Ellis Washington Channels His Fantasy Version of Socrates Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Ellis Washington is back with another one of his so-called "dialectics" in which he masquerades as a smack-talkin', right-wing-shillin' Socrates. Try to imagine the actual Socrates saying this:
Socrates: We are gathered here today at this Symposium to discuss various tactics and strategies radicals have used to denigrate, deconstruct and destroy America – the greatest nation in the history of the world. In a previous Symposium, “The damnation of ideas,” we discussed the differences between ideas that uplift society and those that damn society in the context of 10 infamous writers and their most controversial books, and discussed whether these books have either elevated society to ascend the steps of Parnassus or condemned society into the pit of Tartarus.
Today we will examine the people and radical governmental agencies that come from those infamous ideas that collectively have caused the damnation of modern society. How would you achieve this goal, if you wanted America to fail?
As usual, Washington sets up anyone opposed to his -- er, "Socrates'" -- right-wing ideology as straw men easily knocked down by the power of alleged "truth." For instance, there's this:
Dr. NEA: Although my fascist organization was birthed in 1978 concomitant with the creation of President Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education, my real birth occurred over 150 years ago in 1857 by a small but zealous group of radical atheists, humanists, Marxist and progressives dedicated to forever separating education from morality, truth and the canon.
Would the real, truth-seeking Socrates engaged in such ad hominem and factually misleading attacks? Probably not.
Washington also bizarrely puts Saul Alinsky -- who was not a dictator and never ordered anyone's death -- on the same plane as Marx, Lenin and Hitler.
Washington's pretention is amazing, even for someone best known for getting things flamboyantly wrong. There are few people so stupid as those who insist on masquerading as one of history's greatest intellectuals and philosophers.
CNS' Chief Propagandist Frets Over Future of Reporting Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey uses his May 3 column to fret ab out the future of journalism, because "We live in a nation where the government is growing exponentially and the press is shrinking steadily." He goes on to write:
But anyone who wants America to remain free cannot cheer the demise of the press as an institution. We need more reporters — especially reporters who love liberty and want to defend it — not fewer.
It may be a mistake for Americans to blithely accept the unexamined conclusion that the new electronic media, because of their speed and wide availability, will compensate for the virtual extinction of old-time reporters. Excellent reporting takes time and skills learned through experience — both of which require investment.
That's quite rich of Jeffrey to be concerned. After all, the organization he works for, the Media Research Center, has spent millions of dollars over the past couple of decades trying to undermine people's trust in the media in order to advance its partisan right-wing agenda.
Further, Jeffrey himself is no journalist -- he's a propagandist and rabid Obama-hater who's erasing whatever vestiges of journalistic credibility CNS might have in order to turn it into an anti-Obama propaganda mill.
This is nothing but crocodile dears. Jeffrey cares nothing about journalism, so he can't possibly care about its future.
WND's Klein Admits He's Out to Destroy Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 5 WorldNetDaily article touts a profile of WND's Aaron Klein in the Jerusalem Post. Klein rather laughably breathes a sigh of relief that "the article itself seems fair."
In fact, the Jerusalem Post profile by Josh Hasten is all but a love letter to Klein. He's the only one quoted in it, which allows Klein to spin his story as positively as possible, and the Post apparently talked to nobody else.
For instance, Hasten talks up Klein appearing on Talkers magazine's "Heavy Hundred" list for 2012, calling it " the most prestigious recognition in the US talk-radio industry." Actually, it's not all that prestigious; Klein ranks at No. 99 on the list of 100 radio hosts.
Since it's nothing but a fluff piece, Hasten avoids mentioning the less-than-glowing aspects of Klein's work, such as his being an admitted Kahanist -- the far-right sect that has been banned from Israeli politics for its history of violence -- and overly relying on untraceable anonymous sources and dubious guilt-by-association for his right-wing hack work.
