It's been a whole few days since somebody at NewsBusters went on a Heathering tirade, so Matthew Sheffield fills the void in a Dec. 9 post:
With the departure of commentator George Will to Fox News, the person left to represent the conservative point of view on ABC’s This Week seems to have settled upon Matthew Dowd. Trouble is, Dowd is not really what anyone could fairly characterize as a conservative.
Beyond the fact that he was a Democratic strategist for decades before switching to work for former President George W. Bush in the late 1990s, Dowd’s own political views seem to be rather conventionally liberal. If there was any doubt of that proposition, Dowd dispelled it in a column published last week at the ABC News website focusing on the Obama White House’s latest pet issue: the supposed crisis of income inequality in the United States.
Echoing conventional left-wing bromides, Dowd argued that the fact that much of the capital growth that’s occurred in the past several decades in this country has made it nearly inevitable that many Americans are going to become violent to address this supposedly serious problem. Incredibly, Dowd decides to frame his argument by comparing economic inequality in this country to the government-forced racial segregation system that once prevailed in South Africa[.]
Sheffield huffs that Dowd's claim "was not appreciably different from the argument President Obama presented the day before on December 4 when he called income inequality the “defining challenge of our time,” then insisting that "there are many reasons that this is not nearly the problem that liberals like Obama and Dowd paint it to be. For one thing, everyone’s income in recent years has actually increased. It’s just that the very wealthiest have had a larger increase."
Sheffield doesn't indicate whether he factored inflation into his income increase. He's too busy pushing the logical fallacy that Dowd can't possibly be a conservative because he agrees with Obama on one issue.
WND Calls Obama A Nazi (Again) Topic: WorldNetDaily
One of WorldNetDaily's go-to smears of President Obama is that he's some kind of Nazi. It goes there again in a Dec. 8 article by Bob Unruh:
Critics of Barack Obama, horrified at his “transformation” of America and particularly his government takeovers of large parts of the U.S. economy, have gone so far as to accuse him of being a communist or neo-communist. However, those critics are mistaken, contends a conservative talk host and author whose new book “Was Hitler a Leftist?” examines the German dictator’s radical agenda in light of today’s leftist movement in the United States.
His conclusion? Obama is, at least in some ways, more akin to a “national socialist” than a communist.
“I have to be careful saying that,” said Chuck Morse, host of the IRN USA News talk show.
“I’m not suggesting [Obama] is an anti-Semite. I’m not suggesting he’s going to set up a Holocaust. But putting all that stuff aside, when you strip that away from historical Nazism and look at the political philosophy of Nazism, this is very much what Barack Obama is into.”
Of course, it's really impossible to separate historical Nazism from Nazi philosophy, so Morse can't really get away with accusing Obama of one and not the other. It's sorta like WND's Aaron Klein calling himself a Kahanist sympathizer but not about the extreme stuff -- it's all pretty extreme.
This being Bob Unruh, he simply performs stenography, failing to challenge Morse's seriously Godwin-y smear or seeking out other perspectives that might challenge his view.
If WND was looking for someone to replace the late Hilmar von Campe in reliably going Godwin all over Obama, it seems to have found its man in Chuck Morse.
CNS Attacks Catholic Official for Taking Ambassador Job Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has a habit of demanding that Catholics in public life put their religion ahead of their country. That continues with a Dec. 6 article by Michael Chapman:
Ken Hackett, the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, previously headed the non-profit charity Catholic Relief Services (CRS), which receives hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government grants each year, and which paid him $384,013 in total compensation in 2011. He received similar compensation in earlier years.
Yes, that's the gist of Chapman's story -- a Catholic was well-compensated before accepting a job as an ambassador to the Vatican.
Chapman then undermines his attack by pointing out the large sums of money Catholic Relief Services receives -- more than $822 million in 2011 alone.
By contrast, Chapman's Media Research Center boss, Brent Bozell, makes more than $400,000 a year despite the MRC having only $11 million in assets. It seems that Catholic Relief Services got a good bargain in a leader compared to the MRC.
