NewsBusters' Finkelstein Doesn't Know What Amnesty Means Topic: NewsBusters
Mark Finkelstein writes in his Jan. 29 NewsBusters post of "the current proposals on 'the pathway to citizenship'—AKA amnesty—being floated."
Hate to break it to you, Mark, but creating a path to citizenship is NOT amnesty.
The Gang of 8 immigration reform proposal, for instance, does not call for any sort of amnesty -- which most non-demagogic activists would describe as citizenship without preconditions. ABC reports:
Arguably the most significant detail is the inclusion of a pathway to citizenship for many of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants, but the process of obtaining citizenship is neither easy nor short.
Under the "Gang of Eight" plan, undocumented immigrants would be required to register with the federal government. Those without a criminal record would be eligible for "probationary legal status" if they pass a background check and pay fines and back taxes. The status would allow them to live and work legally in the U.S., but they would remain ineligible for federal benefits such as welfare of Medicaid.
Does that sound like amnesty to anyone? Only to people like Finkelstein, apparently. but calling it "amnesty" does not make it so.
Erik Rush Still Not Bringing His Prime Crazy To WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
Erik Rush still isn't bringing his most insane conpsiracy theories to WorldNetDaily.
Rush uses a Jan. 25 column at Canada Free Press to rant that President Obama wants to take our guns away, just like Mao and Stalin did:
Obama, with the eager cooperation of the American press and the anti-gun lobby, are creating the perception of Second Amendment proponents as manifestly evil. Not misguided, not wrong – but evil. As such, he will set the stage for all “reasonable” Americans to support the wholesale dismantling of the Second Amendment, and if this means wholesale firearms confiscation and the bloodshed to which this will no doubt give rise, so much the better. This will give him legitimacy in his move of declaring martial law – in fact, he will have “no choice,” so it will appear.
This will be, as we’ve seen in so many other nations, the move across the threshold into totalitarian rule. We must never forget that this is a person who grew up studying and admiring Mao, Lenin, Stalin, and Castro – men who murdered hundreds of millions in their ascent to total dominion over their respective nations. Just this week, it was reported that a former senior military staffer revealed Obama’s new litmus test for top military brass: Can they give the order to fire on American citizens?
P.T. Barnum (of Barnum and Bailey Circus fame) was a practiced con artist. He taught his people well in the art of distraction; while folks were watching the right hand, the left hand was pulling the trick off right under the nose of the audience. Amazed, they would declare in wonder, “How did they do that?” The answer, of course, was that it happened right under their noses, while they were watching, and they had just been misdirected. Those who have researched the President’s multitudinous executive orders alone know that the Obama administration has mastered this technique.
There is no real discussion in America about gun ownership in America at any level that matters; Obama will confiscate them all – or at least he will attempt to do so. The question is: Will America see how it is being tricked before it is too late?
If I was WND, I'd be demanding that Rush publish his most crazy stuff at the home of his column.
Penny Starr's Jan. 23 CNSNews.com article on Ted Nugent's statements at a gun show stated that he "criticized New York City’s Democratic Mayor Michael Bloomberg for focusing the gun control debate in the United States on deer hunting."
But Nugent said a lot more. As Media Matters documents, Nugent also ranted about President Obama, claiming he is "actually is attempting to re-implement the tyranny of King George that we escaped from in 1776. And if you want another Concord Bridge, I got some buddies."
Curiously, Starr did not find this highly provocative statement newsworthy.
Meanwhile, a Jan. 23 CNS blog post by Gregory Gwyn-Williams Jr. alludes to Nugent's inflammatory statement, but he waters it down by claiming that Nugent said only that "anyone who seeks to undermine the 2nd Amendment must be treated like King George." In fact, Nugent was specifically referring to Obama with his King George reference.
For reasons known only to them, WorldNetDaily has decided to illustrate a story about President Obama's plans for immigration reform with an image doctored to include Obama in a "1984"-style setting.
