After All These Years, Kessler Still Hearts Waterboarding Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler renews his love for waterboarding in a May 2 Newsmax column:
As normally defined, torture is the infliction of severe pain. While waterboarding causes fear because it simulates drowning, it is painless. Terrorists much prefer it to the Obama administration’s weapon of choice: a deadly drone attack.
In fact, as we'vepreviouslynoted whenever Kessler has made this claim, medical experts have said that waterboarding carries a real risk of death, not to mention mental health issues, and "is contradictory to well established medical knowledge and clinical experience."
WND's Klein Hides Nature of Glenn Beck's Sleazy Attacks on Soros Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a May 2 WorldNetDaily article bashing the Jewish Funds for Justice for honoring activist Van Jones, Aaron Klein writes:
The Jewish Funds for Justice, or JFFJ, was the driving force behind a campaign to paint former Fox News host Glenn Beck as anti-Semitic after Beck used his show to air a special investigation into [George] Soros.
[...]
After Beck’s weeklong special on Soros, the JFFJ in January 2011 delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures to Fox News in protest of the Soros show in which Beck referred to the billionaire as a “puppet master.” JFFJ deemed the show anti-Semitic.
Klein curiously failed to mention what exactly Beck had said about Soros that caused such a backlash.
As Media Matters detailed at the time, Beck falsely portrayed Soros as a willing collaborator with the Nazis in his native Hungary. In fact, he was hiding his Jewish identity as the adopted godson of a man who was inventorying property the Nazis had earlier confiscated from Jews. Beck also invoked anti-Semitic stereotypes by portraying Soros as a "puppet master" who controls the economy and the media. Beck also had a history of citing anti-Semitic sources on his now-defunct Fox News show.
CNS Readers Get As Nasty As They Wanna Be On A Woman (Again) Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has given its readers another opportunity to show just how offensive they can be.
A May 1 article by Matt Cover quotes Democratic National Committee chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz accusing Republicans of "making sure that we would redefine rape." Cover offered up a deceptive defense of Republican attempts to insert the term "forcible rape" as an exemption in a bill that would ban federal funding for abortions, claiming that "the bill did not change the criminal definition of rape under federal law or any other law whatsoever." In fact, the term "forcible rape" is not defined in the federal criminal code, and could be read to exclude non-"forcible" instances of rape, such as statutory rape, from cases that would be eligible for federal funding for an abortion.
But that was all CNS readers needed to launch a misogynistic barrage at Wasserman Schultz taht also included attacks on her Jewish religion, calling her a "bitch" and a "Jewish princess," among many other things:
As we've detailed, CNS readers have a strong misogynistic (not to mention racist) streak. These are the readers Terry Jeffrey has courted in turning CNS into an anti-Obama propaganda machine.
WND Plays The Race Card, With Occasional Backpedaling Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs -- who we last saw peddling the "real news" that Obama had a hand in killing a medical examiner in California -- is back with some more sketchy reporting of the kind he could only do at WND (because no real news organization would take it seriously).
Kovacs penned a May 1 article under the inflammatory headline "100 blacks beat white couple, media bury attack." ("100 blacks" was later changed to "many blacks," presumably because there's no evidence that "100 blacks" participated in the attack in question.) Kovacs asserted that "a white couple was attacked by dozens of black teenagers, and the local newspaper did not report on the incident for two weeks, despite the victims being reporters for the paper," based on the claims of a columnist for the newspaper in question.
The columnist is the only source Kovacs cites; he couldn't be bothered to contact, say, the police in the town where the attack took place. He also offers no evidence whatsoever that the attack was racially motivated, as he portrays it.
Kovacs buried the fact that, according to the columnist, "The responding officer coded the incident as a simple assault," meaning that the paper would be unlikely to report it, and was also trying not to give preferential treatment to its reporters over the public.
Of course, there's a reason you contact more than one source before reporting on a story -- that single source may have his or her facts wrong. And that's what happened here, prompting Kovacs to do some damage control.
The next day, Kovacs finally gets around to talking with the police -- who point out that there is no evidence at this time that the attack was racially motivated:
“That’s what happens when [an opinion columnist] reports the news, not bound by the facts of the case,” said Chris Amos, public-information officer for the Norfolk Police Department.
As WND reported yesterday in a story posted on the popular Drudge Report, the couple was pummeled April 14 by dozens of black teens, and the Virginian-Pilot newspaper did not report the incident for two weeks, despite the fact the victims, Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami, are both news reporters for the paper.
