WND Finds An AOC Conspiracy Theory To Embrace
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As we've seen at CNSNews.com, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives rent-free in the heads of conservatives and right-wingers. That goes for WorldNetDaily as well, which found a conspiracy theory (of course) about AOC that it could embrace, promoting it in a March 11 article:

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is a “puppet congresswoman,” and “the people controlling her are very dangerous.”

It sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, acknowledges actor, writer and political commentator Christopher Patrick Kohls.

But the first-hand evidence is there for anyone to see, he contends in a video produced under his Mr Reagan moniker.

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not really the congresswoman of New York’s 14th Congressional District,” he says provocatively as he opens the video. “She is essentially an actress. She’s merely playing the part of a New York congresswoman.”

Kohls explains that in 2017, a progressive group that formed in response to Trump’s election called the Justice Democrats held “auditions” for potential congressional candidates to run on their platform.

As evidence, he runs a clip from a Justice Democrats video.

“Back in 2016, we put out a call for nominations,” says the group’s executive director, Alexandra Rojas. “We got over 10,000 nominations. Out of those 10,000 nominations, we found Alexandria.”

[...]

Kohls comments: “A casting call. They had a casting call. They cast Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the role of congresswoman. And they did this so they could promote their own agenda.

As usual, WND can't be bothered to fact-check any of this hooey or reach out to AOC for a response.

That's a bad idea, since the theory that Ocasio-Cortez is a "puppet" for Justice Democrats collapses quickly when one discovers that she is also alleged to have been in control of the group in late 2017 and early 2018 and has since been de-listed from its leadership.

Of course, when has lack of truth ever stopped WND from embracing conspiracy theories before?

How Is CNS' Managing Editor Hating Transgenders Now?
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman pretty much despises the entire LGBT community. Let's take a look at his recent hate for transgenders.

In a Jan. 25 article, Chapman cheered how "Japan's Supreme Court ruled to uphold existing law that transgender persons who want their gender legally changed on official documents must be sterilized in order to prevent "problems" in parent-child relationships and protect society from "confusion" and "abrupt changes." He then disparagingly defined a transgender man as "a female pretending to be a male."

On March 6, Chapman had a fit about how "two members of Congress read the pro-transgender 'kids' book I Am Jazz on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives" -- so much of a fit that, as the article URL indicates, the original headline on Chapman's post called the book a "transgender propaganda book," before being later changed to "pro-transgender 'kids' book." In keeping with his theme of hatred, he disparagingly calls Jazz Jennings "a biological boy pretending to be a girl."

Chapman then took offense to the book's description of Jennings as being "born this way," huffing that "To date, there is no scientific evidence proving that transgender people are, as Lady Gaga sings, 'born this way.'" As evidence, he provides a link to a rant about "gender ideology" from the right-wing American College of Pediatricians.

Chapman, as he has before, then turned to discredited anti-gay psychiatrist Paul McHugh to assert that "transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is 'biologically impossible,' and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder." And, for reasons known only to him and God, he includes an image of a painting of the Second Continental Congress.

MRC Thinks CNN Tribute To Trebek's Pursuit Of Facts Is Veiled Attack on Trump
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center loves ot look for "liberal bias" in areas where it doesn't necessarily exist. Nicholas Fondacaro takes a shot in a March 6 post, assering that in a tribute to "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek's pancreatic cancer fight, "CNN’s Chris Cuomo had to throw in a dash of politics and veiled references to President Trump" instead of "just promoting Trebek’s fighting spirit and spreading awareness for a type of cancer that’s really hard to detect."

What did Cuomo say that Fondacaro found so offensive? He merely noted that "In a time of shallow beliefs and rampant truth abuse in our politics and beyond, every night [Trebek] makes facts first. We need him now more than ever." That's it. Despite the fact that Cuomo did not name Trump or any other politician, Fondacaro ranted "Seriously? Nnow, of all times?" and his CNN derangement kicked in:

Cuomo treats his show as a prosecutor’s argument and courtroom against President Trump. Seemingly every night, Cuomo uses his show to rail against the President with suggestions he’s tearing us apart and poisoning the dialogue with lies and misinformation. So, given that blatant history, it’s clear that Cuomo exploiting Trebek’s cancer diagnosis to score political points.

