MRC Denied Pro-Life Link To Tiller Murder, Blames Sharpton for NYC Police Deaths Topic: Media Research Center
Whenever anyone in the media sought to link the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller to the anti-abortion movement -- a link that's not unreasonble to make, given killer Scott Roeder's ties to mainstream anti-abortion activist group Operation Rescue -- the Media Research Center howled about it:
A report bashing public broadcasting cited a PBS segment in which abortion doctors called the Tiller murder terrorism as a reason public broadcasting should no longer receive federal funding.
Clay Waters complained that a New YorkTimes columnist linked Tiller's death to right-wing radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
The MRC declared that an NBC segment highlighting Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's anti-Tiller rhetoric was "fresh evidence" that NBC is biased.
MRC chief Brent Bozell called Roeder an "unhinged vigilante," insisting, "In the very heart of the pro-life community, there is nothing they wanted less than another shooting of an abortionist." Bozell also denied that "the mere act of denouncing Tiller as a killer of babies – as if he were instead removing tumors – is an invitation to terrorism and murder."
But when a man killed two New York City policemen then himself, the MRC knew who to blame: Al Sharpton, President Obama and New York City Mayr Bill de Blasio. This despite the fact that none of them have never directly called for violence against anyone, let alone policemen.
The MRC's Tim Graham mocked Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson for denying that Sharpton, de Blasio and Obama are to blame, insisting that the killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, "clearly identified himself with police 'accountability' movements for Brown and Garner and in dramatic hostility to the police in general." So holding police accountable for their actions is akin to endorsing violence?
NewsBusters' Jack Coleman penned another slobbering tribute to right-wing radio host Mark Levin that the MRC has become famous for, touting how "force of nature" Levin declared that Sharpton, Obama and Eric Holder have "blood on their hands" over the deaths. Needless to say, Coleman didn't mention the fact that Levin is employed as a spokesman for the MRC. Coleman went on to sneer that "golf is more important"to Obama than going to the funerals of the slain officers.
A Dec. 27 NewsBusters post by Jeffrey Lord demands that MSNBC fire Sharpton as a host because he is "a man with 'blood on his hands' -- the blood of two policemen -- to be showcased five nights a week on their airtime."
Lord engages in a dubious metaphor likening Sharpton to D.W. Griffith, director of the infamous Ku Klux Klan-lionizing silent film "Birth of a Nation," and Obama to Woodrow Wilson, who "happily showcased the film at the White House." In fact, while "Birth of a Nation" was the first film ever screen at the White House, there is no official record of Wilson expressing any view of the film, and the one that is generally attributed to Wilson -- "It is like writing history with lightning" -- was likely made up in order to promote the film.
Lord also highlights how former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik blamed Sharpton for "setting the tone" that resulted in the policemen's deaths. He doesn't mention that Kerik's credibilty is a little on the dubious side given that he recently spent time in prison on corruption charges.
Nevertheless, Lord insists that NBC "looks more and more every day like the home of the values portrayed in Birth of a Nation." Funny, we don't recall Lord ever saying that about the anti-abortion movement after Tiller's murder.
A messiah, at least in the Christian sense, is not only supposed to lead people out of bondage and oppression, but to take away their guilt and past sins. Obama was, in effect, anointed by the majority of American voters to absolve their guilt over our great national sin of slavery (and later, racial segregation). But instead of cleansing us of our national guilt, Obama and his administration, especially his attorney general, Eric Holder, cynically magnified and enlarged our guilt, using it as a weapon to confuse, confound and divide us, to neutralize patriots and critics, all for the unholy purpose of amassing ever more power.
Today, after six years as president, it’s become clear that not only is Obama not a messiah, he’s arguably the worst, most dishonest, incompetent, anti-American president in U.S. history. His radical-left administration has caused tremendous harm not just to the nation’s constitutional system of government, its economy, security and culture – but to its national soul. That’s because, to “fundamentally transform” a uniquely great nation like America into just one more pathetic redistributionist welfare state presided over by an all-powerful nanny government, the American people must be seduced into becoming less independent and less moral than they once were, they mustn’t trust in God quite as much as they once did, they must become less rugged and resilient, less logical and competent, less principled and courageous than they once were.
This, alas, is the true legacy of the Obama presidency – the degradation and demoralization of America.
At this point, Barack Obama finally came out and weighed in on this attack. With his usual rhetoric, he condemned it, vowed to get to the bottom of it and then prepared for his two week Hawaiian vacation. There was no outrage, no stern warnings to North Korea, no mention of any type of retaliation at all. He casually said that they were weighing options and something would be done. I won’t hold my breath.
