Newsmax Tries to Cash In on Gandolfini's Death Topic: Newsmax
A June 20 article on Newsmax's health website, by Charlotte Libov, touts how the death of actor James Gandolfini via heart attack is "tragically common," quoting a doctor saying, "When you’re on vacation, you don’t eat the same way that you do when you’re at home. People tend to indulge, and that can lead directly to a heart attack."
Scattered throughout Libov's article are links reading, "These 4 Things Happen Right Before a Heart Attack — Read More." These lead to a 35-minute video video featuring the doctor quoted in Libov's article, Chauncey Crandall, providing "startling presentation" about heart attacks.
This leads into a page where one can subscribe to Crandall's Heart Health Report -- published, of course, by Newsmax, where Crandall serves as "medical editor" -- and receive all sorts of freebies in the process.
It's a bit crass for Newsmax to try to make money on Gandolfini's death, but Newsmax has alwaysbeen about trying to fleece its readers by capitalizing on whatever's in the news.
WND Ignores Child Sex Charges Against Anti-Immigration Activist Topic: WorldNetDaily
A June 21 WorldNetDaily article highlights how "A University of Washington neurobiology student charged with child rape after being accused of picking up a 12-year-old girl from the Seattle streets and taking her to his apartment has been identified as a volunteer with a leading Islamic activist organization." It even quotes anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller declaring that "Muslim men in Islamic cultures have no obligation to control themselves."
Meanwhile, a more serious case of alleged child sex abuse has gone unreported by WND, even though it involves a former ally.
Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a self-appointed border patrol group, has been arrested on suspicion of molesting three young girls. The Southern Poverty Law Center has noted that Simcox's first wife made child abuse allegations against him, and that his third wife obtained a restraining order against him.
WND has long been a promoter of Simcox's anti-immigration efforts, touting its claims of having aided the capture of illegal immigrants and endorsing his efforts at "vigilante justice." He even appeared as a guest on Joseph Farah's onetime radio show and played a starring role in a book on illegal immigration by then-WND reporter Jon Dougherty. Jerome Corsi took the side of Simcox and other anti-immigration activist when another activist, Jim Gilchrist, endorsed Mike Huckabee for president in 2008.
Despite Simcox's other troubles, which include him failing to deliver on promises to spend money he raised on a highly secure border fence by instead putting up a barbed-wire cattle fence -- something else WND has failed to tell its readers about -- WND was still featuring his work, most recently in 2010 in an article by Anita Crane.
So, WND will tell you about alleged sexual abuse involving a Muslim but not abuse involving one of their own. That's yet another reason nobody believes WND.
Brent "Skinny Ghetto Crackhead" Bozell Complains About Character Assassination Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell used his weekly appearance on Sean Hannity's Fox News show to complain about a CBS reporter calling Iranian presidential candidates "very conservative. In U.S. terms, it was as if all the candidates for the presidency came from the Tea Party." Bozell huffed, "If that isn't character assassination, I don't know what is."
Really? The guy who called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead" is accusing others of committing character assassination?
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, personally selected Hassan Rouhani to win Friday’s presidential election even before he received the majority of the votes cast, according to a former Revolutionary Guard intelligence analyst who has defected from Iran.
Naturally, it's another anonymous, untraceable source "Kahlili" is using, and, therefore, is highly suspect.
Surprisingly, this is not the most objectionable thing about this article -- that would be how WND promoted it on its front page.
Never mind the fact that 1) WND offers no credible evidence of fraud in Obama's re-election, let alone fraud of the kind Kahlili alleges took place in Iran, and 2) Obama isn't even mentioned in Kahlili's article, let alone any allegations of fraud purportedly involving Obama.
CNS' Jeffrey Dishonestly Tries to Paint Obama Remarks As Anti-Catholic Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is a longtime Obama-hater, and that hate comes through yet again by omitting the context of a recent remark by President Obama in a speech in Ireland.
Likening religious schools to segregation--a racist system that forced blacks to attend different schools and use different facilities than whites in the American South--President Barack Obama told a town hall meeting for youth in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Monday that there should not be Catholic and Protestant schools because such schools cause division.
"Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity--symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others--these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it," said Obama. "If towns remain divided--if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs--if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.
[...]
Obama is now insisting on enforcing an Obamacare regulation that would force Catholic individuals, business owners and institutions to provide health care plans that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. The Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously ddeclared this regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate" that violates the constitutionally guaranteed right to free exercise of religion.
But Obamacare has nothing whatsoever to do with Obama's remarks, and Jeffrey refuses to report why Obama would say them.
Michael McGough of the Los Angeles Times describes the context that Jeffrey can't be bothered to tell his readers:
Northern Ireland is not the United States. Even in my childhood, when Catholic kids were encouraged to attend Catholic schools and there was an arguably Protestant ethos in many public schools, Catholics and Protestants weren't as isolated from (or as distrustful of) one another in this country as they continue to be in Northern Ireland.
Today, thanks to Vatican II and the relentless asssimilation of Catholics, it’s common for Catholics to attend public schools (where teachers no longer recite from the Protestant King James Bible). But it is also common for Protestants, Jews and others to attend Catholic schools. And a lot of children, Catholic and non-Catholic, will attend both public and Catholic schools over the course of their education.
Society in Northern Ireland is much more stratified, and the role of religiously defined schools more problematic. You can be perfectly comfortable with the role of Catholic schools in the American context and worry about their contribution to estrangement between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Jeffrey also seems to have forgotten that there's a lengthy history of animus and violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, resulting in the deaths of thousands.
But then, Jeffrey is too busy trying to stoke anti-Obama sentiment among right-wing Catholics to tell his readers the truth.
Libyan expatriate sources proven to be credible have posted a gruesome video on YouTube showing a group of Syrian “rebels” brutally beheading a man and shooting two women and tossing their bodies down a hole in the ground.
The Libyan expatriates forwarded the video to WND to make bolster their claim that the “rebel forces” about to be armed by the Obama administration are made up of radical Islamic terrorist groups with international ties to al-Qaida.
Given that Corsi once called the researchers who plagiarized from other news articles for a smear job on Obama as "trusted Kenyan professionals," his faith in these supposedly "credible" Libyan expatriates should be skeptically at best.
On the other hand, Corsi's article embeds the video in question, with the tantalizing disclaimer "Viewers are warned that the video is so horrific that it could be psychologically disturbing."
Meanwhile, in another June 20 WND article, Michael Maloof places his faith in authoritarian Russian leader Vladimir Putin to defend the Assad regime," touting "a little-publicized revelation by Russian President Vladimir Putin his country has evidence chemical laboratories in Iraq produced weapons for the Sunni rebels."
While Maloof concedes that "Putin did not detail the sourcing of that evidence, the name or location of the laboratory," he doesn't explain why a man who stole a Super Bowl ring should be trusted.
CNS' Lucas Tries To Invent An IRS Controversy Topic: CNSNews.com
Fred Lucas' June 20 CNSNews.com article certainly sounds ominous:
The Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual advocacy group, will not say who provided it with a confidential list of donors to the National Organization for Marriage, although NOM’s chairman believes someone at the Internal Revenue Service leaked the information. The IRS also is silent on the question.
Providing such donor information is a felony, John C. Eastman, chairman of the board for the National Organization for Marriage, told CNSNews.com. The Justice Department deferred the matter to the Treasury Department, but Eastman said the probe by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration seems to have stalled.
To keep up this tone, however, Lucas has to ignore the evidence that undermines it.
As Media Matters details, congressional testimony from acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller made it clear that the disclosure of NOM's donor list was done by an IRS employee who wasn't follow proper procedures, and disciplinary action was taken.
Further, former NOM chairwoman Maggie Gallagher has also debunked the conspiracy theory, writing in May that "You may recall that a low-level employee also released NOM's private tax-return information to a guy claiming to be a NOM employee, who then posted it on the Internet."
On top of that, the HRC's "NOM Exposed" campaign states that the NOM Form 990 it's referring to was "obtained by the American Independent."
Lucas makes no mention of any of this. Of course, if he had, he wouldn't have a conspiracy story to write.