Fondacaro did eventually calm down enough to acknowledge that Cuomo "did take time to raise awareness" about pancreatic cancer. But perhaps he needs to lay off the caffeine or whatever it is they're drinking over there to fuel the kneejerk corporate hatred for all things CNN.

Pollster Thinks Criticism of America Is Anti-American
Topic: Newsmax

Conservative pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin spend their March 4 Newsmax column framing any criticism of America as anti-American.

They summarize a poll they conducted for "our client United in Purpose for their 'You've Been Lied to!' campaign" -- but they don't describe the organization any further. As it turns out, United in Purposeis a data-mining organization with the goal of increasing turnout of evangelical Christian voters, but is best known for inadvertently making public information on millions of voters through failure to secure it. Its leader, Bill Dallas, spent time in prison for embezzlement. The United in Purpose website is curiously barren, having only a home page and contact page.

The McLaughlins wrote: "In our most recent national survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted between February 6 and 10, when we asked, 'Do you agree or disagree that America is the source of most of the world’s ills: political, economic and environmental?' 46 percent of all voters agreed and only 46 percent disagreed. It was a shocking result." They asserted that this was an "anti-American message."

The McLaughlins then declared that "Agreement that America is the source of most of the world’s ills is clearly a political message tied to party and ideology," with of course Democrats and liberals most like to hold that belief.

The pair demonstrated their bias further in another poll question asking who was to blame for "rising anti-Americanism," by including the choices of "media elites" and "Hollywood entertainment elites" -- derogatory right-wing terms for things they don't like. They would never describe, say, Fox News as "elites." They conclude with more biased posturing:

It is a political message that is driven by ideology and political beliefs and it is growing among younger voters. It’s clearly a message for the left to drive younger voters to their philosophy.

The vast majority of voters feel that anti-Americanism is on the rise, and they mostly blame partisan politicians and media entertainment elites for the rise of anti-Americanism. So while we agree Anti-Americanism is on the rise, as Americans, we can see it is clearly from germinating from the left within.

As if the McLaughlins aren't themselves trying to push an ideological message masquerading as purportedly neutral polling.

MRC Attacks Devastating Piece on Fox News With Whataboutism
Topic: Media Research Center

Earlier this month, the New Yorker published an article by Jane Mayer about "the Fox News White House," detailing in great depth ties between the channel and Trump White House as well as numerous unflattering claims about Fox News' behavior, wuch as the fact it refused to report on the story that Trump paid off Stormy Daniels to keep silent about their affair before the 2016 election.

Since Fox News is the Media Research Center's favorite media outlet -- as well as the one on which its spokespeople make the vast majority of their talking-head TV appearances -- it had to figure out a way to knock down Mayer's story.

The efforts were rather tepid at first. A March 4 post by Alex Christy complained that MSNBC had Mayer on to talk about her story; at first he sneered, "Well, if critics, who never liked Fox well before Trump became President, say so, it must be true." Christy then whined that the article highlighted Bill Shine's move from the Fox News executive suite to White House commiunications director, adding that "Mayer didn't write an over 11,000 word exposé on George Stephanopoulos, or the fact that the President of CBS was the brother of Obama's deputy national security advisor, or ABC News President Ben Sherwood's sister being an Obama foreign policy staffer, or MSNBC's Al Sharpton having a close relationship with President Obama. Not to mention all of MSNBC's morning and evening opinion shows, Morning Joe included."

Christy also complained that Mayer highlighted how "Fox's hostility toward the Obama Administration grew increasingly extreme," then huffed that it was "left to Fox to play" the aversarial role. He then went the whataboutism route: "Fox has its share of opinion hosts who defend the President, sometimes in over-the-top ways, but what Mayer and Morning Joe  missed was that they engage in similar rhetoric. Morning Joe has never passed an opportunity to call Trump a racist or compare the current state of Trump's America to Germany in 1933. If Fox's opinion hosts claim that everything good in the world is because of Trump and everything bad is due to his opponents, MSNBC and Morning Joe have the inverse opinion."

