If "It's not over till the fat lady sings," then I submit that "It's not over till the skinny guy cools it."
The one thing Barack Obama didn't do in his speech at the shooting memorial in Tucson was "cool it."
The event at the University of Arizona was supposedly a memorial service for the six dead and 14 wounded from the shooting massacre outside that Safeway in Tucson on Jan. 8.
Instead, with few exceptions, it was a glorification of the lowest common political denominator and a re-election rally stained by the tears of the victims' families.
I can forgive my public school system for sending me out into the world thinking that Mexico and even countries like Guatemala and Paraguay were just smaller Americas that speak Spanish. No dictators. No poverty. But I cannot forgive this administration for shamelessly presenting China as a "friend." Did Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon etc. ever tell us the Soviet Union was a "friend"? No. They treated us like grownups. How dare Obama pump all that spray-deodorant on our "friends"! "Kowtow" is a Chinese word, but we do it much better than they do.
[...]
Can anybody explain why America's first black president is so eager to kowtow to slave-masters?
Speaking of Hawaii, its Democratic governor, Neil Abercrombie, recently admitted that they have been unable to track down Obama's actual birth certificate. And while I acknowledge that even some conservative pundits have joined the left-wing knuckleheads in dismissing a certain number of patriots as "birthers," the fact remains that the Founding Fathers wouldn't have stipulated prerequisites to being president if they hadn't thought it mattered.
The good news for liberals is that even though nobody has been able to turn up the official document, they have sworn testimony by several people who just happened to have been in the Honolulu delivery room on Aug. 4, 1961. They include Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid, Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Henry Waxman, Bill Maher and Chris Matthews. The attending physician was Dr. Keith Olbermann, and the head nurse was Nancy Pelosi.
Americans have by now become accustomed to Obama's sniveling obeisance to foreign leaders. It was not a surprise when our community organizer in chief bowed and scraped in greeting Hu, nor was it a shock when Obama claimed the American people "welcome China's rise." There was no doubt in any observer's mind that Obama's warm greeting to Hu was that of a cowed debtor attempting to curry favor with his chief creditor.
Yes, Americans want government out of our personal and private family lives. But government is ordained to protect innocent lives from being destroyed. And that's what happens every time an abortion takes place.
Obama doesn't care about the rights of women. He doesn't care about privacy. He doesn't care about "choice." And he doesn't care about or believe in the sanctity of human life.
The communist has begun his 2012 campaign for the dumb people. Rumor has it that Obama high-fived Michelle backstage after his speech at the Arizona victims' memorial.
The tea party prevented Obama's takeover. People like me are on top of him, watching his every snakey lie. That thing called taqiyya allows Muslims to lie for Allah. (To me, it looked like O choked on the word "God" when he said "God bless America" at the end of his speech.)
[...]
What if, just what if, Obama is the enemy, one of the Van Jones/William Ayres/Jeremiah Wright/Jarrett/Soros America-haters who are secretly intent on destroying America from the ground up and the top down? If that is the truth, Obama is succeeding.
You know that little lie detector part of your brain that knew my photograph at the top of this article was not taken in 2011, but in 1980? Use that when you listen to Obama.
In any event, if you enjoy the theater, you're going to love the next two years. Watching Obama pretend to be a born-again centrist will place him right up there with the best actors who have performed "Othello" on Broadway. Sure, his State of the Union address was a snoozer, but, honestly, he can do much better. Just wait and see.
MRC's Waters Hides Truth About Museum-Bashing Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center still isn't done pushing its manufactured scandal over a gay-themed art exhibition at a Smithsonian museum.
A Jan. 27 MRC TimesWatch post by Clay Waters bashes a New York Times arts critic for his "snobbish chiding of uncouth American conservatives who helped squelch a video some found sacrilegious, by a featured artist in a Smithsonian gay art exhibit."Waters was further outraged that the critic "was convinced that conservative outrage against the art was politically “orchestrated.”
Of course, Waters doesn't admit that the critic is absolutely correct. It was Waters' fellow MRC co-workers and fellow travelers like the Catholic League's Bill Donohue -- on whose board MRC chief Brent Bozell sits -- that manufactured the outrage over the exhibit, something Waters fails to disclose. The "some critics" Waters mentions as finding the video "sacrilegious" is almost entirely limited to the MRC headquarters.