WND does apparently agree, however, that Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke Snowden's revelations, is a horrible person. Aaron Klein plays his usual guilt-by-association game in a June 19 article, claiming that Greenwald "founded a progressive activist coalition that encompasses a who’s who of the George Soros-funded radical left." And, of course, it wouldn't be a true Aaron Klein guilt-by-association special if he couldn't link Greenwald to Obama:
Greenwald also served on a conference panel titled “Revolution and imperialism in the Middle East” with Chicago based pro-Palestine activist Ali Abunimah.
Greenwald and Abinimah teamed up to defend the 2010 flotilla attempting to end Israel’s naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Abunimah was part of the Free Gaza Movement that helped to organize the flotilla.
WND broke the story that Obama spoke at fundraisers in the 1990s for Palestinians living in what the United Nations terms refugee camps.
Abunimah recalled introducing Obama at one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for the Deheisha Palestinian camp in the West Bank.
Abunimah previously described meeting with Obama at a fundraiser at the home of Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, reportedly a former PLO activist.
It was WND that first exposed Obama’s long relationship with Khalidi.
NewsBusters' Sheffield Plays the Bureaucrat-Whisperer Card Topic: NewsBusters
In a June 18 article at the far-right American Spectator (excerpted in part at NewsBusters), NewsBusters managing editor Matthew Sheffield blames President Obama for creating the climate in which the IRS felt it was just peachy to subject conservative activist nonprofit groups to extra scrutiny:
The persistent lies that have been told about right-leaning political groups by leading Democrats, including President Obama himself, may have led to the IRS abuses of power that we’ve heard so much about in recent weeks.
Even assuming that the Internal Revenue Service decided to target conservative groups without explicit orders, the fact is that Obama and other Democrats have been smearing conservatives for so long with vague but outrageous charges of criminality, it’s no wonder that some bureaucratic goons decided to harass “tea party” and “patriot” groups.
[...]
At this stage of the investigation of the IRS scandal, it is unclear whether the Obama White House or other top Democratic politicians directed the tax enforcement agency to deliberately audit Tea Party groups and to delay their applications for tax-exempt status. What is clear is that President Obama and fellow Democrats, with the willing assistance from the supposedly “objective” media, created a climate of intimidation and slander that quite easily could have spurred the IRS to abuse its power.
Ah, the ol' "bureaucrat whisperer" ploy. As Media Matters' Simon Maloy details, "This is a popular argument because it allows for literally anything to be brought forward as evidence of Obama's culpability. Any conservative hobbyhorse or perceived slight by Obama or anyone remotely connected to Obama ... can be easily recast as part of the president's alleged campaign to undermine the tea party via innuendo and pseudo-telepathy."
Sheffield goes on to whine: "If Republicans decided to go around making such outrageous accusations without providing a shred of proof for them, you can bet that the media would have attacked them mercilessly just as they did radio host Rush Limbaugh after he insulted left-wing activist Sandra Fluke." This is the same guy who uncritically bought Limbaugh's self-serving apology to Fluke that was more of a CYA operation in the face of mounting criticism and advertiser boycotts than anything genuinely "heartfelt" and "sincere," as Limbaugh insisted it was.
And this is the same Matthew Sheffield who expressed glee that one advertiser who withdrew from Limbaugh's show due to his three-day tirade of misogyny against Fluke saw its profits go down.
This is just another example of Sheffield's attempt to be some kind of right-wing new-media guru descending into mere repetition of tired conservative talking points.
Does WND Like Running Racist Ads On Its Website? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember when WorldNetDaily had standards for the advertising it runs?
In 2001, WND "at least temporarily" discontinued national advertising on its website "because too many are offensive to management and readers." Those allegedly offensive ads WND editor Joseph Farah disliked ranged "from the promotion of online gambling to the marketing of national television programs that, he says, he would never allow his own children to watch."
In 2009, WND railed against "Sexually provocative ads, sexually suggestive ads, sexually oriented ads and those that are in bad taste," and Farah asked readers to flag ads "of questionable merit or taste" appearing on the website.