Here's the front-page promotion for it:
The article by Taylor Rose contains the same image:
Rose repeatedly uses the word "amnesty" to describe Obama's plan for comprehensive reform, even though the word implies a pardon without preconditions, something Rose knows is not happening since he nonsensically writes that Obama will have "requirements for amnesty."
NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard loves his headline cliches, but he has managed to outdo himself: He wrote three posts in three hours with the word "schools" in it.
Aaron Klein Anonymous Source Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein asserts in a Jan. 27 WorldNetDaily article that "President Barack Obama has already secretly pledged to the Palestinians he will press Israel into a new round of so-called land-for-peace negotiations." His source? An unnamed, untraceable, anonymous "top Palestinian Authority negotiator." No other backup for his claim is provided, and no named souces whatsoever appear in Klein's article.
Bozell Ignorantly Gloats Over Imminent Demise Of 'Liberal Media' Topic: Media Research Center
For someone who heads an organization purportedly dedicated to "media research," Brent Bozell knows stunningly little about the media.
An interview with Bozell is quoted thusly in a Jan. 25 CNSNews.com blog post:
"Think of a cornered rat. When you do have a rat in a corner, what does that rat do, instinctively? It goes for the jugular," Bozell said, predicting the traditional liberal media's ultimate demise:
"This is what's happening with the press. They're losing numbers - dramatically - the networks have lost fifty percent of their audience. Newsweek was sold for a dollar and they're closing it down now. The NYT could be liner for a parakeet cage."
You know who else got sold for a dollar? The Washington Times. As we've detailed, neither of the conservative newspapers in Washingtion, the Times and the Examiner, are subject to a free market like the New York Times and the Washington Post -- they're owned by rich benefactors who can afford to lose millions of dollars (billions in the case of the Wasghington Times) in the service of generating biased journalism to promote an ideology.
Bozell manages to display an amazing degree of self-unawareness as the interview continues:
Bozell said that liberal media won't see the light and change - they'll just get "ugly" and more vicious "as the ship goes down":
"Their numbers are becoming dramatically smaller. So, what's their reaction? They could look at those number and say, my goodness, look at Fox: it's going up. The only newspaper in the world that seems to be doing well is the Wall Street Journal. Maybe, they're doing something right.
"They're not going to do that. They're going to get more and more militant and fighting back as the ship goes down. Look at CNN, MSNBC."
Wait -- Bozell just likened the media to cornered rats, and he's complaining about media viciousness? Yes -- the terminally angry activist who likened President Obama to a "skinny ghetto crackhead" is complaining about how the media is so mean.
Is Bozell that stupid, or is he just a mendacious liar? We report, you decide.
Hillary Clinton Derangement Syndrome, WorldNetDaily Division Topic: WorldNetDaily
In addition, liars like Hillary Clinton need to pay a price for their contempt, incompetence and deceit.
There is a remedy. Congress can and should throw her in prison for a while to see if that refreshes her failing memory and jogs her mind as to the facts the American people demand to know about Benghazi-gate.
I don’t care whether or not she is still secretary of state. It makes no difference. She was, like Barack Obama himself, responsible for the disaster in Libya. Even while making excuses at every opportunity, she claimed responsibility.
This week, during the congressional hearings concerning the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally testified about her role in the breakdown of security at the consulate, which resulted in the deaths of our ambassador and three others. At several points during even the mild questioning about why she had not as secretary of state taken steps to beef up security despite warnings before the terrorist attack, Hillary lost control and bore her vicious fangs.
To me, and I hope the nation and the world, this shows again why she is not fit to be president. If she has a place to fill, the more fitting venue would be a prison cell, lest we not remember who she really is.
If I were in the Foreign Service, I would be very worried about my security after her testimony. As an American, I am worried about our national security.
Do you realize we know more about Barbara Walters’ fall and cut head than we do about Hillary Clinton’s reported fainting spell, fall and concussion?
Think about it.
[...]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, we’re told, had a stomach flu, then was dehydrated (how did they know?) and fainted (where?) and hit her head (on what?)
We’re told she wasn’t hospitalized (why?), and doctors said she should work at home.