Chapman also plays the MRC game of religious Heathering, suggesting that Hackett is insufficiently Catholic because he donated a small amount of money to Obama's campaign:
Despite the Obama administration’s promotion of abortion on demand and same-sex-marriage, as well as the Obamacare regulation it issued mandating that health plans provide cost-free coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortion drugs (which the Catholic bishops have declared “unjust and illegal” and a “violation of personal civil rights”), Ambassador Hackett told the National Catholic Register: “I don’t have a problem representing this administration.”
This is nothing more than a partisan political attack dressed in religious overtones.
-- Media Matters catches Dennis Prager buying into Matthew Shepard trutherism in his Dec. 2 WorldNetDaily column, repeating the dubious claim promoted by one of Shepard's convicted killers that it was simply a drug deal gone bad and not homophobia (which conveniently ignores the fact that said killer mounted a gay-panic defense at his trial).
-- Richard Bartholomew follows up on our earlier post about WND's highly dubious claim that a speech by WND fave Jonathan Cahn at a so-called so-called Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast earlier this year was "suppressed." Turns out the actual problem was an apparent copyright dispute between Cahn and the breakfast organizers. That may be a lot of things, but suppression isn't one of them.
-- The Joe.My.God blog takes execption to Matt Barber's Dec. 6 WND column demanding that the blog be prosecuted for alleged threats in comment threads:
The almost-hilarious hypocrisy here, of course, is that anybody who has EVER endured five minutes on WND knows that they not only allow their own commenters to advocate for the death penalty for homosexuals and that they cheer on violent anti-gay hate crimes, WND columnists themselves have called for executing people who oppose the Christianist agenda, as, for example, when WND's Erik Rush did last year when he declared that journalists should be executed after Mitt Romney won the election. Erik Rush: "Trials for treason and the requisite sentences would apply, and I would have no qualms about seeing such sentences executed, no matter how severe." Earlier this year WND's Erik Rush declared that all Muslims should be murdered and underscored that sentiment with this tweet: "Yes, they're evil. Kill them all." And just last week WND's Erik Rush called for the execution of the president of the United States.
OK, coming back to the world of actual sane people, actual longtime JMG readers are well aware that for the near-decade of this blog's existence, I have posted regular pleas for civility in the comments and have demanded that no one make calls for physical violence against any person or any property for any reason.
[...]
One wonders how many tens of thousands of JMG comments Barber had to wade through before he could finally pounce upon the half dozen cited in today's World Net Daily column. One also wonders if Barber didn't plant those comments himself. You'd think Matt Barber would be SUPER busy getting repeatedly smacked down by the Supreme Court or helping the Liberty Counsel with the RICO Act lawsuit which alleges that they abetted the kidnapping of a young girl. Instead, he's got time to troll JMG and cherry-pick a handful of ugly comments. What a sad clown.
MRC's Graham Is Happy That Katie Couric Scaremongered on HPV Vaccine Topic: NewsBusters
The Media Research Center has long had a double standard on vaccines. You're a crazy person for fearmongering about them -- except in the case of Gardasil and other HPV vaccines, in which you can scaremonger away even though they've never been proven to be exceptionally unsafe.
Tim Graham plays into that in a Nov. 7 NewsBusters post in which he applauds Katie Couric for annoying liberals by baselessly scaremongering about Gardasil:
Katie Couric put herself on the wrong side of liberals Wednesday with a show questioning the safety of the Gardasil vaccine to prevent the Human Papilloma Virus that causes cervical cancer.
Liberals have pushed parents of junior-high girls to get the vaccine with the assumption that they’ll be sexually active at 12.
That last statement is an utter lie. The vaccine works best on someone who has never had HPV, and the best way to ensure that is to vaccinate early -- as the decidedly non-liberal WebMD and the Centers for Disease Control recommend.