What WND apparently doesn't find offensive, though, are racially inflammatory ads that smear the wife of the president of the United States. Wonkette has caught WND publishing the following ad on its website:
Did anybody not flag this for Farah until now? Or does Farah not find this offensive? Perhaps he should explain to his readers why this ad appears on his website.
How high can the price of gold go? Former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul thinks it could go to infinity.
Appearing on CNBC's "Futures Now," Paul explained that "excessive spending and excessive computerized money" is driving down the dollar, and in turn raising the price of gold.
"Eventually, if we're not careful, it will go to infinity, because the dollar will collapse totally," Paul said.
WND Dishonestly Portrays CDC As Clueless On HIV Topic: WorldNetDaily
Steve Peacock writes in a June 16 WorldNetDaily article:
If one believes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the reason certain populations in the U.S. report more cases of HIV isn’t a mystery.
Except to the Obama administration.
The administration seems perplexed about why homosexuals – whom it defines as “men who have sex with men”– along with racial and ethnic minorities, transgender persons and youths 13-29 continue to represent the “overwhelming majority” of the 50,000 new HIV cases reported annually in the U.S.
So now the Obama administration, through the CDC, is working to amass a list of researchers who could investigate and publish, independently of the government, conclusions about “this health disparity in the HIV epidemic,” according to a sources-sought notice that WND discovered via routine database research.
That's an apparently deliberate misinterpretation of what the CDC is looking for. It's not questioning that "men who have sex with men" make up the “overwhelming majority” of new HIV cases -- it wants to know why new cases of HIV has remained relatively constant and arguably high in recent years. From the CDC solicitation Peacock cites:
Thirty years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, many advances have been made in HIV prevention, care, and treatment. Great strides have been made in the development of faster and more efficient HIV testing and screening technologies, and in medical treatments that allow HIV-positive persons to live long and productive lives. Yet despite these efforts, approximately 50,000 Americans are infected with HIV each year, and the overwhelming majority of these new infections remain among minority and vulnerable communities, such as racial and ethnic minorities, men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender persons, and youth (aged 13-29). This health disparity in the HIV epidemic is anchored in long-standing social issues, such as racism, discrimination, stigma, poverty, incarceration, and healthcare inequity.
In July, 2010, President Barack Obama unveiled the first National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) for the United States, a coordinated national response to reduce the burden of HIV in the U.S. by 2015. The strategy outlined 3 major goals: (1) reduce the number of people who become infected with HIV; (2) increase access to care and improve health outcomes for people living with HIV; and (3) reduce HIV-related health disparities. The strategy emphasizes focusing efforts in communities where HIV is highly concentrated, and by addressing HIV in these communities, lowering the collective HIV risk of all Americans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP) provides leadership in helping to control the HIV epidemic. To continue these efforts and in alignment with NHAS, DHAP requires the support of an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract to (1) conduct qualitative inquiry methods to help answer timely questions related to HIV prevention, and (2) to use the findings to strengthen existing and future HIV prevention efforts. It is increasingly important to understand the issues, behaviors, barriers and facilitators experienced by those at greatest risk for HIV to better focus prevention programs and successfully reduce the number of persons infected with HIV, especially in vulnerable communities, and increase access to HIV treatment and care for all HIV-positive persons.
Peacock's portrayal of the CDC and the Obama administration as being in denial that gays make up most cases of HIV is very dishonest. But do we expect anything else from WND?
NewsBusters' Double Standard on News Orgs Editing Stories After Publication Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham uses a June 16 NewsBusters post to complain that the New York Times "found it advantageous to edit out an America-hating Iranian who wished the Times building would burn down" and other supposedly pertinent information.
Certainly the Media Resarch Center, where Graham is director of media analysis, would not be so gauche as to make substantive changes in articles after publication and not tell their readers, right?
That's a trick question -- of course the MRC has done this.
As we've documented, a June 14 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr falsely claim that Mark Sanford "resigned as governor of South Carolina in 2009 after he revealed that he was having an extra-marital affair."CNS later removed the entire paragraph containing the false claim about Sanford resigning -- which also means the reference to Sanford's affair has also been deleted. CNS also didn't bother to tell readers that Starr's article has been corrected.
