Waters Ignores Falsehood to Praise Fox Attack on NYT Topic: NewsBusters
A Dec. 23 NewsBusters post (and TimesWatch item) by Clay Waters proclaims how "The roundtable on Monday night's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC was not kind to the New York Times's hit piece on Sunday's front page that blamed President Bush and only Bush for the mortgage meltdown." But Waters failed to note that panelists Nina Easton and Charles Krauthammer got a major fact wrong.
As Media Matters details, both Barnes and Krauthammer claimed that the Community Reinvestment Act and efforts to expand affordable housing are at least in part to blame for the home foreclosure crisis. But according to experts, the CRA does not govern the vast majority of subprime lenders.
Apparently, conservatives aren't held to the same factual standards by the MRC as non-conservatives.
Examiner Misleads on Global Warming Topic: Washington Examiner
A Dec. 23 Washington Examiner editorial falsely claims that "the Earth has actually been cooling – not warming – since 1998." In fact, as we've repeatedlydetailed, while 1998 is the warmest year on record, overall global temperatures have risen in the ensuing decade.
The editorial also cites a claim regarding "more than 650 current and former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who are now publicly questioning the non-scientist Gore’s major premise." The editorial fails to note that the claim is being peddled by Marc Morano, the staffer for Republican Sen. James Infofe who has a history of pushing bogus claims denying global warming.
First, the Examiner gets one detail wrong. The Inhofe/Morano report did not cite "more than 650 current and former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"; it cited "over 650 prominent international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists."
Second, Morano's numbers are suspect here as well. As Climate Progress points out, the vast majority of people on Morano's list are recycled from a smiliar 2007 report, which was criticized for including a number of people with no expertise in climate science (or science, period).
The editorial also cited "recent freak snowstorms in Malibu, New Orleans and Las Vegas" as evidence that global warming doesn't exist. In fact, as we've detailed, a spell of cold weather in a particular place has no relevance to the overall global warming debate.
A Dec. 22 Newsmax article by David A. Patten, headlined, "ACORN, Soros, Linked to Franken Vote Grab," doesn't fulfill the promise of its headline. Rather, Patten attacks Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie as allegedly having "extensive ties to both the ACORN organization now under federal investigation for vote fraud, and to MoveOn.org ultra-liberal kingmaker George Soros."
And what are those "extensive ties"? Patten tells us: "In 2006, ACORN endorsed Ritchie in his bid to become secretary of state, and Ritchie also received a campaign contribution that year from Soros." That's "extensive"?
Patten also alleges that Ritchie was a beneficiary of a Soros-funded project whose "express purpose is to seed state election bureaucracies nationwide with partisan activists ... who are strategically positioned to influence the outcome of close recounts like the one now underway in Minnesota." Patten adds that the project "was founded after Democrats involved in George W. Bush’s narrow 2000 election victory blamed Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris for influencing the outcome."
As for evidence that Ritchie is spearheading a "Franken vote grab" in the Minnesota Senate race recount between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, Patten offers none -- instead, he quotes our old friend Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center calling Ritchie "a hard-core liberal who was endorsed by ACORN and funded by ACORN" and who has "a permissive attitude toward the recount process." Patten also states that "ruling after ruling by the Ritchie-led State Canvassing Board has gone against Coleman," but fails to note that Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty approved the canvassing board's composition, and that a lawyer for Coleman's campaign reportedly said that the "state should feel good about who's on the panel."
If all this sounds a little familiar, it's because eight years ago, Newsmax was on the other side of a similar election controversy.
Newsmax was all about defending then-Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris during the 2000 presidential election recount, declaring her "the one and only hero to emerge from the election crisis" and asking its readers to email their support to her.
But a search of Newsmax's online archives found no reference to the one relevent piece of information about Harris that was the basis for much of the controversy surrounding her: she was the Florida co-chair for George W. Bush's campaign and had campaigned for him, and her certifying Bush as the winner in the face of controversies surrounding the voting process made him the president.
While that would seem to have relevance in an article on the alleged political affiliations of state election officials, Patten fails to mention that fact as well in his reference to Harris. Further, Patten offers no evidence that Ritchie is behaving any different than Harris, whose behavior Newsmax endorsed and defended.
UPDATE: MN Publius reports that people on the Newsmax mailing list have received a fund-raising letter from the Republican National Lawyers Association, which baselessly asserts that Franken and "his liberal allies are working feverishingly to steal the Minnesota Senate election."
