CNS' Jeffrey Dishonestly Links Planned Parenthood's Federal Funding to Abortion Topic: CNSNews.com
The federal funding Planned Parenthood recieves does not pay for abortions. CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey knows that. Yet he and CNS have repeatedlysought to falsely portray a linkage between the two.
Jeffrey goes even further in trying to create a false linkage in a pair of recent articles. He writes in an April 8 article:
Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Tait Sye recently told Bloomberg Businessweek that 90 percent of that $363.2 million came directly from the federal government or from Medicaid, a federal-state program. Thus, Planned Parenthood received about $326.88 million from federal programs in 2009.
Although the money from federal programs that went to Planned Parenthood in 2009 theoretically paid for things other than the 332,278 abortions the organization performed that year, the fact remains that Planned Parenthood—an abortion provider--received subsidies from federal programs that equaled about $932 per abortion it performed.
Of course, it's not theoretical that federal money doesn't go toward abortions -- it's an undisputed fact, as evidenced by Jeffrey's use of the fudge term "theoretically."
And breaking down Planned Parenthood's federal funding on a per-abortion basis is utterly dishonest and nonsensical since, again, the money is not used on abortion.
Jeffrey doubled down on his dishonesty in an April 9 article in which he complains that the budget compromise that averted a government shutdown "permits federal funding to continue for Planned Parenthood, a group that does an average of 910 abortions per day."Jeffrey repeated his "theoretically" fudge and his dishonest per-abortion breakdown.
What sort of an example does it set when the head of a "news" organization is so transparently dishonest?
Report: WND 'Patched In' To Trump's Birther Meeting, 'Privy To What Was Going On' Topic: WorldNetDaily
With Donald Trump going full birther, it's no surprise that WorldNetDaily would want to get in on some of that action. Now we have apparent proof that it is working with Trump.
The right-wing website The Post and Email contains a report from an anonymous "citizen reporter" about what happened inside a meeting Trump had with tea party activists and an Arizona state representative who sponsored an "eligibility" bill in the state that highlights WND's involvement:
Trump gave them a little over 30 minutes. WorldNetDaily had been patched in somehow and apparently had been privy to what was going on. Also, there were a lot of media outside in the hallway, but none was allowed into the meeting. The only people in the meeting were Trump, (Michael D.) Cohen, and the three people from Arizona.
Between this and its creation of an affidavit for birther and former Hawaii election temp Tim Adams to sign, it seems WND isn't content reporting the news; it's working behind the scenes to invent birther news to report. That's not the role of a "news" organization.
The Post and Email also includes another account from a meeting participant rehashing the claims the participants fed to Trump:
The discussion trend allowed me to ask Mr. Trump right after he was speaking about the Kenyan grandmother, whether he knew about the Kenyan Assemblyman, (James Orengo) who stated on their Assembly floor so that it is documented that Obama was a son of their soil. He apparently did not know of that and asked me to send him the documentation. Anyone who has it readily available is welcome to send it to me so that I can forward it. Even more importantly, I also had the opportunity when we were discussing whether a real long form birth certificate actually exists to do two things. I mentioned Tim Adams, the Hawaiian election clerk and recent affadavit and ALSO asked whether he, Trump, was going to take the issue beyond the birth certificate and place of birth to the question of NATURAL BORN CITIZENSHIP. He asked me to explain precisely what that was and I then got to recite the precise clause from Article II, Section I and explain what the founders meant by it; and where they got the concept from, that being Vattel. He said that he liked the way I was explaining it and gave me another “homework” assignment to send him more information about it. Also, at some point in the discussion, the false social security number belonging to someone from Connecticut born in 1890 came up and so they are aware of that situation to some extent – maybe not all the way to the FOIA actions and suits filed vs. the Social Security Administration by Orly Taitz. Time did not allow getting into the issue to that full extent. ANYONE WHO WANTS TO HELP ME WITH THESE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS, PLEASE DO, I WELCOME IT.
