CNS' Obama Word Obsession Undermined (With Bonus Hate From CNS Readers) Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's pedantic obsession with whether or not President Obama says a certain word just got undermined. From an Oct. 25 CNS article by Fred Lucas:
On the campaign trail for Democrats in recent days, President Barack Obama said the word “Creator” when quoting the Declaration of Independence, although he omitted the word in several earlier speeches this year. The addition of "Creator" came after press reports noted the omission in Obama's earlier speeches.
But CNS' obsession was dsesigned to generate hatred among its readers toward the president, and commenters on the article have obliged:
President Obama is like a destructive child who takes apart a priceless watch that was carefully passed down to him. Without regard for the value of what he holds, he recklessly scatters the pieces on the floor and then can’t put them back together again. Failing to learn from his mistakes, this destructive child moves on to another room where he finds another watch to take apart. Once again, he cannot put the pieces back together. That doesn’t stop him from tearing apart yet another costly timepiece until all that’s left are the pieces of discarded, functionless watches lying at his feet. What’s worse is that nobody steps in to stop him before he destroys again.
Wait until until this refugee from the circus slips up, and instead of Creator, which he obviously has a problem with, he uses the word he is more comfortable with....Allah
Obama leaves out reference to "The Creator" because in his mind that equates to GEORGE SOROS His Creator and puppet master.
Something tells me that the "Creator" doesn't really appreciate being used as a political prop. Sorry bubby, you're not supposed to use God. You're supposed to let Him use you. But then, a Christian would know that. An athiest, obviously, would not.
I think it's a little late for Mr. O to try to learn to speak the language of people he's already alienated.
This clown's commie government will be destroyed on election day.
lousy hate America Manchurain candidate stealth muslim. we need to send him back to the ghetto ASAP
Webster's needs to come up with new adjectives to adequately describe this fraud in the WH. Contempt. That's what America now has for him. We are returning to him the sentiment he has for us.
What a pathetic, manipulative attempt at "playing" the voters! This Marxist, like ALL Communists, USE religion to nefarious ends. The Socialists Obama, Pelosi and Reid are hell-bent on having the Democrat Party seen 20 years from now in the same light as the Whig and Bull Moose parties: EXTINCT!! All patriotic Americans (especially young ones) NEED to go vote and throw out the LIBERTY-ROBBING, HIGH-TAXING, MORALLY BANKRUPT Democrats in 2010 and 2012!! Your freedom DEPENDS on it......
Too late ol' shuck-n-jive, we already saw your original intent more than once.
This isn't news. If one pays attention and asks questions you would have known what kind of man he was long ago. Being a member of a questionable "church" led by Jeremiah Wright should have raised eyebrows. The speech he gave at Georgetown University back in April of '09 when he had the name of Lord Jesus Christ covered up with a black plywood triangle should be all the proof you need. Y'all should know better than to judge this man by his words. He lies. Judge him by his actions...they are all-telling.
Hooray! There is a God today! Or is he talking about our "creator", evolution....?
Nice readers you got there, CNS.
UPDATE: Lucas has a new article up featuring White House press secretary Robert Gibbs being asked a question about it by WorldNetDaily's Les Kinsolving.
You may recall that Kinsolving's boss, Joseph Farah, declared the omission of "Creator" to be "an attempt at deicide by Obama."
Kessler Missed the Memo on Williams Topic: Newsmax
I, the same column in which he went into full-fledged (and baseless) conspiracy mode over NPR's firing of Juan Williams, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah insisted that Williams is "a bona fide liberal," adding that "I have always respected him as a thoughtful liberal commentator."
But somebody didn't get the right-wing memo that Farah did. Newsmax's Ronald Kessler wrote in his Oct. 25 column:
Fired NPR analyst Juan Williams is usually labeled a liberal. But I know a different Juan Williams.
I’ve been privileged to be a friend of Williams since the late 1970s, when we were both Washington Post reporters.
We would have lunch together and continued to socialize with our wives and kids after we both left the paper.
