NEW ARTICLE: Jerome Corsi's Cesspool
Topic: WorldNetDaily
With his birther conspiracies imploding, WorldNetDaily's star reporter is taking a deep swig of the most fetid waters of Obama-hate by parroting sleazy rumors about Barack Obama's sexuality. Read more >>

Churchill Bust Derangement Syndrome
Topic: CNSNews.com
Ken Blackwell writes in his Sept. 10 CNSNews.com column:

We have praised President Obama for getting Osama bin Laden. And we respect how the president consigned Osama’s body to the deep. Ironically, Winston Churchill, whose bust he pitched out into the snow, would have approved, too. 

As we've previously pointed out -- and the White House has since confirmed -- the bust of Churchill that was loaned to President Bush was scheduled to leave at the end of his administration. An identical bust of Churchill has been in the White House since the 1960s and remains there today.

Why does Blackwell obsess over this bust? We don't get it.

Another Blackout: WND Silent on Cancellation of Birther Gathering
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It promised to be a blockbuster birther event: Joe Arpaio, Terry Lakin, Mike Zullo and even Pat Boone were supposed to gather Sept. 22 at a theater in Phoenix to call for Congress to investigate whether President Obama’s birth certificate is real. Tickets were reasonable, too: $10 for the general public, $25 for the front rows that also included admission to a post-event reception. Birtherpalooza, one might call it.

Alas, it was not meant to be. TPM reports:

Not even the promise of crooner Pat Boone singing oldies from a spinning stage could save what was intended to be the premier birther event of the year later this month in Arizona.

Organizers of the gala, which would have featured Boone alongside Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and some of the nation’s other prominent conspiracy theorists, broke the news online Friday that it was canceled “due to inadequate ticket sales.”

You know who didn't report the failure of this birther event? The birthers at WorldNetDaily.

WND also didn't report the failure of the Birther Summit, planned for earlier this year, even though it reported on claims summit organizers made.

And thus, WND's blackout on anything that make birthers look bad -- like facts -- continues.

NewsBusters Ignores That Matt Lauer's Job Prediction Is Backed Up By Economists
Topic: NewsBusters

Kyle Drennen writes in a Sept. 7 NewsBusters post (emphasis his):

On Friday's NBC Today, less than two hours before another poor jobs report, co-host Matt Lauer touted a bold economic prediction: "Some of the analysts I've been reading have said that no matter who is president over the next four years, the economy will add about 12 million jobs just because of the cycle it's in." CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer agreed with the rosy scenario: "...a lot of pent-up demand in autos and pent-up demand in exports. It's not such a bad moment."

In fact, it's not just Lauer who is making that prediction -- prominent economists are too. According to the Washington Post, Moody’s Analytics, in an August forecast, predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. Macroeconomic Advisors in April also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs.

Also, Drennen is curiously silent on the fact that, as the Post also noted, Mitt Romney has promised to create 12 million jobs. Does that think that was as bold of an economic prediction as Lauer's?

WND Columnist Bashes Nazi Name-Calling, Ignores WND's
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Barbara Simpson writes in her Sept. 9 WorldNetDaily column:

Maybe it was something in the water – or the air – or just political brain flatulence that led prominent Democrats last week to start hurling Nazi accusations at Republicans.

Having just read of some of the Nazi atrocities during World War II and having my consciousness raised again by the evil that has been, and can be, perpetrated by tyrannical monsters, it turns my stomach to know that elected Democrats and party operatives are accusing  Republicans and their candidates of acting like Nazis.

Simpson doesn't mention the fact that the website that publishes her column is replete with attacks likening Democrats in general -- and President Obama in particular -- to Nazis.

It would be hypocritical if we thought Simpson read WND enough to be aware of that not-hard-to-find fact.

MRC Complains Media Not Reporting Irrelevent Detail on Teachers Strike
Topic: Media Research Center

Scott Whitlock complains in a Sept. 10 Media Research Center item:

All three morning shows on Monday covered the massive teachers strike in Rahm Emanuel's Chicago that left 350,000 students in the lurch. However, only CBS This Morning explained that the teachers, through their public sector unions, are already well compensated, making an average salary of $71,000 a year (plus benefits).

Whitlock might have a point if salary issues were a primary reason for the strike.But they're not.