Then we’re told she had a blood clot in her head (how did they find out at home?), but it wasn’t serious. Apparently she was hospitalized, but she’s out now, wearing glasses that show modifications to correct double vision.
Like it or not, this appears to be another administration cover-up. What are they hiding about Clinton’s mysterious illness, then her fall and the outcome?
-- Barbara Simpson, Jan. 27 WND column
It’s easy to understand why Hillary is the bitter harridan she has become. At the dawn of what was to become her career she became involved with a serial philanderer who has no respect for law, propriety and/or women.
Hillary the radical feminist whose theism dictated that men were only needed for sperm donations not only became involved with a man who represented everything feminists condemned, but she became the very thing feminists accuse stay-at-home mothers and conservative women of being, i.e., dependent on men for their advancement.
As Hillary looks back in the mirror of her life, she sees embarrassment, abandonment, and, worst of all, she realizes that she has had to swallow her pride time after time as the pernicious lecher she married was accused of philandering and sexual assaults.
She made the decision to stay with him because it was the only way she was going to have even a remote chance of becoming the public figure she has become.
MRC Transgender Freakout Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's ongoing transgender freakout continues with a Jan. 24 Culture & Media Institute item by Kristine Marsh complaining about a Huffington Post piece about how a young transgendered girl wrote an essay about President Obama not mentioning transgenders in his inaugural speech.
Marsh takes umbrage at the mere existence o fthe 11-year-old Sadie, sneering that she is "a boy pretending to be a girl," then bashing her mother for purportedly having "inflicted the condition on her child."
Marsh then rants: "Unfortunately there is a disturbing trend of parents encouraging gender confusion in children as young as three or four, liberal educators and activists working to normalize it, and plenty in the media happy to enable them." One of those links goes to one of the MRC's most bizarre transgender freakouts, in which a J. Crew designer was accused of "blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children" for painting her young son's toenails pink.
Is Farah Really Willing To 'Close The Chapter' On Birtherism? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah made an interesting statement in his Jan. 20 WorldNetDaily column.
After ranting yet again about the records President Obama has not released, including "his legitimate birth records, which, according to the only law enforcement investigation ever conducted on the matter determined those he has produced are fraudulent," he adds:
Now, you can agree with me and Sheriff Joe Arpaio on the last one or not. But it really doesn’t matter. In fact, I’m even willing to close the chapter on the birth certificate matter. Though the question remains, how is this guy eligible to be president when he, according to his own story, is the son of a Kenyan goat herder and an American woman too young to bestow natural born citizenship on her son – no matter where he was born? And why all the secrecy about something as innocent as a birth certificate?
Let's take apart the false statements and false hubris in this statement.
First, since Obama was born in the United States -- and WND has forwarded no credible evidence that he wasn't -- he didn't need his mother to transfer citizenship to him. The clause Farahis referring to applies only if the birth takes place outside of the U.S.
Second, Arpaio's investigation has been discredited, but Farah doesn't want to tell you that.
Third, if Farah really does want to "close the chapter on the birth certificate matter" -- an offer that suggests he knows how discredited his birther conspiracies are -- he should do so by telling his readers that it is discredited, that he was wrong to pursue this obsession for so long after it was discredited, and issuing an abject apology for spending nearly five years reporting things he knew or should have known to be false, thus completely destroying whatever credibility his "news" organization may have had.
It's obvious that Farah will do no such thing -- he seems to think that he has enough gullible readers who will believe anything he says. That's why there's a Jan. 24 WND article featuring Arpaio investigation leader Mike Zullo challenging Colin Powell, who has dismissed birthers, to come "at my expense to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, and I will sit down with him and show him the evidence that we have accumulated that brings us to the only logical conclusion – that this document (Obama’s birth certificate) is manufactured."
It seems that WND still believes birtherism is a winner. There's no way Farah will ever "close the chapter."
WND's Klein Just Can't Stop Smearing Vartan Gregorian Topic: WorldNetDaily
In 2011, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein wrote a number of smear pieces on Vartan Gregorian, attempting to portray a respected scholar who has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a radical Muslim who's working to undermine America.
