Newsmax's Kessler Goes Back to Trump-Fluffing Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler has yet to say a peep about his prediction of a Mitt Romney landslide since the election results proved him wildly wrong. He will, however, turn back time and engage in some old-school Trump-fluffing, like he did when he was trying to get Donald Trump to run for president.
In his Nov. 26 Newsmax column, Kessler writes: "The Republican Party will continue to lose presidential elections if it comes across as mean-spirited and unwelcoming toward people of color, Donald Trump tells Newsmax."
No, Kessler is not interested in such things. Instead, it's time for some full metal Trump-fluffing:
Looking ahead, Trump says his top-rated NBC show “Celebrity Apprentice” is now shooting its 13th season.
Trump says his Trump National Golf Course on 600 rolling acres along the Potomac River is “by far, the best golf course in the tri-state area.” He bought the historic Old Post Office on prestigious Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington to remake it as a luxury hotel, and it doesn’t stop there.
“I just bought the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club and Spa in Jupiter, Fla., which is a phenomenal area,” Trump says.
Regardless of who is president, it will be a good year for Trump. This New Year’s Eve, Donald will be celebrating at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach home and club, which admits Jews and blacks despite the exclusionary policies of some other Palm Beach clubs, as outlined in my book “The Season: Inside Palm Beach and America’s Richest Society.”
Last New Year’s Eve, some 750 guests put on formal wear and sipped Louis Roederer champagne. Hors d’oeuvres included fois gras seared to order, caviar dished lovingly onto blinis, risotto with white truffles, colossal-size cocktail shrimp, and oysters on the half shell.
The band Party on the Moon kept the Mar-a-Lago pavilion rocking as guests donned party hats they found at their tables. Even Trump’s usually reserved wife Melania, a stunning former model, sported a black paper top hat.
Kessler's not big on getting his facts straight either. Trump did not buy the Old Post Office; the federal government continues to own it, but it selected the Trump Organization to redevelop it in a manner that provides a "consistent stream of revenue for the Federal Government."
Kessler also quotes Trump's top aide in order to portray "the private Donald Trump" as "the dearest, most thoughtful, most loyal, most caring man."
But nobody cares about "the private Donald Trump" -- they want to know about the bitter, hateful Trump we saw in the presidential campaign. But Kessler cares too much about his access to Trump to tell his readers the truth.
In a Nov. 26 WorldNetDaily article, Jerome Corsi reports on WND's purportedly extensive anti-trolling operation on its comment threads:
WND Internet forum moderators have conducted extensive studies of leftist, pro-Obama “trolls” who post misinformation.
In the process, the moderators have blocked from WND forums participants who post abusive language aimed at angering or otherwise insulting forum members, WND authors, management and staff.
Trolls appear to perform a “disinformation” function typical of counter-intelligence efforts by intelligence agencies to confuse political enemies and refute or deflect opposing political views that are less susceptible to refutation by more traditional methods of debate and argumentation.
Typically, trolls operating on WND forums attempt to defend Obama by posting specious and diversionary arguments with the goal of changing the subject and obscuring topics that could damage Obama, such as his birth records, life narrative, political history and policy preferences, including his current positions as president.
Particularly offensive is the proclivity of trolls to use obscene or blasphemous language mixed with personal invective.
And so on. Curiously missing from Corsi's article are any specific, detailed examples of a "troll" operating at WND, only general descriptions of how they purportedly operate, or any direct quotes from any of these "WND Internet forum moderators" explaining its "troll" policy. Instead, Corsi repeats a post from "A person identified as 'AMA' posted a comment on the website Above Top Secret that apparently offers insight into how professional trolls operate."
Meanwhile, vile and offensive anti-Obama posts typically remain untouched on WND's comment threads. Corsi offered no explanation for that.