All of Obama’s Hollywood buddies must have stood in astonishment as he threw them under the bus, saying that they never should have “caved” on yanking the film from distribution. He continued to say that they should have called him first, which, according to them, they did. But, he didn’t know about that call because he never knows anything that is going on in his administration.
Instead of focusing on the deplorable and self-inflicted economic and social choices of black Americans, further foisted upon them for decades by Democrats such as President Obama, blacks are being conned into believing that racism is what is holding them back instead of suicidal choices. What a con job.
There’s blood on the hands of black racists, elected idiots, vacuous pawns and our national propaganda ministry. Your change has come, Mr. Holder. How’s that working out for you?
But by now a solid majority of Americans recognizes the Obama era as what it all along promised to be – a time in which Americans choose to break decisively with the course of their promising history, a time of judgment in which we “like sheep have gone astray, everyone to his own way,” doing what is right in our own eyes and forsaking the goodwill of respect for right from which our nation took root.
From warring against dictatorship it seems that some of us have become a people ready to welcome the false promises of dictatorial rule, even going so far as to decry those who plainly take for granted what the evidence of our eyes and minds makes clear to us every day, as if indignantly rejecting the truth of their passive betrayal of the heritage of liberty can perfume the stinking reality of their abject surrender of that heritage.
The “emperor in chief,” President Barack Hussein Obama, has struck again. His appointed judge, the Honorable Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a ruling on the eve of Christmas eve dismissing the lawsuit Freedom Watch and I, on behalf of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, filed against Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and the immigration enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This case challenged what even the emperor confessed, over 22 times in the past, would be an unconstitutional grab of power if he unilaterally took executive actions, bypassing Congress’ legislative prerogative, to modify the current immigration laws, which require that illegal aliens generally be deported, rather than be granted what is referred to as “deferred action.
MRC's Graham Is Bitter About Colbert's Success Topic: Media Research Center
Tom Johnson complains in a Dec. 19 NewsBusters post:
If you’re tired of the tributes and homages to Stephen Colbert’s faux-conservative character, take heart: they’re just about over with. Probably.
One of the gushiest goodbyes came from Leslie Savan, who blogs about media/political issues for The Nation. In a Thursday post, Savan noted that on The Colbert Report, Colbert didn’t attack conservatives head-on, but rather “inhabit[ed] their heads via a character,” which enabled him to “demonstrate…how right-wing psychology works.”
Colbert, opined Savan, “show[ed] that beneath his character’s assertion of omnipotence and certitude, there’s a fragility, one that’s also buried in most of the real-life blowhards and their dittoheads…If they stop clapping, Tinker Bell will die. If they stop nodding in agreement, or step off the reservation of Tax Cuts, Guns, and Built It Myself, they could get Other-ed.”
Johnson won't tell you this, but Othering people who stray off the right-wing reservation is exactly how his NewsBusters boss, Media Research Center official Tim Graham, operates. As we've documented, just last week Graham lashed out at anyone who committed the offense of criticizing Ted Cruz, including solidly conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin.
Indeed, such Othering -- or, as we call it, Heathering -- is Graham's and the MRC's chief method of enforcing right-wing ideological rigidity. It seems that the writer Johnson was highlighting has it correct.
Speaking of which, Graham was extremely bitter about the praise given to Colbert upon the retirement of his character. He huffed in a Dec. 18 post:
Liberals are going into deep mourning over the television death of Stephen Colbert, Very Badly Disguised Liberal. They think this is an "unparalleled achievement." In Wednesday's paper, TV writer Bill Carter of The New York Times lined up all of Colbert’s competitors to call him a genius for disparaging conservatives with so much panache.
“For nine years, Stephen Colbert has relentlessly maintained his pompous, deeply ridiculous but consistently appealing conservative blowhard character he has left an indelible mark on late-night television comedy,” Carter wrote. “Consistently appealing?” To whom? Liberals presume “why, everybody enjoys mocking conservatives as opposed to reading.”
It’s these cheap, repetitive insults that don’t deserve a Hall of Fame induction, but liberals love hating conservatives so preciously that anything that helps them demean their opponents as God-fearing, America-loving morons is an instant classic.
Graham turned even more bitter in a Dec. 21 post, ranting that "Washington Post TV writer Hank Stuever didn’t refrain from the goo over the end of Stephen Colbert’s tenure at Comedy Central. His "Critic's Notebook" might have been too soaked with tears to be legible, but it made it into print." Graham grumbled that the idea of Colbert's audience being divided between those who got his schtick and those who didn't was really about "the people who loved the joke, and the people who were the joke."