Further, as the not-liberal Children's Hospital of Philadelphia notes, there's no evidence that receiving the HPV vaccine causes girls to be more promiscuous or engage in sexual activity at an earlier age.
While Graham quotes from a Los Angeles Times article featuring "liberal" critics of the vaccine, he doesn't note other criticism from several sources that Couric's show "creates the false impression of balance when in fact there is little divide about the safety of Gardasil within the scientific community." As Slate's Phil Plait -- whom Graham would likely dismiss as a "liberal" -- summarizes:
[T]he evidence is vastly on the side of the vaccine having extremely little risk, and no solid evidence at all that it causes harm. It’s not as though the research on this is split. Dedicating most of the segment to the stories of people who claimed it harmed them is not real balance or responsible journalism.
[...]
The HPV vaccine has been tested both for effectiveness and safety, and it has been shown to be an effective preventative measure against the virus with extremely small risk. No fatal injury due to the vaccine has ever been proven, and in fact the evidence presented in cases where girls died is anecdotal; no link to the vaccine other than timing (which can be coincidental) has been presented.
Graham reproduces a comment from Couric's show insisting that "we presented the facts supporting the potential of the vaccine" and "We do not want to leave our viewers with an irrational fear of the vaccine." The latter, of course, is exactly what Graham would like to see.
Bob Unruh writes in a Dec. 7 WorldNetDaily article:
A Kansas Supreme Court that recommended former Attorney General Phill Kline’s law license be suspended indefinitely for his investigation of alleged criminal activity on the part of abortionists is being petitioned to correct its own ruling.
The fight over the abortion industry in the state, which included Wichita late-term abortionist George Tiller as well as Planned Parenthood, the American abortion industry’s biggest player, has gone on for years, pitting Kline, in his office as attorney general and then in the position as Johnson County district attorney, against the whole of the abortion industry including state officials who ardently supported abortion.
Among those was Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, now Health and Human Services secretary, who went way beyond being pro-abortion to being “pro-death,” according to attorneys who worked on the brief.
The petition was filed by attorneys working with the Life Legal Defense Foundation, and seeks a rehearing or modification in Kline’s case, in which the suspension of his license was recommended over issues such as his alleged failure to make certain grand jurors understood state law after he explained it to them.
Wow -- way to whitewash what Kline did, Bob. Needless to say, Kline did much more than commit a "failure to make certain grand jurors understood state law after he explained it to them," and his law license was not suspended merely for "his investigation of alleged criminal activity on the part of abortionists." Let's see what a real news organization reported about Kline:
Citing “clear and convincing evidence” of professional misconduct, the Kansas Supreme Court on Friday indefinitely suspended the law license of former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline.
The court found that Kline violated 11 rules governing the professional conduct of attorneys during his tenure as the state’s highest law enforcement officer and while he served as Johnson County district attorney.
[...]
The court cited three aggravating factors to support the indefinite suspension: selfish motive, a pattern of misconduct and his refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of any of his misconduct. Those outweighed mitigating factors: absence of prior disciplinary record, previous good character and reputation, and cooperative attitude toward the proceedings.
[...]
The court found Friday that when he was attorney general, Kline committed misconduct by instructing members of his staff to attach sealed documents to a publicly filed document in violation of a Supreme Court order. He also told staff to file a court pleading that contained misleading information.
The court further found that as Johnson County district attorney, Kline failed to properly advise members of a grand jury about Kansas law and sought to enforce a grand jury subpoena against the grand jury’s wishes.
It also found that Kline gave false testimony to a judge and made “false and misleading” statements to the Supreme Court about the handling of patient records obtained during the criminal investigations. He also did not correct a misstatement to the state’s disciplinary administrator regarding the storage of patient records.
Unruh doesn't mention that Kline lied to a judge and the Kansas Supreme Court. Nor does he mention that Kline, despite his law license suspension, still teaches at the right-wing Liberty University law school (where, by the way, his online bio does not reflect his law license suspension).
