Les Kinsolving Homophobic Freak-Out Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Les Kinsolving begins his April 5 column this way:
One of the best veteran reporters and columnists in our nation's capital is Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times.
That is probably why he was leaked a copy of our armed forces training material for 2.2 million active and reserve troops, as a prelude to opening the ranks to self-announced homosexual males and lesbian females.
Well, no. The more likely reason Scarborough was leaked the manual is that he's a right-wing hack, as we documented back in 2007 with his attempt to smear a CIA official who was an outsider to the particular management regime he favored (and was probably in bed with).
But you'll notice that the subject of the leaked manual involved "self-announced homosexual males and lesbian females." Cue another homophobic freak-out by Kinsolving!
Noting a statement from the man ual that ""Commanders may honor a request not to shower with known-gay service members," Kinsolving adds:
In a brief interview with Scarborough, I cited that and asked: "If they allow that refuge from the possibility of excessively peering homosexual eyes in the showers, what about the presence of peering by announced homosexuals in the latrines?"
Scarborough replied, "Nothing at all about that in that training material!"
Kinsolving went on to declare "grim news" the Supreme Court has ruled that "private consensual sexual activity to include consensual sodomy, regardless of sexual orientation, is a protected liberty under the 14th Amendment." Then he writes:
QUESTION: Do the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces know of any sexual orientation with a higher rate of AIDS and syphilis than homosexuality, which has led to so many thousands of deaths? And if homosexuals in our armed forces are medically examined for AIDS and syphilis when they are accepted into the armed services, should they not be re-examined whenever they return from leave – given the possibility of an AIDS- or syphilis-infected civilian lover, together with this homosexual armed forces member's possible promiscuity in search for others in barracks or aboard ship?
This is the kind of thing that happens when a hack and a hater (who is also a hack) get together.
NewsBusters Thinks Dead Afghan Troops Are Obama's 'Problem' Topic: NewsBusters
In an April 5 NewsBusters post, Rusty Weiss takes offense at the idea that, as one news article reported, "many of America's problems predated [Obama's] presidency." Weiss reported with "a short list of American problems since Obama took office," among them being "858 U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan since Obama’s inauguration."
You gotta love a conservative declaring dead soldiers fighting for American freedom to be a "problem."
And what does Weiss link to as evidence for this claim? A certain CNSNews.com article. If you were wondering why CNS has been doing monthly body counts on Afghanistan when it felt no need to do so while soldiers were dying under a Republican president, you now have your answer.
(And who invaded Afghanistan in the first place, only to neglect it for a war elsewhere, causing the initial gains to be negated? Hint: Not Obama.)
Weiss also lists as an Obama "problem" the claim that he "Tripled the national deficit in his first year in office." Actually, the fiscal year 2009 budget deficit was mostly the consequence of Bush-era policies. Perhaps he shouldn't be citing as evidence Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft, better known as the Dumbest Man on the Internet.
CNS Columnist Likens Planned Parenthood To Tuskegee Experiment Topic: CNSNews.com
The disturbing parallels that exist between a government cover-up decades ago and the lies propagated by Planned Parenthood today should serve as a wake-up call to those who may not yet know the frightening reality behind what Planned Parenthood practices.
Imagine reading this headline in your local newspaper: If the Tuskegee experiments were being run by Planned Parenthood today, Congress would increase its funding!
Would you be outraged? Presumably, you would be. Yet the sad fact is that this idea is not too far-fetched.
[...]
Today, Planned Parenthood uses the same sort of tactic on our young people that was employed at Tuskegee. Even though these people are not herded into a particular government facility to participate in testing, the results are similar. And Planned Parenthood’s tactic is far more devious.
Much like the Tuskegee research subjects, the young people who are unfortunate enough to visit a Planned Parenthood office do not receive adequate information about the birth control pill prior to ingesting it. They are not informed that the pill can kill a preborn child. They are not warned that the pill can harm them physically, emotionally or even—depending on their medical history—result in their death.
Our teens are human guinea pigs who are being deceived by an organization that receives more than a third of its funding from the federal government.
Newsmax Thrilled That Trump Promoted Its Meaningless Poll Topic: Newsmax
An April 4 Newsmax article gets very meta as it touts how Donald Trump -- whose possible presidential candidacy it has promoting for months -- said in an appearance on "Fox & Friends" that "A Newsmax poll said I’m winning."
