WND's Zumwalt Tries His Hand At Smearing Murdered Journalist
Topic: WorldNetDaily

James Zumwalt went full Horowitz in smearing murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his Oct. 24 WorldNetDaily column. Like the Horowitz-run FrontPageMag, Zumwalt rehashed old links between Khashoggi and Osama bin Laden and the Muslim Brotherhood, treating them as if they were current. Then he declared:

Because of his friendship with bin Laden and his support for bin Laden’s Islamic extremist ideology – perhaps even knowing about 9/11 beforehand – Khashoggi was killed on Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, the apparent victim of a Saudi rendition attempt gone wrong. He was no moderate Muslim, nor was he a supporter of the U.S. and its values. For all intents and purposes, Khashoggi was a bin Laden ideological clone who preferred the pen to the sword in promoting a religion mandating Islam’s ultimate world domination.

While Khashoggi’s death may have been ordained by senior Saudi officials – an extrajudicial act which the U.S. cannot condone – it must also be recognized that the man was no innocent victim. The world he sought to create was one in which sharia ruled supreme and non-Muslims pay a price for rejecting conversion – either monetarily or with one’s life.

Zumwalt is engaging in paranoid, misleading speculation. As an actual news outlet reported:

While Khashoggi was once sympathetic to Islamist movements, he moved toward a more liberal, secular point of view, according to experts on the Middle East who have tracked his career. Khashoggi knew bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s during the civil war in Afghanistan, but his interactions with bin Laden were as a journalist with a point of view who was working with a prized source.

Zumwalt then argued that Khashoggi's death should not interfere with the U.S.-Saudi relationship because it's need to stop Iran:

There have been several times in the course of world events when the U.S. allied itself with less-than-perfect partners to further U.S. interests. For example, in World War II, Stalinist Russia was an ally; during the Vietnam war, Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos was more dictator than elected president, but his country’s military bases were critical to our operations in the region; and, later, during the Cold War, we befriended China in a power play against the Soviet Union.

The role the Saudi government played in the death of Khashoggi awaits clarification, and we may not like the results. But, based on the grave threat that Iran poses not only in the Middle East but worldwide, it is critical we maintain a close U.S./Saudi alliance.

Looking behind the liberal dissident mask the media has affixed on Jamal Khashoggi will help us make wise decisions regarding that alliance.

Even though President Trump ultimately embraced that view, Zumwalt has affixed a false extremist mask to Khashoggi and dishonestly claiming it's the real thing and insists that the entire U.S.-Saudi relationship be judged by that mask.

MRC Misfires On Getting People To Trash CNN's Acosta
Topic: Media Research Center

As part of its current war on Jim Acosta for failing to be a pro-Trump suck-up, the Media Research Center is doing compliation pieces filled with people who say how terrible Acosta purportedly is.

The headline of a Nov. 15 item by Geoffrey Dickens declared, "Even Acosta’s Reporter Peers Think He’s Gone Too Far." He insisted: "It’s not just President Donald Trump, White House press secretaries Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders who think Jim Acosta is out of control. Even some of his journalist colleagues think his antics are bad for journalism."

Dickens' first example of a "reporter peer," however, is Joe Concha. But he's not a White House correspondent -- he's currently a media reporter for The Hill. While he denies it, he's also conservative; otherwise, the MRC wouldn't be quoting him regularly for hew adherence to its right-wing agenda, under headlines like "Joe Concha: Media’s Trump Anger Mostly ‘Performance Art at This Point’" and "Joe Concha Trashes the Media in 2017: It ‘Sticks to Your Boots,’ Cites MRC."

In other words, not really a "reporter peer" at all beyond being in the same general profession.

Dickens also cited anonymous CNN co-workers attacking Acosta in a Politico article. Wait -- doesn't the MRC normally despise anonymous sources? Only when they don't benefit the MRC's agenda, apparently.

