AIM's Kincaid Can't Stop Defending Joel Gilbert Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid, it seems, is still all in for Joel Gilbert. He writes in his May 14 Accuracy in Media column:
Gilbert directed the blockbuster film, “Dreams from My Real Father,” which was heavily criticized by the left before the November 2012 presidential election because of the Obama campaign’s fear it could alert voters to Obama’s communist connections and Marxist philosophy.
False -- Gilbert was criticized because his flim is demonstrably untrue, a fact Kincaid refuses to acknowledge.
In all of the columns Kincaid has written lionizing Gilbert, not once has he acknowledged the work of blogger Loren Collins, who definitively proved that Gilbert's claim that Obama's mother posed nude for Frank Marshall Davis is utterly fraudulent.
If one major claim in Gilbert's film can be so conclusively demolished, why should anyone trust any of the other claims he makes? That's a question Kincaid should answer for his AIM readers before he slobbers over Gilbert again.
And while he's at it, Kincaid should also ask Gilbert who funded the mass mailing of his discredited film to swing states, and exactly how many copies he mailed out.
Those are just a few of the things Gilbert is hiding, despite Kincaid having once laughably claimed that Gilhert "demonstrat[ed] that he has nothing to hide."
It's not that Gilbert has nothing to hide; it's that Kincaid has absolutely no interest in looking. So much for Kincaid's title as head of AIM's Center for Investigative Journalism.
Reza Kahlili Unverifiable Story Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
"Reza Kahlili" writes in a May 13 WorldNetDaily article:
Iran has given the go-ahead to operatives of three terrorist groups that have infiltrated the United States to carry out missions, including what is expected to be a Mumbai-style attack on a hotel where innocent bystanders would be killed, WND has learned.
A full report with many details of the missions has been passed on to U.S. officials.
Three targets have been chosen within America for imminent attack, and the terror teams have now cut communications with the operational center in Iran, a sign that they are moving ahead with the attacks, according to a high-level intelligence officer within the Islamic regime.
If only one of the attacks occurs, the regime will consider the operation a success, the source said. Tehran believes, he said, an attack would not be traced back to Iran due to the nationalities of the operators.
Remember that Kahlili asserted in 2010 that Iran had planted "a thousands suitcase bombs" across Europe and the U.S." with the goal to "commit the most horrendous suicide bombing in human history." Also remember that this is one of many reasons that people in the intelligence community liken him to Ahmed Chalabi, who peddled the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Keep those two things in mind, and that should tell you all you need to know about the veracity of Kahlili's trying to peddle now.
MRC Gay-Bashing Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center really, really does not like it when gays appear on TV. And they like it even less when there are gay characters on TV shows.
In a May 6 MRC Culture & Media Institute article, Andrew Collins laments that the good name of President William McKinley is being sullied by serving as the name of the high school that the kids from "Glee" attend:
Pity William McKinley. Our 25th president was a Civil War hero who successfully prosecuted the Spanish-American War and presided over a booming economy. For his trouble, he was assassinated. Adding insult to injury, he’s the namesake of The World’s Gayest High School.
It’s no secret that “Glee” frequently and flamboyantly pushes a gay agenda. So many characters play for the other team it's hard to believe that there’ll be any future generations of McKinley High students to mock the Bible and cheer on transgendered performers. But as this season prepares to wrap up this week, things are heating up on "Glee." Last week’s episode featured a particularly large dose of gay.
Collins then goes on to take offense at a "Glee" storyline in which a father opposes his son marrying his boyfriend not because he opposes gay marriage but because they're too young. "If anything, his refusal builds the legitimacy of gay marriage even more because he emphasizes the seriousness and permanence of marriage," Collins grouses.
In a similar vein, Matt Philbin uses a May 13 CMI post to dance on the grave of the canceled show "The New Normal," which the headline on his article identifies as a "Gay Propaganda Sitcom":
It seems “The New Normal” … isn’t. NBC has cancelled its gay agitprop sitcom after just one season.
“New Normal’s” plot revolved around a gay couple and the surrogate mother pregnant with their child. Ellen Barkin played the nasty, bigoted, conservative grandmother (a stretch for the nasty, bigoted liberal Barkin) as the foil in the postmodern morality play.
Predictably, conservative Christians were a regular punching bag, and the show went to bat for Obama’s re-election. But it turns out propaganda-as-entertainment wasn’t popular with audiences, and “New Normal’s” ratings grew steadily worse.
