CNS Desperately Proclaims Catholic Film "Tops 'The Hunger Games'" Topic: CNSNews.com
Craig Bannister writes in a June 4 CNSNews.com blog post:
The movie Hollywood wouldn’t make, a historical drama about the struggle for religious freedom, opened in theaters last Friday (June 1) and debuted in the top 10 in its opening weekend, beating out “The Hunger Games.”
“For Greater Glory,” a movie about Mexican freedom fighters rebelling against a president who sought to crush the Catholic Church by outlawing mass and murdering and expelling priests, cracked the top 10 grossing movies.
Bannister leaves quite a bit of context out of his comparison.
"The Hunger Games" has been in theaters for 11 weeks and it has earned more than $398 million so far. In its opening weekend, "The Hunger Games" earned $152 million, the third-highest debut ever.
Bannister also touts how "For Greater Glory" ranked fifth in per-screen revenue, "with an average take of $2,378 for the weekend." He doesn't mention that, by comparison, the opening weekend for "The Hunger Games" generated a whopping $45,911 average per screen.
"For Greater Glory" had what one might call a respectable showing for an independent film. The return may be a little on the deficient side, though, given how much money was spent to advertise the film in right-wing outlets like Fox News -- not to mention the enthusiastic shilling of the film by CNS and its Media Research Center parent.
(As it just so happens, the film shares a PR agency with the MRC: the conservative-oriented CRC Public Relations. Funny that the MRC didn't mention that connection in its own promotion of the film.)
But Bannister is the one making the ludicrous comparison to a mega-blockbuster like "The Hunger Games."
Mychal Massie has wasted yet another WorldNetDaily column on how much he virulently and viciously hates Barack Obama. This time, Massie is frothing at the mouth because Obama gave a speech:
Barack Obama has said and done many condemnable anti-American and anti-military things, even since he has been in the White House. But, short of his advocating the wholesale slaughter of unborn children, nothing comes remotely close to what he did to the veterans of Vietnam on Memorial Day at The Wall – the Vietnam Memorial.
For reasons we can only suspect, he, with forethought and malicious intent, closed the Memorial to veterans, families and friends on Memorial Day. Some of those shut out of the Memorial had traveled at great personal expense for the opportunity to pay their annual respects to family members, friends, neighbors and fellow servicemen whose names are inscribed on The Wall.
I have friends who served in Vietnam, who, along with many other veterans, traveled great distances to pay their respects to those they served with and their fellow countrymen who gave their lives. Many of those who traveled to The Wall on Memorial Day bear the living scars of their service in that horrific war. They gave the very best they had to keep Southeast Asia from becoming the very thing Obama is doing his best to turn America into – a Marxist-Leninist state.
[...]
Our Vietnam veterans are the most unjustly maligned and disrespected of all veterans. They have been falsely accused, purposefully insulted and spit upon simply because they served their country. And in the wake of that, this wretched human being has spit on them again.
Massie conveniently omits the subject of Obama's speech at the memorial or anything he actually said. Obama was taking part in a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. Contrary to Massie's rantings, Obama also expressed appreciation for those who served in that war:
And one of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam -- most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there. You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. You were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. And that's why here today we resolve that it will not happen again.
And so a central part of this 50th anniversary will be to tell your story as it should have been told all along. It’s another chance to set the record straight. That's one more way we keep perfecting our Union -- setting the record straight. And it starts today. Because history will honor your service, and your names will join a story of service that stretches back two centuries.
Let us tell the story of a generation of servicemembers -- every color, every creed, rich, poor, officer and enlisted -- who served with just as much patriotism and honor as any before you. Let’s never forget that most of those who served in Vietnam did so by choice. So many of you volunteered. Your country was at war, and you said, "send me." That includes our women in Vietnam -- every one of you a volunteer. Those who were drafted, they, too, went and carried their burden -- you served; you did your duty.
You persevered though some of the most brutal conditions ever faced by Americans in war. The suffocating heat. The drenching monsoon rains. An enemy that could come out of nowhere and vanish just as quickly. Some of the most intense urban combat in history, and battles for a single hill that could rage for weeks. Let it be said -- in those hellholes like Briarpatch, and the Zoo and the Hanoi Hilton -- our Vietnam POWs didn’t simply endure; you wrote one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history.
