New Article -- Out There, Exhibit 51: Avatar Derangement Syndrome
Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb -- led by professional right-wing movie prude Ted Baehr -- goes nuts criticizing James Cameron's blockbuster movie. Read more >>

Another Farah Birther Lie: He Claims He's Not Questioning Obama's Citizenship
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah writes in his Feb. 8 WorldNetDaily column:

Here's how the Hill played the story Thursday: "'Birthers' who question whether Obama is a U.S. citizen have raised questions about his birth certificate since the 2008 campaign. Even after proof has been offered of Obama's birth in Hawaii, some critics have questioned its legitimacy. Most mainstream politicians have dismissed questions about whether Obama is a citizen."

Seldom has so much disinformation been packed into a single paragraph. But that's been par for the course with media mangling of the eligibility issue.

First, Obama's claim that Americans are questioning his "citizenship," and the press' acquiescence to that assertion, is both deliberate and a lie.

The real question raised is legitimate: Is Obama a "natural-born citizen," a qualifier for only one office – the presidency. Obama has steadfastly refused to release his long-form birth certificate, the only document that could ever begin to answer that constitutional question.

Farah is lying when he says birthers like himself do not question Obama's "citizenship." To cite just one very recent example: a Feb. 4 WND article by Chelsea Schilling references "the growing ranks of officials and prominent commentators who say they are unsure of whether President Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen."

Is Farah going to lie to our faces and say that questioning "whether President Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen" is not questioning his citizenship? It appears so. But Farah has done this before, falsely claiming that "I am not making accusations about where Obama was born" when he has a history of doing exactly that.

Then And Now: Obama, Press Conferences, and Tim Graham
Topic: Media Research Center

February 6, 2009: MRC's Tim Graham suggests the networks "skip" President Obama's prime-time news conferences.

February 8, 2010: Tim Graham wonders: "Why Hasn't Obama Had a White House Press Conference Since July?"

(h/t Jamison Foser)

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Lowell Ponte Division
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax's Lowell Ponte has a long history of Obama and Democrat derangement, to the point of claiming that "Obamacare" will kill Santa Claus. Apparently, just the mere sight of Obama sends Ponte into paroxysms of rage.

Which brings us to Ponte's Feb. 8 column, which begins:

The Super Bowl is supposed to be an event where football fans can forget worldly worries for a day by submerging themselves in beer, pizza, new funny ads, and sportscaster predictions and postmortems — and focus on the contest between the two NFL teams who made it to the final showdown.

So why did CBS, the network carrying this game, cut away during Sunday's pregame for a 10-minute (it felt like an hour) interview of President Barack Obama with "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric?

Was America suffering withdrawal symptoms from going a few hours without Obama's relentless appearances on our TVs?

Ponte goes on to call Obama a "ego-freak politician," the interview a campaign contribution to Obama and the Dems, and Katie Couric, who conducted the interview, was "raised by a left-liberal network journalist father."

So lost in his sputtering rage was Ponte that he declared, "We should now rename the Clinton BS network as OBS, the 'Obama Shill Network.'"

Uh, Lowell? That would be OSN, not OBS.

For Kincaid, Uganda Is Two People
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Are there only two people in Uganda? Cliff Kincaid seems to think so.

A Feb. 3 Accuracy in Media column by Kincaid is headlined "Uganda Confronts 'Loud-mouthed Homosexual Lobby,'" in which he claims that "A leading pro-family activist in Uganda says that Christians in that East African country need help resisting the schemes of the international homosexual lobby." This person is the only one he quotes.

This was followed by a Feb. 5 column headlined "Uganda Rejects Obama’s Pro-Homosexual 'Change,'" in which, again, only one person is quoted, "Ugandan Christian minister Martin Ssempa."

At no point in either article does Kincaid offer any evidence that the views of these two people -- which hew closely to Kincaid's own anti-gay views -- are representative of any significant segment of the country, let alone every single one of the 30.9 million Ugandans, as the headlines of his columns suggest.

And, needless to say, there's no mention of the facts that counter the anti-gay attacks of Kincaid and those he quotes -- for instance, the death penalty could also apply to those caught engaging in homosexual sex more than once, as well as those who merely test positive for HIV, and that HIV is mostly spread in Uganda through heterosexual contact.