A confession: We posted on WND threads until we were banned a couple months ago We have repeatedly contacted WND for an explanation for the ban, only to be given either a non-responsive answer or ignored entirely. We made no attempt to hide our identity, nor did we engage in "obscene or blasphemous language," though we did point out that WND was ignoring inconvenient facts about its Obama birther crusade. Perhaps that was the problem.
It seems that WND, in banning purported "trolls," is also trying to keep its readers from learning things it doesn't want them to know.
If anyone at WND would like to explain why we might be wrong about that, they know where to find us.
NewsBusters Spins: Ricks Criticized Fox For 'Reporting The News' Topic: NewsBusters
When Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter author Thomas Ricks pointed out on Fox News that the attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Behghazi, Libya, "has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party" -- which caused Ricks' interview on Fox to end abruptly -- the Media Research Center, longtimeapologists for Fox News, went into full spin mode.
That resulted in a Nov. 26 NewsBusters post by Jeffrey Mayer that offered his own, um, unique take on the incident:
It’s commonplace for a news organization to be attacked for failing to cover certain major news events. On the other hand, it is rare for a news outlet to be attacked for doing its job and reporting the news.
According to Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Thomas Ricks, Fox News’ extensive reporting on the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi is not only a waste of time but an example of how Fox is, “the wing of the Republican Party.” Appearing on Monday’s Happening Now, Ricks openly called out Fox News for its coverage of what he dismissed as merely a “small firefight.”
The brief segment started off on the wrong foot immediately with Ricks’ first comments being a swipe at Fox News where he claimed, “I think that Benghazi generally was hyped by this network especially.”
Co-host Jon Scott did his best to challenge Ricks assertions by asking him, “when you have four people dead including the first U.S. ambassador in more than 30 years, how do you call that hype?” When Ricks failed to answer Scott’s question and instead repeated his ridiculous assertions, Scott cut the interview short.
Meyer made no effort to explain exactly what was "ridiculous" about what Ricks said. Fox does, in fact, have a long history of being a semi-official mouthpiece for the Republican Party and conservative causes, and it has ceaselessly hyped the supposed "scandal" surrounding the Benghazi attack, pushing numerous falsehoods and distortions in the process.
But Meyer doesn't care about facts. He wasn't done ranting and spinning:
Given that the liberal media has failed to adequately report on the terrorist attack on our Libyan embassy one would expect a well-respected journalist like Thomas Ricks to praise Fox for their coverage. Unfortunately, Ricks decides to not only smear Fox but to classify the terrorist attack as merely a “small firefight” showing the unwillingness of most journalists to objectively cover a major foreign policy failure of the Obama administration.
Again, Meyers fails to disprove Ricks' purported "smear" of Fox. Nor does he consider the possibility that the reason nobody else but Fox is covering this story because Fox is motivated by its right-wing, anti-Obama bias to portray it as a "major foreign policy failure."
WND's Kupelian Fights 'Lies' About Economy With ... Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian complains in a Nov. 26 column that "a great deal of what passes for 'objective reporting' on the economy is little more than “laundered” press releases from the government (and other power players like the Federal Reserve) whose credibility depends on continually deceiving the public."
And how does Kupelian respond to this purported deception? With actual deception.
Let's begin, as Kupelian does, with the unemployment rate. Kupelian uncritically promotes the evidence-free conspiracy theory by Jack Welch and other right-wingers that the October unemployment numbers released by the government were delilbefrately "fudged" to make President Obama look good. Not only does Kupelian bother toreport the lack of truth behind Welch's claim, he tries to reinforce it by ranting about the "real unemployment rate":
OK, time out. Amid all the bickering over whether the “official” unemployment rate is 8.1 percent or 7.8 percent, it’s easy to forget that all these numbers are just a fairy tale created by the government and promoted by the elite media.
“You know what the unemployment rate really is?” asked Texas Rep. Ron Paul earlier this year. “It’s probably closer to 20 percent.”
As the Washington Post reported, Paul, a popular but long-shot GOP presidential candidate during the primary season, “has long argued that the unemployment figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are inaccurate and that the country has actually been in a depression for the past decade.”