As a nation, we've long celebrated the courage of our forces at Normandy and Iwo Jima, the Pusan Perimeter and Heartbreak Ridge. So let us also speak of your courage -- at Hue and Khe Sanh, at Tan Son Nhut and Saigon, from Hamburger Hill to Rolling Thunder. All too often it's forgotten that you, our troops in Vietnam, won every major battle you fought in.
But Massie doesn't care about context or factual accuracy. All he cares about is his obsessive hatred for Obama and spewing his hatred any chance he gets.
And WND will publish Massie's Obama derangement because they hate Obama as much as he does.
Newsmax's Ruddy Still Defending Bernard Kerik Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has long been a defender of disgraced former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik, attempting to rehabilitate his reputation before his guilty plea and sentencing on corruption charges, even publishing a hagiographic article about Kerik that hid the true nature of the charges against him.
Despite the fact that Kerik is in prison, Newsmax is still defending him. In a June 1 column, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy cites the John Edwards trial on the issue of "selective, and often political, prosecutions," then quickly moves to Kerik:
At Newsmax we have talked about selective, and often political, prosecutions. Personally I don't like them when they are targeted against Democrats like Edwards or Republicans like former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
Kerik, if you recall, was thrown in prison for four years, despite an exemplary career of military and police service, because he failed to note an apartment renovation matter on his federal application for Homeland Security secretary, and failed to pay taxes on his domestic servant, the first time any official was charged for such an action. It was such a judicial over-reach, I believe it will deter many qualified candidates who might apply for high federal office. Who would want to take the risk of four years in jail for a tax oversight relating to domestic help?
In fact, the tax fraud charges towhich Kerik pleaded guilty stemmed in part from Mr. Kerik’s acceptance of $250,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment, provided by a company accused of having ties to organized crime. Unpaid taxes for "domestic help" was merely the stated reason Kerik withdrew his nomination for homeland security secretary. Kerik was also accused of confidential information to the media.
One can also argue that the police chief of America's largest city should be held to a higher standard on such offenses, an idea that seems to elude Ruddy.
After further complaining about the alleged injustice faced by another conservative in the criminal justice system, Conrad Black, Ruddy ultimately comes off sounding rather un-conservative in complaining about "for-profit private prisons" that don't rehabilitate prisoners and supporting programs designed to cut recidivism:
Louisiana imprisons more of its people, per capita, than any other state. Prisons have become big business for both government and private firms across the country. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world: 730 prisoners per 100,000 of its population, according to the International Center for Prison Studies. In China, the figure is 122 per 100,000; in Canada, 117; and in India, 30.
The sentencing system in the United States has created a prison industry and with it a permanent underclass — felons can’t get jobs, and many ex-cons wind up back in prison. And statistics show that incarceration rates unfairly strike African-Americans and other minorities.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has offered a sensible proposal for dealing with the problem, especially for nonviolent offenders. Last year he signed prisoner re-entry legislation designed to cut down on recidivism.
[...]
We need such outside-the-box thinking at both the state and federal level, from Republicans and Democrats, to not only improve the concept of “justice for all,” but also to help make our society stronger.
NEW ARTICLE: The WorldNetDaily Super PAC Topic: WorldNetDaily
Not only is WND begging its reader for cash to fuel its birther agenda, Jerome Corsi has created a company that will launder anonymous donations to Joe Arpaio's birther posse. Read more >>
NewsBusters: Paying Off Abusive Priests 'Fast and Economical' Topic: NewsBusters
We've detailed how NewsBusters' Dave Pierre threw Jews under the bus to divert attention from Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Now, Pierre is coming to defense of a bishop who paid off abusive priests rather than punish them for their misdeeds.
In a June 3 NewsBusters post, Pierre complains that the New York Times reported on then-Milwaukee archbishop Timothy Dolan's practice of paying abusive priests to leave the priesthood:
One frequent demand from Catholic Church abuse victims is that abusive clerics be laicized or removed from the priesthood as expeditiously and quickly as possible.
So if the Archdiocese of Milwaukee discovered a fast and economical way to make that happen, wouldn't that be a good thing for both victims and the Church? Not according to the New York Times' Laurie Goodstein.