That, of course, would be one of Newsmax's patented opt-in online polls that is relentlessly promoted online. This one seems to be specifically designed to boost Trump's viability as a candidate (not to mention massage Trump's ego) by making it mostly about him and whether he is "right in demanding that Pres. Obama release his birth certificate."
But the skewed, meaningless poll results have not been released publicly; the article states that Trump was referring to "early results" from the poll.B ut how could he know those results? The only possible explanation is that Newsmax told him.
As an opt-in poll, the results were already untrustworthy. But Newsmax is apparently so in the tank for Trump that it's sharing those untrustworthy poll numbers with him. Why trust anything Newsmax has to say about Trump?
Meanwhile, the fluffing of Trump at Newsmax is not unanimous. John LeBoutillier urges people to fight "the allure of the billionaire savior," adding, "Donald Trump is all about himself. Period. Will it become The Trump White House if he wins?"
WorldNetDaily To Become Just WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
An April 3 WorldNetDaily article announces that the website's name is about to change:
WorldNetDaily is changing its name, but Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah wants everyone to know they can continue to expect the same fiercely independent commitment to the truth and watchdog journalism.
Of course, the idea that WND has a "commitment to the truth" is ludicrous, not to mention patentlyfalse.
The article also states that on top of a new logo, later this year WND will launch "its first major redesign since the site was founded in 1997," which even WND editor Joseph Farah concedes comes "about 10 years late." We can't argue with that.
UPDATE: Commenters (to me and on Facebook) wonder: The proclaimed reason for the name change may be "a marketing decision based on the ease of remembering a three-letter site amid the increasing noise and clutter of an Internet with hundreds of millions of competing sites," but is the real motivation an attempt to distance itself from nicknames like WingNutDaily and WorldNutDaily?
MRC's Hypocritial Outrage Over Jesse Ventura Topic: NewsBusters
In an April 4 NewsBusters post, Scott Whitlock is offended that ABC "offered 9/11 truther Jesse Ventura a platform to hype his conspiracy theories and smear the U.S. government as 'Nazi.'" Whitlock huffed, "why does ABC giving Ventura opportunities to promote such claims?"
Whitlock might have a little more credibility if one of his fellow NewsBusters bloggers wasn't actively helping Ventura to spread his conspiracies.
As we've detailed in the MRC's long list of double standards, NewsBusters associate editor -- and fellow MRC employee -- Noel Sheppard played a starring role in an episode of Ventura's TruTV show "Conspiracy Theory" focusing on global warming, spinning global warming as "power and money and control of the population" and slipping Ventura "a list of scientists that I want you to talk to. You will learn a lot from these folks."
Is George Stepanopoulos questioning Ventura on "GMA" really more embarrassing than Sheppard's thespian turn on Ventura's own show?
WND's Klein Smears Vartan Gregorian -- Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Why does Aaron Klein hate Vartan Gregorian?
Last year, Klein plucked the Carnegie Corporation chief out of obscurity to smear him in a WorldNetDaily article as an Islamist extremist who is "closely tied to the Muslim leaders behind a proposed controversial Islamic cultural center to be built near the site of the 9/11 attacks." Klein didn't mention that by the same standard he was using to smear Gregorian -- being on the board of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum -- Rudy Guiliani, Michael Bloomberg, 9/11 widow Debra Burlingame, and all four living former presidents are also "closely tied" to the " ‘Ground Zero' imam." Klein central concept that Gregorian is some kind of Islamist extremist is laughable given his resume, which also including being president of Brown University and president of the New York Public Library, not exactly hotbeds of extremism (though Klein might belive differently) and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from none other than President Bush.
That smear wasn't enough for Klein; he followed up with an article portraying President Obama appointment of Gregorian to Commission on White House Fellowships as payback for his alleged role in choosing Obama to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the 1990s. Klein apparently believes that nothing screams "payoff" more than an appointment to a minor government board.
Klein went at it again in a March 31 WND article, this time drawing a even more specious guilt-by-assocation attack: Gregorian served on an advisory board in 2001 that developed the "Responsibility to Protect" policy invoked by Obama to launch military action against Libya. No, really, that's all Klein has.
Having exhausted that line of reasoning rather quickly, Klein spends the rest of his article rehashing old smears, such as his claim that "WND previously reported documentation shows Gregorian was central in the recruitment of Obama in 1995 to serve as the first chairman of an education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge." In fact, as we documented, Klein's "documentation" is specious -- just a single letter asking CAC founder Bill Ayers to "compose the governing board" of the Challenge's collaborative project with "people who reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of Chicago."