“The New Normal” was the creation of wannabe pornographer Ryan Murphy, the man who brought us “Nip/Tuck,” “American Horror Story” and the world’s gayest high school in “Glee.”
So we have an anti-gay propagandist denouncing a point of view he despises as "propaganda." Color us shocked.
Colin Flaherty Race-Baiting Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Colin Flaherty keeps up his weirdfetish for documenting "black mob violence" in his latest WorldNetDaily article, the headline of which claims there's a "surge" in said violence. But Flaherty documents no such "surge" -- that would require relevant statistics, and Flaherty is too busy conflating anecdotal evidence into a so-called "epidemic."
After noting a "black mob that created violence" on the Washington, D.C., Metro subway system, Flaherty asserts, "Black mob violence is a regular feature of life on the Metro." Well, no, it's not -- he cites only three incidents over the past two years.
It's that sort of ridiculous overstating that calls Flaherty's motives into question. As does the blurb on the website for his self-published book "White Girl Bleed A Lot" by John Derbyshire, last seen getting the boot from National Review after writing an article denigrating the IQs of blacks and advising people to "[a]void concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally."
MRC's Graham Complains NPR Did No Weekend Features On Obama Scandals -- But CNS Didn't Either Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham whines in a May 13 NewsBusters post:
How enthusiastic can NPR be in avoiding the emerging Obama scandals? Try this: So-called “All Things Considered” aired no features on Benghazi or the IRS on Saturday or Sunday. (This excludes on-the-hour news updates.) But they found time for six minutes on the trade in rhino horns.
It was more ridiculous on “Weekend Edition” Saturday and Sunday – they also skipped both. NPR correspondent Michele Kelemen reported on Secretary of State John Kerry for 4 minutes and 22 seconds without a single word about Libya.
Graham goes on to count every single feature story NPR ran on its weekend news shows, which he claims "reinforce how NPR has a deep self-love for its own focus on race, culture, and cosmopolitan globalism. They're also quite ardent about skipping over scandals that might damage their favorite liberal politicians."
But Graham makes no mention of NPR's newscasts, which run at the top and bottom of every hour. That silence tells us that NPR did mention the "emerging Obama scandals" on those newscasts, but Graham doesn't want to tell us about it because it'll ruin his biased little thesis.
Graham also seems unware of the extremely likely possibility that features set to run on NPR's weekend shows are likely pre-taped days in advance, since many NPR personnel presumably like to have their weekends off.
You know who else likes their weekends off? The folks who work at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com.
You know who else didn't publish any features about "emerging Obama scandals" last weekend? CNS.
Why is Graham demanding NPR do something his own employer couldn't be bothered to do?
Why doesn't CNS lead by example? Surely it can shake a few more dollars from its wealthy right-wing donors to have a newsroom staffed outside office hours.
WND's Corsi Just Can't Stop Lying About Obama and Abortion Topic: WorldNetDaily
You'd think that after years of peddling lies and smears about Barack Obama only to destroy WorldNetDaily's credibility in the process, Jerome Corsi would have learned by now to tell the truth.
“The Gosnell conviction represents a major setback to Barack Obama’s insistence the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy is absolute, extending even to situations where a baby survives an attempted late-term abortion,” WND senior staff reporter and author Jerome Corsi said today after Kermit Gosnell was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder.
The charges stemmed from the deaths of three babies born alive – then killed – in his Philadelphia abortion business.
In writing his 2008 New York Times No. 1 bestseller, “The Obama Nation,” Corsi pointed out that Obama, as an Illinois state senator, argued the legitimacy of the abortion practices that are strikingly similar to the medical procedures that got Gosnell convicted.
In 2001, Obama argued in the Illinois State Senate that a baby who survived a late-term abortion should have been killed, in deference to what Obama argued was a woman’s absolute right to an abortion, such that no restriction must be placed on the right of a mother to abort her child.
[...]
Obama objected that if the proposed bill passed so that a mature fetus surviving a late-term labor-induced abortion was deemed to be a person with a right to live, then the proposed law would “forbid abortions to take place.”
Obama further explained the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment does not allow somebody to kill a child, so if the law deemed the fetus who survived a late-term labor-induced abortion was a child that had a right to live, “then this would be an anti-abortion statute.”
