CNS Managing Editor Lazily Recycles His Anti-Transgender Hate Topic: CNSNews.com
When we read CNSNews.com managing editor Michael Chapman's June 2 article rehashing a right-wing psychiatrist's claim that "transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment," we thought it looked a little familiar. Turns out we were right.
Last August, we caught Chapman devoting an article to "a recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal" by "Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry," even though the article had been published a full two months earlier and had ceased being news, if it ever was (except by CNS standards, anyway). We noted that Chapman made no effort to mention the many mental health professionals who disagree with McHugh's claims.
Then we clicked on the link we provided for that August article -- and discovered it pulls up the June 2 article. All Chapman did is slap a new date on his discredited 10-month-old piece to pretend that it's relevant with the coming out of Caitlyn Jenner.
We already know Chapman is lazy enough to consider serving as stenographer for right-wing evangelist Franklin Graham a legitimate journalistic endeavor. But Chapman, it appears, is such a lazy journalist that he must recycle his hate and can't be bothered to lift a finger to do any reporting to update to current events.
And this man is the managing editor of a "news" organization?
CNS Actually Reports On Duggars -- Then Quickly Buries It Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com is only grudgingly reporting on the Josh Duggar molestation scandal, as if it wouldn't be happening if the "news" part of CNS' name wasn't instilling guilt in its editors. It first censored the story, then reported on it only when it became too big to ignore -- and even then it was dismissed in a blog post, not treated as actual news.
The Duggar family's interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly was also too big to ignore, so CNS couldn't get away with censoring it. Thus, we have a June 4 article -- unbylined, credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff," as if no CNS employee wanted to be on record reporting facts about that Duggars that conflicted with their right-wing Christian image -- that dutifully summed up the interview. The article was still an advocacy piece for the Duggars, playing down the actual offenses of Josh Duggar and playing up the family's self-proclaimed victimhood at the release of the police report on his offenses.
Those offenses are only referenced once in the first 12 paragraphs of the article, eupemistically described as him having "inappropriately touched" his sisters and "groped a babysitter." The article declared that "the Duggars detailed the problem they faced 12 years ago -- a son who three times came to them and confessed to molestation; what they did about it -- eventually sending him out of the home for Christian-based counseling and later to talk with a policeman; and what they now see as the bigger scandal -- the illegal May 21 release of their son's juvenile police record to a tabloid." The article further insisted that "The Duggars explained the facts of the case."
CNS was certainly not about to live up to its mission statement to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story" and acknowledge criticism of the Duggars. Thus,you won't read at CNS how some of the Duggars' answers to Kelly are at odds with the established facts in the case. And you certainly won't see CNS point out the obvious conflict between Jim Bob Duggar's claim that "We had nothing to hide" and his complaint about the juvenile record of Josh Duggar's offenses being release.
Another sign CNS wants to bury this story: While it appeared on the CNS front page this morning, all trace of it was off the front page by mid-afternoon. And even on the CNS "culture" section page, it's buried under much older stories, such as a May 27 article detailing the latest attempt to portray any LGBT-related federal spending as a waste.
Apparently, news is "news" at CNS only if it advances the right-wing agenda of its parent, the Media Research Center. Otherwise, it will get short shrift.
Perhaps it's time for CNS to admit that it's not in the news business but, rather, in the propaganda business.
Did WND's Farah Really March With Martin Luther King? Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah had another one of his thin-skinned reactions to criticism last week, devoting his May 27 column to misinterpreting Republican activist Bruce Bennett's contention that readers of right-wing "news" organizations like WND are engaging in "self-censorship" to claim that Bennett said WND was brainwashing its readers.
In the midst of his self-righteous, self-aggrandizing defense, Farah declared that he was "the guy who actually marched with Martin Luther King Jr." Thanks to an alert ConWebWatch reader, we know that Farah has made this claim before: here, here and here, for instance.
But Farah, to our knowledge, has never written about the details of this march with King. Even his 2007 book "Stop the Presses!" about his journey in journalism appears to be silent about it.
This begs the question: When did Farah actually march with King? It's an interesting question, given that, if the birth date on his Wikipedia page is correct, Farah was only 14 years old when King was assassinated.
Unless Farah was an unusually precocious and race-conscious tween, that likely means any occasion Farah would have had to march with King was somehow facilitated by his parents. That hardly plays with the image he has constructed for himself as a radical left-winger in his youth.
Farah in known to embellish his self-proclaimed left-wing past. He evolved one claim to have been a bodyguard for Jane Fonda and once invited to meet Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to proclaiming that he was "literally working shoulder to shoulder with the likes of revolutionary terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and whacked out traitors Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda."
We've emailed Farah to ask for the details of his march with King. We'll let you know if he responds.