Today, police tell WND they’re not sure if the attack was racially motivated.
“Could it have been? Yeah, it could have, I guess,” said police spokesman Chris Amos. “We certainly haven’t ruled that out, but we haven’t seen anything that jumps out at us other than someone throwing a rock at someone’s car.”
“A whole lot of racial implications have been made. We don’t know the motive of this. Race didn’t become a factor until Twitter comments later. No one at the scene said it was racially motivated. They didn’t tell us then and they didn’t hear any [comments such as] ‘Remember Trayvon Martin.’”
See, Joe? This is why you don't run with the first person you talk to -- although Kovacs is quick to point out that his previous article was "posted on the popular Drudge Report." Which, of course, may be the ultimate reason for Kovacs' violation of basic journalistic principles.
Because President Obama must be involved in this somehow -- and because hating Obama is all WND has -- Kovacs notes for no apparent reasonthat the newspaper's publisher was "nominated by Obama and recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be deputy secretary of HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development."
Further damage control from Kovacs came in another follow-up article in which he works up the courage to talk to the newspaper's editor, something else he couldn't be bothered to do on day one:
“They think we buried the story. We didn’t. We didn’t bury anything,” Denis Finley, editor of the Virginian-Pilot, told WND. “People are just not stopping to think. What would be my motivation for protecting people who beat up two of my reporters? It’s completely ludicrous that I would do that.”
“I think we did the right thing. I think we’re on solid ground. I don’t think we can win here. If we had published a story, it would look like we’re playing favorites. Because I didn’t publish it, now I’m accused of a cover-up.”
Kovacs also quoted the police department spokesman as again asserting that the case "is not being investigated as a hate crime." Still, Kovacs insisted on portraying the attack as racially motivated anyway, claiming that "the couple was pummeled at a stoplight the night of April 14 by dozens of black teens.'
But who cares about facts when you can play the race card? A May 4 article by Chelsea Schilling -- who has her own sordid history of getting things wrong at WND -- asserts that the case is about "a mob attack by large numbers of black teenagers against a young white couple in a car," treats the columnist who got originally played up the race angle as authoritative and buries statements from the police that there's no evidence of a hate crime.
But Schilling isn't done trying to make a mountain out of this molehill. Under the headline "Wave of black mobs brutalizing whites," Schilling claims that ther have been "dozens of brutal assaults by black mobs and assailants against white victims – and some attackers are citing the revenge for the Martin slaying as reason for their aggression."
Despite claimingthe existence of "dozens of brutal assaults," Schilling identifies only 10 -- including the above case even though, again, nobody who actually knows anything about this case is calling it a hate crime.
(Is this going to become an ongoing list, like WND's creepy obsession with female teachers who have affairs with their students?)
Way to play the race card, WND. You must be proud of yourselves in appealing to the racist nature of your core audience.
NEW ARTICLE: MRC vs. Real Research Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center works hard to try and discredit the work of genuine researchers who commit the offense of concluding there's really no such thing as "liberal media bias." Read more >>
If nothing else, WorldNetDaily is good for the parlor game of how high it can ratchet is pathological hatred of President Obama.
WND gives its trademark overheated paranoid rhetoric another stab in promoting the latest issue of its Whistleblower magazine, this time with added "Matrix":
Millions of Americans feel they’re living in a war zone, the bombardments coming their way daily.
Non-stop lies and corruption. White House “czars” with communist backgrounds. Brazen presidential power grabs. Bows to enemy leaders and insults to allies. Intentionally destructive economic and energy policies. Presidential hot-mic gaffes proving collusion with America’s enemies.
No wonder Americans are more worried today about the very survival of their nation than at any time since the Civil War.
But underlying the madness – underlying all of the epic, high-level subversion of America – enabling it, justifying it, disguising it – is a secret language of the left, a language most citizens neither understand nor even recognize.
This secret language, an essential ingredient in America’s rapidly advancing socialist transformation, is dramatically exposed in May’s groundbreaking issue of Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE ALINSKY CODE.”
Without this secret language, the “matrix” of deceit and delusion enveloping modern America would soon disappear – just as in the sci-fi film blockbuster “The Matrix” – and citizens would behold Barack Obama and his administration for exactly what they really are: committed revolutionaries of the radical left.
