Newsmax's Kessler Still Unhappy That Jews Support Obama Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's Ronald Kessler is still trying to pry Jews away from President Obama.
In his Dec. 3 column, Kessler complains that American Jews care more about the economy and health care than they do about Israel, and that they also still like Obama. "Advertisements criticizing President Obama on Israel backfired with Jewish voters and more often solidified support for the president," Kessler wrote, citing polling from the pro-Israel group J Street:
Confirming the results, national surveys conducted by Gallup have found that American Jews have approved of Obama’s job performance throughout his presidency by an average of 14 percentage points more than the rest of the American electorate.
The new poll shows that those who think Obama’s policies toward Israel are hurting him with Jews in America are deluding themselves.
In his Dec. 7 column, Kessler features a spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition who took issue with the J Street poll results. This time around, Kessler labels J Street as "left-leaning," a descriptor he did not apply in his earlier column, and attacks it for being unclear about whether it had accepted money from "left-wing activist" George Soros.
Kessler then touts how the RJC's polling has found that "the Republican share of the Jewish vote jumped nationally in the presidential election from 22 percent to 32 percent."
WND's Farah: Boycott the Military While Obama Is President Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his Dec. 6 WorldNetDaily column:
This may sound like a strange idea coming from someone who loves and respects the U.S. military.
It’s time to deny it our sons and daughters and our grandchildren. For those young enough to serve, it’s time to deny it yourselves. It’s time to boycott the U.S. military.
What am I talking about? Have I completely flipped my lid? Who will protect the nation from foreign enemies in these turbulent times without manpower?
Let me begin with something that put me over the edge: When foreign-serving U.S. military personnel were systematically denied by the Barack Obama administration the right to vote in the 2012 presidential election, I decided I would never encourage any son, daughter or friend of mine to enlist voluntarily in the U.S. military again – at least during the next four years.
That was a disgusting, self-serving and deliberate political act by a White House hell-bent to maintain power by hook or by crook. And it denied those risking their lives for their country the sacrosanct right to participate in our electoral system.
That was it for me.
Farah provides no evidence that "foreign-serving U.S. military personnel were systematically denied by the Barack Obama administration the right to vote in the 2012 presidential election." Indeed, FactCheck.org has debunked the idea that Obama tried to curb early military voting and discredited a claim that delayed military ballots would have swung the vote for Mitt Romney as coming from a parody blog.
But Farah is not done ranting, because he hates Obama so, so much:
I don’t want to see the best and the brightest of this generation sacrificed at the altar of political correctness, promotion of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, same-sex marriages at West Point, women in combat, interventionism all over the globe without regard to national security interests or even humanitarian reasons.
It’s time to just say no to Obama playing God with our sons and daughters.
He demonstrated he has no commitment even to saving the lives of Americans under threat in Libya. That should be the central purpose of the U.S. military.
He clearly doesn’t recognize the gravest threats to our country – insolvency and global jihad. In fact, he seems to do everything in his power to foster both.
As a parent, would you encourage your children to work for a boss who is corrupt and dangerous?
I wouldn’t. And I won’t.
The same words could probably apply to Farah -- as an inveterate liar, he is corrupt and dangerous. Or he would be if anybody believed what his website published.
CNS Story on CIA Seeking Gay Recruits Illustrated With 'Dykes on Bikes' Picture Topic: CNSNews.com
In October, CNSNews.com dishonestly claimed that the federal government was giving "preference" in hiring same-sex domestic partners of government employees at the U.S. Embassy in Libya; in fact, the preference was for "qualified U.S. citizens who were family members of U.S. government employees," which included same-sex domestic partners. Now, CNS is going for a different type of dishonesty in smearing gays.
A Dec. 4 CNS article by Penny Starr on the CIA is "actively seeking recruits from a new demographic – the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community " is accompanied by an Associated Press picture of a group of "Dykes on Bikes" taken during San Francisco's annual gay pride parade in June.
What does one have to do with the other? Starr's article doesn't explain. Apparently, CNS believes all potential gay CIA employees will ride motorcycles during a gay pride parade.
Remember, CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, has a pretty heavy anti-gay agenda.