For the past few weeks, WorldNetDaily has been flogging a petition "demanding that the constitutional eligibility requirement be taken seriously and that any and all controlling legal authorities in this matter examine the complete birth certificate of Barack Obama, including the actual city and hospital of birth, and make that document available to the American people for inspection." But the petition itself lacks the transparency WND is demanding from Obama.
First of all, there's no way for anyone to inspect the signatures, as WND has not made them available. Not only is there no independent way of verifying that (at the time of this writing) 195,039 signatures actually exist, there's no way to check how many Mickey Mouses and Donald Ducks and other fake names have signed it.
Third, the petition accepts only a name, email address and zip code, with no verification that the signer be a registered or even eligible voter. But why ask for an email address? Could it be that this is all one big harvesting operation to gather addresses forWND's mailing list?
It appears so; as part of signing the petiiton, you agree to let WND "keep me informed about the upcoming constitutional crisis over Barack Hussein Obama's eligibility for the presidency, as well as other breaking news and special offers from WND." And once you click the button to sign the petition, you're taken to another page where WND tries to sell you some factually challenged anti-Obama books.
Another WND petition asking President Bush to pardon two Border Patrol agents appears to be structured the same way, down to the sales job on the follow-up page.
There's no genuine sincerity here on WND's part here. It's all just marketing -- another way to make money off readers.
AIM's Dishonest Cry of Censorship Topic: Accuracy in Media
A Dec. 22 Accuracy in Media column by Larry Grathwohl is described in an editor's note as "written in response to Charles Lane’s December 11, 2008, Washington Post column, 'The Unreal Bill Ayers: Three Decades After the Weather Underground’s End, He’s Still Justifying Its Means.'" The note adds: "This Grathwohl column was rejected for publication by the Washington Post." The column is headlined, "Washington Post Censors Truth About Bill Ayers."
But a publication declining to publish someone's letter is not the same thing as "censorship" -- otherwise, we could accuse AIM of censorship for not allowing readers to comment on Grathwohl's column, as it does for most AIM columnists including Cliff Kincaid, who desperately needs to be countered with the truth. It appears that AIM now has turned off comments even on its blogs.
Further, Grathwohl does not accuse the Post of "censoring" the "truth"; indeeed, he writes, "There isn’t much for me to disagree with in the article." He does not complain about the Post but, rather, offers further criticism of Ayers.
And the Post article itself is critical of Ayers, accusing him of engaging in a "selective version" of history, concluding:
Hardly the worst crimes of that turbulent era, the Weather Underground's deeds were nevertheless immoral. They put innocents at risk and sowed fear. Ultimately, they achieved nothing except to undermine the peaceful antiwar movement. Bill Ayers should cut the sophistry and admit it.
It's dishonest for AIM to claim that the Post "censored" Grathwohl by not publishing his letter when AIM refuses to permit its readers to respond to Grathwohl -- or Kincaid, or any other AIM writer.
Aaron Klein Desperate Obama Smear Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is Aaron Klein turning into Cliff Kincaid?
In recent weeks, Klein hasbeenseeminglyobsessed with making guilt-by-association claims, howevertenuous, between Barack Obama and members of his governing team to ... communists -- communism being a longtime Kincaid obsession (as we've noted). He gives it another shot in a Dec. 21 article, in which he tars labor secretary-designee Rep. Hilda Solis as a commie because ... she once sent a representative to a gathering of socialists 12 years ago, and because socialists have allegedly said nice things about her.
Rather thin gruel for an attempted smear. But that's pretty much all Klein has at this point.
Farah Throws Another Lie on WND's Obama-Hate Pile Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has lied and misled about Barack Obama so much in the past year. Why not add one more lie to the pile?
In a Dec. 22 WND column exhorting Rev. Rick Warren not to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration because it would be akin to "embracing evil," Joseph Farah writes of "just one of Obama's evil policies":
Barack Obama is opposed to any and all restrictions on the killing of unborn children and has pledged to work against the few that remain. In fact, as a state legislator in Illinois, he pushed a law that would require the killing of babies born alive after unsuccessful abortions.
That is a deliberate, non-factual distortion of Obama's actions as a state legislator. He did not "push[] a law that would require the killing of babies born alive after unsuccessful abortions"; he opposed a proposed state law that would have designated any fetus that survived an abortion -- even pre-viable ones that cannot survive outside the womb -- as a "human person" and making it a crime to allow them to die (again, even if they cannot survive outside the womb). Obama made a distinction between viable and pre-viable fetuses and claimed that Illinois law already required doctors to provide medical treatment for all children born after abortions who demonstrated viability.