Interestingly, Klein also concedes that he's not interested in being fair and balanced when it comes to reporting on President Obama (hence the anonymous sources and dubious guilt-by-association). He admits that his work is designed “to defeat President Obama, and stop the so-called [extreme left-wing] progressive movement and its followers from taking over the US."
In otherwords, he's not an objective reporter, he's a partisan activist. That, of course, fits in nicely with the mission of the WND Super PAC.
Such sympathies, of course, mean that his work can't be trusted. Again, just like the rest of WND.
MRC Bashed Journolist, But Is Silent On Conservative Journalists Working With Romney Topic: Media Research Center
In 2010, the Media Research Center went ballistic when the existence of Journolist -- a private email forum for an invited group of journalists and opinion writers -- was revealed:
Brent Bozell harrumphed that Journolist was proof of liberal bias: "The revelation of these e-mails simply proves that we have been right all along. The liberal media have no interest in being fair or unbiased." He added, "Any member of the media that was privy to these Journolist emails, and remained silent, is just as much to blame as the folks that crafted these e-mails. Their silence indicts them."
Bozell followed up with a column asserting, "What they prove is that the "mainstream" media today are often just a shameless channel for leftist message coordination, and that anyone who assumes he's simply getting the 'news' from the national media is a very callow and uninformed consumer."
Bozell sent a letter to the Washington Post insisting that "Post readers are owed full disclosure" about which Post employees took part in Journolist.
So Bozell and Co. don't like (liberal) journalists collaborating in secret. Gotcha.
But then, last week, we learned at presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney held an off-the-record meeting with conservative journalists and bloggers, who were under orders from the Romney campaign not to talk about the what was discussed at the meeting or even that it took place.The goal of the meeting was to solidify conservative media support for Romney.
Curiously, no MRC outlet has made any mention of the off-the-record meeting, nor has any MRC employee admitted attending it.
Why is that? And why has Bozell -- who railed so bitterly against Journolist -- remained silent about this sort of journalistic collaboration? Why won't he say whether any of his employees, including those at "news" outlet CNSNews.com, took part in this clandestine meeting?
Or is he exempting his own organization from the standards of integrity he demands from others?
WND Unhappy That U.N. -- Which It Has Vowed To Destroy -- Won't Give It A Press Pass Topic: WorldNetDaily
Why does Joseph Farah expect an organization he has vowed to destroy to give him a press pass? It makes no sense -- unless you're Joseph Farah, anyway -- yet he persists.
An April 30 WND article is dedicated to whining that the United Nations' U.S. mission refused to allow Stewart Stogel, "WND’s veteran U.N. reporter," to attend a "government event" that was closed to the public. WND goes on to fluff Stogel as "one of the most senior U.N. correspondents, who values his long and cordial working relationships with everyone from John Bolton to Ban Ki-moon."
WND is fibbing about Stogel being its "veteran U.N. reporter." He's a freelancer who, near as we can tell, is not on the full-time WND payroll. He has also freelanced for other ConWeb outlets like Newsmax -- where he promoted the alarmist, wildly inaccurate claim that Al Qaeda has suitcase nuclear bombs that it planned to detonate in, er, 2005 -- and CNSNews.com. Stogel has also done birther work for WND, touting the so-called "citizen's court" held by crazy person James David Manning and whitewashing Manning's insane Obama hatred, i.e. omitting the fact that he loves to call Obama a "long-legged mack daddy."
In other words, he's basically a right-wing hack, despite also having written for the Miami Herald.
Aside from burying Stogel's right-wing activism, WND also plays dumb about why the U.N. would deny WND a press pass. But as we detailed back in 2009, the last time WND attempted to get a U.N. press pass, WND editor Joseph Farah wrote a 2005 column, which he repeated in 2007, headlined "Death to the U.N.!" In it, Farah called the U.N. "a global criminal enterprise determined to shift power away from individuals and sovereign nation-states to a small band of unaccountable international elites," adding that "there’s just no place for the United Nations in the United States."