In her latest Catholic Church-obsessed piece, Goodstein takes issue with the fact that New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan, when he was the Archbishop of Milwaukee a while back, approved a number of $20,000 settlements to rid the Church of abusive priests in a more time-efficient and expeditious manner – without long, drawn-out canonical or civil proceedings.
Goodstein characterizes these settlements as "payoffs to sexually abusive priests" in an attempt to somehow besmirch Cardinal Dolan. In fact, these were settlement payments designed to save the Church and everyone involved the legal expenses and distraction of engaging in the protracted proceedings necessary to rid the Church of abusive priests.
But shouldn't these abusive priests have faced the criminal justice system for committing illegal acts? Shouldn't justice have been placed before expediency? Pierre makes no mention of what, if anything, the Milwaukee diocese under Dolan did for the victims of those priests.
Pierre doesn't answer those thorny ethical questions. He's too busy trying to district from those thorny ethical questions by attacking others. First up is the group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) gets bashed for highlighting the issue; Pierre calls SNAP "anti-Catholic" -- as if being sexually abused by a priest doesn't cause a person to question their faith -- and attacks its leader, David Clohessy, for purportedly having "unseemly contacts with contingency lawyers in Missouri."
(Pierre and NewsBusters have previously attacked Clohessy for bringing attention to the church's sexual abuse scandal.)
Then, Pierre distracts with sexual abuse scandals in schools:
Just a few months ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District paid $40,000 to a third-grade teacher accused of committing numerous lewd acts on children in exchange for him not appealing his firing.
Then there was the teacher in New York City who was accused of ogling eighth-grade girls and collected a whopping $100,049-a-year salary without setting foot in a classroom for over a decade.
In fact, such settlements happen in the education profession all the time.
Just because others do it doesn't make it right. If those school districts jumped off a bridge, does that mean the Catholic Church should too? That's the juvenile argument Pierre is making here.
Defending the Catholic Church is one thing. Defending it against all reason is another. Pierre has chosen the latter path.
WND's Vox Day Joins Anti-Vaccine Bandwagon Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is continuing to have trouble letting go of the discredited mytn that vaccines cause autism.The latest contributor to the myth is Vox Day, in his June 3 WND column:
Vaccine advocates – although propagandists would be a more accurate term – often correctly claim that there is no scientific evidence proving that vaccines have ever killed anyone or caused autism. Therefore, they claim vaccines can be considered the cause of nothing but a cure for cancer, an end to war and the elimination of all human disease except that caused by dirty, unvaccinated children who are homeschooled by religious bigots. To even consider the mere possibility of questioning the intrinsic and perfect goodness of vaccines, any vaccine given for any reason, is to be not only anti-science, but personally responsible for murdering anyone who died of a disease that would have been prevented by vaccination.
[...]
The reason that the vaccine propagandist claim is correct is because there is also no scientific evidence that vaccines have not killed anyone or caused autism, because there is absolutely no valid scientific evidence on the matter. Most of the “science” in the studies that are widely cited by those who insist that vaccines are safe are simply statistical reviews, which involve as much use of actual science as polling former Playboy models. In the very few cases where an actual scientific experiment has been performed, the populations compared have not been between a vaccinated group and an unvaccinated control group, but rather two different groups that are both vaccinated to varying degrees.
The vaccine propagandists defend the failure of scientists to gather scientific evidence by begging the question. They insist that it would be unethical to permit a control group of children to go without vaccination, due to their assumption that the risks of vaccination are significantly outweighed by the dangers of the diseases vaccinated against. Thus, they perpetuate ignorance on the actual safety or danger of the current U.S. vaccine schedule.
Day goes on to argue that "It is estimated that between 90 percent and 99 percent of all vaccine-related events go unreported" because infant deaths reported as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) are actually because of vaccines.
Send In The Clowns: LeBoutillier Interviews Ed Klein for Newsmax Topic: Newsmax
Apparently, Donald Trump isn't the only person Newsmax will inflict John LeBoutillier on.
Newsmax has posted three clips so far of an interview clownish conspiracy theorist LeBoutillier has conducted with discredited Obama-bashing author Edward Klein:
A May 30 article builds up Klein's purported mainstream-m edia credentials by noting that he is "the former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine, former foreign editor of Newsweek, and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair." Of course, Klein made clear his partisan intent in writing the book: "I think that the incompetence, the bungling incompetence married with the radical left-wing program is a toxic mix that Mitt Romney should use in this campaign. ... Because do we really want some incompetent to be back in the White House for another four years?"