As the Washington Post reports, teachers and city officials are near an agreement on salaries. More prominentreasons for the strike are personnel issues such as an evaluation system teachers call punitive, smaller class sizes, and air conditioning for classrooms that don’t currently have it.

Given that salaries aren't a major bone of contention, there is no reason to report what current average salaries are -- unless media outlets want to emulate the MRC's right-wing agenda of punishing teachers for joining a union.

WND's Kupelian Plagiarizes Himself In Defense of Oregon Candidate
Topic: WorldNetDaily

If WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian's Sept. 9 article defending Oregon Republican congressional candidate Art Robinson looks a little familiar, that's because it is -- Kupelian wrote pretty much the same column two years ago.

And we mean that literally. Of the 35 paragraphs in Kupelian's column, 23 are substantially or exactly the same as a Robinson-defending column he wrote in October 2010, when Robinson was also running in a House race against the same opponent, incumbent Democrat Peter DeFazio.

Which means that Kupelian repeats the same tired, dubious defenses of Robinson, who has also created a homschooling curriculum known as "The Robinson Curriculum." Kupelian writes sycophantically of this: "Talk about the American can-do spirit!" He continues:

One part of “The Robinson Curriculum” is a recommendation that students read as many as possible of the 99 short, classic historical novels for children penned by celebrated British author G.A. Henty (kind of like the “Hardy Boys” books). Now it happens that in one of these 99 Victorian-era books – all of which Robinson personally reprinted on his own printing press and offered to the public as an adjunct to his homeschooling curriculum – one fictional character makes a two-sentence remark while in Africa that could be considered racially insensitive by today’s standards. Because of this, candidate Art Robinson is being labeled a racist.

Yes, I know, it’s insane. 

As we pointed out when Kupelian and other WND writers came to Robinson's defense in 2010, that's not exactly true.

The book in question is Henty's "By Sheer Pluck," and here's the offending passage, in which Mr. Goodenough, the mentor of the young lad who's the main character, pontificates upon their arrival in Africa, goes on a bit longer than the "two sentences" Kupelian claims, and is a bit more than "racially insensitive":

“They are just like children,” Mr. Goodenough said. “They are always either laughing or quarrelling. They are good-natured and passionate, indolent, but will work hard for a time; clever up to a certain point, densely stupid beyond. The intelligence of an average negro is about equal to that of a European child of ten years old. A few, a very few, go beyond this, but these are exceptions, just as Shakespeare was an exception to the ordinary intellect of an Englishman. They are fluent talkers, but their ideas are borrowed. They are absolutely without originality, absolutely without inventive power. Living among white men, their imitative faculties enable them to acquire a considerable amount of civilization. Left alone to their own devices they retrograde into a state little above their native savagery.”

A PBS bio of Henty noted that his books "are notable for their hearty imperialism, undisguised racism, and jingoistic patriotism," indicating that they they went out of print for a reason: such attitudes fell out of fashion decades ago. And far from being "classic historical novels," a scholarly paper on Henty's work noted that they contain a "formulaic structure" and imparted "a discourse embodying the British imperial ideology." 

The real question here is what Robinson does with Henty's books in his homeschool curriculum, particularly given that, in Kupelian's words, he encourages students to "read as many as possible." What guidance is given to homeschooling instructors in addressing the offending passage in "By Sheer Pluck" and other similar offending passages that presumably exist in other Henty books? Kupelian is silent on this, as he was in 2010 -- which suggests that it isn't addressed at all.

Kupelian also recycles his promotion of Robinson's supposed scientific credentials by  touting how he has rejected science:

Robinson has single-handedly documented the utter lack of unanimity in the scientific community on manmade global warming through a petition he started – not an online petition, mind you, but an actual document physically signed – that to date has been signed by more than 31,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s. All 31,000 agree “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

In fact, only a handful of signers -- less than 1 percent, according to one calculation -- have a scientific background in climatology, and there's no apparent verification mechanism to ensure that the signatories do in fact have the scientific qualifications they claim. Further, there have been more than 10.6 million science graduates as defined by Robinson's group since the 1970-71 school year, making the 31,000 on the petition a tiny fraction of that -- 0.3 percent, to be exact -- small enough that one could call it "fringe."