Such bitterness toward the success of the likes of Colbert and Jon Stewart goes a long way toward explaining why the MRC's own "comedy" show, "NewsBusted," is such a painfully unfunny failure and how the MRC's fundraising effort to upgrade its production values overlooks the fact that it doesn't matter how slick the show looks if it still isn't funny.
WND's Klein Tries, Fails To Link NY Cop Shooting to Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein does his best to tie the killer of two New York City policemen to President Obama in a Dec. 21 WorldNetDaily article:
The gang to which NYPD cop killer Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley may have belonged, the Black Guerilla Family, is allied with U.S. leftist groups and worked as an ideological partner with Bill Ayers’ Weather Underground terrorist organization.
Brinsley is the assassin who executed two officers in Brooklyn on Saturday after posting on social media his intention to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, both of whom were killed by police officers.
The Baltimore media reported his killing spree actually began in Baltimore County, where Brinsley was said to have murdered his former girlfriend before traveling to New York City to kill NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. The New York Post reported the two officers were working overtime to participate in an anti-terrorism drill in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
[...]
The far-left BGF, originally known as the Black Family and Black Vanguard, was founded in 1966 in California’s San Quentin State Prison by George Jackson, a member of the Black Panthers. It was an ally of Ayers’ Weather Underground terrorist group.
The utter lack of any actual link between Brinsley and the Black Guerilla Family isn't keeping Klein from speculating that there is one, presumably because such speculation advances WND's race-baiting agenda:
One anonymous federal law-enforcement official told the Baltimore Sun that Brinsley had no known ties to the BGF. However, this quote was obtained Saturday, before the results of a police probe into Brinsley’s possible links to the gang have been reached.
The BGF link is credible. The Sun reported that on Friday the Baltimore FBI office issued a memo warning the gang was targeting “white cops” in Maryland.
Such factually devoid, race-baiting speculation by Klein is just another reason why nobody believes WND.
CNS Reporter Can't Stop Portraying Federal Spending on LGBT Issues As A Waste Topic: CNSNews.com
Last week, we captured CNSNews.com's Melanie Hunter portraying federal money spent on LGBT issues as a waste (as CNS is wont to do). Hunter was at it again in a Dec. 19 article:
The National Institutes of Health has awarded $189,186 in taxpayer dollars to Emory University to study the mortality of transgendered people, using electronic medical records for people who receive care from the Veterans Affairs Administration.
“The purpose of this study is to determine whether transgender persons defined as those who medically change the gender assigned to them at birth (male to female or female to male) have higher or lower risk of death and certain diseases than men and women that do not consider themselves transgender,” the grant said.
[...]
CNSNews.com contacted Michael Goodman, project leader for the grant, by email to inquire why the grant is an effective use of taxpayer funds, but no response was given by press time.
Gotta love Hunter's presumption that such spending is not "effective."
Irony: WND Publishes Column Warning of Irrational Hatred of Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joshua Charles writes in his Dec. 19 WorldNetDaily column:
You know, I really don’t like Barack Obama’s policies. But I had to come to this realization a few years ago: My dislike of the man was bordering on hatred, as is oftentimes so easy in politics. It was so sly, so stealth, that I didn’t even realize it. So I stepped back, and realized that that hatred, even if it was in response to objectively horrible things, blinded me. It made me uncharitable to those who disagreed with me.
[...]
And I’m very afraid this hatred blinds many of my fellow conservatives. Not all, as there are many good-hearted people that do not hate the president. But there are many loud mouths who do. They refuse to examine things from another perspective. They constantly succumb to the most conspiratorial and apoplectic interpretation of everything. They must assume that Obama, as the source of most evil in the world, is pulling the strings everywhere, and they must believe he exerts a degree of control that it is simply not possible for him to exert. (Anyone who knows anything about the Executive branch knows how unwieldy it can be.) Sometimes, I have simply requested we be less hysterical on certain issues, and some have accused me of being a “socialist” for this.
They not only hate the president, but think they are somehow being moral for doing so. Everything he does is wrong, nothing he does is right – and they have forgotten that one need not hate a man to soberly conclude he may be wrong, even on everything, and to vigorously oppose him. They imagine themselves brilliant psychoanalysts of the president and are perfectly content with coming up with grand conclusions based on extreme suppositions derived from few facts. They have forgotten that to give in to hate is to undermine oneself, first and foremost, not the one who is the object of that hate.
How ironic that Charles' column appears at WND, which is practically defined by its hatred of Obama. It has spent years trying to personally destroy Obama by promoting dubious or outright false claims, chief among them the "birther" conspiracy. WND editor Joseph Farah hates Obama so much that he refuses to acknowledge Obama as president.