P.S. The Farah "liar" image -- which we never thought we'd get so much use out of when we first created it -- is provisional, placed on this post based on his extensivetrack record of falsehoods. If Farah adequately answers the question about his claimed march with King, we'll remove it (from this post, anyway).
UPDATE: To be perfectly accurate, King died three months before Farah's 14th birthday, so Farah would have been no more than 13 years of age in any march he and King allegedly participated in.
The New York Times classless liberal columnist Paul Krugman has a reputation for exploiting tragedy for partisan gain, and did so again in a Sunday afternoon blog post about former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is accused of using hush money to cover up sexual misconduct with a former student.
Waters is not lamenting the aformentioned "tragedy" for Hastert's victims -- he's lamenting it for Hastert. How dare Krugman write about a Republican congressman's alleged crimes?
By the way, the word "crime" appears nowhere in Waters' post in relation to Hastert's alleged actions. But he knows it's somehow a "tragedy" -- but, apparently, not a crime -- for Hastert for such behavior to be revealed.
MRC Falsely Suggests Sex Ed Is Airing On PBS Kids Topic: Media Research Center
The headline on the Media Research Center front page screams "Taxpayer-Funded PBS Pushes Teaching Sex-Ed to 4-Year-Olds," accompanied by an image of the logo for the PBS Kids channel:
It's a lie.
Nowhere in the May 29 article by Katie Yoder does it claim that PBS Kids is running sex education -- or that sex ed directed at 4-year-olds is happening anywhere on PBS. Instead, Yoder complains that on PBS' "NewsHour" website -- again, not a kid-friendly place -- there's an article that "held up the Netherlands as an example for the United States in “sexuality education” – for those as young as 4-years-old to learn 'honest conversations about love and relationships.'"
Yoder selectively quotes from the article claiming that it talks about "sex ed classes … for 4-year olds" -but waits until the next paragraph to concede that the article states that "You’ll never hear an explicit reference to sex in a kindergarten class."
Yoder doesn't even raise any specific objections to the "sexuality eduction" lessons being taught to 4-year-olds, which include "able to properly name body parts including genitals. They also learn about different types of families, what it means to be a good friend, and that a baby grows in a mother’s womb." She has simply gone into a right-wing freakout over the words "sexuality education" and "4-year-olds" being in close proximity.
Yoder does declare that Dutch parents have "totally abdicated their responsibility to the state" by letting schools teach them how to talk to their kids about sex. She doesn't explain, however, why empowering parents with knowledge is a bad thing.
WND Author Thinks Teachers Are Criminals Topic: WorldNetDaily
We last caught Alex Newman using a WorldNetDaily article to whitewash the racism of the white right-wing South African extremists in lamenting "increasingly marginalized European-descent South Africans." Now the writer for the New American, the website of the far-right John Birch Society, is on board as a full-fledged WND author, and his ideas are just as extreme as one would expect from his pedigree.
Newman is co-author, along with longtime WND columnist Samuel Blumenfeld of the new WND-published book "Crimes of the Educators." And yes, he really does think teachers are criminals on the level of Hitler and Pol Pot -- an comprarison absurd on its face and should alone be enough to disqualify their book from serious consideration. But WND believes in the Big Lie technique --
complete with an elaborate conspiracy theory to supposedly prove it, as illustrated by the book's promotional copy:
Utopian dictators like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao are criminals – genocidal psychopaths who have killed more human beings in the last hundred years than any other ideologues in history. They don't limit their murder to individuals, but to entire nations.
In the United States another form of utopians, the "progressives," have tried to destroy traditional America by strategically dumbing down her people. America's future is being crippled on purpose in order to fundamentally transform the nation, its values and its system of government. Laid out a century ago by progressive luminary John Dewey, the fruits of his schemes are plain to see today. Dewey got rid of the traditional intensive phonics method of instruction and imposed a "look-say," "sight" or "whole-word" method that forces children to read English as if it were Chinese. The method is widely used in today's public schools, which is a major reason there are so many failing public schools that cannot teach children the basics. This can only be considered a blatant form of child abuse.
[...]
The whole-word method of teaching children to read – introduced by John Dewey and colleagues in the early 20th century and which permeates Common Core – is a significant cause of dyslexia among students.
There is evidence that the whole-language approch does not work with students who have dyslexia, but Newman and Blumenfeld are claiming that the mere act of teaching whole-language causes dyslexia.No eveidence is mentioned, either in the blurb or in a May 25 WND article making the same claim, that backs up this assertion.
Newman and Blumenfeld ignore one key problem with phonics: There are so many English words that violate the standard sound-symbol rules that at least some memorization of words -- the "whole language" approach they despise -- is necessary to be fully literate.
As befits Newman's extremism, the May 25 WND article documents Newsman's appearance on conspiracy-monger Alex Jones' radio show to promote his book, where he spews more slanders of teachers:
When you put all of this together, says Newman, it’s not only horrifying, but it’s a crime against the American people.
