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Saturday, September 20, 2014
MRC Plucks Quotes From Roosevelt Documentary Out of Context
Topic: Media Research Center

A Sept. 20 NewsBusters post by Jeffrey Lord is devoted to whining that Rush Limbaugh was taken out of context when he lamented that guys can no longer wheedle sex with women by claiming "that 'no' means 'yes' if you know how to spot it." Lord asserts that "Rush has millions of listeners who, yes, actually listen to what he says, understood his context."

As usual at the Media Research Center, however, it's still perfectly fine to take non-conservatives out of context.

In a Sept. 16 MRC item, Kyle Drennen attacks the new PBS documentary on the Roosevelts:

During the first installment of PBS's The Roosevelts: An Intimate History on Sunday, historian Clay Jenkinson and former Newsweek editor turned historian Evan Thomas slammed Theodore Roosevelt as a bloodthirsty "imperialist" who promoted the "glorification of war" and built up a "cult" of personality. [Listen to the audio]

Speaking on Roosevelt's command of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, Jenkinson proclaimed: "There's no question that Roosevelt is an imperialist. Apologists like to try to play this down. But the fact is he's probably the most significant imperialist in American history." Jenkinson seemed troubled by Roosevelt's call for the United States to "take our place in the world's arena."

Minutes later, Jenkinson launched a more pointed attack against the nation's 26th president: "This is really important. There is a blood lust in Theodore Roosevelt. He was a killer. You can't – you can't sanitize that."

Thomas added to denunciation, declaring: "Teddy Roosevelt, although he's a wonderful figure and a glamorous figure, is a dangerous figure in some ways. This glorification of war can't be a good thing in the long run....And it was an illusion that this country from time to time succumbs to."

[...]

The Ken Burns documentary even brought on conservative columnist George Will to scold Roosevelt's belligerency: "Theodore Roosevelt, we should say this bluntly, liked war....And it gave him an unpleasant dimension, which, after a century of war, which the 20th century became, should cause us to look back on Theodore Roosevelt with dry eyes."

But if you look at the transcript Drennen supplies and the accompanying text, it's obvious that Drennen has pulled all of these quotes out of context and fails to fully report what the documentary was saying.

As the full video of the Roosevelt documentary shows, the segment from which Drennen cherry-picks these statements is about Teddy Roosevelt's adventures in the Spanish-American War. The segment starts at 1:20:12; the Jenkinson clip is prefaced with a quote from Roosevelt about "the supreme triumph of war" trumps the triumph of peace and how "it is through strife, or the readiness for strife, that a nation must win greatness."

There's a 13-minute gap betwen the George Will quote and the second Jenkinson quote Drennen cites, during which it's recounted how Roosevelt was unusually eager to fight the Spanish in Cuba and how his reckless behavior  got many of his fellow Rough Riders wounded or killed.

Between the second Jenkinson quote and the first Evan Thomas quote is a short segment about how Roosevelt lobbied to receive a Medal of Honor for his work in Cuba although he was ineligible for one because he was a volunteer. Between the two Thomas quotes is a segment on how Roosevelt's later political career could be traced to his self-proclaimed heroism.

Curiously, for all of his plucking out of context, Drenne never contradicts anything in the documentary. Instead, he whines about Obama for some reason:

It should be noted that Theodore Roosevelt never brought the United States to a war as president and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Unlike Obama, Roosevelt actually earned his peace prize.  

Drennen doesn't mention the fact that the part of the seven-part documentary from which he cherry-picked covered Roosevelt's life before coming president. Part 2 of the documentary, which covers Roosevelt's presidency, does cover Roosevelt's Nobel Peace Prize.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:59 PM EDT
Friday, September 19, 2014
MRC Hides Fox News' Biased Coverage of Benghazi Hearing
Topic: Media Research Center

Matthew Balan writes in a Sept. 17 Media Research Center item:

CNN and MSNBC viewers on Wednesday would have to switch channels if they wanted to watch the first hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. CNN aired a 15-second news brief at the top of the 10 am Eastern hour, mere minutes before the nearly three-hour meeting began, but didn't cover the proceedings live. MSNBC set aside 12 minutes worth of segments to the event, and sometimes showed split-screen video, but didn't provide the audio.

By contrast, Fox News Channel provided nearly 41 minutes (40 minutes, 51 seconds) of live coverage of the congressional committee's hearing during the 10 am and 11 am Eastern hours.

What Balan did report: Fox's coverage of the hearing was probably biased.