Yet Christy and the MRC have never criticized Fox News for acting the inverse of MSNBC.

Two days later, though, Kyle Drennen was denouncing Mayer's article as an "anti-Fox News hit piece" filled with "anonymous claims." Drennen went straight to whataboutism, responding to MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell noting that Fox News killed the Daniels story by huffing: "NBC would certainly know about sitting on damaging accusations against a president. In 1999, the network delayed airing an interview with Bill Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick until after impeachment of the Democratic president had passed." Drennen then ranted:

The gall it takes for committed liberals like Mitchell and Mayer to sit and pass judgment on alleged bias at another media outlet is stunning. The two of them, and most of their press colleagues, have spent decades carrying water for the Democratic Party and slamming conservatives. Just a look back at the 2008 presidential race and the uniform media adulation for Barack Obamashows how blatantly journalists disregard the “line between politics and news” on a routine basis.

Jeffrey Lord complained in his March 9 column that Mayer's article had the "unsubtle subtext" that "somebody needs to silence Fox News," citing the Democrats' decision not to let Fox News host a Democratic presidential primary debate, which Lord declared was a "quite normal and free press activity."

MRC honchos Brent Bozell and Tim Graham got in on the deflection action as well. In their March 6 column, they admit that the Fox-Trump axis is "a fair subject for analysis" -- then make it clear they can't be bothered to do that analysis by descending into full-tilt whataboutism going all the way back to the 1930s: "Forget the journalists who covered up President Franklin D. Roosevelt's disability, or President John F. Kennedy's debauchery. Never mind the 'news' people who insisted that President Bill Clinton would never sexually harass or rape a woman."

(Of course, it's never been proven that Clinton raped anybody, and Broaddrick's story remains highly suspect because she spent a good 20 years denying any such thing ever happened.)

None of these MRC writers dispute anything in Mayer's article -- they simply complain it was written at all and have nothing but whataboutism to offer in response.

WND's Ponte Rants Against Voting Reform Bill
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Lowell Ponte's March 10 WorldNetDaily column is one long screed against H.R. 1, the Democratic-promoted voting reform bill. He pushes all the usual right-wing arguments against reform, plus a few less-than-factual ones. For instance, he writes:

Under the U.S. Constitution, states and localities were to control the voting process. For many decades, judges have been changing this. Before the 2018 election, Democrat judges took redistricting away from elected state legislatures in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and re-drew congressional district boundaries – a judicial gerrymander that favored Democratic candidates. Billionaire Democratic donor George Soros has spent many millions electing leftist state Attorneys General and local district attorneys who control election recounts and tilt their results leftward.

In fact, what those judges have done is forced an un-gerrymander -- both states were so gerrymanded by Republicans that it was deemed illegal. In Pennsylvania, the voting population is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, yet 13 of the state's 18 congressional seats are held by Republicans, and one district is so bizarrely shaped that it's been described as "Goofy kicking Donald Duck" and at one point is only 550 feet wide. In North Carolina, Donald Trump received slightly more votes in 2016 than Hillary Clinton, but Republicans control 10 of the state's 13 congressional districts.

Ponte is certainly not going to admit that any "leftward" movement in those states is simply more accurately reflecting the electorate.

Ponte followed that with a nasty attack on felons trying to regain the right to vote, as well as Democrats for purportedly being no better than criminals:

Under H.R. 1, states must allow all convicted felons to vote. According to university studies, convicted felons vote up to 88 percent of the time for Democrats. Both share the same desire to profit from redistributing wealth at gunpoint. Would you want members of Congress beholden to the felon vote that elected them?

Actually, under H.R. 1 voting rights to felons would be restored once they complete their sentences. And it's weird that Ponte fixates on the alleged political affiliation of felons who have completed their sentences -- which means that he's willing to deny someone's voting rights solely because that person might not vote the way he wants, since he offers no other argument for denial.

How CNS Media Bias Works, Congressional Hearing Edition
Topic: CNSNews.com

As we've noted, one way CNSNews.com displays its right-wing bias is by ignoring questions at congressional hearings posed by Democrats while heaping coverage upon those made by Republican members of Congress. There is an exception, though: CNS will report questioning by Democrats when it can be used to advance its political agenda and/or to make them look ridiculous.