Said Paul: “If you want to really know why the American people feel badly about the economy, it’s that the unemployment rate is escalating. It’s very high. But if you take … the number of people employed, 132 million people, it’s the same number that was employed in the year 2000. There have been no new jobs produced.”
And how does the government arrive at only 8 percent unemployment? Easy, just leave out lots of unemployed people from the calculations.
Let’s break it down. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “In September, 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force.” Even though these individuals “wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months … they were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.” In case you missed that: The government is openly admitting that 2.5 million unemployed Americans were not counted as officially “unemployed.”
That’s just for starters. The government’s “official” unemployment stats also don’t include part-time workers who want and need full-time work. As the PolicyMic.com blog summarized, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 7.8 percent figure “does not include unemployed members of the workforce who are not actively looking for work; nor does it factor in workers with part-time jobs who are seeking full-time employment. When these workers are included, the (U-6) un/underemployment rate for September remained at 14.7 percent as it had been in August.”
In an article titled “The Real Unemployment Rate,” Fox Business News analyst Elizabeth MacDonald does the math and arrives at virtually the same number: 14.5 percent unemployment.
But the idea that the U-6 rate or any number Ron Paul made up is the "real unemployment rate" is simply false. The U-6 rate includes "underemployed" people who have jobs but are looking for better ones, so it's not actually an "unemployment rate" at all.
Kupelian also rants about the Federal Reserve and "fiat money" :
Consider: Most Americans today recognize that the federal government has become a gigantic, malignant cancer. That’s barely a metaphor – government literally has become a parasitic growth on a once-healthy body politic, drawing substance and energy from it, ravaging the healthy “cells” (productive individuals, families and businesses) in order to feed a malignancy so ravenous it threatens the very life of the “host organism,” America.
But all this could not have happened without the “food” of fiat money.
There was a time when the nation had an honest, constitutional monetary system backed by gold and silver. (“No State shall … make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts,” says Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution.) This, all by itself, constituted a massive barrier to the unrestrained growth of government, since one cannot create gold or silver with a printing press.
All that changed in 1913, when under the presidential leadership of progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act. Pushed through on Dec. 23, the night before Christmas Eve, and largely along party lines (only two House Democrats voted nay and none did so in the Senate), Wilson immediately signed it into law.
This was a blatant violation of the Constitution, which specifies in Article I, Section 8 that “The Congress” – not some private banking cartel – “shall have Power … To coin Money, [and] regulate the Value thereof.” From that point, it was all downhill.
For the next two decades, until 1933, Federal Reserve notes were still redeemable in gold and silver, until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlawed private ownership of gold. Between then and 1963, all Federal Reserve notes were redeemable in “lawful money,” which by then meant only silver.
In fact, FDR did not "outlaw private ownership of gold"; his executive order banned the hoarding of gold, which was beleived to be making the Depression worse, and permitted individuals to keep small amounts of gold and gold coins with collectible value.
Kupelian appears to be advocating a return to the gold standard. But some have argued that a rigid gold-standard monetary system in the U.S. would have made the recession even worse because it would have constrained the Federal Reserve from taking the actions it took to rescue the economy.
NEW ARTICLE: Almost (But Not Quite) Independent Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy was willing to be critical of Mitt Romney's campaign before and after the election -- but he turned into a Romney shill in the month before Election Day. Read more >>
WND Falsely Portrays Planned Resurrection Film As 'Sequel' To 'Passion of the Christ' Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Nov. 24 WorldNetDaily article carries the headline "'Passion of the Christ' 'sequel' looking for you." In it, Drew Zahn claims that the planned film is "the unofficially dubbed 'sequel' to [Mel] Gibson’s 'The Passion of the Christ.'"
The scare quotes around the word "sequel" hints at what Zahn refuses to directly spell out: The planned film is no "sequel" at all. He provides no evidence that Gibson or anyone else involved with "The Passion of the Christ" has anything whatsoever to do with this film.