Media Matters monitored Fox's hearing coverage the previous day and found that the channel emphasized the question from Republican members of Congress while cutting away from questions by Democratic members. In all, Fox devoted twice as much time to Republican questions than to Democratic questions. This is something Fox frequently does, but Balan won't tell you that either.

Balan also won't mention Fox's freakish obsession with Benghazi -- nearly 1,100 segments on it since the incidence occurred in September 2012.

Why? Because Fox's agenda is the MRC's agenda. If Fox is obsessed with Benghazi, Balan must be as well.


Posted by Terry K. at 7:26 PM EDT
WND Writer: Adrian Peterson's Punishment Of Son Not A Bad Idea, Just 'Poorly Executed'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Reb Bradley is the author of the WorldNetDaily-published book "Child Training Tips." As we've previously noted, Bradley is an enthusiastic advocate of corporal punishment of children (and even babies), stating that the "objective" of punishing children is "subjection of their will" and that parents must "teach your children to obey without being told 'why.'"

All of which makes Bradley the obvious WND choice to talk about the Adrian Peterson child abuse case, which he did in a Sept. 17 column. Bradley laments the decline of spanking:

People, civilized and uncivilized, have used spanking to teach their children self-control for thousands of years. In most cultures it has been used to help children learn to say NO to themselves and YES to what is right. It wasn’t until 50 years ago that parenting books began to discourage spanking. Instead of reinforcing the absolute importance of raising children of good character through balancing love and discipline, the new “experts” emphasized raising children who were independent, expressive and “self-actualized.” Since the ’60s the change in emphasis saw a dramatic increase in narcissism and hedonism in our culture.

Bradley ultimately defends Peterson's intent if not his methods, claiming the severe beating Peterson delivered to his 4-year-old son was merely "poorly executed":

Someone like Adrian Peterson is trying to employ the approach to parenting that was used successfully for centuries and worked well on him. He wants his son to grow up with self-control and responsibility. Unfortunately, Peterson, like all of us, is flawed and therefore makes mistakes in his judgments and acts of discipline.

When I heard that Peterson had whipped his son 14 times with a switch and left abrasions and bruises I was sickened. Just the thought of injuring a child that way angers me. I am a proponent of spanking, but not of overdoing it. Spanking must not be done in anger, not on the legs, not on the head, not with an implement that damages the skin, and certainly not with 14 strokes. If, as his son claimed, his dad spanked him in anger, then he accidentally taught his son that it is OK to take out aggression on smaller, more helpless people.

Spanking is not an act in which a parent wails on his kid and yells, “I’ll teach you to do that to me.” Parents – spanking is not about YOU. Such an approach can actually foster violence in children. Proper spanking simply offers some negative reinforcement for young children when they demonstrate defiance or rebellion and NOT when they make childish mistakes. The unpleasant consequence for misbehavior motivates better behavior. It helps children in the first five years of life develop self-control, the key trait of maturity. Without self-control they will grow up, but they will never mature. Our nation is now morally out-of-control because it is populated by individuals who lack self-control, most likely because they were catered to and not spanked for defiance when they were young.

So – did Peterson permanently warp his son by spanking him? I doubt it – at least not by the spanking, as poorly executed as it was. A calmly delivered spanking on the bottom would have served his purpose better. Adrian Peterson loves his son and wants to raise him properly, but quite honestly, I would encourage him to concentrate on cultivating a strong relationship of love. By the time his son is a teenager, love will motivate him far more than fear.

Bradley's calling for love to motivate more than fear seems to run counter to his advice to subjugate the will of children and instill blind obedience into them.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:33 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, September 19, 2014 12:33 PM EDT
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Newsmax's Malzberg Joins MRC In Protecting Sharyl Attkisson's Dubious Reporting
Topic: Newsmax

It's not just the Media Research Center that's uncritically buying into Sharyl Attkisson's questionable reporting on Benghazi. Newsmax has joined the lack of skepticism.

A Sept. 17 Newsmax article by Bill Hoffmann summarizes an appearance by Attkisson on Steve Malzberg's Newsmax TV show. Malzberg lets Attkisson get away with pretending her main source on her latest Benghazi scoop, Raymond Maxwell, is being unfairly dismissed as less than credible:

The media is out to discredit a former State Department diplomat who turned Benghazi whistleblower, says Emmy-winning journalist and former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

What is the dirt that reporters have on former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell? He's written poetry, she says.