WND's One-Sided Story on Discrimination Lawsuit Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh uses a Dec. 4 WorldNetDaily article to pull off yet another one-source wonder, this time on the lawsuit filed by a woman who claims she was fired from her job as a university human resources administrator because she wrote a letter to the editor criticizing gay rights.
Unruh quoted only representatives of the law firm representing the woman, the right-wing American Freedom Law Center. While he quotes the AFLC bashing a ruling dismissing the woman's lawsuit, at no point does he quote, or even link to, the ruling itself.
Thus, Unruh has free rein to frame the lawsuit as the woman being fired for "expressing an opinion that conflicts with the institution’s adopted political perspective" and not telling the rest of the story.
Meanwhile, actual journalists at the Toledo Blade quoted from the ruling dismissing the lawsuit:
" … The balance of [Ms. Dixon's] interest in making a comment of public concern is clearly outweighed by the University's interest as her employer in carrying out its own objectives. Therefore, [Ms. Dixon] has failed to establish that her speech was protected," the judge wrote. "[Ms. Dixon] also claims that she was fired for violating an impermissibly vague speech policy. However, the damage she did to her ability to perform her job and to the University provide ample justification for her termination."
In other words, the woman's attack on gay rights raised questions about her ability to perform her human resources fairly and without bias, threatening the university's reputation and justifying its decision to terminate her.
Unruh, of course, mentions nothing about this aspect of the case -- he's clearly too sympathetic to the woman's side to tell the full truth.
WND's Prelutsky Lies About Obama, Capital Gains Tax Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's a sign of both Burt Prelutsky's lack of interest in the facts and WorldNetDaily's lack of interest in copyediting that Prelutsky's Dec. 4 column repeatedly misspells Warren Buffett's name as "Buffet." It's also a sign of both that this line appears:
Not content with having helped finance Obama’s re-election, Buffet has spoken out in favor of Obama’s desire to raise the tax rate on capital gains to something like 45 percent. He insists with a straight face it would do nothing to curtail investment. Oh, sure, just like the financial cliff and Obamacare haven’t done anything to curtail investment. I knew that Buffet had a head filled with rocks, but does he also live under one?
In fact, Obama has proposed raising capital gains tax rates to 20 percent for the two highest income brackets -- not 45 percent.
Seems that the person with a head filled with rocks is Prelutsky.
That increasingly desperate attitude has been codified in the new issue of WND's Whistleblower magazine, the theme of which is "THE AMERICAN TRIBULATION: Can the greatest nation in history survive 4 more years of Obama?"
Note that the cover superimposes debris from the 9/11 World Trade Center collapse onto a backdrop of Washington, blaming him for ... something:
The promotion for the issue is equally apocalyptic:
Unthinkable. A cataclysmic disaster. The end of America as we know it.
That pretty much sums up how millions of Americans regard the re-election of Barack Obama.
Actually, that pretty much sums up the view in the WND offices after it destroyed its own reputation trying -- and failing -- to destroy Obama.
But WND wasn't done with the scaremongering, complete with repeating a discredited claim about regulations and proclaiming that only people who hate Obama as much as Joseph Farah and David Kupelian do are "right-thinking":
But amidst all of this sound and fury, the big question remains: What do the tens of millions of Americans – those who see Obama’s re-election as the national catastrophe it really is – do now? With four more years of the Obama juggernaut, with government still spending amounts of money only physicists can comprehend, with an average of 68 new regulations being imposed on Americans every single day, with devastating economic meltdown imminent and the world daily becoming a far more dangerous place because of the U.S. president’s scandalous failure of leadership, what can and should right-thinking people do now?
This difficult question is dealt with forthrightly and comprehensively in the December issue of WND’s acclaimed Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE AMERICAN TRIBULATION: Can the greatest nation in history survive 4 more years of Obama?”
“This was a challenging issue to put together,” said Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian. “We didn’t want to sugar-coat the harsh reality of what has happened, but neither is it cause for good people to fall prey to hopelessness, anger or depression, nor to give up or drop out. Quite the opposite. This issue presents a totally realistic assessment of where we are now, but shows, almost paradoxically, how there is real hope and a definite way forward.
“‘THE AMERICAN TRIBULATION’ provides real direction and inspiration for readers who desire to preserve the America in which they grew up.”
Nah, not so much, unless you count inspiring fear and hatred in its readers as "inspiration."
