We've noted how CNSNews.com was President Trump's proposed border wall by claiming that it would cost only a miniscule percentage -- despite the fact that CNS' Media Research Center attacked that very same argument when supporters of public broadcasting and arts and humanities funding made it.

Well, CNS was at it again in a Nov. 30 article by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey:

President Donald Trump’s $5 billion request for funds to use building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border equals 0.11 percent of the estimated $4.5 trillion the federal government is expected to spend this fiscal year.

According to the Monthly Treasury Statement for October, the Office of Management and Budget has estimated that the federal government will spend a total of $4,509,641,000,000 in fiscal 2019, which started on Oct. 1.

President Trump is now asking Congress to approve $5 billion in the fiscal 2019 Department of Homeland Security appropriation to fund border wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.

That $5,000,000,000 would equal 0.11 percent of the anticipated total federal spending of $4,509,641,000,000.

To put the president’s border wall request in perspective, the federal government spent $5.587 billion in the month of October alone for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, AKA food stamps. Thus, funding food stamps for just the first month of fiscal 2019 cost more than Trump’s entire fiscal 2019 request for border wall funding.

Jeffrey even included a ludicrous bar chart showing an extremely long bar for federal spending next to a virtually nonexistent one for the border wall request.

By contrast, a March 2017 column by his boss, MRC chief Brent Bozell, and Tim Graham touted how defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money to public ratio and TV operations across the country, would "save of ton of taxpayer money," parenthetically adding that  "$450 million is a lot of money."

Bozell and Graham will never write a column complaining that $5 billion "is a lot of money." and they will never make Jeffrey write an article to that effect.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:29 PM EST

Updated: Wednesday, December 12, 2018 1:12 AM EST

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WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has a, shall we say, unique interpretation of the causes of climate change in his Nov. 25 column:

Black Friday turned into an indictment of carbon dioxide and a warning of dire consequences for the U.S. economy in a report from the Global Change Research Program, which affirmed government conclusions that there is “no convincing alternative explanation” for climate change than human activities, especially greenhouse gases.

“The global average temperature is much higher and is rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced, and this warming trend can only be explained by human activities,” said David Easterling, director of the technical support unit at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.

It was reported all over the media, if possibly overshadowed by the record-breaking post-Thanksgiving sales numbers. America’s cultural institutions are all in for catastrophic climate change. Those who are skeptical are often referred to in academia and within the Democratic Party as “deniers” – suggesting man-made global warming is now a secular article of faith.

On the other hand, surveys show most evangelical Christians dismiss the issue in one of three ways: A liberal hoax, a hypothesis based on flawed science, or an affront to the concept of human existence based on God’s intelligent design.

But is it possible both sides are wrong?

Are Christians not giving their God enough credit?

Does God actually guard jealously His sovereign ability to bless or curse His creation on the basis of humanity’s spiritual health and obedience?

This is why I unequivocally believe in man-caused climate change – because God tells us He uses it to keep us coming back to His ways.

So forceful is God on this point that He characterizes his watchful eye on the climate as “My doctrine,” in Deuteronomy 32:2.

With all you’ve seen, heard and read about climate change in the last 30 years, how about just considering the possibility that God’s still “got the whole world in His hand?” And how about considering still that some of the plagues we’ve all witnessed in recent years – from catastrophic storms, devastating earthquakes and raging wildfires – represent what God clearly explains in His Word as an effort to ensure you do not “perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you?” (Deuteronomy 11:17)

Who needs science? Not Farah, apparently. And it's funny how he laments that people who reject climate science are called "deniers" -- just before he outlines how "most evangelical Christians dismiss the issue" by, you know, denying it.

After a biblical deep dive, Farah got a little clearer toward the end of his column:

God not only controls the weather as a principal means of reigning in our behavior for our own good, He holds the entire universe together – all of Creation. He does so because He loves us and wants us to have the chance to be His children for eternity – but only if we love and obey Him and His Son Jesus the Messiah, the one and only Redeemer and Mediator between God and man.

