MRC Likes Rebecca Black Because She's Not Singing About Gays Topic: Media Research Center
An April 1 MRC Culture & Media Institute article by Erin R. Brown comes to the defense of Rebecca Black and her "Friday" video, declaring it "a welcome relief from the relentless sexualization of chidlhood."
More importantly, she's not singing about people having inherent value no matter what their sexual orientation, unlike a certain other singer:
For instance, the video for Lady Gaga's chart-topping hit "Born This Way" on YouTube has only garnered a little over 28 million hits, compared to black's 69 million. The 'gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgendered' anthem from the pop sensation accrued more than 440,000 downloads in its first week. This radio and digital sales record-breaking song has yet to receive even half of the internet hits already obtained by the previously unknown teen.
Because, you know, Internet hits is always an indicator of quality of a video's content.
WND's Washington Threatens Assault Against Cass Sunstein Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ellis Washington's weekly WorldNetDaily rant is more demented than usual this week, targeting Obama adviser Cass Sunstein.
First, Washington takes out of context Sunstein's statement "There is no liberty without dependency," declaring it his "fascist motto" and "treachery." In fact, the statement is from a 1999 op-ed Sunstein co-wrote arguing that taxes permit the liberty Americans enjoy because true liberty can't be enjoyed as a society without a government to enforce those rights.
Washington then goes into insult-hurling mode, attacking Sunstein as a "Marxist academic" and Obama's Cesare Mori (we're a little unclear on how this is supposed to be insult since Mori, while an official in Italy's Fascist movement, actually did something worthwile by trying to shut down the Mafia in the country).
This is followed by freak-out mode over some policies Sunstein has promoted. First up was his idea that organ donation should be opt-out rather than opt-in. Washington, as he is wont to do, gets this wrong, describing the policy Sunstein has argued in favor of as "explicit consent" when, in fact, that's the current policy. The formal name of the policy Sunstein favors is "presumed consent."
Still, Washington freaked out anyway: "In America, if a corpse doesn't have the liberty to be buried in peace without legions of ghoulish, body-snatching bureaucrats stealing grandma's liver, kidneys or eyeballs, then what freedom and constitutional rights do you think those of us who are alive will enjoy? … None!" Washington seems to be ignoring the fact that organs are generally not harvested from elderly people like "grandma."
Washington also discussed Sunstein's ideas for adding more rights to the Constitution, denouncing them as a "coup d'état" with the "tyrannous effect" of "remak[ing] the U.S. Constitution into a socialist communist document without having to fire one bullet, or get one vote in Congress." Washington then listed the "diabolical parameters of this new communist bill of rights," which he claimed Sunstein "plagiarized" from Franklin Roosevelt -- thus falsely suggesting that Sunstein gave FDR no credit for the ideas. In fact, the subtitle of Sunstein's book "The Second Bill of Rights" is "FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever."
(Washington also claims Sunstein stole the idea from "the 1977 Soviet Constitution.")
After calling Sunstein "one of the most despicable academics I've ever studied who is still alive," Washington seems to want to do something about that "alive" part by threatening an act of violence against him and his wife, Obama adviser Samantha Power:
But for the national lobotomy this great country has apparently suffered after 160 years of state propaganda most people know as our public school system, a scoundrel like Sunstein (and his Lady Macbeth wife) would be immediately fired, placed in the stocks in the public square and have rotten fruit and dead animals thrown at his face like in Medieval times … but this is only a personal fantasy.
Why do we think Washington really wants to be wielding a much sturdier weapon than rotten fruit? An assault with rotten fruit is an assault nonetheless.
WND Promotes Misleading Attack On Obama, Religious References Topic: WorldNetDaily
A March 28 WorldNetDaily article by Drew Zahn uncritically repeats frequentlyinaccurate "Christian historian" David Barton's claim that President Obama is engaged in a pattern of "willfully, deliberately" repudiating America's Christian heritage by occasionally "omitting the phrase 'endowed by their Creator' when quoting the Declaration of Independence and misquoting the national motto 'In God We Trust' in official White House communication."
But as Right Wing Watch notes, Zahn references a Chuck Norris column on the alleged lapses that includes examples in which Obama was paraphrasing the Declaraction, not directly quoting it. Zahn and Barton also ignore the numerous instances in which Obama correctly used the phrases.
Zahn also quotes Barton saying, "You remember when he spoke at Georgetown, he had them cover the Christian symbols [behind him on the stage]?" As we've detailed when CNSNews.com promoted this claim, there's no evidence that the Obama White House specifically demanded that "Christian symbols" be covered at the event; even CNS conceded that the White House requested only that Georgetown "cover up all signs and symbols" on the stage.