"One person tweeted out that she heard someone else or was told by someone else in the media that [Maxwell] had no credibility because of his poetry," Attkisson said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"He's a poet and he published, when he was on administrative leave, some very insightful allegories."

The full segment shows that Malzberg did not push back on Attkisson's ridiculous defense.

In fact, Maxwell has been credibly accused of much more than writing poetry. Media Matters summarizes:

Maxwell himself is a dubious source. He was placed on administrative leave after the Accountability Review Board's investigation found a "lack of proactive leadership" and pointed specifically to Maxwell's department, saying some officials in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs "showed a lack of ownership of Benghazi's security issues." A House Oversight Committee report released findings from the classified version of the ARB report, which revealed that the ARB's board members "were troubled by the NEA DAS for Maghreb Affairs' lack of leadership and engagement on staffing and security issues in Benghazi."

Disgruntled over being "the only official in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job," Maxwell spoke to The Daily Beast in May 2013 in an attempt to "restore" his "honor." Maxwell, who had filed official grievances regarding his treatment, expressed anger that Mills -- the same staff member Maxwell speculated was involved in hiding potentially damaging documents -- "reneged" on a deal to eventually bring Maxwell back to the NEA after his leave.

While Maxwell has previously been interviewed by the ARB, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Oversight Committee, the Daily Beast, and Examiner.com, this is curiously the first time this allegation has been made public.

Maxwell also has no evidence to prove his allegation that Benghazi documents were "scrubbed" to protect then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, nor did he ever witness such behavior taking place.

The fact that Attkisson is resporting to such a transparently diversionary defense of her source suggests that she knows his testimony can't stand up to genuine scrutiny. No wonder she's relying on the likes of the MRC and Newsmax to protect her.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:31 PM EDT
WND's Massie Invokes His Black Conservative Privilege Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Mychal Massie uses his Sept. 15 WorldNetDaily column to engage in one of the oldest tricks in the demogogue's book: pretending that his most extreme critics are representative of all his critics.

In the column, he dismisses his critics as "white bigots" and claims that according to them, "God frowns on those who refuse to be victims and don’t espouse antipathy based on skin color. The fact that my race is the human race and not some melanin-coded subsection of same is anathema to her."

That's laughable, because Massie very much exploits his race to espouse his antipathy. As we've documented, the anti-Obama and anti-black venom that spews from Massie's mouth would be automatically dismissed as racist were he not himself black. He is effectively invoking his black conservative privilege to get away with saying such things.

Massie also declares that, according to his critics, "speaking the truth is inconsistent with being a person of color." This from a man who lies with impunity in his WND columns. Indeed, he peddles more lies in his column:

Should I ignore the fact that Obama sent six special ops members to their deaths to rescue a Muslim terrorist sympathizer and military deserter, Bo Bergdahl, in exchange for five of the most high-value enemy detainees being held? Would they have me ignore the fact that Obama has done not one thing to free Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi from the Mexican prison he is being held in?

First, no "special ops members" died in the exchange of Bergdahl for the "enemy detainees," and the claim that six soldiers died in Afghanistan searching for Bergdahl years before has not been substantiated. Second, even Tahmooressi's lawyer believes that diplomacy will have no effect on his case:

Defense attorney Fernando Benitez, who will represent the Afghan war veteran in a Tijuana court for the first time on July 9, said demands, threats and diplomacy from American politicians will have no effect on Tahmooressi's release.

"This is a federal court and as in any democratic nation you will not find an executive calling up a judge and ordering the release of a suspect," Benitez said. "It makes no difference if it is a mayor, governor, or the president, there's not a phone call in the world that will change this."

Massie continues to be a  dishonest, hateful man who believes he can hide behind black conservative privilege to spew his hate. So what else is new?


Posted by Terry K. at 1:42 PM EDT
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
MRC Covers For Sharyl Attkisson's Shoddy Reporting
Topic: Media Research Center

Now that Sharyl Attkisson has revealed herself to be an anti-Obama conservative-leaning reporter, the Media Research Center has her back, defending her by ignoring the shoddy nature of her reporting.

In a Sept. 15 NewsBusters post, Curtis Houck complained that the networks are providing "zero coverage of news from investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson that aides to Clinton when she was Secretary of State engaged in a weekend meeting that included the removal of documents related to the Benghazi attacks that portrayed her in a negative light." Houck touted how "Attickson [sic] interviewed former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, who stated that the weekend meeting took place in the basement of a room at the State Department and included going through 'boxes and stacks of documents” relating to the attack that left four Americans dead" that pruportedly involved "pull[ing] out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light.”