Susan Jones takes this approach in a March 7 article, in which she complains about questioning of Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan:

At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) expressed more concern about the welfare of illegal alien children in U.S. custody than she did about the welfare of those same children on the perilous journey north, when they are subject to all kinds of injury and sexual abuse.

Harris was particularly concerned about allegations of sexual abuse in U.S. detention facilities; and about the removal of toys from children in Customs and Border Protection custody.

Jones then dismissed Harris' concern over "reports that immigrant children may have been sexually abused while in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement," suggesting that McAleenan shouldn't have been questioned about it because that "falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Health and Human Services," which operates the Office of Refugee Resettlement. She went on to huff: "Even though HHS/ORR personnel are separate from CBP, Sen. Harris made it look like McAleenan bears some responsibility for turning children over to alleged American abusers."

Jones concluded her article by circling back to her opening paragraph and touting the softball questions by Republican Rep. Joni Ernst, who merely "asked McAleenan what he's seeing at the border" and gave him time to pontificate about the alleged sexual abuse happening on the way to the border.

Jones, by the way, did not admit that the U.S. has no jurisdiction over any alleged criminal acts that happened to refugees before they arrived at the border, thus making it superfluous for Harris to demand accountability from any U.S. official over it.

 

NEW ARTICLE: 'Free Speech' Cowardice At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center laments that alternative social-media operations get deplatformed for serving as outlets for far-right extremism -- which it rebrands as "free speech" -- but it can't be bothered to support those operations by establishing a presence there. Read more >>

CNS Keeps Cheering Increased Numbers Of Christian Refugees, Fewer Muslims
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've previously noted how CNSNews.com, particularly reporter Patrick Goodenough, fretted over large numbers of Muslim refugees being admitted to the U.S. under President Obama, compared with Christian refugees, only to be much happier when those numbers flipped under President Trump. That happiness continues in a March 4 article by Goodenough:

Five months into the fiscal year, the Trump administration has admitted a total of 9,305 refugees into the United States, an admission rate well below the average needed to meet the 30,000 ceiling for FY 2019 which it set last fall.

According to State Department Refugee Processing Center data, monthly admissions since the start of the current fiscal year were 1,834 in October, 2,150 in November, 1,722 in December, 1,455 in January and 2,144 in February – in each case below the 2,500 monthly average that would add up to the 30,000 ceiling.

[...]

Of the 9,305 refugees resettled in the first five months of FY 2019, 7,684 (82.5 percent) self-identified as Christians, and 1,306 (14 percent) as Muslims. One year earlier, 62.9 percent of the new arrivals over that five-month period were Christians, and 15.7 percent were Muslims.

By contrast, during the equivalent periods in FY 2016 and FY 2017, the proportions were more balanced: Muslims comprised 42.9 and 47.3 percent respectively, and Christians comprised 46.3 and 43.4 percent respectively.

Even though the religious breakdown of the refugees wasn't address until the fifth paragraph, CNS made it the headline claim.

Goodenough can be a good reporter when he wants to be, and he does admit that the number of refugees admitted so far aren't on track to be even close to the Trump's administration's lowered ceiling of 30,000. But he's still huffing about larger numbers of Muslims than Christians from Syria getting refugee status under Obama, even though "Christians, Yazidis, and other non-Muslims were deliberately targeted by ISIS jihadists in what the Obama administration determined in 2016 amounted to a policy of genocide." But as we've also noted, Goodenough still can't quite admit that Muslims were being persecuted during the Syrian civil war as well; while "74 percent of the Syrian population was Sunni Muslim" at the start of the civil war, as Goodenough states, the Assad regime that rules Syria is Alawite and has targeted Sunni civilians.

Instead, Goodenough is content to suggest sinister motives in Obama's admitting more Muslim refugees. That's not honest reporting.