The only people dubbing it a "sequel," in fact, are Zahn and those behind the project, led by David Wood,
In fact, Zahn's article is nothing more than a plea for donors to fund the planned film and engage in a weird sort of crowdsourcing that Zahn spins as a "revolutionary approach:
“Normally when you make a movie,” ["Hollywood veteran" David] Wood told WND, “you raise money from your investors, get a script, hire everybody, shoot your movie and then you market it for five to six months before it’s released.”
But the team behind “The Resurrection” is flipping that process on its head, starting with the marketing before a single actor or cameraman or even script is on board.
“God directed us to begin marketing the film now, doing interviews, getting people excited, so that He could start drawing people to the project,” Wood said. “The whole idea was to invite the church around the world to come help us, come pray, come engage, where people could be involved in process.”
The Resurrection Project, therefore, is taking a unique, participatory approach to filming “The Resurrection.” The team is already talking to church and parachurch organizations, investors, Christians in Hollywood, and is now reaching out to the church at large to become what they call “spiritual producers” in the film.
The film’s website explains a spiritual producer is “an individual who has pledged to pray for the Resurrection Project, donated and spread the word (i.e. via Facebook, Twitter, email, word of mouth).”
But more than just looking for prayer partners and investors, the Resurrection Project is inviting the spiritual producers to get involved in the process, including contests for submitting script ideas, helping to select the director and cast, appointing screenwriters and more. They’re even planning an opportunity to win a trip for two to the movie set … in Israel.
Zahn fails to make clear what, exactly, "The Resurrection" would cover, since "The Passion of the Christ" ends with Jesus' resurrection. Zahn also fails to tell us what "Hollywood veteran" David Wood has done before this project.
The important thing, apparently, is that Zahn did falsely link it to another, successul film and included clickable text that states, "Discover how you can get involved in making 'The Resurrection' by clicking here!"
MRC's Graham Revives False, Years-Old Attack on Patty Murray Topic: Media Research Center
The MRC's Tim Graham uses a Nov. 24 NewsBusters post to lie about Sen. Patty Murray, reviving a years-old discredited falsehood that Murray "praised" Osama bin Laden:
aturday’s Washington Post devoted the left-hand corner of the front page to hailing liberal Sen. Patty Murray, the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “In a Congress of hot tempers and sharp tongues, Murray doesn’t favor over-the-top rhetoric,” oozed Post reporter Rosalind Helderman. Sen. Harry Reid added: “Everyone takes Senator Murray seriously because she does not bluster.”
She doesn’t? While the Post noted Murray had the “luck” of "intemperate" Republican gaffes on abortion and rape in the last election cycle, nobody in the media wants to remember Murray’s 2002 whopper praising that humanitarian Osama bin Laden[.]
As we first detailed way back in 2002 , Murray was not "praising" bin Laden; rather, she was trying to draw a contrast over how the U.S. is viewed in the Middle East, explaining (somewhat erroneously) that bin Laden had been "building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that."
Graham cited what his boss, Brent Bozell, "reported at the time," but 1) Bozell does not "report," and 2) he was trying to distract attention away from Trent Lott's remarks about Strom Thurmond.
Graham goes on to whine, "You would be a fool to underestimate how much hot wind that liberal newspapers will blow behind a liberal Democrat like Murray, whose gaffes are rarely acknowledged and never remembered." It's only a gaffe in the minds of rabid, dishonest partisans like Graham who have to distort her words and tell lies about what she actually said in order to force it into a "gaffe."
Ellis Washington Plays the Pity (And Self-Grandiosity) Card Topic: WorldNetDaily
Here's how Ellis Washington starts out his Nov. 23 WorldNetDaily column:
When I look at the political careers of a Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, the political hacks of Democratic Socialist Party, the Country Club Republican Party and the millions of liberals, socialists and Marxists who are thriving throughout Hollywood, academia, labor, sports, entertainment and society by bringing America to her knees while systematically deconstructing everything good this country has done for her citizens and for the whole world, then all I can say is …
Nice guys do finish last.
