MRC Getting Into The Right-Wing-Screed Business Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center seems to be getting further and further away from all that "media research" stuff (not that they're allthatgood at it) and is moving toward hateful right-wing screeds. The MRC has been into these in the past month.
For example, P.J. Gladnick sneered in a June 10 post:
When you hear Elizabeth Warren loudly ranting about Donald Trump do her screechings sound vaguely familiar? Perhaps you were sure you heard someone like that in the past but you can't quite put your finger on it. Well, a recent caller to the Laura Ingraham radio show, Mark from Virginia, finally lifted the veil on that maddening mystery when he revealed that Warren was an almost exact vocal twin of the Ruth Buzzi's bag lady character of many eons ago on the Laugh-In television comedy show.
Aha! Now it is clear to you. Of course. And if you doubt the very similar vocal patterns, listen to this clip of Laura Ingraham comparing Elizabeth Warren's rants with those of Ruth Buzzi. They are eerily similar in both voice and attitude.
MRC VP Dan Gainor wrote a post titled "6 Radical, Crazy, Insane, Nutball, Liberal Things," declaring that "Tracking liberal insanity is like playing Whack-A-Mole only instead of pesky moles, you get to bash bizarro lefties." Again, not exactly forwarding the whole "media research" thing.
And Maggie McKneely made her hate clear in the headline of her NewsBusters post: "Make it Stop: Media Hype FLOTUS Snapchatting and Carpool Karaoke." Yes, McKneely is all bent out of shape because Michelle Obama is doing a "Carpool Karaoke" segment with James Corden. No, really:
Corden is undoubtedly a fan of his next guest, but First Lady Michelle Obama is an unconventional choice because she has no original songs. Maybe they can sing Fifth Harmony’s tribute to the FLOTUS.
To announce the upcoming appearance, Obama joined the world of Snapchat. Although she’s only used the app for a day, the ever-worshipful media has already dubbed her the “Snapqueen.” Cosmo, though, just prefers to call her their “Queen” in general.
[...]
Michelle Obama was already the most televised first lady in history, appearing on everything from Jimmy Kimmel to NCIS to even Nickelodeon. But considering Hillary Clinton has had a snapchat account for almost a year, Obama has been surprisingly slow to join the bandwagon. And since 71% of its users are under 25 years old, there’s no better way to reach the college-age demographic.
Snapchat’s appeal to its users is that everything that gets posted disappears forever after 24 hours, no matter how dumb and ridiculous it was. What better way to advertise karaoke?
Again, this is all over Michelle Obama doing a harmless bit of TV. What is McKneely's problem?
UPDATE: Gladnick strikes again in a July 12 post, having apparently decided that Hillary Clinton is the Manchurian candidate:
Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.
Anybody who ever saw the movie The Manchurian Candidate would have quickly thought it rather odd that every soldier captured in Korea with Raymond Shaw gave identical answers when asked to describe him. However, when associates of Hillary used identical answers to describe her, Ezra Klein of Vox seems not to notice anything strange there. Here is Ezra making the observation about those identical (robotic?) descriptions without the least hint of curiosity as to the Manchurian Candidate quality about them:
The answers startled me in their consistency. Every single person brought up, in some way or another, the exact same quality they feel leads Clinton to excel in governance and struggle in campaigns. On the one hand, that makes my job as a reporter easy. There actually is an answer to the question. On the other hand, it makes my job as a writer harder: It isn’t a very satisfying answer to the question, at least not when you first hear it.
Hillary Clinton, they said over and over again, listens.
Hillary Clinton is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful listener I have ever known in my life.
And to make sure you know she is a good listener, Klein repeats "listen," listens," and "listener" 41 times in his shill Hill piece. Whenever the Red Queen flashes by, we get this response:
[...]
Except Klein did not question why every single person associated with Hillary gave that same Manchurian Candidatish "listen" answer. A skeptical mind would suspect that it was a mandatory talking point Hillary description answer handed down from on high. Instead, Klein went on to unsubtly press that "listen" shtick over and over again much like 1950s TV commercials pitching aspirin products by showing a cartoon hammer pounding repetitively against a skull:
[...]
Agghhhh!!! Enough already, Ezra! You've pounded that Hillary "listen" bit so relentlessly against my skull that now I need an aspirin.
Exit question: If I flash the Red Queen in front of Ezra Klein and make a certain demand, would he jump into a vat of Kool Aid along with his fellow Hillary-enabling JournoLists?
