ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch

CNS' Lucas Uncritically Repeats Report's Bogus Claims

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 17:44:08 -0500

A July 8 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas repeats claims from a "congressional report" that "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the chief culprits in the housing crisis because they encouraged people who could not afford payments to borrow money," but Lucas waits until the fourth paragraph to reveal that the report came from "Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee." In other words, it's a biased report that committee Democrats did not sign off on. Lucas failed to solicit any reaction to the report, even though its claims appear to contradict established facts.

Lucas states that "claims in the report have long been advanced by conservatives, who argue that the Community Reinvestment Act and other federal programs fed the housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to the economic downfall in 2008." In fact, housing experts have pointed out that most subprime loans were not made under the CRA.

Lucas also describes Democratic Rep. Barney Frank as having "fought against regulation of the two quasi-public mortgage giants." In fact, Frank made numerous efforts to enhance federal oversight of Fannie and Freddie.

We suspect that Lucas can't be bothered to do a more balanced follow-up, even though prominent conservative David Horowitz has denounced the Republicans' report as "factually wrong-headed" and having "ugly racial overtones."

NewsBusters, WND Mislead on Ginsburg Statement

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 13:18:34 -0500

A July 9 NewsBusters post by serial misinformer Tom Blumer falsely suggests that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg believes in eugenics by highlighting a statement she made in a New York Times interview that "at the time Roe [v. Wade] was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." Blumer added: "Who is this 'we' Ginsburg refers to?"

Blumer does add the transcript of the relevant part of the interview in his post, which contradicts his suggestion by making clear that Ginsburg was not referring to herself regarding that belief.

WorldNetDaily similarly misleads on Ginsburg's comment with a July 8 article headlined "Ginsburg: I thought Roe was to rid undesirables." WND does include a fuller transcript that contradicts the headline.

Ellis Washington Thinks He's Emile Zola

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 10:38:12 -0500

Let's see -- Ellis Washington has already likened Michael Savage to Jesus and Prometheus. Where does Washington go from there?

Well, Washington has now decided that he's Emile Zola. Which means, of course, that Savage is Capt. Alfred Dreyfus. It also means that Washington spends his July 8 WorldNetDaily column throwing around the word "j'accuse" a lot.

But that's not all. Washington ventures into Jack Cashill territory and spins a pan-continental conspiracy to destroy the sainted Savage:

Britain's defensive and convoluted reply on the case of Michael Savage amounts to a non-denial denial. It smacks of conspiracy, cover-up, lies and collusion at the highest levels of the world's two most powerful governments.

Here is my theory on how the Obama administration colluded with Britain to blacklist Michael Savage:
Let us float a "Fairness Doctrine" trial balloon with our ally across the pond before we bring it home to America.
Let us pick a sacrificial lamb: a conservative of some notoriety, yet controversial with few friends in the state-run media or among his conservative peers.
Let us associate him with the most evil, irredeemable criminals on the planet.
And let us wait and watch with glee as his fellow conservatives lurch back into the shadows, shut their normally big yaps on this case and not come to Michael Savage's defense.
Why? Because big shot conservatives like Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, Scarborough, Fox News and conservative think tanks are deftly afraid that they will be next to be blacklisted.

The Machiavellian plot of the British and U.S. government against Michael Savage, an American patriot and self-confessed Anglophile is really appalling.

Um, yeah. Needless to say, Washington has no evidence whatsoever of any of this.

Also needless to say, Washington's whole "j'accuse" framework is faulty. While Dreyfus was innocent of the allegations against him, Savage is quite guilty of the hate speech the British have accused him of making, and Washington's feeble aping of Zola doesn't change that.

P.S. World O' Crap deconstructs Washington's column further.

Molotov Misleads Again

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 08:23:27 -0500

In his July 8 WorldNetDaily video, Molotov Mitchell dismisses "wine research" and "Mormon cricket studies" as projects benefiting from the "trillions of dollars that's already been distributed through welfare" by the Obama administration.

Both items appear to be straight off John McCain's list of the "top 10 porkiest projects" in the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress in February (Mitchell doesn't mention, of course, that the bill included earmarks from both Republicans and Democrats). The first apparently refers to, as McCain put it, "$2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York." But as one blogger points out, given that the wine industry in California alone is worth $20 billion a year, spending $2 million to assure the genetic safety of grape varieties seems like money fairly well spent.

The latter refers to McCain's citing of "$1 million for mormon cricket control in Utah." As Think Progress noted, Mormon crickets cause millions of dollars a year to crops in Western states. Given that cricket infestations cost Utah alone $22 million in crop damages in 2000, spending money to control the pests also seems like money well spent.