Being the one-source wonder he is, Unruh quotes only people defending Kline, and makes no apparent effort to get a reaction from anyone else abouty his appeal.
This kind of "reporting" is obviously the norm at WND -- he could never get away with it at his old employer, the Associated Press -- but all he's doing is creating more evidence for why nobody believes WND.
AIM's Kincaid Writes About Mandela, Doesn't Say 'Apartheid' Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid has managed to achieve what one might have thought impossible: write three entire articles about Nelson Mandela that omit the word "apartheid."
In a speech last week, Jack Cashill, a frequent WND contributor and author of the WND book “If I Had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman,” argued George Zimmerman was the victim of a political prosecution, despite being found “not guilty” of the murder of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin.
“For the first time in the history of American jurisprudence, a state government, Florida, with a Republican governor, conspired with the U.S. Department of Justice under a Democratic president in the White House, with ready compliance of a Democratic-leaning mainstream media, the cooperation of a left-leaning entertainment industry, and the tattered vestiges of the civil rights movement, to send a transparently innocent man to prison for the rest of his life,” Jack Cashill told a to an attentive audience Nov. 29, explaining his view Zimmerman was unfairly prosecuted.
[...]
“The pattern has become obvious in that those on the far left in American politics feel they have a license to lie, almost casually and without conscience, following a model that was introduced by the Soviets in the 1920s, so much so that it has become normative for the Democratic Party and their allies in the media,” Cashill said. “In response, we acquiesce in that our allies on the institutional political right under-cut us when we try to expose the truth by calling us ‘conspiracy theorists.’”
Discover the Soviet roots of leftist lies in Ion Mihal Pacepa’s “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion and Promoting Terrorism.”
This, Cashill stressed, supported his basic theme for the evening: “How to become a genuine, all-American ‘conspiracy theorist,’ because in the eyes of the mainstream media, if we dare to tell the truth, we are going to be cast as ‘conspiracy theorists’ by the left in the effort to preserve the lie by discrediting us as truth-tellers.”
But, Cashill cautioned, the requirement for “conspiracy theorists” on the political right is that the arguments made must have a firm basis in truth and facts.
“If you are wrong, you’re going to get punished, because there’s an army of blogs in Washington, D.C., like Media Matters, with 100 people working in cubicles all day long just to catch the political right on any errors we might make,” Cashill cautioned. “At Media Matters, I have my own case-officer who does nothing but monitor everything I say and right in the hopes of being able to do an end-zone victory dance around any factual error they might find.”
To make the point, Cashill stressed, “We have an obligation to be right all the time, but it’s not a problem because we have a vested interest in telling the truth.”
Yes, that's Jerome Corsi -- serialliar about Barack Obama -- and Jack Cashill -- who has rarely met a killer whose deeds he didn't try to whitewash by hiding the facts about their crimes -- fretting about the left's purported "license to lie."
And that is Jerome Corsi -- who has been desperatelytrying for years to prove that Obama's birth certificate is fake -- and Jack Cashill -- who has met few conspiracy theories he hasn't embraced -- complaining about being marginalized as conspiracy theorists.
Cashill clearly can't stop propping up George Zimmerman, this timelikening the coverage to the Sacco and Vanzetti murder trail, because "even though the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti was proven beyond doubt, the political left in America rallied to politicize the case to advance a predetermined, post-World War I, leftist narrative," adding, "The playbook of virtually the entire Democratic Party in the United States is taken from the former Soviet Union, in which lying for the truth was perfectly OK."
MRC's Graham Promotes Levin, Doesn't Mention MRC's Promotion Deal With Levin Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham dutifully transcribed one of his favorite radio hosts in a Nov. 7 NewsBusters post:
Mark Levin laid into Chris Matthews on his national radio show Friday night over the MSNBC host oozing on Now with Alex Wagner that South African F.W. deKlerk was more patriotic than Republicans because he "had treated Nelson Mandela so different than the way Mitch McConnell handled the election of Obama." Sharpton hailed the wisdom of Al Sharpton for saying the wisest thing in five years.