Farah also throws in an apparently obligatory Nazi reference: "I'm sure you would not want to invoke God's blessing on the inauguration of a figure like Adolf Hitler, whose rise to power brought the destruction of millions of lives." Farah clearly wants you to think -- as do manyWNDcolumnists -- that Obama and Hitler are interchangable.
Farah concludes with more extreme rhetoric: "God will not bless the Obama administration's plans for murder, no matter what you say on Jan. 20. It's time for Rick Warren to decide whether he stands with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or if he stands with the world and his "friend," Barack Hussein Obama."
Farah's refusal to get basic facts straight on Obama reflects poorly on the rest of WND -- though, really, it's more of a symptom of WND's fabulist malaise.
New Article: Faith2Hate Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is WorldNetDaily columnist Janet Folger Porter misusing the resources of her Faith2Action organization for her own personal anti-Obama crusade? Read more >>
WND Resumes Creepy Focus on Female Teachers Having Sex With Students Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've previouslydetailed WorldNetDaily's weird, highly seclective obsession with female teachers (and only female teachers) who work in public schools (and only those who work at public schools) who get romantically involved with their students.
The obsession flares up again in a Dec. 20 article by Drew Zahn carrying the headline "'Cougars' preying in the classroom: Why are so many female teachers targeting boys for sexual abuse?" The word "cougar" to describe a female teenager preying on students appears nowhere in the article itself, and Zahn really doesn't prove that "female teachers targeting boys for sexual abuse" is the problem the headline suggests.
Like WND managing editor David Kupelian before him, Zahn leans heavily on a 2004 study by Charol Shakeshaft, commissioned by the Department of Education that painted the teacher-student sex problem as worse than the recent Catholic priest sex abuse scandals. As we pointed out when Kupelian cited Shakeshaft's study, her numbers are extrapolated from other previous surveys -- her study is subtitled "A Synthesis of Existing Literature" -- and she does no direct research to support them. And even Kupelian conceded that one criticism of Shakeshaft's work called it "a misuse of the data" and that Shakeshaft herself "acknowledged many factors could alter the analysis."
Further, as a June 2004 Washington Times article noted, the National Education Association criticized Shakeshaft's study for conflating reports of harrassment with reports of actual sexual abuse.
None of these caveats about or criticisms of Shakeshaft's study appear in Zahn's article.
Zahn goes on to write: "If female employees are responsible for 40 percent of those crimes, that means America could be facing an average of more than 11,000 instances of women abusing students in school each year – in other words, more cases in one year than were reported in 50 years of Catholic priest abuse." But raw numbers are irrelevant; what is the percentage of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse versus the percentage of female teachers? Zahn doesn't answer that question.
Zahn also writes that, according to Shakeshaft, "nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention by school employees, and in those cases, 40 percent of the perpetrators were women." That would mean that 60 percent of the perpretrators are men. Zahn doesn't explain why he's focusing on why "so many female teachers targeting boys for sexual abuse" when so many more male teachers are doing the same thing. If there are more male teachers who are sexual predators than female ones, isn't that the bigger problem?
Zahn concludes by citing Kupelian himself, repeating his previous claims that "the ultimate answer ... is rooted in a society that has lost its spiritual moorings." But as we also pointed out when Kupelian first asserted this, Kupelian seems unable to grasp the idea that one doesn't have to be a fundamentalist Christian like himself to oppose adults having sex with minors. After all, there is a nonreligous basis for laws against sex with minors -- you don't have to be a fundie to agree that a minor cannot consent to sex by virtue of simply being a minor.
Again, we have to ask: Why the creepy obsession? Why only female teachers when the problem with male teachers is larger? And why only at public schools when the problem exists at private religious schools as well (as we've noted)?
Actually, the answer to the latter question is pretty easy: WND's employees, almost to a person, homeschool their children, and that leads to a corresponding hatred of "government schools" (never mind that sexual abuse also occurs to homeschooled children as well).
Which leaves the answer to the former question. There's some clear misogyny going on here, since WND refuses to expose male teachers to the same criticism. But how deep is it? Do Joseph Farah, Kupelian, Zahn, et al, think their wives should be little more than barefoot and pregnant, stuck at home until the last kid is married off?
How about shedding some light on this, guys?
UPDATE: WND has changed the headline to get rid of the "cougar" reference; it now reads, "Why are women teachers so hot for students?"