As a friend, it makes no difference to me whether Williams is a liberal, a conservative, or none of the above. But the fact is, Williams is no liberal.
[...]
To be sure, Williams usually takes the liberal side on Fox News’ round table discussions, often contributing points of view that add credibility to his argument. But on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show, he often sides with conservatives.
I once asked him why he comes across as a liberal in discussions on Fox News when I know him as leaning more to the conservative side. He said, in effect, that someone has to do it, meaning he is simply being a good commentator.
Oops! So much for the conventional right-wing narrative.
WND Columnist Steals From Limbaugh Topic: WorldNetDaily
Judson Phillips has been listening to a little too much Rush Limbaugh. Phillips writes in his Oct. 25 WorldNetDaily column:
A few days ago on CNN, White House political adviser David Axelrod said people should stay up all night for the election results, certainly hinting there would be some surprise outcome.
Elections always generate surprises. David Axelrod, with his gloating little prediction, scares the living daylights out of me.
I have been writing for several weeks, on Tea Party Nation and other sites, that this election is not in the bag for the conservatives, as many people want us to believe. We are dealing with liberals, and liberals never voluntarily surrender power. They have made vote fraud almost an art form. I have been telling people we need to be very worried about this election being stolen by the liberals.
Phillips appears to have stolen this thought from Limbaugh, who uttered it five days before Phillips' column appeared.
Like the mythological hydra that grew two heads for every one cut off, the controversial ACORN group has been reborn under a swarm of new names and poses an "epidemic" voter-fraud threat that could alter the outcome of midterm elections, GOP leaders warn.
But Patten quotes only one "GOP leader": David Norcross, chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association. Patten gives him plent of room to make unchallenged claims about voter fraud, at one point asserting: "It's an epidemic. ... It's laughable that the left calls voter fraud nonexistent. It's very much existent."
Needless to say, Patten has no interest in telling his readers the full story. As TPM points out, Norcross' group has been training lawyers in Illinois, where GOP Senate candidate Mark Kirk got into hot water over his announcement that the campaign planned to deploy voter integrity squads in predominately minority neighborhoods throughout the state.
TPM also quotes voter fraud expert Tova Andrea Wang stating that the type of language used by Norcross is a perfect example of groups exaggerating the threat of voter fraud for political gain: "It's exactly the kind of inflammatory language that is less than useful at this time in the election cycle. It's the kind of language that is meant to gin up all sorts of unfounded conspiracy theories to steal the election which simply don't go on."
UPDATE: This is an regular ritual; Newsmax fearmongered about election fraud in 2004 and 2008.
Concomitant with the electoral revolutionaries massing in the distance, there's little doubt that the president also perceives the recent demise of "multikulti" in Europe and Americans' discovery of the race card's emetic properties as a harbinger of our beginning to reject progressives' insistence that we collectively kiss the behinds of every malicious, parasitic, ethnocentric faction that slithers across (or flies over) our borders. On all fronts whereupon the left realized staggering gains over the last several decades, they have suddenly begun to lose ground – and fast.
Now, I wouldn't expect Obama to peel off his clothing and streak gibbering across the north lawn of the White House for all the press to see just yet – but it's clear that the pressure is getting to him, and to his spoiled, radical brat pack.
Heaven knows we've had other mediocre men in the Oval Office, but I'm pretty certain we've never had another who was so contemptuous of our nation. Whether it's because of his family background, his education or his unfortunate choice of mentors, it's as if he views America through the wrong end of a telescope. Instead of a great, good and generous country, he sees something small and distant, hardly worth his time and certainly undeserving of his respect and devotion. Ask him what he likes most about America and I suspect his honest answer would be our golf courses.
How do we explain the current sorry spectacle of a highly intelligent president who repeatedly makes bad choices and decisions? Make no mistake about it – President Obama has done just that. Ever pause and wonder how ostensibly perspicacious individuals can show remarkable errors in judgment? History is filled with people like this, proving repeatedly intelligence is no guarantee of good judgment and decision-making. Why?
[...]
