AIM Repeats Bogus Claim on DOJ, Military Votes Topic: Accuracy in Media
An Aug. 4 Accuracy in Media column by Paul R. Hollrah regurgitates the baseless claim that "the Obama Justice Department is now urging the states to use waivers to avoid having to abide by provisions of the MOVE Act," which sets standards for state and local officials to get absentee ballots to members of the military in time to be counted in elections.
In fact, there is no evidence that DOJ is "urging" states to apply for waivers; even the FoxNews.com article Hollrah cites to support his claim offers no direct evidence of DOJ officials doing anything beyond instructing officials about the law, which includes a waiver process that must be signed off on by both DOJ and Department of Defense officials.
Further, the two former litigators in the Voting Rights Section pushing this accusation are both conservative activists, and one, J. Christian Adams, has been a key figure in pushing bogus allegations regarding the DOJ's investigation of the New Black Panther Party. Adams has since walked back the allegation, now claiming that he didn't say DOJ was deliberately suppressing military votes.
NewsBusters Upset That Historic Event Is Described As Historic Topic: Media Research Center
MRC VP Brent Baker was channeling Stephen Colbert -- for him, the facts really do have a liberal bias.
In an Aug. 6 MRC item, Baker portrayed the evening news programs' noting the historic nature of Elena Kagan being confirmed to the Supreme Court -- making the first time in American history that three women have sat on the high court -- as making them, in the words of Baker's headine, "as Giddy as Liberal Democrats":
“The number that really excited Democrats is three: Think Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan,” NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell excitedly announced Thursday night while leading into a clip of Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, who exclaimed as he bounced on his heels on the Senate floor: “Three women will serve together on the United States Supreme Court for the first time in our nation's history!”
The news equally excited the TV network journalists. “History was made in this country today when the Senate confirmed Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court,” declared fill-in NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt as viewers were treated to a “Making History” on-screen graphic.
“Tonight on World News, a day of high court history. Elena Kagan confirmed. For the first time ever, three women will be part of deciding the law of the land,” spouted a giddy Diane Sawyer in matching NBC by making Kagan her lead story. Sawyer could hardly contain her excitement[.]
Baker, it seems, has a little trouble letting his partisan hate blind him to history.
Shocker: WND Debunks Crazy Right-Wing Talking Point Topic: WorldNetDaily
Surprisingly, it appears there are things too crazy for even WorldNetDaily to promote.
Right Wing Watch notes that an Aug. 3 WND article shoots down the idea that right-wingers don't have to recognize court decisions they didn't like by claiming that the Supreme Court has "original jurisdiction" in "all cases...in which a State shall be Party." WND cites not one but two "constitutional experts" pointing out that the "original jurisdiction" is not exclusive.
Bozell's Newsweek Tunnel Vision Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's notorious tunnel vision surfaces yet again in Brent Bozell's Aug. 4 column, which begins:
There’s something oddly funny about the cluelessness of liberal media companies when their ratings fall or their subscriptions collapse. They just refuse to admit, or even consider that the business problem could be (at least in part) their own incessant liberal agitating. Instead, they seem to double down and make things even worse.
[...]
Here’s another case in point: Newsweek’s subscriptions collapsed a couple of years back. How could it not be (at least in part) the umpteen Obama-worshipping cover stories that caused some subscribers to cancel. Then they really abandoned the “News” half of their title and wrote cover stories like “We’re All Socialists Now” and “Is Your Baby Racist?”
Newsweek was put on the market, and the market has spoken: a $1 sale.
By the same logic, the fact that conservative newspapers like the Washington Times, the Pitsburgh Tribune-Review and the New York Post do not make enough money to be viable, and remain in operation only through the good graces of their billionaire owners, must mean that their conservative-leaning content does not sell. Of course, Bozell will never admit such a thing, even though it's more true than his rantings about Newsweek.
An Aug. 4 CNSNews.com article by Matt Cover carries the headline, "Republicans Blast ‘Livable Communities’ Bill As Washington-Based Central Planning for Cities and Towns," and the second paragraph states that "Similar legislation in the House has been criticized by Republicans on the House Budget Committee, who charge that 'the program’s aim is to impose a Washington-based, central planning model on localities across the country.'"