Is our planet actually dying, as some scientists suggest? About that, they are correct. That’s the nature of our fallen planet. Yet God is going to bring it back to perfection.

One thing is for certain: God’s going to shut heaven again. When you see it happen, don’t blame carbon dioxide. Blame man’s disobedience of God’s ways, and get down on your knees in humility and pray for forgiveness.

We're not aware that Farah has ever dropped to his knees and prayed for forgiveness from God for disobeying His ways by using WND as a vehicle for peddling lies about Barack Obama and Seth Rich, among others.

Posted by Terry K. at 5:14 PM EST

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WorldNetDailiy's Joseph Farah isn't the only ConWeb figure feeling more than a little envious and jealous about Michelle Obama's new book being so successful. The Media Research Center's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell bitterly complain in their Nov. 24 column:

Michelle Obama has a new memoir out called Becoming. Add two words: “Very Wealthy.” The Obamas struck a reported $65 million book deal for his-and-hers memoirs, and put that next to their $50 million production deal with Netflix. They are set to cash in to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. One outlet has called them a "Billion Dollar Brand." None of their media sycophants media find this the tiniest bit controversial. They are the royal family. They cannot possibly be compensated enough.

(Trump's wealth? Wealth generated by a lifetime of work in the private sector? Unacceptable.)

We don't recall these two complaining about Ronald Reagan cashing in after his presidency by getting paid $2 million for a speech and other activities in Japan.

Graham and Bozell then descend into their usual whataboutism by grousing that Republican first ladies didn't get this kind of positive media coverage. Of course, Michelle Obama didn't put up blood-red Christmas trees in the White House.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:22 AM EST

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Former WorldNetDaily Les Kinsolving died last week at the age of 90. WND gave him a nice obituary, of course, which manages to gloss over the fact that Kinsolving was a onetime Episcopal priest who was defrocked for questioning the concept of hell. WND editor also served up a gushing remembrance, declaring him a "White House press legend," adding: "I believed Les was a national treasure – sort of an informed, respectful and entertaining version of Jim Acosta, if you can imagine something like that."

Wwe remember Kinsolving as someone so wacky in the White House press room that we gave his work a "Daily Les" tag. We called him the right-wing Helen Thomas -- not that he or WND would ever admit he was biased, of course -- and we caught him pushing a revisionist history of Trent Lott's infamous remarks about Strom Thurmond.

Basically, Kinsolving was definitely entertaining, arguably respectful, but had lots of trouble with the "informed" part -- he was too biased to be genuinely informed or useful. Which, of course, made him the perfect WND White House correspondent.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:56 PM EST

Updated: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 6:01 PM EST

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There are enough positive numbers in the latest jobless figures, so the pro-trump rah-rah continues at CNSNews.com. Susan Jones dutifully proclaims in her main article:

The November employment report, released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the economy added 150,000 jobs, well below the (revised) 237,000 added last month.

But the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7 percent for the third month in a row; and the number of employed Americans once again reached an all-time high of 156,795,000, the 13th record since Donald Trump became president.

Jones waited until the sixth paragraph to note that "On the negative side, the labor force participation rate remained stubbornly high," blaming it on "the growing number of Baby Boom retirees." You might recall that CNS obsessed over the high labor force participation rate under President Obama even as the unemployment rate plummeted, while rarely bothering to explain that retiring Baby Boomers are driving up that number.

As usual, Jones' article was joined by sidebars from editor in chief Terry Jeffrey on growing manufacturing jobs and declining government jobs -- implicitly crediting Trump for both trends -- and  a post from Craig Bannister about Hispanic unemployment, which CNS' Media Research Center owner is synergistically exploiting for its own purposes.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:00 AM EST

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Medical misinformer Jane Orient is back again in a Dec. 3 WorldNetDaily column to fearmonger about filthy, disease-ridden brown people at the border:

Thousands of migrants are crammed together in Tijuana, many outdoors, and about a third of them are already sick. Without sanitation, outdoors in the rain, many more will become ill. Several cases of tuberculosis, chicken pox, and HIV have already been reported.

