WND Still Obsessing Over Arch, Still Won't Say It's Glad ISIS Destroyed It Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've documented WorldNetDaily's obsession with a reproduction of the entrance arch to the Temple of Palmyra (which it insists on calling the Temple of Baal), while downplaying the fact that the reason it exists is that the terrorists of ISIS destroyed the original -- making it seem that WND and its favorite messianic rabbi, Jonathan Cahn, are endorsing ISIS' handiwork here.
A Nov. 20 WND article by Bob Unruh is ostensibly about a Burning Man-esque event on the National Mall called Catharsis that featured "representations of 'Lord Shiva Natarja,' a Hindu god, a massive seven-headed dragon representing Satan" -- curiously, WND doesn't turn to any American source for this; it cites Breaking Israel News, a biased pro-Israel outlet that hosts conferences on prophecy -- but a significant chunk of it is devoted to the Palymra temple reproduction. This time, though, Unruh finally states in a straightforward manner the fate of the original amid all the hand-wringing:
WND has reported recently on the repeated appearances of a reproduction of the historic Temple of Baal.
The arch has risen in London and New York City, the latter only a few steps away from Ground Zero. It was placed outside a global summit in Dubai. More recently, it was even constructed for the G7 Summit in Florence, Italy.
It’s a replica of a Roman triumphal arch originally built in Palmyra, Syria. Destroyed by the terrorist group ISIS during the current Syrian civil war, the Institute for Digital Archaeology used 3-D printing to rebuild the arch. Since then, the arch has been on a world tour, appearing near global summits and in important cities.
But the arch isn’t just a Roman ruin. It was originally an arch for the Temple of Baal, a pagan god repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament. The rites of Baal were marked by child sacrifice and ritual prostitution. And many Christians find it strange that such a god keeps being honored or invoked repeatedly at global summits.
Jonathan Cahn, who rocked American Christianity with his New York Times bestseller “The Harbinger” and produced a revolutionary new kind of devotional with “The Book of Mysteries,” told WND he finds the developments ominous.
“When looking at this phenomenon, we have to understand the nature of the god involved,” he explained. “Baal was the god that Israel turned to after it turned away from the God of Scripture. He was the substitute god, the replacement god, the anti-God god – the god of their turning away, their fall. Baal was the god of the apostasy.”
Or, you know, people who care about world history don't like to see terrorists destroy ancient ruins for their own extremist religious purposes.
Cahn clearly approves of ISIS destroying the temple -- for its serves his religious purposes too -- but he and WND know they can't say that out loud.
Also, Unruh began his article by noting that the Burning Man-esque event came "only 20 years after more than 1 million Christian men gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the “Stand in the Gap: A Sacred Assembly of Men” event organized by the Denver-based group Promise Keepers." Actually, bestestimates were that the 1997 Promise Keepers event drew between 600,000 and 800,000, not a million-plus.
Newsmax's Gizzi Takes Roy Moore's Side, Bashes Opponent Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax "political columnist and chief Washington correspondent" John Gizzi has made it clear whose side he's on in the Alabama Senate race.
After the Washington Post reported on allegations of Moore perving on teenage girls as a thirtysomething man, Gizzi pussyfooted around at first with a Nov. 10 column that highlighted how "almost to a person, Republican leaders in Alabama who spoke to Newsmax rallied behind their already-controversial nominee and denounced both his accusers and the Post." A Nov. 14 column noted concerns from other Republican senators about Moore but added that "keeping Moore out of the Senate would be difficult to imagine" because the procedure has been done so rarely.
Gizzi made his bias crystal clear, though, in a Nov. 20 column dedicated to attacking Moore's Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, for the purportedly "radical" positions of opposing Obamacare repeal and trusting in science:
Jones, 69, has showed no sign of distancing himself from his party’s national platform — an inarguably radical, Bernie Sanders-influenced document that calls for raising the minimum wage to $15, a tough pro-climate change stance, a surtax on millionaires, and abortion-on-demand.
Jones strongly opposes any effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
Jones strongly disagrees with the administration’s position on climate change (“because I actually believe in science”) and has sharp differences on immigration with opponent Moore.
Gizzi then branded as "outrageous" the idea that the American judiciary should look more like America:
At times, Jones’ comments to the press as a private attorney border on the outrageous. In a feature by the Associated Press entitled “Experts Say Alabama Needs More Black Federal Judges," Birmingham attorney Jones endorsed the view that “the federal bench is identified with discrimination laws [and] It would seem the minority population has to be well-represented.”
Gizzi didn't explain why that view is so "outrageous."
