WND Surprisingly Splits On Trump's Vulgarity Topic: WorldNetDaily
Unsurprisingly, WorldNetDaily writers had a lot to say about President Trump's reported use of the term "shithole countries" to describe certain other nations. Surprisingly, though, that reaction was not uniformly pro-Trump.
Jesse Lee Peterson, needless to say, was pro-Trump: "The president allegedly asked, 'Why are we having all these people from s—hole countries come here?' This is a question every American who cares about our country should be asking." He then attacked "black homosexual CNN host Don Lemon" for using the word and accusing Trump of racism, going on to complain that "Radical homosexuals and liberals ... can’t see that Donald Trump is tough, smart, and looking out for America."
Dennis Prager averred that Trump could have used a better word like "dysfunctional" to describe those countries, but then rushed to Trump's defense, declaring, "The press’ constant description of Trump as a racist, a white supremacist, a fascist and an anti-Semite has been a Big Lie."
By contrast, Rita Dunaway repudiated Trump's remark: "President Trump was not speaking for America’s true conservatives when he made his repulsive, potty-mouthed comment about immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti and certain African nations. He certainly was not speaking for me."
Michael Brown, though, was somewhat offended by Trump's use of the word but seemed to be even more so that the word was reported accurately in the media:
President Trump is hardly the first president to use a vulgarity (meaning, behind closed doors, or at the least, away from a mic), but this is the first time it seems the whole nation now feels empowered to be obscene. Why? And why was it that many Trump supporters cheered him on when he dropped the F-bomb early in his campaign? What’s to celebrate?
And while our communication has been getting more profane, it has also become much more explicit sexually. It’s not enough to report that a woman alleges that a famous man assaulted her. We must hear the details of what they did and how they did it.
In the past, such salacious reports would have been found in the crassest tabloids, if not porn magazines. Today, they’re part of our daily news intake.
Surely, this desensitizing is hurting us more than helping us.
Perhaps, but if Trump hadn't said it, it wouldn't have been needed to be reported on.
CNS' Year of Judicial Watch Stenography Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedocumented how, through much of 2017, CNSNews.com has served as a public-relations agent for the right-wing legal group Judicial Watch, rewriting their press releases as "news" articles. CNS closed out 2017 in the same mode. Here's the Judicial Watch stenography CNS published -- mostly written by CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman -- through the end of 2017:
For the record, that's at least 31 articles uncritically forwarding Judicial Watch talking points CNS published in 2017, plus three columns by Judical Watch chief Tom Fitton. Chapman made no attempt to talk to anyone else for their reaction to Judicial Watch's politically motivated campaign, nor does he ask why Judicial Watch is so strangely uninterested in Russian interference in U.S. elections.
CNS appears to be ramping up the stenography for 2018. Here's what it's published so far already since Jan. 1:
Fringe WND Still Promoting Sue-Happy Defamer Larry Klayman Topic: WorldNetDaily
If WorldNetDaily is trying to clean up its act in order to show the world it deserves to live, it isn't doing a very good job of it. It has continued to publish fake news, and it's still birther.
Another sign of this: giving Larry Klayman a new promotional push. As if publishing his column for years wasn't enough.
We've documented how Klayman is a terrible lawyer and sue-happy defamer who stumbles into big rulings more out of sheer luck than any prosecutorial skill.Now, for some reason, WND has decided to promote his latest Clinton-hating crusade, as described in a Jan. 5 article by Bob Unruh:
He sued the National Security Agency and won in district court.
He sued to get Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
He sued journalists.
He sued the Taliban and al-Qaida.
He sued Cuba and won a multimillion-dollar judgment.
He sued to get then-President Obama deported.
Now, Larry Klayman, the former Justice Department lawyer and founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, has obtained on a petition the signatures of almost 11,000 people who want him named special counsel to investigate the Clintons, Uranium One and Fusion GPS.
He has filed a separate legal action that seeks to remove Robert Mueller as special counsel.
It's never explained how Klayman obtained these signatures or if he has instituted any sort of verification system showing that the signatories are who they say they are, if they've signed the petition more than once, or even if they're American citizens. He does provide an alleged list of signatories, though.
The end of Unruh's article rather hilariously links to WND's own petition demanding a special prosecutor to investigate Hi.llary Clinton. Like Klayman's petition, there's no transparency and no apparent verification mechanism.
Then, in a Jan. 15 article, Unruh strokes Klayman's ego some more:
A veteran Washington courtroom fighter, Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, confirmed Monday he has filed a lawsuit that puts special counsel Robert Mueller’s communications with the media in a bull’s-eye.
“Robert Mueller and his staff, who are alleged to have illegally leaked grand jury information to damage the president, his family and associates, have thus far been untouched by the inept and inert Justice Department, run by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who appears afraid that he himself may be indicted by Mueller for alleged Russian collusion and obstruction of justice,” Klayman said.
“Freedom Watch is not afraid and is doing the job of my former alma mater, which has regrettably become the ‘Department of Prosecutorial Misconduct and Injustice.’ I will not rest until Robert Mueller and his partisan leftist prosecutors are removed and replaced with an honest and ethical special counsel and staff, who will not abuse their authority for political purposes, but instead expeditiously conduct and conclude this Russian collusion investigation on the merits before more harm is done to the nation.”
His, filed in federal court in Washington, is against Mueller, the DOJ and the FBI.
Since we know that WND accepts money to publish "news" articles, one has to wonder what financial deal has been worked out for WND to publish such shameless promotion of Klayman.
(Pictured: Larry Klayman and WND editor Joseph Farah at 2013 anti-Obama rally in Washington D.C. No, Klayman never followed up on his threat to sue me for distributing a factual flyer about his background at the rally.)
NewsBusters Blogger Gives Trump Credit for Black Unemployment Trend Started Under Obama Topic: NewsBusters
We've noted how NewsBusters blogger Tom Blumer is loath to give President Obama credit for creating the economy whose coattails President Trump is currently riding. He does so again in a Jan. 12 post:
The seasonally adjusted black unemployment rate in December was 6.8 percent, the first time that rate has ever fallen below 7 percent. A look at the monthly detail for all 46 years of available data shows that the previous lows were 7.0 percent, seen in both April 2000 and September 2017.
No other month during 1999 or 2000, the last time black unemployment dipped to historically low levels, came in under 7.3 percent. Almost no one knows that 2017 contains four of the five lowest reported monthly black unemployment rates on record: June's 7.1 percent, September's 7.0 percent, November's 7.2 percent, and December's 6.8 percent.
Digging further, December's raw unemployment rate of 6.3 percent (before seasonal adjustments) is by far the lowest December on record. The previous December low was 6.9 percent in 2000.
It's hard to imagine that the Big Three networks would have failed to report this remarkable story if it had occurred during Barack Obama's presidency.
Blumer fails to acknowledge, however, that most of that did happen under Obama. As the graph of seasonally adjusted black unemployment that illustrates Blumer's post illustrates, black unemployment has been on a steady downward trend since 2012.
Nevertheless, Blumer continued ranting:
The black unemployment rate in January 2009, the surveys for which were conducted a week before his inauguration, was 12.7 percent. Despite trillions of dollars of so-called stimulus from record federal budget deficits and over $4 trillion in unprecedented "money-from-nothing" quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, the black unemployment rate at first just kept on rising, peaking at 16.8 percent in March 2010. It didn't move permanently below 15 percent until early 2012, didn't stay below the 12.7 percent Obama "inherited" until November 2013, and didn't get below 11.3 percent, the previous decade's pre-recession peak, until September 2014, almost seven years after Obama he was inaugurated. By that time, white unemployment was only 5.1 percent. That's a lot of suffering.
Blumer doesn't mention it despite his inclusion of another graph partially illustrating the fact, but black employment has always been roughly twice as high as white unemployment, and that gap typically increases in times of recession, which the first part of the Obama presidency inarguably was. Yet Blumer just can't credit Obama for the drop in black unemployment in the last half of his presidency.
As before with the economic numbers, Blumer cites no specific policy that has earned Trump the right to take credit for the current low in black unemployment.
Yes, The Failing WND Is Still Birther Topic: WorldNetDaily
If you're begging for money just to stay solvent, like WorldNetDaily is now, it might not be the best idea to remind folks you were a major promoter of one of the biggest fake-news stories of the past decade.
Not that WND sees it that way. In a Jan. 11 article rehasing birtherism, Bob Unruh blames CNN's Chris Cuomo for bringing up -- never mind that Unruh uses that hook to rehash the whole thing:
A mainstream reporter, CNN’s Chris Cuomo, this week resurrected the question of Barack Obama’s birth certificate during an interview with newly announced Arizona Senate candidate Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
It happened because the sheriff’s Cold Case Posse, when he was in office, responded to requests from constituents to investigate, and the only formal law-enforcement review of Obama’s document concluded the document released by Obama’s White House as his official birth certificate almost without doubt was a forgery.
[...]
His constituents had asked him for the review to ensure that Obama met the constitutional requirement of being a natural-born citizen.
“And we have the evidence,” the sheriff said. “Nobody will talk about it. Nobody will look at it. And anytime you want to come down, or anybody, we’ll be glad to show you the evidence.”
Questioned yet again by Cuomo about Obama’s document, Arpaio said it’s phony.
“No doubt about it. We have the evidence.”
Cuomo said a finding that a birth certificate was phony was the same as claiming that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, but that’s not necessarily the case. The era when Obama said he was born in Hawaii was a time when foreigners could obtain Hawaiian birth certificates.
[...]
Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse, comprised of volunteer law enforcement professionals, examined the printed image that Obama released and found nine points that corresponded with another document, suggesting strongly a forgery.
The suggestion was that a computer expert had copied and pasted Obama’s information onto the birth certificate of a woman born in Hawaii about the same time.
Let's rehash what Unruh refused to report, shall we?
First: the investigation, far from being a "respon[se] to requests from constituents," was sleazed into existence with a huge assist from WND. Then-WND reporter gave a presentation on his birther conspiracy theories to a tea party group in a town in suburban Phoenix called Surprise. Corsi then worked with the tea party group to lobby Arpaio to start the investigation.
Second: The Cold Case Posse investigation was not filled with "aw enforcement professionals" -- one of them was Corsi, who has no law enforcement experience.The leader ofthe posse, Mike Zullo, was a police officer in Delaware, hardly relevant experience, but appears to have worked longer as a day trader.
Third: The claim that "a computer expert had copied and pasted Obama’s information onto the birth certificate of a woman born in Hawaii about the same time" is likely bogus. As Dr. Conspiracy details, Arpaio and Zullo never actually prove that parts of Obama’s birth certificate were copied from the certificate of Johanna Ah’nee.
Fourth: Despite his invitation to Cuomo to "show [him] the evidence," Arpaio has never made public the supporting documentation behind its dubious conclusions-- particularly, the affidavit from Reed Hayes (who is a handwriting expert, not an expert in digital documents -- an important distinction given that the posse never examined a physical copy of any birth certificate Obama released) or the report from an Italian forensics laboratory. If Arpaio would just put it all on the web, nobody has to go to Phoenix and wonder why he's acting like he has something to hide playing gatekeeper for dubious evidence.
Fifth: Arpaio and Zullo have never coherently explained why they dismissed out of hand the most logical explanation for the purported anomalies in Obama's birth certificate -- they were created by scanning the birth certificate into a Xerox Workcentre 7655 multifunction printer to turn it into a PDF.
In short: The birther conspiracy is, and always has been, fake news. The fact that WND still pretends it's not is a big reason why it's circling the drain.
CNS (Mostly) Follows WH Marching Orders To Blame Shutdown on Dems Topic: CNSNews.com
A Jan. 17 CNSNews.com article by Melanie Arter provided the marching orders: "The White House on Wednesday said President Donald Trump does not want a government shutdown, and if the government does shut down on Friday because Congress can’t agree on a budget deal, the Democrats are to blame."
Like a good pro-Trump stenographer, CNS knew it had a script to follow, and it gleefully did so. Let the Dem-blaming stenography begin:
CNS did go off script with one article, though (albeit banished to a blog post), in which Michael Morris gave Ben Shapiro space to rant that Trump tweeting that it was a bad idea to put CHIP funding in the continuing resolution undermined the entire Republican strategy to blame the shutdown on the Dems.
Interestingly, that is not the take CNS' "news" side. In her article referencing it, Susan Jones merely said Trump's tweet caused "confusion" and credulously quoted Paul Ryan trying to spin it:
Ryan said he spoke with President Trump this morning, and "he fully supports passing what we're bringing to the floor."
Earlier, there was some confusion about that, when Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) "should be part of a long-term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!"
Republicans added a six-year CHIP reauthorization to the CR in hopes of attracting enough Democrat votes to pass the short-term funding bill.
"Yeah, the president does understand CHIP," Ryan told a reporter who asked if Trump did understand it.
Once again, we see that CNS' purported "news" reporters are too busy being stenographers to do any actual reporting.
Even As It Fights For Its Life, WND Still Publishes Fake News Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his latest appeal for money to keep his WorldNetDaily in business: "I want to emphasize that WND is unique in two ways in the alternative, independent media and always has been. We have a strong Judeo-Christian worldview, and because we are all refugees from what we euphemistically call the 'mainstream media,' we apply the highest standards of journalism because we actually believe in them."
Farah is lying. If he actually believed in upholding "the highest standards of journalism," WND would not have published as much fake news as it has.And even as it fights for its life, the fake news hasn't stopped.
James Zumwalt writes as part of another anti-Muslim screed in his Jan. 10 WND column:
For those unaware of it, Western civilization’s decline is in progress. While several factors contribute to this progression, an outrageous lifestyle recently gaining acceptance in Germany illustrates just how low into a moral abyss Western values have sunk.
This lifestyle’s acceptance will be cited by future historians as evidence of our inability to grasp a demise occurring right before our eyes.
It comes as a direct result of an open-door Muslim immigration policy. As other Western host nations, including the U.S., similarly have opened their doors to Muslim immigrants, they must view the German experience as a bellwether of what awaits them. As Muslim populations grow, some of their cultural demands, found repugnant to many in the West, will be imposed upon host countries.
Brothels abound in a Germany, where prostitution is legal. But what has shockingly evolved as a result of an increasing Muslim population are “bestiality brothels.” Yes, in a country where all aspects of the sex industry are permissible, so too are licensed bestiality brothels – also known as “erotic zoos.” Progressives wielding power in Germany find bestiality acceptable as a “lifestyle choice.”
Some perverts harboring a loin-full lust of the farm animal variety apparently are unwilling even to wait in lines at such brothels. A farmer in southwest Germany, noting his sheeps’ unusual timidity around humans, set up CCTV cameras in his barn. He was shocked to observe Muslims not only violating his property boundaries but the boundaries of human decency by violating his sheep as well. These transgressors adopted a “wham, bam, thank you, lamb” approach to satisfying their sexual proclivities.
That's simply not true. Zumwalt is relying on a 2013 article by the notoriously unreliable Daily Mail -- an article that, according to Snopes, not only fails to mention Muslims or migrants at all but also fails to prove that "bestaiality brothels" actually existed, apparently relying on a single quote from a German animal protection officer who didn't say anything about animal brothels. (The Daily Mail article also doesn't mention "progressives"; Zumwalt made that up too.) Snopes adds that Germany quickly moved to outlaw bestality after realizing there was a loophole that didn't explicitly ban it before.
If Farah really believes that WND applies "the highest standards of journalism," it would have done so here through a simple fact-check on the part of a WND editor that would have caught Zumwalt's falsehood and resulted in either the rewriting or outright refusal to publish his column. But that didn't happen. And it's unclear how the "strong Judeo-Christian worldview" Farah claims WND has prevents it from engaging in basic fact-checking.
Farah keeps begging for money to save WND, but he still hasn't offered any compelling proof that WND deserves to live, let alone that it lives up to the standards Farah invokes in his lofty, empty sales pitch.
Newsmax's Ruddy on Damage Control Again: 'Donald Trump Is Not A Racist' Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy has been aggressively parlaying his friendship with President Trump into media exposure for both him and Newsmax -- but that closeness also means he's found himself having to defend Trump from his various scandals.
Ruddy is compelled to do this again in the wake of reports that Trump referred to certain countries as "shithole countries." Let the damage control begin:
Over many years, I have been in the company of Donald Trump in public moments and many private ones.
I have been with him, on his plane for hours; I was there with him in Scotland when he opened his world-class club; I've been with him for the Miss Universe pageant and too many other times to count.
I don't know what President Trump said at the White House meeting. He may have made some inappropriate comments. But I know one thing for sure: Donald Trump is not a racist.
Inside this great man with a brusque exterior, you will not find a racist bone.
Even in his most off-guarded moments, long before he was running for president, I have never heard him utter any racist remarks, anti-Semitic comments, or ethnic slurs of any type. Sure, he has occasionally used profanity through the years, but it was very rare.
Truthfully, Trump has prided himself on his good relations with minorities. He is someone with a proven track record of developing racial harmony.
But these facts don't matter because we are in fantasy land; everyone sees their own reality. Clearly, people around the world have been hurt — whether accidentally, deliberately, or otherwise.
A simple beer in the Rose Garden won't make this one go away.
But the president can take steps to make the people of the world know that he and America stands with them, to make this place called Earth a better place, and to let them know the real Donald Trump.
Unfortunately for Ruddy, the vicious, profane, apparently racist Trump appears to be the real one as far as much of America is concerned.
NEW ARTICLE -- Slanties 2018: The Shape of Slant Topic: The ConWeb
As the ConWeb contorts itself into pro-Trump state media, it's time once again to honor, as it were, the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year. Read more >>
The Media Research Center (MRC) announced on Thursday that prominent conservative Lieutenant Colonel Allen B. West, USA, Ret. has been named a Senior Fellow at the MRC to support its mission to expose and neutralize liberal media bias.
In addition to his 22 years in the United States Army, Lt. Colonel West’s extensive career includes representing Florida’s 22nd District in the 112th United States Congress and serving as Executive Director to the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, TX. He is a Fox News contributor, Townhall.com contributing columnist, and member of the NRA’s Board of Directors.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued the following statement Thursday welcoming Colonel Allen West to the MRC team:
“I am thrilled to have Colonel West working with our team here at the Media Research Center. Like many of us, he has witnessed the liberal media’s hypocrisy and bias first hand. West brings an extremely knowledgeable and unique perspective that will serve the MRC and our supporters well. We are incredibly fortunate to have a respected conservative like Colonel West fighting alongside us. I am very eager to begin working with him.”
Statement by LTC Allen B. West, USA, Ret.:
I’ve long admired the work of Brent Bozell and the MRC. This is personal for me. The news media have a clear leftist agenda which stands in direct conflict with the values conservatives cherish most and which I fought to protect. I’m thrilled to be part of the MRC and its vital mission to expose the liberal media’s radical agenda.
Note that the only experience the MRC cites for West in the relevent area of media criticism is that, in Bozell's words, "he has witnessed the liberal media’s hypocrisy and bias first hand." In reality, this means West is mad that the media accurately reported the anti-liberal, anti-media, anti-Muslim and other various and sundry crazy things he says. And he has said a lot of them. (Remember when West bizarrely attacked President Obama as a "usurper" and a "charlatan"?)
You might remember that West was one of the members of Accuracy in Media's little "Citizen's Commission on Benghazi" kangaroo court, best known for having Wayne Simmons -- an actual charlatan and fraud who invented an entire CIA career that got him on Fox News as a commentator -- as a fellow member than for any of the dubious conclusions it reached. We noticed that didn't make the MRC's bio for West.
The same day the MRC made this announcement, its "news" division CNSNews.com published a lengthy column by West in which he ranted that "The left has an all-out assault to undermine and delegitimize the Judeo-Christian faith heritage and God the Creator in that faith heritage," spurred by a right-wing media report that an "elite liberal arts college" is hosting a class on "queering the Bible." The headline of the column sets the tone: "Who’s Gonna Stand Up, Denounce This Crap…Only Me?"
Putting political screeds before relevant experience? Sounds like West will fit in just fine at the MRC.
CNS Still Violating MRC's Standards On How A 'News' Outlet Should Behave Topic: CNSNews.com
Last April, we caught CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey making the argument that President Trump's proposed multibillion-dollar border wall cost only "0.035 percent of what the federal government will spend in total this year" -- despite Jeffrey's co-workers at the Media Research Center attacking liberals for making the same comparative-spending argument to preserve funding for arts, humanities and public broadcasting.
Jeffrey trotted out that same argument again in a Jan. 9 CNS article:
President Donald Trump’s current border wall proposal would cost $18 billion over the next ten years, according to an estimate U.S. Customs and Border Protection sent to members of Congress last week.
“The Trump administration is asking Congress for nearly $18 billion to construct more than 700 miles of new and replacement barriers along the Southwest border, its most detailed description yet of the president’s vision of a wall separating the U.S. from Mexico,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
That $18 billion would equal just 0.0338 percent of the $53.128 trillion the Congressional Budget Office currently estimates the federal government will spend over that same 10-year period.
It also equals only 2.7 percent of the money the federal government will spend on the food stamp program (the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”), which will eat up $679 billion in the ten fiscal years from 2018 through 2027, according to CBO’s estimate.
The $679 billion the CBO estimates the federal government will spend on food stamps during that ten years is 37.7 times as much as the $18 billion it would spend on President Trump’s proposed border wall.
At the same time, the $18 billion required for the border wall would equal a mere 0.34 percent of the $5.232 trillion CBO estimates that the federal government will spend on Medicaid over the next ten years.
While the nation is preparing to spend a total of $6.838 trillion on national defense over the next ten years, according to CBO, the $18 billion that President Trump would like to see dedicated to defending the U.S.-Mexico border with a wall would equal only 0.26 percent of that.
Again, we see that the MRC has very different standards for the "news" operation it runs than for the "liberal media" it's constantly dictating to. If CNS actually followed its parent's standards, the MRC might have a little more credibility.
WND Pretends Its Lack Of Credibility Isn't To Blame For Its Financial Woes Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's latest warning of an "existential threat" appears to have had the desired effect: It seems to have raised most or all of the $100,000 it claims it needed by the end of January to stay in business.
WND editor Joseph Farah started his Jan. 11 column with a ridiculous "It's A Wonderful Life" analogy, then declared: "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I never realized I had so many friends – real friends, the kind that rush to your side when you’re in trouble. We thank God for you – and you are the answer to my fervent, tear-filled-eyes, on-my-knees prayers." He added, "Elizabeth and I could have cashed out when times were good, retired with millions of dollars in the bank and enjoyed our old age together. But we had a mission – to seek the Truth with a capital T, to bring you the news the fake media wouldn’t and to do it all within a Judeo-Christian worldview."
A Jan. 15 email by Farah to WND's mailing list expanded on the reasons it claims are "the primary causes of our situation":
There was a day, not long ago, when every time WND broke news you could find it high atop the Google search results. But Google continuously alters its search algorithms specifically to penalize independent news operations like WND. That negatively impacts traffic and revenues. Google also is the gateway to most advertising dollars on the Net. You could say, without exaggeration, it operates like a monopoly driven by left-wing political and cultural activism. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a powerful, exclusive WND story ranked on Google’s news pages.
Likewise, Facebook drives enormous amounts of traffic – but its owners don’t like driving it to sites like WND. Imagine trying to compete in a game where the rules keep changing specifically to put you at a disadvantage. That’s what Google and Facebook do to WND and other independent news sources.
And, as everyone knows, Amazon, the owners of the Washington Post, has gobbled up much of the e-commerce business not only nationally, but internationally. For 20 years, WND relied on its own e-commerce business to sustain us. Yet, the reality is, month by month, Amazon grabs a bigger percentage of all retail e-commerce activity.
Farah is silent on what may very well be the actual cause of WND's situation: It doesn't care about the truth. It's not trusted, and it's not credible. We've recounted the false, misleading and utterly fake news WND has published in just the past few years. It does not tell the truth, in either the uppercase or lowercase varieties. It can't even be bothered to do something so simple and logical as to renounce Paul Nehlen, an author it published and promoted who has since been revealed to have white nationalist and anti-Semitic sentiments.
That complete lack of credibility is directly linked to the first two problems Farah cites. Google is not ranking WND highly not because it's "independent" but because it's not trustworthy. Same for Facebook driving traffic elsewhere. It's telling that even with Facebook's problems with promoting fake news, WND couldn't get a toehold.
Still ignoring those credibility problems, Farah says he needs more money:
We have some exciting plans we want to launch – a redesigned website that is innovative and blazingly responsive, blockbuster investigative reporting projects that take time and money, as well as cost-savings that better technology can bring us. But everything costs.
I waited too long to ask for your help a week ago. I don’t want to make that mistake again. So, this week, I’m coming back to our friends and partners with a new two-week campaign to raise another $125,000. We’ve been blessed with an abundance of one-time donations in amounts ranging from $3 to $1,000. And those are ever so helpful. But for those able to make a longer term commitment to WND, I’m asking for you to become a sustainer of WND with monthly contributions. It would only take 1,000 people making a $100 monthly commitment to get us where we need to go – or 4,000 people making a $25 monthly commitment. Don’t worry, you can cancel any time if your personal financial situation changes.
Can you be one of those partners?
Unless and until Farah can prove WND is worthy of being saved -- by apologizing for WND's legacy of fake news and publicly distancing itself from Paul Nehlen, to name just two easy things that would go a long way toward proving that -- readers should be wary of offering support.
CNSNews.com has been unafraid to politicize American military casualties in the past -- remember that it repeatedly credited President George W. Bush for falling casualities (from a surge that he ordered) while blaming President Obama for increasing casualties in Afghanistan (made necessary because Bush largely ignored Afghanistan to focus on Iraq).
Which brings us to a Jan. 2 CNS article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman headlined "2017: Chicago Homicides Outnumber U.S. Military Casualties 18 to 1." Yes, it's a stupid point, but Chapman is fully committed:
There were 664 homicides in Chicago in 2017 and, for comparison, 37 casualties in the U.S. military in its myriad operations around the globe. That's according to data from the Chicago Tribune and from the Department of Defense's press office.
The Chicago deaths are for the period Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 31, 2017; the military deaths are from Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 22, 2017, which is the latest update on casualties by the DoD posted so far. (There may have been a few more military casualties in December.)
From the data available, it shows that Chicago suffered 17.9 times more homicides than the U.S. military worldwide -- combat and non-combat related deaths -- last year.
Of course, the U.S. military is not engaged in any major combat operations anywhere in the world. But that won't keep Chapman from pressing his dume analogy -- after all, his allegiance is to political ideology, not to journalism.
Leo Hohmann Leaves Cash-Strapped WND With A Flurry of Muslim-Hate Topic: WorldNetDaily
Leo Hohmann appears to be one of the WorldNetDaily employees editor Joseph Farah has intimated was laid off or let go due to its current financial crisis; his last byline was Jan. 7. Hohmann stayed true, though, serving as WND's residentMuslim-hater to the very end.
A Dec. 26 article by Hohmann carried thet headline "U.S. woman stabbed 14 times by Somali migrant, media go dark." Hohmann latched onto an unsubstantiated description of the alleged assailant as a "Somali" and ranted that the media wasn't covering that angle, lashing out in particular at a local newspaper that "did not return WND’s calls Tuesday to inquire about why it went dark on such a brutal, unprovoked attack on a defenseless, unarmed woman walking home from work."
Indeed, Hohmann initially only identified the assailant as "black" and did not explain how he made the leap from "bnlack" to "Somali," let alone what the supposed identifying characteristics of a "Somali" are. Nevertheless, he then served up a list of unrelated crimes that somehow proved in his mind that the stabbing incident "continues a pattern of Somali crimes being covered up, downplayed, lightly investigated and eventually falling off the radar in Minnesota."
Hohmann followed up with a Jan. 3 article that included a clip of an TV interview with the victim, which according to him she described as "a black man in his early 20s, thin build, low-cut afro and a slight Somali accent." But according to the reporter in the TV interview, the description is of "black, mostly likely Somali with a slight accent" -- a slight but important difference showing that Hohmann's eagerness to impugn an entire country's immigrants over the act of a person who may not even be from there is driven by hate rather than any sense of justice.
Hohmann went on to criticized supposed "sloppy police activity" and complain that "police have still not released a composite sketch of the suspect, which would seem to be a normal course of action in a case like this."Hwe then trots out fellow Muslim-hater and adulterer John Guandolo spitting that "Minneapolis police and the sheriff’s office there are so in bed with the jihadis they don’t know which way is up."
Hohmann's most recent -- and, it appears, final -- byline for WND was a Jan. 7 article complaining that the name "Mohamed" came in third in the list of top baby names at one Minnesota hospital. Hohmann goes on to quote a man named Ron Branstner, whome he describes only as an "area resident," complaining about all the Somalis. In fact, he's a noted "anti-Islam and anti-refugee" activist so extreme -- he loves to rant that the United Nations sends Muslim refugees to the U.S. as "to divide and conquer, get rid of our Constitution, get rid of our way of life and implement it with another way of life called ... sharia law!" -- a speech he was to give was canceled when sponsors realized who he is.
So, in the end, it appears that funding -- and not the fact that he hates Muslims so much he falsely blamed them for a measles epidemic and lied about the makers of Chobani yogurt and its hiring of mostly Muslim refugees to such an extent that his articles had to be corrected months after the fact following what we can safely assume was a not-so-friendly phone call from Chobani's lawyers -- has caused Hohmann's tenure at WND to end with a quiet whimper. Sorta ironic, dontcha think?
UPDATE: Turns out Branstner isn't a Minnesota "area resident" at all -- he's from California. And he gets stuff wrong too. Hohmann won't be telling anyone at WND, or wherever he ends up, about that.
MRC Is Weirdly Sensitive About Idea That Reagan Had Alzheimer's Symptoms While President Topic: Media Research Center
Last fall, the Media Research Center had a weird little freakout over the idea that Ronald Reagan might have been suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's disease while president, calling anyone who would raise the issue "deranged" -- even though Reagan's son, Ron Reagan Jr., has said he observed possible early signs of the disease in his father.
The MRC continues to be bizarrely sensitive about the issue, however. Curtis Houck put the word "disgusting" in the headline of his Jan. 8 post attacking a couple of people on MSNBC for talking about it:
Continuing the liberal media’s insistence that they can diagnose someone as mentally or physically ill, Monday’s Deadline: White House on MSNBC featured detestable liberal Republicans Nicolle Wallace and David Jolly asserting that Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s while president to the point that he may have been unfit for office.
[...]
Wallace used the late Michael Deaver (and YouTube videos) as her main sources for claims Reagan having Alzheimer’s while in office, wondering to Jolly if Trump knew about Reagan while tweeting over the weekend: “I don't know if the President doesn't know, has never heard Michael Deavers — the late Michael Deaver post-White House really heartfelt, really honest, really frank articulations of what it was like to see Ronald Reagan age.”
“I wondered today, rereading Donald Trump's tweets about Reagan, if he knew that Ronald Reagan was suspected to have had the early signs of Alzheimer's during his second term as President,” she concluded.
[...]
Bill O’Reilly made this claim in his much-maligned book Killing Reagan and it drew widespread condemnation. At the time, George Will penned an absolutely scathing takedown on the book, including the portions about Regan having Alzheimer’s while in office.
Reagan biographer Craig Shirley trashed the book as “garbage” and “total B.S.” for peddling such views. Reagan library executive director John Heubusch said the book was “a disservice to history.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Lee Edwards addressed Reagan’s health in reviewing a Shirley book, writing in 2015 that Reagan “had no serious health problems before his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1994.”
When Reagan’s son Ron alleged the same in 2011, his half-brother Michael denied the claim by arguing that Ron “was an embarrassment to his father when he was alive and today he became an embarrassment to his mother.”
Houck didn't mention that all of those deniers are Reagan hagiographers who have a vested interest in bending history to obscure the idea that Reagan might have had health problems while in office. And Michael Reagan insulting his half-brother is evidence of absolutely nothing.
Then, in a Jan. 12 post, Kyle Drennen attacked CBS' Dr. John LaPook for accurately stating that "there are questions about whether Ronald Reagan had symptoms of Alzheimer’s while in office." Drennen retorted: "The claim about Reagan has been repeatedly dispelled by experts of his presidency. George Will denounced the notion as 'slander' in a 2015 Washington Post column. Reagan biographer Craig Shirley called it 'total B.S.'" Like Houck, Drennen didn't admit that Will and Shirley are Reagan hagiographers.
Unsurprisingly, WorldNetDaily writers had a lot to say about President Trump's reported use of the term "shithole countries" to describe certain other nations. Surprisingly, though, that reaction was not uniformly pro-Trump.
We've
If WorldNetDaily is trying to clean up its act in order to show the world it deserves to live, it isn't doing a very good job of it. It has continued to 
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If you're begging for money just to stay solvent, like WorldNetDaily is now, it might not be the best idea to remind folks you were a major promoter of one of the biggest fake-news stories of the past decade.
A Jan. 17 CNSNews.com 
Joseph Farah writes in his 
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy has been aggressively parlaying his 
From a Jan. 11 Media Research Center 
Last April, 
WorldNetDaily's 
CNSNews.com has been unafraid to politicize American military casualties in the past -- remember that it 
Leo Hohmann appears to be one of the WorldNetDaily employees editor Joseph Farah has intimated was laid off or let go due to its 
Last fall, the Media Research Center had a 