His high intelligence (fast CPU) notwithstanding, President Obama is handicapped by faulty data and bad programming – both indelibly imprinted upon him by his life-long studies and associations: his mentor, communist Frank Marshall Davis, the writings of communist Saul Alinsky, the rantings of black liberation theology proponent the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and associations with former Weatherman radical terrorist Bill Ayers, plus many more. Is it small wonder then that Obama does things no other president has ever done before? He grovels and apologizes to the world for America's "arrogance" and "mistakes," reaches out to the likes of Chavez and Ahmadinejad, snubs the U.K., brings sanctions against Honduras for ousting Chavez wannabe Zelaya, offering unwavering support for the NEA, SEIU and UAW (a root cause of GM's downfall) while openly supporting a socialist single-payer health-care system and redistribution of wealth.
[...]
So then why did we elect Obama? Continuing metaphorically, the answer lies in the 1960s, when the American body politic was infected by the self-replicating, insidious virus of liberalism. Spawned and nurtured in liberal academia, this virus and its other iterations – socialism and progressivism – has worked its way into every aspect of our society, while being enthusiastically embraced and promoted by a vacuous, nonetheless arrogant liberal media. Consequently, over the intervening decades we have been assaulted and benumbed by a seemingly endless concatenation of liberalism's ruinous policies and ideologies: affirmative action, forced busing, dumbed-down public schools, proliferating entitlements, environmental extremism, sanctuary cities, gay marriage, cultural relativism, multiculturalism, Afro-centrism, political correctness and a lot more. Capping the resultant zeitgeist was white guilt – making Barack Obama a shoo-in in 2008.
It is a well-established fact that $400 million, coupled with a shrewd marketing team, can place a man with zero executive experience and less than five years of legislative background into the seat behind the Oval Office desk. It's a seat from which a young, inexperienced man is making the decisions that are fundamentally changing America forever, a seat of power like no other. How did he get there? Money and manipulation.
MRC Again Obssesses Over Supposedly Excessive Gayness Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center operates under the assumption that any media coverage that is not explicitly anti-gay is, thus, "pro-gay" (and also complains that anti-gay activists are described as anti-gay activists). That peculiar definition showed itself in the MRC empire over the past few days.
An Oct. 22 NewsBusters post by Matthew Balan asserted:
CNN continued its promotion of the left-wing agenda of homosexual activist groups by devoting five segments on Wednesday to promoting GLAAD's "Spirit Day" or "Wear Purple Day." The network promoted the organization's website for the special day, which, as anchor John Roberts described it, was organized "to show support for gay and lesbian youth and honor teens who have taken their lives in recent weeks."
Balan doesn't explain why that is so horrible, beyond the unspoken apparent belief that nothing good about gays should be said on TV.
The next day, Tim Graham weirdly gloated that "Despite CNN committing five segments to helping the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) celebrate the new 'Spirit Day' against anti-gay bullying, GLAAD somehow left CNN out of their list of participating TV 'news' outlets."
Over at CNSNews.com, an Oct. 25 article by Michael Chapman on President Obama's message for It Gets Better Project aimed at countering the bullying of gay youth carries the headline, "Obama Records Pro-Gay Video Message for Youth."
Huh? Because Obama doesn't want gay teens to kill themselves, that's "pro-gay"? Apparently, surviving adolescence is not an optimal outcome for gay youth as far as CNS is concerned.
This was joined by an article by Eric Scheiner complaining that "Facebook announced on October 19th, that it’s working with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GSLEN) to prevent and remove what it considers anti-gay comments from it’s social website. However, Facebook still includes pages with such names as 'I Hate the Pope,' "I Hate Conservatives,' and 'I Hate Democrats.'"
Alan Caruba writes in his Oct. 25 CNSNews.com column:
Big Government kept getting bigger as agencies such as the Security Exchange Commission increased its budget by twenty percent to $1.2 billion, more than triple its size in 2000. It is expected to increase by more than one thousand people to about 4,700 regulators, a 36% increase from 2007.