Much of this twaddle has been promoted by WND, and much of it has been discredited, in particular the stuff about Obama's grandmother, which originated from translation problems in an interview the grandmother had with a rabidly anti-Obama minister.
The participant also noted that the meeting was shortened "because Mr. Trump took a call from Newsmax during the meeting." We've already noted how Newsmax has apparently partnered with Trump to promote his would-be presidential campaign and is feeding him its prelimiary polling results on him.
MRC: Boy With Painted Toenails = "Transgendered Child Propaganda" Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center finds a way to freak out about just about anything even remotely non-heterosexual. A prime example is a April 8 Culture & Media Insitute article by Erin R. Brown over, yes, painted toenails.
Brown declared that "popular preppy woman's clothing brand and favorite affordable line of first lady Michelle Obama" J. Crew "is targeting a new demographic -- mothers of gender-confused young boys. At least, that's the impression given by a new marketing piece that features blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children."
Sounds scary, huh? Turns out it really isn't:
An email sent to customers on Tuesday, April 5th contained a promotion for free shipping if the customer spends $150 or more. The email also contained a feature called 'Jenna's favorites,' highlighting special selections by J.CREW designer Jenna Lyons. Jenna selected a striped long-sleeve t-shirt, and hot pink nail polish by Essie, modeled by her young son.
In the feature, Jenna is pictured with her adorable curly-haired son Beckett, and the two are seen giggling with Jenna holding Beckett's feet, containing hot pink painted toe-nails. 'Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink,' read Jenna's quote. 'Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.'
Not only is Beckett likely to change his favorite color as early as tomorrow, Jenna's indulgence (or encouragement) could make life hard for the boy in the future. J.CREW, known for its tasteful and modest clothing, apparently does not mind exploiting Beckett behind the façade of liberal, transgendered identity politics.
Huh? A boy with painted toenails is suddenly a political symbol and a transvestite-to-be? Does Brown believe that the notion that pink can be a favorite color for a boy something that must be suppressed or beaten out of the boy? Further, Brown seems to believe that Beckett is such a horrible and ignorant mother that she is unaware that her child's favorite things might change on a fairly rapid basis -- something Brown has provided no personal knowledge of beyond trying to read the woman's mind through a picture in an ad.
Brown then tried to claim that "Propaganda pushing the celebration of gender-confused boys wanting to dress and act like girls is a growing trend, seeping into mainstream culture," as evidenced by the "Princess Boy" story, which fellow CMI writer Matt Philbin freaked out about in January as "promot[ing] the tolerance of cross-dressing boys."
Is insulting a woman over so-called "transgendered child propaganda" that is happening only in the writer's head really the best way for the MRC to spending its time?
Newsmax Helps Huckabee Whitewash His Records Issues Topic: Newsmax
A March 6 Newsmax article by Luis F. Perez rewrites a U.S. News & World Report item in which Mike Huckabee tries to dismiss a Mother Jones report on the inaccessibility of his records from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, in part because he had the hard drives of the computers used by him and his staff erased and physically destroyed before he left office.
Perez portrays the issue as one of Mother Jones "falsely referring to missing records and computer hard drives from his time as governor" -- going even farther on the whitewashing limb than U.S. News' Paul Bedard did -- but Huckabee never disputes the central facts of the Mother Jones article. Documents confirm that the hard drives were "crushed under the supervision of a designee of [Huckabee's] office," and the backup tapes of the information on the hard drives have not been seen since they were turned over to a former aide. Neither U.S. News nor Newsmax address the issue of the missing backups.
As the Arkansas Times notes, everything Huckabee did was perfectly legal under state law, which is unusually permissive in the amount of records a former governor can keep secret. U.S. News and Newsmax have apparently decided that merely following the law is good enough.
Bozell, MRC Struggle To Paint Couric As A Liberal Topic: Media Research Center
Writing about Katie Couric's imminent departure as CBS Evening News anchor in his April 6 column, Brent Bozell asserts that "Couric didn’t fail at this job or lack authority because she was the first female nightly news anchor. She lacked authority because she was such a blatant feminist and liberal activist."