The unseen travelers also include measles, Chagas disease, hepatitis and many other dangerous microbes. You can see the lice that serve as vectors of diseases such as typhus if you look closely. Workers in migrant reception centers have spent hours combing nits out of little girls’ hair – but they could be fired for talking about it.

We woudl remind Orient that she has no credibility on this issue. As we documented the last time she did this (last month, actually), Orient -- in her role as head of the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and managing editor of the AAPS' Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons -- published a 2005 article featured similar ranting against filthy foreigners and a massively false claim that cases of leprosy in the U.S. have exploded because of immigration. As far as we know, Orient has yet to issue a correction despite the claim being debunked years ago.

But Orient was not done fearmongering:

Then there’s that mysterious polio-like illness – AFM, for acute flaccid myelitis – that has struck hundreds of American children. Some would be in “iron lungs” if we didn’t use a different kind of breathing machine today. AFM was first noted in 2014, just coincidentally in time and space with the dispersal of thousands of Central American children into U.S. schools. More prominent at that time was an outbreak of a deadly respiratory illness that sent hundreds of American children to intensive care units. Both types of symptoms can probably be caused by enterovirus D68, which happens to be endemic in Central America. Any connection? The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) says it doesn’t know.

Orient is engaging in malicious speculation. No direct link between enterovirus D68 and AFM has been found -- or to anything else and AFM. And Orient won't tell you that enterovirus D68 has been present in the U.S. for many years before 2014, since that would shoot down her anti-filthy-immigrant narrative.

But who needs facts when Orient isn't done fearmongering? And she still wasn't:

Public health can’t deal with a horde violently storming the border. What the mainstream press doesn’t show is that 80 percent of the crowd are men, mostly of military age. The threats they pose to the health of our citizens (and that of other migrants) include violence, sexually transmitted diseases from rape (a large percentage of the women have been molested) and illicit drugs that pour through while Border Patrol agents may be changing diapers.

Too bad for Orient that she can't be trusted on this issue.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:34 AM EST

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New allegations of sexual harassment have surfaced against for CBS chief Les Moonves, and the Media Research Center is back to tsk-tsk about CBS' coverage of it.

A Nov. 29 post by Scott Whitlock complained that "Despite a combined two and a half hours of available air time, CBS on Wednesday night and Thursday morning allowed just 94 seconds to the latest shocking sexual assault allegations against the network’s former chairman and CEO, Les Moonves," adding that "Often, This Morning hosts seem irritated about having to cover the alleged actions of their colleagues." Then, a Dec. 7 post by Whitlock huffed that CBS offered "spin" in its reporting on the alleged offenses by Moonves and other CBS hosts and executives.

Funny, we don't remember the MRC adding up the coverage on Fox News about the hosts and executives there accused of, and ousted for, sexual harassment of women -- including that of founder and longtime chief Roger Ailes.

We'll just remind Whitlock that, as we've documented, he and his employer have shown an almost complete lack of concern about sexual harassment at Fox News -- to the point that his boss, Brent Bozell, lionized Ailes upon his death by claiming that "The good Roger did for America is immeasurable" while completely ignoring the harassment claims and the fact that Ailes' victims would likely have a different assessment of his legacy.