Finally, Gizzi found it outrageous that Democrats in Alabama should have any sort of voice in government:
Perhaps Doug Jones’ most telling comment came earlier this year. Noting that he felt the election of 2016 was “very disturbing,” he acknowledged that Alabama voted “overwhelming” for Donald Trump. But, he quickly added, “there were about 37 percent of the people who did not, and they need a voice too.”
Based on his comments on many issues and political associations, it is clear Jones wants to be that voice — and with a very left-of-center tone.
Gizzi doesn't seem equally offended at the related idea that Moore wouldn't be a senator who would represent all Alabamans.
WND Wavers on Thanking God for Trump Topic: WorldNetDaily
Should WorldNetDaily readers thank God for the elction of Donald Trump? WND itself has wavered on the subject.
Richard Bartholomew noticed that a promo for WND's new state-media campaign to get readers to send thank-you cards to Trump originally read "Thank God for Donald Trump's first year" but was later changed to "Give thanks for Donald Trump's first year." The wavering was odd, given that WND has profusely credited divine intervention for Trump's election.
But over the next few days, WND apparently decided there wasn't enough God in its thank-you campaign. As a Nov. 26 article explains:
When WND.com founder Joseph Farah created the ThankTrump.us program that allows Americans to send the president an e-card thanking him for his accomplishments, he noticed right away a preference among the six optional messages.
People were more than enthused about a simple statement of faith, “Praying for your continued success! May the Lord bless you and keep you.”
About half of all participants in the program were choosing that message for the president.
So when the booming program faced expansion, the next step was entirely logical.
“I noticed that the most popular choice early on was the one and only card that had a strong spiritual hook,” said Joseph Farah, the inspiration behind the ThankTrump.us campaign. “So, I asked our creative director to help me come up with three more card choices – two of which have a spiritual tone. Now everyone has more choices. Anyone can see how popular each one is, because we keep score publicly for you.”
(Note that WND manages to credit Farah twice in five paragraphs for having created this.)
So, anyway, WND now has cards that read "Thank God for the Trump miracle" ...
... and another that says "You are proof that God answers the prayers of his children."
WND still has not addressed the possibility that God sent Trump as a warning and not a blessing.
AIM Writer Still Thinks Obama Was Born In Kenya Topic: Accuracy in Media
Brian McNicoll's Nov. 22 Accuracy in Media column is a rebuttal to an Atlantic piece by Adam Serwer arguing that people who voted for President Trump were motivated in part by racism. McNicoll complains at one point:
Birtherism, Serwer contended, “is rightly remembered as a racist conspiracy theory, born of an inability to accept the legitimacy of the first black president.” Actually, it was an effort by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008 to find a way to delegitimize Obama in the Democrat primaries.
If the rules didn’t prevent someone born in Kenya from serving as president, we never would have heard a word about where Obama was born, and nobody would have cared that he played cat and mouse about the subject for a decade before presenting something he claimed to be his birth certificate but which is not.
1) There was no "effort" by the Clinton campaign to question Obama's birthplace -- that was the doing of right-wing outlets like WorldNetDaily ... and AIM.
2) The "certification of live birth" Obama released in 2008 is legally equivalent to a birth certificate, making McNicoll's complaint moot. He failed to mention that Obama did, in fact, release his birth certificate as well.
3) Obama was not born in Kenya. McNicoll offers no evidence to prove that.
Good to see that McNicoll is coming closer to filling the conspiratorial void at AIM left by the departure of Cliff Kincaid.
MRC Exploits The Hell Out of Matt Lauer's Firing, Flushes Fox News Harassers Down the Memory Hole Topic: Media Research Center
As we noted, the Media Reserach Center could only be bothered to barely acknowledge the fiasco that was James O'Keefe and Project Veritas' attempt to fabricate a fake scandal against Roy Moore in the hope that the Washington Post would take the bait -- apparently failing to account for the fact that Post is a credible news organization that verifies things before they're published. That was in no small part because it wanted to distance itself from the fiasco (even though the MRC has uncritically touted O'Keefe's work in the past), but it ultimately had to speak up in order to protect the so-called integrity of conservative journalism.
But the MRC also had another excuse to quickly move on: a shiny object called Matt Lauer.
The MRC's belated acknowledgement of the O'Keefe fiasco finally made it to a MRC-operated website about the time NBC announced it had fired "Today" co-host Lauer over allegations of sexual harassment. O'Keefe was quickly memory-holed; as far as Lauer went, the MRC was ON IT, cranking out a whopping nine posts in the next 12 hours.
That's approximately nine more posts that the MRC has ever devoted to the sexual harassment allegations against personalities at its favorite channel, Fox News: Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly and Eric Bolling.