"The big dummy hasn’t heard something as smart in five years as something that came out of Reverend Al Sharpton’s mouth," shot back Levin. "Does that show you what a moron he is?" Levin couldn't stand the way media figures are trying to compare Obama to Mandela and the Republicans to apartheid-era racists[.]
Graham didn't mention -- as have somanyother Media Research Center employees before him -- that the MRC has a promotion deal with Levin, as the free bumper sticker offer (above) that runs on MRC websites makes amply clear.
Keeping in mind the definition of verbal bullying (frighten, coerce, intimidate and dominate others), let’s look at some examples of Obama’s serial bullying: The Supreme Court, the Cambridge police (acted stupidly), those who cling to their guns and Bibles (most of America), the Republicans, Christians, George Bush, George Zimmerman, the Redskins, Paul Ryan, the CIA (alleged torturing), military leaders, his grandmother (typical white person), the tea party, conservatives (through the IRS), insurance companies (the health-care issue was never about health care; it was about the insurance companies), Israel, successful Americans, Fox News etc., ad infinitum.
In fact, he bullies anyone who disagrees with him. Now he could not – and would not – bully without serious backup: His mob is the media, who, by the way, are the worst bullies in our society.
Perhaps as interesting as who he bullies are those he does not bully – radical Muslims as such, Islam on treatment of women, late-term abortionists (did he ever denounce the greatest serial killer in our history, Kermit Gosnell?), supporters of same-sex “marriages” (he once lied that he supported traditional marriage), North Korea’s dictator, the Muslim Brotherhood, black “leadership” (race fascists such as Jackson and Sharpton) on black crime and the breakdown of black families (soaring illegitimacy), “knockout” black thugs and Hollywood. How about those incredible incompetents in his own administration? (He is afraid to fire them, knowing many would become whistleblowers.)
I have written extensively in my “The Daily Rant” (TDR) blog that Obama suffers from emotional instability that makes him a threat to our national security and drives him to attempt elevating his self-esteem.
He knows that he is the equivalent of an empty suit who found he could prostitute his skin color for free rides. But like most of his kind, when they find themselves in positions of prominence they realize they are frauds and the secret haunts them. Add the dysfunctional parentage and family setting he grew up within, and we understand that he lies as a means to make a damaged person puff himself up to be what he isn’t. Lying has become his first language because his true opinion of himself is one he cannot stomach.
His grandparents forced him into a mentorship with Frank Marshall Davis who was a rabid communist and pedophile, and although it hasn’t been proven, if as I and others suspect, that led to young Obama being sexually molested. The feelings of worthlessness that would understandably bring about combined with a sense of betrayal by his grandparents (who brought Davis into his life) and feelings of abandonment by his biological parents, which allowed for the betrayal by his grandparents, which led to more feelings of abandonment, anger, and worthlessness. This resulted in an unstable and volatile person unfit for office.
Today, we confront more than just a few problems, to put it mildly. Our current president, who lacks legitimacy to even be president since he’s not a “natural born citizen” as required by the Constitution, is mired in serious scandal – from NSA-gate, to IRS-gate, to Benghazi and Extortion 17-gate, to Obamacare-gate, to Fast and Furious-gate, to name just a few outrages. And, with his latest bow to Islam, the “mullah in chief” has again thrown not just Israel but our own security interests under the bus, with a Neville Chamberlain-type appeasement deal with his “fellow mullahs” in Tehran over Iran’s nuclear facilities and capabilities to build atomic weapons, which this neo-Nazi Muslim regime has threatened repeatedly to use to wipe Jews and Christians off the face of the map.
Friday morning past, I read 1 Samuel 16:7, as part of my daily devotions. It’s a passage I’ve read countless times, but it reverberated anew in the wake of recent observations.
The passage reads: “But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him; for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”
The passage caused me to think of Ephesians 5:9, “For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.”