The same day, there was an anonymously written piece noting how "we at the Media Research Center reached out to conservative leaders around the nation" to get reaction to Acosta, and "hese leaders responded with frustration at CNN’s dramatic publicity stunt." Among the responses was this:

The Acosta-intern video shows what it shows, whether CNN likes it or not. We can disagree over how to characterize the video, but any claim that there was no contact is akin to, as CNN would put it, calling an apple a banana.

James O’Keefe
Founder
Project Veritas

Yes, that James O'Keefe -- whose very brand is publicity stunts and doctored videos -- apparently defending the doctored video sent out by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders showing Acosta's contact with a White house intern trying to take a microphone away from him as being more brutal than it actually was.

Maybe the MRC should screen its signatories closer before promoting them.

WND Sad Stockman's Going to Prison, Still Clings to 'Deep State' Conspriacy Theory
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We've documented how WorldNetDaily has been trying to paint corrupt ex-congressman (and close WND buddy) Steve Stockman as a victim of the "Deep State" through his conviction on 23 counts of financial crimes. Now Stockman has been sentenced, and WND is still clinging to its conspiracy theory.

An anonymously written Nov. 8 article states:

Former Texas Congressman Steve Stockman, a conservative whose criminal charges, trial and conviction on financial crimes have been characterized by supporters as a “Deep State” attack, has been given 10 years in prison by a federal judge.

WND reported last summer the congressman was convicted of using money from mega-donors for personal and campaign expenses.

His supporters have promised multiple appeals claiming that his campaign against the “Deep State” in Washington prompted the attack on him.

Stockman’s family said in a statement he also was ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution, to be divided among three defendants.

WND censored the prosection's case against Stockman, instead suggesting that his prosecution was retaliation for his trying to have then-Internal Revenue Service chief Lois Lerner arrested in the midst of a controversy over alleged extra scrutiny of nonprofit applications for right-wing special interest groups.

This was followed on Nov. 12 by another rant from Rachel Alexander, whom we last saw perpetuating those "Deep State" conspiracy theories and laughably insisting that "almost anyone" could get charged with mail fraud and money laundering like Stockman did. She's still conspiratorial:

The U.S. Department of Justice is full of deep state operatives. They have continued conducting political witch hunts against vocal conservatives under the Trump administration. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions did nothing to stop it. The deep state went after Stockman hard because he was a threat. They wanted to silence him and make an example out of him, so others would be hesitant to follow in his footsteps.

Sadly, most of the conservative media haven’t reported on this corruption. They are running articles that rubber stamp the press releases from the DOJ.

Pushing a conspiracy is much easier than reporting facts, but it also means nobody takes you seriously as a "news" organization and you start facing extinction-level events. WND still hasn't figured that out.

CNS Targets Minor Misdeeds of Federal Employees, Buries Scandals of Trump Cabinet Heads
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com has fixated on petty federal spending mismanagement in recent days, as cited by department inspectors general -- though weirdly anonymously written, credited only to CNSNews.com Staff."

An Oct. 25 article pointed out that "an Internal Revenue Service employee used a federal government charge card to purchase an Amazon Prime membership."And an Oct. 31 article by "highlighted a U.S. Housing and Urban Development inspector general's report noting that "Employees of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, armed with government charge cards, made 'at least 950' 'unauthorized, unsupported, or ineligible purchases' in fiscal 2017," including "a $400 charge at 'an adult entertainment gentlemen’s club' and a $282 'unauthorized ATM withdrawal' followed by an $849 'unauthorized charge' at a Las Vegas casino hotel."

Curiously -- or maybe not so curiously, since CNS is such a loyal pro-Trump stenographer --  CNS has not given the same granular level of scrutiny to Trump cabinet members and agency leaders as it has to the federal rank-and-file.

We've already documented how CNS reported the departure of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt under a growing cloud of scandals by stating only that it came after "months of misconduct allegations."

Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is caught up in his own mounting swirl of scandals -- there were 15 ethics probes into Zinke's conduct at one point, with particular focus on his closeness to the oil and gas industry.

