Tim Graham's Double Standard on Co-Opting Others' Agendas Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham is shocked -- shocked! -- that a certain media watchdog that doesn't employ him (but does employ me) would latch onto someone else's event.
Graham's Oct. 29 NewsBusters post asserts that "One prominent liberal supporter/exploiter of the Comedy Central 'sanity' rally is Media Matters for America, which will glom onto the march in its effort to kill Fox News Channel."
Yeah! Graham's employer, the Media Research Center, would never do something so gauche as to glom onto somebody else's big Washington rally.
Thousands of protesters descended on Washington, Sunday, for the 9/12 rally and many rallied with MRC signs proclaiming, "Don't believe the liberal media!"
The message could be seen in the background of cable coverage, including a live report from CNN. (See picture at right.)
To see conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart and others sporting the MRC's signs, see a selection of pictures below the jump.
What was your problem with Media Matters again, Tim?
WND Finds A Creepy New Poster Boy To Whitewash Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily just keeps latching onto people it thinks are poster boys for its far-right agenda, whose questionable backgrounds WND must then bury in order to make the poster-boy stuff plausible. WND did it first with a homeschooling family run by a controlling, abusive father, and then with a Oath Keepers member who's a suspect in a child abuse case.
Now, WND has found another piece of work to champion, the full truth about whom it must once again hide. From an Oct. 28 WND article by Brian Fitzpatrick:
Filing a complaint about President Obama's eligibility has led retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Walter Fitzpatrick III into some very deep waters.
The 58-year-old Naval Academy graduate is now paying the price for fighting City Hall. Fitzpatrick was arrested Wednesday for missing a court date, and he now sits in jail after allegedly being beaten and tasered by Monroe County, Tenn., deputies.
"I've been told he's been beaten up pretty good, enough to require X-rays," freelance reporter J.B. Williams told WND.
So Brian Fitzpatrick has essentially claimed that Walter Fitzpatrick was jailed for questioning Obama's "eligibility." Only that's not the case.
After a lot of conspiracy-mongering about purported "corruption in the county courts and sheriff's office," as exemplifed by the claim that "state law places a two-year limit on the term of a grand jury foreman, but Monroe County grand jury foreman Gary Pettway has occupied the office for 27 years" -- really, that's the only actual alleged offense cited -- Brian Fitzpatrick finally hints at the truth in the 18th paragraph of his article: "In April, Fitzpatrick attempted to execute a citizen's arrest of Pettway at the county courthouse, resulting in his own arrest for allegedly inciting a riot."
Fortunately, the Associated Press tells the story that WND won't -- specifically, that the jailing of Walter Fitzpatrick had nothing at all to do with his birther tendencies:
Fitzpatrick is charged along with Darren W. Huff, 40, a former militia member from Dallas, Ga., accused of inciting a riot at the Monroe County Courthouse in April while coming to Fitzpatrick's defense after Fitzpatrick's intrusion on the closed grand jury session.
Huff, who also faces related federal charges, was among about a dozen armed people who gathered at the courthouse. Records show Huff had said that he and others planned to take over the courthouse in Madisonville and arrest "domestic enemies of the United States engaged in treason."
Fitzpatrick disrupted the grand jury in a failed attempt to arrest Gary Pettway, who Fitzpatrick claims was unlawfully serving as foreman after serving continuously for almost three decades.
Blackwood previously dismissed a defense motion that Fitzpatrick and Huff were indicted by a "tainted" grand jury process and refused to dismiss felony and misdemeanor charges that include civil rights intimidation.
Ironically, Brian Fitzpatrick links to this very same AP article -- but only for the puprose of repeating the claim by a local district attorney who "said in a previous court filing that rulings in such challenges of grand juror qualifications show there is 'no limit on the number of two-year terms for which a foreman may be reappointed.'" The rest of the article is completely ignored.
This is the state of journalism at WND. Recent hire Brian Fitzpatrick hasdemonstratedall too well his ability to live down to those standards.
WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah is so cute when he pretends his website has standards.