That's not all. In a 2006 column, Farah called the U.N. part of the "Kingdom of Darkness." And in 2005, Farah asserted: "If the United States truly wants to be that “shining city on a hill” to inspire the rest of the world toward freedom and self-government, it’s time to start by kicking the United Nations out of the United States and withdrawing our membership and support."
In short, Farah wants to destroy the United Nations -- but not before it gives WND press credentials.
Farah whined further about this in his May 2 column blaming the White House for this and playing the victim -- ignoring the fact that WND routinely gets no respect because it puts its right-wing, anti-Obama agenda before actual journalism -- and, of course, begging for money by telling readers "you might want to consider making a contribution to WND’s legal defense fund."
Needless to say, Farah makes no mention of his utter contempt for the U.N. or the role that is likely playing in the U.N.'s disregard for WND.
MRC Upset That NY Times Is Covering News Topic: Media Research Center
In a May 2 MRC TimesWatch item, Clay Waters accuses the New York Times of having "a clear Rupert Murdoch obsession" because of its front-page coverage of News Corp. scandals. Waters notes that News Corp. "a direct Times competitor in New York with the Wall Street Journal and New York Post," but he fails to mention other News Corp. properties in New York.
News Corp. -- which is headquartered in New York city -- also owns New York TV station WNYW, the Fox Broadcasting flagship, as well as community newspapers in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. News Corp.'s book division, HarperCollins, is also headquatered in New York.
That significant New York presence makes News Corp. a local story. Does Waters think the Times shouldn't cover local news?
If you'll recall, the MRC has long tried to downplay News Corp.'s phone-hacking scandal at its British newspapers in order to protect its beloved Fox News.
WND's Lashing Out At Sharpton's Birther Criticism Shows It's Scared Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily dedicated a May 3 article to attacking a segment by MSNBC's Al Sharpton mocking birthers, in a way that defies reality:
A segment on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show deriding the findings of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigation of Barack Obama’s presidential eligibility shows the White House fears coming revelations, according to WND senior writer Jerome Corsi.
Corsi, who has probed Obama’s eligibility for four years, said “it’s obvious that the White House is scared.”
The segment by Sharpton on his daily “PoliticsNation” show April 27 was an attempt to get out ahead of the news, Corsi said.
The White House is “front-running the story, putting it out through a surrogate trying to ridicule Arpaio’s investigation, because they know how much damage he is about to do to the president,” he said.
“The legitimacy of Obama’s presidency is about to come unglued.”
First, Corsi provides no evidence that the White House had any role whatsoever in Sharpton's segment. That's just paranoia on his part.
Second, the fact that WND feels it must try to knock down Sharpton, of all people, shows that it's Corsi and WND, not the Obama White House -- who are running scared.
WND has been in a state of denial about the unraveling of its birther story. It can't hide anymore that it manipulated Sheriff Joe Arpaio into cranking out an "investigation" that reads like it was copied from WND's website (which it, in significant parts, was).
Now, a former member of the "cold case posse" that conducted the birther "investigation" has come out with a new e-book detailing the manipulation of Arpaio into conducting the investigation. It alleges that the Surprise Tea Party was using Arpaio as part of a publicity stunt in the second "birther" press conference, not really announcing any new information, but rather getting people to show up and sign a petition for the "birther" legislation. As we've detailed, the Surprise Tea Party was itself manipulated by Corsi and WND into petitioning Arpaio to do a birther investigation -- something WND has never denied.
The authors also claim that Corsi has been granted "special deputy" status by Arpaio -- which makes Corsi's role as Arpaio's PR agent even more suspect.
The jig appears to be up, but Corsi and WND are so far up Arpaio's backside that they don't recognize it. They can only hide their behind-the-scenes manipulation for only so long.
After All These Years, Kessler Still Hearts Waterboarding Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler renews his love for waterboarding in a May 2 Newsmax column:
As normally defined, torture is the infliction of severe pain. While waterboarding causes fear because it simulates drowning, it is painless. Terrorists much prefer it to the Obama administration’s weapon of choice: a deadly drone attack.