Why, you ask, am I mentioning this? I mention it because Obama’s outward appearance – specifically the color of his skin – has blinded most blacks specifically and others in general who claim to be Christians, while they ignore in him the very things God directly spoke about pursuant to leaders and those who claim to be believers in Christ.
When Obama went back to the White House and granted the Thanksgiving turkey an executive pardon, it wasn’t, as some people assumed, a matter of tradition; it was professional courtesy.
Between public opinion turning against the Marxist-in-chief, elements of his own party and the liberal press abandoning him, emerging details relative to long-suppressed scandals and the freshness date on his rhetoric having long since passed, we may yet see a constitutional resurgence in America, whether or not Obama plays the last card in his Marxist deck – that of touching off civil war, of course.
Yes, Barack Obama can be compared to Nelson Mandela – the same way a midget is compared to a giant, a zircon to a diamond, or a street-corner hustler to an astronaut. No matter how hard the mainstream media try to paint a different picture, Obama will forever remain a little speck lost in Mandela’s long shadow.
On the other hand, in one way Obama does remind me of Mandela, but not the Mandela whose legacy will be celebrated universally. Obama does remind me of Winnie Mandela, the scandalous, self-serving, demagogic second wife whom Nelson Mandela divorced because she was such an embarrassment.
We can only wish that America could divorce Obama as easily as Mandela divorced his agitator-wife, but Obama’s crimes are more insidious and his support network more forgiving than Winnie Mandela’s.
To the 65,910,437 people who voted for Obama in November 2012, I ask: Based on the above statement where Obama gleefully cites “statistics” comparing America’s level of “income inequality” to socialist hellholes like Jamaica and Argentina, who has been president of the United States over the past six years?! And who was elected to correct the “worst economy since the Great Depression,” which is how Obama repeatedly mischaracterized the recession of 2008 when George W. Bush was in office?
MRC's Bozell Still Playing Down Limbaugh's Misogyny Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell has always been a coward when it comes to Rush Limbaugh's three-day misogynistic denigration of Sandra Fluke. Now he's pretending that it really wasn't offensive at all.
On the Dec. 6 edition of Fox News' "The Kelly File," Bozell asserted that Martin Bashir's comment about Sarah Palin "was 100-fold more serious than anything Rush Limbaugh has ever said about anyone in 30 years on his show."
Really? Calling Fluke a slut and a prostitute is not offensive? And don't forget (as Bozell wants you to), Limbaugh said much, much more.
Claiming that Fluke wants to be paid to have sex is not offensive? Claiming she's going broke having sex is not offensive? Claiming that Fluke has man lined up around the block waiting to have sex with her is not offensive? Demanding that Fluke post videos of herself having sex on the Internet is not offensive?
Perhaps Bozell can explain the scale he uses to declare that Bashir's single comment is "100-fold" more offensive than Limbaugh's three days of denigration.
WND Finds Another Pro-Apartheid Dead-Ender To Attack Mandela Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has an interesting habit of relying on pro-apartheid dead-enders to bash Nelson Mandela after his death. It does so again in a Dec. 7 article:
Nelson Mandela was a radical Marxist and a firm advocate of abortion, pornography, homosexuality and legalizing prostitution, according to a prominent Christian missionary who was summoned to the home of the South African president.
Rev. Peter Hammond, founder of Frontline Fellowship and Africa Christian Nation, has worked for nearly 30 years helping persecuted Christians in Africa. As a result of Hammond’s visit with Mandela – in which the missionary laid hands on the president and prayed for him to see abortion for what it really is, the merciless slaughter of innocent human life – Hammond was subjected to a 13-year audit of his organization.
The chairman of Frontline Fellowship is Peter Hammond, a former South African army sniper and intelligence officer. Hammond, the son-in-law of ITMI president Bill Bathman, formed Frontline Fellowship on a South African military base in Namibia, drawing on ex-Rhodesian commando units for members. Frontline Fellowship literature called the South African army und,er apartheid a "missionary force" which must be supported. He is also the , current director of UCA (of CSI's Gunnar Wiebalck), of which Frontline Fellowship has been a member since the 1980s.