A May 31 article, featuring another clip from the LeBoutillier interview, insisted that Klein's book "is buttressed by nearly 200 interviews, many of them with insiders who know Obama best." In fact, Media Matters points out that Klein's book "is filled with lazy research, bad writing, bizarre generalizations ("Political wives have always found something to complain about") and gossip forwarded by anonymous sources."
In a June 1 interview clip, Klein credits right-wing media outlets like Newsmax for promoting his book.
At no point, however, do any of these articles disclose the fact the Klein and LeBoutillier collaborated on a book last year, the self-published Obama-bashing novel "The Obama Identity," in which the pair feature "the foreskin of President Obama as a major plot point, along with birtherism, an incomprehensible plot, and the inclusion of every ludicrous conservative conspiracy about Obama."
Should an author who wrote such ludicrous things about Obama even be trusted to write a nonfictin book about him? Newsmax wants you to think so.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has dismissed WND’s $250 million lawsuit against Esquire magazine alleging damages for a false report that the WND Books expose “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible To Be President” by Jerome Corsi had been recalled and repudiated by the publisher.
“The court’s decision is significantly flawed and intellectually dishonest,” said WND’s attorney in the case, Larry Klayman.
Klayman, founder of the D.C. watchdog group Judicial Watch, plans to appeal the ruling.
Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the U.S. District Court in D.C. granted Esquire’s motion to dismiss based on D.C.’s anti-SLAPP law, which is designed to protect media and public figures from frivolous lawsuits.
[...]
Klayman, noting that the decision had been pending for nearly a year, said Collyer ignored three requests for a status conference. It was only after his team’s May 7 letter to the court’s chief judge, Royce Lamberth, he said, that Collyer “apparently commenced in haste to reach this decision, which was poorly reasoned as a matter of fact and law.”
“The decision was so poorly reasoned it rises to a level of negligence, if not a desire to dump the case because it is not palatable to the Washington establishment,” Klayman said.
For all of Klayman's ranting about the anti-SLAPP law, nowhere is he quoted commenting on the judge's key ruling in her dismissal -- namely, that Farah admitted the Esquire blog post was satire before it became "inconvenient" for him to do so:
About an hour after esquire.com issued the Blog Post, Mr. Farah told the Daily Caller that the Blog Post was “a very poorly executed parody.” Findikyan Decl., Ex. 28 (dailycaller.com post May 18, 2011 at 12:06 p.m.). In other words, Plaintiffs immediately recognized the satiric nature of the Blog Post. Mr. Farah also took to the radio airwaves immediately following the Blog Post to mock those who asked him for comment, saying, “are you guys serious? . . . You think I’m gonna pull a best-selling book off the shelves?” Id., Ex. 43 (WND.com post May 18, 2011 at 9:24 p.m.). Because later it became inconvenient to treat the Blog Post as satire cannot erase Plaintiffs’ own contemporaneous admission that it was so intended. Political satire can be, and often is, uncomfortable to its targets, but that does not render it any less satiric or any less an expression on a topic of public concern. The controversy surrounding President Obama’s birthplace reached such a crescendo prior to the release of his long-form birth certificate that it was dubbed the Birther Movement. That Movement had, and apparently continues to have, some committed proponents. Plaintiffs themselves played leadership roles in the Birther Movement, contributing hundreds of articles questioning the legitimacy of the Obama Presidency and enthusiastically advertising the Corsi Book.