Obama-Nazi Reference of the Day Topic: WorldNetDaily
Returning to Nazi Dr. Goebbels, the master of spin and propaganda who continued the epigraph above with these sinister words: "It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
How are Goebbels' ideas exemplified today? Pick your contemporary political hack – Blagojevich, Obama, Bush, Kennedy, Clinton, Paterson, Schwarzenegger, Pelosi, Harry Reid, McCain, Kwame Kilpatrick – they all have in one way or another perverted truth as the "mortal enemy of the lie," thereby making truth (free-market capitalism, conservatism, Judeo-Christianity) "the greatest enemy of the State."
[...]
As [New York] Gov. [David] Paterson prepares to raise taxes and cut services in the Empire State, as Obama prepares for his coronation to be president of the United States where he will no doubt raise taxes and nationalize more private industry under federal control, instead of jubilation, all I hear ringing in my ears is the eternal lie of Joseph Goebbels who said, "Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character."
This is at least the third time that Washington has likened Obama to Nazis. In a May 29 column, he wrote:
How else could any political figure attract over 75,000 people standing for hours in the hot sun of Oregon just for a glimpse of this false political messiah named Barack Obama? An utterly vacuous man who just the other day said these sinister words that would make Goebbels blush with envy as the multitudes of "useful idiots" hung on his every word, saluting him with multiple ovations.
On July 10, Washington praised a college-bound student who wrote, "Just because Obama can write up and deliver a speech better than others does not mean he is the best candidate. If I remember correctly, Adolf Hitler and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick convinced mass numbers of people that they were respectable through dialogue."
Sheppard Still Bamboozling on Global Warming Topic: NewsBusters
A Dec. 14 NewsBusters post by Noel Sheppard, in bashing the Associated Press, suggests that the existence of cold weather in parts of the country means that global warming doesn't exist:
What kind of media outlet would publish this hysterical nonsense with much of the nation in the grips of extremely harsh winter conditions? Does the AP have any idea?
It snowed in Houston Wednesday tying a record for the earliest appearance of the white stuff in the city's history.
There were rare snowfalls in Southern Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi Thursday.
They're expecting possible record-breaking cold in the Pacific Northwest.
Record cold in Montana.
Record cold in Denver.
Supposed to snow in the San Francisco Bay Area Monday.
And the AP thinks we're running out of time to solve global warming.
In fact, as Media Matters points out, most credible climate scientists reject the notion that short-term changes in weather, let alone individual storms, bear any relevance to the global warming debate. And Sheppard offers no evidence to support his contention.
WND Repeats Corsi Claim Backed Up by Bogus Documents Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's just a weekend full of lies at WorldNetDaily, it appears.
A Dec. 20 WND article on an unsubstantiated claim that Jerome Corsi's detention in Kenya was "reportedly orchestrated" by Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga (only anonymous "sources inside Kenya" are cited) asserts that while in Kenya, Corsi obtained "documentary evidence showing Obama helped raise nearly $1 million for Odinga's presidential campaign in three separate visits Odinga made to the U.S. with the assistance of Obama's staff."
As we detailed, that "documentary evidence" is an apparent recreation of a document PolitiFact debunked earlier this year, several months before Corsi first made his claim. The PolitiFactversion -- which it says it obtained from the originators of the chain email, Celeste and Loren Davis, who "lived and worked in Kenya for the past 12 years" -- appears to have been run through a fax machine a few times, making the type fuzzy. Corsi's version, meanwhile, has clean type in an completely different typeface and format, and it appears to introduce a typo or two from the PolitiFact version.
The article also repeats Corsi's claim that he obtained "2006 e-mail documents handed to him in Kenya by former ODM party members and validated by the sources as authentic that established Obama designated Mark Lippert in his U.S. Senate office to be the go-between in communications with Odinga." But those documents -- a pair of emails -- "appear not to have been written by a native English speaker," as Politco's Ben Smith pointed out.
Why is WND still peddling claims that have been discredited? Do Corsi and Joseph Farah hate Obama that much that they simply can't be bothered to tell the truth?
Farah Lies About WND's Reporting on Obama Birth Certificate Topic: WorldNetDaily
The good news: Joseph Farah finally acknowledges the existence of his own website's previous reporting on Barack Obama's birth certificate.
The bad news: He lies to his readers about it.
In his Dec. 20 column, Farah begins truthfully by noting: "From Media Matters to Keith Olbermann to Democratic members of Congress, they are all eagerly attributing to WND a definitive finding that Barack Hussein Obama's website displays an actual copy of his birth certificate." But then the lies begin when he states: "There's just one problem. Nothing could be further from the truth."
