Bozell Whines Media Isn't Covering Planned Parenthood Sting Hoax Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell, as he is wont to do, spends his Feb. 9 column whining that some story isn't being covered by the "liberal media" -- in this case, the "shocking" and "damning" entrapment videos by anti-abortion activist Lila Rose at Planned Parenthood.
Bozell has to hide the facts to keep you thinking that this story is "shocking" and "damning." Nowhere does Bozell mention that Planned Parenthood contacted the Justice Department after visits from Rose's activist group Live Action warning of possible sex trafficking -- the very offense Rose's hired actors were trying to convince Planned Parenthood they were engaging in.
Bozell seems to be failing to consider the fact that the reason the "liberal media" is not reporting this story is because there's no story here.
Barbara Simpson's Obama Derangement Topic: WorldNetDaily
Barbara Simpson has a fit of Obama derangment in her Feb. 7 WorldNetDaily column:
As if not bad enough, other released cables show that Barack Obama used Britain's nuclear secrets as bargaining chips in getting the Russians to sign the START treaty.
To make it clear: The United States betrayed long-time alliances with Britain by giving Russia secret information about every Trident missile the Brits have, as well as their nuclear capability.
Britain had steadfastly refused to agree to share the Trident information with Russia. Despite that, the U.S., in its determination to get the START treaty signed, gave the information to Russia anyway. Now, not only will the number of British warheads be known but also the number of missiles.
Can they ever trust us again?
That Barack Obama would betray Britain is disgusting to anyone with any sense of history who knows the unique political and social relationship between the two countries. But Obama has his own agenda and loyalty to democratic and freedom-loving friends isn't part of it.
In fact, the language that required the disclosure appeared in the original 1991 START treaty, and both U.S. and British officials called the Telegraph report "bunk."
Simpson also referenced the alleged "arbitrary return of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's gift of the Churchill statue" by the Obama administration. In fact, the decision to return the Churchill bust -- which was on loan to President Bush and not a gift -- was made by the Bush administration, not Obama.
CNS Loath To Admit Its Boss Is Conservative Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com is usually good about labeling the political leanings of the subjects it writes about -- except when the subject is the organization that owns it, the Media Research Center.
A Feb. 7 CNS article by Christopher Goins on the MRC's report "preserving Ronald Reagan's legacy and highlighting the liberal media’s resentment and distortion of it" did not describe the report as coming from a conservative viewpoint, though it used "liberal" as a descriptor six times, including three mentions of "liberal media."
Another Feb. 7 article by Pete Winn on the MRC's hyperbolic reaction to AOL's purchase of the Huffington Post did describe MRC chief Brent Bozell as "conservative," though it described the Huffington Post as "liberal" three separate times.
Needless to say, neither article provided any opposing viewpoint to the MRC's. Also there was no mention of whether Bozell's assailing of organizations that "target and obscenely smear" their political enemies and, thus, do not deserve to be called "news" will results in the word "news" being lopped from CNS' name.
An international "crisis management" group led by billionaire George Soros long has petitioned for the Egyptian government to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The International Crisis Group, or ICG, also released a report urging the Egyptian regime to allow the Brotherhood to establish an Islamist political party.
The ICG includes on its board Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the main opposition leaders in Egypt, as well as other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In a June 2008 report entitled, "Egypt's Muslim Brothers Confrontation or Integration," Soros' ICG urges the Egyptian regime to allow the group to participate in political life.
The report dismisses Egypt's longstanding government crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood as "dangerously short-sighted."
The ICG report called on President Hosni Mubarak's regime to "pave the way for the regularization of the Muslim Brothers' participation in political life," including by allowing for the "establishment of a political party with religious reference."
Klein curiously doesn't link to the ICG report so readers can judge for themselves. Why? Perhaps because those readers would learn that Klein has cherry-picked from the report to misrepresent its contents.
The above is the very limited extent to which Klein describes the details of the report. What he doesn't tell you: ICG told the Muslim Brotherhood to moderate its views as well:
The Muslim Brothers also carry their share of responsibility. Although they have made considerable efforts to clarify their vision and can make a credible case that they embrace the rules of democratic politics, including the principles of citizenship, rotation of power and multiparty political life, serious questions linger. Many of their pronouncements are ambiguous; not a few – including in their most recent political program – retain a distinctly non-democratic, illiberal tone. This is particularly true concerning the role of women and the place of religious minorities, neither of whom, for example, the Muslim Brothers believe should be eligible for the presidency. Clarification is needed. Democratising the Society’s internal practice also would help, particularly if the group’s more pragmatic wing is able to make a credible case for a doctrinal revision as the price to pay for political integration.