Gay (And Obama) Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Trying to keep track of the disastrous decisions coming out of the Obama administration is very similar to watching the federal spending "dollars by the second" ticker. It leaves one dizzy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen are the latest to shed any core principles and bow to the ungodly assault on everything good and decent in our nation by this president.

The egregious announcement by Gates, supported by Mullen, that "don't ask, don't tell" will be repealed is no surprise, as it is fulfillment of Obama's campaign promise to the GLBTQIA movement in general and the Human Rights Campaign in particular:

[...]

If this brass had any brass they would have resigned rather than have a hand in torpedoing the institution they are charged with leading and serving – and therefore our very national security. The stealth attack of moral relativism, feminism, multiculturalism, etc., that have been allowed to creep into our military like the poisonous cloud of chemical weapons is only exacerbated by forcing – and I mean forcing – sexual diversity in the face of our men and women in uniform.

I am not even going to pretend to be objective, as I have had a deep respect for our military all my life with a grandfather who served in the army in World War II, a father who served in the Navy post-Korean War, a father-in-law who was one of the Chosin Few of the First Marine Division in Korea and a son who is active-duty in the Marine Corps with two tours in Iraq under his belt.

WARNING: As we say in Texas, I'm fixin' to be offensive to some who think Christians should be wimpy, quiet saints 24/7.

I am one angry military dad who is mad as hell that the political agenda of a radical and tiny minority being force fed to the people of this country is more important than the cohesiveness, morale, effectiveness and ultimately the safety of those serving us in harm's way.

-- Dave Welch, Feb. 6 WorldNetDaily column

WND Silent on Missing Ex-Lesbian Who Violated Custody Order
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Since 2005, when Les Kinsolving first wrote a column about it, WorldNetDaily has regularly kept up with a lesbian child-custody case that became a right-wing cause celebre because the biological mother of the child, Lisa Miller -- who, in the words of one WND article, "left the homosexual lifestyle and became a Christian" -- repeatedly violated court orders to allow her former partner, Janet Jenkins, to visit the child. The two women had obtained a civil union in Vermont prior to breaking up.

The typical WND article on the case uncritically repeated the claims of Miller's lawyer, the right-wing Liberty Counsel, claming that Miller moved from Vermont to Virginia and that any court order issued relating to her civil union cannot be enforced in a state like Virginia that does not recognize civil unions or same-sex marriage from other states. WND has denigrated Jenkins as someone who has "neither a blood nor an adoptive relationship" with the girl and repeated unsubstantiated allegations that the girl "reported being compelled to bathe naked with Jenkins while visiting and came home speaking of suicide." WND even highlighted a claim from Liberty Counsel that an attorney Jenkins hired withdrew "after he was indicted for obstructing justice and tampering with evidence regarding a murder that occurred in his home, where his college male friend was sodomized and killed," even though it's irrelevant to the case at hand.

Ultimately, the Vermont court awarded custody of the child to Jenkins as a way to ensure access to the child. WND reported on Liberty Counsel's appeal of that ruling in a Dec. 11 article by Bob Unruh that again repeated the unsubstantiated smears of Jenkins.

WND has been curiously silent, however, about events since then. As Right Wing Watch has detailed, Miller and the girl have disappeared -- opening her up to child abduction charges -- and Liberty Counsel and its leader, Mathew Staver, don't want to talk about it, to the point of deleting a Facebook group it ran dedicated to the case. ABC News has reported that Miller and the girl have apparently been missing since September.

That Dec. 11 article is the last thing WND has reported on the case. Apparently, if Liberty Counsel has nothing to say about it, WND doesn't either.

Blumer Keeps the Conspiracy Wheels Turning
Topic: NewsBusters

NewsBusters' Tom Blumer keeps up his conspiracy-mongering about a supposed Obama conspiracy against Toyota to get to fix their unsafe cars with a Feb. 6 post highlighting a AFP article "Is US bullying Toyota on recall?" As one would expect, Blumer continues to ignore the fact that problems with unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles dates back to 1999, and the number of incidents with Toyotas is more than those that have occurred in vehicles from all other automakers combined.