P.J. Gladnick followed up with a Sept. 16 post that "Politico reporting on groups of Hillary Clinton supporters who will be defending her during the Congressional Benghazi hearings which makes absolutely no mention of the Sharyl Attkisson's report about how Hillary's aides at the State Department scrubbed the Benghazi documents of possibly incriminating information." Gladnick insists that Attkisson is making "pretty damning allegations" in her "bombshell" story.

What Houck and Gladnick won't tell their readers: Attkisson's source is highly questionable at best. As Media Matters notes, even some reporters at MRC fave Fox News doubt Attkisson's report; Bill O'Reilly, for instance, called Maxwell "a disgruntled former State Department official" who, Attkisson confirmed, didn't actually witness any of the actions he claimed happened.F ox correspondent James Rosen reported that Attkisson's source had previously failed to disclose this accusation of a cover-up and that his account "bears a lot of further investigation before it can be deemed credible."

But these MRC writers somehow trust Attkisson implicitly, even though the MRC has criticized her reporting in the past for promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines. The MRC's cognitive dissonance on Attkisson continues.


Posted by Terry K. at 6:45 PM EDT
WND's Monckton: Ban The Quran!
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Craven public authorities have failed to act against the circulation of the Quran in its present form because they fear a violent backlash.

How, then, is this manifestly illegal text to be dealt with? It is not our custom to ban books, for freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Constitution.

However, it is our custom to prosecute for incitement to murder. And the fact that incitement is on every page of what is said to be a holy book does not diminish, still less extinguish, the offense.

A bill should be brought before Congress identifying all passages in the Quran which, whether in isolation or taken together, constitute incitement to murder.

The bill should specify that anyone who reads any of these passages out loud is to be charged with that crime and, if convicted, subjected to the usual penalty for it – a long prison term.

The bill should state that, after a grace period of a year, every copy of the Quran must clearly identify by emboldened and different-colored text the passages that constitute criminal incitement to murder, together with a clearly printed warning on the first page that reading any of these passages out loud anywhere within the jurisdiction of the United States may result in prosecution.

The prominent part played by the Quran in the radicalization of young Muslims so that they become willing to murder their own fellow-citizens demands that we act at once, before its dangerous influence incites the loss of any more innocent lives. The Quran as it now stands is illegal.

-- Christopher Monckton, Sept. 14 WorldNetDaily column


Posted by Terry K. at 12:43 PM EDT
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
NewsBusters Misinformation Watch
Topic: NewsBusters

In the midst of a freakout over Salon suggesting that George Wallace was a Republican, P.J. Gladnick goes on a misinformation spree in a Sept. 12 NewsBusters post. In whining that a Salon article on Republican voter suppression "is chock full of blatant attempts to rewrite history," Gladnick engages in his own revisionism.

Gladnick complains that Salon references "the myth of the 'stolen' Florida 2000 election , citing a CNN report that "Bush's margin would have tripled if the 'undercounted' ballots had been checked as Gore wanted." In fact, a news consortium that reviewed all presidential ballots in the 2000 election in Florida found that "Gore might have eked out a victory if he had pursued in court a course like the one he publicly advocated when he called on the state to 'count all the votes.'"

Gladnick then has a fit over Salon's claimthat "the parties switched places over civil rights," citing a random guy at an obscure history bulletin board to claim that "With only one exception [Strom Thurmond], all of the Democrat segregationists remained Democrats when that [civil rights] era ended."

But that's miseading -- because the Southern shift from Democrat to Republican didn't happen immediately doesn't mean that there was never a shift. Jody Seaborn points out

The party shift was underway. It was multilayered and would take decades to complete, but Johnson was right. The South was a conservative stronghold in 1964. It remains so. What has changed over the past 50 years is the region that was once solidly Democratic, with only a handful of Republican representatives and senators scattered here and there, is now solidly Republican. And the passage of the Civil Rights Act is a big reason why.

Jamelle Bouie wrote at the American Prospect:

White Southerners jumped ship from Democratic presidential candidates in the 1960s, and this was followed by a similar shift on the congressional level, and eventually, the state legislative level. That the former two took time doesn’t discount the first.

Gladnick also complained that Salon cited an alleged voter fraud complaint in Georgia but "very conveniently did not mention that Kemp's investigation was initiated by complaints at the local county level by election officials of registration irregularities." But Gladnick conveniently didn't mention that the group conducting the voter registration drive at the heart of the complaint, by state law, must turn in all voter registration forms even if they are incomplete. The Washington Post also reported that the group "reached out to the secretary of state’s office proactively in June to ensure they complied with state law."