That paragraph (which links to a Republican press release) is the only evidence provided to support the headline's claim; Cover strangely doesn't write further about what's in the press release. The rest of Cover's article is devoted to a mostly straightforward explanation of what the bill actually includes, as well as Sen. Chris Dodd pointing out that -- in contradition to the headline and Cover's inintial framing -- the program is voluntary.
If the central premise of Cover's article is disproved by Cover himself, why does this article exist?
Coulter Quotes From Discredited Author Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ann Coulter writes in her Aug. 4 syndicated column:
Consider the story of one family of illegal immigrants described in the Spring 2005 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons:
"Cristobal Silverio came illegally from Oxtotilan, Mexico, in 1997 and brought his wife Felipa, plus three children aged 19, 12 and 8. Felipa ... gave birth to a new daughter, her anchor baby, named Flor. Flor was premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator, and cost San Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, (Felipa's 19-year-old daughter) Lourdes plus her illegal alien husband produced their own anchor baby, Esmeralda. Grandma Felipa created a second anchor baby, Cristian. ... The two Silverio anchor babies generate $1,000 per month in public welfare funding. Flor gets $600 per month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. Cristobal and Felipa last year earned $18,000 picking fruit. Flor and Cristian were paid $12,000 for being anchor babies."
In the Silverios' munificent new hometown of Stockton, Calif., 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in 2003 in the San Joaquin General Hospital were anchor babies. As of this month, Stockton is $23 million in the hole.
This anecdote comes from an article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons by Madeleine Cosman, which is little more than a anti-immigrant screed. In the same article, Cosman forwarded the completely false claim that "in 40 years only 900 people were afflicted" by leprosy, but that there had been "more than 7,000 cases of leprosy" in "the past three years."
The anecdote quoted by Coulter and Cosman came from a Wall Street Journalarticle making the case that stricter border enforcement is causing the counterintuitive effect of more illegal immigrants choosing to stay in the U.S. rather than migrating back to Mexico. There's a lot of selective quoting going on to hide that aspect of the article, which, of course, isn't as pejorative as Cosman and Coulter make it out to be.
For Jerome Corsi, copying-and-pasting is easier than telling the truth.
A few weeks back, we noted that Corsi, in an article on the vote for a new Kenyan constitution, repeated falsehoods that Obama campaigned for Raila Odinga during a visit to Kenya in 2006 and "raised almost $1 million for Odinga during the run-up to Kenya's 2007 presidential election."
Corsi has written an Aug. 4 article on the results of the election -- and he copy-and-pastes the exact same falsehood-ridden passage about Obama and Kenya into it.
CNS Ignores Evidence Of Tea Party Group's Racism Topic: CNSNews.com
An Aug. 5 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr reports that "Black conservative leaders from around the country gathered in Washington on Wednesday to denounce the NAACP for its resolution charging that elements of the Tea Party movement are racist," at an event "organized by the Tea Party Express." But Starr is silent on the reason the Tea Party Express held this event -- an effort to counter racially inflammatory remarks by own of its own former officials.
Mark Williams is the Tea Party Express spokesman (and former vice chairman of the PAC that operates the group) who wrote a blog post mocking NAACP president Ben Jealous and portraying blacks as wanting the return of slavery so whites will take care of them. Tea Party Federation publicly repudiated Williams and kicked the Tea Party Express out of the movement. As TPM points out, Williams was unmistakably the reason for the Tea Party Express event, even though nobody on the podium would admit it.
Even though this history is key to the event in question, Starr doesn't mention any of it.
In a related article interviewing event attendee Alan Keyes -- in which he asserts that "President Barack Obama and liberals in Congress are promoting a dependence on government that mirrors slavery" -- Starr also fails to mention the Williams incident, even though he was not afraid to talk about it and even criticized Williams over it, and even though Starr describes Keyes as among "more than a dozen other black conservative leaders at a gathering in Washington to condemn accusations by the NAACP that the Tea Party movement has a racist faction."
President Barack Obama’s appearance last week on “The View” was his third time on the show.
He was scheduled to speak to the Boy Scouts of America on the same day that he taped “The View.” Obama is the honorary chairman of the organization, but he stiffed the scouts to go on a daytime TV talk show, and followed that up with fundraising events in hopes of fattening coffers for upcoming midterm elections.
In fact, Obama was never scheduled to appear in person at the Boy Scout Jamboree. As Fox News reported, the Boy Scouts knew two months prior to the Jamboree that Obama would not be able to attend.