And what is Bozell's prime example of this alleged bias? "Attacking Rush Limbaugh as 'certainly heartless' in mocking Michael J. Fox’s ads for Democrats." No, really.
Of course, as we'vedetailed, Limbaugh never gets criticized by Bozell and his Media Research Center minions no matter how offensive he is, and the Fox incident was yet another example.
An October 2006 MRC CyberAlert set the tone by trying to change the subject, unwilling to acknowlege that Limbaugh did anything wrong but attacking critics because they "ignored how Fox was injecting politics into medical research funding policy, how Fox has admitted going off his meds in order to look worse and that Limbaugh was also criticizing Fox's anti-Talent ad in Missouri in which Fox made the distorted claim that 'Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us the chance for hope.' Plus, it's worth noting that Fox was a lot more steady in a clip of him responding to Limbaugh."
Bozell's other major example of Couric's alleged bias is her alleged "her pounding on Sarah Palin in 2008." Yeah, Couric asking Palin what newspapers she read was a real"pounding" -- one Palin could have easily avoided by giving Couric a straight answer to her very simple question.
Meanwhile, Bozell's minions are still desperate to come up with any significant number of examples of her alleged "liberal bias." An April 4 NewsBusters item by Rich Noyes could only come up with a dozen examples of her "worst bias." That's not very many for nearly five years of newscasts.
As we pointed out a few years back, Media Matters found more examples of "conservative misinformation" on Couric's newscast in her first year as anchor than the MRC found examples of "liberal bias."
Ben Shapiro Falsely Attacks Samantha Power Topic: CNSNews.com
In his April 7 column, published at CNSNews.com, Ben Shapiro falsely attacks Obama adviser Samantha Power:
Back in 2002, Power told a University of California at Berkeley interviewer that America should put military forces on the ground in Israel to prevent Israeli "human rights abuses." "What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in sort of helping the situation," she said.
Channeling the conspiratorial ruminations of anti-Semitic scholars the world over, Power added, "And putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing -- or investing, I think, more than sacrificing -- literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israel's, you know, military, but actually in investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing billions of dollars it would probably take also to support, I think, what will have to be a mammoth protection force."
Then Power went even further -- she stated that America should impose a solution on Israel. "You have to go in as if you're serious, you have to put something on the line," she explained.
In fact, Power was discussing how to react to a hypothetical move toward genocide by "one party or another," not Israel alone. Power specifically stated that United Nations peacekeeping forces were insufficient to stop genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, and her reference to "put[ting] something on the line," in its proper context, is to a force sufficient to stop a genocide, not, as Shapiro claimed, imposing a "solution" on Israel only.
Even WND Is Now Correcting Orly Taitz's Birther Lunacy -- But Jack Cashill Embraces It Topic: WorldNetDaily
Are the days when WorldNetDaily serve as an apologist and whitewasher for Orly Taitz over? It appears so.
An unbylined April 6 WND article highlights a claim by Taitz -- who it describes as an "eligibility gadfly," a far cry from when WND was fawning over her in a 2009 profile as a "fierce blond attorney" with "a vibrant smile and an ebullient personality" -- that Barack Obama "only attend[ed] Columbia University for nine months," only to follow up with a stinging response: "But according to information obtained by WND, it appears Obama did indeed attend Columbia for two years."
After proving Taitz wrong, WND descended into its usual birther blather. But WND throwing Taitz under the bus is an interesting development.
But as WND was correcting Taitz's bogus claim, conspiracy-monger extraordinaire Jack Cashill was embracing it in his April 7 column, citing "irrepressible researcher Orly Taitz" (though he does aver that "Taitz is likely unaware of competing evidence").
Cashill then takes it further:
In his definitive 2010 biography of Barack Obama, "The Bridge," New Yorker editor David Remnick features a photograph of a dapper young Barack Obama sitting between his grandparents on a Central Park bench.
The bench is real. The grandparents are real. The wall behind them is real. Barack Obama is not. He has been conspicuously photoshopped in. Who did this and why remains as much a mystery as Obama's extended stay in New York.