Exhibit A: Barack Hussein Obama (1961 - ) It’s amazing how far a person can get in America with a little help at key times in their life from powerful and influential people who lift you up as the Manchurian Candidate by directing your life to deconstruct and undermine everything that America’s Founding Fathers gave their lives and sacred honor to uphold: freedom of religion, rule of law, liberty, culture, society, American exceptionalism, constitutionalism, capitalism, Natural Law.
Exhibit B: Ellis Washington (1961 - ) I have been a conservative for 30 years. I wrote my first published essays for our school newspaper on culture and politics in 1982 during Christmas break my senior year in college at DePauw University, where I warned the university faculty and my fellow students of the dangers of liberalism, progressivism and socialism. For 30 years, I wrote books nobody bought or read extolling the virtues of a country I thought stood for God, liberty and truth.
Nice guys do finish last.
Yes, Washington is lamenting that his life hasn't gone as well as Obama's -- which may explain some of Washington's Obama-hate.
Oh, but Washington is not done. The bulk of his column is a letter he wrote to right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly repeating his lament that no decent law school will hire him to teach, albeit in a overly self-aggrandizing way:
By God’s grace I have done intellectual feats that no other liberal intellectual, legal scholar, judge, justice, academic lawyer or PhD I am aware of has achieved. For example, before I completed my first semester in law school (September – December 1991), I had already achieved the following:
Staff editor at the Michigan Law Review (more than two years before I attended law school; outperforming all top-tier second and third-year law students);
Clerked for The 60-Plus Elder Law Clinic (outperforming all top-tier second and third-year law students);
Clerk for The Rutherford Institute (outperforming all top-tier second and third-year law students);
Wrote the manuscripts to two law review articles in 1989 and 1990, which later became five book chapters of my first book, “The Devil is in the Details: Essays on Law, Race, Politics & Religion” (Vantage Press, 1999);
As executive editor, I edited about a dozen books, scholarly journal articles and monographs by historian extraordinaire, professor Arthur R. LaBrew, president of the Michigan Music Research Center.
Finally, I have letters in my files from members of the Supreme Court representing all three jurisprudence and ideological factions on the High Court – liberal-moderate-conservative – who have accepted several of my books and law review articles into their Chambers Library, including two law review articles of mine Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accepted into her private Brown v. Board of Education archives.
Unmentioned by Washington, of course, are his manifesto in which he goes on at length about his inability to get a decent teaching job, as well as his repeated self-portrayal as Socrates, which -- along with his above claim to have "outperform[ed] all top-tier second and third-year law students" in "intellectual feats that no other liberal intellectual, legal scholar, judge, justice, academic lawyer or PhD I am aware of has achieved" -- suggest a narcissistic personality disorder on Washington's part rather than deliberate discrimination on the part of anyone he has encountered.
Washington even includes Schlafly's short, generalized response to his letter as evidence of ... something.
We've never met Washington, so he may indeed be a nice guy. But he is clearly a guy with a highly inflated sense of self-importance, not to mention a seething hatred of Obama. Those are hardly turn-ons for any prospective employer, and it's likely that this, rather than ideological discrimination, is the reason Washington finds himself in his current station.
Noel Sheppard -- Who Called Michael Moore 'Corpulent' -- Complains People Are Making Fun of Christie's Weight Topic: NewsBusters
Apparently, only Noel Sheppard is allowed to make fun of people's weight.
Sheppard complains in a Nov. 24 NewsBusters post that "liberal commentator" Mark Shields "took a cheap shot" about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's weight, harrumphing that "the larger point is how comfortable media members are at making such jokes about Christie. Would they be doing so if he were a Democrat, a woman, or a minority?"