Charles may as well be writing a letter to Farah. But given that Farah is blind to his own sins, it's unlikely he'll get the message.
MRC's Double Standard on Reporting Contents of Stolen Emails Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell and Tim Graham fret in their Dec. 19 column:
The widespread reporting on hacked emails from Sony Pictures — spurred by the upcoming release of an allegedly funny movie about assassinating North Korean despot Kim Jong Un — might encourage some gloating from people who would like to bring Hollywood down a peg. But hold the schadenfreude. The media's ethics — or seeming lack of ethics — are troubling.
Take CNN "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter in an interview with the program "Access Hollywood." His ethical position? Anything goes, as long as the journalists aren't the hackers.
[...]
In other words, journalists have every right to exploit whatever the hackers steal. So much for all those lectures about compassion or ethics. Ends justify means. Juicy "scoops" trump any question about how the information was obtained.
When hackers for an evil entity procure private information through illegal means, isn't there a reason for the media to restrain itself?
That's quite a change from five years ago, when Bozell was demanding that the media cover the contents of stolen emails. Of course, those involved the so-called scandal involving stolen emails from climate scientists. Bozell huffed in a December 2009 press release:
"The networks' silence on ClimateGate is deafening. Scandal, cover-ups and conspiracy are the bread and butter of the media. Yet they have selectively and deliberately decided not to report this bombshell - or any of the incriminating details surrounding the scandal - because it goes against their left-wing agenda.
"To pretend this story simply doesn't exist is damning to journalism. The so-called 'news' media are protecting scientists because it exposes their underbelly. That's not journalism. That's a cover-up. And we will continue to call them out for ignoring these allegations and the mounting, inconvenient evidence against them."
Bozell did not fret about media ethics or the procurement of private information through illegal means back then. There's no reason -- other than craven partisan politics -- why he and Graham should care now.
WND Touts David Barton Lawsuit Win As It Plugs His Discredited Book Topic: WorldNetDaily
John Aman has the four-month-old breaking news in a Dec. WorldNetDaily article:
David Barton critics beware: There’s now a price to pay if you want to defame the popular historian, author and speaker with false and outlandish charges.
Barton won a $1 million defamation judgment in August against two left-leaning candidates for the Texas State Board of Education. The pair, Rebecca Bell-Metereau and Judy Jennings, charged in a 2010 campaign video that Barton, a consultant to the Board, was “known for speaking at white-supremacist rallies.”
That highly charged claim stems from two 1991 speeches Barton gave to groups linked to the racist and anti-Semitic “Christian Identity” movement. Barton, recognized as a strong friend of Israel, acknowledges speaking to the groups but said in court filings he did not know in advance about the racist ideology of his hosts.
Aman goes on to quote Barton lamenting being called a liar and suggests that he'll sue to get his good name back:
A favored target of the secular left for decades, Barton considered a lawsuit 20 years ago “on some very easy to disprove lies.” However, as a public figure, he needed to do more than show that truth was on his side. He also had to demonstrate economic harm to prevail in court. And that, he said, meant hiring an economist for $100,000 to document financial damage.
“We dropped pursuing anything at that time,” Barton recalled, “but over the last 20 years, it has continued to grow and snowball and one unrebutted, uncontested lie – because nothing happened – became bigger and greater, so people added more as they repeated themselves.”
Barton’s books have been met, he said, by a “cottage industry” of critics rehearsing old claims about his alleged lack of truthfulness and supposed racist and anti-Semitic connections.
“There were concerted efforts on Amazon book reviews and elsewhere to repeat those types of things, and that hurt sales,” Barton said.
Embedded in the article, and otherwise unremarked upon by Aman or Barton, is this promo:
As we've detailed, there's a reason Barton's book was "spiked" by its publisher: the book contains numerous inaccuracies. Barton purchased 17,000 copies of his withdrawn book, and presumably it is out of that stash that WND is selling it. WND's online store page for Barton's book mentions nothing about the book being withdrawn, let alone explain why WND is selling a book its publisher thought was too inaccurate to be sold.
Perhaps WND might want to address the issues of Barton's veracity before further portraying him as a victim.
The Jeffrey Rule: Can I Get Away With It? Topic: CNSNews.com
Terry Jeffrey huffs in his Dec. 17 CNSNews.com column:
Call it The Obama Rule. When will our president do something he wants to do that the Constitution or morality prohibits? When he can get away with it.
President Barack Obama did not move forward with his unilateral action on immigration before the midterm elections, because he was worried he would pay too high a price. Additional congressional Democrats might have lost, and more Democrats would have blamed him for the losses.