But Blumer is so invested in the conspiracy that he's not going to let some pesky facts stand in his way:

While it may appear that Uncle Sam's conduct is judicious throughout this process, that appearance won't disperse the cloud of suspicion that hangs over the "negotiations" -- and it shouldn't. If the government hadn't decided to become the controlling owner of two auto companies, the worst suspicion would be that it's picking on a foreign-based competitor of a large U.S. industry. Now the suspicion is that it's trying to hurt the strongest foreign-based competitor of two companies it controls and from which it hopes (someday) to recover tens of billions of dollars it has thrown at them. No amount of outwardly professional behavior will negate the existence of that inherent multibillion-dollar conflict.

[...]

Similarly, we shouldn't blandly accept the idea that government's safety people, whose bosses have controlling interests in two competitors who "owe" them tens of billions, aren't going to let those situations affect their judgments as to how hard to push safety issues at a competitor. The fact that a consumer watchdog group that has tended to favor regulation in so many areas thinks that Uncle Sam has overreacted is not a trifling matter (though to be fair, Consumer Reports, having rated Toyotas so highly for so many years, has a bit of an appearance problem of its own).

What? Consumer Reports is in on the conspiracy as well? They're everywhere!

WND Hiding Full Account of Farah-Breitbart Incident
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As we suspected would happen, WorldNetDaily is not eager to rell readers the full truth about the Tea Party Convention confrontation between WND editor Joseph Farah and right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart regarding the merit and political use of birtherism.

Even though WND reporter Chelsea Schilling was present for the confrontation, she wrote up no story; instead, WND links to a CBS News blogger's partial summary of David Weigel's Washington Independent account of the incident:

Why didn't WND link directly to Weigel's account, even though it's the most complete version available? Perhaps because Farah hates Weigel and the Independent for reporting on the birther stuff -- i.e. Orly Taitz's shoddy lawyering -- that WND won't. Indeed, during his rant, Farah denounced the Independent as a "socialist newspaper" (even though it has no print version).

It may also be because the CBS summary leaves out the fact that Schilling was present for the entire incident, and Farah and WND are likely hoping that its readers won't click through to read about the fullness of Farah's pettiness -- or wonder why Schilling isn't writing her own version of events. (Unless she's getting paid only to write only fluffy, positive articles on the proceedings instead of doing actual reporting.)

And even if Schilling somehow does end up writing something about this, it's a sure bet she won't mention the fact that Breitbart, despite taking the anti-birther side in his argument with Farah, has previously used his websites to promote birtherism.

UPDATE: WND also offers more of the stenography that made them one of the few outlets allowed to cover the convention with a fawning (if unbylined) account of Palin's speech.

Sheppard Defends Tancredo's Hateful Remark
Topic: NewsBusters

Noel Sheppard goes where most sane poeple wouldn't and uses a Feb. 6 NewsBusters post to defend Tom Tancredo's insulting, elitist, borderline racist assertion that Obama voters as so stupid they "could not spell the word 'vote' or say it in English" his call for a "civics literacy test" before being allowed to vote.

Sheppard, in responding to Rachel Maddow's criticism of the remark, tries to pretend that Tancredo wasn't alluding to the outlawed literacy tests of the Jim Crow South and that Tancredo was only talking about immigration:

Maddow was playing a little fast and loose with the facts here. After all, the federal government first used literacy tests as part of an immigration policy enacted in 1917.

It is of course correct that literacy tests were used in the south to prevent blacks from voting. However, as Tancredo's hot-button issue is indeed immigration, it's absurd to link his statement Thursday evening to racism.

But it's clear that Tancredo wasn't only insulting immigrants -- his statement about stupid Obama voters impugned all of them, not just immigrants. And if you're calling for a literacy test of any kind before being allowed to vote, you are in fact endorsing a historically racist act.

Sheppard then posts questions from a civics test on the MSNBC website and concludes: "So, Ms. Maddow, if it's not racist for the U.S. government to expect immigrants to answer these questions, is it racist to want voters to AT LEAST be able to spell the word 'vote'?" But that's irrelevant to the issue, and it's an endorsement of Tancredo's insult.