Hirsen also fails to mention that Obama has welcomed Boy Scouts into the Oval Office twice during his presidency, most recently on July 12, or that Obama supplied a videotaped message to the Jamboree. He also fails to mention that Ronald Reagan also failed to attend a Boy Scout Jamboree during his presidency.
Graham Defends Ingraham's Stereotypical Attack on Obama Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham took offense when Stephen Colbert highlighted a passage in Laura Ingraham's parody book "The Obama Diaries," in which she depicts Michelle Obama as repeatedly eating ribs, as being among "the most hideous, hackneyed racial stereotypes." Not because Ingraham did anything wrong, but because Colbert pointed it out.
What? All those Chili’s 'I want my baby back, baby back, baby back' ads were only designed for black customers?" Graham wrote in an Aug. 4 NewsBusters post. "Obviously, there are more hackneyed culinary stereotypes than that."
Really? A TV ad with a catchy tune is more offensive than depicting a black woman as obsessed with eating ribs? Is Graham so on-message with the right-wing agenda that he is unable to criticize conservatives for doing something that is obviously questionable?
Graham concludes his post by spinning a conspiracy: "Since these shows are pre-taped and edited, do you ever wonder whether conservatives get some of their slams edited out before the show is aired? Have you ever seen Stewart or Colbert successfully swatted by a conservative? Ingraham's interview had some slice-and-dice in it, I think."
Because, you know, conservatives would never do that.
WND Columnist: More Gay-Haters Needed Topic: WorldNetDaily
Telling lies isn't frowned upon at WorldNetDaily -- at least, it isn't when those lies are about President Obama.
So when Pieder Beeli's first WND column in June proved to be not only extrordinarily hateful of Obama (Beeli declared that, based on what Obama purportedly "implied" as opposed to what he "explicitly stated," Obama has a "fealty toward Islam") but also wildly inaccurate, you knew he was guaranteed a return appearance.
And return he does in a Aug. 4 column, in which Beeli manages to stay away from Obama smears and falsehoods. He does, however, list "nine examples of hate groups that can enrich any neighborhood," with the intent of illustrating how "we can only truly love someone to the extent that we hate the bad and evil turns by which human nature may entreat him." Among the benign hatreds (drunk driving, crime) and the predictably right-wing ones ("the deflating of economic dreams," "a political culture that opposes individual wealth creation") is this:
Hatred for unnatural and perverse sexualities. What if the average shortening of one's life due to homosexual behavior was four times greater than that due to obesity and poor diet, or three times greater than that due to heavy smoking? Would that be grounds to attach the "perverse" or "unnatural" label to some sort of consensual adult sexual activity? Further, what if the pathological demographic indices – violent crime, suicide, depression, pedophilia – further correlated with increased acceptance of homosexuality? Would it be love toward the individual considering such a lifestyle, or would it be hate? Wouldn't it be necessary to hate sexual perversity in order to truly love people considering it?
Beeli thinks not enough people hate gays, a hate he claims is "consistent with a loving American citizen." Of course, WND hates gays too, so Beeli continues to fit right in.
“You said at a recent Catholic Community Conference that your favorite word was ‘The Word, as in the word made flesh,’ and that we need to quote, ‘give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the Word.’ So, when was the Word made flesh? Was it at the Annunciation, when Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Sprit, as the Creed says, or was it at the Nativity when he was born of the Virgin Mary? And when did the Word get the right to life?”
When the answer Pelosi provided was deemed insufficient, CNS decided to press the issue:
CNSNews.com then sent an e-mail to the speaker’s press secretary, Nadeam Elshami, seeking to clarify the speaker’s answer. The e-mail said:
“Speaker Pelosi said at a Catholic Community Conference that her favorite word was ‘the Word’ as in ‘the Word made flesh’ and that we ‘need to [give] voice to what that means in terms of public policy.’ We’d like to clarify the speaker’s position on this: Did Jesus have the right to life from the moment of conception?”
In an e-mailed response, the press secretary wrote: “The speaker answered the question. Thanks.”
CNS doesn't seem to care about actual news, only in attacking the Obama administration with gotchas. As we'venoted, CNS even engages in gotcha Freedom of Information Act requests.