Klein then claimed that "Ayers and other founding Challenge members then recruited Obama to serve as the project chairman." But more credible sources have reported that Ayers had nothing to do with the recruitment of Obama.
Klein's repeated attacks on Gregorian appear to be more than coincidence -- they seem personal. What did Gregorian do to Klein that is apparently motivating this campaign of guilt-by-association revenge?
With the new month comes yet another body count report from from CNSNews.com's Edwin Mora. This time, he makes a big deal out of, as the headline states, "60% of U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan Have Occurred Since Obama Was Inaugurated in 2009."
As we've come to expect, the word "Iraq" appears nowhere in Mora's article; thus, Mora fails to put the Afghan casualties into perspective by ignoring the fact that the U.S. casualty rate in Iraq at the height of the Iraq war was much higher.
NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily's Favorite African Dictator Topic: WorldNetDaily
Why is WND backing Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo, who lost an election but won't leave office even as his followers commit human rights violations? Because he claims to be a Christian, and because his opponent is a Muslim. That's it. Read more >>
AIM's Kincaid Still Thinks He's A Journalist Topic: Accuracy in Media
An April 3 Politco article on the inferiority of Republican opposition research quotes Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid denouncing the idea that he's in the opposition research business:
Noting with displeasure that some of the staffers and leaders of Media Matters and CAP have “Democratic affiliations – they just come from the Democratic Party openly,” he said “that bothers me because I am a journalist. I never worked for a political campaign. I make it a policy in what I write at AIM to be critical of, not just the left-leaning media outlets, but also the right.”
False. Kincaid has never worked for a news organization, and AIM -- where Kincaid has spent most, if not all, of his adult career -- is certainly no journalistic enterprise. It has a partisan point of view, and so does Kincaid. As we pointed out the last time Kincaid suggested this, his track record is one of partisan activism, not journalism.
So When DOES The MRC Like Christianity Being Crititized? Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is trying to become enforcers on when the media is permitted to write anything less than flattering about Christianity.
A March 29 MRC Culture & Media Institute article by Matt Philbin complained that Showtime's new miniseries "The Borgias" -- in which family patriarch Rodrigo became pope -- was airing during Lent, complaining that Showtime was "getting into the spirit of Lent and gleefully calling to mind some of the Catholic Church's centuries-old sins," adding that the series is "a thumb in the eye to the Church during holy season."
Philbin doesn't really question the historical accuracy of the content; he concedes that Rodrigo Borgia "bought the papacy, becoming Pope Alexander VI in 1492, and misused his office in a variety of distinctly unholy ways." Instead, he grouses only about the timing of the series (but does not offer an alternative time that the show could air and not draw his criticism) and highlights Bill Donohue's attack on the series, failing to disclose that his boss, Brent Bozell, is on the board of advisors of Donohue's organization, the Catholic League.
In the same spirit, an April 3 NewsBusters post by Tim Graham bashing the Washington Post for running a feature article on the creators of a new Broadway musical about Mormons (emphasis in original):
The Washington Post obviously doesn't observe the idea that Sunday is the Lord's Day. It's apparently the Atheist's Day. The entire top half of the front page of the April 3 Sunday Arts section is an enormous picture of "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Just below the fold is a huge headline: "No, nothing is sacred." Another huge picture of Parker and Stone is inside, dominating most of E-7. The text around these publicity shots [Jennifer Altman for The Washington Post] is another promotional piece by Post theatre critic Peter Marks. Saying their new play "The Book of Mormon" actually "deserves worship" wasn't enough. A second helping of goo is required.
[...]
Marks and other South Park shoe-shiners don't seem to understand that Parker and Stone toe a hard line. Just because they giggle a lot and make butt jokes doesn't mean they aren't taking a very firm stand on the near-mental illness of religious people. They also fail to note that this pair is picking on people who don't fight back. If they wanted to make fun of a buffoonish religious figure, where is "Al Sharpton: The Musical"? It wouldn't happen because Sharpton would sue, and someone's building might get burned down.
Graham offers no evidence that he would be any less incensed about his article had it run on any other day of the week. He also offers no evidence that he has actually seen the musicial, which hasn't stop him for attacking it before.
Graham also slips in a bit of his omnipresent gay-bashing: "Don't miss that this show has a serious political meaning for the gay lobby. As MTV.com reported last year, "It's a project the duo first announced back in 2008, after the passage of the gay-marriage-banning Proposition 8 in California (for which the Mormon Church campaigned heavily)."