So Obama is Agent Smith and Joseph Farah is Neo?
Remember that a few years back, WND's David Kupelian laughably portrayed partakers of non-WND media as victims of "the Matrix," when in fact WND is is a blue-pill wholesaler.
And this bizarre logical analysis is brought to you courtesy of the WND Super PAC.
CNS Still Obsessed Over Afghan Troop Deaths Under Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
We've detailed how CNSNews' Edwin Mora has been obsessed with doing monthly body counts of American troops killed in Afghanistan under President Obama while ignoring the much higher number of Americans killed in Iraq under the stewardship of President Bush.
Mora ramps up the obsession again with a May 1 article declaring that "Although President Obama has only served 39 months in office, 69 percent of the U.S. military fatalities in the more than 10-year-old war in Afghanistan have occurred on his watch."
Missing from Mora's article, as they were from his many previous articles on troop deaths: any mention of Bush or Iraq.
This confirms that the sole point of Mora's reporting is to disparage Obama. After all, CNS did no such body count of troop deaths when Bush was president -- to the contrary, it touted how troop deaths were dropping.
Conflict of Interest: WND Fails to Mention It's Publishing Book By Author It's Plugging Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 1 WorldNetDaily article by Michael Thompson on YouTube's suspension of "the immensely popular PPSimmons Ministry account" is dishonest in several ways.
First, there's the depiction of PPSimmons as "immensely popular," which Thompson backs up by claiming that it had "more than 23,000 subscribers, 530-plus videos and 21 million views." By comparison, the Fred channel on YouTube has 2 million subscribers and 912 million views. That's what "immensely popular" looks like.
Second, Thompson pretends that PPSimmons has never done anything particularly controversial or offensive: He describes the channel's output as "videos on biblical commentary, startling biblical revelations and, perhaps most controversially, political revelations concerning Barack Obama and his birth certificate." But if you'll recall, PPSimmons was the creator of a 2009 video that fallaciously cited Scripture to claim that Obama is the Antichrist. In the July 2009 WND article promoting said video, Joe Kovacs went through great pains to hide the identity of the video's creator.
We now know that the person behind PPSimmons -- which, as we noted, also had a list of several videos it claimed to have "produced for WND" -- is Carl Gallups, who is identified in Thompson's article. And that brings us to our third bit of dishonesty.
Twice in his article, Thompson notes that Gallups is the author of a "soon-to-be-released book on Christian apologetics" called "The Magic Man in the Sky: Effectively Defending the Christian Faith," and then lets Gallups himself work in a plug:
“To make matters worse, the termination of the YouTube channel occurred two weeks prior to the release of my book, ‘The Magic Man in the Sky,’ and at the same time I was doing interviews across the nation on talk radio concerning the Sheriff Joe Arpaio investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate ordeal,” said Gallups.
Guess who's publishing Gallups' book? That's right -- WND Books. Guess how many times that disclosure of a conflict of interest appears in Thompson's story? That's right -- zero.
WND has had a longtimeproblem with violating basic journalistic ethics by refusing to disclose its personal and financial links to the subjects it writes about.
Oh, and guess when Gallups book is coming out? May 15.
One wonders if Gallups deliberately uploaded an inflammatory video that would result in an automatic shutdown of his YouTube Account so he could exploit the controversy to promote his new book. This is WND we're talking about here, so such underhanded tactics are not exactly out of the question.
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Wayne Allyn Root Edition Topic: Newsmax
Spain is a financial train wreck because of the exact same agenda that Barack Obama is trying to stuff down America’s throat. Spain is facing economic Armageddon because of big government, big spending, big taxes, big entitlements, big unions, big pensions, free healthcare, billions wasted on green energy, and, don’t forget, billions more on high speed rail. Size matters. And bigger isn't always better.
The golden lining in this entire mess is that we now have a model to save America. It’s simple. Cut spending dramatically. Cut government. Cut government employees. Cut pensions. And NEVER ever allow government to invest in the biggest scam of all-time: green energy. Spain's entire economy was wrecked by this progressive obsession with green energy and climate change. Every dollar spent on green energy kills three jobs in the private sector. That's why Spain is broke, insolvent, and jobless.
If you want to follow Spain into hell and Great Depression there is a simple answer — re-elect Barack Obama.
It's time for our weekly dose of Obama Derangement Sydrome from WorldNetDaily's Mychal Massie, this time under the headline "More evidence Obama's a depraved liar." And indeed, Massie calls Obama a "depraved liar" in his column.
