WND Weekly (nee WorldNetWeekly), WorldNetDaily's attempt to generate a little income by repackaging its content into an e-magazine form, is no stranger to creating provocative, publicity-generating covers -- witness this cover image of Obama looking not unlike he's been shot in the face.

WND is at it again with the latest issue, which depicts Hillary Clinton with the tongue of a serpent:

Posted by Terry K. at 5:21 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Cliff Kincaid loves his dubious right-wing fringe figures (Scott Lively, Jared Taylor, Joel Gilbert), so it's not a surprise that he would rush to the defense of another one, Glenn Beck.

Kincaid's May 8 Accuracy in Media column is dedicated to echoing Beck's very narrow defense that he really wasn't depicting New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg as a Nazi during his NRA speech, he was trying to depict Bloomberg as a communist, and that there is a huge difference between the two. Kincaid insists that any claim that Beck was invoking Nazi imagery is "demonstrably false" and huffed that one writer who did make that claim would not "retract his charge after he was informed by Accuracy in Media that his account was flatly inaccurate."

But Kincaid conveniently overlooks the fact that while Beck did apparently model the image on what Kincaid insisted is a "very famous" pose by Vladimir Lenin, it's Naziism, not communism, that's infamous for the raised-arm salute, and it's not a shock that that people not steeped in Soviet propaganda -- that is, the vast majority of America -- would see Beck's image as echoing Nazis, not communists.

Nevertheless, after quoting a writer who pointed that out, Kincaid insisted that the image "is clearly not the same thing as the Nazi salute given by Hitler."

Kincaid was also offended that Jewish groups were calling on Beck to apologize, and that Media Matters (disclosure: my employer) "clearly hoped to resurrect the controversy over Beck, when he was with Fox News, having identified George Soros as having been a Nazi collaborator in his youth." But Kincaid didn't mention that Beck's attack on Soros is, to coin a phrase, demonstrably false.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:59 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, May 10, 2013 5:24 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

CNSNews.com isn't the only ConWeb operation to have promoted that Heritage Foundation study on immigration without mentioning its flaws or the racially charged rhetoric of the study's co-author.

A May 7 WND article by John Bennett touted how "Amnesty will cost American taxpayers at least $6.3 trillion in welfare and other public benefits," featuring an audio interview with report co-author Jason Richwine. But Bennett has not lifted a finger to report any of the reaction and fallout from the report:

• The report has massive flaws that even co-author Robert Rector acknowledges: It not only doesn't examine the entire Senate immigration bill it purports to be looking at, it leaves out any examination of provisions designed to help the economy.
  
• Richwine wrote a 2009 doctoral dissertation titled "IQ and Immigration Policy" claiming that "there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races," adding, "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against."

Laziness or censorship a la WND's hiding of all facts that discredit its birther obession? We report, you decide.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:36 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Erik Rush -- no stranger to Obama derangement -- tops himself in his May 8 WorldNetDaily column:

Earlier this week, Fox News Channel analyst Brit Hume asserted that for the investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, “to become the scandal it surely deserves to be,” it will require relentless news coverage.

Hume is quite right, of course; however, there is another requisite for definitive results to develop with regard to Benghazi, and that is the willingness of Congress to see the process through to a just conclusion.

And what would be a just conclusion?

I suppose that depends on two things: One, what is revealed in the hearings, and two, whom one asks. I have always leaned in the direction of the administration having orchestrated the attack for reasons of its own – given his connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and legendary understanding of all things Islamic, it is possible that President Obama could even have arranged for the assault on the compound without the foreknowledge of his Cabinet.

A bold charge, to be sure, but I am operating with such questions as the unresolved Trinity United murders before me. Then there are the possibilities that the tragedy came about as the result of less grave criminal action or a series of irresponsible and craven decisions.

That's right -- Rush is saying that Obama "orchestrated" the attack on the Behgiazi  because of his friends in the Muslim Brotherhood, and we know he's capable of it because of the gay men he supposedly killed.

We have nothing to add.

Posted by Terry K. at 7:55 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Earlier this week, we detailed how CNSNews.com is censoring the fact that the Heritage Foundation study on immigration it promoted is so flawed as to make it worthless, despite promoting the study itself. Now, questions have been raised about statements made by one of the study's co-authors, and CNS hasn't said a peep about that either.