The MRC's manufactured outrage was a success -- the video got banned from the exhibit. Why doesn't it want to take credit for this?
Ellis Washington Thinks He's Socrates Topic: WorldNetDaily
So now Ellis Washington thinks he's Socrates.
In his Jan. 29 WorldNetDaily column, Washington does one of his "symposiums" in which he purports to examine issues via the Socratic method of the dialectic, "with the ultimate principle of the dialogue being Veritas – Truth." The problem here is that Washington is no Socrates -- we're pretty sure that Socrates wouldn't make as many flamboyantly wrong claims as Washington does -- and Washington's "Socrates" tends to go off on political rants that sound a lot like, you know, Ellis Washington.
So, in his column "symposium" on divine command theory -- "Is what is good, good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?" -- "Socrates" rants about liberal politics:
Applying the Euthyphro dilemma to modern America politics, for more than 100 years the progressive revolution has essentially removed God from the marketplace of ideas and replaced "God" with the "god" of humanism or the idea that man is the center and arbiter of all things. Therefore, all public policies are not judged constitutional, moral or true, but whether they are for the common good. Theodore Roosevelt's "Square Deal," FDR's New Deal and welfare state, Truman's "Fair Deal, LBJ's Great Society and Obama's New Deal, Part 2, all confiscated and spent trillions of taxpayers' money to improve the human condition, yet in all respects society is more ignorant, decadent, alienated and poverty-stricken than preceding generations of the past 100 years.
So why did these tyrants pervert the Constitution and make their own citizens slaves to the federal government?
Gee, that doesn't very socratic to us.
As we've previously noted, Washington's "Socrates" has hurled ad hominem Ku Klux Klan smears, which we're pretty sure also violates the Socratic method.
NewsBusters Promotes Bogus Bachmann Camera Claim Topic: NewsBusters
Part of the Media Research Center's goal of eliminating all liberal viewpoints in the media is denouncing any criticism of conservatives, even when it's humorous.
So we have Noel Sheppard -- who, as linked above, has asserted that the existence of liberal opinions on TV is "disgraceful" -- dedicated a Jan. 30 NewsBusters post to bashing a "Saturday Night Live" skit about Rep. Michele Bachmann's post-State of the Union speech. Sheppard asserted the skit was "designed to totally trash a conservative woman," adding that "NBC predictably piled on the conservative Congresswoman the media love to defame."
Sheppard then claimed, "In reality, if the folks at SNL had done their homework, they would have known that the real gaffe Tuesday night was made by CNN," citing a Breitbart.tv post as evidence of this. But Breitbart is wrong; Mediaite has reported that the camera feed CNN used during Bachmann's speech -- which caused a minor controversy because Bachmann didn't look into that camera but, rather, another one providing a web feed -- was a pool camera operated by Fox News, not CNN.
Breitbart has since updated his post to note that "the pool camera providing the feed for CNN was Fox News." Will Sheppard make the correction too?
Bozell Offended Gays Are Depicted On TV Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell furthers his Media Research Center's anti-gay agenda with his Jan. 28 column, professing to be offended that gays are depicted on TV. He calls "Glee" a hotbed of "gay teen propaganda" and huffed of coverage of the show that insufficiently bashes the gay characters for being gay: "They are not celebrating diversity. They are intimidating dissidents."
Bozell goes on to petulantly call the show "My So-Called Life" a "bomb" (incorrectly conflating lack of popularity with lack of quality, as the MRC is wont to do) and dismissed the show "Degrassi" as a "grope opera" that "has had eight gay characters, and is now normalizing “Adam,” a female-to-male transgender teen." And he's particularly put out that "Most of ABC Family's teen shows seem to have a sympathetic gay character."
Of course, Bozell is opposed to any sympathetic gay character, teen or otherwise.