Actually, as Media Matters points out, Obama has in fact been Photoshopped out of the photo, and the the one Cashill is portraying as "real" is actually the fake -- as evidenced by Obama's right knee still appearing in it.
An April 7 Newsmax article by Hiram Reisner uncritically repeats Donald Trump's claim that Barack Obama's "grandmother in Kenya is on record saying he was born in Kenya." But Reisner fails to report that Trump's claim is false.
As we documented when WorldNetDaily tried to peddle this same claim, the charge originates with an Obama-hating Anabaptist minister named Ron McRae, who contacted Obama's grandmother, Sarah Obama, and tried to talk to her through translators. McRae has twisted misunderstandings due to translation problems into a definitive claim that Sarah Obama said Barack was born in Kenya.
Reisner also uncritically repeats another Trump claim: "The hospital has, not only no birth certificate — or if they have it they should produce it, maybe there is something on it, who knows — but they have no records that he was there. The family is fighting over which hospital in Hawaii he was born in. There is not one record, in any hospital in Hawaii, that Barack Hussein Obama was born there." Trump simply cannot know that; in fact, federal privacy laws forbid hospitals from releasing patient records.
Why is Reisner allowing such clearly false and misleading information to stand uncorrected? Perhaps because his boss seems to have partnered with Trump to promote his wannabe presidential campaign.
CNS Still Falsely Suggesting Federal Funding For Planned Parenthood Pays For Abortions Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com, it seems, is bound and determined to falsely portray federal money for Planned Parenthood as paying for abortions.
In an April 5 CNS article, Fred Lucas interprets President Obama's comment about "using last year’s budget process to have arguments about abortion, to have arguments about the Environmental Protection Agency, to try to use this budget negotiation as a vehicle for every ideological or political difference between the two parties" to actually mean that Obama "would not sign a budget agreement to keep the government running that cuts funding for Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency." At no point does Lucas quote Obama actually saying that.
As misleading as that is, the headline on Lucas' article gets it even more so, claiming: "Abortion, Environmental Regulation are Priorities for Obama in Seeking Budget Compromise." But Lucas never quotes Obama saying that, either.
As we've previously noted, federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood pays for health care and family planning services and does not pay for abortions outside of what is permitted by the federal Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal spending on abortions to cases of rape, incest or to preserve the life of the mother.
WND Still Whitewashing Adams -- And Ignores His Biggest Scoop Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember Tim Adams, the former Hawaii elections clerk temp who had no real access to election records yet insisted that President Obama wasn't born in Hawaii? He's back!
An April 6 WorldNetDaily article by Joe Kovacs details Adams' latest claim: that "the president and his aides have been 'caught fibbing' about Obama's background, and the 'embarrassing' situation is making it difficult to fess up to the truth." As he has before, Kovacs is covering up for Adams.
Kovacs writes that Adams made his claim "in a two-hour interview with a group looking to disprove claims made by so-called birthers." But Kovacs fails to mention the most significant claim Adams made during that same interview -- that people connected with WND created the affidavit Adams signed in January (which WND made a big deal out of at the time).
RC: Well, you, you were certainly able to say what, what you wanted to say. Now, now you, you did mention, I believe, and we'll get to your, the affidavit that you filed. First, I think we're able to move on to that. You filed, you filed anaffidavit that appeared in WorldNetDaily. First of all, was, was this sworn under, under oath to any officer of the court? Under penalty of perjury?
MR. ADAMS: Yes.
RC: To what court?
MR. ADAMS: Uh, I'd have to look at a copy of the darned thing.
RC: Well, I've got it here. It's, it's signed by a notary public, but you know I could get my, any, any document I can get a notary public to sign. But, again, an affidavit is normally, uh, a court document -
MR. ADAMS: If you want to go over the affidavit, I can, can tell you about that.I had agreed -- I had been willing to do an affidavit last June, but, um, I'm poor, so, uh, this past year, uh, some of the folks with, at WorldNetDaily, or affiliated with WorldNetDaily, they paid for the lawyer to draw the thing up. They, uh, sent it up here and I had it, uh, notarized and signed, and swore out the statement and sent it back. There's no duplicity going on there, that's just the way it was done.