So when Obama stop being the Manchurian candidate (or president)? Gladnick should ask Aaron Klein about that.
CNS Writers Spread Birth Control Misinformation Topic: CNSNews.com
In his July 6 column, CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey decries the Supreme Court failing to take up a right-wing favorite case in which a pharmacy in Washington state claim their religious rights have been violated because it's being punished under state law for refusing to stock the morning-after pill.
Jeffrey repeatedly calls the morning-after pill an "abortifacient" or an "abortifacient drug," and he even quotes Justice Samuel Alito referring to "abortifacient emergency contraceptives."
Just one problem: the morning-after pill is not an abortifacient under the medical definition of the word. As we've previously documented, morning-after pills like Plan B primarily work by suppressing ovulation, thus preventing fertilization.
Jeffrey quotes the right-wing groups pushing the case claiming that "the FDA has recognized" that the morning-after pill "can prevent implantation of an embryo." But research has not definitively shown that the pill works this way, but even if it did, it would not be an "abortifacient" because, medically speaking, an abortion can only take place on a implanted egg.
Plus, as many as 80 percent of a woman's fertilized eggs fail to implant naturally, which would seem to make every woman a walking "abortion" factory. Jeffrey doesn't address that little issue.
Jeffrey also uncritically repeats the right-wing activists' case that "over 30 pharmacies carry Plan B" within a five-mile radius of the pharmacy involved in the case, as well as "from nearby doctors' offices, government health centers, emergency rooms, Planned Parenthood, a toll-free hotline and the internet."
But as the Atlantic points out, the flaw with that argument is that the case would seek to invalidate the law across the state, not just the urban area where the plaintiff's pharmacy is:
In its decision, the Ninth Circuit argued that there are good reasons for Washington not to make religious exemptions to its drug-delivery rules. While the owners of Storman’s argued that they would have been happy to refer customers to other pharmacies, “Speed is particularly important considering the time-sensitive nature of emergency contraception and of many other medications,” the Ninth Circuit said. “The time taken to travel to another pharmacy, especially in rural areas where pharmacies are sparse, may reduce the efficacy of those drugs.” Customers also shouldn’t get sent somewhere else when they ask for medication, the decision said, because “referrals could lead to feelings of shame in the patient that could dissuade her from obtaining emergency contraception altogether.”
At its conceptual core, that’s what this case is about: whether religious business owners and employees should be able to refuse to provide contraceptives to women, even when state regulations require them to do so.
Jeffrey, however, wasn't the only CNS employee dispensing contraception misinformation last week. Penny Starr wrote in a July 1 article bashing "longtime abortion advocate" Carmen Barroso discussing an abortion she had that "Barroso said she got pregnant while using an abortion-inducing intra-uterine device, which failed."
No, IUDs are not "abortion-inducing." As the Atlantic again explains, IUDs work mainly by killing sperm -- which is not abortion -- and it could also possibly work by preventing implantation (it's not clear whether it acually does), but that is, again, also not abortion under the medically accepted definition.
Jeffrey and Starr would better serve the public interest it claims to provide as a "news" operation if they would report facts instead of peddling biased misinformation.
WND Now Trying to Blame Obama for Dallas Shooting Topic: WorldNetDaily
Having falsely linked Dallas police shooting perpetrator Micah Johnson to Black Lives Matter, WorldNetDaily continued on its fact-free way and tried to blame President Obama for the massacre as well.
Right-wing ambulance-chasing terrible attorney Larry Klayman spewed in his July 7 column:
In the wake of the massacre of five Dallas, Texas, policemen, with seven shot and wounded, President Barack Hussein Obama, as he has with his Muslim brothers, refused to refer to this heinous crime as a “hate crime” – despite the fact the shooter had admitted that he wanted to kill whites and in particular white cops, motivated by the hateful anti-white rhetoric spewed forth by Black Lives Matter and thus by extension the support this insidious group has gotten from Obama himself.
Not only does Obama have blood on his hands as having encouraged if not furthered this hate crime against whites and white cops, but so too does his “soul brothers,” the virulent anti-white, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian so-called Rev. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, and his co-enablers like another so-called reverend, Al Sharpton, a charlatan and white hater. Indeed, Obama has, as usual, chosen to associate himself with these lowlifes in his quest to ram his latent hatred of whites, Jews and Christians down everyone’s throats. When the leader of the United States and supposedly the Western world, who was born to a Muslim father, schooled in Muslim schools, and has close ties to black-Muslim leaders like Farrakhan seeks to incite violence by virtue of his running interference for Muslims and blacks who are not even representative of African-Americans generally, it’s no wonder Obama-inspired massacres like Dallas happen. In two words, “Obama Happens!”