WND's Klein Baselessly Attacks Obama, ElBaradei On Egypt Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Jan. 29 WorldNetDaily article by Aaron Klein asserts that "The Egyptian government suspects elements of the current uprising there, particularly political aspects, are being coordinated with the U.S. State Department." But as is per usual for Klein, he cites no named source for this, only an anonymous "senior Egyptian diplomat."
Klein typically hides behind anonymous sources when he attacks Obama on Middle East policy. In this case, he is suggesting without any credible evidence that Obama is deliberately helping the Muslim Brotherhood, a longtimeright-wingsmear.
Klein goes on to assert that Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei "is seen as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egypt":
Last week, ElBaradei gave an interview to Der Spiegel defending the Brotherhood.
"We should stop demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. ... [They] have not committed any acts of violence in five decades. They too want change. If we want democracy and freedom, we have to include them instead of marginalizing them," he said.
But Klein edited out statements by ElBaradei that contradict his assertion. From the full interview, with the statements Klein edited out in bold:
We should stop demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. It is incorrect that our only choice is between oppression under Mubarak and the chaos of religious extremists. I have many differences with the Muslim Brotherhood. But they have not committed any acts of violence in five decades. They too want change. If we want democracy and freedom, we have to include them instead of marginalizing them.
In other words, ElBaradei's full statement, and the entire interview, shows that he is recognizing the Muslim Brotherhood as a part of the political opposition that must inevitably be a part of the country's post-Mubarak future. It's irresponsible of Klein to deliberately hide information from his readersin order to falsely portray ElBaradei as something he's not.
For good measure -- and as further evidence of his anti-Obama pathology -- Klein includes a factual error in order to attack Obama. Klein cited a 2008 incident in which the U.S. government allegedly "helped a young dissident attend a U.S.-sponsored summit for activists in New York" as further evidence of "the Obama administration's alleged interference there."
Of course, there wasn't an Obama administration in 2008, at the time of the alleged incident. The UK Telegraph article he cites as evidence mentions only "the American embassy in Cairo" as helping the dissident and doesn't mention Obama at all.
Last October, WorldNetDaily took part in a right-wing freakout over Campbell's Soup offering a line of soups that meet Islamic dietary guidelines of halal, declaring it to be "catering to Islam."
Now, WND has felt the need to freak out some more over halal food with a Jan. 27 article by Joe Kovacs declaring all halal food to have been "sacrificed to idols." Kovacs uncovered an "outspoken American pastor" who is complaining that halal food means that Muslims "have their meat blessed in the name of their god, Allah, adding, "From the Christian standpoint, Allah would be an idol."
Kovacs makes no mention of kosher food, which is subject to similar procedures. It's not until the 20th paragraph, after liberally quoting the panicky minister , that Kovacs gets around to quoting a spokesperson for an Islamic nutrition council calling such panic ridiculous. And it's not until the very last paragraph that Kovacs notes that the minister 'stresses he's not against halal food, halal stores or Muslims."
The more appropritate response to such contrived Muslim-bashing panic, though, comes from Stephen Colbert: "Folks, we are dangerously close to being served Filet al-Fish by Imam McCheese!"
Newsmax Rushes to Attack Obama Over Egypt Topic: Newsmax
As events in Egypt started to escalate, Newsmax wasted no time in finding a way to attack President Obama over it. A Jan. 27 article by David Patten carries the headline, "US Under Fire for NO-bama Response to Mideast Powder Keg."
Surprisingly, the article was not as biased as its headline made it out to be. Patten -- who is typically no slouch in regurgitating right-wing talking points -- admitted that "The administration’s ambivalence stems from the region’s volatility," and nobody Patten quotes echoes the headline's "NO-bama" attack line.
This tells us that Newsmax's only interest was a slapdash attempt get a lead in framing events in Egypt, whatever they end up being, as a failure for Obama -- never mind that things are moving too quickly there for many to get a hold on.
CNS' Lucas Tweets Bile During Egypt Crisis Topic: CNSNews.com
And we have a front-runner for the dumbest ConWeb tweet regarding the events in Egypt: CNSNews.com's Fred Lucas, who takes a shot at White House press secretary Robert Gibbs for delaying a scheduled briefing on the crisis:
Lucas seems not to have considered that the White House might have a little more concerned with making sure its message is properly connected to quickly evolving events than trying to please a right-wing reporter who is more interested in trashing them no matter what they say.