He moved forward with his unconstitutional action after the elections because he calculated — correctly — that Republican congressional leaders would let him get away with it.
Why? Because Jeffrey and Co. can get away with it. Indeed, the Media Research Center is not paying them to report the truth; they are being paid to advance a political agenda, and if they must lie or mislead in the process, well, so be it.
That may work for an ideologically driven organization, but CNS purports to be a "news" outlet that claims to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story."
If Jeffrey were an honest journalist, he'd replace the word "news" in CNS's name with "propaganda." That would be a more accurate description of CNS' operations under Jeffrey.
Democrats are the masters of deceptive persuasion, meaning that they will take our attention off of something they have really screwed up and put it on something that’s not quite as bad. And chief among those masters is he who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C.
[...]
There’s no better tail-wagging Washington weasel than the current president himself. Or do you think strokes of deflective luck just keep coming the president’s way as his administration fumbles and tumbles in its cesspool of ineptness?
So, you think that the Democrats just happened to release a report shredding the CIA and Bush administration (again) on the same day as Gruber’s garbage testimony?
And I’m sure it was a coincidence in December 2009, at the very moment when Obamacare’s passing seemed to be in jeopardy in the Senate, that Obama ordered the mission for the U.S. to attack an “alleged” al-Qaida camp in Yemen that “allegedly” caused the death of civilians, women and children.
And I’m sure it was just a coincidence a few years into Obama’s presidency, when he was being hit hard from Main Street to Wall Street about the skyrocketing prices of oil and failure of his economic stimuli and policies, that he unilaterally decided it was a good time to start dropping bombs on Libya.
So what is the purpose behind the release of this “torture” misinformation?
1) It helps Obama and his minions,who are hell-bent on removing respectable authority in this country. Notice this comes on the heels of the recent Ferguson, New York City and other anti-police protests that have been carefully orchestrated by Occupy Wall Street, the NAACP, Communist Party USA, New Black Panther Party and other subversive groups.
Think about the breakdown of our military (open homosexuality, women in combat, tough-as-nails generals being let go, the Secret Service scandals and now this unjust attack on the CIA’s credibility). It all serves to break down authority and set us up for an outcome we will not be able to stop.
2) It gives Obama an issue to campaign on for the rest of his term, trashing Bush-Cheney and the Republican brand instead of taking responsibility for the mess he’s made of our country. Yet Feinstein and others liberals supported these “torture” policies, gave the CIA the go-ahead and are now crying foul!
“2016: The End of an Era” is an ambitious, epic treatment of the presidency of Barack Obama. All Barack ever really wanted was paternal redemption. He dreamed as a young boy of conquering the pro-colonialist America from the inside. He gave it all he had and he was schooled and sculpted by the worst enemies of the country he would rule. He only ever nodded to those operatives who told him they knew the answers to how to entirely “re-organize” the country and he did everything they said, obediently. In a dark circle of conspiracy, Valerie Jarrett and Van Jones point the way, but Obama’s scheme to unravel all tradition and morality is exposed and shredded by an uprising and a re-enlightenment among those he had hoped were merely mindless useful idiots. The joker, Gruber, emerges and proves that even the best webs of destruction can unravel at the most inopportune time. Regrettably, while “The End of an Era” is intriguing, it falls short of any lasting impression when the pagan, communist plot is exposed for exactly what it is: ineffective and failed.
Racism is “deeply rooted in our society,” and nowhere is there greater evidence of this truth than beginning with Obama and his administration.
Let’s start with his wife. You don’t marry someone with whom you have nothing in common. Michelle Obama’s record of bigotry and racial animus is prolific even if one only takes into account her time at Princeton and Harvard. Then consider that Obama not only spent 20 years under Jeremiah Wright’s tutelage, but he called Wright and Michelle his “mentors and two people of greatest influence in his life.” (See “Michelle Obama’s inner demons,” WND.com, April 6, 2008)
Racism exudes from the very pores of the Obamas, and he comprised his inner-most circle with people just as racially bigoted as himself. I reference Valerie Jarrett and Eric Holder for starters.
There are those who argue Obama has exacerbated racial problems in the United States. I disagree. I say Obama has created problems where none existed, and with the deftness of an evil alchemist, he fomented a zeitgeist of unbridled black antipathy toward whites.
Yet, after every heinous act carried out by Muslims, we are assured that such Muslims do not represent Islam, that they are aberrations with respect to Islamic doctrine and that the majority of Muslims are peaceful. President Obama is, of course, one of the most vociferous purveyors of this meme; he has used it time and again.