Klayman then showed off his ambulance-chasing ways:
I am filing in the next day a lawsuit, with myself as the initial plaintiff, against Obama, Black Lives Matter, Farrakhan and Sharpton for endangering not just my life, as a white law enforcement person of Jewish origin, but also for all Americans, white, black, yellow or brown, no matter what their race or religion. Someone has to take the first step, and I have concluded it has to be me.
Bercause Klayman is just that narcissistic and delusional.
The same day, WND editor Joseph Farah declared that "Obama himself provided plenty of excuses beyond his inclination to enflame racial strife and deter racial reconciliation. He has done everything a president of the United States could do to bring us such a tragedy – with potentially more on the way."
Farah then lists several bullet points to attempt to prove his point, such as the tired, irrelevant claim that "Obama will not use the term 'Islamic terrorism.'" But it's a sign of WND's overall lack of credibility that two of Farah's bullet points reference "FBI counter-terror specialist John Guandolo."
Why? Guandolo is actually a former FBI counter-terror specialist (which Farah concedes in his second reference to Guandolo), and the reason he's a former FBI counter-terror specialist is because he's a serial philanderer and adulterer who jeopardized a federal investigation by having sex with a witness and trying to get her to donate money to a right-wing "anti-terrorism" organization.
Still, WNDinsists Guandolo is actually credible. Which is just one more reason people think WND isn't.
NewsBusters Blogger Has Selective Memory on Klan, Double Standard on Rhetoric Leading to Shootings Topic: NewsBusters
Tom Blumer devotes a July 4 NewsBusters post whining that the Associated Press did an article on the 150th anniversary of the Ku Klux Klan. What he's really mad about, though, is that the AP referenced Donald Trump in its article, noting that "Klan leaders say Donald Trump's ascendancy in the GOP is a sign things are going their way," noting Trump's support for building a wall on the Mexican border, something the anti-immigrant Klan also supports. Blumer huffs:
There you go. The AP wants readers to believe that any supporter of nationalism, only-lawful immigration which doesn't take jobs away from current citizens, and building a wall to stem the tide of illegal immigration is really no different than the racists in the KKK.
Blumer, however, doesn't explain why there is a substantive difference between the two. Nor does he square these conservative views that are a part of the platform of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and the Klan with his assertion that "All three incarnations of the Klan were either arms of, had close ties to, or were dominated by members of the Democratic Party."
Of course, Blumer omits the fact that it was Southern Democrats who provided this support for the Klan, and after Democratic support for civil rights laws in the 1960s made it clear that racism would no longer be tolerated through the entire Democratic Party, the Republicans drew up the "Southern strategy" to use race as an issue to woo southern Democrats to their party, which played a significant role in the current Republican dominance of Southern politics.
Also, Blumer's desperate attempt to try and separate Trump from racists might have worked a little better if his post didn't come in the midst of the Trump campaign trying (and failing miserably) to spin away an anti-Semetic image attacking Hillary Clinton that originated on a white nationalist website that the campaign tweeted out.
Blumer also misleadingly attacks the Southern Poverty Law Center, claiming it engaged in purported "irresponsibility" that led to an attempt by an armed gunman to enter the Family Research Council headquarters because "it has taken to calling any group which advocates traditional one-man, one-woman marriage (e.g., the Family Research Council) as a hate group." In fact, the SPLC has explained that its listing of the FRC as a hate group has reasoning that goes far beyond merely "advocating traditional one-man, one-woman marriage":
The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.
As the SPLC made clear at the time and in hundreds of subsequent statements and press interviews, we criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins’ words, that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” — an utter falsehood, as every relevant scientific authority has stated. An FRC official has said he wanted to “export homosexuals from the United States.” The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.
If Blumer really believes that about the SPLC, he then has to admit that Operation Rescue played a role in the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller because killer Scott Roeder had several contacts with the group before committing his crime, or the Center for Medical Progress played a role in the massacre of three employees at a Planned Parenthood clinic because of its dishonestly edited secret-video attacks on Planned Parenthood and shooter Robert Dear was echoing what CMP and others (like the MRC) said about "baby parts" allegedly being sold from the clinics.