First, the Gosnell conviction has nothing whatsoever to do with Obama, nor has he ever advocated what Gosnell did, let alone anything "strikingly similar."
Second, Corsi and WND are lying again about what Obama did regarding "born alive" laws in Illinois.
As was documented at the time Corsi's book was published, Obama never "argued" that "a baby who survived a late-term abortion should have been killed." And the speech Obama gave on the Senate floor -- from which Corsi selectively edits to promote his lie -- demonstrates that:
Obama did not say that "a mature fetus surviving a late-term labor-induced abortion was deemed to be a person with a right to live, then the proposed law would 'forbid abortions to take place.'" He said the bill defines a pre-viable fetus has having the same rights as a post-viability fetus, and would thus forbid all abortions.
Obama did not say that "if the law deemed the fetus who survived a late-term labor-induced abortion was a child that had a right to live, “then this would be an anti-abortion statute.” He said that, again, because the bill made no distinction between pre-viability and post-viablility fetuses, it essentially barred all abortions.
Corsi and WND also uncritically repeat Jill Stanek's claims about abortions in Illinois without mentioning the fact that her testimony was never substantiated, or that she once argued that a woman who has an abortion deserves to be the victim of domestic violence.
It's time for Corsi and WND to give it up, come clean, and stop lying.
WND's Newest "Day of Prayer" Endorser: Mancow Topic: WorldNetDaily
One reason to resist Joseph Farah's "National Day of Prayer and Fasting" is because Farah is an unrepentant liar who's pretending that there's no partisan motivation behind it, despite the fact that he has spent the past five years using his website to further the attempted personal destruction of Barack Obama.
Another reason is the rogue's gallery that has endorsed it.
A May 13 WND article ticks off the chief endorsers: "Chuck Norris is on board. So is Michele Bachmann. Best-selling author Jonathan Cahn agrees. So does evangelist Greg Laurie. Historian and author David Barton likes the idea."
Jonathan Cahn, whose dubious prophecy book "The Harbinger" WND has been riding the coattails of for the past year by producing a video based on the book (and whom Farah just slobbers over).
And David Barton, the so-called "historian" whose book on Thomas Jefferson was withdrawn by its publisher for its inaccuracies (and yet is still for sale at the WND online store).
To that illustrious list WND has added ... Mancow:
Matthew Erich “Mancow” Muller, better know as plain old Mancow, joined the growing list of celebrities and leaders who have endorsed the 9-11-13 National Day of Prayer and Fasting called for by WND’s founder, Joseph Farah.
Mancow welcomed Farah on his program this week to talk about the event and said he agreed it might represent America’s last hope – given the failure of political leaders to address the country’s crises.
Mancow's Morning Madhouse ran afoul with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) indecency regulations in at least six separate incidents during 2000 and 2001. As a result, the FCC levied $42,000 in fines on Emmis Communications, the licensee of Mancow's then-home station WKQX-FM. In 2004, Emmis Communications signed a consent decree with the FCC sharply restricting indecent content and requiring the payment of $300,000 to the US government.
This is the guy WND is turning to endorse Farah's Day of Prayer? Really?
NewsBusters: Jose Antonio Vargas 'Has No Rght to Complain' Topic: NewsBusters
Suddently, NewsBusters has suddenly become the arbiter of who can and cannot speak on the subject of immigration.
In a May 9 post, Paul Bremmer unloads on Jose Antonio Vargas, whom he describes as a "former Washington Post reporter and liberal activist who happens to be both gay AND an undocumented immigrant." As you might suspect, that deadly combination disqualifies Vargas from speaking about immigration:
Someone call him a shrink, because he's confusing a cable network for a therapy couch.
I don’t know why this guy is griping. He should just be thankful that the U.S. government allowed him to stay in this country after he revealed his illegal immigrant status in 2011. Vargas has been allowed to live out his dream as a journalist and immigration activist, even winning a Pulitzer Prize, all while trying to smooth the pathway to citizenship for illegals like him. He has no right to complain that our laws currently do not cater to gay illegal aliens.
And Vargas doubly has no right to speak about gay civil rights, at least not without someone sitting next to him telling him he's going to hell and destroying the country:
Vargas asserted: “The country has moved on when it comes to gay marriage, same-sex marriage. How are we moving on in terms of immigration?”