If Gladnick couldn't manufacture the kind of outrage he cobbled together for his post, would he still be a NewsBusters blogger?


Posted by Terry K. at 10:03 PM EDT
Bob Unruh One-Sided Reporting Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We already know that WorldNetDaily "reporter" Bob Unruh can't be bothered to report any side of an argument that diverges from his employer's (and, presumably, his own) right-wing agenda. And he just can't seem to stop repeatedly proving it.

Unruh does it again in a Sept. 13 WND article in which he promotes only the view of anti-gay therapists, even quoting  from a dissent in a judicial decision upholding a state ban on anti-gay "repatative" therapy without quoting from the majority decision. Unruh goes on to baselessly assert that lawmakers in states that have banned anti-gay therapy are "pro-homosexual lawmakers" and that the anti-gay groups who favor such therapy are "licensed mental health professionals."

Such is the state of WND and Unruh's reporting. No wonder nobody believes WND.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:46 PM EDT
Monday, September 15, 2014
MRC's Graham, Sharyl Attkisson Pretend We Don't Know Where Obama Was During Benghazi
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Tim Graham devotes a Sept. 12 NewsBusters post to highlighting tweets by Sharyl Attkisson -- the former CBS correspondent turned conservative darling and right-wing website employee -- claiming that "we still have no idea what commander in chief did Sept. 11, 2012" during the attack on diplomatic facilities in Benghazi" and asserting that "the White House photos taken that night" have been "withheld" from the public. Graham followed up Attkisson's huffing by adding, "How can our "government watchdog" media not secure answers to the most basic questions about the government response to this attack on our consulate?"

Except, of course, those answers have been supplied. Even Fox News acknowledges that Obama was in the White House during the attack, and the White House Flickr account has a photo of Obama meeting with then-deputy national security Adviser Denis McDonough, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, and then-chief of staff Jack Lew the night of Sept. 11, 2012.

Graham tries to fudge things by claiming that Attkisson was talking about what "Obama was doing in real time" that night, but she does not make that distinction in the tweets Graham reprints.

We know Graham has an interest in playing dumb about Benghazi because of his anti-Obama agenda, but what's Attkisson's excuse? Maybe she's just a bad reporter -- which the Media Research Center, where Graham serves as director of media analysis, used to believe she was until she made her own anti-Obama leanings clear.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:15 PM EDT
WND's Zahn Really, Really Wants You To See 'The Identical'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's resident movie guy, Drew Zahn -- best known for panning films that fail to comport with his right-wing Christian worldview -- has found a film that aligns with his worldview, and he's berating his fellow Christians for not seeing.

In a Sept. 1 article, Zahn touts an "exclusive preview" of the film "The Identical," declaring that "In 1967, Israel was miraculously saved from warring Arab nations on all sides, and this weekend in Hollywood’s only widely released debut movie, well-known actor Ray Liotta will proclaim that Israel’s fate has 'everything' to do with Christians in America." Which is an odd thing to focus on given that the actual film's plot has to do with twins separated at birth, one of whom becomes a rock star and the other is a preacher's son who is also lured by rock n' roll.

But when the film tanked at the box office on its opening weekend -- it came in 12th in revenue despite being the widest-opening new film that weekend -- Zahn used his Sept. 7 review of the flim  to berate his fellow right-wing Christians for not going to see it:

The moviemakers spent tens of millions marketing this film – a budget most Christian movies could only dream about – through churches, Christian radio and other key outlets. The movie stars big Hollywood names like Ashley Judd, Seth Green and Ray Liotta. It features a stunning soundtrack put together by Motown legends. It also delivers a profoundly Christian message in the context of a story that you don’t have to be a pew-sitter to love.

In other words, it’s just the kind of film that could take Christ outside the church walls. All it needs to succeed and to see more films like it made, to see the candle become a blaze in our culture, is for Christians to go see it. That’s it.

And yet, theater receipts now reveal, “The Identical” has become one of the biggest box office busts of 2014. Despite being the only widely released new film of the week, despite showing in nearly 2,000 theaters (or roughly 10 times the number of locations of a typical, independent Christian film), “The Identical” couldn’t even crack the Top 10 movies of the week.

The church simply stayed home and left its brothers and sisters in the arts out to dry … again.