But Blumer will never admit that because it takes away his own argument, as he admits:
Outfits like SPLC think it's "outrageous" that people blamed them when someone attempted mass murder based on their false evaluation of a mainstream Christian group. But in [historian quoted by the AP] David Cunningham's world, every person on earth who is patriotic, or advocates reasonable controls on immigration, or thinks a border wall is necessary, deserves to be blamed for any and all violence which might be committed by people who claim to hold similar positions.
So, the double standard continues, and Blumer is OK with it.
Susan Jones throws out a bunch of numbers to start her July 8 article on the latest unemployment numbers:
The civilian labor force expanded in June, adding 414,000 people, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
The number of employed people increased by 67,000 to 151,097,000 in June, but the number of unemployed people increased even more, by 347,000 to 7,783,000.
The unemployment rate ticked up two-tenths of a point to 4.9 percent.
BLS said 94,517,000 Americans were not in the labor force in June, a slight improvement from May's record 94,708,000; and after dropping for three straight months, the labor force participation rate increased a tenth of a point to 62.7 percent in June.
Note that none of the numbers she's tossing around is the really important one: number of jobs created. Taht number -- 287,000 -- doesn't get mentioned until the sixth paragraph of her article.
Jones also surprisingly undermines her and CNS' obsession with presenting the labor force participation rate as a meaningful measure of employment by admitting the large number is largely driven by retiring baby boomers:
Last month, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told Congress the Fed is keeping a close eye on the labor force participation rate. She said she expects that rate to "continue declining in the coming years because we have an aging population."
As baby-boomers retire, "they work less," she noted, even though younger people "participate more."
People who have not actively looked for work in the previous month are not counted as participating in the labor force.
Of course, that didn't get mentioned until the ninth paragraph of the article. Jones'noting that "Yellen told Congress that 'a sign of a strengthening labor market is to see people who were discouraged brought back into the labor force'" -- which further undermines the way Jones presented her numbers -- is buried even farther down.
So apparently there's a Google Chrome app called Nazi Detector that claims to single out right-wing pro-white extremists by putting swastikas next to their names in that browser -- a response to the "Coincidence Detector" app created by neo-Nazis that highlighted Jews on the internet. The Nazi Detector app apparently flagged WND as a organization that deserved this treatment. Cue the outrage from WND:
WND itself is also identified as a “Nazi” group. WND founder Joseph Farah reacted with outrage.
“The left loves to label its opposition as Nazis,” he said scornfully. “It’s disgusting in so many ways – from trivializing the unique horror that Nazis inflicted on their innocent victims to scapegoating and criminalizing political differences just as the Nazis themselves did.
“Nazism was a form of socialism, which I oppose. It’s a form of totalitarianism, which I oppose. It’s a form of state terror, which I oppose. How many of those things do leftists actually oppose?”
Now, we wouldn't go so far as to label WND as Nazi sympathizers. But it's undeniable that WND has gone partly in that direction with its promotion of white nationalist views.
As we documented following Dylann Roof's massacre of several black churchgoers, the white-supremacist views in his manifesto closely tracked WND's editorial agenda over the past few years, with its obsession with black-on-white crime (particularly in the George Zimmerman case) and writers who pine for the days of apartheid in South Africa.WND has never challenged our pointing out of these views, though a few months ago it dropped its chief apartheid-lamenter, Ilana Mercer, as a columnist.
And while WND has been a staunch supporter of Israel -- solicitations masquerading as "news" articles begging readers to shell out to join Farah on his apparently annual trip to the Holy Land havebeenomnipresent in recent days -- it also has a regular columnist Pat Buchanan, who has fretted that there are too many Jews on the Supreme Court.
But then, WND weirdly soft-pedals the racist nature of the Coincidence Detector app:
The “Nazi Detector” is based on the “Coincidence Detector,” another app for Google Chrome which automatically put parentheses around Jewish names designed to represent “echoes.” The “echo” meme was created by the blog The Right Stuff in an attempt to draw attention to what the blog’s authors said was disproportionate Jewish involvement in left-wing movements and causes.
After several Jewish reporters said they were “targeted” with the parentheses online, a spate of articles revealed the supposedly “secret symbol” used to “identify and target Jews.” The “Coincidence Detector” was promptly removed from the Chrome App marketplace, though the “Nazi Detector” remains available.
Some Jewish writers expressed discomfort about the “creepy” and anti-Semitic “Coincidence Detector” because of the “dark, murderous history to the practice of maintaining lists of Jews.”