Kupelian concludes his column (both of 'em) by begging for donations to Robinson's campaign. But Robinson really doesn't need the money -- he's outraising DeFazio, with a whopping 79% of his contributions coming from out-of-state.

Plus, Robinson has a super PAC sugar daddy he can rely on. In the 2010 election, Robinson was the beneficiary of $627,500 in advertising paid for by a New York hedge fund manager, and he's expected to help out Robinson again this year. Yet, despite outspending his opponent in an 2010 election cycle that favored Republicans, DeFazio beat Robinson by nine points.

Kupelian mentions none of this, of course; instead, he asserts that "Art Robinson stands an excellent chance of winning" without explaining why the outcome could possibly be any different than 2010. You know, like his column.

CNS Columnist's Revisionist History of The Depression
Topic: CNSNews.com

Kevin Price ("a syndicated columnist, publisher and managing editor of US Daily Review, and host of the Price of Business radio show") serves up this, er, interesting take on history in his Sept. 10 CNSNews.com column:

Another president who inherited a terrible economy was FDR from Herbert Hoover.  How did FDR compare to Obama? Well, in spite of the romantic notions of liberal ideologues, Roosevelt was a disaster as he took a serious recession into the nation's worst Depression. Interestingly, Obama's approach to solve our economic crisis is similar to FDR's and we are getting similar results.  Big government, outrageous subsidies, and massive increases in regulations guaranteed that the Great Depression would be the worst economic period in our nation's history to date. It appears Barack Obama may be committed to out performing FDR in this notorious area.

Actually, most economists agree that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies lifted the country out of the Great Depression, not deepened it.

And this guy hosts a radio show about business? Apparently an understanding of economics and history was not required for Price to get that gig.

WND's Klayman Goes On A Clinton Derangement Head Trip
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Given his record of legal and personal failure in recent years, it's no surprise that Larry Klayman would want to relive his glory years of filing harrassing lawsuits against the Clinton administration. And that's exactly what he does in his Sept. 7 WorldNetDaily column.

And since this is Larry Klayman we're talking about, he kicks things off with a huge blast of the derangement syndromes that occupy his fevered brain, of the Clinton and Obama varieties:

No matter how much gloss conservative talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity try to spin in favor of the Grand Old Party, the hard reality is that presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his minions of timid, disorganized and confused Republicans took a bath this week at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. That’s because the largely uneducated and ill-informed American electorate was treated to extensive brainwashing by black Muslims, leftists, feminists, radical gays and lesbians, atheists, anti-Semites, anti-Christians and others who wrapped themselves in sheep’s clothing. And, when it all was over last night, there was blood on the floor, this time ironically not from the over 80 people who mysteriously “died” during the Clinton administration – including former White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster, who many, including myself, believe to have been Hillary Clinton’s at one time extra-marital lover – but now figuratively from Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate.

And who better to spill this blood than Hillary’s “faithful” husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Klayman, it seems, still believes in the discredited "Clinton body count." 

In his laundry list of mostly ginned-up Clinton "scandals," Klayman inserts the claim that the Clintons were "simply stealing the White House furniture." In fact, the government found that there is little evidence that furniture orncomputers were stolen or damaged at the end of the Clinton administration.

Klayman proudly proclaims that Al Gore "lost the 2000 presidential election, largely due to the work I did at Judicial Watch, then hilariously insists that "I never went after Clinton to influence the election." If you can read that sentence without laughing yourselves silly, you're made of better stuff then we are.

Klayman is also incensed that the Bush administration didn't follow on his highly partisan anti-Clinton witch hunt, which means Clinton has come back to torment Klayman some more:

But when George W. Bush was predictably elected president in 2000, rather than ordering his Justice Department to work with me at Judicial Watch to put the Clintons away where the sun don’t shine – in prison – Bush, true to his establishment blue-blood roots, instead invited the Clintons to the White House for tea, praised them, and told Attorney General John Ashcroft to drop all legal matters concerning them. The establishment, Democrat and Republican alike, when push comes to shove, will always circle the wagons in high-level criminal and civil cases to protect itself. Only lower-level officials, if anyone, are burned at the stake and held legally to account.