Chuck Norris writes in his Aug. 2 WorldNetDaily column:
Now, it finally is coming to light why back on Dec. 16, 2009, Obama signed an executive order "designating Interpol [International Criminal Police Organization] as a public international organization entitled to enjoy certain privileges, exemptions and immunities."
Glenn Beck spoke for a host of other government watchdogs back then, when he asked on the air on his Jan. 7 show, "We've been asking ever since it was signed: Why? Who can tell me what special-interest group asked for this? If it were about terror, why not tell us that when he signed it? This Congress attacks our CIA and FBI, but Interpol gets immunity? Why? It makes no sense."
It all comes down to one basic verb. Can you find it in the following paragraph?
Obama's executive order reads, "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) ..."
There's the magic verb: "to extend"!
As I wrote in an earlier column on Interpol, is it also just coincidental that Interpol is exempt from typical American search-and-seizure laws?
Anyone still not connecting the dots?
In fact, as was detailed when Glenn Beck first pushed the claim, the executive order does not give Interpol the power to arrest U.S. citizens, and Interpol already had immunity from lawsuits in the U.S. -- granted by President Reagan! Further, Interpol is not a traditional police force that his officers who arrest people; its functions are mostly investigative and record-keeping, and local law enforcement is used to conduct any actual arrests.
NewsBusters' Selective Analysis of Clinton Wedding Coverage Topic: NewsBusters
An Aug. 2 NewsBusters post by Nathan Burchfiel offers a rather selective approach to examining coverage of Chelsea Clinton's wedding and complaining it got more coverage than Jenna Bush's wedding, implying that this was yet another example of liberal bias:
The broadcast networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - aired 87 stories about Clinton's July 31 nuptials between July 25 and August 1. Four major newspapers - The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today - printed 21 stories during the same time period.
[...]
NBC led all coverage of Clinton's wedding with 59 stories during the period examined, almost as many as all three networks combined reported on the wedding of former first daughter Jenna Bush in 2008. ABC, CBS and NBC aired a total of 59 stories about Bush's wedding during the same time period surrounding the May 11, 2008, event.
The 48-percent increase in coverage on the networks was similar to the 52-percent increase in coverage of Clinton's wedding over Bush's in the four major newspapers. The publications ran 21 stories about Bush's wedding compared to 32 about Clinton's.
Further, Fox News had a reporter on the scene in the town where they got married, filing numerous reports throughout the day, as "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart highlighted.
While there arguably was overcoverage of Chelsea's wedding, let's not pretend, as Burchfiel does, that it was only the so-called "liberal media" that was doing it.
Cliff Kincaid Anti-Gay Freakout Watch Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid's Aug. 1 Accuracy in Media column is obsessed with the sexuality of Bradley Manning, the soldier suspected of passing classified documents about the war in Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.
Kincaid asserts that "reliable reports suggest" Manning "was not only a homosexual but was considering a sex change." Then again, Kincaid considers a guy who thinks the Nazi party began as a "private homosexual military force" to be reliable, so perhaps his judgment on such issues is less than stellar.
As could be expected, Kincaid uses manning to argue against repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, another Kincaid obsession:
In a clear indication that the law was being ignored by the Obama Administration, the evidence demonstrates that Manning was continuing to serve after openly flaunting his homosexuality, including on Facebook.
Who in the Obama Administration—and the Department of Defense—was aware of his conduct and looked the other way? Was Manning given a pass because his “lifestyle” was considered to be in favor and acceptable under the Obama Administration?
Now, because of the obvious mishandling of this homosexual ticking time bomb, it appears that the United States, its soldiers, and relations with countries in the region will pay the price. Lives—and a war on terrorism in Afghanistan—could be lost.
The revelations of Manning’s openly pro-homosexual conduct suggest that a more liberal Department of Defense policy, in deference to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief, had already been in effect and has now backfired in a big way. The result could be not only the loss of the lives of U.S. soldiers, as a result of the enemy understanding U.S. intelligence sources and methods, but damaged relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan and a possible U.S. military defeat in the region as a whole.
[...]
It will be interesting to see how the pro-homosexual U.S. media deal with the shocking revelations about Manning—and whether they investigate whether he was part of a secret homosexual network in the military that is currently working with WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, once part of a group called the “International Subversives.”
That's just wild, hate-driven speculation. But Kincaid wants to see gays dead, so that's to be expected.