If Massie really wants to see a depraved liar in the flesh, all he needs to do is look in the mirror.
He has repeated the discredited lie that Michelle Obama went on a lingerie-shopping spree, as well as other falsehoods about the woman he spitefully calls "Buttzilla." He has embraced the non-existent Michelle Obama "whitey" tape. He lied about Obama not sending FEMA trailers for tornado victims. He has repeated discredited claims made by Arkansas state troopers about Bill Clinton.
MRC's Graham, Ex-MRC Staffer Argue Over How 'Fringe' It Is To Be Anti-Gay Topic: Media Research Center
Remember how the Media Research Center's Dan Gainor attacked Mitt Romney's campaign for being insufficiently "conservative" by hiring the openly gay Richard Grenell as a spokesman, even though is area of expertise is national security and would not be discussing social issues?
Well, Gainor and his fellow homophobes have gotten their pound of flesh -- Grenell has resigned from Romney's campaign, citing the controversy. But while Gainor has remained mostly silent about Grenell's resignation, another MRC has picked up the fight, at least for the idea that being anti-gay is not "fringe."
That's what former MRC employee Kevin Eder tweeted about it, which prompted a backlash from the MRC's Tim Graham:
Of course, the MRC has a very aggressive anti-gay agenda that should address any questions about how "fringe" the MRC thinks it is on the subject.
In his April 29 article marking WorldNetDaily's 15th anniversary, Joe Kovacs waxes rhapsodic about the kind of hard-hitting news he gets to cover at WND, as opposed to the "mainstream" media where he used to work:
I had finally found a news agency that cared about reporting the news. I mean the real news. The news that matters. Not the daily body count of who shot whom and what’s the weather guess. I was working with some of the finest journalists alive, and everyone there knew (and still knows) that we indeed have a team gifted and blessed with extraordinary talent.
I think readers both old and new instantly recognize they get more real journalism from WND than any other news source on the planet, whether it was from the middle of nowhere, or now headquartered in new offices in the nation’s capital.
It was, and still is, all about finding and reporting the most important, hard-hitting, relevant and interesting information on any given day. Because we don’t follow the drumbeat of the mainstream media, we’re free to focus on what’s important to real people, without the phony-baloney hype and agenda-driven reports that seem so ubiquitous in today’s news industry.
And what's Kovacs' latest contribution to serving up "the real news, The news that matters" at WND? Suggesting that President Obama had something to do with the death of a medical examiner.
No, really. This is the beginning of Kovacs' April 30 article:
Medical examiners in Los Angeles are investigating the possible poisoning death of one of their own officials who may have worked on the case of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who died March 1, the same day Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced probable cause for forgery in President Obama’s birth certificate.
Michael Cormier, a respected forensic technician for the Los Angeles County Coroner died under suspicious circumstances at his North Hollywood home April 20, the same day Breitbart’s cause of death was finally made public.
At no point does Kovacs even bother to establish that Corimer was involved in any way with Breitbart's autopsy, let alone any personal involvement by Obama in anything.
Oh, and as it turns out, LA Weekly learned that Corimer played no role whatsoever in Breitbart's autopsy, meaning that Kovacs' entire article is a sick joke.
What we learn from this is that Kovacs did not join WND to engage in disseminating "real news." He is a conspiratorial right-wing hack who wanted an outlet for his hack work, and WND -- which is in the midst of turning itself into an anti-Obama super PAC -- is the home for conspiratorial right-wing hacks.
This shows that there seems to be another reason Kovacs ditched thte "mainstream" media for WND: The mainstream media follows mainstream journalistic and ethical standards. WND has no such encumberances on its so-called journalism.
Put simply, WND is the only place Kovacs could publish this steaming pile of feces he calls a "news" story.
CNS' Bannister Whines About Obama Trip to Afghanistan Topic: CNSNews.com
Yes, Craig Bannister really did headline his May 1 CNSNews.com blog post this way: "Was Panetta Just A Pawn In Obama's Bid To Mislead Americans And Slip Out Of The Country Unnoticed?"
And yes, Bannister does spend his blog post whining that the White House did a few deceptive things, including placing a meeting with Leon Panetta, on the White House schedule in order to obscure the fact that Obama was actually on his way to Afghanistan. He huffs: "And, what's with all the cloak-and-dagger secrecy, anyway? I don't know about the rest of you. But, I, for one, resent being duped."