Here's an idea: Why doesn't the MRC issue a calendar detailing excactly which days -- if any exist -- the media is permitted who publish or air things that are less than flattering to Christianity?
Cashill: I Don't Look As Crazy As I Sound Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jack Cashill writes in his March 31 column, "I appear much more sane on TV than I do in the pages of Media Matters. How could I not?"
Another way to say that is: Cashill is hoping his sane-looking demeanor will sell some very insane stuff, like his new book insisting that Bill Ayers wrote Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father."
Indeed, in this very column, Cashill touts how he was able to make three very crazy points in his appearanceon Fox News:
In the course of the interview, I was able to assert three points that may not have been voiced before on network TV. The first was, "I have no doubt that Bill Ayers was the primary craftsman behind 'Dreams from My Father.'"
The second was a reaffirmation of Ayers' point that Obama's second opus, "Audacity of Hope," was a "political hack book." As I added, the book "was written by committee."
The third, which no one on the left has dared challenge, was my assertion that "there was no Obama family." I described newborn baby Obama's hegira from Hawaii to Seattle with his mom and their return to Hawaii only after Obama Sr. had left for Harvard.
Cashill then added: "These now-confused souls on the left might just ask themselves, 'Would Simon & Schuster's lawyers green light a book that promotes "insane Obama conspiracy theories"?' I can assure you from experience, they would not.'"
In another column the next day, Cashill tries to read Ayers' mind and decides that Ayers wasn't joking when, in response to a conservative activist, he said he wrote the book and is bitter about not getting any royalties:
Obama's success must chafe Ayers even more. He hoped to mold a mayor of Chicago, and instead he ended up with a president whose ambitions would always corrupt his ideology.
The fact that Ayers went public in the first week of our war on Libya, a use of force almost indistinguishable from the Bush administration's, had to irritate Ayers deeply.
As Ayers suggested at Montclair, one could build a school for the cost of a Tomahawk missile. As he implied, one could build a whole lot of schools with the royalties just from "Dreams."
Cashill also does not take criticism well. In his March 29 column, he dismisses a review of his book in the Washington Post as written by "a left-leaning 20-something with scant credentials." At no point does he respond to anything the reviewer said about his book, much less quote any of it or link to the review.
That's likely because it was pretty much deconstructs Cashill's book for its reliance on circumstantial evidence, factual errors and hypocritial whining:
Cashill’s clues are far from convincing. Cashill believes that the similarity between the two men’s “imagery” and “structure” is by itself “almost enough to convict” Obama of his charges. For example, Ayers writes in his memoir, “Fugitive Days:” “The confrontation in the Fishbowl flowed like a swollen river into the teach-in, carrying me along the cascading waters from room to room, hall to hall, bouncing off boulders.” In “Dreams,” Obama writes the following passage: “I heard all our voices begin to run together, the sound of three generations tumbling over each other like the currents of a slow-moving stream, my questions like rocks roiling the water, the breaks in memory separating the currents.”
“Deconstructing Obama” includes many more flimsy examples of stylistic overlap: Obama and Ayers both misquote a line from Carl Sandburg’s famous poem “Chicago”; they both misspell the name of a city in South Africa (though they misspell it in different ways); they both love the words “flutter” and “ragged.” Cashill bends or invents evidence to fit his theories and further undercuts his argument with errors of fact and interpretation.
He attacks the media for ignoring Andersen’s book, to which Cashill says Obama gave his “tacit blessing.” But the White House, in fact, so disliked the book that it canceled a staffer’s CNN appearance because the network booked Andersen — and then quizzed him about the Ayers connection.
“Deconstructing Obama” is distressing also for what it reveals about the publishing industry. Cashill details how the media, including conservative outlets such as Fox News and the National Review, ignored his research. Yet he has now published a book with the conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster, one of the biggest houses in the country.
Cashill claimed the review was all about the reviewer trying to convince readers "to ignore the awkward amateur writer behind the curtain," but it seems that the same could be said about Cashill himself.
MRC Likes Rebecca Black Because She's Not Singing About Gays Topic: Media Research Center
An April 1 MRC Culture & Media Institute article by Erin R. Brown comes to the defense of Rebecca Black and her "Friday" video, declaring it "a welcome relief from the relentless sexualization of chidlhood."