This is part of the psychopolitics that has been inflicted upon Americans for decades; Muslims, closet Islamists like Obama and dhimmi supporters of Islam have been able to get away with this, despite the fact that the most atrocious crimes against humanity we see carried out by Muslims on a daily basis are codified in the Quran. We’re intolerant, racist, Islamophobic if we fail to accept their contradictory line of reasoning.
It’s not bad enough that Barack Obama is getting away with his unconstitutional executive action providing a sweeping amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., as well as sending a signal to millions more to come get in on the action.
No.
In an announcement heralded only at WND last week, his State Department told us we need to roll out the red carpet for 9,000 Sunni Muslim “refugees” of the Syrian civil war who have been hand-picked by the United Nations to resettle in the U.S.
Do you believe this?
It’s true.
As millions of Christians are being slaughtered by Sunni Muslims, exiled and sent into refugee status throughout the Middle East, the U.N. is handpicking Sunnis from Syria to live in America.
Speaking of those without consciences, I am hearing rumors that Obama, who refuses to sanction Iran, is considering leveling them against Israel. It is a classic case of déjà vu. If your memory is still functioning, you’ll recall that the last time Israel had the gall to actually erect buildings within its own borders, Obama threw a major hissy fit.
Back then, I wrote that the next time Obama visited Bethesda for his annual checkup, the doctors should perform a brain scan because there was surely something terribly wrong with an American president who was more concerned with Jews building apartment houses in Israel than with Muslims building nuclear bombs in Iran.
Since I’m looking back over the past decade and a half, I will state what I think amounts to the most momentous story of our age, a story that begins with, as best I can judge, the near-certainty that Barack Obama’s online birth certificate and Selective Service registration card are forgeries. That this has been a non-issue in most conservative and Republican circles for the past six years is the biggest single and essential enabler of the war Obama and his administration are visiting upon our nation and our Constitution.
This past year has been one of cascading crises – from Obamacare, to the invasion of the U.S. across our southern border, to the ascendency of ISIS, Iran and Putin’s Russia, to illegal executive amnesty – each and every catastrophe either caused or greatly exacerbated by Barack Obama.
But I have to tell you, such chaos was predicted way back in January by Whistleblower, WND’s acclaimed monthly print magazine.
In an amazingly prophetic New Year’s issue headlined “THE YEAR OF MANUFACTURED CRISES,” Whistleblower foresaw in advance how 2014 would play out.
Of course, that is what Obama, a closet communist and pro-Muslim “dictator” in his own right, wants. Nothing better than to have his communist brothers, ones like the Castro brothers who also support terrorist regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran, now breath easily and feel “freer” to continue their socialist revolution. After all, while somewhat constrained by Republicans and some now in his own Democratic Party, Obama only wishes he could move our nation even further to the left, Cuban-style. The Castro brothers and Obama have a not too latent kinship, and this outrageous deal proves it.
For The MRC's Graham, Ted Cruz Is He Who Must Not Be Criticized Topic: Media Research Center
As we saw with his attempt to whitewash Scott Walker's "Molotov" gaffe, Media Research Center director of media analysis Tim Graham is not afraid to play defense for conservatives he deems sufficiently conservative. That extends to trashing anyone who dares criticize his sainted conservatives.
Which explains the Heathering job Graham unleased on conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin in a Dec. 15 NewsBusters post for committing the offense of criticizing right-wing darling Ted Cruz. Graham's headline sneered that Rubin is a "So-Called WashPost 'Conservative' Blogger," and it just went from there:
The most dishonest advertising in The Washington Post isn’t selling soap or shoes or automobiles. It doesn’t come phonier than this: “Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.”
Rubin spent 2012 insisting that every conservative presidential contender was unelectable except Mitt Romney, who was neither conservative nor electable, as it turned out. Rubin’s still at it, as in her latest screed from Sunday, headlined “Senate passes spending, GOP still despises Ted Cruz: The cromnibus passes despite Ted Cruz's ego trip.”
Which part of the GOP? The wing of the party that endorsed Barack Obama in 2008? Notice how Rubin sounds very much like your standard-issue liberal Post reporter, suggesting the "far right" is going to ruin the Republican Party. Just like she saw sweet victory in Romney, she was wrong in thinking Ted Cruz's Obamacare filibuster would kill GOP hopes in 2014:
[...]
An actual conservative blogger would point out that it’s a little odd for Republicans to take over the Senate and add seats to the House as they opposed amnesty and Obamacare, and then betrayed both campaign stands in the first spending bill after the electon. Jen Rubin’s blog should be called “Establishment Turn,” spinning the news from a “liberal Republican perspective.”