The MRC's continued obsession with sexual harassment at other media outlets only makes its Fox News-shaped blind spot even more glaring.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:48 PM EST

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A couple months back, we highlighted how CNSNews.com had suddenly become enamored of right-wing lawyer Joseph diGenova's insults of people involved in the Breett Kavanaugh controversy. Since then, CNS -- specifically, managing editor Michael W. Chapman -- has continued to make a regular place on the website he runs for diGenova's pro-Trump, insult-comic stylings, this time focused on the Trump-Russia investigation with a particular obsession with the official running it, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein:

• Oct. 23: DiGenova: Sessions, Rosenstein Are 'Two Worst Officials’ In DOJ History
• Nov. 8: DiGenova: Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein's 'Days Are Numbered'
• Nov. 29: DiGenova: Mueller's 'Investigation Is a Complete Failure,' 'No Evidence' of Collusion
• Dec. 6: DiGenova: Gowdy, Goodlatte 'Two of the Most Ineffective, Feckless, Stupid Overseers' in Congressional History
• Dec. 7: DiGenova: Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein 'Deserves the Guillotine'

The guillotine! Hardy har har! Chapman apparently thinks that's so hiliarous that he ignores the implicit death threat.

Oddly, as if to legitimize diGenova's vulgar threat in that last item, Chapman threw in a cut-and-paste paragraph detailing his background as having "served as Special Counsel to the House of Representatives to probe the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; led the prosecution of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard; and served as Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Rules Committee and Counsel to the Senate Judiciary, Governmental Affairs and Select Intelligence Committees." But shouldn't such a pedigree mean he should know better than to issue such puerile threats?

No matter. Chapman is clearly happy to have found his favorite right-wing insult comic.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:10 PM EST

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Gabriel Hays spent a Nov. 27 Media Research Center post complaining that people were criticizing Melania Trump's Christmas decorations -- specifically, the blood-red Christmas trees. He then tried for a coup de grace at the haters:

People can have their tastes all they want, and they are perfectly fine to argue about what’s elegant or not. But let’s not pretend that if this exact same style was present in the White House during Christmas 2015, that these lefty celebs wouldn’t have been saying that Michelle Obama had done an incredible job with the presentation.

And let's not pretend that Michelle Obama done that same exact style in 2015, Hays and the MRC would be attacking her the way he now complains people are attacking Melania.

But as it so happens, the Washington Post has pictures of the 2015 White House Christmas decorations:

All very tasteful, and not a blood-red tree to be seen anywhere. Even Obama's most vicious haters -- as well as the haters at the MRC -- couldn't find anything to complain about, then or now.

The MRC needs to give up on such reflexive defense of Trump -- especially when its attempt to make an Obama Equivocation lacks logic.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:46 PM EST

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WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian uses his Nov. 19 column -- taken from the sparsely read Whistleblower magazine -- to rant about  "the progressive left’s growing descent into madness," asking among other things: "What are normal Americans to make of the never-ending attempts to overturn the constitutional election of President Donald Trump by any means possible – legal or illegal, moral or immoral?"

Ironic coming from a man who helps runs a "news" organization that spent eight years trying to overturn the constitutional election of President Barack Obama by any means possible – legal or illegal, moral or immoral.

Kupelian then graciously concedes that not every Democrat is not evil and insane, just stupid and naive:

Before exploring this question, let’s first pause and allow for the fact that there are many decent people on the left. There are people of conscience and principle, a prominent one being former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who today openly criticizes – and is persecuted in return by – his fellow leftists. Moreover, there are rational – or at least understandable, however flawed – arguments that can be made in favor of some leftwing policy positions such as socialized medicine (concern that poor children get needed medical care), gun control (desire to avoid tragedy arising from criminal or mentally ill people with firearms) or raising the minimum wage (concern that everyone has a living wage). Those making such arguments may be naïve, mistaken about their facts, ignorant of the laws of economics, think too emotionally, or be oblivious to the unintended consequences of their feel-good policies – but that doesn’t mean they’re insane.

A fine bit of condescension there, Dave. He then returned to the "hatred of Trump" theme, with a bonus plug for a book he wrote:

This is indeed a major factor, since intense hatred can, all by itself, literally make a person crazy. As I write in “How Evil Works”:“Hate is like spiritual plutonium, possessing bizarre, explosive and transformative qualities of which we are largely unaware. It is the means by which evil itself blooms on this earth, especially when rage is focused and magnified by a malignant worldview.” If you get mad enough – you go mad.

