Meanwhile ...
Topic: WorldNetDaily
FreeThoughtBlogs' Ed Brayton catches WorldNetDaily flip-flopping from attacking President Obama for wanting to bomb Syria without congressional approval to attacking him for seeking that very same congressional approval. Brayton concludes: "How convenient for the Worldnetdaily that Obama is wrong if he does it and wrong if he doesn’t. Either way, he’s obviously a traitor. Heads they win, tails he loses."

MRC: Soros Is So Evil, He Funded ProPublica Eight Years Before It Existed
Topic: Media Research Center

Fresh off his sloppily written attack on George Soros and Columbia University, the Media Research Center's Mike Ciandella is back a new bit of Soros-bashing, this time going after the nonprofit news website ProPublica. Ciandella huffs that "ProPublica is a liberal investigative journalism outfit that has received $300,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2000."

But later on, Ciandella writes that "ProPublica began operations in 2008 with funding from the liberal Sandler Foundation."

How could ProPublica have been receiving money from Soros "since 2000" when it didn't exist until 2008? Ciandella doesn't explain. Perhaps he's so desperate to attack Soros that the truth doesn't matter to him.

Needless to say, Ciandella makes no mention of the fact that Soros' contributions to ProPublican pale in comparision to the millions of dollars each year that prop up such right-wing media outlets like the Washington Times and Pittsburgh Tribune-Rreview.

WND's Corsi Unleashes Nasty Tweets About John Kerry
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In case you needed another reminder that Jerome Corsi is a horrible human being who's motivated by personal destruction rather than the truth, the WorldNetDaily writer has been kind enough to provide us with one.

The spectacle of Secretary of State John Kerry trying to sell members of Congress on taking action against Syria for using chemical weapons sent Corsi into a paroxysm of attempted schadenfreude, and he spewed his venom into a series of tweets in which he mocks Kerry's Vietnam War heroism and the pronunciation of Kerry's wife's name:

These sound a lot like the hateful comments he posted at Free Republic prior to his publication of his anti-Kerry book,"Unfit for Command." Corsi made a half-hearted attempt to swift-boat Kerry again upon his nomination as secretary of state, which nobody cared about.

Corsi's mean-spirited insults are more evidence that he should never be taken seriously as a reporter -- as if his lies and dishonesty about President Obama hadn't already made that crystal clear.

MRC Transgender Freakout Watch
Topic: Media Research Center

More than 40 organizations have signed a statement calling for respect and fairness in media coverage of transgenders, even Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. The Media Research Center won't be signing that statement -- it would interfere with its two basic modes of coverage of transgenders, mockery and fearmongering.

Tim Graham takes the former approach in an Aug. 31 NewsBusters post, complaining that People magazine "aggressively used female pronouns" in an article about Manning, while sneeringly calling Manning a "traitor-ettte."

The latter approach shows up in a lengthy Sept. 3 Culture & Media Institute screed by Katie Yoder:

Welcome to the brave new world of “the next civil-rights struggle.” From a California law decreeing that any student has the right to use any gender-specific restroom and play on any gender-specific sports team he or she (or she or he) wants, biology be d**ned, to LGBT activists counseling network honchos on more sensitive TV portrayals, transgender is all the rage among liberals and media types.

The campaign to normalize gender confusion relies on emotional appeal. The media present “adorable” “transgender” 6-year-olds or teen couples who transitioned genders together. Or, for a child still unsure of his or her gender, lefty sites like Huffington Post and Slate enthusiastically recommend transgender children’s cartoons and transgender kid camps where little boys dress as “princesses.” It’s all part of the effort to “loosen the reins of gender expression,” as NPR put it.

At the adult level, CNN’s Anderson Cooper spoke with a transgender ex-SEAL “Warrior Princess” who advocated for transgender soldiers, while The Washington Post promoted “new hope” for transgender public bathroom use. The New York Times and the AP have decided to call convicted traitor Bradley Manning “Chelsea” (with all the matching pronouns) simply because he declared he wants to be a woman named Chelsea.

And no effort to force the public to celebrate “alternative” sexualities would be complete without ABC, CBS, and NBC giving viewers stories of transgendered “normal” people leading “normal” lives – except for the “unique challenge” of transitioning into the opposite sex.

Downsides? Consequences? Differing opinions? Don’t be silly. The accounts of rallies defending marriage between one man and one woman are censored. The stories of entertainment media redefining the family don’t break into the mainstream.

As the same-sex marriage debate proved, the media ruthlessly shut down dissent when they find a pet cause.

Yoder went on to declare that it was "language abuse" to refer to Manning with feminine pronouns. Yoder concludes by huffing:

The normalization of transgender is probably a done-deal. The left has declared it a civil rights issue and the media – news and entertainment – have their marching orders. Fresh from their victory on same-sex marriage, they’ll employ the same tactics.