Do Sheppard and Tancredo really think that Obama voters are somehow more illiterate than McCain voters? Can they produce any actual evidence to support this theory?

Annals of Poorly Written Headlines
Topic: CNSNews.com

A Feb. 5 CNSNews.com article by Terry Jeffrey carries this overly long headline: "Yale Gets $3.9-Million Federal Grant to Develop ‘Avatar’ Video Game to Teach ‘Sex, Drug and Alcohol Negotiation and Refusal Skills’ to 9-to-14 Year Olds."

If you're getting the impression that this game is somehow tied to the movie "Avatar," you're wrong. As Jeffrey later writes, "will feature 'virtual characters or avatars' that are guided by the children playing the game to make decisions about whether to engage in behaviors that put them at risk of being infected with HIV."

The alarmism Jeffrey's article is presumably trying to forward -- with its frequent references to “vaginal or anal intercourse" as stated in the grant literature -- is undercut by a headline that suggests a link to a popular movie that doesn't exist. That, and CNS' nonsensical auto-censoring in the comments that replaces "sex" with asterisks. How are commenters supposed to discuss an article on the subject of sex if they're aren't allowed to use the word?

UPDATE: CNS has now changed the headline to "U.S. Gives Yale Researcher $3.9-Million in Tax Dollars to Develop ‘Avatar’ Sex-Ed Video Game for Kids." It makes the headline shorter, but not only does it not address the fundamental problem of falsely linking the game to the movie, it introduces a new error by falsely describing the game as a "Sex-Ed Video Game for Kids." Teaching "teach “sex, drug and alcohol negotiation and refusal skills," which is what the article states the game does, is not "sex education."

WND Tea Party Convention Coverage: Stenography, Not Actual News
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As expected, WorldNetDaily's status as one of the very few outlets permitted to cover the National Tea Party Convention -- chosen for their sympathy for the tea partiers' right-wing agenda -- has resulted in sycophantic coverage led by Chelsea Schilling, who provides near-stenographic summaries of speeches by her boss, Joseph Farah, as well as WND columnist Roy Moore and professional global warming denier Steve Milloy.

However, Schilling couldn't be bothered to report the one bit of actual news from the convention thus far -- Tom Tancredo's insult of Obama voters as so stupid they "could not spell the word 'vote' or say it in English." WND offers a link to a Fox News blog post for that, but even Fox News didn't mention Tancredo's subsequent call for a "civics literacy test" before being allowed to vote, which smacks of the now-outlawed literacy tests used in the Jim Crow South to keep blacks from voting.

But then, Tancredo is also a WND columnist, and the elitist belief that Obama voters are stupid and immature is accepted wisdom at WND.

UPDATE: The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel details how Schilling asked Andrew Breitbart about his criticism of birtherism, and how Farah joined the argument. Will this -- or any criticism of birtherism -- make it onto the pages of WND? We shall see.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The way some of you have gone after this bill, you'd think this was some ... Bolshevik plot.

-- President Obama, Jan. 29, 2010, to GOP members of the House

Now, why on earth might people suspect someone who's been immersed in Marxist ideology since he came out of the chute of masterminding a Bolshevik-style plot? Actually, I'm glad Obama brought it up; he saved me the trouble. Regular readers of this column are aware that I've made this claim regarding nearly everything Obama has done, from his involvement in mortgage-securities politics (even before he became president) to health-care legislation.

The "Bolshevik plot" statement itself, according to a professional I consulted in the area of psychological pathology (yes, I do that, because I don't pretend to be a psychologist), might be a variant of psychological projection (sometimes called Freudian Projection). You know, like the guy who says to his wife, "Jeez, honey -- it's not like I'm cheating on you," when in fact, he is. He's trying to allay her suspicions whilst gauging them at the same time. Judging from the materials I've read by psychologists and lay people on Obama's alleged mental twists, I can only come to the conclusion that the signs thereof are pretty apparent.