In an Oct. 27 WND article responding to reader complaints about ads for Democratic candidates popping up on the site -- which in all likelihood is less about the claimed argument of "free political expression" than it is about maximizing revenue -- there appears this:
"WND advertising messages should never imply endorsement – especially political ads," explained Farah. "WND commentators, including me, make their views clear in their columns and videos. None of them, including mine, necessarily reflect the corporate positions of WND. WND has rarely ever offered corporate positions in the form of editorials, like most newspapers do. That's because WND is and always will be primarily a news source. Commentary and political opinions are secondary to the primary mission of breaking news. This commitment and characterization distinguishes WND from many other websites and many other news organizations – perhaps even most of them."
Farah also reminds that, unlike any other news pioneer on the Net, he spent his entire professional career in the news business as a reporter, editor, top news executive and publisher and attempted, 14 years ago, to carry over the highest standards and practices from the old world of newspapering into the new medium of the Internet.
"We're doing the same thing we set out to do – with the same standards, the same mission," he added. "We're not an opinion site, like so many others out there. We are an independent news operation like no other in the world. There is no litmus test for the expression of political viewpoints at WND – unlike most other websites and media organizations. So, certainly, there has never been any temptation to ban political advertising based on the views of anyone at WND."
That's pretty much all balderdash. Farah's claim that WND is "not an opinion site" is false -- most original WND "news" articles are so slanted, through distortion or outright elimination of alternate sides of the story, that they are synonymous with opinion. We've caught so many falsehoods and misrepresentations in WND "news" stories that we've lost count. Only Farah could believe that such slanted, sloppy reporting equals having "the highest standards and practices."
Farah is also disingenous in pretending that his opinions do not represent the "corporate positions" of the company of which he is CEO and largest shareholder. Sorry, dude, but WND is Farah and Farah is WND. There's no logical reason to pretend otherwise.
And there is very much a litmus test for political viewpoints at WND -- liberal opinions must be heavily outweighed by conservative opinions.
See how silly Farah is being? Pretending he operates a real "news source" is goofy enough, but insisting he has nothing whatsoever to do with the website he runs? That's goofiness on stilts.
NewsBusters Purports to Read Jon Stewart's Mind Topic: NewsBusters
Media Research Center have occasional fits of mind-reading. That tendency popped up again in an Oct. 28 NewsBusters post by Lachlan Markay.
Responding to Jon Stewart's statement that, in Markay's words, "the agenda the administration has managed to get through "has felt timid at times,'" Markay insisted:
Under "timid," read "not liberal enough." Stewart's complaint was that the Obama agenda has not come to completely dominate the national political scene. He's not concerned that perhaps the president has overreached. No, to the extent that there are problems with Obama's policies, they are due only to the fact that those policies are not far enough to the left.
Markay, of course, does not back this assertion up. He's merely pretending to read Stewart's mind, insisting that he can divine what Stewart said better than Stewart himself.
Molotov Mitchell starts off his latest WorldNetDaily video by smearing Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam who wants to build an Islamic center near the site of Ground Zero in New York, as "buddy-buddy with terrorists and a security threat in his own right," adding that he "simultaneously claims to build bridges while protecting his terrorist buddies as they blow them up." Mitchell then claims Rauf embodies a "combination of arrogance and idiocy that makes what I like to call idio-arrogance."
Then, ol' Molotov demonstrates his own idio-arrogance -- or more accurate, projection -- by explaining what it means to be "sharia-compliant":
Day one: If we're going to whip this country into sharia shape, we gotta deal with the gays first and foremost. Because under sharia law, homosexuals get the death penalty, so we'll need to form a new mujahadeen death squad to go and find Barney Frank, Rachel Maddow, that California judge who overturned Prop 8, the other California judge that just recently attacked don't ask, don't tell, as well as any gay entertainers because Allah does not like the show tunes. Throw in half the women in the Democratic Party, and we're off to a healthy sharia start.
Um, isn't that pretty much the same thing that Mitchell himself wants? As we've detailed, Mitchell has repeatedly engaged in gay-bashing and even endorsed a proposed Uganda law that would execute people merely for being gay -- after all, he's on record as favoring the "abolition of homosexuality."
Even Mitchell's graphics show projection:
Is Mitchell denouncing sharia law -- or wishing he could get away with it? We report, you decide.
Newsmax Gives Rick Scott the McCollum Treatment Topic: Newsmax
Having fully cast off Bill McCollum by endoring the man he lost to in the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary, Newsmax follows up on its endorsement of Rick Scott by doing for him what it did for McCollum -- slanting its coverage of the race to favor Scott.