“This is a gigantic criminal enterprise masquerading as a government school system, and it’s deliberately dumbing down the children,” Newman declared.
[...]
Newman hopes “Crimes of the Educators” will help destroy the globalists’ scheme by alerting people to what’s going on.
“If this information were more widely known, the entire edifice would collapse because all of it rests on a dumbed-down public that can’t read well, that can’t do math,” Newman said.
From what the author has seen lately, he thinks the globalists are accelerating their plans because they are nervous.
“They know that they’ve got to get this all done as quickly as possible because people are waking up right and left by the millions, and once we reach a critical mass of people who are awake, this whole thing is going to come crashing down,” Newman declared. “They’re going to end up in prison, and that’s serious stuff.”
The article also states that the authors "decry public schools for destroying children’s religious beliefs by teaching evolution and secular humanist doctrines. The authors note that lack of religion is a hallmark of totalitarian societies." Talk about your base demonization.
While Newman and Blumenfeld's book is laughable and paranoiac on its face -- complete with references to "socialist utopians" who want to create "a global government, a global society, a single world religion" -- that's WND's stock in trade. It's never corrected or apologized for any of its birther falsehoods, so look for it to promote the hell out of this book, no matter how discredited it becomes.
More proof that most modern “comics” are anything but comical come in the form of their newest Islamic promotional efforts. Marvel Comics presents Kamala Khan, a 16 year-old superhero from a New Jersey, Pakistani family. Not a Pakistani Christian family, because few of them have either survived or been allowed to immigrate here.
“Kamala Khan is just an ordinary girl from Jersey City,” Marvel announces, “until she is suddenly empowered with extraordinary gifts.” To be authentic, the poor girl wouldn’t have her genitals intact and couldn’t leave her house at night without a few male sidekicks ordering her about. But what’s a little reality compared to covering for misogyny and terrorism in Islam?
[...]
Kamala is the brainchild of Islamic-American convert Gwendolyn Willow Wilson and other Islamic staff. A successful journalist and writer of graphic novels for teens, she lived in Egypt for years. She even interviewed the grand mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa. None of this is proof Wilson is a terror supporter; yet the entire Marvel enterprise reeks of entertainment to camouflage genocide, using trivialization, distancing and distraction … with great illustrations, of course.
Supposedly Kamala was born to counter “Islamophobia” in the middle of the Islamic terror war against us. Superman and the old fellows actually supported American GIs, even showing up on the battlefields. Somehow Marvel forgot to create Germanic übermenschen in capes and lederhosen to prevent outbreaks of Naziphobia. What were they thinking?
Gifted but tragically liberal artists team up to fight against women and minorities of the Middle East in many contemporary initiatives and publications, like this one. A classical Stalinist disinformation campaign, anything relevant is minimalized or labeled opposite to reality, where they do everything but tap dance around neon signs blazing “nothing is happening here … you’re imagining everything … especially if you’re in a displacement camp or cage.”
Annihilated Christians in Syria apparently aren’t worth the ink to print comic books now. Female victims in Islam are also invisible. Serious issues are identificational “struggles” of teenage Muslim immigrants. Marvel Comics has just volunteered to be another outpost in an Islamic war campaign at this point. Deflecting controversy and discussion is the entire raison d’être of Ms. “ad hoc” Marvel.
Old Archie struggled with competition and other teen angst, but he wasn’t representing a group of killers while he did it. It would be encouraging if Marvel’s Islamic “superhero” struggled against honor killings, threats, misogyny, beatings, child marriage and genital mutilation.
Large wings of Western artists feel Muslims deserve extra kudos, although they’ve nearly annihilated Christians from several nations. If this continues (and few around here seem eager to stop them), it may happen in our burgs. You can bet your last copy of the Constitution that Kamala Khan won’t be showing up in her little red tights and shamefully exhibited face to save American women and assure our rights. Western hussies.
Marvel’s artists are as skilled as ever, but how they can sleep at night – if they have an inkling what is happening in the Mid-East – is a mystery.
WND's Loudon Is Clueless About Non-Christians Topic: WorldNetDaily
Gina Loudon starts her May 25 WorldNetDaily column by trying to bury the Duggar sexual molestation scandal:
After the recent revelations about “19 Kids and Counting” star Josh Duggar and his past transgressions as a child, non-Christians across America are pointing their fingers and saying, “See! I told you the Duggars aren’t perfect!”
Of course they aren’t! No Christian is perfect. That is precisely why people become Christians!
If the Duggars were perfect, or believed they were perfect, they would not need a savior, and, therefore, would not be Christians.
The left has set up a straw man.
First, nowhere in her column does Loudon identify what Josh Duggar's "past transgressions as a child" were -- namely, molesting numerous underage girls, several of them his own sisters. Doing so would presumably blunt the impact of Loudon defending the family as not "perfect."