Co-author Jason Richwine also wrote a 2009 doctoral dissertation titled "IQ and Immigration Policy" that "there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races," adding, "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against."

Richwine elaborated on his race theories during a 2008 C-SPAN appearance:

Races differ in all sorts of ways, and probably the most important way is in IQ. Decades of psychometric testing has indicated that at least in America, you have Jews with the highest average IQ, usually followed by East Asians, and then you have non-Jewish whites, Hispanics, and then blacks. These are real differences. They're not going to go away tomorrow, and for that reason, we have to address them in our immigration discussions and our debates.

Does CNS not consider this to be news? Or does it realize the news value but has decided that the truth must be suppressed?

By the definition CNS' parent organization, the Media Research Center, uses to attack media outlets for not covering right-wing-friendly stories to its satisfaction, non-coverage is the same thing as censorship.Thus, CNS is censoring the truth about the Heritage study.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:42 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, May 9, 2013 11:43 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

The last time WorldNetDaily did an article on the purported menace of fluoride in municipal water supplies, it fell to one of WND's own columnists, Phil Elmore, to debunk it.

But WND is back in the fluoride-conspiracy business again with a May 7 article by Steve Elwart pushing the bizarre idea that fluoride in water has "civil rights implications." Actually, all that happened is that a couple people formerly involved in the civil rights movement expressed concerns about fluoride:

[F]ormer Atlanta mayor and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young and Civil Rights leader Gerald Durley, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Atlanta, both asked Georgia legislators to repeal the state’s mandatory water fluoridation law.

Young and Durley both expressed concerns about the fairness, safety and full disclosure regarding fluoridation in letters to the state’s minority and majority legislative leaders.

Young wrote: “My father was a dentist. I formerly was a strong believer in the benefits of water fluoridation for preventing cavities. But many things that we began to do 50 or more years ago we now no longer do, because we have learned further information that changes our practices and policies. So it is with fluoridation.”

He goes on to note that most cavities occur in the crevices of the molars of teeth where the food can tend to accumulate. Fluorides in water do little to stop cavities caused this way. Tooth sealants are a much more effective way to stop cavities in these areas and there is an emphasis on using tooth sealants as part of a child’s dental health with fluoride being applied to the surface of the teeth (known as a topical application).

Young goes on to say that not only does water fluoridation have a limited effect on cavity prevention, but also presents risks of adverse side effects on the human body. He urges that communities weigh these limited benefits against the potential risks to infants, diabetics and others as a result of using fluorides.

Elwart also repeats a claim from a review of fluoride research that "our results support the possibility of adverse effects of fluoride exposures on children’s neurodevelopment." But the study also stated that "very little is known of its effects on children’s neurodevelopment," which means more research is needed -- which you wouldn'tknow from Elwart's selective editing.

Elmore's earlier debunking stated that "The correlation found between fluoride and IQ levels is not causation." Looks like he needs to weigh in again and do the job WND's so-called reporters won't.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:38 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid was one of the chief promoters of Joel Gilbert, whose film claming that Barack Obama's real father is Frank Marshall Davis has been thoroughly discredited, continuing to defend Gilbert even after the debunking surfaced.

You'd think Kincaid would have learned his lesson by now. Apparently not, for in his May 3 AIM column, he approvingly cites Gilbert again:

Other fugitives on the FBI list include members of the May 19th Communist Organization.

Joel Gilbert, director of the film, Dreams from My Real Father, describes the May 19th Communist Organization as “an above ground support group for the Weather Underground” that was based in New York City from 1978-1985. He says Obama was “likely” a member of the group during his time at Columbia University in the early 1980’s.

The major media have consistently refused to cover the indisputable evidence of Obama’s communist connections, including a relationship with Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, featured in the film.

Apparently, as long as Gilbert stands by his discredited smears of Obama, Kincaid will continue to stand by him. Sad, isn't it?