But you won't read a thing about Zinke's scandals at CNS. In fact, he hasn't even been mentioned on the pages of CNS since Aug. 24 -- as near as we can tell, one of only three references to him at CNS in the entire calendar year of 2018 -- when columnist Paul Driessen cheered Zinke for "his recent decision to reopen certain wildlife refuges to modern farming practices." (The other two are also columnst praising Trump-era policy as implemented by Zinke."

Once again, so much for CNS' mission statement to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story."

WND Is Sad An Anti-Muslim Graphic Novel Was Removed From Library
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Art Moore complains in a Nov. 8 WorldNetDaily article:

Under pressure from the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Washington, D.C.-based group named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-funding case, a Texas library removed a graphic novel about super heroes fighting al-Qaida.

CAIR’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter said in a statement it “applauded a decision by the Plano Library to resolve an issue related to anti-Muslim material in its catalog,” reported Andrew Harrod for Jihad Watch.

The book, “Holy Terror,” is by renowned graphic-novel author Frank Miller.

Harrod called the book’s removal “a disturbing act of censorship and a flagrant violation of longstanding library standards,” noting the irony of it coming during the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week.

Note that Moore is quick to apply its usual descriptof of CAIR as being "an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-funding case," he never in his article offers a descriptor for the vehemently anti-Muslim Jihad Watch.

Moore cited the Plano library official allegedly claiming that one reason "Holy Terror" was pulled was because it lacked "professional review," to which he quoted Jihad Watch's Harrod retorting that "dozens of reviews of the comic book have been published, including by prominent newspapers and journals." They didn't mention that the vast majority of those reviews are bad ones; the Hollywood Reporter compiled several, one of which noted that Miller didn't bother to explore the differences between Muslims and terrorists and another calling it "mean and ugly." Spencer Ackerman, writing at Wired, called it "one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time" and "a screed against Islam, completely uninterested in any nuance or empathy toward 1.2 billion people he conflates with a few murderous conspiracy theorists.

Moore did concede that Miller has tried to distance himself from the book, then let the Jihad Watch guy try to walk it back by citing another interview in which Miller said that he doesn't "I don’t want to go back and start erasing books I did." But he also admits in that same interview that the book is "bloodthirsty beyond belief" and that "I’m not capable of that book again."

Moore concluded: "Harrod noted that Plano libraries hold materials such as Adolf Hitler’s 'Mein Kampf' and a DVD of the 1915 American white supremacist film 'Birth of a Nation.'" But those are well established as offensive works. We can assume that Harrod, as well as Moore, would never admit there is anything offensive about "Holy Terror."

NEW ARTICLE: Making A Film -- And A Narrative
Topic: Media Research Center
Right-wing filmmakers found a willing (and possibly paid) partner in the Media Research Center for a four-year campaign to fund, shoot and promote -- and manufacture victimhood over -- a movie about rogue abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. Read more >>

WND's Mercer Responds To Criticism With Attacks and Whitewash
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It took a few months, but Ilana Mercer spent her Nov. 8 WorldNetDaily column taking issue with a Slate item from August calling her out for being on a panel with since-departed White House speechwriter Darren Beattie. It's arguably a indictment of the weakness of her case that Mercer starts off by questioning the manhood of the Slate writer, Ben Mathis-Lilley, solely on the basis of having a hyphenated last name:

Incidentally, double-barreled surnames are largely a feminist affection. “Mathis-Lilley” happens to be male. Or, rather, an excuse for a man. Real men don’t bully, berate and bitch baselessly.

That’s what my many dogged, anti-Semitic, unmanly readers do.

Mercer also irrelevantly claimed her Jewish bona fides -- "I’m a Jewish, independent writer, the daughter of a scholarly, penniless rabbi. Bullies invariably target the weakest" -- despite the fact that Mathis-Lilley does not mention Jewishness or anti-Semitism anywhere in his article.

