Too Stupid, Even For NewsBusters Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein managed to top his notorious 2006 post speculating that Matt Lauer was a Palestinian sympathizer for wearing a checkered scarf. How? By declaring in a June 3 post that the World Cup soccer ball, as used on the cover of Time, "seems strikingly like that of the Obama logo."
We'll outsource the mocking to Media Matters' Simon Maloy, who later goes on to note that NewsBusters was apparently so embarrassed by Finkelstein's post that it was removed from the front page (though not completely deleted).
Bill O'Reilly to Help Promote Latest Newsmax Scheme Topic: Newsmax
We’ve previously detailed how Newsmax uses anti-Obama scaremongering (and Dick Morris) to sell its financial schemes. Now Newsmax is apparently cooking up another scheme -- and it has enlisted another Fox News personality to help sell it.
A June 3 email sent to Newsmax’s mailing list promotes something called the “Economic Crisis Summit,” starring Morris (of course), but also “Premier Guest” Bill O’Reilly:
The purpose of the “summit” is described this way:
What is the Economic Crisis Summit?
On June 17, an esteemed panel led by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Dick Morris, along with global investor Jim Rogers and Newsmax CEO and Editor in Chief Christopher Ruddy, will convene to discuss inflation, higher taxes, our fragile economy, and real solutions that average Americans can take to ensure their wealth is safeguarded and positioned to prosper in an uncertain future.
Call it a hunch, but we suspect that Newsmax also wants to sell you something during this event.
As is standard practice with these things, Newsmax engages in anti-Obama fearmongering -- much of it misleading or outright false -- to whip up outrage and draw people into the “summit.” For instance, there’s this passage:
President Obama Will Usher in One of the Most Massive Tax Increases in History on December 31!
This is when the Bush tax cuts expire.
An immediate 10 percent tax increase across the board will strike citizens of all income categories.
He knows the capital gains tax will rise by almost 50 percent and the tax on dividends as much as 250 percent!
His Obamacare plan already calls for more taxes, including a $28,000 tax increase for millions of Americans.
And now Obama is openly talking about a new “value-added tax” which would be tantamount to a national sales tax. It is clear that the mentality of both the Obama White House and the Pelosi-run Democratic Congress is pro-taxes.
Let’s take that apart point by point:
Obama will not cause an “immediate 10 percent tax increase across the board.” Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget would allow the Bush tax cuts to expire only for individuals making more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000.
Obama is also not allowing Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains to expire for most Americans. Obama’s proposed budget would raise the top rate on both from 15 percent to 20 percent, again applying only to the highest income brackets. That is not an “almost 50 percent” hike (for capital gains) or an increase of “as much as 250 percent” (for dividends).
Health care reform does not include “a $28,000 tax increase for millions of Americans,” and it’s unclear from which bodily orifice Newsmax is pulling that number.
Obama “openly talking about a new ‘value-added tax’ ” is pretty much limited to having once called it a “novel” idea.
The anti-Obama activism doesn’t stop there. If you sign up for the “summit,” you are redirected to a website containing a petition called “America’s Ultimatum,” which states in part:
We of this petition represent all parties and all people of this country. And we are united. We will not stand silently anymore as years of reckless spending have put at risk our wealth, our retirement savings, and our future. And we will not allow you to hurt the promise we’ve made to our children and grandchildren -- that they have the right to achieve financial prosperity and claim their piece of the American Dream. We realize that the only way to get the message across to you is in the voting booths. And this petition serves warning. Inaction on your part will not go unnoticed.
We know Morris has an affinity for taking part in such shameless hucksterism and fearmongering. But how did O’Reilly get roped into this? Have Morris’ frequentappearances on The O’Reilly Factor rubbed off on him? Or has palling around with Glenn Beck unlocked some sort of latent shameless-huckster gene?
Lowell Ponte's derangement doesn't end at Democrats, it appears.
Ponte's June 2 Newsmax column takes issue with Glenn Beck's embrace of the space program as a more noble cause than the "dope-smoking hippies rolling erotically in the mud with strangers" at Woodstock.
Glenn Beck is right on both counts, as far as he goes. But I was troubled when Beck proclaimed these two events as our choice between two kinds of America.
Beck is one of the most libertarian voices in American media, but in comparing Woodstock and Apollo 11 he never made a libertarian analysis.