The Blog Post itself bore indicia of its satiric nature. The page was tagged as “humor.” Findikyan Decl., Ex. 27 (esquire.com Politics Blog post May 18, 2011 at 10:50 a.m.). The Blog Post started with an exaggerated headline announcing in bold print “Breaking: Jerome Corsi’s Birther Book Pulled From Shelves!” Id. Real news does not usually contain an exclamation point and would not be reported on an opinion page. Further, the headline was accompanied by a logo of a siren, a symbol used by conservative Matt Drudge when commenting on current news to his readers. Id. The text asserted that Messrs. Corsi and Farah announced “plans to recall and pulp the entire 200,000 first printing run of the book” Id. The reference to a first run printing of “200,000 books” is an exaggerated number for a first printing. Also, the Blog Post refers to a fake book, alleged to be authored by Mr. Farah, called “Capricorn One: NASA, JFK, and the Great ‘Moon Landing’ Cover-Up.” Id. The book title alludes to “Capricorn One,” a 1978 movie starring O.J. Simpson and others about a government Mars landing hoax. Finally, the Blog Post includes absurd quotes, such as Mr. Farah’s alleged statement about his own Birther Movement views that “bullshit is bullshit.” Id. These clues reveal that the Blog Post was satire; Mr. Farah immediately recognized that it was.
This marks the second lawsuit by sue-happy defamer Klayman on WND's behalf that blew up in his face. In 2010, WND's Klayman-led $10 million lawsuit against the White House Correspondents Association because the WHCA wouldn't sell WND the number of tickets it demanded for the annual correspondents dinner was swiftly tossed out of court on a WHCA request for dismissal. Adding insult to injury, the copy of the order sent to Klayman's office was returned was returned to the court because it was "Not Deliverable as Addressed, Unable to Forward."
WND, Klayman and birthers extraordinare Jerome Corsi and Mara Zebest announced the lawsuit against esquire last year at a sparsely attended dog-and-pony show. When we asked about the WHCA lawsuit at that time, Klayman brusquely dismissed us, saying that "we decided not to pursue that." If the lawsuit was so unimportant to pursue, why bother filing it in the first place? (Besides publicity, that is.)
The fact that Klayman pursues dubious and time-consuming lawsuits for the purpose of [publicity shows you what kind of lawyer he is. Which is to say, the kind of lawyer who has trouble making a living as a sue-happy defamer.
Yet WND apparently has Klayman on retainer. Go figure.
CNS Keeps Up Its Obsession Over Afghan Troop Deaths Under Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
It's a new month, and you know what that means: a new Afghanistan body-count article from CNSNews.com's Edwin Mora.
There were 36 U.S. military casualties in Afghanistan reported for the month of May, marking the deadliest month for American forces so far in 2012.
The American soldiers’ death toll in May brought the total U.S. fatalities since the war started in October 2001 to 1,881, including 124 this year alone. Last month was also the deadliest May of the conflict, meaning the highest number casualties during May since the war began (see below).
When compared to the same period in 2011, the military deaths during the first five months of this year have decreased by about 20 percent, from 152 to 124.
For the 1,881 deaths that have occurred so far during the course of the decade-old war, 1,312, or an estimated 70 percent, have taken place since Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009.
As Mora has consistently done in using his body-count articles to politicize the Afghan war to bash President Obama, he disappears the fact that casualty rates were much higher at the peak of the Iraq War under President Bush. In fact, the words "BusH" and "Iraq" appear nowhere in Mora's article.
We've detailed how CNS' body-count reporting on Iraq prior to Obama's election was focused on the reduction in casualties.
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Wayne Allyn Root Edition Topic: Newsmax
Obama is losing support like a sinking ship. The leaks are everywhere, among virtually every group.
Obama is living proof that familiarity breeds contempt. To really get to know Obama is to realize that his only real skill is giving speeches — with a teleprompter.
In this regard, Obama has a lot in common with Facebook. They are both all about hope and hype. But once you get to actually see the business model, there is nothing left to do but sell short.
Forget the polls. My gut instincts as a Vegas oddsmaker and common sense small businessman tell me this will be an historic landslide, and a world-class repudiation of Obama’s radical and risky socialist agenda.
NewsBusters: Anyone Who Criticizes Catholic Film Is 'Elitist' Topic: NewsBusters
As part of the Media Research Center's public relations campaign to promote the new film "For Greater Glory," about a Catholic martyr in Mexico, Scott Whitlock sneered in a June 1 NewsBusters post that any film critic who didn't like the film was nothing but an "elitist":
Elitist film critics at several big city papers, Friday, mocked the Christian-themed movie For Greater Glory as "catnip for crusaders," a movie that exploits the struggle for religious freedom with "maximum teary-eyed outrage."