WND's Zumwalt Botches Facts About Democrats and the KKK
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily columnist James Zumwalt has always had a shaky grasp of facts, and he demonstrates it again in his March 6 column. After pushing right-wing talking points about the death penalty and abortion, he turns to another subject he thinks he can bash Democrats over:

The third death link issue involves recalling history and a violent group Democrats helped foster 153 years ago – the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). While Democrats’ relationship with the KKK – a most violent supremacist group – no longer exists, today, liberals have replaced their support for one supremacist group seeking the death of non-members with another group having a similar mindset.

To entice the black vote today, Democrats falsely accuse Republicans of racism. But it was the Democratic Party that gave rise to the KKK in 1866 as Republicans struggled in the post-Civil War era to implement political and economic equality for blacks. Ironically, as Democrats rallied to support the KKK, blacks rallied to become Republicans. The first seven blacks elected to Congress were, in fact, Republican candidates.

Interestingly too, one of the Democratic Party’s most respected serving senators until his death in 2010 was Robert Byrd of West Virginia – a former senior KKK official. Today, listening to Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters hurl venomous racist charges at President Donald Trump, it is hard to believe she is the same person who mightily defended Byrd in 2003.

Of course, the Democratic Party of the post-Civil War era is not the Democratic Party of today; as we've previously pointed out, the KKK was never an exclusively Democratic organization.

Further, Zumwalt ignores that Byrd repeatedly apologized for his Klan affiliation , something Waters highlighted upon his death: "Senator Byrd often spoke about his regret over participating in racist and anti-civil rights activities as a young man. I appreciated his willingness to publicly repudiate his membership with the Ku Klux Klan, and later his filibuster of the Civil Rights bill in the Senate. He often referred to his decade as a Klan member as the greatest mistake of his life."

Zumwalt then dipped into his usual Islamophobia to rant that "political Islam" is just like the KKK because they share "two foundational beliefs":" that "1) The world exists in only two parts – one in which its ideology thrives now and one in which it eventually, by force, will so thrive; and 2) every believer has a duty to convert non-members to this ideology – and, if they do not, to force them to pay a tax or kill them."

MRC Mad Anti-Muslim Hate Group Accurately Identified
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center is strangely sensitive to anti-Muslim group ACT for America being described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center -- perhaps because group leader Brigitte Gabriel has been a featured speaker on its cruise junkets. Plus, it feeds into the MRC's combined victimhood/SPLC-bashing narrative:

• In a Feb. 20 item, Matt Philbin identified ACT For America as among the allegedly "distinctly non-hate-based groups" that "have been slimed by SPLC." Philbin did not explain what made ACT for America "distinctly non-hate-based" or how, exactly, the SPLC "slimed" it.
• On Feb. 27, Corinne Weaver cited ACT for America as among groups "banned" from accepting money through PayPal as an "insidious form of social media censorship" and attacked the SPLC as a "once-noble organization has become a left-wing direct-mail giant."
• A Feb. 28 post by MRC Latino's Ken Oliver insisted that anti-Muslim groups like ACT for America aren't anti-Muslim because, well, they say the aren't, since they "would counter that they are the ones actually fighting the single greatest menace of hate in our day: that of radical Islamic terrorism, which actively seeks to perpetrate (and regularly takes credit for) horrific acts of murder and mayhem throughout the world."

Philbin returned on March 7 to do more heavy-lifting defense of the group. he attacked a "hatchet job" in Roll Call noting that ACT for Americca "was once found to have ties to a longtime neo-Nazi." The article added regarding a 2017 "March Against Sharia" series of rallies put on by the group: "Longtime neo-Nazi Billy Roper organized the Arkansas event for the group, according to the SPLC. Roper once served as the state leader of the National Alliance, a now defunct neo-Nazi group that agitated for Jewish genocide. ACT subsequently disavowed Roper."

Start spinning away, Matt:

Here’s what really occurred: A man named Billy Roper volunteered to organize the June 10 March. ACT found out before the event that Roper was a white supremacist and was planning to glom his Shield Wall Network’s own demonstration on to ACT’s. ACT canceled the March and Roper was “permanently banned from any affiliation with our organization.” Nothing happened “subsequently.”