Speaking of which: The first Lauer post was one in which Scott Whitlock bashed him as a "hypocrite" for questioning O'Reilly about his sexual harassment cases. Taht would be the interview in which the MRC's Randy Hall endorsed O'Reilly's porrayal of himself as the innocent victim of a "hit job," even though he has effectively admitted guilt by paying out millions of dollars in settlements.
The second Lauer post was also hypocrite-themed, in which Whitlock wondered if Lauer "doesn't have any concept of self-reflection" and "might have pondered his own actions while slamming Donald Trump over the infamous Access Hollywood tape," going on to huff that "Lauer brezzily reported on allegations against others."
Recall that the MRC helped Trump play the victim over that tape by dismissing it as politically motivated, with a heavy dose of Clinton Equivocation.
We also got the preening moralizing from MRC chief Brent Bozell, asking: "Clearly, there must have been numerous people at NBC who knew about his repugnant behavior. Where have they been all this time? How many people who could have put an end to this actually enabled his abuse of women?"
Bozell never asked that about the goings-on at Fox News.
The MRC's Rich Noyes took a similar tack, arguing without evidence that NBC News president Andy Lack must have known earlier about the accusations against Lauer "unless he's living in a cave or everybody else whose talking on the record is lying." He didn't mention that at Fox News, it was the president himself, Ailes, who was doing the harassing.
Not to be outdone, MRC bigwig Tim Graham asserted (on Fox News, natch): "But I think that the news media, these are people, that the shocking thing about all of this, is, you have never seen a group of people who say that they're on top of everything and then don't seem to realize they have a sexual predator in their midst for 20 years." Neither he nor his Fox News host, Shannon Bream, discussed how long Bream's fellow employees knew there were sexual predators in their midst -- or whether Graham, Bozell or anyone else at the MRC knew of the Fox News predators before it went public.
Finally, Bozell (though, in reality, probably his ghostwriter Graham) penned a piece for Fox News (of course) in which he rails once again at Lauer for his interview with O'Reilly: "How could Matt Lauer make these solemn pronouncements on national television with a straight face?" Funny, we ask that same question (except for the Matt Lauer part) every time we see Bozell on Fox News.
Bozell, Graham and the MRC have suddenly developed another Fox News-sized blind spot. Now that there are non-conservative sexual harassers to rant about, the last thing they want to talk about Ailes, O'Reilly and Bolling -- and their own hypocrisy in holding conservative harassers to lower standards and less lecturing.
WND Thinks All Muslim Women Wear Full Burqas Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Muslim-haters at WorldNetDaily have never been completely moored in the harbor of facts when lauching their repeated attacks on Muslims. So it's no surprise to see WND descend to lazy stereotypes like assuming that all Muslim women wear full-body burqas.
A Nov. 24 article by chief Muslim-hater Leo Hohmann lamented that a Muslim woman won't be deported because she fears she'll be killed by a family member because she had a child out of wedlock. It's certainly problematic that Hohmann is rooting for a woman to be murdered, but he doesn't apparently see the issue.
The article was promoted on its front page with a picture of a woman in a full burqa:
A similar picture is used to illustrate the article itself:
WND offers no evidence that this is an accurate representation of the woman.
Similarly, a Nov. 25 article by Bob Unruh is weirdly happy that a group of Muslim women suing a restaurant for discrimination won't be allowed to keep their names anonymous. The front page promo uses a different burqa stock photo:
The article itself is illustrated with the same photo.
As before, WND offers no evidence this is an accurate representation of the women involved in the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, in the real world outside WND's anti-Muslim bubble, relatively few women wear the burqa. IN Europe, it's estimated that less that 1% of Muslim women wear one, and the number is similar in the U.S.
Unless WND can prove these photos are an accurate representation of the typical Muslim woman, let alone the women these two articles are about, this should be considered yet another example of fake news.
NewsBusters Blogger Wants To See IRS Non-Scandal Drag On, Just Because Topic: NewsBusters
Tom Blumer just doesn't know when to give up on a scandal.
he devoted a Nov. 24 NewsBusters post to being outraged about a Bloomberg View op-ed by Francis Wilkinson proclaiming the IRS controversy over alleged targeting of right-wing groups seeking tax exemptions to be nothingburger it was. Blumer first goes the ad hominem route, denigrating the op-ed's writer as a "career leftist" who once worked for a "Democratic media firm." But the evidence he cites comes from an anonymous "longtime Tea Party activist" and a guy so obsessed with the non-scandal that he posted articles about itfor "1,353 striaght days." Blumer offers no evidence why his partisans are any more trustworthy than the op-ed writer.
Never mind that the so-called scandal effectively ended four years ago, when the IRS admitted that the groups were targeted -- not for their political bias, but because of a flood of applications for tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012. Blumer rants insteadabout alleged stonewalling that led several congressional committees to fail to find evidence:
The failure to produce evidence occurred because, as just noted, they made every attempt to either destroy it or withhold it. Of course, Wilkinson never mentioned the IRS's obstruction and evidence destruction.
Enough evidence to matter is still available, which explains why the IRS scandal's conspirators are still stonewalling and attempting to enlist the assistance of the courts to keep that evidence under wraps.
Blumer didn't mention that those congressional committees are controlled by Republicans, and if there was actually something there, they could have easily found something -- anything -- to destroy the IRS with. But Obama's not president anymore, and raging against the IRS doesn't have the same political juice when there's a Republican in the White House.
Curiously, Blumer didn't mention the report issued in September by the Treasury Department's inspector general, which pointed out that liberal-leaning groups were also singled out for more scrutiny and that the IRS had changed its procedures in that area.
In other words, there's really nothing left to investigate. Yet Blumer wants it to drag on anyway for no apparently reason other than political retaliation and pursuit of a nonexistent conspiracy. Sad, isn't it?
Muslim Derangement Syndrome, Barbies in Burqas Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
Will Barbies in burqas be next?
That’s the question every parent, especially mothers, should be asking now that Mattel has rolled out a new Barbie for little girls to look up to – one wearing a hijab, the headscarf worn by millions of oppressed Muslim women worldwide.
Why would an American doll maker promote a widely known symbol of female oppression, you wonder? You can thank political correctness.
In the spirit of promoting diversity, the toy manufacturer decided to honor fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad – the first American Olympian to compete wearing a hijab, at the Rio de Janeiro Games last year.
Memo to Mattel: No matter what PC “Kool-Aid” you’re drinking these days, promoting oppression and the subjugation of girls and women is never OK.
MRC Slow to React to O'Keefe Fiasco Topic: Media Research Center
Right-wing provocateur and troll James O'Keefe really screwed the pooch in a seriously botched sting, sending a minion to a Washington Post reporter with a false claim that she had an abortion following an affair with Roy Moore. the Post investigated, found major holes in her story and her background, and the sting was turned around on her -- thus having the effect of proving that the Post investigated the claims of Moore perving on teenage girls with the same rigor and found them to be credible, as well as proving the Post itself to be a credible news organization overall.
This created a dilemma for the Media Research Center. After all, it has given videos released by O'Keefe's Project Veritas lots of free publicity over the years -- in October alone, the MRC touted twovideos of secretly recorded videos of people in the media saying things that advance the MRC's anti-media agenda, and a third item that month featured Tom Blumer endorsing the illicit videotaping: "We also know that O'Keefe got it right."
The MRC's first reacton seemed to be to do nothing and hope it would blow over. But after outrage continued to build -- after all, O'Keefe's minion was not only to try and discredit the Post but also the women who accused Moore of perving on them -- it seemed clear that it couldn't stay silent. So 24 hours after the scandal broke, on Nov. 28 it took a baby step -- not by posting anything at any MRC website, mind you, but having MRC chief Brent Bozell use his Twitteraccount to denounce O'Keefe's actions:
Regarding WaPo/O'Keefe incident, this was entrapment, & the kind of "gotcha" stunt that should be condemned. If a liberal did this to a conservative outlet, we'd be outraged. Once again, O'Keefe is grandstanding & hurting the conservative movement. I'm glad the Post outed him.
O'Keefe's story was a fabrication to create a scandal. That's slanderous. The day conservatives endorse these tactics, we've lost all moral standing.
The problem, of course, is that Bozell and his fellow conservatives have already lost moral standing by endorsing a thrice-married adulterer and misogynist for president (and after Bozell insisted that Donald Trump "did not walk" with conservatives), so his word doesn't mean much. And his MRC has no problem pushing fabrtcations, as demonstrated by its pre-election promotion of a fake-news Fox News story, one the MRC never corrected or retracted when it was proven to be false.
Nevertheless, The Hill did a story on Bozell's tweets the evening of Nov. 28. Curiously, these same statements weren't being repeated at any of the MRC's three main websites: NewsBusters, MRCtv, and CNSNews.com.
It was not until the morning of Nov. 29 -- nearly two full days after the O'Keefe fiasco broke -- that any Bozell statement made it to a MRC-operated website, in the form of a NewsBusters post by Tim Graham summarizing Bozell's tweet and a comment he made to the hated Associated Press.
Missing from all of this: Any mention of the MRC's previous promotion of O'Keefe, as well as an answer to the question of whether Bozell and Co. will now treat O'Keefe with the same disdain it treats a member of the "liberal media" who does something similar.
In other words, it was a perfunctory CYA move, driven by fear of damage to the conservative movement and the MRC's own brand than any genuine concern about journalism.
Bozell and the MRC couldn't have been happier that the news of NBC host Matt Lauer's firing over sexual harassment claims broke around the time Graham's post went live, because it swept O'Keefe out of the news cycle and all but guaranteed Bozell would never have to address it again.
As its weird, densely written e-book demonstrated, WorldNetDaily is intent on portraying diverse left-wing "antifa" activists as unified, violent Trump-haters. A Nov. 4 anti-Trump rally by various liberal-leaning groups gave WND an opportunity to push that meme anew.
Antifa activists around the country are declaring something huge is going to begin on Nov. 4. There are wild rumors of revolution and civil war. But what looks more likely is something along the lines of Occupy Wall Street on a national scale.
And while violence is not inevitable, the inherently violent nature of antifa suggests scattered violence is very likely.
Strangely, though, the article strayed from fearmongering and right-wing orthodoxy enough to impart a couple actual facts, such as admitting that "One of the leading misconceptions about antifa among many conservatives is the idea 'antifa' constitutes a single grouping or organization" or "funded by George Soros."
Another anonymously written Nov. 2 article declared that antifa are "masked left-wing extremists" just like the ones in Europe and claimed:
Antifa are attempting to rise to the prominence their counterparts have in Europe on Nov. 4, with demonstrations nationwide designed to “drive” the Trump administration out of power. The umbrella group Refuse Fascism, which is hosting the protests, is a front group for the Revolutionary Communist Party. Though the mainstream media is largely silent about the nature of the group behind the event, the Revolutionary Communist Party is an openly anti-American organization that has openly called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Leo Hohmann tried to up the ante in a Nov. 3 article -- carrying the speculative headline "Will antifa spark civil war this weekend in America?" -- portraying the group leading the rally, Refuse Fascism, as secretly violent, or something:
The planning has been going on since at least August, and the chatter on social media would indicate that antifa, the loosely connected group of anarchists, communists and other splinter groups angry at the outcome of last year’s presidential election, has something big planned for Saturday, Nov. 4.
Depending on where you choose to get your information, one can find descriptions for what is planned that vary from an attempt to spark civil war, to a massive outbreak of peaceful protests filled with well-behaved hippies holding signs signifying their common hatred of America’s 45th president. They will “drive him out,” they say, and he “must go,” because they have “had enough” and “this nightmare must end.”
[...]
So what does the organizer itself say about how protesters should conduct themselves?
We searched their website and while we could find no outright calls for violence. But it seems fair to point out that the group makes no concerted effort on its website to emphasis peaceful rallies. In the absence of an explicit call for peaceful marches, is it not reasonable to assume that some people could interpret phrases like “drive them out of power” as a call to violence?
The group’s Nov. 4 protest page explaining its “methods” says nothing about peace or striving to remain peaceful.
[...]
Again, no detailed explanation of what this call to action requires and no explicit declaration that violence will not be tolerated.
If such a declaration is somewhere, hiding in small print, we could not find it, and that was after spending a good amount of time on the website. We did find lots of angry words meant to stir up hatred, spark division, and call for some vague “action.”
Angry words meant to stir up hatred and spark division? Are we sure Hohmann isn't talking about website of his employer?
Another Nov. 3 article attacked the New York Times for running a full-page ad from Refuse Fascism, continuing to insist that it's a "communist front group," adding, "The black-clad, left-wing terrorist group known as 'antifa' is likely to be a major force at the protests."
Finally, the day of the rally came, and ... nothing happened. As Right Wing Watch noted, there was none of the violence WND and other fearmongering right-wingers predicted. That wasn't worth any WND reporter's time, though; instead, it stole an article from the New York Daily News noting the smallish crowd and lack of violence, and ran a poll question asking, "Why did antifa's civil war flop?" It didn't mention that the only people calling the protest a "civil war" was right-wingers like WND -- or that its own coverage of the rally proved to be fake news.
CNS Suggests Roy Moore Accuser Was A Temptress Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com, despite presenting itself as a "news" operation, has continued to mostlyignore the news about the scandal of Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore's history of perving on teenage girls (while pushing sexual harassment scandals involving non-conservatives). Now it's suggesting that Moore's accusers are the ones at fault.
A Nov. 20 CNS article by Susan Jones summarizes an interview witih Moore accuser Leigh Corfman. The writeup is mostly straightforward; the headline, however, betrays CNS' right-wing bias. It reads, "Leigh Corfman, Roy Moore’s Accuser: ‘I Was Expecting Candlelight and Roses’."
Huh? That makes it seem like Corfman was the one trying to seduce Moore.
The quote in questions doesn't appear until the fifth paragraph of Jones' article, the it reads much differently in its proper context:
She said it did not occur to her at the time that she had been molested, but she said the experience did change her life for the worse:
"I'd been reading Harlequin romances, you know, for years at that point, and I was expecting candlelight and roses, and what I got was very different.
"It took away a lot of the specialness of, you know, interactions with men. It took some trust away. It allowed me to delve into some things that I, you know, wouldn't have otherwise. It took years for me to regain a sense of confidence in myself. And I felt guilty," she said. "You know, I felt like I was the one to blame. And it was decades before I was able to let that go."
In other words, Moore is the one who anti-candlelight and roses and basically ruined adult relationship for Corfman.
Curiously, Jones edited a Corfman quote later in the article. She writes:
Corfman told NBC's Savannah Guthrie she was not paid or compensated in any way for coming forward: "If anything, this has cost me. I have no tickets to Tahiti. And my bank account has not flourished. If anything it has gone down."
In fact, Corfman said (Jones' omissions in italics): "If anything, this has cost me. I've had to take leave from my job. I have no tickets to Tahiti, and my bank account has not flourished. If anything, it has gone down because currently I'm not working.”
Why does Jones want to hide the fact that Corfman has been unable to work because of the accusations she made against Moore? We don't know.
More WND Columnists Join the Roy Moore Defense Brigade Topic: WorldNetDaily
An impressive array of WorldNetDaily columnists have already come to the defense of Roy Moore in the aftermath of the revelations of his history of perving on teen girls. The parade hasn't really stopped.
Carl Jackson pretty much summed up his take with the headline of his column, "If you're not an Alabamian, shut up about Roy Moore!" Still, for a guy whose column name is "Making Politics Personal," Jackson is quite put out that people are making the Moore allegations personal:
There are dangerous precedents at stake in the Alabama U.S. Senate race, primarily being imposed by outsiders – a precedent in and of itself. Initially, I was inclined to throw Moore overboard based on the mere “seriousness” of the accusations alleged, though I never bought into the groupthink that Moore isn’t fit for the Senate based on the accusations alone. My concern was and admittedly remains that the seat, not the state, could temporarily go blue. Under that scenario, Republicans would have a slim majority in the Senate of 51-49, making it even more difficult to pass major legislation. Given the GOP Senate leadership’s inability to get anything done with a 52-48 majority, it’s understandable why outsiders would want Moore to step aside. However, what if there’s something larger at stake?
First off, we’re abandoning constitutional federalism by nationalizing state races. Secondly, we’ve politicized sexual assault. Thirdly, if opponents of Roy Moore are wrong about the allegations, it’s not just a Senate seat at stake – they’re complicit in undermining Christianity. Lastly, if conservatives won’t recognize the consequences of freedom, how can we expect Democrats to?
Mychal Massie deflected in a column whose headline also summed up his take: "Members of Congress are the predators, not Roy Moore."
The point here is not to say that the accusers in any of these many cases are liars or that the men are innocent but that our society has a system for determining what the truth is, and we risk doing great damage, not just to the individuals but to the nation as a whole, if we abandon the rule of law to emotional expedience.
That risk is especially high in the case of pro-life, pro-family stalwart Judge Roy Moore, who is rightly outraged at being tried by the leftist media in the court of public opinion on the eve of an election in which opponents like Mitch McConnell have proven a willingness to stop him at all costs. What is more, his many feminist opponents (and perhaps the accusers themselves) routinely justify the wholesale murder of unborn babies as “women’s rights,” so what’s a little election fraud compared to that?
Yes, that’s a serious charge! Which proves my point about due process. Opinion and unproved accusations cannot be a substitute for facts in public policy!
A pretty funny statement from a guy who's best known for substituting opinion and unproved accusations for facts in public policy.
WND editor Joseph Farah goes on Moore defense patrol again, though without mentioning his name. He wonders if the victims of unwanted sexual advances are maybe a little too sensitive about it, and that maybe it didn't actually happen:
And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, if victims don’t understand what “unwelcome advances” mean, are they really unwelcome? How is anyone to know if the target of the advances doesn’t know? If the target isn’t certain about whether they are unwelcome, how can anyone else make sense of such “offenses”?
And, of course, he blames the Clintons somehow: "And, in retrospect, were all those who excused, overlooked, rationalized and trivialized the outrageous sexual activity of the most powerful man in the world back in the 1990s, including his wife, to blame now that the chickens have come home to roost? Just asking."
Alan Keyes kicked off his Moore-defending column with a rhetorical flourish bordering on the ridiculous:
Because I am standing with Judge Roy Moore I find myself within the circle of malice now focused on him by the forces of evil that are moving inexorably to procure the complete destruction of the Constitution and identity of the people of the United States. Their greatest enemy is God, of course, as He has shared Himself, in Spirit and Truth, in and through Jesus Christ. Their enmity naturally extends (as Christ said it would) to anyone willing faithfully to bear witness to God’s authority over the universe created by and through His Word. This includes, of course, His authority over all the determinations and conceptions that define human existence; the bonds of material, moral and spiritual obligation that allow for human action and choice, according to the Providence by which He makes good the promising nature on which our continued existence depends.
There's more ridiculousness throughout his column, until he finally declares, "We must never contemn [sic] as fools brave and God-believing leaders, like Judge Roy Moore, who are faithful unto civic and even corporeal death."
Jason and David Benham claimed to offer "5 observations on Roy Moore from [a] Christian perspective," none of which were "Perving on teen girls is kinda gross and maybe Moore doesn't deserve to be elected." instead, they huff that "Jesus teaches His followers the proper way to expose sin, which has a specific order found in Matthew 18," and that it's not being followd. Then they move to slut-shaing, claiming that Moore's "first accuser lacks credibility with her three divorces, three bankruptcies and three charges against pastors for the very thing of which she accused Moore."
The Benhams also blame society: "it’s glaringly hypocritical for our society to objectify women through pornography and “sex sells” advertising and then condemn men for objectifying women." But it's not glaringly hypocritical for evangelical Christians like the Benhams to give Moore a pass for failing to live up to his (and their) professed standards on the treatment of women?
Finally, there's Pat Boone, who follows the pattern of attacking Moore's accusers while denying he's doing so:
Let me be very clear. My wife and I raised four beautiful girls in Beverly Hills California. By the time any of them were 12 at most, they knew better than to be alone anywhere with an older man. And, God forbid, if they had reported any incident like the ones Moore is accused of – as furious as I’d have been with the man, I would also have laid part of the blame at the feet of our daughter, who knew better than to be in the situation! I’m not excusing Moore’s alleged action or accusing the women, if the claims can possibly be proven at this late date, but it’s undeniable that if any of the accusing women had told their parents or any authority after it happened, it would have been dealt with, and we wouldn’t have to be sorting it all out, after Moore has been investigated and elected so many times since then!
Boone then moves to the "nobody's perfect, so let's elect the perv" argument:
God didn’t make perfect people. Though He says we’re created “in His image,” that includes free will and the likelihood we’ll make mistakes along the way, probably some serious one with bad consequences. That’s why we need a Savior, one with God’s own divine nature, one who was sorely tempted like we are, yet without sin, and one who is able to take a penitent failure, lift him up and help him become a more admirable person. Someone like even Roy Moore.
That’s the main theme of the whole Bible. God makes man and woman and desires their companionship. But they fail and fall away, forfeiting the relationship. Then the loving God provides a way back into the relationship through His Son, who pays the debt of all our sins.
There's the usual Clinton Equivocation and more attacks on the accusers, but you get the idea.
Bozell & Graham Hypocritically Shame Charlie Rose Topic: Media Research Center
Tim Graham and Brent Bozell's Nov. 27 column is all about piling on Charlie Rose over sexual harassment allegations. They call him among the "elites," "privileged" and a member of the "ruling elite."They lecture: "Every powerful man who is getting caught up in this wave isn't living by the Ten Commandments but by the 'Access Hollywood' code: When you're a star, the women will let you do it. You can do anything."
Funny thing about that: Graham and Bozell never lectured the man who invented the "Access Hollywood" code -- Donald Trump -- that way. As we documented, both Bozell and Graham went the Clinton Equivocation route when Trump's misogyny surfaced, insisting that Bill Clinton did much worse . Rataher than devote an entire column to shaming Trump, Graham and Bozell whined and deflected for an entire column, hufing about an "October surprise" and deflected by insisting, "As repugnant as it was, Trump's offense was words. The Clintons' offenses were actions." The word "repugnant is the only criticism of Trump's behavior in that entire column.
And Graham and Bozell certainly didn't spend an entire column shaming Roger Ailes or Bill O'Reilly for their actions in the field of vile sexual harassment. As we also documented, theit column on O'Reilly could muster only a perfunctory "indefensible, if true" disclaimer, then dismissed the accusations as old news and went all Clinton Equivocation again. And when Ailes died earlier this year, Bozell gushed over his work in building Fox News but stayed silent about Ailes' victims, and his Media Research Center attacked anyone who brought them up.