Obama (And Chinese Pianist) Derangement Syndrome Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Sure, the controversy over a song played by pianist Lang Lang at the White House state dinner for Chinese president Hu Jintao is entirely manufactured. But manufactured outrage is good enough for WorldNetDaily's Chrissy Satterfield, whose head explodes in her Jan. 26 WND column:
I wonder, what would it take to make Obama angry? What would Lang Lang have to do for Obama to put a stop to his performance? If Lang Lang had stripped down to his underwear and started screaming "Death to America," would he have budged? Some might say it would have been rude to interrupt Lang's performance. But hey, if I invite someone to my house (regardless if I owe them money) and they start singing about killing my family, I'm going medieval on them. Debt shmet, you disrespect my family? You better play dead. Unacceptable is the only word that comes to mind when I think about Obama. He just sat there and let us get the biggest pie in the face. When Lang started playing his Anti-American propaganda, Obama should have left. I don't expect him to get violent, or start shouting for Lang to stop. He could have stood up and walked out. That would have sent a clear message that respect is a two-way street. There is no excuse for Obama's lack of action. He has proven that he is nothing more than a marionette working for the liberal puppet masters. He can't do anything without being directed. He can't speak up without a prompter.
Obama probably didn't even realize what was happening. I wouldn't be surprised to find out he enjoyed Lang's musical rendition of "I hate America." There he was with that blank grin thinking how great he is, thinking how wonderful it is that he reached out to China. He threw Hu a "please like me" party and made us look like complete fools. Falling all over Hu, telling him how much we want to be friends, Obama was like a new kid in the schoolyard who just wanted to be accepted. All the while China is giving us a national swirly in the political toilet.
Obama deserves a wedgie the size of his ego for what he's done to us. He has helped our enemy embarrass us in front of the entire world. Who in their right mind would respect us now? Obama allowed us to be humiliated. He allowed Lang and Hu to spit in our face. He's made us appear weak and inferior. He has failed to lead by example. If he cannot stand up to Hu, what's the point of it all? My dose of honesty: We need a president who is strong, opinionated yet open minded; someone who will lead with his heart and protect our good name at any cost. Obama is none of those things, and this fiasco shows his true character … weak. As for Lang, he should never be allowed to set foot on American soil ever again.
Whatever would Satterfield do if she ever stumbled across an genuine controversy? Why, it just might kill her.
MRC Again Portrays Limbaugh As Innocent Victim Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's reflexive response is to protect right-wing icons like Rush Limbaugh at all costs -- even when its agenda runs counter to his.
This compulsion has shown up again in the MRC's response to a California state senator, Leland Yee, who said he had received death threats after Limbaugh dismissed his call for an apology Limbaugh's on-air mocking of Chinese speech and culture.
Tim Graham was first to join the Limbaugh brigade, squealing in a Jan. 27 NewsBusters post that "the media" was "trolling for proof that conservatives are racist and violent" and deriding Yee as "a liberal state senator running for Mayor of San Francisco."
Then, MRC chief Brent Bozell ratcheted things up by issuing a press release baselessly suggesting that Yee is a liar:
"This is part of a systematic, coordinated campaign designed to smear Rush Limbaugh. We've seen it before, over and over. The media helped propel the bogus story about the "phony soldier" by twisting Rush’s comments into an attack on U.S. troops. They validated the completely bogus quote alleging that Rush endorsed the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – which was later proven to be a complete fabrication. And the list goes on.
"This fax smells to high heaven. Before Yee attacked him, Limbaugh had never spoken about him. Limbaugh has no reason to want to attack him. Limbaugh has nothing to do with this. But the Yee camp sure has a lot to gain – especially from all the free publicity this gimmick is giving them and his political ambitions running for Mayor this year.
"So let's see if the so-called 'news' media, which are so obsessed with talk radio, will investigate and expose who is behind these smears, instead of doing the Left's dirty work and spreading smears against a talk radio giant who has never uttered a word of malice against Senator Yee. It reeks to high heaven. Let's see who has the decency to investigate this."