You can tell that Sheppard's outrage about this is utterly manufactured, because he takes cheap shots at Shields' weight, calling him a "portly PBSer," "a guy with more jowls than a Basset hound," and "hardly the poster boy for health and fitness in this country."
And as we've previously noted, Sheppard has previously taken cheap shots at Michael Moore's weight calling him "rather corpulent" and claiming that "this portly schlockumentarian has never met a cheeseburger he'd say no to."
WND Promotes Self-Proclaimed 'Forensic Profiler' Who Hates Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's amazing how much you can blame on someone when you're claiming they're admitting to things unconsciously.
The increasingly discredited WorldNetDaily has been promoting for some time a self-proclaimed forensic profiler named Andrew Hodges, who wrote a book (sold in the WND online store, natch) that through a "unique psycholinguistic technique he calls 'ThoughtPrint Decoding," Hodges can read between the lines and decode the unconscious messages President Obama gives through speeches.
Bob Unruh devotes a Nov. 24 WND article to promoting Hodges' latest claim, that Obama "is confessing to stealing the 2012 president election." How? Well, first, we have to sit through some right-wing boilerplate about purported voter fraud:
In Hodges’ assessment: “Following Obama’s presidential reelection impressive findings have emerged pointing to a fraudulent election. A brief summary reveals precincts in Ohio and Pennsylvania reported greater than 100 percent of registered voters turned out to vote. In 100 precincts in Ohio Obama got 99 percent of the votes. Pennsylvania illegally removed GOP poll inspectors from voting locations. Computer irregularities in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) reverted to a default Obama vote no matter who the voter selected.”
He continued, “Florida prevented absentee ballots from being observed by neutral observers. Military ballots were systematically denied active-duty servicemen and women around the world.”
So he said all he had to do was sit back and wait for the confession.
And since claiming to be able to delve into Obama's subconscious by reading between the lines of Obama's words is Hodges' stock in trade, you can be sure that he will twist anything Obama says into his preconceived conclusion. And indeed he does:
“On election night after initial voting reports declared him the winner, Obama once more unconsciously pointed to a confession. Before his anxious and relieved supporters, Obama spoke of his pride in his daughters but commented, ‘But I will say this for now, one dog’s probably enough’ – on the surface referring back to promising his daughters a puppy after his 2008 victory,” Hodges said.
“But stay with his spontaneous right-brain image. Understand he could have chosen any matter on which to comment and any description but his brilliant unconscious mind which always speaks in a symbolic right-brain language – and carefully chooses its images – selected ‘one dog is enough.’
“Read his confession that America has just elected a dog of a president – and once was enough,” Hodges said.
“He suggests that he’s dogging it as president, faking it as an illegal president in a second way now with a stolen election. That he’s a real ‘dog’ for such deception. The image of a dog further suggests: a pet favored by the media and blind supporters who would not dare to explore his illegality by birth or unfair election; that he will dog or haunt America for another four years because a dog also bites especially a wounded one. (And Obama is deeply wounded beyond belief.) Once again Obama unconsciously points to his deceptive anger and indeed he has bitten/assaulted America in multiple ways, both covert and overt, and plans on more of the same.”
[...]
Further, during a Nov. 9 press conference, “Obama snapped at two senators who had criticized U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice for her erroneous declarations regarding the Benghazi attack. He challenged the senators to ‘come after me,’ not Rice,” Hodges said.
“This matches his hidden instructions in the U.N. speech that American citizens be prepared to protest unfair elections. In both his 2008 Fathers’ Day speech as a candidate and in his inaugural address he unconsciously instructed citizens to confront him as an illegal foreign-born candidate/ president,” Hodges said.
“Obama’s ideas continually reflect a preoccupation with unconscious guilt and a need to be caught and stopped. His behavior and decision-making around the Benghazi tragedy with obvious cover-up suggest more guilt – a need to be questioned, a secret confession of being a weak leader and a president who puts a U.S. ambassador’s life at risk,” said Hodges.