Shouldn't Graham hold the organization for which he works to the very same journalistic standards he applies to others?
WND Whitewashes Racism of The Afrikaners It Quotes Topic: WorldNetDaily
A June 15 WorldNetDaily article by Alex Newman (who normally writes for the New American, the magazine published by the far-right John Birch Society, which tells you the standards WND is hiring writers by these days) worries about "the future of increasingly marginalized European-descent South Africans." But the people Newman quotes in support of that view tend to be right-wing extremists.
Newman writes:
Hundreds of thousands of economically excluded Afrikaners now live in squalid squatter camps throughout South Africa without so much as running water or electricity.
Hundreds of thousands more have fled to Western nations seeking a better life.
“The advent of black rule has been devastating for whole groups of whites, even highly educated ones,” Dan Roodt of the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group, PRAAG, told WND.
To provide a clue as to where Roodt's racial views lie, he wrote a 2012 article for the white nationalist website American Renaissancein which he approvingly quotes AmRen leader Jared Taylor asking that "the Republican Party be loyal to its electorate and become the unabashed champion of white interests" and writes, "We need to form a global network to keep America from falling into the hands of anti-white zealots. ... If the United States goes the way of South Africa, whites everywhere will be in danger."
Roodt was also a fellow traveler of Eugene Terreblanche, a white supremacist (and favorite of WND columnist Ilana Mercer) who headed the militant Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) until he was killed by two black farmhands.
Newman also writes:
For an increasingly significant segment of the population, it is becoming clearer that today’s South Africa is simply not sustainable in the long term.
“South Africa is a colonial construct, currently an incompatible, unsustainable mix,” International Afrikaner Society President Hannes Louw told WND.
Louw is reportedly a speaker at this weekend's national conference of the League of the South, the neo-Confederate fringe group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans.”
Newman also touts how Genocide Watch "raised its alert level on South Africa to stage 6 out of 8 – the planning and preparation phase of the extermination process" without mentioning that the group lowered the level to stage 5 due to developments within the country.
Finally, Newman seems to want to play down the offensive parts of apartheid, describing its end in 1994 as "when the Western establishment and Soviet powers finally succeeded in forcing the anti-communist, white-dominated government to relinquish power."
Newsmax Columnist: TSA's Groping Softened Us Up for NSA's Snooping Topic: Newsmax
Here’s a question I asked myself yesterday: Would I rather have my phone records collected and readied for possible inspection by the National Security Agency, or have my genitalia scrutinized by the Transportation Security Administration?
One answer, of course, is, why choose? In today’s America you can have both.
But my preference is the latter, and not only because the TSA Genitalia-Inspection Service has been doing its business on me (and you, too!) for years now and I’ve grown used to it in the way that Americans too readily accept indignities foisted on them by large institutions, including, but not limited to, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and Facebook.
Here’s my reasoning: It is better, I think, to suffer the stick-’em-up humiliation of the TSA’s naked body scan machines, because while they can see through our clothes, at least they can’t see inside our heads. Not yet, anyway.
A June 20 article on Newsmax's health website, by Charlotte Libov, touts how the death of actor James Gandolfini via heart attack is "tragically common," quoting a doctor saying, "When you’re on vacation, you don’t eat the same way that you do when you’re at home. People tend to indulge, and that can lead directly to a heart attack."
A June 21 WorldNetDaily 
Brent Bozell used his weekly 
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is a 
On the other hand, Corsi's article embeds the video in question, with the tantalizing disclaimer "Viewers are warned that the video is so horrific that it could be psychologically disturbing."
Fred Lucas' June 20 CNSNews.com 
WorldNetDaily doesn't quite know what to think about Edward Snowden's revelations on NSA surveillance -- its commentary page swings from Molotov Mitchell's "
In a June 18 
Newsmax thinks 
Steve Peacock writes in a June 16 WorldNetDaily 
Tim Graham uses a June 16 NewsBusters 
A June 15 WorldNetDaily 
Here’s a question I asked myself yesterday: Would I rather have my phone records collected and readied for possible inspection by the National Security Agency, or have my genitalia scrutinized by the Transportation Security Administration?