Mercer then defended her book, "Into the Cannibal's Pot" from Mathis-Lilley's headline description of it as comparing black South Africans to cannibals:

Cannibalism serves merely as metaphor in my book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

The origin of the title is expressly and unambiguously explained in the Introduction. “It is inspired by Ayn Rand’s wise counsel against prostrating civilization to savagery.” (p. 8)

The exact Rand quote is citation No. 15 in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot.” It comes courtesy of “Robert Mayhew (ed.), Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A (New York, 2005).”

Unlike Mathis-Lilley’s unsourced material in Slate, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” is topped and tailed with hard evidence, and sports over 800 endnotes.

Based on the evidence presented, readers come to see “that South Africans had been tossed into the metaphorical cannibal’s pot.” (p. 9)

These are facts, not slander. Slander is Slate’s purview.

Mercer also complained about Mathis-Lilley's description of the book's cover -- dark handprints covering a naked white woman's body -- as "insanely unsubtle" -- while also trying to wash her hands of the work: "Mathis is no wordsmith. His choice of adjectives is positively Kardashian. The cover art, of course, is the publisher’s purview, not that of the author."

As has been her recent trend, Mercer then presents herself as someone who was an anti-apartheid activist back in the day:

Daddy was a noted anti-apartheid activist before it became a fashionable and safe virtue-signaling pastime. The book maligned by Slate’s Mathis-Lilley as “racist” pays homage to dad (who refuses to leave his South Africa) for being “… a leader in the Promethean struggle to end apartheid. Rabbi Abraham Benzion Isaacson’s fight for justice for South Africa’s blacks was inspired by the advanced concept of Jewish social justice showcased in Deuteronomy and in The Prophets. …” (“Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” 2011, pp. 185-186.)

Mathis-Lilley is a pig of a man (with apologies to pigs, which I love and do not eat). The woman he dubs “a real piece of work, racism-wise” worked tirelessly against petty apartheid.

A couple of pathos-filled pages in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” detail how, in one single day, with nothing but determination, this “racist” broke a bit of the apartheid bureaucracy, to benefit a beloved domestic worker, Ethel, tribal name Nomasomi Khala. (pp. 70-72)

Accompanied by me, Ethel entered the Department of Home Affairs in Cape Town as a woman whose tribal marriage was unrecognized by the authorities, whose kids (in tow) were without birth certificates and whose decades of toil left her bereft of state benefits.

Ethel was not in The System. She was stateless. But not for long.

When we departed the Department, that same day, Ethel and Jim, her husband of 25 years, had had their union solemnized by a grumpy magistrate, summoned at my insistence. And the children – bless them, they had dressed to the nines for the occasion – had birth certificates.

Good people, Mathis-Lilley, act. Bad people badmouth.

Note Mercer's use of the term "petty apartheid." That tells us she appears to have no problem with the overall concept of apartheid, just its "petty" aspects. Indeed, a few months back, Mercer spent a column trying to make an intellectual case for apartheid as a response to crime and communism, pretending it could be separated from its racist aspects.

Mercer took particular offense to Mathis-Lilley's descrption of her book as making the case that "white people shouldn’t support democracy in countries in which they’re a minority population because they will be exterminated by nonwhite savages.”

And I’m the pseudo-intellectual?

Every democratic theorist worth his salt knows that South Africa doesn’t even qualify as a democracy.

The scholarly data cited in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” stipulate that a prerequisite for a classical liberal democracy is that majority and minority status should be interchangeable and fluid; that a ruling majority party should be as likely to become a minority party as the obverse.

By contrast, in South Africa, the majority and the minorities are permanent, not temporary. And voting is strictly along racial lines.

If majority and minority are perpetual or fixed, then government ceases to have a mediating or remedial function. It becomes an instrument of perpetual oppression of the minority by the majority.

That’s untrammeled tyranny.

Meanwhile, what Mercer doesn't say in her column is perhaps even more important -- specifically, that she is completely silent about the context in which her name came up in reference to Beattie.

That panel on which Mercer and Beattie appeared took place at something called the H.L. Mencken Club Conference, described by CNN as a gathering of white nationalists. Indeed, also appearing at the conference were white nationalists Peter Brimelow, Jared Taylor and John Derbyshire. Mercer was listed as giving a talk on "Libertarians and the Right" and taking partin a debate called "Should The Right Be Pro-Capitalist?"