Actually, the folks at The Right Stuff specifically stated their anti-Semitic intent with the app to serve as a critique of "Jewish power":
"The inner parenthesis represent the Jews' subversion of the home [and] destruction of the family through mass-media degeneracy. The next [parenthesis] represents the destruction of the nation through mass immigration, and the outer [parenthesis] represents international Jewry and world Zionism."
So, no, WND, Coincidence Detector is not a commentary on liberal Jewry.
Both of these apps are blunt instruments designed to make a political statement -- Nazi Detector, for example also flags Pamela Geller, and much of WND's article is dedicated to quoting her screeching about it, but she's merely a xenophobic Muslim-hater, not a Nazi.
So how is it that WND is incredibly offended by Nazi Detector, but it hides the anti-Semitism behind Coincidence Detector? Maybe WND really deserves that swastika after all.
Is The MRC Bitter That Hillary Wasn't Jailed For Email Issues? Oh, A Tad Topic: Media Research Center
The headline of Media Research Center writer Kristine Marsh's July 5 post reads "'Obviously' Clinton Wouldn't Be Charged; Right is Just 'Bitter,' Claim Journalists on Twitter." But instead of arguing that right-wingers like herself really weren't "bitter about Hillary Clinton not being charged over her email controversy, Marsh instead proved justy how bitter she is by her sneering attacks on those "journalists" who commented:
"Paul Krugman, columnist for the elitist The New York Times had his own snotty tweet ready"
"CNN analyst Van Jones snappily replied"
"Jamil Smith of MTV News dismissed the whole scandal in one crass tweet"
While Marsh was also suggesting that the "journalists" she quoted were supposed to be objective, most of them, like Krugman, Jones and Amanda Marcotte, are opinion writers. March very easily could have found conservative "journalists" similarly spouting off.
Marsh also complained that Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel "mocked the GOP" by commenting, "Who’ll be the first elected to call on the GOP Congress to create a special counsel and probe Clinton’s email again?" he was proven right by House Republicans hauling FBI director James Comey before a committee to explain himself, then declaring that the issue would not die due to the committee giving the FBI a referral "in the next few hours" to investigate whether Clinton lied to the FBI, something Marsh's fellow MRC employees at CNSNews.com proudly reported.
Marxh ended her post with one last bitter salvo: "The media’s readiness to quickly dismiss yet another Clinton scandal proves that their attitude towards Clinton hasn’t changed since the days where she characterized her critics as part of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy.'" Of course, there was such a thing, and Marsh's employer was one of the organizations involved with it.
Last Week's Trump Coverage At CNS: Again, Mostly Stenography Topic: CNSNews.com
NOTE: Our CNS Trump coverage tally for the final week of June somehow did not get posted, so we're doing that now.
The big Donald Trump campaign news last week was his campaign emailing overseas politicians begging for donations, in apparent violation of federal election law.
Did you read about that CNSNews.com? Of course not! CNS reports only positive news about Trump and/or stenographic quoting of Trump campaign officials. To that end, this is the only Trump-related news that made the CNS front page last week:
A June 27 article by Susan Jones trying to put a positive spin on Trump's need to stay on message and not go off-script with wild rants, quoting Mitch McConnell touting how Trump is "beginning to right the ship" by using a "prepared script."
A June 28 article by Patrick Goodenough uncritically quoting a Trump campaign operative declaring that "We’re not going to base national security off PolitiFact, or even the United Nations" after fact-checking sites pointed out that Trump got something wrong yet again.
A June 28 AP article on Trump criticizing international trade.
A June 29 stenography article by Jones regurgitating a Trump speech.
CNS has madeitclear that it will avoid putting negative news about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on its front page.
Meanwhile, what else did CNS consider front-page worthy that week? A slobbering story by Barbara Hollingsworth citing the "high praise for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas" by "his former law clerks and colleagues in the Reagan administration" on the 25th anniversary of Thomas being named a justice.
CNS Obsesses Over Hillary Emails, Ignores Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
Apparently, CNSnews.com's blanket coverage of Hillary Clinton's emails -- at least 15 original articles over four days, as we'vecounted -- made CNS reporters too exhausted to put fingers to keyboard to write anything about Donald Trump, even to perform another act of speech stenography.
The only Trump-related story that made it to CNS' front page last week was a July 5 article quoting the Trump campaign denying any anti-Semitic intent in a tweet of a image of Clinton accompanied by a six-pointed star with the words "Most corrupt candidate ever!" despite the fact that the image originated on a website with numerous offensive images on it.