Posted by Terry K. at 11:49 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 11:54 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

When WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah first called for "a national day of prayer and fasting" in his April 11 column, his bill of particulars read like an anti-Obama rant:

• There’s a concerted effort to redefine marriage as any union between people, regardless of sex, possibly regardless even of the number of participants in that union and possibly even regardless of the status of blood relationship between them;
• America continues to abort unborn babies by the millions and has now moved further in the direction of euthanasia on both ends of the life spectrum – possibly even making it a matter of national, state-controlled health-care mandates;
• American foreign policy seems directionless, no longer with the primary concern being national security, but in fostering and fomenting change for the sake of change and breaking down the barriers of national sovereignty;
• Government seems determined to enforce a monopoly on force by making it more difficult for Americans to exercise their constitutionally protected right to procure and bear firearms;
• Government and cultural institutions are breaking down the pillars and principles upon which self-government has been built;
• Government is building up its authority and diminishing the role God plays as the supreme authority in the lives of free people;
• The people are responding, predictably, by doing what’s right in their own eyes, as the people of ancient Israel did before their judgment.

Now, Farah wants you to believe there's no partisan intent behind his now-formal (it must be; it has its own URL) National Day of Prayer and Fasting, set for the totally-not-meant-to-send-a-political-message-really day of Sept. 11, and he whines when he's called on it. From Farah's May 3 column:

An editorial in the Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C., expresses concerns about the idea.

“Our concern is attempts to make such a prayer day a political statement,” the editorial says. “It is being proposed and pushed via petition by Joseph Farah – founder, editor and CEO of WND.com, formerly known as WorldNetDaily. Farah is the author of ‘The Tea Party Manifesto.’ His 2003 bestseller. ‘Taking America Back,’ predicted the rise of the tea party.”

So who said anything about politics?

Who said anything about a political statement?

Obviously, the unnamed editors of the Times and Democrat did – by insinuation.

Because I have written some books that were political in nature and presumably because I have some strong political opinions, I am somehow not worthy of calling for a day of prayer.

No, that's not it, Joe. It's the fact that you're pretending it's not another attempt to stick it to Obama that makes you not worthy of it.

Plus, there's also the fact that Farah has painted President Obama's re-election in the most dire and apocalyptic of Biblical terms:

• Before the election, Farah declared that "One thing most Americans have experienced during the Obama years is tribulation," and "I pray fervently for my fellow Americans, that they have developed the character and the hope for a better America to bring the Obama tribulation to a quick end."
• In another pre-election column, Farah invoked a Bible verse to describe Obama: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
• Farah pronounced Obama's re-election to be "God’s judgment on a people who have turned away from Him and His ways and from everything for which our founders sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" called for "collective repentance" because "Only a miracle can save us – and we need to humble ourselves before God and pray hard for one."
  

Farah oversells his modesty in his May 5 column, writing, "I admit a journalist and media entrepreneur is not the most likely candidate to be promoting spiritual revival." But Farah is not a journalist -- he said so himself in a 2009 column when he declared that "I stepped beyond my role as a journalist and media entrepreneur to become an activist, a crusader, some might even say a 'birther.'"

Farah peddled some of that false modesty in his May 3 column as well, stating, "I’ve been attacked for many things in my life. For some of them, I deserved it. I’ve beat myself up for much of what I’ve done."

Do any of those involving destroying the credibility of his website to pursue an four-year, scorched-earth anti-Obama jihad, or that has yet to acknowledge the fact that WND refuses to tell its readers the truth about its utterly discredited "eligibility" obsession? Somehow, we suspect not.

Farah complains that his National Day of Prayer and Fasting is political "only in the vivid, warped and distorted imaginations of people with their own political agenda." No, Joe, they're not warped or distorted at all -- they've simply been watching you operate.

If Farah really believes in the power of repentence, he should publicly apologize to his readers for the massive dishonesty his website has perpetrated for the past four years, trying to personally destroy Obama merely to gain a political scalp.

If he can't do that, there's no reason for anyone to believe he's sincere about his day of prayer.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:54 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 9:56 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

James Hirsen writes in his May 6 Newsmax column:

Something intriguing has been happening at the “Tonight Show” with the content of host Jay Leno’s humor. The jokes that are flying are going where no late-night hosts have gone before.
 
Leno’s late-night TV colleagues, for the most part, have been blatantly partisan, particularly in the manner in which their material has been written.
 
Leno’s peers have made the occasional reference to President Obama within the context of their jokes; however, in a similar vein to the mainstream media, they have been perfunctory at best in their targeting of Obama or his administration, reserving their sharpest comedic barbs for the GOP.

