results," but there's no mention of the Examiner's right-wing bias. It's similarly noted that "Often, the New York Post also runs an editorial with their observations on the worst quotes of the year," but again, no mention of the Post's right-wing bias.
It's not exactly newsworthy that right-wingers are merely serving as a echo chamber for other right-wingers -- though NewsBusters wants you to think otherwise.
WND Perpetuates Another Obama Lie Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily just can'tstoplying about President Obama, can it? Even Joe Kovacs' Dec. 27 list of "funniest news stories of 2009" is anchored in a lie.
Kovacs' lead-off item carries the subhead "Barack Hussein the Ogler. Mmm, mmm, mmm!" and is centered around a photo of Obama purportedly ogling a girl walking past him, which, according to Kovacs, makes Obama a "bozo" who is "doing his best in the role of buffoon in chief."
Kovacs added: "In all fairness, watching video of the event may provide a slightly different picture of what really happened." If by "slightly different" Kovacs means completely opposite, then sure. (And to assume that WND is actually interested in fairness when it comes to Obama is truly the height of comedy.)
Of course, the entire premise of Kovacs' smear is that the picture is accurate -- something he will never admit is not true because he clearly despises Obama too much to be honest with his readers.
Congratulations, Joe -- you've helped further solidify WND's reputation as the most dishonest news organization in America. You must be so proud of yourself.
WND Lets Hilmar von Campe Spew More Hate Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's holiday of hate continues with that Obama-hater (and Hitler emulator) extrordinaire, Hilmar von Campe.
Von Campe doesn't explicitly liken President Obama to Hitler -- as he has frequently done -- in his Dec. 26 WND column, but the implication is unmistakable:
Most Americans do not have a clue what a totalitarian system is. Let me tell you from experience: It is a godless society where there is no justice. The totalitarian leaders are always right, while the opposition is always wrong. Rules are based on lies forced upon people by godless and corrupt functionaries. Totalitarian systems grow out of immorality. Immoral people can be manipulated; moral people cannot. Protest, and you will be sanctioned. We will experience the end of freedom and the rule of the lie. Founding Fathers will be presented as greedy capitalists. There will be multi-religious "faiths," which includes watered-down Christianity. We had that in Germany. The "German Christians" promoted National Socialism in religious language.
You will be told by our unconfirmed president, Barack Obama, and the godless bunch of politicians what to believe. In the global ideological battle for the role of God in human society, they stand contrary to our founders. They are neither Christians nor patriots but enemies of God and the Constitution. They aim to replace God's commandments by making people believe that they know how to solve every crisis. We are not in a battle between socialism and capitalism. That is only the outside. The real battle is between God and almighty man, between truth and lies.
Von Campe also delves a bit into his past as well:
When I began to figure out how the Nazi atrocities could happen, I noticed that many people, including churchgoing Christians, lived as I had done: for myself, not bothering about what went on in government. I realized that as I am so is my nation. I was a liar who lied for small personal advantages, and if all German people were like me, it was no wonder Hitler could get away with his atrocities. He lied for big political stakes. With my lies I, who detested the Nazis, was closer to Hitler than to Jesus Christ. Going to church did not make me a Christian.
But von Campe has not changed -- he's still telling lies and not acting like a true Christian and, thus, is still "closer to Hitler than to Jesus Christ." Will von Campe tell his readers of the "small personal advantage" for which he's telling his current lies?
During this Christmas season, America should be reminded that President Barack Obama has perpetrated more vicious attacks against the Christian faith than any other president in the history of America.
[...]
Is President Obama our "public servant" or are We the People his slaves? I believe that the Obama administration and his puppet masters, like billionaire George Soros, the unions, the Hollywood movie moguls, militant gay and feminist activists, as well as legal organizations like the ACLU and the American Trial Lawyers Association, have nothing but utter disdain for the Constitution and the inalienable rights of the people founded under Natural Law.
[...]
Obama and his socialist minions have always hated American exceptionalism and since the advent of the progressive movement in the 1890s for over 120 years have worked ceaselessly to replace the Judeo-Christian traditions that have made America the greatest nation in the history of humanity, making it the greatest debtor nation in the history of humanity.
Obama did not cause this sudden catastrophe alone. It was caused by many so-called progressives, intellectuals, academics, social engineers, lawyers, judges, liberal special-interest groups and Machiavellian politicians of both political parties.
[...]
President Obama is not a patriot. Obama and his socialist legions are arrogant, deceitful political thugs who, along with the corrupt hacks of the Democratic Party, have defiled the austere grandeur of the White House and Congress.
-- Ellis Washington, "authorized biographer for the conservative intellectual Dr. Michael Savage," Dec. 26 WorldNetDaily column
(Washington, by the way, offers no evidence that Obama "has perpetrated more vicious attacks against the Christian faith than any other president in the history of America" -- or, for that matter, any "vicious attacks against the Christian faith." We're also disappointed that Washington appears to have run out of evil people to liken Obama to.)