"If you believe Christ wants a holy war to preserve apartheid, the Reverend Peter Hammond is your general, his Frontline Fellowship your army," wrote the National Catholic Reporter in 1989.
Sounds like your basic apartheid dead-ender. He denies this, of course, stating in a posting to his Frontline Fellowship that "I was never a supporter of apartheid" and that his "Opposing communism, terrorism, and political manipulation of the churches ... is not the same thing as supporting apartheid!" Yet in that posting, Hammond does not denounce apartheid.
Yet Hammond has also tried to downplay any sense of guilt white South Africans may have for benefiting from apartheid, claiming that "most South Africans alive today had not even been born when the system had been introduced" and adding: "In the Bible, guilt and repentance is specific and personal, not vague and national, and Biblical restitution is to be made by the culprit to the victim – directly and entirely."
If Hammond is as opposed to apartheid as he says he is, why is he working so hard to downplay it?
Can't WND find any Mandela critics who aren't on record as approving or at least condoning apartheid?
MRC Invents A Biden 'Gaffe' Topic: Media Research Center
Scott Whitlock writes in a Dec. 4 Media Research Center item:
Vice President Joe Biden unleashed another gaffe on Tuesday while talking to female employees at an internet company in Japan. According to the Examiner, Biden was "scheduled to address the company's female employees" and "discuss the economic impact of women in the corporate world." Instead, while talking to the women, he blurted, "Do your husbands like you working full time?"
ABC's Good Morning America, CBS This Morning and NBC's Today all ignored the remark. Imagine if a conservative Republican like Rick Santorum had made such a similar comment? The politically correct media would likely trot out the "war on women" theme.
But as the Washington Post points out, Biden asked the question for a reason -- to bring up the issue of women in the workplace in a country where sexism still dominates:
Biden agreed to highlight the issue because the Obama administration, which has made women’s rights a key pillar of its foreign policy agenda, wanted to support Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push for women to augment the shrinking workforce in a nation with a rapidly aging population and plummeting birthrate. In Japan, an estimated 60 percent of women quit their jobs after having children, in part because companies do not offer flexible leave or work schedules and day-care options are expensive and scarce.
[...]
At the Japanese Internet company, [U.S ambassador for global women’s issues Cathy] Russell told an anecdote about her own experience when she quit her job as then-senator Biden’s staff director to raise her children full-time. After 10 years, she called him to ask if he’d hire her back on a part-time schedule.
“He said to me, you come back whenever you want, on whatever schedule you want, because you are worth it to me,” Russell said.
Aides said that behind the scenes, Abe thanked Biden for highlighting the issue, and Biden introduced Russell to both Abe and South Korea’s Park. Russell paid separate visits to government officials in Japan and South Korea, visited students at two women’s universities to learn more about their concerns and ambitions and also met with survivors of violence at a pair of women’s shelters.
The Post also noted that CNN’s Jake Tapper "apologized to Biden on the air for failing to 'provide the proper context' while playing the sound bite of the vice president’s remarks in Tokyo." Don't hold your breath waiting for the MRC to issue a similar apology.
Much as the MRC would like this incident to forward the conservatively correct meme that Biden is a gaffe machine, there wasn't a gaffe here.
WND's Farah: Don't Mourn for That Commie Mandela Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah devotes his Dec. 6 WorldNetDaily column to remembering Nelson Mandela by trashing him, under the headline "Don't Mourn for Mandela":
Maybe you say: “But Farah, he was fighting against the evil of Apartheid!”
Yes, that is true. Apartheid was inarguably an evil and unjustifiable system. But so is the system Mandela’s revolution brought about – one in which anti-white racism is so strong today that a prominent genocide watchdog group has labeled the current situation a “precursor” to the deliberate, systematic elimination of the race.