Whitlock takes particular aim at Detroit News reviewer Tom Long, who in Whitlock's words "could barely hide his disinterest in the movie's subject matter." In fact, it's clear from Long's review that his complaint was that the movie gave him no reason to care:
[Director Dean Wright] succeeds in making enough noise, but what the noise is about is left pretty unclear. Why was the Mexican government, personified by Ruben Blades as President Plutarco Elias Calles, intent on secularizing Mexico? And why do we care?
We don't much. None of the characters here really catch fire, despite a cast that includes upcomer Oscar Issac, the venerable Peter O'Toole and (briefly) Eva Longoria.
Whitlock apparently doesn't understand what film critics do, one of which is judging how effectively a film conveys its message to those outside its intended audience. If a film is simply pushing emotional buttons and building set pieces and not making an effort to make viewers not already invested in the film's agenda care about what's going on, it is a failure at a certain level.
But Whitlock any everyone else at the MRC involved in its propagandistic promotion of the film don't care such things. They care only that a message that conforms to its right-wing was delivered.
WND Teams Up With Alex Jones to Go On Bilderberg Patrol Topic: WorldNetDaily
A June 2 WorldNetDaily article by Michael Thompson touts a gathering of "more than 1,000 protestors" outside the Washington-area convention center where the Bilderberg Group was meeting, "the secret conclave that gathers global leaders of finance and government."
Getting big play in Thompson's article his interview at the protest -- embedded in his article -- with Alex Jones, described only as a "radio personality" who "hosts the radio program 'The Alex Jones Show' and runs the popular news site Infowars.com."
Jones got more WND play in a June 1 article by Timothy P. Dionisopoulos, who, like Thompson, benignly described Jones only as "the founder of the news website Infowars.com." Dionisopoulos ignored Jones' history of conspiracy theories, despite the headline of his article being "Who are these people protesting Bilderberg?"
WND's public embrace of Jones is mainly the result of conspiracy theory convergence -- WND has long obsessed about the Bilderbergers as well, and it sells a book titled "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group," which calls the group " a shadow government whose top priority is to erase the sovereignty of all nation-states and supplant them with global corporate control of their economies under the surveillance of 'an electronic global police state.'"
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham has been saying more, um, interesting things in non-MRC venues.
OneNewsNow reports (h/t Right Wing Watch) that Graham said of MSNBC: "They're not just anti-war; they're anti-military. ... In particular, they're anti-American military."
And Media Matters notes that Graham is upset that the "news media" won't report on the "interesting development" that Barack Obama "had these white girlfriends. And how exactly would the black women feel about Obama having white girlfriends?"Media Matters responds: "The real question is who exactly -- in the year 2012 -- would consider the fact that Obama dated white women to be 'an interesting development'?"
We've previously noted Graham making making similarly bizarre statements in non-MRC media last month.
CNS Publishes, Then Deletes, Anti-Obama Propaganda Piece Topic: CNSNews.com
On June 1, CNSNews.com published the following "news" article by Patrick Burke that read more like a Romney campaign oppo-research hit piece:
President Barack Obama is holding six separate fundraisers in the Midwest on Friday, June 1 -- the same day the Labor Department reported the May unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent.
On this day in 1984 -- when President Ronald Reagan also was running for re-election -- Reagan announced that the May unemployment rate had dropped to 7.4 percent.
When President Reagan announced the lower May unemployment rate on June 1, 1984, he was on his way, not to a fundraiser, but to Western Europe, to promote peace and democracy in the Cold War era.
"Some good news for the economy tonight," Peter Jennings, the late ABC News anchorman, announced on his June 1, 1984 broadcast, citing the drop in unemployment. Jennings noted that the unemployment rate was at its lowest level since 1981, and he called it "good political news for President Reagan."
"It means real people in every category of the labor force are going back to work." The report led the June 1, 1984 "World News Tonight" broadcast.
Upon arriving at Shannon Airport in Ireland on June 1, 1984 President Reagan delivered remarks, praising Irish heritage in the United States and expressing optimism for peace among democratic nations:
“We're beginning a mission to strengthen ties of friendship and cooperation among the world's leading democracies. It's our deepest hope and our earnest conviction that we can make genuine progress together toward a safer world, a more prosperous world, a far better world,” said Reagan.