It's worth noting her that Brimelow runs a notorious white supremacist website called VDARE, and it published the preface to Mercer's "Into the Cannibal's Pot," along with a promotional blurb from Derbyshire.

We suspect VDARE would not have done that if it didn't think Mercer was making a racial argument that would appeal to its white nationalist audience.

If Mercer is the anti-apartheid activist she claims she is, why is she palling around with white nationalists like Brimelow? Perhaps because, at heart, she really isn't that.

Mercer also whined that "Duly ignored was my polite request, addressed to Slate’s editors, to let me counter Mathis-Lilley’s lies." In the middle of nitpicking statements, Mercer is certainly not going to concede just how close Slate got to the truth.

Trump Gives MRC An Excuse To Ramp Up Its War Against Jim Acosta
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center already despises CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta for failing to adhere to its right-wing agenda, and it hardly needed added ammunition to perpetuate its war against him. But President Trump provided some anyway, and the MRC's war on  Acosta went to a whole 'nother level.

When Trump insulted Acosta for trying to ask a question at a Nov. 7 presidential briefing, the MRC's Scott Whitlock reveled in it, hyperbolically calling it "WAR" in his headline and touting: "The President slammed Jim Acosta as a 'rude,' 'horrible' and 'terrible person.' At one point, Trump told Acosta to sit down as a White House aide tried to take the microphone away from him." Whitlock went on to happily transcribe:

As a White House aide attempted to take away the microphone from Acosta, the journalist pushed her away. Trump snapped, “CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN.” 

The fight continued as the President fought back: “You're a very rude person. The way you treat Sarah Huckabee is horrible and the way you treat other people is horrible. You shouldn't treat people that way.”

When CNN personalities defended Acosta, noted Acost-hater Curtis Houck put "HISSY FIT" in all-caps in the headline of his rant, sneering that the defense was a "20-minute love letter to itself":

After Wednesday’s free-wheeling and tense White House press conference, CNN went on the offensive against President Trump, illustrating a level of self-centeredness that’s unrivaled in the media and showing petty levels of emotion on-set reacting to the President’s condemnations and heated exchanges with chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta, political analyst April Ryan, and PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor. 

Check out the video here of co-hosts Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper welcoming on Acosta like a triumphant Captain America who took on the President as if he were Thanos in Infinity War, but actually won.

Legal analyst Laura Coates led off this shameless display of arrogance, ludicrously claiming that the media did not “take the bait” or engage in a “tit for tat” and lashed out in the same way the President did at the media, including Jim Acosta and his throwdown. Yes, really.

Of course, Houck also thinks that it's "self-centered" for journalists to be concerned about their safety in the face of an anti-media president, so his priorities are a little distorted.

When the Trump White House pulled Acosta's press credentials, Houck was excited about that too, squarely blaming "circus act" Acosta and, again, a purportedly narcissistic CNN and certainly not a thin-skinned president: 

As Acosta had likely hoped, it drew attention to himself and CNN, triggering over 20 minutes of CNN expressing its love for, well, CNN while showing its undeniably deep disdain for the President.

[...]

After years of back-and-forth jousting, this feud came to quite the head Wednesday night and will certainly reverberate across the political universe. And without a doubt, CNN will seek to make this about, well, CNN.

And, predictably, Houck whined again when CNN defended him on air.

Also predictably, the MRC almost completely ignored the fact that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted out a doctored video showing the contact between Acosta and the White House intern trying to take the microphone away from him as more violent than it actually was. It was only obliquely referred to in a Nov. 8 post by Kristine Marsh noting the "suggestion" that Acosta assaulted the intern.