In fact, as we'vepreviouslynoted whenever Kessler has made this claim, medical experts have said that waterboarding carries a real risk of death, not to mention mental health issues, and "is contradictory to well established medical knowledge and clinical experience."
WND's Klein Hides Nature of Glenn Beck's Sleazy Attacks on Soros Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a May 2 WorldNetDaily article bashing the Jewish Funds for Justice for honoring activist Van Jones, Aaron Klein writes:
The Jewish Funds for Justice, or JFFJ, was the driving force behind a campaign to paint former Fox News host Glenn Beck as anti-Semitic after Beck used his show to air a special investigation into [George] Soros.
[...]
After Beck’s weeklong special on Soros, the JFFJ in January 2011 delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures to Fox News in protest of the Soros show in which Beck referred to the billionaire as a “puppet master.” JFFJ deemed the show anti-Semitic.
Klein curiously failed to mention what exactly Beck had said about Soros that caused such a backlash.
As Media Matters detailed at the time, Beck falsely portrayed Soros as a willing collaborator with the Nazis in his native Hungary. In fact, he was hiding his Jewish identity as the adopted godson of a man who was inventorying property the Nazis had earlier confiscated from Jews. Beck also invoked anti-Semitic stereotypes by portraying Soros as a "puppet master" who controls the economy and the media. Beck also had a history of citing anti-Semitic sources on his now-defunct Fox News show.
CNS Readers Get As Nasty As They Wanna Be On A Woman (Again) Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has given its readers another opportunity to show just how offensive they can be.
A May 1 article by Matt Cover quotes Democratic National Committee chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz accusing Republicans of "making sure that we would redefine rape." Cover offered up a deceptive defense of Republican attempts to insert the term "forcible rape" as an exemption in a bill that would ban federal funding for abortions, claiming that "the bill did not change the criminal definition of rape under federal law or any other law whatsoever." In fact, the term "forcible rape" is not defined in the federal criminal code, and could be read to exclude non-"forcible" instances of rape, such as statutory rape, from cases that would be eligible for federal funding for an abortion.
But that was all CNS readers needed to launch a misogynistic barrage at Wasserman Schultz taht also included attacks on her Jewish religion, calling her a "bitch" and a "Jewish princess," among many other things:
As we've detailed, CNS readers have a strong misogynistic (not to mention racist) streak. These are the readers Terry Jeffrey has courted in turning CNS into an anti-Obama propaganda machine.
WND Plays The Race Card, With Occasional Backpedaling Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs -- who we last saw peddling the "real news" that Obama had a hand in killing a medical examiner in California -- is back with some more sketchy reporting of the kind he could only do at WND (because no real news organization would take it seriously).
Kovacs penned a May 1 article under the inflammatory headline "100 blacks beat white couple, media bury attack." ("100 blacks" was later changed to "many blacks," presumably because there's no evidence that "100 blacks" participated in the attack in question.) Kovacs asserted that "a white couple was attacked by dozens of black teenagers, and the local newspaper did not report on the incident for two weeks, despite the victims being reporters for the paper," based on the claims of a columnist for the newspaper in question.
The columnist is the only source Kovacs cites; he couldn't be bothered to contact, say, the police in the town where the attack took place. He also offers no evidence whatsoever that the attack was racially motivated, as he portrays it.
Kovacs buried the fact that, according to the columnist, "The responding officer coded the incident as a simple assault," meaning that the paper would be unlikely to report it, and was also trying not to give preferential treatment to its reporters over the public.
Of course, there's a reason you contact more than one source before reporting on a story -- that single source may have his or her facts wrong. And that's what happened here, prompting Kovacs to do some damage control.
The next day, Kovacs finally gets around to talking with the police -- who point out that there is no evidence at this time that the attack was racially motivated:
“That’s what happens when [an opinion columnist] reports the news, not bound by the facts of the case,” said Chris Amos, public-information officer for the Norfolk Police Department.