[...]
To the Society of Muslim Brothers:
4. Engage in a dialogue with members of the government, opposition and civil society, notably by:
(a) approaching officials and reform-minded NDP members to discuss conditions necessary for the Society’s peaceful political integration;
(b) engaging with secular opposition parties and movements to form a consensus on how the Society can best be integrated as well as wider issues of political reform;
(c) engaging with representatives of the Christian community in a frank dialogue on sectarian relations and the Society’s stance toward religious minorities;
(d) supporting comprehensive political reform clearly, as opposed to a bilateral arrangement between the Society and the regime; and
(e) ensuring that consensus positions on these issues are formed within the Society in a democratic manner to avoid contradictory approaches by members.
5. Finalise and amend the Society’s political program, in particular by:
(a) altering its position on the role of women and non-Muslims in public life;
(b) continuing to seek input from a wide range of its members as well as non-members; and
(c) clarifying relations between the Society and a future related political party.
If Klein had told the truth about the ICG report, it would have destroyed his little storyline of Soros masterminding the Egypt chaos. As we already know, the storyline is more important to Klein than the truth.
UPDATE: Klein falls back on his overreliance on anonymous sources in another Feb. 8 article claiming that "Members of a vast Hezbollah terrorist cell suspected of planning attacks against tourist sites and economic targets in the Suez Canal have escaped from Egyptian prison." Klein cites only "informed Egyptian security sources" to back the claim and offers no on-the-record confirmation.
MRC's Graham Admits Truth About GOP's 'Forcible Rape' Provision Topic: Media Research Center
When the provision in an anti-abortion bill that redefined a rape exception as limited only to "forcible rape" became public, Republicans wouldn't defend it -- heck, even NewsBusters had to dance around it -- and Republicans ultimately vowed to remove it.
Now, the MRC's Tim Graham is admitting what his right-wing fellow travelers wouldn't -- that the provision was an attempt to further restrict abortion.
Graham uses a Feb. 8 NewsBusters post to attack some random Daily Kos blogger for calling the Republican Party the "Rapeublican Party." Graham writes that the "forcible rape" provision was an attempt to "deny taxpayer subsidies for abortion in cases of statutory rape." Not in so many words, of course; he doesn't use the term "forcible rape," and he doesn't quite concede that that the term would constitute as a narrowing of current law regarding restrictions on federal funding of abortions.
Nor does Graham quite concede (beyond a block quote of the Kos blogger he's attacking) that the "forcible rape" construct would go way beyond statutory rape to rape of a physically or mentally incapacitated person. Graham distrcts from what his admission by attacking the Kos blogger for supposedly claiming that "taxpayers who aren't committing statutory rape should lend a helping financial hand to those who are, and women who aren't 'daring to have sex' until they get in trouble should be subsidizing those women who do."
Graham's attack mode doesn't change the fact that he broke the GOP's anti-abortion omerta by essentially admitting what the "forcible rape" gambit was really about. His telling the truth may be bad news within his little activist conclave, but it's good news for the rest of us.
WND Baselessly Blames Obama for What Anonymous People Are Supposedly Claiming Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Feb. 7 worldNetDaily article by Aaron Klein carries the subhead, "Look what Obama's support for Islamist group is doing." What is is that Obama is supposedly "doing"?
An Egyptian Islamist terrorist organization founded by the Muslim Brotherhood is re-establishing itself amid the political upheaval in Cairo, WND has learned.
Both Egyptian and Israeli security officials said the group, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, is being reconstituted at the direction of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The officials affirmed Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya serves as the de fact [sic] "military" wing of the Brotherhood, which originally founded Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya.
[...]
The information comes after the U.S. tacitly approved the Muslim Brotherhood's involvement in political dialogue in Egypt.
At no point does Klein demonstrate any direct corellation between the Obama administration "tacitly approv[ing]" participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's "political dialogue" and the purported return of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya -- not even the anonymous sources Klein quotes. So the WND headline is a lie -- just another way Klein and WND are serving as a Mubarakmouthpiece.
By the way, is Klein ever going to quote an actual named person about Egypt? He hasn't so far.
Newsmax's Walsh: Illegal Immigrants Are Dumb, Lazy Gang-Bangers Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax columnist James Walsh has longbeenhostile to immigrants in general and illegal immigrants in particular. He spends his Feb. 7 column attacking another writer for daring to say nice thing about immigration.