This is the same SEC that failed to spot Bernie Madoff’s $50-billion Ponzi scheme and which failed to do anything about the “toxic assets” that led to the government bailout of banks, investment firms, and AIG, an insurance company.
Did Caruba not consider the possibility that the reason the SEC is expanding is in order to address deficiencies that kept it from adequately recognizing the Madoff scandal, et al?
One can only marvel at folks like Obama who are so caught up in their hatred that they overlook the obvious.
WND's Evidence-Free War on Kinsey Topic: WorldNetDaily
Over the past week, WorldNetDaily launched its latest salvo against long-dead sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, this time promoting a claim by a woman who says Kinsey paid her father "to rape her and then report to him on the attacks." But the story lacks evidence to support it, and reporter Brian Fitzpatrick makes no effort to contact the Kinsey Institute for a response.
In one interview transcript, the woman, using the psuedonym "Esther White," makes the allegation based on childhood memories. The woman's statements are littered with qualifiers (emphasis added):
"I think that's when they made the deal to use the information they got before for Kinsey's second book, the one about women."
"I think the Kinsey people at IU talked my grandfather into getting involved."
"He realized he had been duped by Kinsey, I think."
"They had to do the charting first, then they got paid for it. The check was probably $6,000."
There's no mention by Fitzpatrick of any evidence that would substantiate the woman's claims; Fitzpatrick and WND are merely taking the woman at her word.
Fitzpatrick's lack of curiosity goes further: At no point in any of the severalarticles he wrote in his series of attacks does he even bother to contact the Kinsey Institute for a response. Instead, he repeats previous claims by the institute that Kinsey "did not carry out experiments on children; he did not hire, collaborate, or persuade people to carry out experiments on children." Fitzpatrick did, however, find time to contact numerous Kinsey critics to further the anti-Kinsey attacks.
Nevertheless, WND's Joseph Farah chimes in to portray the woman's unsubstantiated claims as "fully documented" -- even though not a shred of documentation has been presented.
All of this, of course, is in the service of trying to sell you something -- in this case, Judith Reisman's latest, WND-published anti-Kinsey screed. As we've previously detailed, Reisman has largely been discredited due to her own hateful obssession with Kinsey being put before sound research.
A real reporter would have noted Reisman's credibility problems, and also would have demanded actual evidence from the woman concerning the Kinsey link to her alleged molestation. But Fitzpatrick is not a real reporter.
But since WND is not a real news organization, he fits in perfectly.
UPDATE: Actually, WND's being even more dishonest than usual. Contrary to its portrayal of the "Esther White" story as something new, Reisman wrote in her 2003 book "Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences" that she interviewed White in 1997, and that she hadtold her story in a British documentary, "Kinsey's Paedophiles," that Fitzpatrick identified as airing in 1998.
The only thing new that WND adds to the story is Fitzpatrick's own presumably recent interview with "White."
Like WND, Reisman indicates no substantive documentation to support the charges made by "White," only a "sworn statement" that she offered no further details about.
(Thanks to alert ConWebWatch reader L.C. for the tip.)
Patten's Unsubstantiated Attack on Dems Topic: Newsmax
An Oct. 24 Newsmax article by serial misleader David Patten carries the headline, "2010: Democrats Set Records for Dirtiest Election Ever." Too bad that Patten doesn't actually prove this and conducts no emperical analysis to demonstrate any "records" were set.
Patten references the "extraordinarily negative tone that political campaigns are striking this year," adding:
Faced with an angry electorate and a poisonous anti-incumbent zeitgeist, many Democratic incumbents feel they have no choice but to launch personal attacks against their opponents.
While Republicans have been taking aim at Democrats voting record, including their backing a $787 billion stimulus that failed to produce the promised jobs and a $500 billion cut to Medicare for Seniors, Democrats have gotten mean with ad hominen [sic] attacks.
But Patten never offers anything beyond cherry-picked anecdotal evidence to support his claim. None of the people he quotes specifically make the claim that Democratic candidates have been more negative than Republicans.