Klein can't leave well enough alone -- he uses a Jan. 24 WND article to repeat those smears and add new ones.
Klein's dubious hook this time is that Gregorian is on the board of Qatar Foundation International, which is working with the federal government "to facilitate an online program aiming to connect all U.S. schools with classrooms abroad by 2016." Klein claims that the foundation "is close to the Muslim Brotherhood." His evidence? "In January 2012, it launched the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics under the guidance of Tariq Ramadan, who serves as the center’s director. Ramadan is the grandson of the notorious founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna."
In fact, Ramadan is no terrorist, and he has condemned terrorism as being against the teachings of Islam. Klein offers no evidence that Ramadan plays any role whatsoever in the Muslim Brotherhood today.
Klein goes back in time to repeat the false and baseless guilt-by-assocation smears that marred his earlier reporting:
He claimed that Gregorian "was appointed by Obama in 2009 as a White House fellow." In fact, he was named to the board of the organization that oversees the White House Fellows program.
He claimd that "Gregorian was central in [Bill] Ayers’ recruitment of Obama to serve as the first chairman of the project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a job in which Obama worked closely on a regular basis with Ayers." In fact, The New York Times reported that, "according to several people involved," Ayers "played no role" in choosing Obama.
Klein claimed that "Gregorian is closely tied to the Muslim leaders behind the controversial Islamic cultural center to be built near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks" because he is on the board of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. And so is Michael Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani, all four living former presidents, and 9/11 widow Debra Burlingame, to name a few.
Klein repeated criticism of a book on Islam by Gregorian issued by the Middle East Forum, without explaining that it's an anti-Muslim group or that the quotes of Gregorian being cited are misleading and out of context.
We wrote about Klein's falsehoods and smears a year and a half ago, yet he couldn't be bothered to correct the record. Copying-and-pasting is for bad and lazy reporters -- which Klein apparently is.
A special shout-out to Danette Clark and Brenda J. Elliott, who contributed "additional research" to Klein's article. Apparently, they're just as slovenly about facts as Klein.
MRC's Thatcher Doesn't Understand What A Newspaper Editorial Is Topic: Media Research Center
Liz Thatcher concludes a Jan. 21 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute item complaining 18 of the top 20 newspapers in the U.S. "pushed gun control in editorials" by ranting:
It shouldn’t be too surprising that newspapers campaigned so aggressively for stricter gun control laws. They, like other proclaimed journalists, have lost touch with what their job actually is – to report the news. Instead, many of our leading newspapers have become advocacy outlets for the left. Ironically, these newspapers have lost respect for the Constitution that gives them the right to operate freely.
Thatcher apparently doesn't understand the difference between a news article an an editorial. Editorials are not for "reporting the news" -- they're for expressing an opinion.
Further, in calling for increased gun control does not equate to newspapers having "lost respect for the Constitution that gives them the right to operate freely." Even conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doesn't believe Second Amendment rights are absolute.
Nevertheless, Thatcher bashed the New York Times for supposedly having "completely dismissed the Second Amendment" by stating that "he Second Amendment does not provide each American with an absolute right to own guns."
In the comments for her article, Thatcher reacted to criticism of it by stating, "I'm an analyst, not a journalist." We'll agree that Thatcher is not a journalist, but judging by her errors of fact and logic, she's not much of an analyst either.
WND Still Baselessly Blaming Drugs for Newtown Massacre Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we've noted, WorldNetDaily is already blaming psychiatric drugs for Adam Lanza committing the Newtown massacre, even though it isn't known what drugs, if any, Lanza had been taking.
WND takes that up a notch with a Jan. 22 article by Jerome Corsi featuring a doctor, David Healy, who is fearmongering about the drugs:
In an exclusive in-person interview in New York City with WND, London-based Dr. David Healy criticized pharmaceutical companies that have made billions of dollars marketing Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, known as SSRIs.
Psychotropic drugs “prescribed for school children cause violent behavior,” Healy stated.