If Mitchell really was the "For the Record" guy he proclaims himself to be, he would have mentioned the cost of those two particular earmarks are mere rounding errors in the "trillions of dollars" he asserts is being misspent under Obama. But he's not.

Newsmax's Double Standard on Senatorial Temperament

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 00:35:57 -0500

David Patten is not quite yet done slapping around Al Franken.

Following up a Newsmax article in which he tried to tie the new senator from Minnesota to ACORN -- a charge he had to admit he couldn't substantiate -- another July 6 article by Patten fervently expressed hope that Franken would make a gaffe as senator that Republicans can exploit.

Patten asserted that "Franken is the only senator to joke about helping terrorists assassinate a U.S. president, to openly marvel that his cocaine habit hadn’t led to addiction, and the only salon [sic] who angrily drops F-bombs during campaign fundraisers." He went on to rehash "incidents that don't bode well on Franken's resume," such as his "mouthy satire" and "vitriol," adding, "To conform to Senate decorum, Franken will have to overcome his penchant for getting personal. Senators avoid the acrimonious personal attacks that Franken appears to relish."

Patten's concern about Franken's temper reminds us of how Newsmax -- specifally, Patten's co-worker Ronald Kessler -- treated John McCain, who has a similar temper problem.

As we detailed, Kessler -- who creepily supported Mitt Romney during the Republican primaries -- repeatedly attacked McCain's temper calling it his "irrational, explosive side that make many of them question whether he is fit to serve as president and be commander in chief" and further pondering "whether a man who seems so out of control should have the authority to unleash nuclear weapons." But not only did Kessler's attacks on McCain stop when McCain clinched the Republican nomination, Kessler recast the negative as a positive -- the former "irrational, explosive side" became a "scrappy approach" and "swagger."

We don't recall Patten showing any concern about McCain's temper, which can only mean that Patten's an utter hypocrite.

WND Runs Fake Franken Photo

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 23:20:04 -0500

In yet another example of WorldNetDaily's complete lack of journalistic ethics and credibility, WND illustrated an article on Al Franken officially being sworn in as a senator with a doctored photo of him:

As others have detailed, the doctored photo was created in 2006 by Ohio Republicans sticking Franken's head on another photo of an adult in diapers in order to smear Franken, and it's been used that way ever since.Thus, WND knows or should have known that the photo is a fake.

Even though the photo was displayed on its front page throughout the day on July 8, nowhere does WND indicate that the photo is a fake -- a violation of journalistic ethics.

It also runs counter to WND's previous criticism of doctored photos used by others. A 2005 article, for instance, claimed that the Council on American-Islamic Relations "doctored a photograph on its website to ensure a woman was shown wearing a customary Islamic headcovering." WND also complained when USA Today manipulated a photo of Condoleezza Rice to give her what it called "a menacing, demon-eyesing stare."

So WND is exposed yet again as a pathetic hypocrite. But you knew that already.

WND Columnist: Palin Has No Business Working Outside the Home

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 21:56:52 -0500

Leave it to a WorldNetDaily columnist to claim that Sarah Palin is not conservative enough. In her July 8 column, Olivia St. John asserts that, as a woman, Palin has no business being in politics -- or any other job outside the home -- in the first place, and that her "highest calling" is to stay at home and take care of her kids:

Palin is an avowed feminist. As such, her husband and children have to fall in line behind her career goals. If everyday actions speak louder than words, then she holds more affinity with her pro-abortion feminist sisters than with her conservative sisters nursing babies at home.
[...]
It came close to sounding as though Palin's family was a priority when she said, "…every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it's right for all, including your family." She also stated, "…we know we can effect positive change outside government" and "actually make a difference."
Was Palin talking about "the hand that rocks the cradle" kind of difference that celebrates motherhood and the value of children, not only inside the womb, but outside as well?
Palin's history over the past 17 years tells another story. Three years after the birth of the first of her five children, she entered the rough-and-tumble world of Alaska (and eventually national) politics and has never looked back.
Has America become so emasculated that our only hope of getting another Ronald Reagan into the Oval Office is to idolize Palin as a political Madonna? Hardly.
Do we have no men who can match her intelligence, charisma and leadership skills? To the contrary, we have better.
Have conservatives become so desperate for a passionate leader that they forsake their most basic values of home and hearth? Yes, but it's more than that.
[...]
It has been said that the sin of homosexuality precedes judgment on a nation. Yet, the first instance in Scripture where we see a curse enacted was in the Garden of Eden when a woman took the lead and a man followed. Does this not describe America today? "As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them," says Isaiah 3:12.
As conservatives continue chanting Sarah Palin for president, are they disenfranchising the men capable of stepping up to the plate in 2012? There are many strong conservative men better qualified to lead the greatest nation in the world.
I pray these men rise to the fore and that Sarah Palin begins to turn her heart toward her home.
I pray America wakes up to realize once again that the hand that rocks the cradle truly rules the world. That is a mother's highest calling. That is Sarah Palin's calling.