Walsh complains that the writer "does not differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants," then goes on a tirade against illegal immigrants. He asserts that the writer "fails to mention that illegal workers are taking jobs that could be filled by unemployed U.S. citizens in Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois," but he offers no evidence to back up this claim.
Walsh does conceded that " educated immigrants are a boon to the nation, economically and socially, but most enter the United States legally and with the assistance of their employers." Unlike those filthy, violent illegal immigrants:
Many illegal aliens tend to be undereducated or uneducated, and as a result end up doing menial work for which they are paid off the books in cash.
Many are slow to learn English, and a number are criminal gang members or just plain criminals. Taxpayers cover the considerable costs of translators for non-English speaking illegal aliens who end up in the federal and state court systems.
Illegal aliens cost communities where they live significant amounts of public funds for health, education, and welfare entitlements. Immigrant advocates instruct illegal aliens that they qualify for these entitlements right along with U.S. citizens. Perhaps worst of all, immigrant advocates encourage illegal aliens to commit fraud by voting in U.S. elections.
Why does Newsmax allow someone with such unbridled hatred for illegal immigrants to write about how much he hates them?
Bozell's Overheated And Hypocritical Response to HuffPo-AOL Merger Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell serves up a typically overheated reaction to AOL's purchase of the Huffington Post:
“This proves AOL News has lost its mind. They must be in such dire straits that they’ve been blinded by the millions and think an acquisition of The Huffington Post is worth sacrificing credibility and objectivity. AOL News is fooling only itself in thinking there is no journalistic conflict in merging with a hate-filled, vicious, radically left-wing rag.
“Let’s do a quick review of The Huffington Post. Our ‘Huffington’s House of Horrors’ Special Report revealed beyond a shadow of a doubt ongoing campaign of profanity, crude sexual and excretory metaphors and outright hate speech against conservatives, all under the leadership of Arianna Huffington. In fact, just last month, Huffington's site published a man saying the next 'Great American Story' would be Dick Cheney receiving a heart transplant from a brain-dead American soldier from Iraq, possibly causing ‘the heart to implode knowing it was trapped inside Dick Cheney.’
“So when Arianna brags today that ‘I laid out my vision for the expansion of The Huffington Post, and he laid out his vision for AOL. We were practically finishing each other's sentences,’ we can only assume that AOL News has been infected with the same vicious motive: to target and obscenely smear conservatives. They can do that if they want, of course, but please don’t call it AOL ‘News.’ That’s now become an insult.”
We've previously detailed how the MRC's "special report" on the Huffington Post is little more than a joke, cherry-picking a mere 19 posts out of the tens of thousands of posts on the site and dismissed all posters as ""all-star far-left cast of celebrity dilettantes," "celebrit[ies] toasted by the leftist elites" and "hate-speech specialists."
And if Bozell thinks "news" organization shouldn't be targeting and smearing political enemies, does that mean he will drop the "news" designation from his CNSNews.com, which lovestodo just that?
Ellis Washington Gets It Wrong on Egypt Topic: WorldNetDaily
It wouldn't be Ellis Washington if he wasn't spewing hatred and getting stuff flamboyantly wrong, and he hits the mark on both in his Feb. 5 WorldNetDaily column.
Washington begins with "paraphrasing the telling words" of Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson as "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." A paraphrase means that you keep the essential meaning of what was said, and Washington didn't do that. Jackson never said that "The Constitution is not a suicide pact"; he said, according to the Wikipedia link Washington supplied regarding a court ruling to which Jackson supplied a minority opinion on, that "There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."
From that factual error, Washington moves on to ranting about how "The world stands at the brink – the Progressive/Muslim Axis vs. Natural Law/Christianity." This segues into a discussion of events in Egypt, in which he dismisses both Joe Biden and Mohamed ElBaradei as "what Lenin called useful idiots."
Washington then segues into an anti-Egypt tirade:
The Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979 began America's financial aid of Egypt, which amounts to scores of billions of dollars to date. Most of that money goes to Egypt's military. Egypt, along with several other Muslim nations fought (and lost), four major wars against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. Why for the past three decades have we given money to build Egypt's military and keep a dictator in power? Because they signed that treasonous false peace treaty in 1979 with that nitwit Jimmy Carter while Egypt secretly ships hundreds of tons of weaponry though their shared tunnels into Gaza, which Hamas uses to kill Israelis.
Washington offered no evidence that the Egyptian government is secretly shipping arms to Hamas that were purchased with U.S. foreign aid. In fact, quite the opposite is occuring: Mubarak's government usually destroys tunnels to Gaza, and the smuggled weapons are made in Russia and China, not America.