That would be a good point had it not come from a guy whose hatred for Obama is so intense he accused Obama of perpetrating a "date rape of America."

So, yeah, Kupelian is totally projecting here. As if to prove that he himself is the one who's gone mad, he writes under the "hatred of America" section of his bill of goods against liberals:

The same leftists who so easily brand Trump and Republicans as racist and immoral tend also to feel essentially the same way about their own nation – seeing America as a fundamentally racist, immoral country. That is why, to cite just one example, over 100 Civil War-era statues, monuments and symbols have been torn down across the U.S. since 2015.

Actually, that Newsweek article states that over 100 Confederate monuments have been removed. Kupelian seems to have forgotten that the Confederacy fought against America in the Civil War in order to preserve the racist, immoral practice of slavery. Wouldn't the removal of Confederate monuments thus be supportive of America?

Alas, Kupelian has been so driven mad by his own hatred that he can't see the illogic of his argument.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:34 AM EST

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The Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro spent a Nov. 26 post ranting about "lies" purportedly told about Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican candidate in a runoff for a Mississippi Senate seat against Democrat Mike Espy. Fondacaro huffs regarding NBC's Kristen Welker:

Welker decided to condemn Hyde-Smith for the actions of her parents because they made her attend a segregated high school while growing up. “And tonight a new controversy,” she boasted, “the Jackson Free Press reporting Hyde-Smith attended an all-white segregated high school…” Welker then lied and insisted Hyde-Smith “sent her daughter to a similar school.”

While the school, Brookhaven Academy, was founded as a segregated school, it obviously no longer is because they do, in fact, have minorities in the student body. Hyde-Smith’s daughter graduated from there in 2017. Clearly, Welker and the rest of the liberal media don’t know what century we live in.

Fondacaro is hiding the fact that Brookhaven Academy has "minorities in the student body" only in the most token sense. As Jackson Free Press reported, in the 2015-16 school year the academy had just one black student and five Asian students ... and 386 white children.The town of Brookhaven itself is 55 percent black.

So, yeah, it is for all intents and purposes segregated, despite Fondacaro's insistence that the academy deserves to be thought of as fully integrated despite still being 99% white.

Fondacaro then claimed: "All of these lies were to create a smokescreen to hide the true controversy in the race: Espy’s deep financial ties to an African despot on trial in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity." That would be Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast.

The funny thing is that conservatives used to love Gbagbo. Glenn Beck, for instance, attacked President Obama for expressing support for Gbagbo's opponent in a 2011 election, ostensibly because the opponent was a Muslim running against the Christian Gbagbo. Pat Robertson similarly stood by Gbagbo in a dispute over that election, declaring that "He's a Christian, he's a nice person, and he's run a fairly clean operation in the Ivory Coast."

WorldNetDaily also took Gbagbo's side in the election dispute, touting him as an “opening practicing Christian” and complained about “outsiders” supporting “an attempt by a Muslim to unseat a Christian president.”

We doubt that anyone at the MRC would have had any problem with Espy's ties to Gbagbo in 2011, so it a little strange for Fondacaro to make an issue about it now.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:39 PM EST

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WorldNetDaily hasn't had much to say about Jerome Corsi after he left WND in early 2017 to go further down the credibility spiral to work for Infowars. But now that Corsi has been implicated in Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation, WND is taking an interest again.

A Nov. 27 article touted how "Corsi is now rejecting a plea deal he says was offered to him by Mueller because it would force him to lie about his alleged inside information pertaining to WikiLeaks leaks and his relationship with founder Julian Assange." The qrticle quotes Corsi saying "I never met Julian Assange, I never spoke with him, I’ve never emailed him, I’ve had no contact with Julian Assange whatsoever."