Now, having been let off the hook by W. and congressional Republicans, 14 years later Bill Clinton has risen from the politically and legally dead and come back with a vengeance, fully “rehabilitated,” to deliver crushing blows to presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the DNC convention. 

Poor Larry Klayman. All he has is his frivolous lawsuits from the Clinton administration to cling to, since he has no recent accomplishment he can point to now.

Noel Sheppard Falsely Claims Gore Said He Invented the Internet
Topic: NewsBusters

One of the very first items we wrote for ConWebWatch 12 years ago was about how conservatives were misinterpreting Al Gore's comments about his role in creating the Internet. We're still writing about it.

In a Sept. 9 NewsBusters post -- the same one in which he complains that someone had the audacity to fact-check Paul Ryan's claim about running an implausibly fast marathon -- Noel Sheppard was just as apolectic that CBS' Norah O'Donnell "actually equated the error to Al Gore saying he invented the internet." Sheppard repeated himself later in the post, saying that O'Donnell "compared his error - about a marathon time from 22 years ago! - to another politician boasting about inventing the internet," huffily adding: "Does O'Donnell really think someone's time in a race is as consequential as an invention that has radically changed our very way of life?"

Of course, Gore never said he "invented the internet" -- he said that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" as a congressman, a claim the Media Research Center has misinterpreted numerous times. And as we've pointed out several times since that original item, the folks who did invent the Internet, like Vinton Cerf, credit Gore for his role in forwarding it.

Sheppard has regularly lied about Al Gore, so it's no surprise that he would cling to this lie for so long.

WND's Ellis Washington Goes Gaga Over Obama-Hater's Speculative Fantasy
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Ellis Washington spends two entire columns regurgitating the speculative anti-Obama film "Dreams From My Real Father" and treats every single claim it makes as fact.

How gullible is Washington? Take this passage from his Aug. 31 column, for instance:

When you compare Davis’ doctrinaire Marxist resume with the son-of-a-goat-herder story Obama and his propagandists have fed America for 50 years, it becomes self-evident that the Kenyan story was a cover to hide the fact that Obama’s young promiscuous mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a regular guest at Frank’s house. (Stanley Sr. and Frank were drinking buddies.) Obama’s mom was hell-bent on getting revenge on her father for making her leave all her friends her senior year in Washington for Hawaii, where she knew no one. Ann sought refuge in dad’s new cool friend, Frank Marshall Davis. Soon we would have the pornographic pictures showing Obama’s mother in several sexually suggestive positions. We now know that Davis sold these photos to men’s mail-order stag magazines.

Ironically, the naked pictures we see of young Ann were taken by Davis in December 1960 when she was five weeks pregnant with Barack Obama.

It is a small step from young Ann Dunham sneaking out of high school to Frank’s house to listen to jazz, to take pornographic pictures, have forbidden conversations and to engage in orgies where the fruit of one of those sordid affairs was to be a future president of the United States. But who would elect a “red diaper baby” (i.e., the child of a communist)? That’s why Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Dunham Sr., and Obama’s mother conspired together to formulate the Kenyan student plot – to get Barack Obama Sr., a recent Kenyan national on a temporary student visa recruited by Stanley Dunham Sr., a CIA spy, to become a future CIA operative when he returned back to Africa – one of many Cold War programs fighting world Soviet hegemony.

But as we've previously pointed out, Gilbert never proves that the nude photos in question are of Obama's mother. And where is Washington getting his claim that Ann Dunham "engaged in orgies"? It appears that Washington is trying to slut-shame a dead woman in order to smear her son as an illegitimate bastard. Socrates -- the real one, not Washington's imaginary philosopher -- would not approve.

Washington also claims that Obama made "two well-publicized trips to Kenya in 1987 and 2006." Obama was a senator in 2006, but was an unknown student in 1987, making it highly unlikely that trip was "well-publicized."

Wsahington takes his love-fest for the speculative film to an absurd extent in his Sept. 7 column, devoting paragraphs to what the film's Obama impersonator says as if it was actually coming from Obama's lips or somehow based in reality instead of an Obama-hater's speculative fantasy.

But then, Washington is an Obama-hater who engages in speculative fantasy too, so it was apparently predestined that he's the ideal, uncritical audience for this film.

MRC Hates It When Paul Ryan Is Fact-Checked
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has never thought that its "Tell the Truth!" campaign should apply to fact-checks of conservatives, and it's proven that yet again.