From there, Philbin descends into an anti-SPLC screed, ranting that it's "a lefty hate group that makes money screaming 'Hate Group' at anyone to the right of The World Workers Party. These include mainstream Christian and religious freedom groups." Philbin did not identify what, exactly, is "mainstream" about ACT for America.

Philbin also huffed: "The group’s also inspired more political violencethan any conservative 'hate' mongers it’s slandered." His evidence for that was a PJ Media article that tried to blame James Hodgkinson's shooting spree on the SPLC solely because he "liked" it on Facebook, which was somehow deemed to be "moral support."

And, no, Philbin didn't disclose the MRC's closeness with Gabriel and ACT for America.

WND Columnist: Don't Buy Girl Scout Cookies Because AOC Was One
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jane Chastain begins her March 6 WorldNetDaily column complaining about the socialist origins of International Women's Day, then follows a tangent to the Girl Scouts that they too are overly socialist:

Today’s Girl Scouts are a far cry from those of my youth, which trained us to put God and country before everything else. Today, God in the Girl Scout promise has an asterisk, meaning the great I AM and His moral absolutes can be replaced by anything, including oneself.

Country, also, has taken a backseat. The emphasis is on global citizenship, which is fine unless you stop to consider that most of the world is not free and the world’s values are often at odds with our own.

It is little wonder the Girl Scouts have taken a sharp left turn and can be found marching for abortion rights, gun control and other radical feminist events like International Women’s Day.

Chastain then quickly moves to bizarrely arguing that people shouldn't buy Girl Scout cookies because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a Girl Scout:

So before you decide to embrace an International Women’s Day celebration or buy the cookies, ask yourself, “Will the country be better off with more representatives like the young socialist Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez?”

If not, it’s a good time to start your diet.

This sort of AOC got the attention of the actual AOC, and WND reported on this in the strangest way. In an anonymously written March 9 article, WND claimed that Chastain was "attacked" by Ocasio-Cortez -- then spent the next nine paragraphs summarizing Chastain's column before turning, in the article's 11th paragraph, to what Ocasio-Cortez actually said ("Boycotting cookies that teach little girls leadership skills to own the libs, nice job" -- which is more an expression of bemusement with Chastain's AOC derangement than an "attack").

Just as weirdly, WND doesn't bother to link to Ocasio-Cortez's tweets responding to Chastain, though it faithfully reproduces all the links from Chastain's column.

What LGBT Stuff Is The MRC Freaking Out About Now?
Topic: Media Research Center

Karen Townsend is hate-watching "Riverdale" and upset that conservatives are shown as evil and gays aren't (and spoils a movie's big plot twist in the process):

The random plot twist of gay conversion therapy from a previous episode of The CW’s Riverdale is brought back in the February 6 episode titled “Chapter Forty-Seven: Bizarrodale,” and this time the Catholic nuns at Sisters of Quiet Mercy are said to have "twisted the soul" of an intolerant father back when he was a teenager. Also, along the way, we hear that outing gay people is bad unless it is a conservative politician.

[...]

So, in order to randomly insert an anti-Catholic and anti-conservative thread in this episode, Riverdale brings in the "homophobic dad is really repressed homosexual" trope made infamous in the 1999 Academy Award Winning film American Beauty. And, the upcoming generation is ok with treating conservative gays differently than liberals. Great.

Annie Piper freaked out about "the gay agenda for children" appearing on "A Million Little Things" because a 12-year-old boy who may be gay is being "unquestioningly encouraged" by his parents. She then lectured: "Most 12-year-old kids don’t even know what they want to do when they grow up let alone who they want to date. Maybe parents should focus less on encouraging homosexual desires at such a young age and more on helping them grow and develop as a young adult."

Tom Joyce, meanwhile, is stuck hate-watching "Family Guy," and he's reduced to complaining that he show bowed to "PC culture" in its "transgender episode." Joyce is appalled that "towards the end of the episode, Peter apologizes for mocking transgender people," adding, "The show’s attempt to try to promote and normalize transgenders at the expense of making Peter Griffin act out of character should not be a surprise." Because "Family Guy" is a stickler on being true to character?