But Corsi somehow sure knew a lot about plans by the Assange-led WikiLeaks to release stolen Democratic emails in a bid to attack Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. The same day as the WND article, the Washington Post reported that Corsi alerted Stone about the pending email dump. Corsi is in denial there as well, saying, "I’m convinced my memory is correct that I didn’t have a source that connected me to Assange. I really don’t think so" and insisting he was merely engaging in speculation about the email dump. That seems to strain credulity.

(That alert also proved that Corsi -- and WND -- spent the last two years lying about Seth Rich by portraying him as the person who leaked the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks.)

On Nov. 30, WND touted the lawsuit filed by terrible lawyer Larry Klayman on Corsi's behalf in an attempt to end Mueller's purported "reign of terror." That was joined by a Klayman column in which he gushes over Corsi as "a 72 year-old, vibrant, renowned and distinguished conservative journalist, investigative reporter and accomplished New York Times best-selling author now in the cross-hairs of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “witch hunt” to take down President Donald J. Trump" and ranted about the "felonious" plea deal Mueller wanted Corsi to sign. A Dec. 3 article further summarizes Klayman's lawsuit without any outside analysis.

Needless to say, nobody at WND is going to mention the fact that Klayman's complaint is basically a joke, full of Klayman's usual pseudo-legal BS such as charging Mueller with "conspiracy to commit treason."

Corsi has gotten some support from WND columnists as well. Dave Goronski asserted in his Dec. 4 column:

In the news today we are hearing reports that elderly pundit Dr. Jerome Corsi is likely facing prison time for getting tripped up in a perjury trap during psychologically abusing grillings by grand inquisitor Robert Mueller. Corsi’s actions, whatever the specifics, did not produce a victim (though Robert Mueller did when he helped mislead the nation into the Iraq War, as tens of thousands of wounded or killed soldiers prove).

Regardless of what you think of his politics, Corsi is facing the prospect of being locked in a cage merely for the impotently cathartic game of D.C. blood sport. Seemingly near half the country seems to be foaming at the mouth at the sight of a political writer being caged in his last years just because he favored their rivals’ presidential pick. Who wants to live in a society where its law and liberty is decided by these violent bouts of scapegoat pingpong?

Michael Master touted: "Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone already refused to compose for Mueller. If they hold out, they will win."

Oddly subdued, though, is the guy who hired Corsi lo those many years ago, WND editor Joseph Farah. His only reference to Corsi's current troubles came at the end of a rambling Nov. 14 column that was about CNN's Jim Acosta but featuring a lot of dissembling about the birther conspiracy theories he promoted, Farah interjected: "Jerome Corsi is expressing fears he will be imminently indicted in matters related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of so-called 'Russian collusion' in the 2016 presidential election."

Posted by Terry K. at 1:31 AM EST

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Kristine Marsh complains in a Nov. 19 Media Research Center post:

On Sunday night’s miniseries The Clinton Affair, A&E took potshots at conservatives in their attempt to create a sympathetic portrayal of Bill and Hillary Clinton. While praising Clinton as a feminist president, the network gave soundbites to Democrats attacking anyone on the right who dared to criticize the political couple for their numerous scandals.

Right from the get-go, the series portrayed conservatives and Republicans as the villains of the story, with a barrage of soundbites from journalists, and Clinton operatives, attacking Newt Gingrich, independent counsel Ken Starr, and anyone who dared to be critical of the Clintons as fueled by “Republican lies,” out for a witch hunt against President Clinton:

[...]

Who did A&E blame for Hillary becoming an “object of hatred?” Right-wing commentators and Republicans of course. Immediately after those soundbites, the network played clips of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh criticizing Hillary for implementing policy as First Lady.