[...]

Audiences of all faiths could enjoy “The Identical,” learn from it and have the opportunity to see how Christ, specifically, brings strength and purpose to life.

They could, anyway, if only someone would go and actually see it. And more such opportunities could also be made, more candles shining in the darkness, if only the bushel-dwellers would take seriously their opportunity to make a real impact on the culture around them.

Hollywood, right now, is practically handing the megaphone over to the church, but the church must come out of its doors and take the opportunity. There are filmmakers who are stepping up the challenge; but in order to make this work, the ticket buyers need to step up, too.

Zahn went to bat again for "The Identical" in a Sept. 12 article by touting the filmmakers' last desperate gambit to promote the film: streaming the first 15 minutes of the film online. Zahn groused:

Many Christian ticket buyers, it seems, mistakenly concluded “The Identical” – which stars big Hollywood names like Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta and includes 23 original songs created by Motown music legends – was “just an Elvis movie” and didn’t give the production the same boost at the box office they gave other faith films like “Son of God” and “God’s Not Dead.”

Without support from Christian moviegoers and saddled with negative reviews from secular critics, “The Identical” – despite appearing in nearly 2,000 theaters nationwide – flopped at the box office.

Zahn also complained that "while popular movie-critic sites like RottenTomatoes.com panned 'The Identical,' many Christian reviewers found reasons to praise it."

Zahn's willingness to be an unpaid (as far as we know) hype man for "The Identical" didn't help: The film took in a mere $390,000 over the weekend, a plunge of 75 percent from its opening weekend.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:16 PM EDT
Sunday, September 14, 2014
WND Tries To Invent A Reason Obama Says ISIL Instead Of ISIS
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily wants a reason President Obama uses ISIL instead of ISIS to refer to the Islamic State extremist group currently running roughshod in Iraq and Syria. But the truth is too boring, so it will promote the craziest theories instead.

An unbylined Sept. 11 WND article does just that, advancing unfounded speculation that Obama uses ISIL because he's “tipping his hat” to the group (Fox News' Harris Faulkner), because use of ISIL means Israel doesn't exist (Allen West). There is no evidence that anyone at WND ever bothered to ask anyone who's actually knowledgable about the issue about Obama's use of ISIL terminology.

WND could have checked with the Washington Post, however. Two days before WND's article appeared, the Post reported:

Many politicians and media organizations that have chosen ISIL rather than ISIS have said they went with the former as a paean to grammar. When you translate the Arabic name for the group of insurgents (Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham) into English, many argue that using "the Levant" (a.k.a. ISIL) to describe the region is most accurate[.]

[...]

In the Capitol on Tuesday morning, House Democrats decided after a long debate that they too would call the extremist group ISIL -- partly because ISIS was a name that first belonged to a goddess, and then to thousands of women who took said goddess's name, before a terrorist group claimed it. As Max Fisher at Vox reported last week, many women named Isis have been aggravated by the acronym favored by most people discussing the Islamic State. 

But actual reporting is too much for WND. It would rather engage is baseless, Obama-smearing speculation.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:21 PM EDT
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It is high time that those in government who have any desire whatsoever to preserve this nation as an ongoing concern take stock of the abundance of evidence which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual representing himself as Barack Hussein Obama is responsible for the resurgence of Islamic militancy in the Middle East, and ISIS in particular.

As uncomfortable for them as it may be, they must come to grips with the fact that Obama is a well-placed saboteur representing malignant interests, enemies both foreign and domestic, that have been strategizing the downfall of the United States for decades.

-- Erik Rush, Sept. 3 WorldNetDaily column

Hillary Clinton would like to become the first woman president. Should she succeed, it likely would be a bit anticlimactic. We’ve already had a girly-man president. More correctly, we’ve had a valley girly-man president – an uppity little pampered princess who can’t, or won’t, be bothered with things in which he has no interest, like terrorism or foreign policy.

For six years now we’ve looked for an Obama doctrine. Finally we have one. Last April aboard Air Force One, he summed it up for reporters: “Don’t do stupid s–t!” How very presidential! The only thing missing from that statement was “totally” and “whatever!”

--  Jane Chastain, Sept. 3 WND column

I take issue with those who are willing to take Barack Obama at his word when he says that he and his cohorts “don’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIS.” Readers who take the time to go through the articles from which the above quoted passages are taken will understand why. I think the Obama faction has been implementing a strategy that involves “dealing with ISIS” for some time. These days the word “strategy” is used to refer to a general plan for achieving a goal. But at its root it refers to a general’s plan for war.