RC: So, you, did WorldNetDaily pay you for the affidavit?
MR. ADAMS: No, they just paid -- someone associated with WorldNetDaily, I forget who, it might have been Mr. Corsi, um, had their attorney draw it up. So they paid for the attorney services to draw the document up.
Foggy: And did the attorney talk to you before he drew itup?
MR. ADAMS: Yeah. They contacted me about two or three times on the phone before they sent it up here and told me what I had to do with it when it arrived. And then I faxed it down back to them.
RC: But they, they wrote it for you then?
MR. ADAMS: They wrote out the document based on my testimony. Yeah. Yep.
Besides, as we've previously detailed, Adams' affidavit is complete hearsay, repeating claims from unnamed "senior officers in the City and County of Honolulu Elections Division"; at no point does he relate any firsthand knowledge regarding Obama's birth certificate.
As he hasrepeatedlybefore, Kovacs ignores the charges of racism against Adams, starting with the fact that Adams first made his claim about Obama's birth certificate on the radio show of self-described "pro-White" host James Edwards, who was broadcasating from the 2010 National Conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a decendent of the openly racist White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s that the Anti-Defamation League describes as having a "white supremacy, white separatism" ideology.
But Adams has said more racially charged things that WND has never mentioned -- for instance, repeatedly referring to Hawaii as a "ghetto paradise" on his MySpace blog.
This and other statements -- such as calling the hateful Westboro Baptist Church a "blessing" and sarcastically describing Obama as a "chosen messiah" who "is gettin whipped like a Hebrew slave child by a white woman from Alaska" -- were covered during the radio interview Kovacs wrote about, but he mentions none of it in his article.
Not only is Kovacs still whitewashing Adams to keep up his birther-hero status, he's hiding the fact that WND is working behind the scenes to advance his claims.
Les Kinsolving Homophobic Freak-Out Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Les Kinsolving begins his April 5 column this way:
One of the best veteran reporters and columnists in our nation's capital is Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times.
That is probably why he was leaked a copy of our armed forces training material for 2.2 million active and reserve troops, as a prelude to opening the ranks to self-announced homosexual males and lesbian females.
Well, no. The more likely reason Scarborough was leaked the manual is that he's a right-wing hack, as we documented back in 2007 with his attempt to smear a CIA official who was an outsider to the particular management regime he favored (and was probably in bed with).
But you'll notice that the subject of the leaked manual involved "self-announced homosexual males and lesbian females." Cue another homophobic freak-out by Kinsolving!
Noting a statement from the man ual that ""Commanders may honor a request not to shower with known-gay service members," Kinsolving adds:
In a brief interview with Scarborough, I cited that and asked: "If they allow that refuge from the possibility of excessively peering homosexual eyes in the showers, what about the presence of peering by announced homosexuals in the latrines?"
Scarborough replied, "Nothing at all about that in that training material!"
Kinsolving went on to declare "grim news" the Supreme Court has ruled that "private consensual sexual activity to include consensual sodomy, regardless of sexual orientation, is a protected liberty under the 14th Amendment." Then he writes:
QUESTION: Do the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces know of any sexual orientation with a higher rate of AIDS and syphilis than homosexuality, which has led to so many thousands of deaths? And if homosexuals in our armed forces are medically examined for AIDS and syphilis when they are accepted into the armed services, should they not be re-examined whenever they return from leave – given the possibility of an AIDS- or syphilis-infected civilian lover, together with this homosexual armed forces member's possible promiscuity in search for others in barracks or aboard ship?
This is the kind of thing that happens when a hack and a hater (who is also a hack) get together.
NewsBusters Thinks Dead Afghan Troops Are Obama's 'Problem' Topic: NewsBusters
In an April 5 NewsBusters post, Rusty Weiss takes offense at the idea that, as one news article reported, "many of America's problems predated [Obama's] presidency." Weiss reported with "a short list of American problems since Obama took office," among them being "858 U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan since Obama’s inauguration."