But all of this borders on the irrelevant. The current economic crisis was orchestrated. Health-care reform, Obama's past spending and his new budget all have the same objective: manipulation of the economy toward consolidation of unprecedented power. Obama could possess any number of dangerous psychological maladies; for now, he's still the president, and his ideology presents far more peril than the mind that harbors it.

Whatever the case, if he mentions the film "Soylent Green" once, I'm heading for the hills.

-- Erik Rush, Feb. 4 WorldNetDaily column

Previously in Technocracy, we called Barack Hussein Obama "our technology dictator," in recognition of his initially shrewd and subsequently overexposed use of multiple media to inflict his visage on us. Obama's omnipresence on every flickering screen and in every possible venue competed only with his steadfast refusal to give up his personal data device, flouting years of White House security tradition and forcing the people who take care of such things to provide him with a specially prepared PDA hardened against hacking. Obama has, from the first days of his presidency, displayed a distinct technological savvy – which has, in his every word and deed, quickly manifested itself as a desire to control every technological venue in which Americans might conceivably find utility, entertainment or employment.

Mr. Obama has wasted no time implementing this destructive, invasive, oppressive worldview where the Internet is concerned. He is, after all, the man who previously sought the power of a collective "off" switch for the Web – in the form of a Senate bill that would give the White House "the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet."

Phil Elmore, Feb. 4 WorldNetDaily column

I fully realize that even some of my fellow conservatives keep insisting that Barack Obama is a great orator. It strikes me that, along with Hillary Clinton's alleged brilliance, this is a case of something being repeated so often that large numbers of people finally come to believe it.

I suspect that some people will assume that I refuse to acknowledge Obama's oratorical skills simply because I hate his radical agenda. That doesn't happen to be the case. I know this because I am able to acknowledge that George Clooney, Ed Harris and Alec Baldwin are good actors even though I am convinced they've got nothing between their ears but hot air and cotton candy.

I will acknowledge that Obama has an excellent speaking voice – mellow and with good timbre – but if that's all it takes to be a great orator, he could be replaced by any number of radio announcers. And, for my part, it can't happen soon enough.

-- Burt Prelutsky, Feb. 5 WorldNetDaily column

BHO is a true believer. By his own admission, when he was in college, he hung out with radicals, Chicanos and Marxist professors because he didn't want to be seen as a "sellout." Thus, left-wing poison is deeply imbedded in his psyche, which is why you can count on him to follow, to the bitter end, the Saul Alinsky model for taking control of America. He will double-down, triple-down and keep pushing until he either gets his way or is voted out of office.

Though millions of us knew from the start that BHO was a fraud, few imagined that, once in office, he would arrogantly thumb his nose at the American electorate. BHO has great difficulty hiding his disdain for the tea-party people, Fox News and anyone else who opposes his policies.

I don't know how many Democrats will have the courage to stand up to BHO, but you can be sure that he will threaten and punish those who do not fall into line. In his eyes, he was not elected president of the U.S.; he was anointed monarch. He has absolutely no interest in what the electorate thinks.

-- Robert Ringer, Feb. 5 WorldNetDaily column

Meanwhile ...
Topic: Newsmax

Media Matters has been doing a fine job of decimating Dick Morris' latest rantings, as also posted at Newsmax.

First, Morris' apparent inability to grasp the concept of fiscal year deficits, as expressed in his Feb. 2 column, is exposed.Then, in his Feb. 5 column, Morris seriously overstates the amount of TARP money that has been repaid -- Morris claimed $500 billion has when, in fact, the amount is closer to $165 billion.

NewsBusters Pretends There Isn't A Link Between Tea Partiers, Birthers
Topic: NewsBusters

Lamenting MSNBC's alleged "quest to link conservatives with the birther movement," Scott Whitlock complained in a Feb. 5 NewsBusters post that Norah O'Donnell said that "Presidenet Obama sends a message to those who question his citizenship, this as the tea party movement gets ready for its first big convention." Whitlock added, "At no point did O'Donnell explain or justify the connection, other than her apparent assumption that tea partiers equal birthers."

Whitlock neglects to mention that one keynote speaker at the convention, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, is a raging birther who will prominently feature the subject in his speech, and that another keynote speaker, Sarah Palin, has expressed birther sentiments as well.