When CNN filed suit against the White House over  the pulling of Acosta's press pass, the MRC cranked up the anger again. MRC chief Brent Bozell issued a rant claing that "Jim Acosta is not a reporter; he is a left-wing activist" and "CNN is not a news organization but a political hit squad for the far left." He and Tim Graham followed with a column listing "Six Reasons the CNN Acosta Lawsuit Is Lame," one of which was defending Trump's right to take questions from whomever he chooses like other presidents have, adding: "President Obama never consented to questions from Sean Hannity."But Hannity is not a White House correspondent; he's a right-wing Fox News ranter with an affinity for conspiracy theories.

Geoffrey Dickens and Bill D'Agostino introduced a montage of out-of-context "disruptive behavior" moments by Acosta under the headline "Here’s Why Jim Acosta Should Be Kicked Out of the White House," huffing: "CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta – during the Trump administration – has shouted at and talked over press secretaries Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders. He has interrupted his fellow White House press corp [sic] colleagues, called the President himself “fake news” and even screamed at Trump as he was talking to children at the annual Easter Egg roll."

Alasa for the MRC, that was not to be, at least in the meantime: a judge restored Acosta's press pass. And, of course, they grumbled about that:

• Houck complained about the "exuberant mood" at CNN after the ruling, adding an attempt at a hip allusion: "For as much as CNN thinks of itself as The Avengers, there's likely a fair portion of the American public that instead sees them as the cast of Monty Python and the Holy Grail running away from the Rabbit of Caerbannog."
• Whitlock dismissed CNN's "excited" reation to the restoration of Acosta's press pass as "self-important," further grousing that "Panelist Jeffrey Toobin smugly redefined the liberal Acosta as an American hero."
• D'Agostino was annoyed that CNN's Brian Stelter said that "the courts effectively did their jobs" in restoring Acosta's press pass.

The MRC can't even lose gracefully.

Farah Still Hustling Bitcoin-Esque Cybercurrency To Save WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For months, Joseph Farah has been hustling cybercurrency as part of a scheme to save his WorldNetDaily by giving some of it away in the form of a shadily-marketed variant called AML Bitcoin (not to be confused with actual bitcoin) to donors. He hasn't really stopped, and the begging -- and vague promises of cashing in big -- continued in his Oct. 19 column, framed around the idea of selling his cybercurrency scheme to the older-skewing readers who make a notable part of WND's readership:

Well, the next big thing is cryptocurrency – the blockchain. Trust me on this.

And I would like to introduce you into this new world with no risk or obligation. It would help me in my little battle for survival against the forces of evil – Google and Facebook and the rest of the Digital Speech-Code Cartel – and their eventual demise. (Don’t bet against me on this!)

First, let me be open and honest about one thing – I need a little financial support from you. Many of you have given already. If you can give more, great. If not, I understand. Thank you for what you have done. If everyone who reads WND or subscribes to our news alerts gave only $3, I figure we would have been long past this crisis we’ve been in since President Trump won the White House and Google and Facebook went to war with the deplorables in the independent media.

We would have made money!

Instead we lost MILLIONS – in two years!

So, we need your help if we are to continue defending and safeguarding our free society.

We would also like to see America retain its free speech, free press, freedom of religion, free enterprise and free elections, correct?

That’s why we need your direct financial help.

And that’s where I’ve got something to give back to you.

If you will donate at least $100 to WND, I’ll send you one AML Bitcoin token, the cryptocurrency I consider to be the best bet to dominate the industry in the next year or two because of safety, security and anti-piracy and anti-money-laundering technology. (That’s why it’s called AML.)

When we first made this offer, AML Bitcoin was not even trading on any exchanges. It is now on several. Look for it to take the cryptocurrency world by storm in less than a year.

This is a way for you to tippy-toe into the strange new world, get your feet wet and start to wrap your brain around the future.

Send WND a donation of $100 and get one token. Send WND $500 and get five. Send WND $1,000 and get 10. Send WND $5,000 and get 50. Send WND $10,000 and get 100. Suit yourself, but get started – without the hassle of the exchanges and without trying to become a total cryptocurrency geek overnight.

As you may have heard in my previous announcements, AML Bitcoin boasts patented hack-proof technology that I believe will make these units precious.