Vargas’s idea of “moving on” involves accepting gay marriage as normal and rewarding those who reside in this country illegally with citizenship. But there are many voices in this country who disagree with that particular notion of societal progress. MSNBC should have balanced Vargas with such a voice.
But wait, the gay immigration activist was not done kvetching.
And neither is Bremmer. After Vargas noted that people think that because he is an undocumented Hispanic immigration it's assumed that he "crossed the border" from Mexico, Bremmer resumed his kvetch-fest:
I guess this is another nuisance in the life of an illegal immigrant. People assume that because Vargas is an illegal alien, he is Mexican. (He’s actually Filipino.) Obviously, not every illegal immigrant crossed our southern border -- many are visa overstays -- and border crossings have declined a bit in recent years. But according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 59 percent of undocumented immigrants in 2011 were from Mexico, a country which itself has rather stringent border security laws to prevent immigration on its southern border.
Federal officials should not be distracted by illegal Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants, who, according to Vargas, make up “a full million of the 11 million undocumented population.” That is not a large proportion of the illegal population. Our southern neighbor is still our greatest supplier of illegal immigrants, so the focus on border security is well warranted.
What MSNBC served up in the Vargas interview was not analysis; it's just good old-fashioned liberal activism thinly and cynically disguised as journalism.
And what Bremmer served up is some good old-fashioned bigotry and right-wing ranting that most definitely is not analysis.
WND Hides Bush Link to Green Energy Funding Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily states in an unbylined May 11 article that regurgitates claims from the right-wing Judicial Watch:
Another company once considered a brilliant clean-energy venture – and supported by taxpayer money under Barack Obama’s strategy to attack coal and oil energy – has hit the big-time, being listed among the “Corruption Chronicles” at Judicial Watch.
Oh, it’s also going out a business, after taking some $50 million in taxpayer money.
“Another one of President Obama’s brilliant clean-energy ventures has collapsed after taking tens of millions of dollars from American taxpayers, in this case to develop a special wheelchair-accessible ‘green’ van,” the Judicial Watch report said.
The news comes just weeks after a separate company that got nearly $200 million from the government to develop hybrid vehicles folded, said Judicial Watch. “That fly-by-night company, Fisker Automotive, had been heavily touted by the administration as an innovator that would develop two lines of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that could run up to 300 miles on a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery. Before doling out the cash, Obama’s Energy Secretary assured the cars ‘will save hundreds of millions of gallons of gasoline and offset millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.’”
WND omits some crucial facts: The program that lent VPG and Fisker that money was created under the Bush administration and signed into law by President Bush, Fisker applied for that loan money while Bush was still in office, and the losses by Fisker and VPG are a tiny fraction of the money set aside by Congress to cover losses from the loan program.
But this is WND, where bashing Obama is always more important than telling the truth.
MRC's Gainor Furthers Fox Anchor's False Claim on Benghazi Coverage Topic: Media Research Center
Fox News' Megyn Kelly started off her May 9 interview with the Media Research Center's Dan Gainor by claiming that "If you look at sort of across the mainstream media, it was a collective yawn in response to yesterday’s Benghazi coverage" -- that is, the Republican-led hearing on the issue.
Kelly is wrong -- as thte Washington Post's Erik Wemple points out, both the New York Times and Washington Post put it on their front pages, and all three network evening newscasts carried lengthy segments on the hearing.
But rather than correct Kelly, Gainor prattled forward with his right-wing talking points about how this supposed "collective yawn" was a "continuation of their policy to minimize a scandal that makes Hillary Clinton look really bad."
But then, Gainor's a right-wing apparatchik, so he would stick to the talking points instead of tell the truth.
A May 10 WorldNetDaily article by Drew Zahn about California considering accommodations for transgenders in school does what it usually does:
It dishonestly frames the issue as co-ed locker rooms, as with the headline "State order girls' locker rooms open to boys."
And It nonsenically illustrates the article with an image from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" of the lead character taking a shower. WND did the same thing last year.
And, as usual, Zahn does not let anyone respond to the anti-LGBT talking points from anti-gay organizations that take up much of the article.
Immigrant-Bashing Is James Walsh's Business, And Business Is Good Topic: Newsmax
James Walsh's job at Newsmax is to be its chief immigrant-basher, with a side of Obama-bashing -- a function he continued to perform in a couple recent columns.