Once we remember this root meaning we realize that, in order to understand what strategy is at work, we must first answer the critical question: Who is the enemy? In light of their declared hostility toward the United States, and the grisly murders they have perpetrated on account of it, we naturally assume that, when someone purporting to be the president of the United States speaks of a strategy for dealing with ISIS we are right to assume that they are the enemy. But the statements and actions of Obama and his cohorts suggest the likelihood that, in the strategy he is pursuing, the enemy is not ISIS, but the life and liberty of the people of the United States.

-- Alan Keyes, Sept. 4 WND column

It goes without saying that when people say that Obama throws like a girl, they’re not talking about 13-year-old Mo’ne Davis. Not only did she pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series, but showed real class when, embarrassed that so much attention was being focused on her, pointed out that baseball is a team sport and that she doesn’t play all nine positions and bat in all nine slots in the lineup. Too bad the guy in the White House who took the lion’s share of the credit for executing Osama bin Laden lacks her maturity and graciousness.

-- Burt Prelutsky, Sept. 4 WND column

The time for political correctness is over. It is time to call it like it is. The nation hangs in the balance, and making excuses for the destructive conduct of President Barack Hussein Obama and his American Muslim constituency no longer cuts it. His acts are not the result of someone who is ill-prepared and disconnected from the office of the president. He and his racist, anti-white, socialist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian minions – from Attorney General Eric Holder, to Secretary of State John Kerry, to closet Muslim Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan – know exactly what they are doing. To complement the race war Obama and Holder have stoked at home, Obama and Brennan are bent on furthering an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and around the globe. These are evil men, bent on taking the United States and its allies down. For Obama’s part, he not only identifies with his Muslim roots, he acts on them. Brennan is simply the white stooge who, among others, helps Obama carry out the plan.

-- Larry Klayman, Sept. 5 WND column

Whosoever feels comforted that Obama finally has the right notion about ISIS is too far gone to deal with. Let’s hope all those guilty of such poor thinking will forget to vote. They make me sorry I don’t have any more bridges to sell. Jack Benny taking a whole bunch of time to decide whether he’d rather hand over his pocket money or get shot is funny. The president of the United States ducking, stalling, equivocating and trying on a selection of other positions before settling on “Destroy ISIS” is not funny. If Obama’s latest statement on ISIS were a rope bridge, I wouldn’t trust it to sustain the weight of my pet ant walking across.

-- Barry Farber, Sept. 9 WND column

For years we’ve been aware that Obama and his colleagues (or co-conspirators, if you prefer) have studied, long-admired and (most importantly) emulated political leaders who have committed the worst atrocities and crimes against humanity in recorded history. These tyrants had no compunction with regard to deceiving, pauperizing, oppressing, or killing off tens of millions of their own citizens in order to actualize their political objectives.

Are we really going to employ such a deep and deliberate intellectual indolence that it will take several million casualties among us to confirm what is evident?

Like the pro wrestler, Barack Hussein Obama is simply going through the motions, executing choreography – that which he believes is expected of him as an American president. Largely, this amounts to little more than rhetoric and, at the moment, halfhearted military swipes against ISIS in Iraq. And like the wrestler, whose objective is to entertain and get paid rather than to win, Obama’s true objectives are also veiled.

-- Erik Rush, Sept. 10 WND column

Most young athletes must play on JV teams before they make the varsity. Most people must pay their dues through a process of preparation before they are elevated to positions of real achievement and responsibility in life. Obama is something of an exception to this rule.

He never ran a business.

He never held an executive position in government before being elevated to the presidency.

He never served in the military.

He had no foreign policy experience, save for four years as a U.S. senator.

He was simply a politician in the right place at the right time facing the wrong competition.

-- Joseph Farah, Sept. 10 WND column

No doubt many voters will blindly go to the polls in November with a case of collective amnesia. In an Obama-like stupor they will return their Democratic senators to Washington who then will roll over and play dead when he finally makes good on his promise to the amnesty advocates.

Beware of Obamanesia!

-- Jane Chastain, Sept. 10 WND column

Clearly, we have a commander in chief who is every bit as delusional as John Hinckley, who not only believed that actress Jodie Foster would be smitten with him if he could somehow manage to assassinate Ronald Reagan, but never even considered just sending her flowers and a box of candy.