[...]

Interestingly, Leno’s jokes have been taking aim at President Obama’s policies and the “Tonight Show” host appears to be going after some of the same uncomfortable truths that prior to now only conservative talk show hosts would dare to speak freely about.

Funny how Hirsen doesn't label Leno as "partisan" for his Obama jokes. Instead, he pontificates that "Leno’s humor contains substantive messages that might pose a danger to someone who lacks the clout to buck the Hollywood infrastructure" and declares Leno's humor to be "bold, honest" and deserving of a more appreciative home at Fox.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:04 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

When she's not pining for apartheid or lamenting that she has the right to vote, Ilana Mercer likes to serve up her definition of manhood, which apparently involves having Vladimir Putin as a role model and nary a word about homosexuality -- not to mention defining why Adam Lanza went on a shooting spree. She writes in her May 2 WorldNetDaily column:

Boys, especially, require strong, moral men in their lives – men who affirm their masculinity. American boys, however, are mired in an estrogen-infused, cloistered world where real men in authority are a threatened minority. The nation’s schools have been, for the most, drained of manliness. Almost to a man are they staffed by feminists (mostly bereft of the Y chromosome).

Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was a product of a freewheeling, fatherless household. The tele-experts have been mum about a mother who was weak and ineffectual. Nancy Lanza was filled with fear. She used a menacing gun collection to overcompensate for her parental inadequacies. A strong, caring male might have taught the troubled Lanza to handle firearms responsibly, might have helped diffuse the lad’s rage. A manifestly weak woman playing at make-believe manhood only added fuel to that fire.

[...]

This very sexual activism is practiced by the president of the United States. No other than Barack Obama tinkled basketball player Jason Collins to congratulate him on stepping out as the first openly gay player in NBA history. Imagine Vladimir Putin or the president of Chechnya doing the same. Impossible!

“A huge step forward for our country” is how a hugely hyperbolic (and frightfully masculine) first lady tweeted out about Collins’ “accomplishment.” Small mercies, Michelle Obama did not call the festive affair a giant leap for mankind.

In the unmanly (because so undignified) mosaic described so far, pride-of-place must be reserved for the American president. To a boy from a Muslim culture, America’s man-in-chief has to represent a mass of contradictions. This president and those before him lead the lavish and licentious lifestyle of an emperor. This as they bomb and obliterate other people from afar.

Hardly honorable, much less manly.

We're supposed to follow the example of an authoritarian dictator as a prime example of manhood? Really, Ilana?

Posted by Terry K. at 12:16 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Kyle Drennen uses a May 6 NewsBusters post to complain that NBC's David Gregory was tossing "softballs" in an interview with Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

Yet just five hours later, NewsBusters executive editor was lobbing softballs of his own in an interview with anti-abortion activist Marjorie Dannenfelser. Here are some of the questions tossed Dannenfelser's way:

• Why do liberals like to regulate everything in existence except for abortion clinics?
• What do you think is the reason that there is such reluctance to cover [the Kermit Gosnell trial]?
• Tell us a bit about “3801 Lancaster,” the documentary that you guys have been showing up on Capitol Hill.

Yep, hard-hitting stuff. How can NewsBusters complain about others lobbing softball questions when it does the exact same thing?

Just another day of double standards at NewsBusters.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:10 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Much as he likes to deny it, there are perfectly good reasons for not hiring WorldNetDaily columnist Ellis Washington as a tenure-track professor that have nothing to do with him being a black conservative, as he claimed in his manifesto. One of them is that he likes to perpetuate myths and outright falsehoods. (He does have an extensive history of that.)

He does exactly that in his May 3 WND column railing against the NAACP for supporting Planned Parenthood. Washington begins by misunderstanding how the Plan B morning-after pill works and how it may become available to females under 18:

America, now a 15-year-old little girl can go to her local drugstore, and right next to the candy bars, bubble gum and Tic-Tacs she can freely purchase the morning-after pill called “Plan B One-Step” to cleans her womb of all unwanted baby materials from “partying” the night before. Statics are demonstrative: 40 years since Roe v. Wade (1973) about 17 million little black babies have been murdered out of 58-60 million babies aborted in America. The worldwide abortion estimate since Roe is a staggering 1.72-1.80 billion babies!