Mysterious MRC sports blogger Jay Maxson is unhappy that the NFL is talking about being more accepting of gays:

If you think a men's pro football league sidetracked by a focus on lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders is odd, think again. This is a league whose commissioner, Roger Goodell, spent several hours last summer at a bail bond hearing for a Louisiana man charged with armed robbery. This is a league that gave $89 million to social justice activist players. And several million more to shake-down artists Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid.

(Maxson did not explain how settling a lawsuit with the NFL regarding alleged blackballing for their beliefs makes Kaepernick and Reid "shake-down artists.")

Maxon concluded by sneering, "That's your new "NFL SJW LGBTQ+."

MRC honchos Brent Bozell and Tim Graham had a pair of transgender-related freakouts. One column intoned: "Here's a very sad story. Those who wish for the collapse of our culture are now celebrating children deciding they're not the gender they were 'assigned at birth.' ... Our world has turned upside down overnight." Another column mocked actress Debra Messing for issuing "self-flagellating apologies" to transgenders after making vagina-shaped cupcakes for International Women's Day and called her a "roaring idiot" for doing so.

CNS Hops Aboard the Divine-Donald Train
Topic: CNSNews.com

Yet another example of the creeping WorldNetDaily-ization of CNSNews.com -- on top of its recent embrace of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories -- is its similar embrace of the idea that God ordained Donald Trump to be president. That has been a WND staple over the past couple years, most recently with editor Joseph Farah pushing the idea by declaring, "If God had wanted Trump elected, there is no doubt in my mind that it would be so."

CNS first dipped a toe in the divine-Donald pool a few months back by highlighting how a gathering of Christians in the White House turned into an "improptu worship session." In an anonymously written Jan. 31 article, CNS touted how "White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on the Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday that God wanted Donald Trump to become president." Later that day, CNS devoted an article to huffing that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar responded to Sanders' statement by tweeting, "God has a strange sense of humor!"

Then, a March 4 article by Craig Bannister gushed over the CPAC speech by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell:

God answered our prayers, our millions of prayers, and gave us grace and a miracle happened on November 8, 2016. We were given a second chance and time granted to get our country back on track with our conservative values and getting people saved in Jesus’ name.

“As I stand before you today, I see the greatest president in history. Of course he is, he was chosen by God.

[...]

I see myself in divine appointments, and one was especially important. Donald Trump invited me to meet him at Trump Tower in New York City. I walked into his office with high hopes on August 15 2016.

“I walked out of that office after meeting with him and I knew God had chosen him for such a time as this.

As with the WND writers who have pushed this idea, nobody at CNS appears to be entertaining the possibility that even if one accepts the idea that Trump's election was ordained by God, he was sent as a warning and not as a deliverance.

Finland Derangement Syndrome At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

Apparently, it's "liberal bias" to report facts about health care in Finland. That's the impression we get from Scott Whitlock's March 5 Media Research Center post:

CBS This Morning journalists on Tuesday spent an entire segment hyping the glories of Finland and the country's free stuff, chiding the United States for falling behind. With very little discussion on the nation's high taxes, foreign correspondent Holly Williams and the show’s hosts praised the country’s paid maternity leave, hospital care and even supposedly free nannies.

Reporting from Finland, Williams praised: “In Finland, you're guaranteed around four months paid maternity leave by law. And parents can split another six months paid parental leave.”

Without offering much context, co-host Bianna Golodryga cheered the idea of dumping your kids in parks and handing them over to free nannies: “When I was there last summer, our tour guide told us women and families could just drop their kids off in the local park and they have paid nannies there where the kids go to work.”

Whitlock went on to lecture that "Finland has 5.5 million people. The United States has 325 million. No one seemed to think about the practicality of how transferring such massive entitlements to America would work." He went on to huff: "The issue of taxes seemed of little concern to the CBS journalists. Finland’s personal income tax rate in Finland stands at 51.60 percent, according to Trading Economics. The sales tax is 24 percent."

In fact, according to the edited video clip that accompanies Whitlock's post, it was noted that taxes are higher in Finland than in the U.S.

Whitlock concluded by huffing that "Journalists love to fawn over Finland" -- but he was able to cite only two examples of it, one from 2005 and the other from 1997. Three stories in 20-plus years is barely like, let alone love.