Zahn made no apparent effort to obtain any sort of response to Barton's accusations.
Bozell Buys Into Bogus Planned Parenthood Attack Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell fully buys into Lila Rose's latest non-scandal involving Planned Parenthood with a March 30 press release demanding that Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards be banned from CNN:
“Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards appeared on CNN's Headline News channel claiming that de-funding Planned Parenthood would prevent it from providing women with mammogram services. This has been proven absolutely false. A group called Live Action has released an audio investigation with proof from numerous Planned Parenthood clinics whose staff clearly state they do not provide mammograms, yet the President of the organization went on national television and stated the exact opposite.
“The evidence has been presented, and CNN’s Headline News (HLN) has the opportunity here to display true journalistic integrity. How will Headline News respond to the evidence of Cecile Richards’ lie on its network? We call on CNN’s HLN to correct the record, and it should be done by Joy Behar to her viewers. There should be consequences to lying on national television, and if CNN wants to maintain the respect and trust of their viewers, they should ban Cecile Richards and her lies from appearing again.”
As Media Matters points out, Richards' statement is not a lie -- the Planned Parenthood clinics Rose's Live Action contacted do, in fact, provide mammograms by partnering with outside organizations that conduct them. Rose and Bozell appear to be baselessly assuming that the only way an organization can "provide" abortions is to conduct them on premesis -- the sole basis of Rose's so-called "exposé."
If Bozell and Rose are still unclear on the meaning of "provide," Media Matters offers further help.
WND's Chief Schiavo Distorter Returns For More Bias Topic: WorldNetDaily
Diana Lynne -- the WorldNetDaily reporter who turned in highlybiasedaccounts of the Terri Schiavo case -- returns to WND to pen a follow-up story.
In her March 31 article, Lynne frames the Schiavo case around "the recent clamor over imminent Obamacare 'death panels'" -- never mind the fact that the "death panels" claim has been declared the lie of the year.
Lynne goes on to invoke the case of Baby Joseph" Maraachli, writing:
Meanwhile, in the case of "Baby Joseph," Ontario, Canada's top court sided with the hospital's desire to hasten death, ruling it could pull the 13-month-old's life-sustaining breathing tube over the objections of his parents.
The infant suffers from a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is fatal. The family sought a tracheotomy in order to care for their son at home while likely extending his life by weeks or months.
In fact, nobody has claimed that the tracheotomy would extend Joseph's life; the claim centered on the family's desire to have the child die at home versus the hospital's contention that a tracheotomy would increase discomfort and risk of infection -- not about rationing medical care or "death panels" as Lynne suggests.
The tagline for Lynne at the end of the article calls the WND-published quickie book she wrote on the Schiavo case "powerful" and "comprehensive." In fact, as we documented, the book was as biased as her reporting, heavily favoring Terri Schiavo's family and demoninzing her husband, Michael Schiavo, who had initiated the legal battle to withdraw life support from Terri, who was a persistent vegetative state.
How does the Media Research Center's Tim Graham respond to Media Matters' report that Fox News' Bill Sammon admitted lying on-air about Obama advocating "socialism"? By tossing around the word "Soros" a lot. Oh, and not questioning the factual accuracy of the report.
WND Checks In With Its Birther Martyr Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily presumably remains happy that Terrence Lakin destroyed his life and miliary career to further WND's birther agenda, because it now has another opportunity to portray him as a martyr.
A March 31 WND article by Bob Unruh fawningly reports on how Lakin "is more than halfway through his sentence" for disobeying orders. He repeats "private communications to the Terry Lakin Action Fund" in which Lakin "commented on the physical workouts he's enjoyed, his work, his cell and other issues," as well as his reading material, "including Mark Levin's 'Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.'"
As is WND operating procedure, Unruh obscures the fact that Lakin's offense was his refusal to obey orders, not his "questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to be president." All the better to keep up the pretense of Lakin's martyrdom.
WND Still Standing By Ivory Coast Leader Despite Violence Topic: WorldNetDaily
Back in January, we detailed how WorldNetDaily threw its support to Laurent Gbagbo, the "Christian" leader of Ivory Coast who's fighting to stay in office despite international consensus that his Muslim opponent, Alassane Ouattara, won the election.
WND is standing by its man. A March 31 WND article, taken from WND editor Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, declares that Ivory Coast "is being plunged into civil war by rebel Muslims who want to get rid of a Christian president," going on to complain: "They are being supported by United Nations and U.S. efforts, even though the nation's own constitutional process affirmed Christian President Laurent Gbagbo's election victory."
In fact, the reason the U.S., the U.N., and even the European Union declared Ouatarra the winner is because there is a problem with the "constitutional process" WND touts. The constitutional council WND relies on as having certified the results of the election is, in fact, controlled by Gbagbo loyalists who reversed previous results declaring Ouattara the winner.
WND also conveniently ignores that Gbagbo's "Christian" regime has been accused of human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch states that "pro-Gbagbo forces are increasingly targeting immigrants from neighboring West African countries in their relentless attacks against real and perceived supporters of Alassane Ouattara." It continues:
Residents from Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Niger gave detailed accounts of daily attacks by pro-Gbagbo security forces and armed militias, who beat foreign residents to death with bricks, clubs, and sticks, or doused them with gas and burned them alive. A Malian man interviewed by Human Rights Watch described how he and six other West Africans were forced into two vehicles by armed militiamen and taken into the basement of an abandoned building. More youths were waiting, who then executed five of the captured West Africans at point-blank range. The homes, stores, and mosques of hundreds of other West Africans have been burned, or they have been chased out of their neighborhoods en masse under threat of death at the hands of pro-Gbagbo militias.
The brunt of these attacks came immediately after Gbagbo's "youth minister," Charles Blé Goudé, called publicly on February 25 for "real" Ivoirians to set up roadblocks in their neighborhoods and "denounce" foreigners. The situation threatens to worsen further, as a March 7 letter addressed to the Burkina Faso ambassador by a militant pro-Gbagbo group warned. The letter threatened to "cut the umbilical cord" of the Burkina Faso nationals in Côte d'Ivoire unless they left the country by March 22.
Human Rights Watch also documented the recent enforced disappearances of at least seven active members of Ouattara's party, as well as the February 25 rape of nine politically active women - the day after fighting between armed forces loyal to Gbagbo and Ouattara broke out in the Abobo area of Abidjan. Pro-Gbagbo forces are using excessive force in response to largely peaceful demonstrations, resulting in at least 25 deaths since February 21 - including seven women killed on March 3 when security forces opened fire with a mounted machine gun and a larger unidentified weapon against thousands of women demonstrators.
The abuses by pro-Gbagbo forces against real and perceived Ouattara supporters have escalated since mid-February.
Human Rights Watch also notes that pro-Ouattara forces have engaged in abuses as well. But it states that, since Gbagbo still controls the state apparatus, "pro-Gbagbo forces engage in these frequent acts of deadly abuse, apparently with absolutely no fear of being investigated or held accountable."
WND also repeats the discredited lie that Barack Obama, during a 2006 visit to Kenya, was "appearing ... at campaign stops" with Raila Odinga, who was campaigning for president at the time, where "Obama gave speeches accusing the sitting Kenyan president of being corrupt and oppressive." As we've detailed, PolitiFact.com found "no evidence to indicate that Obama 'openly supported' Odinga" during his 2006 trip to Kenya.
AIM Ignores Debunkings of Cashill's Conspiracies Topic: Accuracy in Media
A March 28 interview of conspiracy theorist extrordinaire Jack Cashill by Accuracy in Media's Roger Aronoff is all about giving Cashill a platorm to spin his latest theory that Bill Ayers wrote Obama's book "Dreams From My Father." Aronoff makes no attempt to question any claim Cashill makes.
Therefore, there's no mention of the Oxford don who found that Cashill's analysis of Obama's book to be "very implausible" and and that his research methods "seem badly flawed." There's also no mention of the fact that Cashill's invoking of celebrity biographer Christopher Andersen as backup for his conspiracy ignores the fact that Andersen was citing Cashill's previous work as part of his evidence, or that Andersen has specifically said that "I definitely do not say he wrote Barack Obama's book."
Instead, Aronoff helps him shoot down any criticism, saying at one point, "I know the mainstream media, the liberal media, of course, is going to shun this or use ad hominem attacks. They’ll never go in and try to address your issues one by one and refute them, so they just call you names and all that."
WND's Farah Wants To Impeach Obama (Again) Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah has another impeachment flare-up, calling once more for President Obama's impeachment in his March 30 column, pretending that no one, including him, has ever called for Obama's impeachment until now:
Never before in the history of the United States has an occupant of the White House displayed less concern for the Constitution and the rule of law than Barack Obama.
It's about time somebody said it: It's time to impeach Obama.
Of course, Farah already said it last November. And as far back as October 2009, WND was promoting far-right hack Floyd Brown's call to impeach.
Farah continues his particular bit of impefachment agitation. But does it really matter why he wants Obama impeached since any excuse would be sufficient to feed his Obama-hate?
Newsmax's Kessler Fluffs David Keene In His New Job Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's Ronald Kessler has been a longtime fluffer of former American Conservative Union president David Keene, giving him a platform to spout conservative talking points and even to spin away controversies at the ACU-operated CPAC conference (after first ignoring said controversies, of course).