Farah continues:
Here's an example. It's a constituent letter from Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash. He writes: "As you know, President-Elect Obama has indeed provided his actual paper Certification of Live Birth to several media organizations, as well as the Annenberg Foundation's non-partisan 'Factcheck.org' website and the conservative news website WorldNetDaily, which reported that a WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic.' In fact, all of these groups have recognized that the president elect's actual birth certificate document is real and genuine."
That statement is totally and obviously false.
It's too bad contempt of Congress charges don't work in reverse – so that citizens could jail members who lie to them.
At no time did Obama ever make his actual birth certificate available to WND – or any other news organization.
WND did offer up to forgery experts the facsimile of a partial birth certificate posted on his website. None of them could report conclusively that the electronic image was authentic or that it was a forgery.
A separate WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren't originally there.
At no point does the August article express any doubt about whether the "forgery experts" could "report conclusively that the electronic image was authentic or that it was a forgery" as Farah claims; it unmabiguously and definitively states that "forgery experts found the document to be authentic."
As for the claim that "At no time did Obama ever make his actual birth certificate available to WND – or any other news organization," here's what the August article also stated (emphasis added):
However, FactChecker.org [sic] says it obtained Obama's actual birth certificate and that the document was indeed real. The site discredited some of the claims of Internet bloggers, such as that the certificate as viewed in a scanned copy released by Obama's campaign lacked a raised seal. FactChecker.org [sic] also established that many of the alleged flaws in the document noted by bloggers were caused by the scanning of the document.
Indeed, FactCheck.org states that it has "seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate," adding, "We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship."
Curiously, Farah does not suply a link to that August article in his column so his readers could judge for themselves. What is Farah afraid of?
Having lied about his website's own reporting, Farah then tries to spin it away:
But, here's the rub. Even if the image is authentic, which remains under serious question, it proves nothing. It is not a complete birth certificate. It doesn't answer the key questions as to whether Obama was indeed born in Hawaii, as he claims.
[...]
If anything, the fact that members of Congress and Obama's running dog lackeys in the media have to rely on WND to prove their candidate's constitutionally viability to serve should raise red flags from coast to coast.
[...]
The overwhelming preponderance of reports by WND on this matter raise serious questions about the eligibility of Obama to serve as president. Therefore, quoting one sentence out of context in one report represents a serious and deliberate distortion by those who are grasping at straws to justify their own predetermination of the facts.
Farah overlooks the fact that the reason that report is being cited is because it contradicts WND's subsequent reporting on the birth certificate, and neither Farah nor WND has offered an honest explanation of the chasm between the two -- or why it has refused to acknowedge the existence of that August 23 report in its subsequent reporting. The fact that "The overwhelming preponderance of reports by WND on this matter raise serious questions about the eligibility of Obama to serve as president" doesn't mean those reports are true.
And what, exactly, is the false context in repeating the August article's unambiguous statement that "A separate WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic"? Farah doesn't explain.
Farah also fails to explain away another statement in that August article: that Philip Berg's lawsuit charging that Obama is not a natural-born citizen in part "relies on discredited claims."
The fact that Farah is so blatantly lying about his own website's report about the birth certificate demonstrates just how far gone around the bend he is on the issue. He really is determined to destroy Obama at any cost -- including the truth.
Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of "mother earth."
The natural consequences of such behavior – pregnancy an childbirth – and the associated financial burdens of "unplanned parenthood" were easily offset. One could either choose to engage in homosexual conduct or – with child sacrifice available on demand – could simply take part in another fertility ceremony to "terminate" the unwanted child.
Modern liberalism deviates little from its ancient predecessor. While its macabre rituals have been sanitized with flowery and euphemistic terms of art, its core tenets and practices remain eerily similar.
[...]
Nonetheless, the aforementioned pillars of postmodern Baalism – abortion, sexual relativism and radical environmentalism – will almost certainly make rapid headway over the next four to eight years, with or without help from the Christian left. The gods of liberalism have a new high priest in Barack Obama, and enjoy many devout followers in the Democratic-controlled Congress, liberal media and halls of academia.
Both Obama's social agenda and that of the 111th Congress are rife with unfettered pro-abortion, freedom-chilling, pro-homosexual and power-grabbing environmentalist objectives. The same kind of "hope, action and change," I suppose, that was swallowed up by the Baalist Canaanites of old.