Here are some post-endorsement Newsmax headlines, taken from its wire for the race between Scott and Democrat Alex Sink:
Newsmax also did an Oct. 25 interview with Scott. As his been the case since Newsmax started working for Scott instead of against him, there was no mention of Scott's sordid history as head of a hospital company convicted of massively defrauding Medicare (something Newsmax was more than eager to discuss when it was on McCollum's side). Instead, interviewer Ashley Martella lobbed softball questions and uncritically described Scott as a "former health care industry executive." The accompanying article non-iroinically described Scott as a "successful businessman" -- something it would never have called Scott two months ago.
It seems it really doesn't matter who it's shilling for -- Newsmax only knows how to slant its news to whatever its interests are at any given moment. That's the sign of a political organization, not a news organization.
Which makes us wonder: Did Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy donate to Scott's campaign like he did to McCollum's? And if so, will he stay silent about it, just like he failed to tell Newsmax readers about his behind-the-scenes fundraising for McCollum?
CNS Finds New Obama Words To Obsess Over Topic: CNSNews.com
Now that its ginned-up "creator" controversy has been resolved, CNSNews.com had to quickly scramble to find another word or two that President Obama said (or didn't say) to obsess over. Thus, we have an Oct. 26 article by Penny Starr:
President Barack Obama repeatedly has called the United States a “big, messy Democracy" in his many campaign stops around the country in recent weeks.
That's pretty much the entire story. No explanation on why CNS is focusing on those words -- nothing. Just three words. They might as well be random.
The boys at NewsBusters are doing their best to downplay the case of Lauren Valle, the liberal activist who was stomped in the head by a supporter of Rand Paul outside a venue where a Kentucky Senate debate involving Paul took place.
Matthew Balan was annoyed that "CNN devoted seven news briefs on Tuesday to an assault on a MoveOn.org employee by Rand Paul supporters caught on camera outside the Kentucky Senate debate on Monday evening, but failed to mention a second assault on Rand Paul supporter by a booster of Paul's opponent, Jack Conway. Most of the briefs also omitted how the MoveOn employee was trying to get an embarrassing picture of Paul."
Kyle Drennen complained that CBS interviewed Valle but "in September 2009 the network failed to give any coverage to a man having his finger bitten off by a MoveOn.org supporter at a California ObamaCare rally." Drennen continued: "In addition, on Wednesday, Smith did not report the fact that a Rand Paul supporter was assaulted by a Jack Conway supporter at the very same debate rally on Monday."
Drennen also wrote in an update: "New video obtained by RedState.com shows Valle run up to Rand Paul's car and shove a sign in his face. That runs contrary to Valle's assertion to Smith that she was 'simply there to hold a sign.'"
Actually, that's not quote what it shows. TPM writes:
What do we learn from the new video? Not a lot. It depicts the chaotic clash of supporters outside the Senate debate in Lexington that preceded the stomping, just as all witness accounts and Valle's own recounting have said. Conservatives touting the video say it shows Valle "attempting to assault" Paul but it also appears she was getting pushed from behind.
Regardless of what the clip adds to the story, the fact remains that Profitt stomped on her head, leaving him open to criminal investigation and the Paul campaign open to criticism and public shaming.
Mark Finkelstein, meanwhile, is the only NewsBusters writer moved to actually condemn the stomping. But even he found a way to deflect attention from it:
The guy who put his foot on an anti-Paul protester and pushed should be made to answer to the law. Period. That doesn't mean Chris Matthews had to break out the tired Nazi metaphor. But he did.
On this evening's Hardball, after rolling tape of the incident that occurred outside the Kentucky senatorial debate last night, Matthews dredged up the creakiest cliché in politics.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Wo-w-w-w. I don' t know what to make of that, but it reminds me of the 30s in another country.
If Matthews is going to go the Nazi-metaphor route, can't he at least have the courage of doing so straight up, instead of resorting to lamely-laminated references?
Funny, we don't recall anyone at NewsBusters complaing when their fellow right-wingers drag out the Nazi metaphor against President Obama.