And that's not even the only defense of Cruz Graham mounted this past week. Graham and Brent Bozell's Dec. 17 column expressed dismay that anyone would dare criticize Cruz for traying to derail a Senate appropriations bill:
Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are polar opposites, a Tea Party conservative and an Occupy Wall Street socialist. Then there are the similarities: Both were elected in 2012, both have Harvard on their resume and both are mentioned as presidential material. But the media's read of the two demonstrates an unquestionable slant.
Both senators have shaken up the Senate over heavy spending and regulation. When Warren does it, she's promoted as a profile in courage, standing up for fairness. When Cruz does it, he's a selfish brat causing meltdowns.
[...]
All this provides a precise GPS location for our liberal media. To them, Ted Cruz is a dangerous extremist, but Warren is their heroine — compassionate, professorial and politically and economically correct. Anyone who expects objectivity from the press is badly out of touch.
Graham and Bozell carefully omit the actual offenses that were caused: Warren merely gave a speech and didn't try to derail the bill-making process. Cruz, meanwhile, along with Sen. Mike Lee, did delay a vote on a massive appropriations bill, a delay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took advantage of by advancing dozens of Obama appointees that Senate Republicans had delayed for months. Even solid conservatives like Charles Krauthammer were apoplectic at the move.
But as far as Graham is concerned, Cruz can do no wrong, and woe to anyone who dares criticize him. How does playing defense for a politican qualify under the "education" mission the MRC is supposed to have under its nonprofit tax status?
Pope Francis is charging the “media” with the sin of disinformation, saying that giving people “half” the facts leaves them unable to make accurate judgments.
A report on Monday from writer Thomas Williams said the pope was speaking to the managers and staffers at Catholic television station TV 2000 inside Vatican City.
He named the “sins of the media” and explained, “Of these three sins – disinformation, slander and defamation – slander seems to be the most insidious. But in communication, the most insidious is disinformation.”
He said “disinformation” is providing “half of the facts, and this leads to not being able to make an accurate judgment on reality.”
WND could have taken this opportunity to confess and repent for its own sins of disinformation. WND employs reporters like Bob Unruh who do nothing but report only half the facts, and Chelsea Schilling, who has a bad habit of reporting total falsehoods. Heck, even WND editor Joseph Farah seems rather proud of the fact that his website publishes misinformation and is himself a documented liar.
Instead, WND turns the article into a sales pitch for a WND-published book by a Soviet defector that was apparently selling so poorly that WND currently is trying to unload it for $4.95.
The lovefest between CNSNews.com and right-wng radio host Mark Levin continues apace.
A Dec. 4 article by Ali Meyer actually treated as "news" Levin's answer to a question she asked about so-called "amnesty." Resident fanboy Michael Morris chimed in with a Dec. 16 blog post transcribing one Levin rant, and followed up the same day with a post quoting a guest on Levin's show.
Needless to say, none of these items mentioned the fact that CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, is in a business relationship with Levin. The latest manifestation of that relationship is a promotional ad in which Levin is quoted as saying, "I read CNSNews every day and so should you."
It seems that Levin's enough of an egomaniac to tell people to read a website that writes flattering things about him -- and which is paying him to say nice things about it right back.
UPDATE: Oops, we missed a few. Moresycophancy from Michael Morris, and Ali Meyer effectively transcribing a Levin speech.
WND's Rush Falsely Claims Obama Released ISIS Leader Topic: WorldNetDaily
Erik Rush's Obama derangement is so strong, he doesn't really care about facts. Rush writes in his Dec.17 WorldNetDaily column:
To date, Obama has authorized the importation of tens of thousands of “refugees” from Islamic nations into this country. I would reiterate that the Australian chocolate-shop hostage taker, Man Haron Monis, was admitted to Australia under refugee status. In addition to the multitudes that we know of who have arrived from Syria, Somalia, Libya and other nations, charter pilots speaking under condition of anonymity have testified concerning planeloads of individuals from these nations bypassing Customs at major U.S. airports and being quietly bussed off to parts unknown.
Does no one find it odd that the world has had no peace as regards Islamic terrorism since Barack Obama came to town? Shortly after taking office, Obama sent operatives to Egypt (including former weather Underground associate Bill Ayers). Within 18 months, the Arab Spring swept Muslim nations, giving rise to the Muslim Brotherhood ascendency in Egypt and destabilizing other Muslim nations in the region. Then came Obama’s Libyan adventure. That nation is now essentially a vast training camp for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups; through it, weapons have flowed to Nigeria’s Boko Haram. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the virulent and barbaric ISIS group, was released by Obama in 2009.