Later that week, he visited Normandy Beach to commemorate the 40th anniversary of D-Day, and he also attended an economic summit in London.
On June 1, 2012, President Obama planned to speak at Honeywell -- an official presidential visit, which means taxpayers pay for his transportation.
According to the White House, he will deliver remarks "urging Congress to act on the 'To Do List'" -- legislation Obama favors and Republicans oppose.
Once the official Honeywell visit is over, President Obama will devote the rest of the day and evening to fundraisers, which the White House describes as "campaign events."
From the White House schedule for Friday, June 1, 2012:
1:15 PM - The President delivers remarks at a campaign event 1:50 PM - The President attends a campaign event 2:25 PM- The President attends a campaign event 3:20 PM - The President departs Minneapolis, Minnesota en route to Chicago, Illinois 4:20 PM - The President arrives in Chicago, Illinois 6:10 PM - The President delivers remarks at a campaign event 7:25 PM - The President delivers remarks at a campaign event 8:55 PM - The President delivers remarks at a campaign event
But if you go to the page now, you'll find that the article has been deleted. The CNS tweet promoting the story is still live, though.
Here's a screenshot of the story -- note the "news" designator at the top:
Why did CNS delete this story? Perhaps because even CNS -- as rabidly anti-Obama as it is becoming, serving as the propaganda wing of the Media Research Center -- realized it couldn't ignore the blatantly partisan nature of Burke's "news" article.
There is no news value to Burke's piece; it exists only to attack the president and, by extension, promote Mitt Romney's Republican presidential campaign. As such, there's a potential conflict with federal laws governing 501(c)3 non-profit organizations, which forbids open advocacy for a political candidate. CNS is a division of the Media Research Center, which is a 501(c)3 group.
Does this mean that Terry Jeffrey and Co. will start to rein in its work as an anti-Obama propaganda mill? Unlikely, but we shall see.
MRC Unhappy That Discredited Anti-Abortion Activist Being Ignored Topic: Media Research Center
"There is nothing more predictable than networks burying negative news about Planned Parenthood," Paul Wilson writes in a May 30 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute article. And there's nothing more predictable than the MRC complaining that its pet right-wing causes aren't covered, no matter how specious or trivial.
Here's what Wilson is complaining about this time:
Pro-life organization Live Action recently came out with a disturbing video showing a Planned Parenthood staffer in Texas assisting a Live Action actor to obtain a sex-selection abortion. That practice is where a fetus is aborted if the child is discovered to be of a certain gender (usually female). The broadcast outlets have completely ignored the controversy: ABC, CBS, and NBC have not devoted a single second of their May 29 evening broadcasts and May 30 morning broadcasts to coverage of the recent Live Action videos.
Left-wing outlets have gone into damage control, spinning the Live Action sting as a manufactured controversy.
But that's the truth -- this truly is a manufactured controversy, peddled by a discredited activist. Live Action's Lila Rose -- an associate of even more discredited right-wing activist James O'Keefe -- has been caught making a series of entrapment videos featuring fake "patients" with the explicit purpose of smearing Planned Parenthood to the extent of running it out of business. Rose is not interested in facts, she's only interested in destroying Planned Parenthood by whatever means necessary.
That sordid history, of course, is not mention by Wilson. Nor does Wilson mention the fact that Rose's current crusade is a hoax as well -- there simply is no evidence of any widespread effort to abort fetuses due to gender.
Wilson complained again in a May 31 CMI post that the broadcast TV networks (thus conveniently factoring out Fox News) are continuing to ignore the bogus Live Action-manufactured scandal, while they "went ballistic"when it was announced that the Susan G. Komen Foundation "was going to cease allocating funds to Planned Parenthood," but then later "caved to intense media pressure and reinstated funding for Planned Parenthood."
The MRC complained about coverage of the Komen at the time. It baselessly accused Planned Parenthood of making "vicious attacks" against the Komen foundation, while also grousing about the indisputable fact that Komen's cutting of funding to Planned Parenthood was the result of "bullying by the right" -- hiding the fact that the MRC was one of those bullies.
Wilson also disingenuously ranted that "a taxpayer-funded organization" was "assisting the practice of sex-selection abortion." In fact, there was no "sex-selection abortion" because the patient was fake, and no tax money to Planned Parenthood pays for abortion.