Marsh headlined her piece "A&E Docuseries Paints Clintons as Victims of Conservative Hatred" -- which is what, in fact, they were. She might wnat to check with her boss, Brent Bozell, who declared in 2001 that "Yes, Virginia, the vast right-wing conspiracy did exist all along!"

So the right didn't merely "criticize" the Clintons for their "numerous scandals" -- it targeted them from the get-go. It's not "liberal bias" to report that fact, no matter what Marsh claims.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:38 PM EST

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Being who he is (an inveterate liar and Muslim-hater), WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah just can't be good with a solid, uncontroversial denunciation of anti-Semitism. See how, in his Nov. 18 column, Farah takes things in another direction:

Jewish people were the victims of more reported hate crimes than any other religious minority in 2016, according to the most recent year of FBI statistics. In fact, those incidents were higher than the rest of religiously motivated hate crimes combined.

Last year, anti-Semitic incidents rose almost 60 percent, the largest single-year increase on record. The ADL found 1,986 cases of harassment, vandalism or physical assaults against Jewish people or institutions in 2017. It found 1,267 in 2016.

Does anyone ask why this should be?

No, not really. In fact, the numbers parallel the trends in Europe where immigration trends run high among Muslims, as they do in the U.S. There are now 3.45 million Muslims living in the U.S., up more than 1 million in the last decade.

Yet we look not at who is committing these crimes. In fact, let’s face it. Every time there is a terrorist attack in America, the news media starts the game of pin the tail on the gun-toting, Christian white guy. It is considered “racist” to examine demographic changes in communities and immigration trends as a contributing cause – just as it is now to consider the threat posed by MS-13 gangs throughout the country. It is also considered inappropriate to look at the changing ways we educate our children about matters of faith, morality, justice, equality under the law.

Farah seems not to understand that the reason white men are looked at as perpetrataors of mass shootings is because that's statistically likely -- more than half of mass shootings in the past 30-plus years have been committed by white men. And the worst act of violence against Jews in America -- the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that took place just a few weeks befvore Farah's column was published -- was perpetrated not by a Muslim but, rather, by a white man.

Indeed, by complaining that "demographic changes in communities and immigration trends" are not being examined as a "contributing cause" to mass violence, Farah seems to be justifying the Pittsburgh massacre. The shooter targed the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society for its work in bringing refugees into the U.S. -- an agency Farah's own WND has demonized for bringing too many Muslims into the country (which is to say, bringing any Muslims, period). So it's entirely possible that WND helped inspire the shooter, something WND has had a problem with over the years.

But Farah doesn't want to talk about that -- there are brown people to fearmonger about.

Farah is also a pro-Trump sycophant, so his column turns to the president as well:

How does Donald Trump get sandbagged with that smear – the father of a Jewish convert, the father-in-law of a Jewish man, a New York developer who has worked lifelong in the city with a population of 2.2 million Jews. Never before he ran for president was there even a single allegation of antisemitism or racism toward him or anyone close to him. It would have been considered preposterous. It should be considered just as preposterous and irresponsible today.

Can we stop the dangerous labeling of Trump and his supporters as anti-Semites and racists? Indeed, it is dangerous and inflammatory, and not just for the president and his supporters. It is also is an excuse for not examining the real symptoms, the real perpetrators, the real hatred and the forceful violent solutions to which they so readily resort.

Well, Joe, one gets tagged as having anti-Semitic when one rants that one's political opponent "meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty," is slow to disavow the support of white supremacist David Duke, tells Republican Jews he doesn't want their money, and inspires anti-Semitic attacks on his Jewish critics, among other things. It's not preposterous at all, which Farah would know if he had done the slightest bit of research before writing his column.

Farah concludes his column by declaring: "Never again. No more racism. No more bigotry. No more phony blame-gaming slanders. No more fake hate-baiting." That's an odd declaration from a man whose website was built on bigotry and slander (against Obama) and a lot of fake hate-baiting (of Muslims).

You want the hate to stop, Joe? You first.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:49 PM EST

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