Actually, as PolitiFact details, the Department of Defense states that the man now known as Baghdadi was released in 2004. The evidence that Baghdadi was still in custody in 2009 appears to be the recollection of an Army colonel who said Baghdadi’s "face is very familiar." PolitiFact adds:
Even if the colonel is right, Baghdadi was not set free; he was handed over to the Iraqis who released him some time later. But more important, the legal contract between the United States and Iraq that guaranteed that the United States would give up custody of virtually every detainee was signed during the Bush administration. It would have required an extraordinary effort to have held on to Baghdadi and there is no evidence that he was on anyone’s radar screen, assuming that he was in custody at all in 2009.
The U.S.-Iraq agreement drove the release of thousands of detainees in 2009, but Obama had nothing to do with that.
This is what happens when people like Rush let their hate trump the truth -- they look foolish for repeating falsehoods.
Newsmax's Ruddy Laments 'Persecution' Of Christie As His Website Champions Persecution of Hillary Topic: Newsmax
Christopher Ruddy complains in a Dec. 17 Newsmax column:
The ongoing probes of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his associates over the so-called Bridge-gate matter boil down to another example of political prosecutions that border on political persecutions.
The case involving the George Washington Bridge occurred in January, nearly a year ago, and should be open and shut by now.
Christie was recently cleared in a report by a New Jersey legislative committee of any prior knowledge of the plan to impede traffic onto the bridge by closing access lanes.
No one thinks or believes he ordered the closing of any bridge lanes. So why the worry?
It is clear that some of his aides may have acted out of political considerations in their decision to close the lanes. If that is the case, their actions were stupid, but not criminal.
[...]
Yet in a strange way, the Left's attempt to persecute Christie could actually help his GOP standing because it is so obviously motivated by their worry he actually might be the GOP nominee.
Hence, the Democrats want to keep pushing Bridge-gate as far as they can and for as long as they can. Perhaps they have finally gone a bridge too far and should finally “shut up,” as the New Jersey governor might put it.
Ruddy might have a point if Newsmax wasn't pushing another political persecution elsewhere on its pages the very same day. From a Dec. 17 unbylined Newsmax article:
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could be called to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the next Congress, said the incoming committee chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz.
According to The Hill, the committee intends to investigate the issue of embassy security in the coming congressional session, and the Utah Republican said that Clinton's record in managing it as secretary of state will be examined.
He said Clinton, "changed the way we do embassy security and how we build the infrastructure there and she created a mess. It's a disaster!" The Hill reported.
Asked if Clinton could be called before the committee as a witness, Chaffetz said, "I'm not going to rule that out."
The article did not mention the fact that, as ABC News reported, "Multiple independent, bipartisan and GOP-led inquiries have faulted the State Department for inadequate security in Benghazi, leading to four demotions," or that the State Department has implemented recommendations regarding embassy security made by an independent review board.
the fact that Chaffetz seems intent on dragging Clinton before yet another congressional committee even though she left the secretary of state post nearly a year ago suggest that he's acting on behalf of Republicans fearful that she may be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 and simply wants to keep pushing anything Benghazi-related as far as he can.
Ruddy doesn't explain why he apparently has no problem with cheerleading a political persecution of Hillary Clinton.
Whenever anyone in the media sought to link the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller to the anti-abortion movement -- a link that's not unreasonble to make, given killer Scott Roeder's ties to mainstream anti-abortion activist group Operation Rescue -- the Media Research Center howled about it:
A messiah, at least in the Christian sense, is not only supposed to lead people out of bondage and oppression, but to take away their guilt and past sins. Obama was, in effect, anointed by the majority of American voters to absolve their guilt over our great national sin of slavery (and later, racial segregation). But instead of cleansing us of our national guilt, Obama and his administration, especially his attorney general, Eric Holder, cynically magnified and enlarged our guilt, using it as a weapon to confuse, confound and divide us, to neutralize patriots and critics, all for the unholy purpose of amassing ever more power.
Tom Johnson complains in a Dec. 19 NewsBusters 
Aaron Klein does his best to tie the killer of two New York City policemen to President Obama in a Dec. 21 WorldNetDaily 
Last week, we 
Joshua Charles writes in his Dec. 19 WorldNetDaily 
Brent Bozell and Tim Graham fret in their Dec. 19 
John Aman has the four-month-old breaking news in a Dec. WorldNetDaily 
Terry Jeffrey huffs in his Dec. 17 CNSNews.com 
As we saw with his 
From a Dec. 15 WorldNetDaily 
The 
Erik Rush's 
Christopher Ruddy complains in a Dec. 17 Newsmax 