Hodges appears to be unware of the concept of psychological projection, because that's exactly what he's doing here. Hodges is a birther and avid WND reader (he once praised WND editor Joseph Farah for having "observed Obama falling apart beyond belief" during the first debate) who's cloaked his own hatred of Obama with a bit of pseudo-scientific silliness.
Hodges' WND-beloved book is called "The Obama Confession: Secret Fear, Secret Fury." Hodges' own anti-Obama fury isn't secret at all.
MRC Researcher: Allowing Women To Vote Is 'Left-Wing' Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center senior news analyst Scott Whitlock devotes a Nov. 22 NewsBusters post to criticizing a History Channel program on Republican President William McKinley for painting him as "a corporate stooge who took bribes and had his speeches rewritten by business titan John D. Rockefeller." Whitlock's defense of McKinley is less than persuasive: "There's no doubt that Rockefeller, Morgan and Carnegie donated heavily to the McKinley campaign and feared the impact electing the left-wing Bryan would have on business. But the documentary's fanciful dramatic sequences imply it's bribery."
Well, Rockefeller did donate $250,000 to McKinley's 1896 campaign -- which, according to this currency calculator, is equivalent to $6.65 million in today's dollars. That's a lot of money in a time when there was no mass media to buy commercials on.
Whitlock goes on to attack McKinley's opponent, William Jennings Bryan, as having a "left-wing mindset." He cites a Washington Post article noting that Bryan advocated "women’s suffrage, creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of a progressive income tax."
Huh? We weren't aware that allowing women to vote was a "left-wing" concept. Does Whitlock oppose these things?
If he does, that puts him in the same camp as far-right libertarians like Ron Paul, Vox Day, and Ilana Mercer.
WND Columnist Ridiculously Blames Obama for Arrests of 'Artists' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Under the headline "Obama's America: where artists are terrorists," Marisa Martin rants in a Nov. 22 WorldNetDaily column about how artist Geoffrey McGann was "interrogated and publicly humiliated" for wearing a "strange watch" while attempting to board a plane at an airport.
Martin rather innocuously describes McGann's watch as merely having "extra springs, fuses and mechanical pieces, none of them workable or connected, as I understand." Here's a picture of said watch:
Yeah, that shouldn't freak out any TSA person at all.
Martin then launches into you standard right-wing anti-TSA rant:
The National Security Agency seems obsessed with fabricating an enemy that in no way resembles any terrorist, living or dead. They consistently deny that Islamic terrorists are Islamic, which requires some mental dexterity, a lot of paperwork and a contingent of advisers from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Of course, if Islamic terrorists know they're being profiled at airports, they would certainly do their best to not look like an Islamic terrorist, would they not? Martin seems to not have considered that. And she most certainly will do no such thing, because she's moving on to blaming Obama for repressing artists:
This may be a comical fluke by an overly zealous baggage handler and cop, but considering the plight of the pathetic little Egyptian “filmmaker” Mark Basseley Youssef, it is beginning to look like a new day for the rights of expression in America.
Youssef, the state sanctioned scapegoat tossed to our enemies, is living in a U.S.-sponsored hell. An obscure immigrant with an amateurish YouTube promo that was also unknown before the White House targeted him for attack, he was arrested in the middle of night accompanied by with hoards of reporters for … parole violations? We are to led believe that concurrent with the Benghazi mess, this man’s suddenly discovered parole violations are pressing, national news. Local prosecutors were sent to his home and federal brass brought in to deal with the grave dangers of insulting the Prophet.
Is Youssef our poster child, a reverse Red Scare campaign for artists and writers who dare to step out of line?
Obama had just delivered his menacing declaration to the U.N. that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Certainly the White House, the State Department and the U.N. offices of Susan Rice have slapped a zero tolerance sign in the face of anyone who would “offend” Muslims. They have by no means, however, made the same effort to protect the sensibilities or even the lives of Christians and Jews across the globe.