Second, the point is not that the Duggars claimed to be "perfect"; they portrayed their lifestyle as an antidote to the type of behavior that were, in fact, happening within their own family. So it's more about hypocrisy than failing to act perfectly.
You think that even Loudon would agree that sexual molestation is a behavior that ranges far beyond "imperfect" -- but then, Loudon spent a disturbing amount of time and column space rationallizing (and trying to capitalize on) her own teenage daughter's relationship with a 57-year-old man. (The above image of Loudon and her daughter accompanied that column.)
And speaking of straw men, Loudon tries to set up her own:
There is a convenience in being non-Christian. They get to point out the stumbles of every Christian without having to live according to a moral code. As long as you don’t call yourself a Christian, you can engage in any immoral behavior seemingly without consequence.
Loudon falsely assumes that if you are not a Christian, you cannot possibly act in a moral fashion. Jews, Muslims and Buddhists are just a few of the many non-Christian religions that have a moral code, and even many people who do not follow an organized religion behave in ways that follow a moral code. The system of law can also be said to be a moral code.
The fact that Loudon can speak only euphemistically about Josh Duggar's disturbing behavior, coupled with her attempt to defend the family and throw their critics under the bus -- she even attacks Christians who are criticizing them, declaring that they "are handing ammo to the secular left" -- tells us that she has some, shall we say, issues. But we already knew that.
CNS Misleads About Michelle Obama Commencement Speech Topic: CNSNews.com
A May 26 CNSNews.com article was dedicated to selectively quoting from Michelle Obama's commencement speech at Oberlin College to ratchet up the outrage factor among CNS's readers. And judging from the hate and racism in the article's comment thread, she has succeeded with that.
Jones claimed that Obama "equated conservative opposition with 'noise,' 'clamor' and 'polarization,' and she urged students to "rise above it.'" But in the actual excerpts of the speech Jones included, Obama did not specifically do what Jones claimed. Here's the excerpt with the apparently offending words highlighted:
"You might find yourself a little dismayed by the clamor outside these walls -- the name-calling, the negative ads, the the folks yelling at each other on TV. After being surrounded by people who are so dedicated to serving others and making the world a better place, you might feel a little discouraged by the polarization and gridlock that too often characterize our politics and civic life.
"And in the face of all of that clamor, you might have an overwhelming instinct to just run the other way as fast as you can. You might be tempted to just recreate what you had here at Oberlin -– to find a community of like-minded folks and work with them on causes you care about, and just tune out all of the noise. And that’s completely understandable. In fact, I sometimes have that instinct myself -- run! (Laughter.)
"But today, graduates, I want to urge you to do just the opposite. Today, I want to suggest that if you truly wish to carry on the Oberlin legacy of service and social justice, then you need to run to, and not away from, the noise. Today, I want to urge you to actively seek out the most contentious, polarized, gridlocked places you can find. Because so often, throughout our history, those have been the places where progress really happens –- the places where minds are changed, lives transformed, where our great American story unfolds."
So, no, Obama did not equate conservatives to "noise," "clamor" and "polarization" as Jones claimed -- indeed, Obama does not even use the word "conservative" anywhere near those terms.
But Jones wasn't done misleading. After quoting Obama urging the students to "persuade" and "compromise" in order to "move the country foward," she sneered: "Interestingly Mrs. Obama's husband is not a compromiser, starting his second term with a 'go-it-alone,' I-have-a pen-and-a-phone attitude."
Funny, the PolitiFact website has a full seven pages of examples of Obama compromising to achieve his policy goals. And Jones omits the fact that Republicans have refused to compromise with Obama.
This is WND-level work. It's too bad Jones and CNS have sunk to this.
MRC's Graham Would Rather Put Words In A Columnist's Mouth Than Talk About The Duggars Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center doesn't want to talk about the sexual abuse allegations against Josh Duggar -- witness MRC "news" division CNSNews.com burying its only mention of it as a blog.
And the MRC's Tim Graham is so desperate to not talk about that his post on the subject is actually about pretty much everything but.
In his May 26 NewsBusters post, Graham extremely narrowly focuses on a coule of supposedly offending lines in a Washington Post column on the subject by Alexandra Petri. But after a first-paragraph mention that Josh Duggar "was guilty of sexually abusing other children at age 15" -- not nothing that his victims included his own sisters -- the offense is never brought up again, and the Duggars themselves are mentioned only twice more in passing.
The vast majority of Graham's "open letter" to the Post is dedicated to raging at Petri for noting that the Duggar scandal "is a reminder of how badly the cult of purity lets victims down.” It involves putting a lot of words in Petri's mouth -- apparently, what Petri actually wrote wasn't worth getting upset over. She is "obviously bad at hiding her glee" over thte Duggar scandal, Graham declares without evidence, adding -- also without evidence -- that she "doesn’t believe in sin."