So, why am I giving them up? Because WND needs the money now to fight for something even more precious, America’s freedom.

It’s more than possible that your contribution to WND will in the future pay for itself and then some. In fact, I’m counting on it!

As before, Farah didn't explain how he got this stash of AML Bitcoin he's giving away months before it was publicly traded, or what kind of deal he made with the currency's promoters to make this happen.

Farah copied-and-pasted his cybercurrency hucksterism in his Oct. 29 column, this time framed around yet another Google-bashing attack.

When we last checked in on the value of AML Bitcoin in September, it was valued at around 28 cents. As of this writing, it's valued at 23 cents. So much for donations to WND paying for themselves.

MRC's Campaign To Make Jordan House GOP Leader Is A Failure
Topic: Media Research Center

We've detailed how the Media Research Center and its "news" division CNSNews.com spent the last few months heavily lobbying for conservative Rep. Jim Jordan to become House speaker afater the midterm elections. So how did that turn out?

First, the midterms didn't turn out. Democrats took control of the House, meaning that the chief House Republican would no longer be speaker but, instead, minority leader. Still, the MRC gave Jordan's bid one last shot.

Nearly a week after the midterms, MRC chief Brent Bozell -- who did a fawning interview of Jordan in September -- issued a statement blandly titled "Bozell Comments on Midterms and Media" in which he tried to spin the loss of GOP control of the House as a "serious messaging problem" because "their leaders aren't committed to their own party platform. They cannot articulate it, sell it, and enact it, because they don’t believe in it." At the end was an endorsement of Jordan as minority leader:

For them to regain the faith of their constituents, conservatives believe the GOP must find new leadership with leaders that truly believe in and are willing to fight for the conservative policies they espouse. It’s why conservatives are rallying behind Jim Jordan as the new GOP Minority Leader. Conservatives believe that with his leadership the Republicans will regain their fallen majority, and they can do it in two years. It is then that they'll fight – fight seriously – for that which they say they believe. This time it'll be Promises Made, Promises Kept for them.

House Republicans elected their leader on Nov. 14, and the winner was ... not Jordan. Kevin McCarthy is the new minority leader, and it wasn't even close: 159 votes for McCarthy, 43 for Jordan.

Despite being a self-proclaimed "news" organization, CNS never reported McCarthy's election and Jordan's defeat. It was similarly never acknowledged on the MRC's main content site, NewsBusters, though a Nov. 15 post by Scott Whitlock complained that during an "exclusive interview" with CBS after his elevation to speaker, "network journalists chose to spend the entire interview demanding McCarthy answer for a lack of diversity within the Republican Party."

Herbert London, R.I.P.
Topic: Newsmax

Herbert London, called a "conservative thought leader" by Newsmax, where he wrote a column for several years, died last week. Newsmax's John Gizzi gushed that he was a "renaissance man of the right" whose death "was a devastating blow to conservatives in his home state of New York and nationwide." Newsmax columnists Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon touted "Herb’s prowess as a thinker, a teacher, and an institution builder" who was "always gracious, always open, always decent." London even got a farewell from CNSNews.com columnist Bill Donohue, who called him "a brilliant and courageous professor, writer, and activist, one who inspired everyone around him."

We touched on London a few times: He endorsed anti-gay conversion therapy, he freaked out over President Obama reiterating the general U.S. policy toward Israel by likening it to giving Hitler the Sudetenland, and he's approvingly quoted by WorldNetDaily columnist Kent Bailey calling Hillary Clinton "the embodiment of evil."

But we also caught London whitewashing his own history. In a 2009 Newsmax column, London claimed he was "reluctant to challenge" his opponent in a race for New York state comptroller when, in fact, he tried to smear his opponent as an anti-Semite in a campaign ad that was so nasty that even London's fellow Republicans distanced themselves from him.

That's a "conservative thought leader" in action, apparently.  We hope Herbert has found peace.

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.

WND Anonymously Lectures Macron To Defend Trump's Self-Declared Nationalism
Topic: WorldNetDaily

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.