Patten concludes:
The worst-ad award may go to a group called Latinos for Reform. It targets Hispanics in Nevada, complaining of Democrats' broken promises. But the ad urges Hispanics in both English and Spanish to stay home on Election Day. "Don't vote this November. This is the only way to send them a clear message: You can no longer take us for granted. Don't vote." Hispanic organizations are blasting the ad as a blatant attempt at voter suppression.
But the man behind Latinos for Reform is a Republican activist. Doesn't that pretty much undermine Patten's entire premise?.
Shocker: WND Debunks False Claim About Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's ultimately self-serving, but WorldNetDaily did something extrordinary last week: it debunked a false claim about President Obama. From an Oct. 21 WND article:
A video by the Republican National Trust has falsely accused President Obama of accepting campaign contributions from the Hamas terrorist organization.
In a blast e-mail, the GOP Trust, an ally of the Newsmax.com website, has touted a newly released, 25-minute video as capable of "chang[ing] this election and catapult[ing] Conservatives into Congress if enough voters see it before Election Day."
"Our film is the ONLY strategy for Conservatives that NATIONALIZES this election," continued the GOP Trust e-mail.
The GOP Trust e-mail went on to spell "aggressive" wrong: "THIS IS THE MOST AGREESIVE ELECTION STRATEGY EVER LAUNCHED."
The entire film is based on news stories that have already been reported, with some of the stories first breaking at WND. Many of the stories have received wide attention on talk radio and the Fox News Channel.
The video accuses Obama of taking money from Hamas.
"During his presidential election," begins the narrator, "he wound up with a record shattering $750 million in his campaign. To this day, he refuses to report from whence it came. One reason might be that some of it comes from Hamas, which also endorsed Obama for president."
Hamas, however, has never been accused of funding Obama's presidential campaign.
The ad apparently confused a different report – that Palestinian brothers inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip illegally contributed to Obama's campaign.
So not only does WND get to tweak a competitor in linking GOP Trust to Newsmax, the article goes on to rehash its own out-of-date reporting. Then, because the GOP Trust ad referenced "the radicalism of some of Obama's 'czars,'" the article goes on to take credit for Anita Dunn leaving the the White House because she "stepped down immediately after WND released a video of her boasting how Obama's presidential campaign 'controlled' the media."
As we've previously detailed, Politico reported months before WND focused on Dunn that she was filling her White House job on an interim basis. And WND's framing of the quote is false as well -- Dunn is talking about efforts by political campaigns to manage media coverage of their candidate, which every political campaign of any size tries to do. There's nothing remotely surprising about that at all.
But what makes this story different is that Kathleen Folden, bless her heart, entered the gallery, broke into the artwork with a crowbar and ripped it to pieces. She didn’t really destroy the art, since it was one of several prints, but she did express a rebuttal of sorts to the constant artistic besmirching of Jesus. Someone offended back.
In Afghanistan recently, supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar issued an edict against un-Islamic graven images, which means all idolatrous images of humans and animals. As a result, the Taliban are destroying all ancient sculptures. Explosives, tanks, and anti-aircraft weapons blew apart two colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan Province, 230 kilometers (150 miles) from the capital of Kabul.
Way to side with our enemies, Brent.
UPDATE: Sadly, No! gets into a Twitter fight with the MRC's Tim Graham over Bozell's column.
Portraits of (Right-Wing) Success Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's latest book is something of a vanity project, written by a WND columnist and profiling people like WND editor Joseph Farah.
WND enlisted the notoriouslyhateful and fact-averse Burt Prelutsky to write "Profiles of Success," in which Prelutsky interviews "writers, actors, athletes, politicians, entrepreneurs, developers, directors, musicians, evens an animal therapist" about how they "successfully pursued their dreams."
The list of interviewees, however, appears to fall into two main categories: Right-wingers, and friends and acquaintances of Burt Prelutsky. Farah is joined on the right-wing side by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Ralph Peters, Jesse Lee Peterson, Michele Bachmann and Andrew Breitbart. Many of the celebrities he picks are also right-leaning, such as Pat Boone, James Woods, Curt Schilling and Orson Bean (who also happens to be Breitbart's father-in-law).