The legalization of this genocide pill will make future abortion estimates impossible.

First, does Washington really believe that Plan B will be stocked "right next to the candy bars, bubble gum and Tic-Tacs"? Pharmacies don't do this with currently available forms of over-the-counter birth control -- typically, they're kept within eyeshot of a pharmacist or clerk -- so why would they start now?

Second, Plan B is not an abortificent. It acts by inhibiting ovulation or interfering with fertilization, and it does not stop development of a fertilized egg that implants in the uterus.

Washington then goes on to take Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger out of context to portray her project to bring birth-control climics to the rural South as wanting to exterminate black babies:

In a 1938 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, Margaret Sanger, the racist, eugenicist and founder of Planned Parenthood whose techniques and writings Hitler and the Nazis would later exploit to eradicate the Jews during World War II and the Holocaust, stated, “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. And the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

FactCheck.org explains what the quote really means:

Sanger says that a minister could debunk the notion, if it arose, that the clinics aimed to “exterminate the Negro population.” She didn’t say that she wanted to “exterminate” the black population. The Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University says that this quote has “gone viral on the Internet,” normally out of context, and it “doesn’t reflect the fact that Sanger recognized elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow south, unless clergy and other community leaders spread the word that the Project had a humanitarian aim.”

Why would any self-respecting university hire such a dishonest person as an instructor?

Lest one think Washington is merely hyperventilating over abortion -- or that dishonesty alone is a reason not to hire him -- remember that two weeks earlier he claimed that the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut -- which overturned a state law banning married couples from obtaining contraceptives -- started "Darwinian, atheistic, progressive, anti-constitutional agenda and unleashed a nine-man sexual revolution using the incorporation doctrine to pervert the sexual mores of American society."

So, basically, Washington wants to repeal the past 50 years or so of expanded sexual freedoms. Good luck finding a law school that will allow you to teach that, Ellis.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:03 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, May 7, 2013 8:25 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Clay Waters devotes a May 6 MRC TimesWatch item to smearing Obama adviser Cecilia Munoz and the advocacy organization for which she used to work.

Waters calls Munoz "Obama's chief amnesty pusher" -- ignoring the fact that comprehensive immigration reform that requires numerous steps before an illegal immigrant is allowed to become a citizen is, by definition, not "amnesty" --  and complained that a New York Times article on her buried "Munoz's history as a lobbyist for the left-wing separatist group National Council of La Raza ('La Raza' means 'the race')." Waters also called La Raza "a radical pro-Hispanic group."

In fact, La Raza -- which actually means "the people" or "the community" --  is not "radical" or "separatist" but, rather, an advocacy group for Hispanics.

But facts aren't the MRC's strong suit when there are liberals to bash.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:03 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Birtherism is largely dead, except for a few fringe holdouts -- even WorldNetDaily toned down its anti-Obama crusade, and WND's Jerome Corsi admits he's been "completely marginalized and discredited" for his obsession.

But WND has decided to try and jump-start birtherism, but they're using the same dishonest tactics they were before.

A May 5 WND article (unbylined, presumably because no WND writer wants their linked to birtherism anymore) touts how "professional law-enforcement investigators" will be taking part in an Alabama birther lawsuit. Actually, "professional law-enforcement investigators" is a bit of an exaggeration: what's actually happening is that "Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., and his special Cold Case team lead investigator Mike Zullo will be providing evidence in the arguments."

Of course, WND fails to mention the anti-Obama bias of Arpaio and Zullo's cold case posse or that WND's Corsi was a de facto member. There's also no mention of the numerous things the posse got wrong, such as citing a coding system established in 1968 to interpret a birth certificate from 1961. But then, WND has always censored any factual evidence that contradicts the birthers.

On the other hand, WND repeats a quote from Zullo claiming that "We recently discovered new irrefutable evidence, which confirms, hands down, the document is a fraud." WND makes no apparent effort to find out what that "new irrefutable evidence" is.

WND also highlights how two judges on the Alabama Supreme Court -- where the birther case is being considered -- have expressed sympathy, but ignores the fact that doing so is arguably grounds for the judges to recuse themselves from the case.

So WND is back to its old birther shennanigans. So much for trying to rebuild its credibility after destroying it through four years of Obama derangement.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:55 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, May 7, 2013 12:56 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink