CNS Finally Happy That More Christian Refugees Than Muslim Refugees Admitted to U.S. Topic: CNSNews.com
During the Obama administration, CNSNews.com and particularly reporter Patrick Goodenough were obsessed with comparing the number of Muslim refugees admitted to the U.S. with the number of Christians admitted. He complained a lot about the number of Muslims being admitted while only occasionally conceding that the reason the numbers of Christians were so low is because they tended to not use the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees camps from which he pulled his numbers as reprted to the State Department. Goodenough and CNS also had trouble admitting that Muslim refugees in Syria were fleeing religious persecution just like Christian refugees were.
But now, under the Trump administration, Goodenough has the numbers he likes, as stated in a Nov. 6 article:
The first month of the new fiscal year saw 1,834 refugees admitted to the United States, more than three-quarters of them Christians, as agencies involved in resettlement began operating under the lowest refugee admission cap set by an administration since the Refugee Act was enacted in 1980.
Despite the 30,000 ceiling set for fiscal year 2019 – down from 45,000 in FY 2018 and 85,000 two years earlier – more refugees were admitted during October than during the same month last year (1,248), although significantly fewer than the numbers admitted in October 2016 (9,945) and October 2015 (5,348).
Of the 1,834 newcomers, 1,425 (77.7 percent) were Christians of various denominations, and 362 (19.7 percent) were Muslims (including Sunnis, Shi’ites and Ahmadis.) Ahmadi beliefs are deemed heretical by many mainstream Muslim clerics and outlawed in the criminal code of Pakistan – the country of origin of the 15 Ahmadi refugees admitted in October.
Rounding out the October refugee admissions were 47 non-Christian and non-Muslim refugees, including 17 Buddhists, five animists, four Hindus, three Jews, and several others who gave their religious affiliation as “other” or “none,” according to State Department Refugee Processing Center data.
Goodenough did not explain why he thought the number of Christian refugees increased while the number of Muslims declined, though you'd think that the anti-Muslim leanings of the Trump administration would have played a big role in that.
These body-count articles are silly and serve only to serve CNS' political agenda -- anti-Obama and anti-Muslim a few years back, pro-Trump and pro-Christian now.
It was presented as a "news" article, but a Nov. 11 WorldNetDaily item was anonymously written and had an unambiguous opinion. So what did this anonymous coward rant about?
It didn’t take long for the central feud of the 21st century to rear its head amid the 100th World War I anniversary Armistice Day ceremony in a wet, dreary, overcast Paris, as French President Emmanuel Macron laid-down the gauntlet on the nouveau dirty word of international politics – “nationalism.”
With 60 world leaders present, the attack on nationalism was intended as a rebuke to President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But, as George Orwell knew, it’s all in the way you define your terms.
Here is the way the key terms involved in the debate are still defined in 2018 – nearly 100 years after they came under attack by those who favor the one-world globalist alternative:
nationalism: (1.) “spirit or aspirations common to the whole nation;” (2.) “devotion and loyalty to one’s own country; patriotism;”
patriotism: (1.) “devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty;”
globalism: (1.) the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations.
Yet, here is the way Macron attempted to redefine the terms on the fly in Paris today.
“By saying, ‘Our interests first,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest … its moral values.”
He called nationalism a “betrayal of patriotism.”
He deplored the “selfishness of nations only looking after their own interests. Because patriotism is exactly the opposite of nationalism.”
He denounced rising ideologies that have warped religious beliefs and set loose extremist forces on a “sinister course once again that could undermine the legacy of peace we thought we had forever sealed.”
In other words, the central feud of the 21st century is being fought over morphing definitions, not stable ones.
Never far back in the shadows is the specter of Nazism – certainly one hideous form of national socialism.
As we've previously noted, Naziism was not socialism or even liberal.
This anonymous WND writer then declared: "Whatever is happening in this gathering in France Sunday may seem inconsequential. It is not. It is, rather, an expression of the central divide in the world. Do we govern ourselves as sovereign nation-states and sovereign citizens or as interdependent global communities of world citizens?
Even the headline mocked Macron by stating, "Parlez-vous anti-nationalist gibberish?"
WND did not explain why it presented an anonymously written opinion piece as "news." Such stunts do little to instill confidence and trust in WND's overall editorial product as something readers can trust.
MRC Mad The 'Conservative Backlash' It Orchestrated Got Called Out For What It Is Topic: Media Research Center
Jacob Comello whined in a Nov. 5 Media Research Center post:
When a conservative outlet or personality says something offensive, the media will rush to report the incident (often divorced from context or slyly edited.) Another conservative outrage against decency. When a liberal does it, you don’t often hear about the episode until there’s a “conservative backlash” to report.
Consider Pete Davidson mocking the war wounds of a decorated Navy SEAL on the Nov. 3 Saturday Night Live. Dan Crenshaw served numerous combat tours before losing an eye in Afghanistan, requiring him to wear an eye patch. Now he’s running for the House of Representatives from Texas. Davidson showed a photo of Crenshaw in the “Weekend Update” segment, saying, “You may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate from Texas and not a hitman in a porno movie. I’m sorry, I know he lost his eye in war, or whatever.”
Numerous media outlets didn’t even cover the event itself and instead resorted to - you guessed it - conveying the ‘conservative backlash’ to Davidson’s jeering.
But Comello is complaining about what the MRC exists to do. It worked hard to create the "conservative backlash" to Davidson's joke. The MRC cranked out a whopping five posts in the two days between the joke being told and Comello's post:
The original post by Nicholas Fondacaro complaining about the joke .
Conello's boss, Brent Bozell, demanding an ad boycott of "Saturday Night Live" over thejoke and ranting, "Making fun of a former Navy SEAL for his combat injuries shows that nothing is too low for SNL when they have a chance to mock Republicans."
A post by Kyle Drennen noting a fellow "SNL" cast member stated thst the joke may have missed the marik.
Kristine Marsh whining that "The View" co-host Joy Behar "repeatedly defended the show and comedian, saying it was normal for the comedic show to make offensive jokes, (not noting that most of their “humor” is directed at Republicans.)"
Gabriel Hays following in his boss' footsteps by attacking the show's advertisers: "These companies should consider Crenshaw’s suggestion and give generously to to veterans’ groups. It’s one thing to advertise on a partisan “comedy” show. It’s another to do business with people who laugh at wounds suffered in service to the nation.
The MRC worked hard to create this "conservative basklash." Comello probably should not be attacking it.
"The backlash didn't stop, either. Bozell and Tim Graham devoted a spelentic column dedicated to attacking Davidson as a "loud-mouthed, spoiled punk," only slightly pausing to acknowledge that Davidson's firefighter father died in 9/11. The two again listed the show's advertisers, adding: "These merchants should think more than twice about the garbage they’re making possible."
(Yes, this is coming from the same guy who called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead.")
Over at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, conservative backlash was the marching order as well. CNS repeated Bozell's rant, complained a video that included the "offensive" joke was "still posted on YouTube, and assigned a reporter to "repeatedly contact[] by phone and email each of the 24 companies that advertised on the Nov. 3 episode of SNL" to laboriously read Davidson's joke and ask if they "intend to continue advertising on Saturday Night Live."
When Davidson had Crenshaw on the following week's "SNL" to apologize, the MRC went into victory mode. A post by Fondacaro claimed that Davidson's joke 'united the left and right in outrage" (it did?) and gushed over Crenshaw for showing "great class," and Drennen touted how NBC's "Today" show praised Crenshaw's handling of it. At CNS, Craig Bannister also highlighted the apology while also complaining that "Davidson's insulting video segment is still featured on SNL's YouTube channel."
So, stop complaining, Jacob. Your employer's "conservative backlash" worked as intended.
WND's Pretend Democrat Tells People To Vote Republican Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've previously highlighted how WorldNetDaily columnist Bob Just insists he's a Democrat yet always bashes the party he purports to be a part of. He was at it again in his Nov. 1 column, in which he again claims he's been "a Democrat since my youth" but rehashes his previous anti-Democrat attacks before telling his readers to vote for, yes, Republicans:
And let’s face it, our Democratic Party is the “PC party” because of our current leadership – so they must be stopped with a powerful rebuke at the ballot box.
[...]
Many Americans have been shocked at the decline of our party, but I doubt they could have predicted Democratic leadership would soft-glove thuggish groups like antifa who go around bashing people and destroying property all in the name of being “against fascism.”
Even those Democrats who have never liked Hillary Clinton, could they have imagined she’d publicly reject civil behavior?
As Democrat President Kennedy said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”
That time is now. Vote Republican.
Just hasn't been loyal to the Democratic Party in quite some time, and he should renounce his party membership if all he can do is attack it and tell people to vote for the opposition.
But Just would lose his entire column-writing gimmick, wouldn't he? So that's probably not going to happen, as least while there's still a WND willing to indulge his silly delusion.
CNS Presents WH's Doctored Video To Justify Acosta's Suspension, Lets Trump Lie About It Topic: CNSNews.com
Needless to say, the folks at the Jim Acosta-hating Media Research Center couldn't have been happier that the White House suspended Acosta's "hard pass" for White House access, and that also goes for the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com. A Nov. 7 blog post by Craig Bannister cheered Acosta's pass suspension, adding that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders "tweeted that the White House stands by its decision to suspend Acosta and invited Americans to watch the video of the incident she embedded in her post," and embedding the Sanders tweet containing the video in his post.
Just one problem: the video was doctored. A video expert enlisted by the Associated Press documented how the video tweeted out by Sanders had frames speeded up to make Acosta's action in trying to keep a White House intern from taking the microphone from him while he was asking President Trump a question look more aggressive than it was in reality, while other frames were slowed down to make the video's run time the same as an unaltered video. The doctored video apparently came from a reporter for far-right conspiradcy site Infowars. Heck, even one of CNS' favorite conservatives, Ben Shapiro, called out Sanders for sending out a doctored video.
Despite all that, Bannister's post was never updated to reflect the controversy over the video.
Two days later, an article by Melanie Arter addressed the issue not by admitting the clear, unambiguous evidence that the video was doctored, but by starting out in stenography mode, giving Trump three paragraphs to falsely rant that the video wasn't doctored:
President Donald Trump called out the media for reporting that a video that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released of a White House intern trying to take the microphone away from CNN’s Jim Acosta at Monday’s White House press conference was doctored.
When asked why Sanders “shared a doctored video of the incident in the East Room,” Trump said, “The taped video of Acosta? What are you talking about? Nobody manipulated it. Give me a break. See that’s just dishonest reporting. All that is is a close-up.”
“They showed it close-up, and he was not nice to that young woman. I don’t hold him for that, because it wasn’t overly, you know, horrible, but all that was-- When you say doctor, you’re a dishonest guy, because it wasn’t doctored. They gave a close-up view. That’s not doctoring,” the president said.
Even though the facts are not on Trump's side, Arter chose instead to present the story as a he said-she said, following Trump's rant with a statement that "The Washington Post reported Thursday that Sanders shared a video 'that appeared to have been altered' to make Acosta’s actions 'ook more aggressive toward a White House intern,'" with two additional paragraphs from the Post article.
Giving falsehoods the same credulity as the truth without admitting that the falsehoods are, in fact, false is the very defition of false balance. That's what you do when you're a stenographer and not a reporter.
Arter concluded her article with some uncritical dissembling from Sanders on the doctored video:
After the media questioned the reasoning behind the White House’s decision, Sanders issued a statement Thursday addressing reports that the video she shared was doctored.
“The question is: did the reporter make contact or not? The video is clear, he did. We stand by our statement,” she said.
Arter did not mention that the question was actually about the doctored video, nor did she point out that Sanders refused to answer the question that was asked. She's a stenographer, after all.
WND Touts Michael Flynn Fund-Raiser, Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymously written Nov. 1 WorldNetDaily article touts a fundraiser for admitted perjurer Michael Flynn and advances the right-wing conspiracy theory that Flynn pleaded guilty to a crime he didn't commit:
Supporters of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn who contend he is an American patriot who was unfairly targeted by Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation are holding a gala fundraiser in his honor next week.
Flynn, who briefly served as President Trump’s national security adviser, faces a hearing next month for his guilty plea for lying to the FBI in the Mueller investigation. But his defenders point out that Senate Judiciary Committee members say former FBI Director James Comey told them that FBI agents did not think Flynn was lying intentionally when he was first interviewed about his conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
The fundraiser, Nov. 11, culminates a conference called Operation Classified organized by John B. Wells, host of the radio program “Caravan to Midnight” and a former host of “Coast to Coast AM.”
[...]
Flynn’s youngest sibling, Joseph Flynn, the spokesman and a trustee of the Mike Flynn Legal Defense Fund, accepted the offer and will be at the event.
“General Flynn is a victim of political expedience, political skullduggery and lawfare,” said Wells.
The left, he said, “crewed up and destroyed the man’s reputation, his families’ reputations and his finances.”
As we pointed out when WND columnist James Zumwalk embraced this conspiracy theory, it ignores that Flynn was being investigated on other charges of making false statements, particulaly regarding his lobbying for Turkey. In his plea agreement, Flynn pleged to cooperate with Mueller in exchange for the rest of the charges against him being dropped.
Of course, WND won't report that because it's an inconvenient fact to the fund-raiser.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's War On Journalists, Part 3: Craven Callousness Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center tries to protect its brand and insists its (and President Trump's) hateful anti-media rhetoric doesn't inspire violence against journalists -- then claims that it's "self-centered" for journalists to be worried about their safety. Read more >>
An anonymously written Nov. 1 WorldNetDaily article sure tried to make its case, under the headline "Now Biden calls for GOP congressman to learn 'threshold of pain': More rhetoric calling for violence over 2018 elections":
Former Vice President Joe Biden only a week ago called for an end to “this division, this hatred, this ugliness” around the 2018 midterm elections.
Now he’s calling for a union official to come up and show a member of Congress “a threshold of pain.”
It’s the latest in the Democrats’ rhetoric calling for violence around next week’s election.
A post on the Twitter news aggregating site Twitchy said it “seems like only last week when Joe Biden was decrying ‘this division, this hatred, this ugliness.’ Probably because it was only last week.”
The RNC pointed out, “Joe Biden suggests union president should attack GOP Congressman @KevinCramer, ‘show him a threshold of pain.'”
Such comments have become common in the run-up to the vote.
Except that's not what happened at all. WND completely eliminates the context of Biden's remark -- which, surprisingly, was in the Republican National Committee video embedded into the article -- which clearly shows that Biden was responding rhetorically to a specific comment made by the Republican opponent of the Democratic candidate he was stumping for:
Let me tell you, these guys are amazing, and they stand up -- how they stand up and say things that are absolutely mind-boggling. I love this one on trade. This I love, and by the way, I told you I come from an agricultural state. I don't know how you can possibly get elected in an agricultural state with the things he's saying. But -- but, we're nearing the 20th week of zero soybean orders from the Pacific and Northwest and China, and your guy calls farmers' concerns hysteria and says they don't have a very high threshold for pain. Well, I get that president of the trade union's up here and he'll show him a threshold of pain.
In other words, WND is peddling fake news again. Given that fake news helped drive WND to the brink of death, you'd think Joseph Farah and Co. would know better by now.
WND Columnist Declares Trump To Be 'God's Man' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has been mildly obsessed with portraying Donald Trump's election as divinely ordained and placing him in the pantheon of Bible heroes. The latest stab in this genre comes from evangelist Hal Lindsey in his Nov. 2 WND column:
“Merry Christmas” is back. There is unabashed prayer in the Oval Office – in front of the cameras! As a nation, we have loudly proclaimed our support for and solidarity with Israel. We have smashed some of the most dangerous Islamic terrorist forces in the world. We have withdrawn from pacts and partnerships that were not only duplicitous, but dangerous. We are witnessing a restoration of the constitutional role of the judiciary. We have eased the bureaucratic burdens on industry and business that were choking our national economy. Most of us have seen the immediate benefits in our paychecks. We have unleashed the power of American creativity and productivity, and we’re seeing a rebirth in hope and optimism among American workers of all races and classes. We are finally seeing the brakes being applied to our mad rush toward a nonsensical world of unlimited and undefined genders. We are seeing a phenomenal surge in our citizens’ pride in and appreciation for our military, law enforcement and first-responders. And the list goes on.
In short, I think we are seeing a genuine resurgence of President Reagan’s inspiring ideal of America as a “shining city on a hill.”
We owe much of this progress to President Donald Trump. It’s not that he has singlehandedly made these things happen, but his genuine love for America, his optimism, fearlessness, determination, courage and willingness to suffer the blows has inspired so many people in so many areas to take a step of faith and do what is right for America.
I do not say that President Trump is a man of God, but I firmly believe he is God’s man for this time in America.
And the world, too. As we hurtle toward the end of this age, the infrastructure of the Antichrist’s government is being constructed with alarming speed. To have the leader of the free world stand tall and threaten the “globalist” forces who are preparing the way of the Antichrist cannot be a coincidence. If nothing else, President Trump is drawing into sharp focus the opposing forces and the battle formations that will soon come into play in the end-times scenario.
That means it is time to choose on which side of this battle you will fight.
How about the side that thinks lionizing Trump as a instrument of God is somewhere between creepy and blasphemous?
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:19 AM EST
Updated: Wednesday, November 14, 2018 12:29 AM EST
CNS Gushed Over Trump's Final Pre-Election Rally, Pre-Spins Election Results Topic: CNSNews.com
On the day or two before the midterm elections, CNSNews.com was in full pro-Trump spin mode -- so much so, in fact, that it tried to pre-spin election results it was basically admitting were not going to go well for President Trump and the Republicans.
CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey used a Nov. 5 article to discount any House seats that Republicans would lose because Democratic presidents lost more:
In the post-World War II era, Presidents Barack Obama, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton saw the three biggest midterm election losses for their party in the House of Representatives, according to historical data published by the Clerk of the House.
In 2010, when Obama was in his first term and had signed the Obamacare law, the Democrats lost a net of 63 House seats. In 1946, after Truman had succeeded the late Franklin Roosevelt (who died in April 1945) and real GDP was declining by 11.6 percent, the Democrats lost 55 seats. In 1994, when Clinton was in his first term in which his signature proposal was Hillarycare (a “universal healthcare plan"), the Democrats lost 54 seats.
On Nov. 6, highly biased CNS reporter Susan Jones gushed over one of Trump's final pre-electon rallies by giddily (and, of course, uncritically) reciting Rush Limbaugh's introductory speech:
Massive crowds and surging energy greeted President Donald Trump at his final midterm campaign rally Monday night in Cape Girardeau, Missouri -- home town of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who introduced the president.
In his warm-up-the-crowd remarks, Limbaugh reminded everyone that Democrats call all of them "divisive."
"Divisive?" he asked. "The Democrats haven't even accepted they lost the election in 2016. That's what this is all about! It's serious stuff! All of this," he said.
[...]
He also addressed the size and the enthusiasm of the crowds that have attended Trump's rallies around the nation:
"These rallies, I have to tell you, they are the envy of official Washington. You realize there isn't a single elected official in either party who could do what this is tonight. Other than Donald Trump, there's no one. No one! And they're jealous. They are envious. This isn't supposed to happen. You people are supposed to love them, not Trump.
"And so guess what? They want to get in on it. Bill and Hillary Clinton and their national stadium tour. Have you seen Obama? He's been stumping down in Florida where I live. He's drawing crowds of a thousand people, two thousand people. Joe Biden can't fill a phone booth because he's looking for someone to punch out," Limbaugh joked.
Yes, Jones thought Limbaugh's partisan rant warranted a "news" article.
Jones gushed further in a second article as she tried to portray the crowd at the rally, and Trump himself, as compassionate over an attendee with a health emergency:
The enormous, enthusiastic crowd fell suddenly silent Monday night at Trump's final campaign rally in Cape Girardeau, Mo., when one of the attendees collapsed.
Trump, looking out from the podium, asked, "Is there a doctor in the house, please? Doctor?"
"Doctor, take your time," he urged, as medics and security made their way through the full house.
Three-and-a-half minutes later, Trump urged his supporters, "Say a little prayer." And he stepped away from the podium, as heads bowed and eyes closed.
The somber president again urged doctors to "take your time."
Almost seven minutes elapsed, when voices swelled into a stanza of "Amazing Grace." Everyone joined in.
The woman who collapsed was conscious as she was wheeled out of the arena moments later, the crowd cheering for her.
Trump returned to the podium:
"That was really something,” he said. “I want to just thank everybody for the way you behaved. That was beautiful. And at the end -- was beautiful. ‘Amazing Grace,’ thank you very much. That was beautiful. Hopefully, she'll be okay. Hopefully -- she'll be okay.”
This was also a "news" article. Given that CNS is basically pro-Trump state media these days, that's not a surprise.
It was a smug Pelosi who obviously was elated by the election of a Democratic House majority. She immediately promised, “Democrats pledge a Congress that works for the people – for the people.” Of course the anti-Trump drum she has been beating for two years and promises to launch numerous investigations of everyone except Hillary Clinton suggest otherwise. Pelosi managed to keep a straight face while claiming, “The Democratic Congress will be led with transparency and openness.” We have not heard such false optimism since her mentor, former President Barack Obama, made a similar empty promise.
[...]
Hopefully, House Democrats, if they are truly interested in serving the people, giving them priority over tribal interests, will mutiny against Pelosi and elect someone more capable of bridging the gap between parties. Pelosi is a Trump hate-monger bearing other baggage as well.
Of concern should be her mental state. She has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to complete sentences or thoughts.
To some extent, she appears to have relinquished her leadership role. In the aftermath of the 2016 election and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters’ rant about getting confrontational with Republican leaders, Pelosi initially chided Waters, only later to agree.
Upon becoming speaker in 2007, Pelosi clearly reveled the role – one important in leading the Congress in fully understanding and debating any and all legislation passing before it. It should have left her little time for non-speaker related activities. However, while not having time to read the Obamacare legislation before voting on it, suggesting “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” she miraculously found time to write a book touting her personal achievements. Undoubtedly, some government time was spent doing so.
Additionally disturbing is that Pelosi praises her party for having Muslim members of Congress, demanding they boast about it at rallies. Yet, she has devoted no time to reading the Quran to better understand what exactly it is she is helping to promote.
As a courtesy, the speaker has a military aircraft available to fly him/her back home when Congress is in recess. It should be noted how “Queen” Pelosi treated the aircraft like a party plane, with alcohol running freely for family and contributors.
If another Pelosi coronation as speaker occurs, voters will quickly find out, and may not particularly like, what it is they are paying for. They will discover too it includes putting a chicken in every illegal alien’s pot.
MRC Downplays The Conservative Among Pollitical Donors Who Are Media Moguls Topic: Media Research Center
In a Nov. 6 Media Resarch Center post, Julia Seymour highlights a Los Angeles Times article about the top 12 political donors in the 2018 midterms, four of whom own media outlets. The top name on the list is a conservative, but Seymour gave him only a short paragraph:
Ranked at the top by that measure were Sheldon and Miriam Adelson who the paper labeled as “ultra-conservative,” are “Republican super-donors” who spent $113 million on the 2018 elections. LAT noted that Adelson purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2015.
Seymour didn't mention that Adelson also owns several media outlets in Israel, which tend to serve as loyal backers of conservative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And in the next paragraph, Seymour downplayed Adelson's media holdings, calling the Review-Journal a mere "city paper" that's "small potatoes" compared to the next person on the list, Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg got two paragraphs, with Seymour claiming without substantiation that Bloomberg's media empire "often promotes the same liberal attitudes as Bloomberg himself, especially on climate change and gun control" -- right after she cites a claim that Bloomberg's media outlets publish 5,000 stories a day in 120 countries. Seymour did not say how many of those 5,000 items a day were "often" repeating Bloomberg's "liberal attitudes."
Further down was "Hillary Clinton supporter" Fred Eychaner, whose media outlets actually are small potatoes compared with even Adelson -- he owns a couple of small radio stations in the Chicago area, but his main media business is in printing newspapers. He gave one-tenth the money that Adelson has.
Finally, there's Jeff Bezos, who Seymour concedes gave even less political money than even Eychaner and all of it to a nonpartisan group dedicated to electing military veterans. But because Bezos owns the MRC-desipsed Washington Post, he comes in for an irrelevant partisan beating:
While their giving may be nonpartisan, the Postleans heavily left. Shortly after Donald Trump assumed the office of president in 2017, the Post introduced a new slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
More recently the paper’s book critic compared Trump voters to “cancer cells,” the paper editorialized that Trump was “complicit” in the destruction that would be inflicted by Hurricane Florence, and a Post political reporter argued “The American people aren’t interested in”the Trump administration's “substantive accomplishments.”
Weirdly, Seymour didn't mention another MRC-despised political donor on the list, George Soros, even though the MRC has spent years ranting about how much money Soros has given to various and sundry media outlets (even though conservative moneybags have spent much more than Soros ever did trying to prop up their failing conservative newspapers).
Fringe-Right Anti-Muslim Group Thinks People Fear It (And Misleads About Dead Saudi Journalist) Topic: Horowitz
It's been a while since we've written about anything Horowitz-related, mostly because the David Horowitz Freedom Center has long since marginalized itself as little more than a Horowitz cult of personality with an anti-Muslim obsession on the side. But we fefel like we had to weigh in on an Oct. 22 FrontPageMag article by Daniel Greenfield smearing apparently deceased Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Greenfield complains that the Washington Post singled it out for pushing said smears. It's telling that Greenfield doesn't link to the Post article to which he objects so his readers can judge for themselves. Instead, he rants:
Front Page Magazine’s article documented Khashoggi’s extensive terrorist affiliations and his advocacy for Islamist power, and subsequent posts delved into his anti-Semitism and support for Hamas. These were all documented using reputable sources ranging from Khashoggi’s own published writings and interviews, to sources like The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright and the Wiesenthal Center.
The Washington Post had no rebuttal to this array of facts. Instead, it dishonestly used conspiratorial language to cast aspersions on our work, smearing the unchallenged facts in a widely distributed article as part of a “dark whisper campaign.” It argued that some unnamed and unquoted “experts on the Middle East” claimed that Khashoggi had adopted a “more liberal, secular point of view.”
[...]
The Post quoted "four GOP officials" who were apparently too afraid to name the names of the "lawmakers and others who are passing around information critical of Khashoggi" because it would expose them as "sources." The “right-wing” sources were Patrick Poole, Mark Levin, and, an article by me that the Post smeared as a “story in far-right FrontPage magazine,” taking issue even with Bosch Fawstin’s artful illustration of “bin Laden and Khashoggi with their arms around each other.”
The hysterically vitriolic tone of the Washington Post piece, its conspiratorial claims of “cadres” mounting a “dark whisper” campaign and hidden “sources” among House Republicans could be mistaken as another routine smear of conservatives. But it’s a about a war for Washington D.C.
Greefield's link on the words "reputable sources" gpes to the similarly right-wing American Spectator, which no rational observer considers "reputable," let alone fair or balanced.
The other main sign that Greenfield really is all about smearing Khashoggi is his edited quote of Khashoggi's statement following the death of Osama bin Laden, with whom Khashoggi had been acquainted before he turned to terrorism, which Greenfield misleadingly painted as an "old friend":
“I collapsed crying a while ago, heartbroken for you Abu Abdullah,” Khashoggi wrote after Osama bin Laden’s death. “You were beautiful and brave in those beautiful days in Afghanistan.”
Greenfield deliberately cut off the end of Khashoggi's message: "...before you surrendered to hatred and passion." In other words, Greenfield is censoring the fact that Khashoggi hated what bin Laden had become after what he considered to a just cause fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
From here, Greenfield descends into delusions of grandeur regarding himself, his political god and his employer:
The Washington Post believes that it can set the agenda for Washington D.C. And it sees Front Page Magazine'scutting edge investigative journalism and the David Horowitz Freedom Center as a threat.
[...]
The Washington Post’s smears in September and October share a common underlying worry that the David Horowitz Freedom Center is reaching Republican House members. And it is trying to intimidate them with slanted stories and anonymous leaks. The Republicans whom the media fears are not the loudest or those who have the most conservative ratings, but those who don’t listen to the media.
That is why the media hates and fears President Trump so much.
The media’s power comes from driving the narrative, not just at the breakfast table, but in the Senate cloakroom, the legislative chambers, and in the Oval Office. The Post’s latest attack on the Freedom Center is an acknowledgement that our stories and speakers are undermining the media’s influence.
Last year, the Washington Post attacked the Freedom Center’s tax exempt status in “How a ‘Shadow’ Universe of Charities Joined with Political Warriors to Fuel Trump’s Rise.”
It warned that the Freedom Center’s 2014 Restoration Weekend had “brought together an array of hard-right activists and a little-known charity whose ideas would soon move from the fringes of the conservative movement into the heart of the nation's government.”
After this profile, identifying the Freedom Center as a key hub for conservative ideas among elected officials, the Washington Post has been launching smear campaigns intended to prevent the Center’s ideas from reaching elected officials. Other media outlets quickly joined in this coordinated campaign.
Greenfield's aversion to directly linking to anything the Post wrote is so extreme that he doesn't link directly to the Post article on the the far-right connextions to the Trump orbit; rather, he links to a Tampa Bay Times reprint of it.
Greenfiled concludes: "The Freedom Center believes in a free press. And it believes that everyone is entitled to the facts." If that was actually true, Greenfield wouldn't be editing Khashoggi's words or be so desperate to smear a man whose death the Saudis apparently made extremely painful simply for criticizing its leadership.
CNS Echoes Trump's Call To End Birthright Citizenship Topic: CNSNews.com
President Trump says "jump," and CNSNews.com asks, "How high?" That's pretty much CNS' editorial agenda these days -- support pretty much anything Trump proposes.
When the Trump administration floated the idea of trying to end birthright citizenship -- in which any person born on American soil is officially a U.S. citizen, CNS knew it had to bolster the legal case for it. And bolster it did with a barrage of opinion pieces.
An Oct. 30 column by the Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky insisted that the long-established legal case for birthright citizenship is based on a "misunderstdanding" of the 14th Amendment.
The same day, CNS published a column by conservative law professor Lino Graglia, who asserted that "A policy of granting birthright citizenship to children born here of illegal aliens is not merely unreasonable and harmful, but irrational and self-contradictory, a matter of both punishing and rewarding the same conduct."
The next day, Craig Bannister published a "flashback" from a 1993 speech by Democratic then-Sen. Harry Reid cvlaiming that "no sane country" would permit birthright citizenship. It's not until the final paragraph that Bannister gets around to noting that Reid has repudiated his remarks a few years, citing a Fox News article to blame that repudiation on "union pressure."
Bannister also wrote another blog post citing the author of the 14th Amendment, Sen. Jacob Howard, stating that the amendment "“settles the great question” and “removes all doubt” about citizenship.
CNS then called on its favorite right-wing radio ranter, Mark Levin, promoting the alleged constitutional expert's claim that "Nobody really knows how birthright citizenship was instituted." Levin was able to double-dip with an item complaining that House Speaker Paul Ryan is "utterly wrong" and "has no idea what he's talking about" in criticizing Trump's call to end birthright citizenship.
On Nov. 1, von Spakovsky popped up again to declare that "the president is correct when he says that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution does not require universal birthright citizenship" and that "Contrary to popular belief, the 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all people born in the U.S. are citizens." Levin popped up again as well to rant that he was challenging "practicing lawyers or former federal this or former that ... to show me the evidence in the 1860s that supports your position that birthright citizenship was enshrined in the 14th Amendment."
A Nov. 2 syndicated column by anti-immigrant writer Pat Buchanan asserted that "in challenging birthright citizenship, Trump has some constitutional history on his side."
Von Spakovsky showed up once more with a Nov. 5 column pushing the case that Trump can end birthright citizenship with an executive order.
The "news" side of CNS (which is that pretty much in name only) wasn't much more balanced. Bannister wrote a blog post cheering Sen. Lindsey Graham for saying that he was glad Trump was addressing the "absurd policy of birthright citizenship."
And an Oct. 31 item credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff" spent more space attacking Nancy Pelosi forsaying that Trump does not have the power to alter the Constitution over birthright citizenship then it did quoting her saying that.
CNS clearly knows how to jump very high at Trump's request.
During the Obama administration, CNSNews.com and particularly reporter Patrick Goodenough were obsessed with comparing the number of Muslim refugees admitted to the U.S. with the number of Christians admitted. He complained a lot about the number of Muslims being admitted while only occasionally conceding that the reason the numbers of Christians were so low is because they tended to not use the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees camps from which he pulled his numbers as reprted to the State Department. Goodenough and CNS also had trouble admitting that Muslim refugees in Syria were fleeing religious persecution just like Christian refugees were.
It was presented as a "news" article, but a Nov. 11 WorldNetDaily 
Jacob Comello whined in a Nov. 5 Media Research Center 
We've 
Needless to say, the folks at the Jim Acosta-hating Media Research Center couldn't have been happier that the White House suspended Acosta's "hard pass" for White House access, and that also goes for the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com. A Nov. 7 
An anonymously written Nov. 1 WorldNetDaily 
An anonymously written Nov. 1 WorldNetDaily 
It's time to tally up how many times CNSNews.com did stenography for its favorite sources in October.
WorldNetDaily has been mildly obsessed with portraying Donald Trump's election as 
On the day or two before the midterm elections, CNSNews.com was in full pro-Trump spin mode -- so much so, in fact, that it tried to pre-spin election results it was basically admitting were not going to go well for President Trump and the Republicans.
It was a smug Pelosi who obviously was elated by the election of a Democratic House majority. She immediately promised, “Democrats pledge a Congress that works for the people – for the people.” Of course the anti-Trump drum she has been beating for two years and promises to launch numerous investigations of everyone except Hillary Clinton suggest otherwise. Pelosi managed to keep a straight face while claiming, “The Democratic Congress will be led with transparency and openness.” We have not heard such false optimism since her mentor, former President Barack Obama, made a similar empty promise.
In a Nov. 6 Media Resarch Center 
It's been a while since we've written about anything Horowitz-related, mostly because the David Horowitz Freedom Center has long since marginalized itself as little more than a Horowitz cult of personality with an anti-Muslim obsession on the side. But we fefel like we had to weigh in on an Oct. 22 FrontPageMag 
President Trump says "jump," and CNSNews.com asks, "How high?" That's pretty much CNS' editorial agenda these days -- support pretty much anything Trump proposes.