And Washington's depiction of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty as "treasonous" is bizarre, since the treaty has largely held for 30 years.
Washington concludes by descending into derangement over various things:
America must break the servile bondage of the Progressive-Muslim Axis over American foreign policy. The trillions spent in foreign aid and war over there we've essentially flushed down the toilet. What has 35 years of Middle Eastern "diplomacy" gotten us but 9/11, two Iraq wars, Afghanistan and the devolution of American exceptionalism?
I am not promoting neo-isolationist policies America had prior to the World Wars, but how about breaking the slave chains of China, Iran and the Saudis and returning to a robust Reagan foreign policy where we manufacture what we need here in this country without needless regulation and union thuggery? How about America mining for our own rich natural resources in coal, oil, natural gas, shale and other profitable minerals needed for computers, manufacturing and weaponry? America is literally the Saudi Arabia of coal, oil shale and natural gas, but for too long we've allowed gutless politicians to be controlled by the environmental fanatics, union thugs and the regulatory Gestapo.
Stop the Progressive-Muslim Axis. America needs a pragmatic and narrowly defined foreign policy that makes alliances with Christian or Christian-friendly nations and avoids what President George Washington warned against, entangling alliances with those nations whose ideology and culture seek our destruction.
Any nation that we have to bribe with foreign aid (i.e., voluntary extortion) isn't a faithful or true ally and will only push America into bankruptcy and into treasonous geopolitical entanglements.
Only Christians should get U.S. foreign aid? Really?
Ed Fuelner's Feb. 3 CNSNews.com column touts Ronald Reagan's "true legacy," but somehow manages to avoid using the words "deficit" and "debt." And he avoids mention that wages for most Americans stayed essentially flat throughout the 1980s.
What WND Didn't Report About Abdullah Adhami Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein has been pushing attacks on a newly named adviser to the Park51 Islamic center and mosque, Abdullah Adhami:
A Jan. 20 article stated that Adhami said that "Muslims have 'more of a right' than Jews to the biblical prophet Moses."
A Jan. 23 article claimed that Adhami said that "Those who leave Islam and preach against the Muslim religion must be jailed." As we detailed, Klein took this out of context.
A Jan. 30 article asserted that Adhami said that "'True' Muslims who enter the highest levels of Muslim paradise are those who pay the ultimate price of sacrifice for the goal of implementing Shariah Islamic law."
Curiously, Klein did not relay one attack on Adhami that has appeared elsewhere: that "an enormously, overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life."
Why did Klein pass on this opportunity to pile on Adhami? Perhaps because This view isn't all that far from the WND corporate view.
And now, Klein won't have the opportunity; Adhami has quit the Park51 project. Yet Klein hasn't reported that either -- perhaps because Adhami's remarks on homosexuality, and not what Klein reported, have been cited as a reason why.
NewsBusters' Double Standard on Videotaped Stings Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters hasbeendutifullypromoting the hoax videos of Lila Rose attempting to entrap Planned Parenthood -- even deceiving to do so. But apparenyly only conservatives are allowed to do undercover sting operations.
A Feb. 3 NewsBusters post by Scott Whitlock complains:
ABC and reporter John Quinones on Thursday stretched the bounds of journalism, hiring an actor to play a racist security guard as a way of testing how the people of Arizona would react to the state's "anti-immigration law."
Previewing the network's "What Would You Do?" segment for Friday's 20/20, Quinones explained the undercover concept: "So, I go undercover, pretending to be someone who is about to be arrested and deported, simply by the way I look."
The piece featured a cartoonish "security guard" harassing Mexican actors in Tucson, Arizona. Presumably, ABC chose a security guard because impersonating a police officer is illegal. The actor walked into a restaurant and spewed, "I'm just looking to make sure these guys are legal citizens. And if they're not legal citizens, they shouldn't be here. They should be deported. They look Mexican."
Of course, having this man pretend to be a security guard really makes no sense. (A security guard is going to deport people?) Secondly, for journalists that often attack conservative sting operations, it's rather odd to see ABC manipulate such a scenario.
The Radio, Television and Digital News Association ethics guide states: "Use surreptitious newsgathering techniques, including hidden cameras or microphones, only if there is no other way to obtain stories of significant public importance and only if the technique is explained to the audience." Was this the only way ABC could do such a story?
Given the MRC's enthusiasm for Rose's bogus sting operation, it's utterly hypocritical for Whitlock to complain about ABC doing something similar.