As WND reported yesterday in a story posted on the popular Drudge Report, the couple was pummeled April 14 by dozens of black teens, and the Virginian-Pilot newspaper did not report the incident for two weeks, despite the fact the victims, Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami, are both news reporters for the paper.
Today, police tell WND they’re not sure if the attack was racially motivated.
“Could it have been? Yeah, it could have, I guess,” said police spokesman Chris Amos. “We certainly haven’t ruled that out, but we haven’t seen anything that jumps out at us other than someone throwing a rock at someone’s car.”
“A whole lot of racial implications have been made. We don’t know the motive of this. Race didn’t become a factor until Twitter comments later. No one at the scene said it was racially motivated. They didn’t tell us then and they didn’t hear any [comments such as] ‘Remember Trayvon Martin.’”
See, Joe? This is why you don't run with the first person you talk to -- although Kovacs is quick to point out that his previous article was "posted on the popular Drudge Report." Which, of course, may be the ultimate reason for Kovacs' violation of basic journalistic principles.
Because President Obama must be involved in this somehow -- and because hating Obama is all WND has -- Kovacs notes for no apparent reasonthat the newspaper's publisher was "nominated by Obama and recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be deputy secretary of HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development."
Further damage control from Kovacs came in another follow-up article in which he works up the courage to talk to the newspaper's editor, something else he couldn't be bothered to do on day one:
“They think we buried the story. We didn’t. We didn’t bury anything,” Denis Finley, editor of the Virginian-Pilot, told WND. “People are just not stopping to think. What would be my motivation for protecting people who beat up two of my reporters? It’s completely ludicrous that I would do that.”
“I think we did the right thing. I think we’re on solid ground. I don’t think we can win here. If we had published a story, it would look like we’re playing favorites. Because I didn’t publish it, now I’m accused of a cover-up.”
Kovacs also quoted the police department spokesman as again asserting that the case "is not being investigated as a hate crime." Still, Kovacs insisted on portraying the attack as racially motivated anyway, claiming that "the couple was pummeled at a stoplight the night of April 14 by dozens of black teens.'
But who cares about facts when you can play the race card? A May 4 article by Chelsea Schilling -- who has her own sordid history of getting things wrong at WND -- asserts that the case is about "a mob attack by large numbers of black teenagers against a young white couple in a car," treats the columnist who got originally played up the race angle as authoritative and buries statements from the police that there's no evidence of a hate crime.
But Schilling isn't done trying to make a mountain out of this molehill. Under the headline "Wave of black mobs brutalizing whites," Schilling claims that ther have been "dozens of brutal assaults by black mobs and assailants against white victims – and some attackers are citing the revenge for the Martin slaying as reason for their aggression."
Despite claimingthe existence of "dozens of brutal assaults," Schilling identifies only 10 -- including the above case even though, again, nobody who actually knows anything about this case is calling it a hate crime.
(Is this going to become an ongoing list, like WND's creepy obsession with female teachers who have affairs with their students?)
Way to play the race card, WND. You must be proud of yourselves in appealing to the racist nature of your core audience.
NEW ARTICLE: MRC vs. Real Research Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center works hard to try and discredit the work of genuine researchers who commit the offense of concluding there's really no such thing as "liberal media bias." Read more >>
If nothing else, WorldNetDaily is good for the parlor game of how high it can ratchet is pathological hatred of President Obama.
WND gives its trademark overheated paranoid rhetoric another stab in promoting the latest issue of its Whistleblower magazine, this time with added "Matrix":
Millions of Americans feel they’re living in a war zone, the bombardments coming their way daily.
Non-stop lies and corruption. White House “czars” with communist backgrounds. Brazen presidential power grabs. Bows to enemy leaders and insults to allies. Intentionally destructive economic and energy policies. Presidential hot-mic gaffes proving collusion with America’s enemies.
No wonder Americans are more worried today about the very survival of their nation than at any time since the Civil War.