Trans characters will be turning up in your favorite sit-coms, and ribbons will appear on awards shows. Look forward to a parade of “Princess Boys,” Chelsea Mannings and Miss/Mr Universes, all with a poignant story and all scrambling to sort out their restroom accommodations. 

Graham and Yoder certainly has their marching orders to disparage people different from themselves. That's what the MRC is paying them to do, after all.

NEW ARTICLE: Black Box Reporter
Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily expects its readers to trust Reza Kahlili, who hides behind a fake name and disguise and almost exclusively uses anonymous, untraceable sources. Read more >>

At CNS, A 29-Year-Old Quote Is 'News'
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNS has a peculiar idea of what constitutes "news." First it was jokes from late-night comedians, then it was snide attacks from right-wing pundits.

Now it's ancient quotes from a celebrity. Here's how a Sept. 4 CNS article by Michael W. Chapman begins:

Hollywood legend Jack Nicholson, 76, who is retiring from movies it was reported today, is, unlike many liberals in Tinseltown, a staunch pro-lifer who said in a 1984 interview about abortion, “I’m positively against it. I don’t have the right to any other view."

And, yes, the rest of the article is all about what Nicholson said about abortion 29 years ago.

Funny, we thought conservatives believed celebrities were supposed to shut up and sing or whatever. Apaprently, if you're conservatively correct, you're allowed to say whatever you want. Indeed, CNS publishes columns by Charlie Daniels, who clearly has not been told by Chapman to shut up and sing.

Another Sketchy Figure Endorses Farah's 'Day of Prayer And Repentence'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We've detailed the rogue's gallery of fringe figures who have endorsed WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah's 9/11 "Day of Prayer and Repentence." Add another one to the list.

An Aug. 31 WND article by Scott Greer details how "Carl Gallups, author of 'The Magic Man in the Sky' and the coming WND Books release 'The Rabbi Who Found the Messiah,” says America is “on the precipice of no return'" ... as he endorsed the 9-11-13 National Day of Prayer and Repentance, which was prompted by a commentary from WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah." Greer continues:

He said the choices America has made are alarming.

“We … have destroyed the lives of tens of millions of American babies. In the same year the Supreme Court declared abortion to be legal (1973), we passed the Federal Endangered Species Act. In that year we declared that a turtle’s nest and a turtle’s egg were more precious and sanctified than a human baby within its mother’s womb,” Gallups noted.

He’s also concerned about the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage and the homosexual culture.

“Our Supreme Court has, in effect, declared that we do not know what constitutes a real marriage. Men are marrying men, women are marrying women, and our military and society at large are openly celebrating the sodomite lifestyle. The New Testament book of Romans, chapter one, declares that when these things happen it is a certain sign that God has ‘given them over to a depraved mind,’” Gallups commented.

Speaking of depraved minds, Gallups arguably is one. He's the mastermind behind PP Simmons, the "online ministry" that's little more than an anti-Obama propaganda mill. Through PP Simmons, Gallups has promoted the idea that Obama is the Antichrist, and he has pushed numerous birther claims. Gallups once used his radio show to invite any "Obot" to call in and prove that Obama is a citizen; when one did, Gallups cut him off. 

We will assume that Gallups will not be repenting any of his dishonest, reprensible behavior on the day he's endorsing.

MRC Drags Columbia U. Into Its Anti-Soros Crusade
Topic: Media Research Center

It's been a while since the Media Research Center has inflicted its obsession with George Soros on its readers, so we were due. And the MRC delivers with an Aug. 28 "special report" by Mike Ciandella using Soros to attack the Columbia University journalism school.

But as with many MRC "special reports," this one falls into the not-so-special category, sloppily written to suggest more sinister connections than the facts bear out.

Ciandella's big claim is that "Columbia has received $9.7 million from left-wing billionaire George Soros, more support than he has given to all but three other schools." But if you go to the section of the report detailing that, Ciandella says that the donations are since 2000, and his lack of further detail tells us that the amount is for all Soros donations to Columbia, not just to the j-school as he suggests.

(By contrast, the the Koch Family Charitable Foundations, operated by conservative billionaire Koch brothers, have given more than $29 million to George Mason University since 1985, and Ciandella doesn't seem too concerned about that.)

Still, that amount over 13 years is still one-fourth of what the Unification Church doles out every single year to keep the conservative Washington Times alive.

Ciandella also asserts that "Of the 40 full-time members of the faculty, 27 work at explicitly left-wing outlets including The Huffington Post, Slate, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, Salon, The Nation and Greenpeace." But "work for" typically means being paid, and Ciandella provides no evidence that the professors who "work for" these "left-wing" outlets receive money for their contributions. For instance, the Huffington Post does not pay its bloggers.