Um, Craig? Haven't many presidential trips to Iraq or Afghanistan by both Obama and President Bush not been officially announced until the president had actually arrivedin order to protect the president's security? Why, yes, they have. Here's an account of Bush's 2003 Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad to visit troops there:
President Bush (search) flew in under the cover of darkness on Thursday to dine with U.S. forces at a Baghdad International Airport mess hall. It was the first trip ever by an American president to Iraq — a mission tense with concern about his safety.
Bush's surprise trip delighted troops and stunned the nation -- including the president's own parents, who had traveled to Crawford, Texas (search), expecting to spend the holiday with their son. Media outlets were reporting on Thursday morning that Bush would be at his ranch all day, only to be told the truth after the fact, when he was safely in the air and headed back home.
It appears Bannister is so petty in his hatred for Obama that he will criticize him visiting the troops in a foreign country.
WND's Farah: Obama Is 'At War With God' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Yet, Joe the Plumber insists he doesn’t question Obama’s faith.
“I don’t question his faith, and when I read or hear people claiming he’s not a Christian because of this or that, I don’t like it,” he wrote in his letter to CBN. “[But] Barack Obama once famously told me he just wanted to spread the wealth around and I take him at his word about that as well. After three years of watching the policies he’s put forth, the agenda he’s pushed and the detrimental effect it’s had on our country, I don’t question it one bit.”
How about this?
his support of same-sex marriage
his support of open homosexual activity in the military
his support of killing innocent babies in the womb
his support for withholding life support for survivors of abortion
his support for forcing those of Christian conscience to provide sterilization and abortion services to their employees through mandatory health-care programs
Barack Obama has been at war with God before he took office and ever since.
MRC Still Lashing Out At Anyone Debunking Idea Of 'Liberal Media Bias' Topic: Media Research Center
As studies undermining the Media Research Center's cherished agenda of liberal media bias continue to pile up, the MRC has been furiouslyspinning them away. The latest offender is a Washington Post article examining the idea of liberal media bias.
Saturday’s Washington Post included a story dismissing the public for believing the media has a bias, complete with the headline “Public has its own biases about media.” It sounded like a twist on "I Know You Are, But What Am I?" Media reporter Paul Farhi argued studies finding an increased perception of the media favoring “one side” since 1985 are somehow dashed because professors and their studies disagree.
Graham goes on to praise Farhi for citing right-wing media critic Tim Groseclose's claim that pretty much every media outlet has a liberal bias, then criticized him for having "quickly dismissed him" (though neither Graham nor Farhi noted the shaky methodology that Groseclose employed to reach his dubious conclusion). Graham then attacks a researcher Farhi cited, David D’Alessio, who points out that left-leaning reporting is balanced by reporting more favorable to conservatives. Graham then bashes Farhi for not identifying D’Alessio as a "liberal," even though the only evidence he offers to back up that claim is that he once "attack[ed] Richard Nixon" -- actually, D'Alessio was citing Nixon's attempts to manipulate the media by attacking its objectivity, something that the MRC is still doing today -- and that his conclusions deviate from the MRC's right-wing agenda.
Graham then nonsensically claims: "The story denying liberal bias only underlines liberal bias." Well, only if you work for the MRC, which starts with the partisan-driven -- not research-driven -- conclusion of liberal bias and then selectively cite evidence to back it up.
Graham goes on to get hilariously huffy that Farhi mentioned the MRC in the same breath as Media Matters:
Dear Paul: FAIR was founded in 1986, and the MRC in 1987 (and technically, Brent Bozell's and Brent Baker's MRC was under way at the National Conservative Foundation in 1985). It's at best misleading to pair the MRC on a timeline with Media Matters, which Hillary Clinton helped start in 2004. The MRC, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, deserves to be in a "long ago" sentence.
Graham concludes by clinging to his preconceived notions:
Here's the big picture: the liberal media may not be more biased to the left today than it was in the of Reagan's tenure in 1985, but that's not the point. The point is the public is smart/jaded enough to realize now that the liberal media can't pretend not be liberal -- and yet, they keep pretending. Farhi's piece reads like "there's little to the idea we're more biased than we were in 1985 -- and we were denying it, then, too."
Graham doesn't seem to know the difference between political talking points and research. And if you've seen what passes for research at the MRC, you'd know why that is.