Graham also declares that he can read "between the lines" of what Petri wrote to determine what she actually meant to say: "Religious people have an unhealthy attitude toward sex, and are against educating children about sex. That's wrong." How convenient for Graham to put those straw-man words in Petri's mouth to attack her for them and knock them down as "wrong."
Graham does concede that Petri "is right to suggest that it is wrong to assert that someone who’s lost their virginity is immediately and permanently like a cup of spit or a dirty used bicycle – especially for pure, faithful children who’ve become the victim of sexual abuse." But he leaves out the critical context that this is the message the Duggars themselves publicly spread -- and, again, the fact that among Josh Duggar's victims were his own sisters.
This, by the way, is the only mention of Duggar's victims -- odd for an official of an organization that can't mention Ted Kennedy without bringing up Chappaquiddick or Bill Clinton without bringing up his sexual scandals. If Graham is trying to tamp down discussion of the Duggar scandal, he's also tamping down the fact that there were underage victims of a sexual assault.
Graham then attacks "feminists and libertines" -- and he clearly believes Petri is among them through all of the words he put in her mouth -- who purportedly "have an unhealthy attitude toward sexual commitment, and are against educating children about preserving yourself for a committed relationship. Libertines insist virginity is impossible, unless you’re an indoctrinated robot...like they think of the Duggars."
By the time he attacks things Petri wrote a year ago that have nothing whatsoever to do with the Duggars but everything to do with smearing someone he doesn't agree with, it's clear how desperately Graham is to change the subject -- so much so that he's dragged his own family into it by professing that his wife "has never been a campsite or a used bicycle." Um, yay?
(Again, that metaphor was espoused by the Duggars, not Petri. Graham might want to keep that in mind.)
And then Graham goes to some really weird territory: "Post columnists could call me a loser or a nerd or something worse, but I know I have never exploited another human being like a blow-up doll or sought a quick thrill without an 'emotional stranglehold.'"
Remember: None of this has anything to do with what's happening with the Duggars -- and that's the way Graham wants it.
Graham rather deliberately misses the entire point of Petri's column, which he's careful not to mention:
When all sexuality is a sin, when even holding hands is off limits, there isn’t a clear line between permissible, healthy forms of exploration and acts that are impermissible to anyone, not just the particularly devout. This gospel of shame and purity has the potential to be incredibly harmful because it does away with important lines. (Studies not only suggest that abstinence-only approaches to sex education do nothing to decrease the incidence of sexual behaviors, but also that they can make them riskier and that they deprive kids of the vocabulary they need to discuss when bad things happen.)
Graham even bizarrely complains that Petri quoted someone who he claimed believed "Duggar committed a crime, and definitely not a sin." That raises a question: Does Graham believe Duggar committed a crime? If so, shouldn't he be upset that the incident was not handled as a crime, instead being treated as a "sin" the family decided could be remedied through their own devices and not through, say, professional counseling for both the perpetrator and his victims?
All of Graham's histrionics are in service of distracting theMRC's right-wing audience from the Duggar scandal and the fact that Petri dared to write about it -- nothing else. The fact that his post is only the second original reference to appear on any MRC website (after the CNS blog post) is ample proof of that. But Rush Limbaugh's latest utterance, by golly, is considered "news" at CNS.
It's hard to criticize the media when you know they're right. Graham knows that the media is generally doing a good job on the Duggar story, and he also knows that the MRC can't defend the Duggars too vociferously lest it appear to condone Josh Duggar's behavior. Hence, this effort at misdirection to drown out the Duggar scandal by putting words in the mouth of a columnist he dislikes so he can bash her for -- well, anything, really, to change the subject.
The MRC ought to be above such dishonest tactics. Apparently, it's not.
WND's Jesse Lee Peterson: 'The Minimum Wage Has Never Helped Blacks' Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's not often that we come across a statement that is so flat-out wrong it defies reality, but when we do, it's usually at WorldNetDaily (i.e., Joseph Farah's patently false assertion that WND "strives for 'fair and balanced' news coverage" and that his reporters "are always encouraged and required to seek out multiple sources and contrary viewpoints").
Which brings us to Jesse Lee Peterson's May 24 WND column. He spends it railing against the minimum wage, and its climax is this statement: "The minimum wage has never helped blacks, and it won’t help them now."
Hoo boy. Where to begin? For starters, researchers have found quite the opposite:
The Economic Policy Institute found that the share of black workers that would benefit from one minimum wage hike proposal is larger than the black population as a whole.
The Center for American Progress reports that raising the current minimum wage would raise income among black Americans as a whole by $5.2 billion.
The AFL-CIO claims that 4,123,000 African American workers would benefit if the federal minimum wage were increased to $10.10 per hour.
Peterson also ignores the fact that the main reason the minimum wage may not have helped blacks in its early years is because it originally exempted numerous professions dominated by blacks. Then again, conservatives use this fact to instead demonize the minimum wage rather than acknowledge that non-discrimination laws, along with the overturning of many of those exemptions, were needed to counter that effect.