This means the last time CNS did an original article on Trump was June 29, with Susan Jones serving as dutiful stenographer on a Trump speech.
Certainly Trump did nothing newsworthy in the past week -- for example, his continued defense of the offensive image -- and certainly Hillary's emails were at least 15 times more front page-worthy than anything Trump did.
CNS is a "news" organization like they claim, right? (No, they're not.)
UPDATE: So what else did CNS consider front page-worthy that week? A interview by Mark Judge of Kevin Sorbo, the ex-Hercules who's now "playing Joseph the father of Jesus in the film 'Joseph and Mary.'" This means CNS has done more original stories on Kevin Sorbo in the past week than it has on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
AIM's Kincaid Thinks Transgender Soldiers Are Like Corporal Klinger Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media's chief gay-hater, Cliff Kincaid, is at it again. In a June 28 column titled "Corporal Klinger Reporting for Duty," he rants:
As if to add insult to injury, the Department of Defense will lift its ban on transgenders on July 1.
We predicted this development back in 2010. “The MASH television spectacle of Corporal Klinger wearing women’s dresses to get out of the military may now give way to the Pentagon actually permitting transgendered male soldiers to openly wear women’s military uniforms,” we said. “This is what repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ could mean.” The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was designed to keep active and open homosexuals out of the military services.
These developments prove that the “fundamental transformation” of America promised by Obama has been most evident in the cultural rather than economic sphere. His communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a pedophile.
Yes, Kincaid thinks all transgender people will wear dresses on the front lines instead of regular fatigues, like Corporal Klinger.
Speaking of that casual smear of all gays as pedophiles, Kincaid also serves up this creative interpretation of the Stonewall riots:
President Obama’s determination to eliminate any notion of sexual deviance or perversion in American society continues at a rapid pace. He just released a video announcement of his designation of a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn in New York City, as a national monument.
Obama’s video made it seem as if the homosexuals at the formerly Mafia-controlled facility were giving their lives for the greater good of the nation. The place had been raided in 1969 because it was a location for men known as chicken hawks wanting sex with underage boys. Homosexuals rioted in response, injuring several policemen.
No, Cliff, gays were not rioting to have sex with "underage boys." They were rioting against years of harassment by the police. That the bar had Mafia links is irrelevant to the issue.
WND Already Trying to Falsely Race-Bait Over Dallas Shooting Topic: WorldNetDaily
Never let a crisis go to waste, they say, and WorldNetDaily is trying to do exactly that over the sniper shootings of police officers in Dallas.
The cover of this week's WND Weekly -- a digital compilation of free WND articles that WND is trying to make people buy -- screams "BLACK LIVES MASSACRE."
This was joined by that old WND standby, stenography of whatever Rush Limbaugh is saying. This time, Garth Kant gets the honors:
One of the nation’s leading experts on law enforcement and race sees a cause and effect relationship between the president’s rhetoric and the murder of five police officers in Dallas.
“President Obama lied to the nation last night, and he embraced the Black Lives Matter myth that there is a racist war by white officers against black civilians in this country. And we see the results,” Heather McDonald told Rush Limbaugh on his radio program Friday.
“It is simply not the case that the police are disproportionately shooting black males when you take violent crime into account,” she asserted. “And for President Obama to give that movement any credibility when it is now threatening law and order itself, we are at risk of attacking the very foundation of civilization if this type of hatred continues.”
Obama welcomed leaders of Black Lives Matter to the White House in February. Limbaugh recalled how the president praised them and their efforts, saying they were “much better organizers than I was when I was their age.”
“And Black Lives Matter was exactly who they are then as who they are today,” Limbaugh observed. “They’re a terrorist group. They’re quickly becoming a terrorist group committing hate crimes. And the attorney general today is saying that she’s going to look into this, investigate this as a hate crime.”
Just one problem with all of this fearmongering over Black Lives Matter in the Dallas shootings: it's not true.
Newsreports state that the shooter, Micah Johnson, has no affiliation whatsoever with Black Lives Matter or any other organized group; he was a loner who followed black militant groups (of which Black Lives Matter is not one) on social media and amassed an arsenal of weapons in his home.
But then, when has the truth ever mattered to WND? No wonder it has no credibility.