There's not an obvious liberal to be found -- which was probably the point.
AIM's Kincaid: Palin "Had Every Right To Question" Manhood of Writer Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid writes in the "Cliff's Notes" section of the Oct. 22 Accuracy in Media "AIM Report" that the writer who did a profile of Sarah Palin for Vanity Fair is "not a man in the traditional sense" because he's gay, and thus " Palin had every right to question his manhood":
Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post accused Sarah Palin of offending homosexuals when she remarked that the author of a Vanity Fair hatchet job about her was “impotent and limp and gutless.” Marcus wrote, “The Vanity Fair writer, Michael Joseph Gross, is gay, which makes matters worse —conjuring the stereotype of ‘limp-wristed.’ But whatever the sexual orientation of the offending reporter, Palin should not have been questioning his manhood.”
Palin had every right to question his manhood, since he is not a man in the traditional sense and wrote a cowardly piece. But her remarks were probably directed at his “journalism,” which Marcus admits was sloppy and full of unverifiable and anonymous quotes. Nevertheless, Gross was on the CBS News “The Early Show” with his “revelations.” Host Erica Hill, who substitutes for Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News, called the article “fascinating.”
Marcus was more concerned with Palin’s response to the shoddy article than with the fact that it was written by a homosexual journalist with an axe to grind. Palin has long opposed gay marriage, which makes her an obvious target for homosexuals like Gross.
The Marcus criticism of Palin shows how “sensitive” the Post has become on matters involving homosexuality. The paper does not tolerate any criticism of the homosexual lifestyle. It has been a cheerleader for gay rights for years and was one of the first newspapers to run announcements of gay “unions” as if they were marriages. It is sad that this once mighty newspaper has degenerated into a mouthpiece for the homosexual movement.
Usually it's Noel Sheppard who's shocked by the unshocking. Now, his fellow NewsBusters mate Tim Graham tries to horn in on the action with an Oct. 20 post headlined "Shocking: Maria Shriver's Daughter Excited Over Jon Stewart-Stephen Colbert Rally."
Even if Graham meant this sarcastically -- Graham went on that this admission "must thrill liberal hearts, who want something (anything) that fires up liberal young people" -- so what? Why attack Maria Shriver's daughter? What did she ever do to Graham beyond committing the apparent sin of liking Jon Stewart and being the daughter of someone he despises?
And conservatives complain about liberals engaging in personal attacks.
WND, Newsmax Spin Conspiracy Over Williams Firing Topic: Newsmax
NPR's firing of Juan Williams has kicked the ConWeb into baseless conspiracy-mongering over whether it was done on the orders of George Soros, who recently made a sizable donation to NPR.
In an Oct. 21 Newsmax article, headlined "A Soros Connection to Juan Williams Firing?" Jim Meyers claimed Williams' firing "has raised speculation that liberal NPR patron George Soros may have influenced the media organization’s decision to ax Williams on Wednesday." But Meyers cites nobody speculating that.
The conspiracy-happy Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily, meanwhile, had no problem being more explicit: "This is a very big deal and suggests a totalitarian mindset is very much in control of NPR – not surprising given the additional support it receives from George Soros."
Farah goes on to falsely claim that "NPR concedes Williams was fired only for this comment." In fact, as the Washington Post reported, "NPR said it fired commentator Juan Williams because of a pattern of commentaries that violated the news organization's guidelines, and not solely because of Williams's statements about Muslims and terrorism on a Fox News program." The Post adds: "NPR officials say they have repeatedly told Williams that some of his statements on Fox violate NPR's ground rules for its news analysts. The rules ban NPR analysts from making speculative statements or rendering opinions on TV that would be deemed unacceptable if uttered on an NPR program."
He also calls NPR a "government media source" that is "state-sponsored, taxpayer-supported media propaganda" without offering any evidence of such "propaganda."