You gotta love a conservative declaring dead soldiers fighting for American freedom to be a "problem."
And what does Weiss link to as evidence for this claim? A certain CNSNews.com article. If you were wondering why CNS has been doing monthly body counts on Afghanistan when it felt no need to do so while soldiers were dying under a Republican president, you now have your answer.
(And who invaded Afghanistan in the first place, only to neglect it for a war elsewhere, causing the initial gains to be negated? Hint: Not Obama.)
Weiss also lists as an Obama "problem" the claim that he "Tripled the national deficit in his first year in office." Actually, the fiscal year 2009 budget deficit was mostly the consequence of Bush-era policies. Perhaps he shouldn't be citing as evidence Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft, better known as the Dumbest Man on the Internet.
CNS Columnist Likens Planned Parenthood To Tuskegee Experiment Topic: CNSNews.com
The disturbing parallels that exist between a government cover-up decades ago and the lies propagated by Planned Parenthood today should serve as a wake-up call to those who may not yet know the frightening reality behind what Planned Parenthood practices.
Imagine reading this headline in your local newspaper: If the Tuskegee experiments were being run by Planned Parenthood today, Congress would increase its funding!
Would you be outraged? Presumably, you would be. Yet the sad fact is that this idea is not too far-fetched.
[...]
Today, Planned Parenthood uses the same sort of tactic on our young people that was employed at Tuskegee. Even though these people are not herded into a particular government facility to participate in testing, the results are similar. And Planned Parenthood’s tactic is far more devious.
Much like the Tuskegee research subjects, the young people who are unfortunate enough to visit a Planned Parenthood office do not receive adequate information about the birth control pill prior to ingesting it. They are not informed that the pill can kill a preborn child. They are not warned that the pill can harm them physically, emotionally or even—depending on their medical history—result in their death.
Our teens are human guinea pigs who are being deceived by an organization that receives more than a third of its funding from the federal government.
Newsmax Thrilled That Trump Promoted Its Meaningless Poll Topic: Newsmax
An April 4 Newsmax article gets very meta as it touts how Donald Trump -- whose possible presidential candidacy it has promoting for months -- said in an appearance on "Fox & Friends" that "A Newsmax poll said I’m winning."
That, of course, would be one of Newsmax's patented opt-in online polls that is relentlessly promoted online. This one seems to be specifically designed to boost Trump's viability as a candidate (not to mention massage Trump's ego) by making it mostly about him and whether he is "right in demanding that Pres. Obama release his birth certificate."
But the skewed, meaningless poll results have not been released publicly; the article states that Trump was referring to "early results" from the poll.B ut how could he know those results? The only possible explanation is that Newsmax told him.
As an opt-in poll, the results were already untrustworthy. But Newsmax is apparently so in the tank for Trump that it's sharing those untrustworthy poll numbers with him. Why trust anything Newsmax has to say about Trump?
Meanwhile, the fluffing of Trump at Newsmax is not unanimous. John LeBoutillier urges people to fight "the allure of the billionaire savior," adding, "Donald Trump is all about himself. Period. Will it become The Trump White House if he wins?"
WorldNetDaily To Become Just WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
An April 3 WorldNetDaily article announces that the website's name is about to change:
WorldNetDaily is changing its name, but Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah wants everyone to know they can continue to expect the same fiercely independent commitment to the truth and watchdog journalism.
Of course, the idea that WND has a "commitment to the truth" is ludicrous, not to mention patentlyfalse.
The article also states that on top of a new logo, later this year WND will launch "its first major redesign since the site was founded in 1997," which even WND editor Joseph Farah concedes comes "about 10 years late." We can't argue with that.
UPDATE: Commenters (to me and on Facebook) wonder: The proclaimed reason for the name change may be "a marketing decision based on the ease of remembering a three-letter site amid the increasing noise and clutter of an Internet with hundreds of millions of competing sites," but is the real motivation an attempt to distance itself from nicknames like WingNutDaily and WorldNutDaily?
An April 3 WorldNetDaily 