More CNS Bias: 7 Articles on Comey Testimony, Zero on Trump In Past Week Topic: CNSNews.com
As we've seen, CNSNews.com can marshal its reporting resources when moved to by its right-wing agenda. CNS did so again regarding FBI director James Comey's testimony before a Republican-dominated congressional committee on Thursday. Here are the original articles CNS got out of that hearing:
All of these seven articles are based on either Comey testimony or questions asked by Republican committee members. No article even mentions there are Democratic members of Congress at the hearing, let alone quote any of the questions they asked.CNS also failed to mention how Comey debunked several right-wing talking points about Clinton's emails.
That would appear to be another violation of its mission statement that it's "a news source for individuals, news organizations and broadcasters who put a higher premium on balance than spin."
Meanwhile, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is still nowhere to be found on CNS' front page. The most recent original CNS article on Trump appeared more than a week ago, on June 29. CNS cannot plausibly claim Trump has done nothing newsworthy since then.
To tally it up: Including CNS' earlier selectively wall-to-wall coverage of Comey's press conference on July 5, that's at least 15 CNS articles related to Clinton's emails, but zero CNS articles on anything Trump has done in the past nine days.
Is CNS a "news" organization, or is it a Clinton attack operation? Looks like it's the latter.
MRC Rants Against Gas Taxes, Provides No Alternative Method To Fund Transportation Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alatheia Nielsen ranted in a June 30 NewsBusters post:
If you’re taking advantage of the extended Independence Day weekend to embark on a road trip, you’ll be filling up the tank.
If you are researching prices to see just how much your trip will cost, have you thought about which states siphon the most money from each tank of gas you purchase?
Unlike the federal gasoline tax, which is set at 18.4 cents per gallon across the nation, states set their own gas taxes, which vary widely from 12.25 cents to 50.3 cents per gallon, according to data from the American Petroleum Institute. Five states are the biggest money grubbers. If your weekend plans take you through these five states, just remember how much of your gas money is actually going straight to the state government:
But Nielsen overlooked the fact that these "money grubbing" gas taxes in those five states -- as well as every other state -- goes mostly or entirely toward funding transportation needs in those states.
For instance, in California, which Nielsen identified as having "the 5th highest state gas tax," 57 percent of that total goes to highways, 36 percent for cities and counties for various needs -- mostly streets and roads -- and 7 percent for transit. In other words, nearly all of it; a small part goes into the state's general fund.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Hawaii, with the fourth highest gas tax, spends 96 percent of its gas tax revenue on state and county roads. In New York, the third highest gas tax, the money is completely earmarked for state and local transportation projects. IN Washington state, with the second highest gas tax, more than 61 percent is earmarked for transportation. And in Pennsylvania, the state with the highest gas tax, 100 percent is dedicated to transportation programs.
In other words, the gas tax is the main method states use to build and fix roads, as well as fund other transportation needs. It's a logical tax in that it's not a regressive tax and it's paid by people who benefit almost entirely from the service it provides. It makes eminent sense for drivers to pay for the roads they drive on, and the easiest way to do that is the gas tax.
Nielsen offers no alternative way to fund transporation needs if states' gas taxes are eliminated. But then, given that she got her information from the American Petroleum Institute -- which is part of the fossil-fuel industry whose bidding the MRC routinely does -- offering a solution was never part of the plan.
WND Redefines 'Birther' To Bash Hillary Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last time we checked, WorldNetDaily was running as fast from the birther issue as it could to avoid having to avoid having to apply the standards it applied to non-foreign-born Barack Obama to definitely-foreign-born Ted Cruz.
Now, WND is apparently comfortable enough with birtherism to actually redefine what a birther is. A July 5 WND article by Joe Kovacs carries the headline "Hillary goes birther, shouts out Obama's 'birthplace'."
Wait -- is Hillary challenging Obama's eligibility to be president? No, quite the opposite, according to Kovacs:
uring a campaign appearance Tuesday with Barack Obama in Charlotte, North Carolina, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton intentionally re-opened the contested issue of where the president was born, firing a Twitter shot against her Republican opponent Donald Trump.
As part of her remarks about Obama, Mrs. Clinton tweeted out: “Someone who has never forgotten where he came from. And Donald, if you’re out there tweeting: It’s Hawaii.” –Hillary on @POTUS
No, Joe, "going birther" is what WND did pretty much every day for the eight years before Cruz ran for president. What Hillary did is what Kovacs and WND have refused to do on birther issues: tell the truth.
But Kovacs goes on to demonstrate the behavior actual birthers engage in:
Her comment refers to Trump’s push during Obama’s first term for the president to release his long-form birth certificate amid questions of his natural-born citizenship and constitutional eligibility to serve.