But underlying the madness – underlying all of the epic, high-level subversion of America – enabling it, justifying it, disguising it – is a secret language of the left, a language most citizens neither understand nor even recognize.
This secret language, an essential ingredient in America’s rapidly advancing socialist transformation, is dramatically exposed in May’s groundbreaking issue of Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE ALINSKY CODE.”
Without this secret language, the “matrix” of deceit and delusion enveloping modern America would soon disappear – just as in the sci-fi film blockbuster “The Matrix” – and citizens would behold Barack Obama and his administration for exactly what they really are: committed revolutionaries of the radical left.
So Obama is Agent Smith and Joseph Farah is Neo?
Remember that a few years back, WND's David Kupelian laughably portrayed partakers of non-WND media as victims of "the Matrix," when in fact WND is is a blue-pill wholesaler.
And this bizarre logical analysis is brought to you courtesy of the WND Super PAC.
CNS Still Obsessed Over Afghan Troop Deaths Under Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
We've detailed how CNSNews' Edwin Mora has been obsessed with doing monthly body counts of American troops killed in Afghanistan under President Obama while ignoring the much higher number of Americans killed in Iraq under the stewardship of President Bush.
Mora ramps up the obsession again with a May 1 article declaring that "Although President Obama has only served 39 months in office, 69 percent of the U.S. military fatalities in the more than 10-year-old war in Afghanistan have occurred on his watch."
Missing from Mora's article, as they were from his many previous articles on troop deaths: any mention of Bush or Iraq.
This confirms that the sole point of Mora's reporting is to disparage Obama. After all, CNS did no such body count of troop deaths when Bush was president -- to the contrary, it touted how troop deaths were dropping.
Conflict of Interest: WND Fails to Mention It's Publishing Book By Author It's Plugging Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 1 WorldNetDaily article by Michael Thompson on YouTube's suspension of "the immensely popular PPSimmons Ministry account" is dishonest in several ways.
First, there's the depiction of PPSimmons as "immensely popular," which Thompson backs up by claiming that it had "more than 23,000 subscribers, 530-plus videos and 21 million views." By comparison, the Fred channel on YouTube has 2 million subscribers and 912 million views. That's what "immensely popular" looks like.
Second, Thompson pretends that PPSimmons has never done anything particularly controversial or offensive: He describes the channel's output as "videos on biblical commentary, startling biblical revelations and, perhaps most controversially, political revelations concerning Barack Obama and his birth certificate." But if you'll recall, PPSimmons was the creator of a 2009 video that fallaciously cited Scripture to claim that Obama is the Antichrist. In the July 2009 WND article promoting said video, Joe Kovacs went through great pains to hide the identity of the video's creator.
We now know that the person behind PPSimmons -- which, as we noted, also had a list of several videos it claimed to have "produced for WND" -- is Carl Gallups, who is identified in Thompson's article. And that brings us to our third bit of dishonesty.
Twice in his article, Thompson notes that Gallups is the author of a "soon-to-be-released book on Christian apologetics" called "The Magic Man in the Sky: Effectively Defending the Christian Faith," and then lets Gallups himself work in a plug:
“To make matters worse, the termination of the YouTube channel occurred two weeks prior to the release of my book, ‘The Magic Man in the Sky,’ and at the same time I was doing interviews across the nation on talk radio concerning the Sheriff Joe Arpaio investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate ordeal,” said Gallups.
Guess who's publishing Gallups' book? That's right -- WND Books. Guess how many times that disclosure of a conflict of interest appears in Thompson's story? That's right -- zero.
WND has had a longtimeproblem with violating basic journalistic ethics by refusing to disclose its personal and financial links to the subjects it writes about.
Oh, and guess when Gallups book is coming out? May 15.
One wonders if Gallups deliberately uploaded an inflammatory video that would result in an automatic shutdown of his YouTube Account so he could exploit the controversy to promote his new book. This is WND we're talking about here, so such underhanded tactics are not exactly out of the question.