[...]
Woodstock was irresponsibility run amok, if not a riot, on many levels. Any society using Woodstock as its blueprint is doomed to failure.
But does Glenn Beck want the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as his model for rebuilding American ideals?
NASA is big government.
The Apollo program cost taxpayers more than $25 billion in 1960s dollars.
Thanks to NASA's employees and courageous astronauts, America won the space race, was first on the moon, planted flags and brought back moon rocks. But when the political value of such missions waned, so did NASA's budget for moon shots.
NASA, like any government bureaucracy, has limped forward by doing whatever the politicians are willing to fund.
In recent years this has included ultra-politicized research into purported global warming to justify vast expansions of government regulation and taxation.
Ponte then complains that NASA refused to commercialize space:
Even more frightening to those of us who anticipate humankind's future among the stars is that NASA is the manifestation of unyielding socialist rule forever in outer space.
Like other government institutions, NASA is eager to reshape the world in its big government image. NASA might actually have the power to do this literally on the moon, Mars and worlds beyond.
This could mean that on planets where NASA first plants the flag — soon a United Nations flag — regulations will instantly be imposed to create the equivalent of a national park or a pristine nature preserve planet-wide.
The development of tourist hotels, golf courses, McDonald's restaurants and other earthly manifestations of capitalism and individual freedom will either be entirely prohibited or permitted only under the tightest of restrictions.
Is there an alternative to NASA prohibiting capitalism in outer space (beyond the token examples that even President Barack Obama says he wants)?
Yes. Let free enterprise take the risks, pay the costs, and reap the rewards. As on earth, at least in America, so let it be in the heavens.
"Coca-Cola refreshes you best" should have been the first words Neil Armstrong spoke on the moon.
In exchange for this everlasting advertisement, quoted for centuries via every history book and video of the event shown to schoolchildren, Coca-Cola would have relieved taxpayers of the entire cost of the Apollo space program.
We thus could have commercialized space from the beginning, initially to help fund NASA to capture "the new high ground" for America's national defense.
And almost from that launch we should have offered tax benefits and other incentives to encourage private spacecraft development.
Imagine if the U.S. allowed private companies to stake capitalist private property claims on other worlds.
A single asteroid whose orbit comes close to earth could contain $4 trillion or more worth of iron, nickel, platinum and other valuable resources, a prize worth owning.
Ponte concludes: "Glenn Beck, is NASA really who you want to rule humankind's future in space?"
If the choice is between NASA and Ponte, we'll go with the former.
President Obama had a golden Memorial Day opportunity to show the country that (contrary to his left flank) he is not anti-military and not anti-Christian, by telling Attorney General Eric Holder to order the Park Service to permit volunteer veterans to replace the Mojave Cross that was stolen on May 9. But he let the atheists and those who sneer at our veterans win the day.
A June 2 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr baselessly claimed that Scott Roeder, the convicted killer of abortion doctor George Tiller, is "a mentally unstable man." Starr offered no evidence to back up her claim.
In fact, while Roeder family members claimed immediately after the shooting that Roeder suffered from mental illness, Roeder did not mount an insanity defense at his trial; indeed, Roeder attempted to justify his actions as necessary. Further, a psychologist hired by the defense found Roeder competent to stand trial.
Starr has previously referenced Roeder's alleged mental problems (also without supporting evidence) in an apparent effort to distance the murder of Tiller from the anti-abortion movement from culpability in Tiller's death -- as others in the ConWeb have done -- despite Roeder's association with the mainstream anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and a tacit endorsement of Roeder's actions by prominent anti-abortion figure Randall Terry, whose protest of President Obama's 2009 speaking appearance at Notre Dame CNS had favorablyreported on.
Kinsolving's Stupid Question Leaves Gibbs in Stunned Silence Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily actually tells most of this story straight for once, so we'll let them handle it:
A question about war memorials at Harvard apparently has left White House spokesman Robert Gibbs without a response.
The question was raised at today's White House briefing by Les Kinsolving, the third-ranking beat correspondent at the White House and WND's correspondent there.
"A two-part question relating to yesterday, Memorial Day. As a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School, the president has never protested," started Kinsolving.
"He didn't graduate from Harvard, Lester. He graduated from Harvard Law School, but he graduated from Columbia undergrad," Gibbs corrected.