While the president claims he was born in Honolulu, there have been numerous questions, especially since a law-enforcement investigation by Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, found “probable cause” that the birth certificate released by Obama was forged. Also, Obama mysteriously has a Connecticut-based Social Security Number, when neither he nor his parents ever lived there.
Ironically, it was Hillary Clinton herself who started the birther movement in 2008, according to numerous news agencies.
Kovacs doesn't mention that Arpaio's so-called investigation -- which included WND writer Jerome Corsi as a member -- is a discredited joke. And Kovacs' sole proof that "it was Hillary Clinton herself who started the birther movement" is a Breitbart article claiming that the Washington Post confirmed this,citing a strategy memo by Mark Penn, a strategist for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.
But as the Post has also pointed out, the memo never questioned Obama's citizenship or elligibility to be president -- two pillars of the birther movement led by WND -- and not only did her campaign never act on the part of the Penn memo suggesting she play up Obama's "otherness," staffers who did bring it up were admonished.
So Kovacs is the birther here by doing what birthers do -- promoted false and discredited claims about Obama's eligibility and citizenship. All the Orwellian redefining in the world doesn't change that.
CNS Columnist Rant About 'Corrupt' Supreme Court After Abortion Ruling Topic: CNSNews.com
Right-wingers had a serious temper tantrum after the Supreme Court ruling on Texas' attempt to legislate abortion clinics out of existence (also known as the Hellerstedt ruling) failed to go their way, and that extends to CNSNews.com. In fact, CNS' stable of columnists are so upset by the ruling that two of them have declare declared the court "corrupt" because their pet cause was rejected.
Lynn Wardle -- who last we saw calling gay marriage a fad just like communism -- complained that the Hellerstedt ruling "overturned decades of small, carefully-crafted pro-life inspired regulations of abortion" -- Wardle doesn't seem to consider that maybe they weren't that carefully crafted after all if their aim of incrementally outlawing abortion with these laws was so blatantly obvious -- and hurled around the C-word:
We must speak up and speak out and write often to express our dissatisfaction, disgust, outrage, and non-acceptance of the corrupt abortion rulings and the corrupt judiciary that issues them.
The abortion rulings and judicial patterns of the past forty-three years are clear indicators that something is wrong, something is broken in our federal judicial system.
The Founders of the American experiment created an independent judiciary. After forty-three years of almost unbroken pro-abortion judicial rulings, it is clear that the federal judiciary is not really independent when it comes to abortion cases and abortion issues. It is a captive agency. The question is – who owns the Supreme Court?
He was joined by birther lawyer Herbert Titus, who along with law partner William J. Olson declared that the Hellerstedt ruling was "corrupt" because, well, Clarence Thomas said so in his dissent, and asserted that the majority ruling employed "corrupt precedents,"though in both instances their definition of "corrupt" appears to mean "didn't support the views of anti-abortion activists." They also ranted that "Truly, the U.S. Supreme Court has once again uttered lawlessness masquerading as a judicial decision."
Titus and Olson then gushed of Thomas' dissent: "This brilliant dissent should be required reading for every law school student who is increasingly unexposed to reasoning from fixed principles, and instead trained in the techniques of judicial balancing — as if the latter was all that law is about."
This from two guys whose own "fixed principles" appear to involve denigrating a court for simply ruling against their personal opinions.
The Media Research Center seems to be getting further and further away from all that "media research" stuff (not that they're all that good at it) and is moving toward hateful right-wing screeds. The MRC has been into these in the past month.
In his July 6 
Having 
Tom Blumer devotes a July 4 NewsBusters 
Susan Jones throws out a bunch of numbers to start her July 8 
So apparently there's a Google Chrome app called Nazi Detector that 
The headline of Media Research Center writer Kristine Marsh's July 5 
NOTE: Our CNS Trump coverage tally for the final week of June somehow did not get posted, so we're doing that now.
Apparently, CNSnews.com's blanket coverage of Hillary Clinton's emails -- at least 15 original articles over four days, as 
Accuracy in Media's chief gay-hater, Cliff Kincaid, is at it again. In a June 28 
As we've seen
The Media Research Center's Alatheia Nielsen ranted in a June 30 NewsBusters 
Last time we checked, WorldNetDaily was 
Right-wingers had a serious temper tantrum after the Supreme Court ruling on Texas' attempt to legislate abortion clinics out of existence (also known as the Hellerstedt ruling) failed to go their way, and that extends to 
He was joined by 