So Peterson's claim is not just laughably false but ignorant as well.Would we expect any less for him and WND?
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Christopher Monckton 'of The Devil' Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
Now, it has become apparent that the global totalitarian hard left, led by Mr. Obama, no longer make any pretense of speaking the truth about any of its favorite political topics.
Two of these topics are currently in the news: so-called “gay” so-called “marriage,” for which the once-Christian people of Ireland have recently and shamefully voted, and so-called “catastrophic” so-called “manmade” so-called “global” so-called “warming,” about which Mr. Obama last week preached a whining, heavily touted and in every material respect deceitful commencement sermon to Coast Guard cadets.
Even the names of these two topics are lies. There is nothing in the least bit merry about homosexuality, and marriage is by definition the union of a man and a woman, not of two of one or two of the other.
[...]
Which brings us to Mr. Obama’s speech to the Coast Guard Academy about the weather. Even by his remarkably low standards, it was a dreadful speech. For a start, since this is a political hot potato, it was not an appropriate subject for the commander in chief to give to any branch of the nation’s defense forces. By iron convention, real presidents don’t make partisan political speeches. Just one more item of evidence, you may well think, that Mr. Obama is not a real president, just like BO’s BS WH HI ID (about which no one has done anything yet).
Seldom have I seen so many half-truths, untruths and outright lies crammed into a single speech. For a line-by-line, lie-by-lie analysis, follow this link to my detailed analysis at Wattsupwiththat.com, the world’s most visited climate website, run by a real weatherman.
[...]
With that background, let us address the question of whether Mr. Obama and the “gay”-promoting, catastrophist hard left are, to use St. John’s phrase, “of the devil.”
The charitable conclusion is that they are of the devil, that they are under the controlling influence of the father of lies, that they are his unwitting or unwilling mouthpieces.
For if that be not the case, Mr. Obama and others like him who utter the wicked falsehoods on the basis of which they promote such fatal abominations as “gay” “marriage” and “catastrophic” “manmade” “global” “warming” are deliberately, willfully telling lies – lies that kill.
On the evidence, they are certainly not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So far are they from the truth, so many are the deaths their interminable and often gross lies cause, that it is surely kinder to grant them the Hitler defense – that they are not in control of themselves either because they are collectively mad or because they are individually of the devil.
-- Christopher Monckton, May 24 WorldNetDaily column
WND Tries To Revive Fake Clinton Scandals Topic: WorldNetDaily
With Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign under way, WorldNetDaily is reliving its '90s glory, right down to Joseph Farah dreaming once again of a Hillary perp walk -- after all, one of the reason it was founded in 1997 is to serve as a repository for anti-Clinton sentiment.
Thus, we have an unbylined May 18 WND article dedicating to "a fresh look at the top 20 scandals involving Hillary" -- never mind that the article's headline says 22 scandals and the article itself lists 23 (apparently, nobody at WND has ever passed a math class in one of their homeschools). WND clearly had to pad out the article, because more than a few of these "scandals" turned out to be anything but, and were found to be so years ago -- not that WND will ever report that, of course. Let's review, shall we?First up...
3) Looting the White House
When the Clintons left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2001, they reportedly vandalized and looted the White House.
[...]
Additionally, the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, reported that ”damage, theft, vandalism and pranks did occur in the White House complex” during the presidential transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush – including the theft of a presidential seal.
In fact, as we've reported, the GAO found that the Clintons did not leave the White House in any worse condition than the first Bush administration left the White House for Clinton, and a review by the General Services Administration determined that "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."
4) Filegate: FBI files on GOP enemies
The Clinton duo was involved in a scandal known as “Filegate” in which they illegally obtaining FBI files on perceived adversaries, most of whom served in previous Republican administrations.
“In an effort to discredit the women who charged President Clinton with sexual misconduct, personal files and papers were illegally obtained and released. The courts found, under the Privacy Act, that the privacy of Linda Tripp and Kathleen Willey had been violated,” a Judicial Watch report said, citing just a few of more than 900 relevant files. Judicial Watch said Hillary had been linked “directly to the center” of the controversy.
In fact, independent counsel Robert Ray's final report on the issue states that "there was no substantial and credible evidence that any senior White House official, or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, was involved in seeking confidential Federal Bureau of Investigation background reports of former White House staff from the prior administrations of President Bush and President Reagan."
5) Hillary’s ‘Muslim Brotherhood princess’
Huma Abedin, who served as Hillary’s longtime deputy chief of staff and has worked with her for nearly 20 years, has known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – a group bent on “destroying Western civilization from within” – and other Islamic supremacists. As WND has extensively reported, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic supremacist connections not only extend to Abedin’s mother and father, who are both deeply tied to al-Qaida fronts, but to Abedin herself.