"I'm sorry, I correct that. Thank you very much. The president has never protested the memorials to Harvard's war dead in World War I and II, which include the names of Harvard alumni designated as 'enemy' because they were soldiers of the Kaiser and of the Fuhrer. Has he – he's never protested that, has he?"
"I honestly don't have – I don't have any knowledge," Gibbs said.
In a second question, Kinsolving continued, "Does the president believe it is right for Harvard to have memorials mentioning these three German enemies, but no memorial at all to 71 Harvard alumni who died in the Confederate army?"
But instead of responding, Gibbs left the room.
WND goes on to try and explain that "The issue was raised because of the long-standing controversy over war memorials at Harvard and the fact that Obama is a graduate of its law school," but in fact there is no "issue," only Kinsolving's strange obsession, which Obama has absolutely nothing to do with and, thus, has no place at a White House press briefing.
And Kinsolving wonders why nobody takes him seriously.
We've previously noted Newsmax's interest in buying Newsweek magazine. Now Newsmax has officially put in a bid. From a Newsmax statement:
Newsmax Media, Inc. has made a bid for Newsweek. Newsmax Media is a multi-platform publishing company that produces a variety of print and electronic products covering news, politics, health, finance and lifestyle, with different editorial voices and perspectives.
The company’s bid for Newsweek’s print and online assets is congruent with its objective to diversify and expand into numerous distinct media brand offerings, like any major multi-title publisher.
Newsweek’s staff, advertisers and readers can be assured that if Newsmax Media, Inc.’s bid is successful, Newsweek's stellar brand and editorial representation would remain distinct from our other brands. Newsweek would continue in its mission to objectively report the news and provide analysis from a wide spectrum of perspectives.
Would Newsmax really allow Newsweek to remain editorially independent and "objectively report the news" and not, say, stick Dick Morris in there somewhere? We have our doubts.
MRC Blinded By 'Name That Party' Topic: Media Research Center
We've previously noted the Media Research Center's enthusiasm for playing "Name That Party" with the media even when it violates those same rules. The MRC's Clay Waters reminds us just how anal they are about this.
In a June 1 TimesWatch post, Waters complained a New York Times story on Mark Kirk making a false claim about his military record identified Kirk as a Republican in the first paragraph, while a story on Richard Blumenthal's false claims about his military record didn't identify him as a Democrat until -- horrors! -- the third paragraph.
Those bastards!
Waters is curiously silent, however, about a couple other crucial differences between the two stories. The Kirk story is only 12 paragraphs long and was buried on page A14, while the Blumenthal story is a whopping 50 paragraphs long and appeared at the top of the front page.
But to Waters, size and placement of an article is apparently a less reliable indicator of bias than how far up in the article a person's political party appears.
Richard Bartholomew does a fine job of once again shooting down WorldNetDaily's promotion of the discredited idea -- promulgated by Joel Richardson -- that the Antichrist will be Muslim.
As Bartholomew succintly puts it, "this is a farrago of nonsense that would be dismissed outright by any serious Biblical scholar – whether atheist, Christian, Jewish, or whatever."
WND Brings The Old-School Birtherism Topic: WorldNetDaily
For all of WorldNetDaily's recent revisionism attempting to shift the birther debate from "citizenship" to "eligibility," it hasn't lost its taste for the old-school, Obama-hating birther rant. Which brings us to a June 1 WND column by David Solway:
For it is not merely Obama's putative illegitimacy but the fact of Obama himself with all the harm he is doing both domestically and internationally that may conceivably lead to major dislocations, far worse than the disasters of Jimmy Carter's administration or the blowback naiveté of Woodrow Wilson's. Indeed, what we see developing is a cataclysm from which America may not be able to recover. That is why the legitimacy question needs to be pursued until it is settled one way or another. The stirring finale of Ezra Pound's celebrated Pisan Canto LXXXI serves as a cautionary tale: "Here error is all in the not done,/all in the diffidence that faltered." What is not helpful to the nation as a whole is precisely Obama's continued occupancy of the White House. This is the reason so burning an issue should not be suffered to just gutter out. For in the electoral framework, it seems the only way to dismiss Obama from office before his destructive term is up is via impeachment, and the only way this can conceivably happen is for the courts to accede to disclosure requests, assuming that Obama does indeed have something to hide.