Reisman starts off by taking offense at President Obama's advice to gay teens, screeching that he is "urging vulnerable youths into a premature sexual life riddled with crippling disease and death," adding, "Why tell children to feel 'pride' and 'strength' in adopting an early death sentence when you are too immature to know much of anything? How cruel, how outrageously heartless!"
From there, Reisman presents as a example of "homosexual trauma" a 1988 ad (which she misidentifies as 1998) from a AIDS clinic stating that one in five "prospective partners could be infected with the virus that causes AIDS," claiming that the clinic "inadvertently confirmed homosexist sodomy as a death wish," asserting that "The data find roughly 1 in 5 homosexist males are an HIV, or, if you prefer, AIDS, vector."
Reisman seems not to understand that 22 years ago is not now. Also, "homosexist"? What does that even mean?
Still, she continues:
Depending on the data one consults, the average homosexual male has between 50 and 150 sex partners, and many die before age 20. Mr. Obama told these confused boys and girls to "reach out to people you trust," who would tell the child he or she is "gay." Obama's contention that teen homosexism as "a source of pride and a source of strength" is contraindicated by medial facts – a very short-lived period of "pride" or "strength."
AIDS has been transferred via oral sodomy while condoms during anal sodomy is an insider joke, albeit a lethal one (a penetration model increasingly fashionably among copy-cat "straights").
Statistically, youngsters who think themselves "gay" can expect to contract scores of STDs and to die young of AIDS. This is not "pride" but mass suicide based on how the human body responds to ongoing sodomy.
Reisman concludes by citing more ancient data, this time from a 1992 magazine article about the number of adolescents infected with AIDS who she presumeswere infected by adult "homosexist males," then asks, "Why haven't 10,000 or more homosexist males been arrested and convicted of mass boy murder?"
The fact that Reisman -- like Molotov Mitchell -- must go back 20 years to dig up statistics that don't reflect realities demonstrates the speciousness of her argument. Not to mention how, like with her anti-Kinsey jihad, personal animosity trumps anything remotely resembing sound research.
AIM's Kincaid Tries Lame Guilt-By-Association to Smear Stewart Rally Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid goes for some laughably crude guilt-by-association in his Oct. 26 Accuracy in Media column, highlighting a statement by "Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers" that this weekend's Washington rallies by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are "worth attending."
That hit-and-run smear is pretty much it. Kincaid devotes the rest of his column to attacking Ayers.
Then again, Kincaid wants to see gays die, so this little fit of amoral ranting is not exactly out of character.
A $41,000 "all-electric" car heavily hyped by the Obama administration is now being dubbed a "fraud" because it requires gasoline for the driver to get anywhere, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.
Last summer, General Motors, commonly called "Government Motors" since the Obama administration takeover, unveiled the first of its "Obamamobiles," the Chevrolet Volt, a compact electric car.
"At the end of July, Obama allowed himself at a GM plant in Michigan to be photographed looking somewhat nervous and uncomfortable behind the wheel of a production-line model of the Chevy Volt," Corsi wrote. "Now it turns out the GM promotion about the Volt being the first truly all-electric car was just a lot of hype."
Corsi, unsurprisingly, gets things wrong. First, the Volt is not an "Obamamobile"; development started in 2006 and it made its first public appearance at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show -- both well before GM needed government intervention.
Second, the Volt was never promoted as an "all-electric car." It always had an internal combustion engine, as noted in the 2007 unveiling. What the Volt has that other hybrid cars don't is electric drive -- that is, an electric motor drives the car, and the internal combustion engine generates electricity but is not directly connected to the driving wheels.
Corsi also writes: "Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has scoffed that the $7,500 tax credit constitutes nothing less than an admission by the Obama administration that nobody wants to buy the Volt." In fact, GM reports that initial demand for the Volt is so strong that it's planning to boost production.
Corsi adds, "Even worse, TopSpeed.com reported that the Chevy Volt's 1.4-liter 80 horsepower engine will only run on premium gasoline." Corsi doesn't explain why that's somehow "worse," given that numerous cars on the market already require premium fuel. Further, the Volt uses premium for a reason, because of the way the motor is designed to be as small and as high-efficiency as possible.
With such easily discredited claims, no wonder Corsi couldn't get anyone to pay for his now-free (but still not functional to free subscribers) newsletter.
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.