Since when does the White House denounce and micromanage artistic expression in the U.S.?
The answer is easy: Since about 2008.
Martin can't seem to decide whether Youssef, aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the maker of the anti-Muslim film that provoked deadly demonstrations in the Middle East, is an artist or just "pathetic." But then, she goes on to excuse his long criminal history to defend his "artistic expression":
The excuse for the abysmal treatment of Youssef was that he was a “criminal,” a fact loudly trumpeted by the castrated press who has helped with his digital lynching. True enough, he was a small time crook with a string of forgeries, false identities and drugs usage – not unlike some who have served this administration. Eight purported violations were suddenly discovered in September, just after Youssef was accused of being involved in making the “film.”
[...]
Among many who questioned this circus was Los Angeles defense attorney Mark Werksman and law professors Lawrence Rosenthal and Jonathan Turley. Former federal prosecutor Bill Otis noted that probation violators routinely “get a pass on violations far more serious,” while Youssef had every right to make a “perfectly legal video.” Will we keep those rights?
Martin also overlooks the fact that Youssef/Nakoula was never charged with anything relating to his film --he violated his probation on a felony bank fraud case by using using several aliases. Martin offers no evidence that Youssef was treated any differently than anyone else found to have violated probation on a felony. (We also thought that conservatives believed in law and order.)
Youssef drew attention to himself, and his criminal history, by making a deliberately inflammatory film. There's no evidence Youssef was engaging in anything but anti-Muslim propaganda by making this film. Nevertheless, Martin portrayed him as a martyr:
Youssef is imprisoned for a year (high YouTube crimes), still alive but not for lack of fatwas. Western artists must man up and support each other soon before this is commonplace. Artists and writers are especially good at this, exposing ludicrous rules and rash authorities. Who is the Goya or Beckmann for America, or have they all become subordinates and servants for the system?
CNS' Lying Headline: 'Gov't Tells Americans What to Discuss at Holiday Dinner' Topic: CNSNews.com
A Nov. 22 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones carries the headline "Gov't Tells Americans What to Discuss at Holiday Dinner; Declares Thanksgiving 'Family Health History Day'."
That headline suggests coersion or a mandate -- that the government has decreed that these subjects must be discussed. That's a lie, of course -- no such government mandate exists, nor does Jones' article claim there is one.
It seems that CNS has chosen to pander to right-wing readers (and, presumably, hope for a Drudge link) by sticking a false, alarmist headline on Jones' article. How cynical can you get?
President Obama's re-election really seems to have sent WorldNetDaily editor around the bend.
Right Wing Watch reports on a recent radio interview by Farah, in which he fearmongers about purported voter fraud contributing to Obama's re-election (at least twoexamples pushed by WND are contradicted by the facts), which led to Farah fearmongering about the idea that Obama would try to remain in power beyond a second term, saying, " if you don’t believe in the Constitution and you’ve got a President who is not even eligible under the Constitution to serve, anything is possible, isn’t it?"
Farah also attacks New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for praising Obama's response to Hurricane Sandy: "Unfortunately, instead of turning to God he turned to Obama for help, that’s the problem that we have in America."
NewsBusters Finds Bias In Fake News Topic: NewsBusters
The Media Research Center is so obsessed with uncovering "liberal media bias," it's trying to find it in fictional news.
A Nov. 20 NewsBsuters post by Ryan Robertson complains about a story at the satirical news site The Onion, which features how "8-year-old Palestinian boy Walid Suleiman expressed both joy and astonishment Monday that he has yet to be killed in an Israeli military attack." Robertson's complaint? "At no point in the short piece does it reference the terrorist organization Hamas, the death and destruction they cause, or Hamas terrorists' penchant for firing rockets from locations that are full of innocent civilians."
It's amazing how much you can blame on someone when you're claiming they're admitting to things unconsciously.