MRC Complains New Sitcom Is Too Gay-Friendly Topic: Media Research Center
For the second time in a week, the Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute devotes a post to hating gays.
A Dec. 4 CMI post by Lauren Thompson complained about how gay-friendly Reba McEntire's new sitcom "Malibu Country" is and that McEntire "crowed about how much she cherished her gay following and the show’s gay themes." Thompson grumbled, "'Malibu Country' is one of the many shows on ABC that cater to the gay agenda."
Thompson doesn't explain what this "gay agenda" is, but she and her CMI cohorts (like Paul Wilson) do love to go on about it.
Meanwhile ... Topic: Newsmax
Media Matters details how Dick Morris' Super PAC for America raised $3.7 million in the month before the election -- and paid $1.7 million of that to Newsmax Media, some of which appears to have made its way back to Morris in the form of renting Morris' mailing list (which Newsmax administers) to his super PAC.
WND's Robert Ringer Has Issues With Women Topic: WorldNetDaily
Robert Ringer doesn't like women, apparently.
In a Dec. 5 WorldNetDaily column in which he purports to be in "Andy Rooney" mode, Ringer unleashes a hateful tirade against hose who appear on Forbes magazine's list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, and one who's not:
No. 2: Hillary (“Hilla the Hun”) Clinton. Hillary is the ultimate fraud. She’s an accomplished liar, a thief and an embarrassment as secretary of state. The only solace we can take is that she and Bubba genuinely believe that Obama is going to support her bid for the presidency in 2016 as a payback for their supporting his candidacy in 2012. Instead, what they’ll get is his middle finger.
No. 7: Michelle (Big Mac and Fries) Obama. You don’t need any input from me on this one. Best not to go there.
No. 14: Lady Gaga. I have never heard this decadent humanoid sing and wouldn’t know her face if I saw her on the street. But, please America …
No. 32: Beyonce. Brilliant, thoughtful, intellectual – a bold, fresh piece of … well, you know what I mean.
Hard as it is to believe, the princess of frumpiness, Sandra Fluke, didn’t make the Forbes list. Even so, she’s on course (as in intercourse) to be the first recipient of the Nobel Contraceptive Piece Prize. Rest assured that once this caricature of every man’s worst fear about his upcoming blind date gets her masters in contraception, she will be a force to be reckoned with.
That's followed up with this:
Last night I had a nightmare about being held captive by terrorists in a 10-by-10 room with no windows, and my captors told me they were going to throw one of four things into the room with me, to be left there until I died: 1) Rachel Maddow, 2) Hilla the Hun, 3) Frumpy Fluke, or 4) a cup of hemlock.
Then, in a show of mercy, they said they would allow me to choose which one I preferred. It was an easy decision. As I drank the poisonous hemlock, I woke up in a cold sweat thinking about what my fate might have been had I made a different choice.
Yep, the man's got issues with women.
Ringer is not the only WND columnist with that affliction; Vox Day has majorissues as well.
NewsBusters' Motley Bizarrely Likens Chevy Volt to 'Obama Phone' Topic: NewsBusters
Seton Motley turns in another fact-challenged rant about General Motors in his Dec. 4 NewsBusters post, this time centered around the picayune complaing that the Chevrolet Volt tops customer-satisfaction surveys. It doesn't take long for Motley to whine about "government money" being spent to develop the Volt, which he insists is "a lot like the Obama Phone."
Actually, the current federal program of subsidized phone service was created in 1996 and expanded to cover cell phones in 2008, before Obama took office. It's funded by surcharges on phone bills, not the federal government.
From there, Motley launches into more false or misleading claims. He whines that "more-than-$3 billion-in-federal-government-subsidies-alone" on the Volt, ignoring that development of the Volt began in 2007, well before the government got involved with GM.
He also claims "The Volt costs GM $89,000 to manufacture." In fact, GM has pointed out that this number includes development costs, which are spread over the vehicle's lifespan -- meaning that amount per vehicle drops with every Volt sold -- as well as use of the vehicle's techology in other GM products, which will spread those costs out even further.
WorldNetDaily has pushed the completely false claim that President Obama won one Ohio County with "108 percent of the voters registered." But facts don't matter to WND, because it's still pushing it.