More importantly, she's not singing about people having inherent value no matter what their sexual orientation, unlike a certain other singer:
For instance, the video for Lady Gaga's chart-topping hit "Born This Way" on YouTube has only garnered a little over 28 million hits, compared to black's 69 million. The 'gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgendered' anthem from the pop sensation accrued more than 440,000 downloads in its first week. This radio and digital sales record-breaking song has yet to receive even half of the internet hits already obtained by the previously unknown teen.
Because, you know, Internet hits is always an indicator of quality of a video's content.
WND's Washington Threatens Assault Against Cass Sunstein Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ellis Washington's weekly WorldNetDaily rant is more demented than usual this week, targeting Obama adviser Cass Sunstein.
First, Washington takes out of context Sunstein's statement "There is no liberty without dependency," declaring it his "fascist motto" and "treachery." In fact, the statement is from a 1999 op-ed Sunstein co-wrote arguing that taxes permit the liberty Americans enjoy because true liberty can't be enjoyed as a society without a government to enforce those rights.
Washington then goes into insult-hurling mode, attacking Sunstein as a "Marxist academic" and Obama's Cesare Mori (we're a little unclear on how this is supposed to be insult since Mori, while an official in Italy's Fascist movement, actually did something worthwile by trying to shut down the Mafia in the country).
This is followed by freak-out mode over some policies Sunstein has promoted. First up was his idea that organ donation should be opt-out rather than opt-in. Washington, as he is wont to do, gets this wrong, describing the policy Sunstein has argued in favor of as "explicit consent" when, in fact, that's the current policy. The formal name of the policy Sunstein favors is "presumed consent."
Still, Washington freaked out anyway: "In America, if a corpse doesn't have the liberty to be buried in peace without legions of ghoulish, body-snatching bureaucrats stealing grandma's liver, kidneys or eyeballs, then what freedom and constitutional rights do you think those of us who are alive will enjoy? … None!" Washington seems to be ignoring the fact that organs are generally not harvested from elderly people like "grandma."
Washington also discussed Sunstein's ideas for adding more rights to the Constitution, denouncing them as a "coup d'état" with the "tyrannous effect" of "remak[ing] the U.S. Constitution into a socialist communist document without having to fire one bullet, or get one vote in Congress." Washington then listed the "diabolical parameters of this new communist bill of rights," which he claimed Sunstein "plagiarized" from Franklin Roosevelt -- thus falsely suggesting that Sunstein gave FDR no credit for the ideas. In fact, the subtitle of Sunstein's book "The Second Bill of Rights" is "FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever."
(Washington also claims Sunstein stole the idea from "the 1977 Soviet Constitution.")
After calling Sunstein "one of the most despicable academics I've ever studied who is still alive," Washington seems to want to do something about that "alive" part by threatening an act of violence against him and his wife, Obama adviser Samantha Power:
But for the national lobotomy this great country has apparently suffered after 160 years of state propaganda most people know as our public school system, a scoundrel like Sunstein (and his Lady Macbeth wife) would be immediately fired, placed in the stocks in the public square and have rotten fruit and dead animals thrown at his face like in Medieval times … but this is only a personal fantasy.
Why do we think Washington really wants to be wielding a much sturdier weapon than rotten fruit? An assault with rotten fruit is an assault nonetheless.
WND Promotes Misleading Attack On Obama, Religious References Topic: WorldNetDaily
A March 28 WorldNetDaily article by Drew Zahn uncritically repeats frequentlyinaccurate "Christian historian" David Barton's claim that President Obama is engaged in a pattern of "willfully, deliberately" repudiating America's Christian heritage by occasionally "omitting the phrase 'endowed by their Creator' when quoting the Declaration of Independence and misquoting the national motto 'In God We Trust' in official White House communication."
But as Right Wing Watch notes, Zahn references a Chuck Norris column on the alleged lapses that includes examples in which Obama was paraphrasing the Declaraction, not directly quoting it. Zahn and Barton also ignore the numerous instances in which Obama correctly used the phrases.
Zahn also quotes Barton saying, "You remember when he spoke at Georgetown, he had them cover the Christian symbols [behind him on the stage]?" As we've detailed when CNSNews.com promoted this claim, there's no evidence that the Obama White House specifically demanded that "Christian symbols" be covered at the event; even CNS conceded that the White House requested only that Georgetown "cover up all signs and symbols" on the stage.
Zahn made no apparent effort to obtain any sort of response to Barton's accusations.
An April 3 WorldNetDaily 
