Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has a lengthy track record of "conveniently forgetful news," complaining that others were treating Donald Trump the same way it treated Barack Obama. Read more >>
Monday, April 10, 2017
NEW ARTICLE -- WND: Don't Do (To Trump) As We Did (To Obama)
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has a lengthy track record of "conveniently forgetful news," complaining that others were treating Donald Trump the same way it treated Barack Obama. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:46 AM EDT
Sunday, April 9, 2017
MRC Tries to Defend Dubious Clinton-Uranium Link
Topic: Media Research Center In a March 29 post, the Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro tried to dismiss how President Trump's accusation that Russia paid off the Clintons in return for control of part of the uranium supply in the U.S. has been largely discredited:
Fondacaro omits two pertinent facts. First, the New York Times' report was based on Schweizer's claims. Second, Schweizer's book "Clinton Cash" was funded by a group called the Government Accountability Institute, which was headed by one Steve Bannon, who later joined the campaign of Hillary Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump, and is now a top aide to Trump in the White House. Bannon's hands and cash on Schweizer's work should taint it just as much as the MRC loves to claim any accusation made about a Republican or conservative by a "liberal" group is similarly tainted. Will Fondacaro or the MRC ever admit that? Not a chance.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:18 PM EDT
WND's Peterson Challenges Masculinity of Liberals
Topic: WorldNetDaily In ranting against the repeal of North Carolina's anti-gay HB2 "bathroom bill," in his April 2 WorldNetDaily column, Jesse Lee Peterson is all about the insults and name-calling. He declares the repeal to be "an evil perpetrated against normal people, innocent children and misguided 'transgender' people" and asserted that supporters of the repeal "love money over people." Peterson then expanded his name-calling to all liberals, while also defending discrimination against people he doesn't agree with (while also dutifully plugging his WND-published book in the process):
Peterson even baselessly attacked North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, claiming his 2016 election was marred by "suspicions of voter fraud – aided by liberal judges who think voter ID laws are 'racist'." In fact, the "voter fraud" allegation was a desperate smear by the losing candidate, incumbent Gov. and HB2 promoter Pat McCrory, despite a lack of evidence to support the claim. It also turns out that North Carolina's voter ID law did, in fact, have racist intent behind it and was deliberately designed to discourage black turnout. So Peterson thinks men who oppose discrimination aren't "real men." How about a man who lies and deceives for political and personal gain?
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:48 AM EDT
Saturday, April 8, 2017
MRC Mocks LGBT Youth As Victims of 'Indoctrination,' 'Stupid Trendiness'
Topic: Media Research Center The anti-gay hate and condescension oozes from the Media Research Center's Matt Philbin in a March 31 post headlined "Study: 20% of Millennials Are LGBTQ; Indoctrination Wins! Or Not":
Philbin, interestingly, does not prove his contention that more youth identifying as LGBT is the result of "indoctrination" or "stupid trendiness." In fact, one could plausibly argue that Philbin's hatred of gays is itself the result of right-wing indoctrination and stupid trendiness. And after quoting a GLAAD representative saying that "Though laws can be unwritten, hearts and minds in America have been changed for the better," Philbin sneered: "If you just threw up in your mouth a little, sorry." It takes dedication to hate an entire class of people that completely -- indoctrination, if you will.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:37 AM EDT
WND's Resident Anti-Kinsey Obsessive Attacks Rockefeller
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily, it seems, is not done saying weird things about the death of David Rockefeller. Discredited anti-Kinsey obsessive Judith Reisman devoted her March 29 WND column to attacking Rockefeller for giving money from his family's foundation to "the father of the sexual revolution, Dr. Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, and Margaret Sanger, the founder of abortion-on-demand and population-control agent Planned Parenthood." She went on to rant:
As we've pointed out, Reisman's accusations that Kinsey conducted sexual experiments on children to get that data on sexual response has been discredited. Reisman also gets stuff wrong about the Model Penal Code. It actually wasn't approved until 1962; the only thing that came out in 1955 were two drafts, out of 13 issued between 1953 and 1961. We have to go to a 2003 Human Events article to find out what the heck her deal is with the Model Penal Code: that it sought to stop the criminalization of private, consensual sexual behavior. Also, she's upset that the code's authors "quoted Kinsey’s junk science in order to overthrow the Judeo-Christian sexual morality of The Greatest Generation and replace it with Kinsey’s ideology of sexual anarchy." Reisman concluded by ranting:
Meanwhile, Reisman's legacy is all about trying to falsely smear Kinsey.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:51 AM EDT
Friday, April 7, 2017
Bozell Defends Trump With Hot-Take Rants About Susan Rice