One column denounced a recent rally for immigration reform as "a well-orchestrated, well-financed, Alinsky-style community-organizer protest," and claimed the presence of children "reflected the labor-union tactic of using children to evoke sympathy and gain publicity."
Walsh went on to claim that "Some observers of the rally questioned the cost of transporting, feeding, and housing the demonstrators, many of whom couldn’t speak English." He provided no evidence of any lack of English-speaking skills among the attendees, and the quotes he attributes to these "observers" have no backup either; they sound like his usual tactic of quoting purportedly real people who all happen to agree with him.
Walsh's May 3 column was dedicated to declaring that President Obama's policies "have the potential to erode U.S. culture, heritage, identity, and financial solvency." He rails against immigration reform (of course), Obamacare and foreign policy. We've previously noted Walsh's misleading defense of a military instructor who made inflammatory claims about Muslims.
When Will WND's Schilling Correct False Article On Forced Lesbian Kissing? Topic: WorldNetDaily
On April 24, WorldNetDaily's Chelsea Schilling wrote an article in which she uncriticially repeats a report from Fox News' Todd Starnes that "a New York middle school instructed young female students to ask one another for a lesbian kiss – and boys learned how to spot young sluts – in an anti-bullying presentation on gender identity and sexual orientation." At the end of the article, Schilling provided the phone number and email address of the superintendent of the school district so that "concerned parents" may contact him.
Just one problem: It's not true.
The school has explained that "female students were not forced to engage in any lesbian kissing," "male students were not told to carry condoms,” and "sexual activity among young adolescents was not condoned or promoted in any way." The school distrct added, "This information had been shared with the media, but was not reported by some." Starnes has also demanded a correction from Fox's Starnes in an email that may as well be cc'd to Schilling:
These sessions were designed by the building leadership in an effort to have eighth graders treat each other with respect and to develop in our young adolescents an appreciation for personal dignity. To suggest that we would condone or promote sexual activity among teenagers is absurd. It is equally absurd to suggest that an activity, designed to have young women feel more confident saying no to unwanted advances from boys, is in some way promoting a lesbian lifestyle. It is my understanding that the role playing activity is part of a program supported by conservatives such as Laura Bush.
The definitions given to students, while overly granular in my opinion, were put forth to make sure that students understand that all gender identities and/or sexual orientations are protected in law in New York State as part of an effort to curb harassment, discrimination, and bullying. It is our intent to adjust this document and be less granular in future lessons.
Please also know that the two college students who helped facilitate these sessions were guided and supervised by the principal and guidance counselors. They were not acting without direction. And, there is no evidence to suggest that they were inappropriately interacting with the students. Reports indicate the opposite is true. I have read both their written accounts of the sessions and written feedback from students. It was all very positive.
Will Schilling correct her article or do a follow-up that reports the facts? Don't count on it -- after all, she has a long history of less-than-factual reporting at WND.
MRC's Graham Mocks Poll He Doesn't Agree With Topic: NewsBusters
Feel the condescension in Tim Graham's May 11 NewsBusters post mocking a poll finding support for letting gays join the Boy Scouts:
ABC and the Washington Post are happy to join the war on the Boy Scouts, pushing every church in America that sponsors a Scout troop to alter their Bibles for the gay agenda. The Post headline on Saturday was "Poll: Most Americans support lifting ban on gay Boy Scouts."
The pollsters did not ask if Americans would also like ending the "bans" in other American social organizations and faith groups. Why can't avid barbecuers join PETA? Freedom of association -- whoever said that was an American principle?
[...]
"Catholics" -- at least those saying they were -- favored the gay agenda: "Opposition to banning gay scout leaders ranges by religious group and along well-worn political fault lines. A 56 percent majority of Catholics oppose the continued ban on gay scout masters, a number that rises to 75 percent among people who identify as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. By contrast, Protestants are closely divided, 49 percent supporting and 47 percent opposing the ban on gay scout leaders."
Gotta love the scare quotes around "Catholic," as if he was the arbiter of who and who isn't Catholic.
Cliff Kincaid, it seems, is still all in for Joel Gilbert. He writes in his May 14 Accuracy in Media column:
The Media Research Center really, really 
Colin Flaherty keeps up his 
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham whines in a May 13 NewsBusters 
You'd think that after years of peddling lies and smears about Barack Obama only to 
A May 13 WND 
A May 10 WorldNetDaily 