Of course, Bozell offers no proof to support his assertion that Yee is lying, even though he operates a news service that one would think is capable of investigating it. Bozell is also silent about the mocking behavior by Limbaugh that led to Yee's complaint, even though it's central to the issue.
The press release offers a link to an MRC "special report," called "The Left's Character Assassination Campaign Against Rush Limbaugh." But as we detailed, the report deceptively blurred the line between apparently false racially charged statements attributed to Limbaugh and the undeniably true things Limbaugh actually did say.
Of course, being honest about the issue would involve actual media research -- something Bozell and his crew have demonstrated they have no interesting in doing. He's too busy defending Limbaugh to tell the truth.
Zing! Farah Fires A Shot At Us Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah displays his thin skin yet again in his Jan. 27 column, going on a tirade set off by a Huffington Post blogger who called WND "white supremacist."
Farah actually does have a point here. WND is much more Christian reconstructionist than it is white supremacist, even though it has exhibited a tolerance for Pat Buchanan's racial bigotry.
But then, Farah writes this:
Would Arianna Huffington ask a "white supremacist" to do that?
Maybe she would.
After all, she invites inveterate liars and mudslingers to write opinion pieces on her website.
She's actually got one nut job on her payroll who pretty much writes full-time about me and WND – with hardly a word of it connected to reality.
Gee, who could Farah be talking about? Sounds like it's me.
First, I'm not on Huffington's "payroll" since Huffington Post doesn't pay its bloggers. Second, Farah has yet to offer any evidence whatsover that any claim I have made about him and WND is wrong or otherwise not "connected to reality."
I'll take this as proof that Farah reads ConWebWatch and is scared that the truth I tell about him and WND (and the rest of the ConWeb) will find a larger audience. He clearly feels that he must discredit me any way he can; since he has no actual facts to back him up, resorts to ad hominem attacks like "nut job" (if you'll recall, he has previously called me a "talent-challenged slug").
In short: The truth is on my side, and Farah knows it.
WND Pretending It Didn't Get Burned On Birther Claim Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is doing its best to pretend it didn't get burned when its story that radio celebrity gossip Mike Evans claimed that Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie told him that he couldn't find a copy of Obama's birth certificate in Hawaii state records went bad.
First, WND pretended it didn't happen. While it linked to the FoxNews.com article in which Evans retracted his claim, for a good while today that article appeared on its front page below Jerome Corsi's original faulty story and a separate version of it on Fox Nation:
In other words, WND played up the faulty story over the correct version.
Then, WND cobbled together a follow-up written by Bob Unruh, in which Evans vowed on a radio show featuring Jerome Corsi -- who wrote the original article uncritically repeating Evans' claims without bothering to fact-check them -- that he would talk to Abercrombie about it.
Meanwhile, Corsi's original article remains live and uncorrected, nor does it offer a link to Evans' retraction.
But that's the way WND rolls -- it generally doesn't correct anything, no matter how false, unless it's threatened with a lawsuit or if it can make the faulty article disappear quietly.
A Jan. 26 CNSNews.com article by Melanie Hunter-Omar provides a fawning depiction of Michele Bachmann's post-State of the Union speech, claiming that President Obama "failed to deliver on his promise to keep unemployment under eight percent by spending a trillion dollars on the federal stimulus program."
What Hunter-Omar doesn't do is mention anything unpleasant regarding Bachmann's speech -- like what she got wrong. For instance, take the claim Hunter-Omar led her article with. As the Washington Post noted, Obama never "promised" that that the stimulus plan would keep unemployment under eight percent.
The Post found other misleading claims by Bachmann, as did CNN, regarding another Bachmann claim Hunter-Omar uncritically repeated, that health care reform "will put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama’s healthcare bill." CNN called the claim "at best, misleading."
Hunter-Omar also avoid mention of the single most talked-about aspect of Bachmann's speech: the way she gave it. Viewers at CNN, which aired the speech live, were treated to Bachmann delivering it while looking somewhere other than directly into the camera; it turns out she was looking into a different camera used for the speech's Web feed.