The drugs are widely used in the U.S. as antidepressants by doctors working in the mental health field and increasingly by primary care doctors, he noted.
Healey insisted the problem today is that doctors working with schools to control the behavior of children are inclined to prescribe SSRI drugs without serious consideration of adverse consequences.
“The pharmaceutical companies made these drugs with the idea of making money,” he said. “There’s a wide range of problems when it comes to looking at these drugs for children. Very few children have serious problems that warrant treatment with pills that have the risks SSRI drugs have.”
The drugs can make children “aggressive and hostile,” he noted.
[...]
WND contended that putting more mental illness screening into schools would actually increase the incidence of school shootings, not reduce the violence.
“You can draw a line between the number of child psychiatrists in the United States and the number of school shootings, and you will find that both have gone up in the same direction at the same time,” he said.
He sees a “propaganda campaign” being conducted in the U.S. in the wake of the Aurora, Colo., cinema shooting and the Newtown, Conn., school shooting asserting gun violence is being caused by mental illness and could be stopped by additional school programs that screen for it.
“If school children are screened for mental illness problems, this presumably will lead more medical doctors to put more students on more pills,” he said. “I would predict then the outcome of more school screenings for mental illness will be more mass killings, even if the guns are taken away and the mass killings are not done with guns.”
Corsi doesn't mention that Healy has been roundly criticized for his excessive alarmism about drugs.
Writing at Forbes, John LaMattina states that Healy insists that "any drug approved since 1990 should be considered a possible candidate for late side-effects":
Where does he get this? What makes 1990 special? His implication is that the studies done in support of new drug applications (NDAs) prior to 1990 were more thorough and vigorous. This is absurd. Furthermore, his singling out of biologic drugs makes no sense at all. The fact of the matter is that the pre-approval testing of drugs in the 1980s was far less vigorous than what now happens. Back then, a new drug to treat the pain of arthritis would only need to complete 90 days of continuous testing before approval. Similarly, lipid lowering drugs were approved with only LDL lowering properties and a year of patient exposure. This same paradigm held for novel anti-diabetic agents where simple blood glucose lowering and 12 months of testing in patients were the norm. Today, for drugs such as these that are to be used chronically, sponsors are required to show that their new medicine actually improves the long-term health of a patient. Thus, pre-approval testing to show the reduction of heart attacks and strokes for drugs to treat obesity, diabetes or heart disease are needed – studies that generally involve tens of thousands of patients to be dosed for 3 – 5 years. Such studies are needed not just for FDA approval but also for convincing payers to reimburse patients for these new drugs.
The hurdles that must be overcome to get a new drug approved are higher than they have been in the history of medicine. Does this mean that new drugs are totally safe? Absolutely not. But to say that newer drugs are less safe than older ones is incorrect.
Corsi doesn't mention the controversy over his views, but then, fearmongering is what Corsi and WND are all about.
Newsmax Goes Into Radio, Hires Steve Malzberg Topic: Newsmax
A Jan. 25 Newsmax article reports that Steve Malzberg has been signed to host a radio show that Newsmax plans to syndicate as well as simulcast on its website. Newsmax has even set up a new company for the venture, Newsmax Broadcasting LLC. Newsmax has more:
“The Steve Malzberg Show” will be the channel’s first live-streaming TV show. Newsmax plans to develop a cost-free 24/7 TV streaming channel over the next several months.
The Steve Malzberg radio and TV simulcast will be unique for talk, focused on breaking news and featuring fast-changing topics and guests, combined with cutting-edge viewer and listener interaction through the Internet.
[...]
Newsmax Broadcasting is building a terrestrial radio network of affiliated stations for the Steve Malzberg show. Stations that affiliate will be supported by Newsmax and its 10 million viewer audience across the nation.
Malzberg has been without a steady radio gig since being ousted at New York's WOR radio in September 2011. Malzberg has written a column for Newsmax off and on since 2001.
This isn't Newsmax's first broadcasting venture -- it bought time on CNBC in 2001 to air an infomercial-slash-news program that, near as we can tell, made only a single appearance despite plans to do it at least monthly.