Will Whitlock apply those same RTDNA standards to Lila Rose? Probably not.
WND's Klein Still Serving As A Mubarak Mouthpiece Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein keeps up his desperate efforts to prop up the Mubarak regime with a Feb. 6 article attacking the dictator's opposition as linked to George Soros.
Klein complains that Soros-funded Open Society Institute's Middle East and North Africa Initiative "has provided numerous grants to a wide range of projects that promote so-called democratic issues across the region, including in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood stands to gain from any future election." Klein also criticized the OSI's Justice Initiative for having "helped represent Muslim Brotherhood leaders seeking election or more authority in the country."
But Klein doesn't mention what the initiatives has done, let alone explain why things like protesting Egypt's detention of a man for 15 years without a trial or even any charges filed against him is "so-called democratic" instead of actually democratic.
In all, this is just another pathetic attempt by Klein to aid his favorite dictator.
"Few are recognizing what an opportunity the House Republicans have to force Washington to downsize," says Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND and the author of the petition and organizer of the "No More Red Ink" campaign. "If Republicans in the House unite around this idea, there is nothing the White House or the Senate can do to exceed the debt limit. This is a golden opportunity for real change in policy that must not be frittered away in favor of deals with the Democrats."
The second phase of the "No More Red Ink" campaign allows Americans to send a "red ink" letter to every member of the House majority urging them to vote "no" on raising the debt limit. The letters are individually addressed to each member, with guaranteed delivery by Fed Ex for a cost of just $29.99. It would cost an individual more than $100 in postage alone to send the 242 letters with no guaranty of delivery and certainly nowhere near the impact.
And nowhere near the profit for WND. It charged $29.95 to send out factually inaccurate "pink slips" to all members of Congress; now, it's sending half as many "red ink" letters for the same price. More money for WND!
UPDATE: A Feb. 6 WND article states that it has "shipped the first 125,000 'red ink' letters to House Republicans." As with the "pink slip" campaign, counting by numbers of letters sent sound much more impressive than it actually is. Divide 125,000 by 242, and you get a mere 516 people who paid WND their hard-earned $29.95. Multiply those numbers, though, and WND has already grossed more than $15,000 on this venture -- and you know it didn't cost WND nearly that much to print and ship those letters.
WND's Klayman: Obama Is Pretending To Be A Christian Topic: WorldNetDaily
Larry Klayman kicks off his Feb. 5 WorldNetDaily column this way:
Thursday was the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Weakened politically and likely at this point in his administration to lose the 2012 presidential election, the "mullah in chief," Barack Hussein Obama decided to show his face at the annual event and pretend that he is a believer in Judeo-Christian culture and ideology. But, as has been true throughout his presidency, Obama's actions speak much louder than his insincere if not fraudulent words.
Klayman then served up a, shall we say, alternative history of the past year:
We all remember last year's Obama outrage; canceling the White House commemoration of May's National Day of Prayer and instead celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in the people's house. To add insult to injury, the president used the occasion to effectively endorse the Ground Zero mosque. What we witnessed before this shocking display was a chief executive who went out of his way to humiliate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he first interrupted and then left the Jewish leader waiting during a meeting in the White House, while Obama went off to have a cozy dinner with first lady Michelle. That's not to mention the administration's generally hostile attitude and approach toward Israel and its now obsessive "outreach" to radical Arabic interests. Couple this with Obama's dissing of and failure to support the Persian freedom movement in Iran, a natural ally of Israel and the West if there is regime change, and we have the backdrop of a president, true to his black Muslim Chicago roots, not only obsessed with the radical Arab world, but also hostile to Jews, Christians and Persians.
Klayman then fell into line with his fellow dictator-lovers at WND by claiming Obama was "literally throwing President Hosni Mubarak, a 30-year ally of the United States and Israel, under the proverbial bus."
All of this showed Obama's true colors – even if we did not need to be reminded given his conduct of the last few years. He has a knee-jerk reflexive ultra-leftist reaction to world events and exhibits a frightening degree of disloyalty toward American allies who have stood with the United States and Israel. This may stem from his own heritage as the son of a anti-colonialist, America-hating Kenyan father, or it may have been also acquired over the years from Obama's association with the likes of Rev. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ, Bill Ayers, a noted anarchist and domestic terrorist, and, of course, his own wife, Michelle – who is a liberal extremist. But whatever the cause, the president is a highly dangerous man bent on destroying vital U.S. strategic alliances and undermining Israel and the Iranian freedom movement in particular.
All in all, a fine exhibition of Obama derangement.