And it sure looks like he does. Obama is the only president who has suppressed vital personal information; every other has made full disclosure. When the press raised a fuss about John McCain's birth particulars – since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone – he immediately released all his actual documents, thousands of pages worth, including those showing that he was a natural-born American citizen, as per the United States Code [8 U.S.C. 1403 (a)]. Obama did not follow suit, and the media let him off the hook. The document released online is not an authentic birth certificate. It is the "short form" affidavit, a Certification of Live Birth (COLB) with standard information left out, such as the actual name of the birth hospital and the name of the attending physician. In "Dreams from My Father," Obama mentions having found his birth certificate, which, as it turns out, was then conveniently lost in a small house fire. Nor would the two announcements in Honolulu newspapers confirming his birth constitute proof of American citizenship or be accepted as such in a court of law, for obvious reasons.
Let's look at that second paragraph a little closer. Solway offers no evidence that McCain released "thousands of pages worth" of documents; he did release his birth certificate but never publicly released all of the related documents. WND reported in August 2009: "During his first presidential campaign in 1999, Sen. John McCain released 1,500 pages of medical and psychiatric records collected by the Navy. In 2008, McCain allowed reporters to spend three hours sifting through 1,200 pages of health records." Allowing reporters to view documents for a limited time is not the same thing as a public release. And WND does not indicate how many of the latter documents were duplicates of those released earlier.
Solway's supporting link for his claim that the certificate released by obama "is not an authentic birth certificate" goes to an analysis by an anonymous "expert analyst" boing by the name "Techdude." As we've detailed, "Techdude" has been discredited, and his credentials have been questioned as well.
solway's claim that Obama's original birth certificate was "conveniently lost in a small house fire" goes to a story that identifies itself as "satire." The Obama-haters at the Western Journalism Center seem to have fallen for this as well.
WND's embrace of such a factually deficient screed undermines whatever credibility it was trying to establish with its "eligibility" revisionism. But don't expect Joseph Farah and Co. to recognize that -- they're too far down the Obama-hate rabbit hole to notice.
At a time when Barack Obama is getting heat for stonewalling information about an alleged administration bribery scandal, a new poll shows more Americans than ever suspect the president is hiding information about his own background and want him to come clean.
Questions about Obama's eligibility to be president, exacerbated by his refusal to answer questions, release ordinary background documentation and his extraordinary legal maneuvers to keep his background hidden, have been on the radar of a number of top-level investigative reporters and news organizations since before his election.
But if you look at the questions Wenzel asked -- listed at the end of the article -- it's clear that most of the questions weredesigned to promote a certain response. See if you can detect a certain pattern in the questioning (we'll put it in bold just to be helpful):
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans are concerned about Barack Obama's refusal to release his long-form birth certificate, school records, college records, Harvard Law School papers, medical records, travel records, passport records and other personal documents. What do you think he should do?
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: He is unquestionably a natural born citizen, born in the U.S. of two U.S. citizen parents.
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: He is unquestionably a natural born citizen, born in the U.S. of at least one U.S. citizen parent.
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: He is unquestionably a natural born citizen, but I don't know where he was born or the citizenship status of his parents.
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: I don't know, but he is hiding something by refusing to reveal his long-form birth certificate and other documents.
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: I think he is eligible, but I am confused about the constitutional definition.
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: No one can be sure without public scrutiny of his long-form birth certificate and other documentation.
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: He is not eligible because his father was a Kenyan national and Obama was born a subject of the British Crown.
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: I suspect he was not born in the U.S.
Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements on the matter: We don't know enough about Obama's birthplace, parentage and his residency in Indonesia to say for sure.
That's right -- almost every question was prefaced by the unsupported statement that "Recent polls suggest a significant percentage of Americans question Obama's own constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen."
Most people might call that push-polling. But apparently it's just another day at work for Fritz Wenzel and WND.
Name That Party, NewsBusters Edition Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters has an entire category called "Name That Party," which allows the boys to tsk-tsk every time the media fails to identify a misbehaving Democratic politician as a Democrat (or fails to do so sufficiently prominently). So it's fun to put the shoe on the other foot.
A Michigan lawmaker wants journalists to be licensed.
"Senator Bruce Patterson is introducing legislation that will regulate reporters much like the state does with hairdressers, auto mechanics and plumbers," reported FoxNews.com Friday.