In other words, the world has been sold a bill of goods about Mandela. He wasn’t the saintly character portrayed by Morgan Freeman. He wasn’t someone fighting for racial equality. He was the leader of a violent, Communist revolution that has nearly succeeded in all of its grisly horror.
If apartheid was so evil, why does WND employ a columnist, Ilana Mercer, who laments the end of that evil system?
And as we've previously noted, the group that labeled the current situation in South Afrida "a 'precursor' to the deliberate, systematic elimination of the race" has since reduced its alert level.
Farah also writes:
You will read today many stories describing Mandela as a “political prisoner.”
In fact, he served 27 years in prison for 23 specific acts of sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government.
It was only a year ago that some of the international press began to report the truth about Mandela for the first time. Last December, the London Telegraph reported that, indeed, the records showed Mandela was not only a member of the South African Communist Party, he held a “senior rank.”
By the way, Mandela was offered his freedom while incarcerated many times. All he had to do was renounce terrorism. He wouldn’t do it.
Farah leaves out a lot of context. Given that much of the Western world, incluiding the United States, condoned if not outright supported pro-apartheid governments in South Africa, Mandela had to find support from somewhere.
Farah's claim that Mandela stayed in prison only because he refused to renounce terrorism ignores what Mandela actually said on the subject:
What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? What freedom am I being offered when I may be arrested on a pass offence? What freedom am I being offered to live my life as a family with my dear wife who remains in banishment in Brandfort? What freedom am I being offered when I must ask for permission to live in an urban area? What freedom am I being offered when I need a stamp in my pass to seek work? What freedom am I being offered when my very South African citizenship is not respected?
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
In other words, his freedom would be meaningless in a country that still practiced apartheid.
Finally, we suspect that Farah's disdain for Mandela "attempting to overthrow the government" doesn't similarly apply to anyone attempting to overthrow the Obama administration, like WND columnists Larry Klayman and Erik Rush.
(P.S. Yes, the above image is really the cover of the current issue of WND Weekly.)
If you read CNSNews.com today, you would never know that there was good news in the latest unemployment numbers -- a drop in the jobless rate from 7.3 percent to 7.0 percent, and 203,000 new jobs created.
CNS produced three stories on the new numbers, none of which promote the good news. Here are the headlines:
These articles again state that "The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold." Is CNS' blatant bias and dishonesty in reporting jobless statistics -- a staple of CNS' work in the past year -- what Wold really paid for?
It's been a whole few days since somebody at NewsBusters went on a Heathering tirade, so Matthew Sheffield fills the void in a Dec. 9 post:
One of WorldNetDaily's 
CNSNews.com 
-- Media Matters 
The Media Research Center has long had a 
Bob Unruh writes in a Dec. 7 WorldNetDaily 
Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid has managed to achieve what one might have thought impossible: write three entire articles about Nelson Mandela that omit the word "apartheid."
Jerome Corsi writes in a Dec. 1 
Tim Graham dutifully transcribed one of his favorite radio hosts in a Nov. 7 NewsBusters 
Keeping in mind the definition of verbal bullying (frighten, coerce, intimidate and dominate others), let’s look at some examples of Obama’s serial bullying: The Supreme Court, the Cambridge police (acted stupidly), those who cling to their guns and Bibles (most of America), the Republicans, Christians, George Bush, George Zimmerman, the Redskins, Paul Ryan, the CIA (alleged torturing), military leaders, his grandmother (typical white person), the tea party, conservatives (through the IRS), insurance companies (the health-care issue was never about health care; it was about the insurance companies), Israel, successful Americans, Fox News etc., ad infinitum.
Brent Bozell has always been a coward when it comes to Rush Limbaugh's three-day misogynistic denigration of Sandra Fluke. Now he's pretending that it really wasn't offensive at all.
WorldNetDaily has an 
Scott Whitlock writes in a Dec. 4 Media Research Center 
Joseph Farah devotes his Dec. 6 WorldNetDaily 
If you read CNSNews.com today, you would never know that there was 