This is a classic guilt-by-association attack, so scurrilous that none other than Republican John McCain was moved to defend Abedin, calling it "nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American and a loyal public servant." WND doesn't mention, as McCain did, thatAbedin's father died two decades ago and, thus, is not plotting anything right now.
Abedin found another right-wing defender in Republican operative Ed Rollins, who pointed out that WND's attacks on Abedin are "unsubstantiated" as well as "extreme and dishonest."
6) Vince Foster’s 1993 death
Vince Foster was deputy White House counsel and Hillary’s friend and law partner who had connections to the Travelgate and Whitewater scandals. In 1993, Foster was found dead in a park with a fatal gunshot wound to his mouth. As WND reported, his suicide was the subject of much speculation and three official investigations.
Investigations by the U.S. Park Police, the Department of Justice, the FBI, Congress, Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr concluded Foster’s death was a suicide. However, as WND reported in 2003, one of Starr’s key investigators challenged the official line, insisting the probe’s result was predetermined, only a few plotters were required to engineer the result, the crime scene was altered and that major newspaper editors killed stories by reporters pursuing the truth. The Washington Post reported that federal investigators were not allowed to enter Foster’s office after his death, but “White House aides enter[ed] Foster’s office shortly after his death, giving rise to speculation that files were removed from his office.”
Yep, WND is still trying to blame Hillary for Foster's death and invent a cover-up that has no actual evidence to support.
9) Travelgate: Always room for friends
In the Travelgate scandal, the staff of the White House travel office was fired to make way for Clinton cronies, including Bill’s 25-year-old cousin, who was reportedly promised the position of office director.
Hillary allegedly fired seven employees and gave the positions to her Arkansas friends. According to the Washington Post, there was an effort to award a White House airline contract to a Clinton friend.
Also, Hillary reportedly had the FBI investigate the former head of the travel office, Billy Dale, who was fired without notice and removed from White House grounds. Dale was charged with embezzlement but found not guilty of the crime in 1995. He was later audited by the IRS.
WND doesn't mention that, as the report by independent counsel Robert Ray concluded, the Travel Office employees "served at the pleasure of President Bill Clinton, and they were subject to discharge without cause." Ray's report also found evidence of financial mismanagement in the Travel Office and that "sufficient evidence existed to provide the requisite predicate for the opening of a criminal investigation."
10) Whitewater: Jail for friends, but not Clintons
The Whitewater investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr began in 1994 with accusations of impropriety against the Clintons and others concerning improper campaign contributions, political and financial favors, and tax benefits. Its initial subject was a failed Arkansas real-estate venture involving the Clintons in the 1980s that was linked to the collapse of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, a Little Rock savings bank run by the Clintons’ Whitewater business partners. Clinton friends James and Susan McDougal went to jail for fraud (James died while serving his sentence), as did former Arkansas Gov. Jim Tucker and municipal judges David Hale and Eugene Fitzhugh.
The probe eventually expanded to include the death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, the dismissal of White House travel office employees, receipt by the White House of a number of FBI files and the issue of whether President Clinton lied or obstructed justice to hide an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
WND doesn't mention that the reason the Clinton's were never prosecuted was because Robert Ray found that whatever evidence he found was " insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that either of them committed any criminal offense." The fact that Starr's Whitewater investigation spread so far afield to an affair is the reason why there aren't independent counsels anymore.
15) Clinton body count: ‘You find dead people’
“The Clinton body count,” first published in WND and later circulated by Linda Tripp to Monica Lewinsky, is a collection of names of people associated with Clinton administration scandals who have died mysterious and often violent deaths. Reporter David Bresnahan broke the story of the list during the summer of 1997 while researching his book, “Cover Up: The Art and Science of Political Deception.”
21) Peter Franklin Paul: Another Hillary friend goes to prison
As WND reported, Hillary was named in a lawsuit brought by Peter Franklin Paul for allegedly directing to her 2000 Senate campaign an illegal, in-kind contribution from Paul that included a fundraiser at the exclusive Spago restaurant in Beverly Hills, a tea hosted at the Beverly Hills home of socialite Cynthia Gershman and a lavish, A-list, million-dollar-plus Hollywood gala honoring Bill Clinton. At the trial of Clinton’s finance director for the 2000 senatorial campaign, David Rosen, the government told the jury Paul personally gave more than $1.2 million to produce the events.
Paul, a former business partner of Spider-Man creator Stan Lee who sued Bill for fraud and accused Hillary of hiding nearly $2 million in Senate campaign donations, alleged they sabotaged the media company he formed with Lee to get out of a $17 million agreement made with Bill Clinton to serve as an international promoter for the company after he left the White House. Paul was indicted in June 2001 for manipulating the price of the stock in his company, Stan Lee Media, as it was collapsing. A judge determined Paul didn’t profit from the attempt to save his company, but he accepted a plea bargain and served three years in prison. WND reported in 2012 that Paul charged Attorney General Eric Holder and his Justice Department obstructed justice by reneging on a sentencing agreement.