Ciandella goes on to huff that "Many of these professors not only write for these liberal outlets, but actually work full-time for them as well," citing as one example "Thomas B. Edsall with the Huffington Post." In fact, Edsall hasn't worked for the Huffington Post since 2010.

Further, Ciandella is using "left-wing" and "liberal" interchangeably, which further indicates the level of intellectual sloppiness in his report.

Ciandella even takes the respected Columbia Journalism Review for allegedly being "left of center":

On February 19, 2013, CJR published a fairly ironic report bashing the conservative-leaning Donor’s Trust, while referring to (and agreeing with) a report which claimed that Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the liberal Tides Foundation were “markedly more transparent about where money comes from and where it goes.”

Ironically, Ciandella doesn't disclose whether his employer, the MRC, has received any Donors Trust money. That lack of disclosure is typical here: Ciandella's report is bereft of endnotes that would detail where he got his information from, which a real researcher would do.

That's how bad and biased this report is.

How Is Mychal Massie Lying About Obama This Week?
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It's not too far from the truth to say that you know Mychal Massie is lying because his lips are moving. And he tells more lies in his Sept. 3 WorldNetDaily column:

Based on the color of Obama’s skin do we ignore the fact that his administration played a major role by backing the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the terrorist responsible for the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, despite Obama’s feigned concern over Megrahi’s release? Based on the color of Obama’s skin I guess we should overlook that Obama’s backdoor maneuvering resulted in Megrahi being released from prison to live in Libya.

In fact, the U.S. opposed the release of Megrahi, as demonstrated by correspondence with Scotland by the State Department, which specifically states that "we are not able to endorse the early release of Megrahi under any scenario."

And since this is Mychal Massie, whose hatred of Obama borders on the pathological, we get a massive dose of Obama derangement, in which Massie likens the president to Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy:

Race-mongers and those who use color of skin as a cudgel to silence any and all criticism of Obama should be forced to answer the following questions.

Was Hitler bad because he was German or because he was an Erebusic evil consumed by hatred? Was Ted Bundy bad because he was white or because he kidnapped, raped, engaged in necrophilia and confessed to murdering at least 30 women? Is Fidel Castro bad because he is Cuban or because he is a vicious dictator who installed a failed political system and has murdered and imprisoned his people at the same time he was taking their property by constraint? Was Saddam Hussein bad because he was an Iraqi or because he imprisoned, tortured and murdered his own people? Are child-molesting Catholic priests bad because they are Catholics or because they are priests who used their positions molest children?

Massie is a depraved liar regardless of his race.

Newsmax's Gizzi Tries to Claim MLK For Republicans
Topic: Newsmax

CNS' Terry Jeffrey is not the only right-winger who's trying to claim Martin Luther King Jr. for conservatives. Newsmax's John Gizzi joins the party in a Sept. 1 article pushing the idea that King was a Republican:

It is impossible to know whether King was Democrat, Republican, or independent. His home state of Georgia did not have registration by party, so allegiance to a political party depended on which primaries a voter chose to cast a ballot in.

The Atlanta pastor kept this to himself. His choice of primaries to vote in is not known and, as the intellectual force the civil rights cause, King carefully avoided embracing political candidates.

But there is some evidence as to where his party leanings were, including the observations of the Republican who was Martin Luther King's congressman.

"I believe Dr. King was a Republican," Fletcher Thompson, who represented the Atlanta area in Congress from 1966-72, told Newsmax. "Most of the blacks in the late 1950s and at least up to 1960 were Republican. Our party was sympathetic to them and the Democrats were the ones enforcing 'Jim Crow' laws and segregation."

But, as Gizzi later concedes, Thompson "never personally met King." That, of course, doesn't keep Gizzi from using Thompson to suggest King's political leanings, even as he goes on to admit that "Republican orators increasingly denounced" King for his "embrace of the anti-Vietnam War movement and his friendship with the far left."

WND Columnist: End-Time Teach Keeps Christians In Line
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Tom Flannery seems to have inadvertently given away a secret about evangelical Christianity.

In rebutting a video made by fellow WND columnist Bradlee Dean criticizing evangelicals who teach end-times theology, Flannery's Sept. 2 WND column defends end-time teaching as "a message of hope and joy unspeakable" -- and, as it turns out, a good way to keep Christians in line:

Truth be told, end-time teaching is one of the most powerful motivating factors there is for godly living and making your life count in this world for Christ – since, if you truly believe that the Rapture is imminent, that it could happen at any time, you are far more likely to live each day as if it could be your last and you were about to stand face-to-face with the Lord.

Admitting you're scaring people into believing in God seems a bit counterproductive -- not to mention having the dubious effect of proving Bradlee Dean correct.