"Patterson, who also practices constitutional law, says that the general public is being overwhelmed by an increasing number of media outlets--traditional, online and citizen generated--and an even greater amount misinformation."
Sheppard seems to disapprove of this law, as indicated by the "Big Brother" artwork he appended to his post. But what didn't he tell his readers?
Farah Moves the Birther Goalposts Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've previously detailed how WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah has been trying to change the focus of the birther movement from questioning Barack Obama's citizenship to questioning his eligibility to be president by mining the "natural born citizen" argument. Farah moved the birther goalposts even more in his May 26 WND column:
Let's see the birth certificate – as a starting point.
Let's hear from Obama on how, as the son of a foreigner from Kenya, his birth anywhere – in the United States or elsewhere – he could possibly qualify for the presidency as a "natural born citizen," as the term has always been defined.
Not only did Farah fulfill our prediction that he would not be satisfied if Obama released the original birth certificate Farah has been screaming for for months, Farah is also messing with the facts because "natural born citizen" has never had an authoratative legal definition in the U.S. and, thus, cannot be interpreted as a term that has "always been defined."
As Farah's own employee, Drew Zahn, reported in August 2009:
Indeed, a consensus on the correct definition of "natural born citizen" has eluded lawyers and scholars for more than 200 years. The Constitution's failure to offer any definition of the phrase whatsoever, the absence of definitive Supreme Court rulings and a wide array of opinions through the centuries have only further confused the question of what "natural born" actually means.
Farah cannot demand an interpretation of "natural born citizen" as it "has always been defined" because such a thing does not exist, which he would know if he had read his own website.
Also, nowhere in his column does he tell us how "natural born citizen" has "always been defined" -- which tells us that Farah is either very stupid or very dishonest. Or perhaps both.
Grover Norquist writes in a May 27 Newsmax column:
The House “extenders package” has a pair of tax increases on investment partnerships (Sec. 411 and 412). Investment partnerships consist of a “general partner” who makes investment decisions for the partnership.
It also consists of “limited partners” who contribute money to the partnership. Limited partners are usually large investors like defined-benefit pension plans, university endowments, and charities.
The two tax hikes in question each involve the general partner. A general partner is usually compensated under a system known as “2-and-20,” or a similar arrangement.
Are you asleep yet? That's what Norquist wants. He drones on about this for pretty much the entire column, never once uttering the common term the "general partner" of such "investment partnerships" are much better known as: hedge fund managers.
Norquist also misleadingly frames the tax change itself, portraying it as a "157 percent tax hike on general partners of investment firms." What it actually does is change the hedge fund manager's portion of income (also known as "carried interest") that had been designated as capital gains -- and taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent -- to being taxed as income, at the higher marginal rate of up to 35 percent. Norquist doesn't make clear that the rate is marginal, or that only the highest-income earners would be subject to it.
Needless to say, people who aren't trying to hide the fact that it's hedge fund and private equity managers who will be the ones paying more in taxes have a different take. Derek Thompson of the Atlantic points out that current law "amounts to quite the tax break for private equity managers. Their primary source of income is taxed at half rate as long-term capital gains, even if the managers' own capital contributed little or nothing to the gains."
Chuck Marr of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities adds: "there’s no logical reason why a leveraged buyout (LBO) specialist at a private equity firm should be taxed differently than a mergers and acquisitions expert at an investment bank (who pays as much as 35 percent in taxes), since both people are doing basically the same kind of work."
Even Warren Buffett has said on the issue, "If you believe in taxing people who earn income on their occupation, I think you should tax people on carried interest."
Let's see, Grover Norquist or Warren Buffett? We'll go with the latter.
Report: Newsmax's Ruddy Looks At Buying Newsweek Topic: Newsmax
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy has shown interest in buying Newsweek magazine.
Ruddy already publishes Newsmax magazine, which somehow manages not to be as doctrinare right-wing as the Newsmax website, and which has steadily grown in circulation, so his interest in Newsweek is not as outlandish as it might seem.
Of course, Ruddy would be only the front man for such a purchase. The money would in all likelihood come from longtime funder Richard Mellon Scaife, who helped fund Newsmax's startup; he and Ruddy are now the sole owners of Newsmax Media.