A Dec. 2 WND article promoting its meaningless petition demanding an investigation of "fraud and abuse in America’s election system" claims that "And in one Ohio county – widely considered ground zero for the election – Obama received 106,258 votes from 98,213 eligible voters – an impossible 108 percent of the vote."
In fact, the county in question did not have more votes than registered voters. As per usual, WND offers no evidence to back up its claim.
WND also cites "the 59 different Philadelphia voting divisions in which Mitt Romney received zero votes compared to Obama’s 19,605" as evidence of fraud. In fact, the idea of these precincts being an example of voter fraud has been discredited; the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the precincts are "almost exclusively black" with very few registered Republicans.
Curiously, WND fails to mention the fact that there are precincts in Utah where Obama recevied no votes as additional evidence of voter fraud.
NewsBusters Pretends Anti-Immigration Group Isn't Controversial Topic: NewsBusters
Ryan Robertson uses a Dec. 5 NewsBusters post to complain that Roy Beck, leader of the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, was being unfairly portrayed in an interview in MSNBC. Robertson uncritically insists that "Numbers USA is a grassroots organization and an influential lobbyist group that concerns itself with immigration reform and the threat of mass amnesty."
What "threat of mass amnesty" is Robertson talking about? He doesn't say. As we've previously pointed out, the comprehensive immigration reform that has been put forward by the Obama administration is not "amnesty."
While Robertson doesn't actually quote much of anything from the interview, he nevertheless insisted that MSNBC had "no intention of portraying him in a positive light," adding that "rather than consider it an anti-amnesty organization, in predictable fashion [the interviewer] presented the group as 'racist' in motivation," citing claims from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In fact, the SPLC has documented how Beck has downplayed his work for John Tanton, a figure in the anti-immigration movement linked to white nationalists. The two are so closely linnked that Tanton has called Beck his "heir apparent." Robertson made no mention of Tanton in his blog post.
WND's Farah Flip-Flops, Is Now A 'Conservative' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has long denied is a conservative. In 2002, for example, he wrote a column titled "Why I am not a conservative," in which he declared: "I’m not a 'conservative' because I see precious little left in this world worth conserving. Conservatives, from my experience, do not make good freedom fighters. They seem to think a victory is holding back attacks on liberty or minimizing them. They are forever on the defensive – trying to conserve or preserve an apple that is rotten to the core."
Conservatives are too wimpy and not far-right enough for Farah: "Conservatives, it seems to me, only forestall the inevitable slide into tyranny. I don’t want to forestall it. I want to prevent it. I want to reverse that slide. I want to restore the dream that was America."
But Farah is quite willing to call himself a "conservative" when the right opportunity. A Dec. 3 WND article by Unruh details how "More than 100 conservative leaders from across the nation have dispatched a letter to GOP members in Congress encouraging them to “negotiate from a position of strength” with Democrats regarding the trillions of dollars in tax increases Barack Obama is demanding." One of those "conservative leaders" who signed the letter is Farah.
Unruh also does some shilling for his boss, noting that WND's "separate 'No More Red Ink' campaign explains what authority the GOP currently holds as the majority party of the U.S. House, where all national spending bills must originate."
This may be nothing more than an attempt at trying to cash in, but it may also be a bit of reputation repair. After four years of pathological Obama hatred turned WND into a website that nobody believes, and Farah could certainly like to rebuild a little credibility by associating himself with the kind of mainstream conservatives he normally prefers to disdain.
If Farah is so willing to flip-flop on his ideological affiliation in order to make a few bucks and/or save his bacon, can he really be trusted. Farah's newfound conservative compatriots might want to ask themselves that question.
Is there a war on Christmas in the city of Brussels?
The Belgian capital has replaced the city’s traditional 65-foot-tall Christmas tree in the center of the city with an even bigger structure of abstract modernist art, “Electronic Fir.”
Only at CNS can an abstract Christmas tree be considered a "war on Christmas." But then, CNS is a part of the Media Research Center, which has a history of hostility toward art it doesn't like.
Conservatives are too wimpy and not far-right enough for Farah: "Conservatives, it seems to me, only forestall the inevitable slide into tyranny. I don’t want to forestall it. I want to prevent it. I want to reverse that slide. I want to restore the dream that was America."