“Hillary is carrying out her promise to finally destroy my family to punish me for exposing the corruption that elected her to the Senate,” Paul told WND at the time.
As we've noted, Paul was claiming a Clinton conspiracy against him -- thus getting rabid Clinton-haters like WND on his side -- in an effort to deflect the fraud charges against him. If Paul is the upstanding guy WND portrays him as, why did he flee to Brazil to evade prosecution, then fight extradiction back to the U.S. for two years?
And, as we've also noted, the fact that -- as WND admits -- Paul wasn't indicted until 2001 means that the Bush administration, not Hillary Clinton or any other member of the Clinton administration, was leading the prosecution against him. That sort of blows up his whole victim schtick.
And that's just the beginning. Imagine if we had the time to examine in detail all 22 (or 20, or 23) so-called "scandals" on WND's list.
But that, of course, is what WND is counting on -- to repeat the lies until people are tired of correcting them. Joseph Farah and Co. think that this is some strange form of "journalism," but it's actually yet another reason why nobody believes WND.
CNS Finally Reports On Duggar Scandal -- In A Blog, Not As 'News' Topic: CNSNews.com
It's taken surprisingly long for an organization that professes to be a "news" operation, but CNSNews.com has finally gotten around to reporting on the Josh Duggar sexual molestation scandal. But, oddly, it still doesn't consider this "news."
Melanie Hunter's May 22 item on Duggar is not presented as "news" but, rather, as a blog post -- the same status also afforded to Michael Chapman's stenography of Franklin Graham and posts dedicated to the stylings of "Evan Sayet, the nation’s leading conservative, political comedian."
Hunter also presents the Duggar scandal in as perfunctory a manner as possible -- apparently finally moved to write about it only after the Duggars' "19 Kids and Counting" show was canceled because of the revelations -- keeping to reporting only statements and refusing to dig into the issue. For instance, Hunter notes that Josh Duggar's victims "live[d] in the Duggar home," but fails to note the obvious conclusing that Duggar was molesting his sisters.
Hunter also uncritically repeats a claim that Duggar was "sent to a Christian treatment program," but ignores reporting that the "treatment program" was actually some guy in the home remodeling business who was actually "more of a mentor ... kind of" rather than someone with actual counseling credentials, which you'd think would be important in dealing with a teenager who molested his sisters.
Hunter uses her dry, perfunctory writing to hide the fact that the Duggar family waited a year to report Josh's behavior to authorities. She also doesn't mention that CNS has favorably promoted Duggar in the past.
Hunter's treatment of the Duggar story is not the only sign CNS would rather ignore it. CNS' Twitter account has not promoted the story, nor have the Twitter accounts of editor in chief Terry Jeffrey and managing editor Michael Chapman. And the Duggar story is still being censored on other MRC websites, such as NewsBusters, MRC TV, and the main MRC website.
On May 1, CNSNews.com published a fluffy interview with Josh Duggar, oldest son of the Duggar family of "19 Kids and Counting" fame, in which he declared that “marriage is central to the family and every single child deserves a mother and father” and complained that "there is an agenda to silence people of faith, those who hold a dissenting opinion."
Actually, CNS is the one who's engaged in the act of censorship, making sure no bad news about the Duggars appears on its "news" pages.
Earlier this week, news broke that Josh Duggar, as a teenager, was named as an "alleged offender" in an underage sexual abuse probe. Technicalities and other issues in the police investigation led to Duggar failing to be prosecuted in the case.
People magazine reports that the case involved Duggar molesting five underage girls as a teenager. The duggar family states that he underwent counseling and that he regrets his actions, he has since resigned from his job as executive director of the Family Research Council's political action division.
Yet none of this is newsworthy at CNS -- it has not reported a single word about Josh Duggar's scandal, even though it has been two days since the story first broke, and even though it would not hesitate to do so if the perpetrator was not a cultural conservative.
So, what is newsworthy at CNS today? Likening President Obama to Osama bin Laden. No, really.
It seems CNS would much rather do fluffy interviews to advance right-wing ideology than engage in actual journalism without fear or favor.
UPDATE: Wonkette notes that according to the police report, four of the five victims of Josh Duggar's molestation were his own sisters.And Right Wing Watch reports that Duggar has a history of claiming that gays -- not people like himself -- are a threat to child safety.
If CNS reports this at all, it will be couched in some heavy-duty spinning to highlight the power of Christian redemption or something. Again, a whitewashing that CNS would never provide to anyone who isn't a cultural conservative.
When we read CNSNews.com managing editor Michael Chapman's June 2 article rehashing a right-wing psychiatrist's claim that "transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment," we thought it looked a little familiar. Turns out we were right.
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