AIM's Benghazi Crowdsourcing Is A Bust So Far
Topic: Accuracy in Media

In promoting its little kangaroo court it calls a "Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi," Accuracy in Media is staging some sort of unspecified conference (which may or may not be a planned Sept. 16 gathering) that it claims will cost $5,000. To that end, AIM is trying to raise $1,000 from its readers through a crowdfunding site, complete with perks for large donations.

Though the campaign nas been up and running for nearly two weeks, AIM has yet to receive a single donation:

Perhaps its readers have realized how much of a kangaroo court its birther-filled "citizens commission" will be. Whatever the reason, it doesn't bode well for AIM or its commission.

WND's Farah Misses The Point On Its Impeachment Profiteering
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah begins his Aug. 30 WorldNetDaily column this way:

You may not have noticed, but the semi-official government press really is taking the traditional watchdog role seriously.

Oh no, not as a watchdog on the government.

Not as a watchdog on waste, fraud, abuse and corruption in high places.

Not as a watchdog on corrosive and powerful institutions.

I mean they watch WND like hawks.

Farah goes on to complain that other news outlets have written stories about WND's new "Impeachment Store," mocking his critics for exposing "my scheme to enrich myself through this jaded scheme of profiteering off the outrage of millions of Americans over the conduct of the most un-American president in history."

But Farah (perhaps deliberately) misses the point. The question his activities raise is not one of money-making but of journalistic integrity.

As we've documented, Farah is using the same tactics against Obama as he did in the 1990s against President Clinton by promoting conspiracy theories about the death of Vince Foster. But unlike then -- when Farah used a nonprofit group as a front for his Clinton-bashing -- Farah heads the for-profit WND, and thus is in a position to make much more money off his anti-Obama activism than he did off his anti-Clinton activism.

This raises the likelihood that Farah will keep any anti-Obama story alive in order to sell more anti-Obama tchotchkes to his readers.  Indeed, he has already demonstrated his willingness to do so by forbidding any contradiction of its birther conspiracies to be reported at WND.

By the same token, while WND has heavily promoted Aaron Klein's new anti-Obama book advocating impeachment, WND has not published any rebuttals of Klein's pro-impeachment arguments. Presumably, that's because he doesn't want to undermine sales of a book he's publishing. In other words, he has a motive for putting his own personal wealth ahead of journalism, and he is apparently doing so.

And, as always, Farah is thin-skinned about the truth being told about him and his "news" website.

NewsBusters: Obama Is A Journalist Whisperer!
Topic: NewsBusters

Ken Shepherd writes in a Sept. 1 NewsBusters post:

The president's call on Saturday for Congress to debate and pass a resolution authorizing airstrikes against Syria also served as a telegraphed message to the liberal media about how to spin the message in a way that puffs the president politically while turning a serious question of foreign policy and use of military resources into a domestic political grist for the 2014 midterms.

So Obama is sending secret "telegraphed messages" to the media?

After bashing a Wall Street Journal article for not hating Obama enough for pushing for an airstrike against Syria, Shepherd huffs:

Responsible journalism would call for dispassionately relaying all sides of the debate rather than helping the White House write this into a partisan narrative.

If Shepherd really believes that "responsible journalism" doesn't take sides, he might want to have a chat with Terry Jeffrey, editor in chief of the "journalism" end of the Media Research Center, CNSNews.com. He has an article headlined "Obama to Congress: I Don't Need Your Authorization for War, But Give It to Me Anyway."

If the MRC's own "journalism" operation can't act in a balanced manner, what authority do Shepherd and the MRC have to demand it of other media outlets?

WND Just Can't Stop Fearmongering About Gardasil
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has long tried to scare its readers about Gardasil and other HPV vaccines. Bob Unruh is at it again in an Aug. 30 article:

A new video by the federal government intended to encourage the use of a virus vaccine that has been linked to seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, memory loss, Guillain-Barré syndrome and even death includes a warning that the side effects could be merely “dizziness and stomach aches.”

The government watchdog Judicial Watch, which has been investigating for years the vaccine, Gardasil, is crying foul.

“The U.S. government is promoting a dangerous cervical cancer vaccine linked to thousands of adverse reactions, debilitating side effects and even death with a new video that outrageously claims side effects are limited,” Judicial Watch said.

Unruh uncritically presents Judicial Watch's alarmist claims as fact. At no point does he  bother to explain the position of the Centers for Disease Control on Gardasil: That there is "no statistically significant increased risk" for such specific severe adverse events such as Guillain–Barré Syndrome (GBS), stroke, VTE, appendicitis, seizures, syncope, allergic reactions, and anaphylaxis resulting from a Gardasil vaccination. The most common adverse events, according to the CDC, are pain and redness at the site of immunization, dizziness, nausea, fainting and headache.

But Unruh doesn't care about the truth -- just implementing his employer's right-wing agenda, even if someone might die in the process.