Graham and Bozell extended their Rose-shaming to his employers: "Charlie Rose exploited women for decades as he produced shows at Bloomberg's TV studio for PBS and hosted shows on CBS. None of those news agencies ever seemed to find any wrongdoing inside their own offices worth reporting. The embarrassment and shame should also be theirs." Again, they never shamed Fox News for not finding Ailes' and O'Reilly's regpugnant behavior worth reporting on.
Back in their 2016 column whining about and deflecting from the Trump misogyny, GHraham and Bozell concluded: "The cynicism boggles the mind." True -- especially your own, boys.
WND Still Struggling to Crowdfund A Film Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's crowdfunding campaign to praise pre-production costs to make a film about Obama-smearer Anita Dittman's WND-published memoir about life in Nazi Germany remains a failure -- after four months, it's raised only about $14,000 of its $120,000 goal. So WND is getting a bit desperate in its appeals. Last month, WND offered up this vaguely worded morsel:
It’s only a matter of time and a few tweaks: Things are looking good for an independent campaign to create a feature movie about the remarkable survival under Adolf Hitler’s regime of a teen Jewish girl who became a Christian.
The project, “Trapped,” got a thumbs-up from a team of professional script analysts who gave it a “consider” rating, which was given only to 4 percent of scripts submitted.
A few changes and the rating could end up being “recommend,” according to George D. Escobar, vice president of WND Films and the co-writer and co-director of Academy nominated film “Alone Yet Not Alone” and the documentary “Isaiah 9:10 Judgment,” based on Jonathan Cahn’s New York Times bestseller, “The Harbinger.”
According to an actual script analyst, the "consider" rating is basically the same as "mediocre," in which some parts might be good but others need work. If it was just "a few changes" that were needed, the script would done better than it did before the nebulous panel of script analysts WND called in.
The article also tries to punch up the premise of Dittman's story, calling it "a harrowing true story in which a Jewish girl embraces Christianity during the Holocaust, handled in a way highly respectful of both faiths." We'll believe it if we ever see it; typically, conversion tales are less than respectful to the religion one is leaving, since there's usually a big reason that someone chooses to reject their native religion.
The article also reprises the questionable appeal that its recommended donation of $10 of "less than two cappuccinos, or lattes, or mochas from Starbucks," despite the fact that there's likely very little overlap in the Venn diagram of Starbucks customers and WND readers.
In other words, the overall appeal remains less than compelling.
CNS Gives Space to A Fox News Democrat Topic: CNSNews.com
While the Media Research Center tries to make "MSNBC conservative" a thing, the MRC's "news" division is giving space to a Fox News Democrat.
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman touted in a Nov. 7 blog post:
Democratic strateist Doug Schoen, who worked on Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign and Hillary clinton's 2008 campaign, said that, given the allegations of "rigging" the primaries against Bernie Sanders by the DNC and new revelations about the Clinton email and Uranium One scandals, it is time for a "special prosecutor" to look into the entire mess.
Schoen, a Harvard Law School and Oxford University graduate, added that "the entire Democratic Party stinks from the head down, the whole process," and "everyone really has a stain on their hand."
Schoen made his remarks on the Nov. 6 edition of Hannity, where he was joined by Tezlyn Figaro, the national justice director for the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.
Chapman fails to menton that Schoen's main purpose on Fox News is to bash what he claims are his fellow Democrats. Schoen is so not an actual Democrat that he has helped fund-raise for Republicans (along with fellow Fox News Democrat Pat Caddell) and has donated to Republicans.
So, the MRC is being hypocritical and a bit cynical. No surprise there.
We've documented WorldNetDaily's obsession with a reproduction of the entrance arch to the Temple of Palmyra (which it insists on calling the Temple of Baal), while downplaying the fact that the reason it exists is that the terrorists of ISIS destroyed the original -- making it seem that WND and its favorite messianic rabbi, Jonathan Cahn, are endorsing ISIS' handiwork here.
Newsmax "political columnist and chief Washington correspondent" John Gizzi has made it clear whose side he's on in the Alabama Senate race.
Brian McNicoll's Nov. 22 Accuracy in Media 
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Tom Blumer just doesn't know when to give up on a scandal.
Will Barbies in burqas be next?
Right-wing provocateur and troll James O'Keefe really screwed the pooch in a 
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CNSNews.com, despite presenting itself as a "news" operation, has continued to 
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Tim Graham and Brent Bozell's Nov. 27 
WorldNetDaily's 
While the Media Research Center tries to make "