-- Burt Prelutsky, Sept. 11 WND column

Gullible Americans did not seem to compute that King Hussein’s commitment to take care of them was preposterous. Consider: “The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism” did not even mention the threat of Islamist terror. Like his predecessor, this president and his malevolent minions consider the signal danger to the homeland (i.e. to their reign) to emanate from local yokels: “anti-government militia groups,” “white supremacy extremists,” “sovereign citizen nationalists” and, naturally, “Puerto Rican nationalists.” And, while He has thrown a bone to the ISIS-obsessed boneheads at home, the homeland’s southern border remains, by His decree, open to all.

-- Ilana Mercer, Sept. 11 WND column

Obama has promoted the view that illegal entrants into the U.S. are only looking for jobs and economic opportunity, not the chance to kill us in our schoolyards and malls.

-- Alan Keyes, Sept. 11 WND column


Posted by Terry K. at 9:14 PM EDT
Friday, September 12, 2014
CNS Doesn't Disclose Bozell's Link to Catholic League
Topic: CNSNews.com

A Sept. 11 CNSNews.com article by Michael Chapman reports on how "Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said he will not march in the 2015 St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City." The article is almost exclusive filled with quotes from Donohue; Chapman apparently couldn't be bothered to contact any parade organizers for their response to Donohue.

Another thing Chapman couldn't be bothered to do: Disclose that his boss, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, is on the Catholic League's board of advisers. The MRC loves to hide Bozell's connections to right-wing Catholic groups.

Remember, Chapman is CNS' managing editor. The fact that such a high-ranking official would write an article that is completely one-sided and lacks fundamental disclosure tells you all you need to know about journalism standards -- or the lack thereof -- at CNS.


Posted by Terry K. at 7:42 PM EDT
WND's Klein Backtracks On ISIS Training Claim, Won't Admit He Was Wrong
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In June, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein made the inflammatory claim (citing his usual untraceable anonymous sources) that "dozens of ISIS members" were trained by "U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan" -- something that the on-the-record evidence he cited did not back up.

Interestingly, after we highlighted Klein's dubious claim, WND altered Klein's article, adding a editor's note stating that "this story has been corrected to clarify that the fighters trained in Jordan became members of the ISIS after their training." But, again, none of the on-the-record evidence Klein cited backs this up.

That means Klein's article is still wrong, since he can't prove anything on the record and offers nothing but anonymous "informed Jordanian officials" who may have their own agenda.

Fast forward to a Sept. 11 WND article by Klein, in which he quotes a "senior Jordanian security official" -- anonymous, of course -- claiming that "The Kingdom of Jordan is deeply concerned about the Obama administration’s renewed plan to train 'moderate' rebels in Syria, believing the Syrian rebels are mostly extremists who espouse radical al-Qaida-like ideology." Klein then rehashes some of his earlier reporting -- but only some of it:

In February 2012, WND was first to report the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country’s northern desert region.

The report has since been corroborated by numerous other media accounts.

Last March, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported Americans were training Syrian rebels in Jordan.

Quoting what it said were training participants and organizers, Der Spiegel reported it was not clear whether the Americans worked for private firms or were with the U.S. Army, but the magazine said some organizers wore uniforms.

The training in Jordan reportedly focused on use of anti-tank weaponry.

The German magazine reported some 200 men received the training over the previous three months amid U.S. plans to train a total of 1,200 members of the Free Syrian Army in two camps in the south and the east of Jordan.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper also reported last March that U.S. trainers were aiding Syrian rebels in Jordan along with British and French instructors.

Reuters reported a spokesman for the U.S. Defense Department declined immediate comment on the German magazine’s report. The French foreign ministry and Britain’s foreign and defense ministries also would not comment to Reuters.

There's no mention of his earlier report that U.S. officials were training ISIS militants, or even his altered claim that people trained by the U.S. later joined ISIS.

Klein's silence is a concession that he never could back up his earlier claim. Yet rather than issuing a full correction and retraction, he apparently just wants to  pretend that he never made such a claim in the first place, despite the fact that his erroneous article remains live on the WND website.

Klein has always been a sloppy reporter who puts his right-wing ideology ahead of the facts. Remember some of his other blunders -- he falsely linked an Islamic charity group to terrorists, and he falsely suggested that Fox News paid a ransom to free two kidnapped journalists.

This is why WND's desperate efforts to portray Klein as a credible writer -- such has falsely denying he's a birther -- are doomed to failure. The fact that Klein remains a prominent WND employee despite his lengthy history of blunders speaks for itself.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:42 AM EDT

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