With Keene moving on from the ACU to become president of the National Rifle Association, it's completely unsurprising that Kessler would fluff him in that new position:
You might expect that the man who is incoming president of the National Rifle Association and was chairman of the American Conservative Union would be a double-barrel ideologue.
Not quite.
David Keene’s friends include liberal-leaning types like Al Hunt of Bloomberg News, former ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson, former New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, and former Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.
Keene never hesitates to mention that his mother and father were labor union organizers in Wisconsin or that, as a teenager, he passed out literature for John F. Kennedy during the presidential primary.
Moreover, Keene has stood firm against attacks from within the conservative movement over his decision to keep the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) open to participation by such groups as GOProud, an organization of conservative gays.
At the same time, few have had as much impact on the conservative movement and been so successful over the years at promoting Republican candidates at the national level as Dave Keene.
The rest is a fawning biography, complete with his-and-hers stories about how Keene met his current wife (the previous one is alleged to have embezzled from the ACU, something Kessler apparently thinks is too gauche to mention), how he "hunted cape buffalo in Zambia," and his favorite brand of whisky.
CNS Misleads On Social Security Trust Fund Topic: CNSNews.com
Matt Cover writes in a March 29 CNSNews.com article about a claim by Sen. Harry Reid:
“Social Security has not contributed one penny to the debt or the deficit ever in its 75 years,” Reid said at Monday’s event.
The claim is false. According to the actuaries for Social Security and Medicare, the Social Security program ran a deficit of approximately $41 billion, excluding interest on the bonds in the Social Security trust funds. Those bonds, which are a special type of Treasury bond, are placed in the trust funds in place of the cash surpluses Social Security has taken in from payroll taxes.
Because there is no cash in the Social Security trust funds, any deficits the program runs, including the 2010 deficit – and those projected into the future – must be repaid from current tax revenue.
Since the federal government was already running a deficit in 2010, and ran one in 2009, the money required to pay the Social Security deficit would have had to be borrowed, meaning it was added to the deficit and the national debt, contrary to Senator Reid’s claim.
Cover's reasoning here is specious. Near-term Social Security deficits were designed to be covered by surpluses from previous years, which were converted into treasury bonds and spent by the government. The current value of the trust fund is $2.6 trillion. The insistence of previous Congresses on spending the money in the trust fund, replacing it with the treasury bonds to be cashed in when needed, is the reason Social Security is running a deficit that must be covered out of the current federal budget.
Social Security is not running a deficit within the program's accounting because the money to cover that shortfall has already been collected. Cover's attempt to equivocate the need to cash in treasury bonds to cover the revenue shortfall with the overall federal budget deficit is ridiculous.
It's as if Obama considers the interest he serves as being above all that Congress-American-people-stuff. "Humanitarians" are like that, and what we're seeing is so-called humanitarian military intervention, the doctrine is promulgated by Obama's human rights adviser Samantha Power. Known as a genocide expert, Power has gone so far as to argue for the insertion of a "mammoth" American "protection" force into Israeli-Palestinian environs to prevent "human rights abuses" – code for neutralizing Israeli self-defense.
West is taking Power's comments out of context. Power was not speaking in "code" for "neutralizing Israeli self-defense"; in fact, Power was addressing a hypothetical situation about the peacekeeping force that would be needed if "one party or another" in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were "looking like they might be moving toward genocide."
Plame Movie 'Bombed' At The Box Office? Not So Much Topic: NewsBusters
Matthew Sheffield attempted to gloat in a March 29 NewsBusters post that the movie "Fair Game," about the Valerie Plame case, "ended up being a total bomb." But then he proved himself wrong in the very next sentence:
It grossed just $9.5 million domestically. Add in the international ticket sales and the fiction flick just barely managed to recoup its production budget of $22 million.
A movie that recouped its production costs on its theatrical release is a "total bomb"? Sounds like Sheffield is trying to redefine the term.
WND's Klein Thinks Immigration Reform Is 'Radical' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein's March 26 WorldNetDaily article is yet another one of his guilt-by-association specials, this time attacking union official Eliseo Medina as a "radical on immigration issues" whom President Obama once "boasted of consulting."
How "radical" is Medina? The only evidence Klein offers is thatMedina has spoken in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, and that he was among "top supporters of Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez's Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Bill." That bill would have created a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants currently in the country and boost border enforcement.
Why is that bill so "radical"? Klein doesn't explain. Perhaps that's becuase there isn't anything radical about it. Only right-wingers like Klein oppose any sort of immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country.