Clay Waters complains in a Sept. 7 MRC TimesWatch item that the New York Times "devoted a full story to probing" Paul Ryan's "claim to have run a super-fast marathon," dismissing it as a "silly atheletic-related controversy" and "partisan-slanted 'fact-checking.'" In Waters' mind, it seems, only "partisan" fact-checkers hold conservatives accountable.

Noel Sheppard brought his hackishness to the issue in a Sept. 9 NewsBusters post, declaring that the marathon in question happened " 22 years ago," huffily adding: "Our nation is struggling with stubbornly high unemployment and spiraling budget deficits that threaten our very existence, and O'Donnell spent time quizzing the Republican vice presidential nominee about his marathon time when he was in college."

Bradlee Dean's Obama Derangement: 'Kissinger Is The Man Who Sits Next to Obama'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Rubio then went on to say his opposition to Obama is not personal. If you are truly an American, it is totally personal.

Three thousand seven hundred babies a day are aborted in America. Since President Obama’s time in office, over 4 million babies have been slaughtered in the womb.

Americans are outraged by Hitler’s holocaust that killed 6 million Jews, Polish and other innocent civilians, yet the past eight presidents are responsible for 55 million babies who have been killed on American soil (Proverbs 6:17).

It doesn’t stop there. The DNC, at its convention this week, is attempting to mandate through totalitarian means taxpayer-funded abortion. In essence, the American people will become forced accomplices to murder.

And the establishment minions have the audacity to say that Obama is just a “bad president”?

Where is the outrage, America? Is this not personal?

Day by day, we hear of another American soldier killed in Afghanistan. Bob Woodward, in his book “The Final Days,” quoted Henry Kissinger’s shameful statement, “Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” Kissinger is the man who sits next to Obama while telling us that he is pushing for a New World Order. Our soldiers died fighting against the ideology America is tolerating through the Obama administration.

As our military men swear an oath and lay down their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies (both foreign and domestic), the establishment uses them for their own political games.

Where is the outrage, America? Is this not personal?

How many shots does this administration need to take at you and your country before you realize his intention is to sink your ship?

-- Bradlee Dean, Sept. 6 WorldNetDaily column

NewsBusters' Double Standard on Rooting Against Films
Topic: NewsBusters

In a Sept. 6 NewsBusters post, Tom Blumer claims that "far-left Hollywood" is "so upset" with Clint Eastwood's bizarre, rambling lecturing to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention that they're rooting for his new film, "Trouble With the Curve," to fail at the box office.

Why, you'd think NewsBusters would never be so gauche as to root for the failure of a film because they didn't agree with some political aspect of it, right?

Wrong. Back in 2009, NewsBusters' P.J. Gladnick proudly proclaimed the movie "Che" to be "one of the worst box office bombs in film history," on the scale of the infamous "Heaven's Gate." It wasn't true of course -- it wasn't even the biggest bomb of 2009. Gladnick also baselessly posited that a movie's quality is measured by its popularity, which, as anybody who saw "Batman & Robin" can attest, is definitely not true.

WND: Foreigners Make New York Look Like 'Star Wars' Bar Scene
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We already know WorldNetDaily doesn't like black people (those who aren't WND columnists, anyway), so it's no surprise it's pretty hostile to foreigners too.

That was driven home in a promo email for a WND article. Carrying the headline "New York to look like 'Star Wars' bar scene?"it reads: "If you recall the bar scene from "Star Wars," you know it was filled with a cast of sordid characters. Well, New York City will host such a cast, with you-know-who leading the pack ..."

The email links to a Sept. 7 WND article by Stewart Stogel on how "the leaders of Israel and Iran both will be attending the United Nations General Assembly later this month. President Obama also is expected to be on hand." Stogel also notes that "French President Francois Hollande and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron also will attend the U.N. forum."

How, exactly, does this equal a "'Star Wars' bar scene"? We have no idea -- Stogels article doesn't even mention "Star Wars" or bars. Apparently, to WND, all foreigners -- even Israelis -- are misshapen and inferior to Americans. And, apparently, Obama counts as a foreigner, which dovetails nicely with WND's birther obsession.

Most people would call that attitude kinda racist. What say you, WND?