Corsi Still Pushing Discredited Document

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:35:39 -0500

Jerome Corsi uses a July 8 WorldNetDaily column to detail his pestering of the Obama White House to explain why President Obama wasn't visiting Kenya on a swing through Africa this week -- rehashing dubious and discredited attacks along the way.

Corsi restated his claim that Obama made "repeated appearances" with Raila Odinga during Odinga's campaign for the Kenyan presidency. But as we've noted, Corsi cited only one joint appearance in his Obama-bashing book.

Corsi asserted that "The truth was that I brought back from Kenya firsthand documents I obtained from former Orange Democratic Movement Party members who had turned against Odinga. The documents proved the points I had argued in "The Obama Nation," namely, that Sen. Obama worked hard to try and get Odinga elected as Kenya's president in December 2007."

Among those documents were emails purportedly from Obama to Odinga setting up an Obama aide as a liaison between the two. As we've detailed, the emails are clearly not written by someone for whom American English is a first language. Corsi has never explicitly acknowledged the emails' clearly fraudulent nature, nor has he formally retracted the claims he made based on those documents.

Corsi made no specific mention of the emails in his July 8 article, but he did reference "an internal document" purportedly showing that "'Friends' of then-Sen. Obama" supported Odinga "with a donation of nearly $1 million." As we also detailed, that document's bogus too -- it's an apparent re-creation of a similar document PolitiFact debunked months before Corsi published his version. Corsi has never addressed the PolitiFact debunking of his story.

Corsi has not been one to let the truth get in the way of a good Obama smear, and he demonstrates that again here.

Farah's (And WND's) Military Cluelessness

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:24:38 -0500

Joseph Farah spends his July 8 WorldNetDaily column bashing President Obama for a 1983 newspaper article he wrote as a Columbia undergraduate that advocated a reduction in nuclear arms -- which, of course, Farah dismissed as a "screed ... hat denounced U.S. defense policies." Farah falsely asserted that in the article, Obama "preferred to see deep unilateral disarmament by the U.S."; in fact, the article says nothing about unilateral disarmament.

Farah then repeated claims Obama made in a campaign ad that purportedly "affirmed those ideas" fromthe 1983 article. One of those claims was "I will slow our development of future combat systems," to which Farah responds, "This illustrates the man sitting in the White House today believes America should disarm unilaterally."

Farah has no idea what he is talking about. Obama was not referring to slowing development of all "future combat systems." In fact, Future Combat Systems is a specific Pentagon program launched in 2003 with the goal of modernizing Army weapons systems. It has long been troubled by cost overruns and dubious effectiveness of the planned weapons.

Even Obama's 2008 opponent, John McCain, agreed with Obama, asserting that the FCS program "should be ended" (later amended to "slowed").

Farah's problem appears to be that he's getting his information from his own website. Indeed, all the references to Obama's statement about Future Combat Systems in WND's archive treat the term as an all-encompassing generic reference and not the name of a specific military program. Needless to say, since WND writers are utterly clueless about the nature of the program, there's no mention of its troubled history.

So, what Farah was intending as a quick, cheap shot against Obama only exposes Farah's own ignorance.

Your WND Obama Lie of the Day

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 08:27:44 -0500

Aaron Klein writes in a July 7 WorldNetDaily article:

In a revelation that raised a few eyebrows, Obama in April 2008 disclosed he traveled as a college student to Pakistan in 1981.
[...]
Pakistan in 1981 was under military rule. It was difficult for U.S. citizens to travel to the country without assistance. It would have been easier for someone to enter Pakistan on an Indonesian passport.

In fact, as we've detailed, it was not particularly difficult to enter Pakistan in 1981 on a U.S. passport. A June 1981 New York Times article states that "Tourists can obtain a free, 30-day visa (necessary for Americans) at border crossings and airports," and an August 1981 State Department travel advisory explains how Americans can obtain visas for visiting Pakistan. Klein writes that Obama was in Pakistan for "about three weeks," which dovetails nicely with a 30-day visa.

The gist of Klein's article, by the way, is his attempt to twist Obama's description of Jakarta as a "home town" into evidence that Obama was an Indonesian citizen.