Topic: Media Research Center Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell hasn't said a word about the Bill O'Reilly sexual harrassment scandal -- in fact, nobody at the MRC has beyond Randy Hall obliquely complaining about CNN's "obsessive Bill O'Reilly coverage," and Bozell certainly does not want to put his TV hits on Fox in jeopardy by mentioning it -- but he has suddenly become a veritable hot-take machine on the subject of former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and the unmasking of . Bozell issued a statement asserting that Rice engaged in "politically-motivated unmasking of Trump associates"-- never mind the fact that Bozell does not and cannot know, at this point, whether Rice's actions were " politically-motivated." Bozell went on to rant: "We have a smoking gun that points to criminal activity by President Obama’s national security advisor and the media have shown an utter lack of interest in pursuing the story. If this story is not a top priority for every news outlet, they are aiding and abetting a cover-up. President Trump has every right to be furious with the press and the American people have every reason to be disgusted." Bozell, meanwhile, doesn't want to talk about the "smoking gun" that is the $13 million in settlements O'Reilly and Fox News have paid to settle sexual harrassment complaints. Bozell then ran to Fox News' sister network Fox Business (of course) to assert that "CNN has been on a jihad" against outlets that report on Rice, insisting that Rice was engaged in "parsing of words" by claiming that she did not unmask for political reasons.Bozell then whined that "there have been non-stop, countless, innumerable stories done about these allegations of a Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians. Not one single piece of evidence has come up to point to that allegation." He didn't mention that his own "news" outlet, CNSNews.com, has been desperate to spin away the Trump-Russia connection. In a separate Fox Business appearance, Bozell was still ranting about Rice, this time invoking the tired right-wing Benghazi warhorse: "This is the same Susan Rice who went on five national news shows after Benghazi and lied and blamed it on a video and yet you have got Andrea Mitchell reporting her spin on it that this was the latest of a Trump administration series of attacks." In fact, the House report on Benghazi found that Rice was following White House talking points about the video, which were based on an editing error by the CIA, and that she was not deliberately lying. Bozell also invoked his persecution narrative, insisting that the media "want [Trump] out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So they're keeping a story alive that has absolutely no legs." Bozell and Tim Graham's April 5 column rehashes all this hot-take spin -- calling her a "liar" on Benghazi, baselessly suggesting she leaked the unmasked names. They then laughably complain: "The media don't care first about "facts." They care first about liberal victory. Their hope now is to remove Trump from office. Keep that in mind when they speak." Pretty rich coming from a couple of guys who didn't care about facts when applied to Trump and cared only about a Trump win and protecting Trump from his words and actions. Keep that in mind when Bozell and Graham speak.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:03 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, April 7, 2017 5:04 PM EDT
WND Goes Into Pro-Trump Defense Overdrive
Topic: WorldNetDaily In pointing out WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah's ludicrous assertion that there's no actual news in thte connections between Donald Trump and Russia, we stuck our well-worn Farah "LIAR" graphic on it -- and not just because Farah repeated the lie that Obama spent taxpayer money to influence an Israeli election. We also noted how WND has been spinning so hard to pretend there is nothing to see here regarding those Trump-Russia links, and how Farah is lying about how that's not really a story. WND's pro-Trump, Russia-denying agenda has been consistent through the news of the past week or so. First up is Garth Kant (pictured), who in a March 27 article baselessly asserts as fact that there was "possible spying by the Obama administration on then-President-elect Trump’s transition team," then insists that the real story is that alleged spying, not the fact that numerous Trump transition officials had contacts with Russia. In to deflect from Republican Rep. Devin Nunes' partisan handling of the House of Representatives investigation of the Russian contacts, Kant forwarded the pro-Trump spin that the actual scandal is that the FBI is engaging in a "possible stonewall" of Nunes' requests for information and whined that "the media antennae were all aflutter with the whiff of scandal" over Nunes' unorthodox behavior. Yes, somehow this is all the media's fault for trying to hold Nunes accountable, according to Kant. Kant struck again in an April 3 article attacking former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, proclaiming that "Mike Cernovich broke the story in an article in Medium on Sunday that said, 'The White House Counsel’s office identified Rice as the person responsible for the unmasking after examining Rice’s document log requests,'" going on to baselessly suggest that Rice leaked those names. Kant didn't mention that Cernovich is an alt-right troll who makes racially charged statements and who promoted the Pizzagate scandal -- which was so bogus that even the conspiracy-lovers at WND largely stayed away from it, though not completely -- and, thus, really can't be trusted. An April 4 WND article by Alicia Powe actdually embeds a Cernovich tweet promoting his dubious story -- then, incredibly, attacked media outlets like CNN who pointed out the emptiness of the claim that Rice leaked the names of Trump associates who had contacts with Russian operatives as "fake-news giants." Powe went on to huff:
Someone forgot to tell Powe that she's employed by a fake-news giant.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:42 AM EDT
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Newsmax's Hirsen Runs to Devin Nunes' Defense
Topic: Newsmax James Hirsen is ostenibly Newsmax's "media analyst," but he's also a pretty tight Trump toady. And he's upset when others are portrayed as such. In his March 27 column, Hirsen complains about how Democrats are allegedly trying to "systematically disparaging, discrediting, and sometimes seeking to destroy, in a political sense" Republican Rep. Devin Nunes for his highly politicized handing on the House investigation of allegedly links between Russia and the Trump campaign. Hirsen parrots the right-wing spin that "officials in the Obama administration had wrongfully revealed and disseminated the identities of U.S. citizens" but doesn't actually prove it. Hirsen then runs to Nunes' defense of perhaps the most indefensible thing Nunes has done, briefing President Trump on the investigation before even members of his own committee:
The headline on Hirsen's column, by the way, is "Nunes Briefed Trump Out of a Sense of Duty Only." Hirsen does not know that; he only knows what Nunes has claimed about it. You'd think a media analyst would be smart enough not to solely take someone's word for something.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:41 PM EDT
WND's Farah Doesn't Understand Why Trump-Russia Is A Story. No, Really.
Topic: WorldNetDaily Joseph Farah writes in his April 2 WorldNetDaily column:
That's right: the man who spent eight years promoting conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's birth certificate -- and the man whose website just claimed that CoverGirl hiring a Muslim spokesmodel makes it a "proxy for jihad" -- somehow doesn't see any significance whatsoever in the Trump team's Russian connections. We suspect he'd see this as a story if Trump was a Democrat, though. And his WND wouldn't be spinning so hard to pretend there is nothing to see here regarding those Trump-Russia links. Farah also repeats the falsehood that "Barack Obama used U.S. taxpayer money openly to influence the election of its best ally in the Middle East, Israel." As we pointed out the last time Farah told this lie -- which refers to an Israeli group that received State Department funding for a separate project that later used the project's infrastructure to run a campaign against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- no laws were violated, the organization did not violate any conditions of its deal with State, and no State Department money went toward funding the anti-Netanyahu campaign. (Note that Farah doesn't refer to Obama as "President Obama." Farah apparently still refuses to acknowledge that Obama was ever president.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:14 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, April 6, 2017 4:40 PM EDT
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
CNS' Starr Bolts to Breitbart
Topic: CNSNews.com In case you missed in our full-length article last week on CNSNews.com's continued fawning coverage of fossil-fuel interests, CNS reporter Penny Starr -- the site's leading fossil-fuel stenographer -- has flown the coop, leaving in March to take a new job at Breitbart. The oil industry cheerleading she purveyed at CNS has continued in stories like "Donald Trump’s State Department Gives Green Light to the Keystone XL Pipeline" and "EXCLUSIVE: Navajos Celebrate End of Obama’s Job-Killing Energy Policies: Trump Offers ‘Unwavering Support’ for Coal." Indeed, a skim through her archive shows that Starr is doing pretty much the same thing at Breitbart she did at CNS, though for a larger audience and (presumably) a bigger salary -- heavy on single-source items designed to promote a right-wing, pro-Trump agenda. Of course, as a Breitbart employee, she's now a part of the "state-owned media" of the kind her former employer, the Media Research Center, loved to rail against when the president was a Democrat.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:04 PM EDT
WND Again Attacks Muslims Who Invoke Law It Praised Christians For Using
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has predictably served up another example of attacking Muslims for using the very same religious-freedom law it has praised Christians for invoking. Bob Unruh writes in a March 31 article about "a case brought by Mohammed Ali Chaudry and the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge against Bernards Township, [New Jersey]," which is trying to build a mosque, a case that in part involves "the apparent intervention of the Obama administration against the local government, even while the public hearings over the project were ongoing." As is WND's biased standard, Unruh quotes only opponents of the mosque, as is to be expected given that he's merely rewriting a press release from the right-wing Thomas More Law Center, which is representing mosque opponents who apparently don't want to be held accountable for their words. Unruh also quotes Karen Lugo, whom hedescribes only as "a specialist on constitutional law and zoning issues" (a turn of phrase straight from the Thomas More press release), not mentioning that she's an anti-Muslim activsts whose real expertise is manipulating local zoning laws to stop mosques from being built. That's what seems to be the case here, in which the township required that the mosque have more than twice as many parking spaces than it requires for a similarly sized church. Unruh does acknowledge this, but also complained that the Department of Justice, "under an agenda imposed by Obama, sued Bernards Township" over the planned mosque. What Unruh doesn't mention, however, is that the "agenda" the DOJ is using is the federal Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act, and as a real news outlet reported, a federal judge found Bernards Township guilty of violating it by demanding an excessive number of parking spaces in denying zoning for the mosque after a four-year battle. WND has repeatedly praised Christian organizations who invoked RLUIPA against alleged municipal discrimination. Unruh says nothing about RLUIPA being the basis for the legal action, even though the Thomas More press release did -- just like Unruh's WND colleague Leo Hohmann failed to do in writing about a similar legal action regarding a proposed Michigan mosque. The headline on Unruh's article calls the legal action "mosque lawfare." We're pretty sure WND used the term "church lawfare" to describe any Christian organization that invoked RLUIPA.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:34 AM EDT
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
More Pro-Trump Spin: CNS Touts How 'GOP Protects Trumps Tax-Return Privacy'
Topic: CNSNews.com We've noted how CNS' chief Trump stenographer, Susan Jones, has obsessed over (and defended against) calls for Donald Trump to release his taxes ... but was curiously silent when MSNBC's Rachel Maddow actually did release details of one year's return. Well, she's at it again, in a March 29 article under the spin-heavy headline "GOP Protects Trump’s Tax-Return Privacy: ‘No Single Individual Has Ever Been Targeted in Such a Manner’." In it, Jones simply blockquotes one Trump defender while his critics get the normal "news" treatment, and she once again makes sure to point out that "there is no law requiring" Trump to release his taxes. That's life in the Trump stenography lane at CNS.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:05 PM EDT
WND Ludicrously Calls Makeup Company A 'Proxy for Jihad'
Topic: WorldNetDaily It seems that at WorldNetDaily, Muslims are the new communists. Just like right-wingers found reds under the bed, WND is finding "jihadists" under seemingly every rock it turns over. Like in makeup. No, really. From an anonymously written March 29 WND article headlined "Muslim expert warns of new proxy for jihad: CoverGirl":
Needless to say, WND did not quote an actual "expert on Islam" who, by contrast to Qudosi, does not hate Muslims to rebut her nonsense. The only surprise about this article is that chief WND Islamophobe Leo Hohmann didn't write this piece (or, heck, maybe he did since there's no byline).
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:40 AM EDT
Monday, April 3, 2017
CNS' Top Tebow-Touter Takes Another Swing
Topic: CNSNews.com We've documented how CNSNews.com writer Michael Morris was lavishing praise on Tim Tebow's nascent baseball career while ignoring the fact that he's not exactly major-league material at this point. Morris takes another swing at it in a March 20 blog post, touting New York Mets manager Terry Collins' noncommittal assessment that Tebow is "getting better." Morris did make a passing reference to "minor league spring training," but he ignored one notable bit of news that occurred the same day his article was published: Tebow was sent to play for a Mets affiliate in Class A ball, the lowest rung of Major League Baseball. Morris hasn't written about Tebow since. Of course, minor-league baseball isn't that exciting, even when Tebow is playing it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:07 PM EDT
WND's Right-Wing Doctor Still Lying About Planned Parenthood
Topic: WorldNetDaily A couple years back, we caught Elizabeth Lee Vliet -- WorldNetDaily columnist, affiliate of the right-wing Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and fearmongerer -- spreading lies about Planned Parenthood. In her March 29 WND column, Vliet went back to that well, asserting "If one goal of 'health-care reform' is to eliminate 'disparities,' eliminating tax funding to Planned Parenthood would help save lives of minorities. Approximately 80 percent of abortions in the U.S. are done for two minority groups: African American and Hispanics." Vliet's support for this claim? That lie-filled 2015 WND column. As we pointed out then, 55 percent of abortions are among whites. Vliet also asserted:
In fact, according to Washington Post fact-checkers, it's unclear whether community health centers can fill the void left by denying federal funding to Planned Parenthood (none of which, by the way, goes to pay for abortion, a little fact that Vliet elides), and the Congressional Budget Office found that pulling Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood would reduce the use of contraceptives and increase the cost of births to the federal government. Further, rural health clinics are not required to provide family planning services and do not have to serve low-income patients. Vliet concluded by ranting, "Obamacare cannot survive. It is in a death spiral as many on both sides of the political spectrum have painfully realized." Um, no, it's not.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:10 AM EDT
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