Newsmax Columnist: Ron Paul Forever! Topic: Newsmax
Doug Wead has been Newsmax's mostenthusiasticsupporter of Ron Paul's presidential ambitions. Now that Paul has suspended his campaign, though, Wead doesn't want it to end.
Wead still clings to the Ron Paul cause in his May 15 column:
Ron Paul is not out. He is up!
"We are absolutely not dropping out of this race! We are focusing our efforts squarely on winning delegates and party leadership positions at state conventions, declared Jesse Benton, campaign chairman for Ron Paul.
Paul announced Tuesday he would not be competing in the upcoming state primaries, saying that he would focus, instead, on his delegate strategy. This is a strategy that is working, by the way, and transforming the Republican Party.
Needless to say, Wead is fully on board with Paul's new strategy of trying to poach delegates at the Republican convention,e even as he sorta concedes that it's a lost cause:
The delegate strategy is working. That is the way we will impact the platform in Tampa, Fla.. That is the way we will begin the process of change. It is through the caucuses that we are attracting youth, like the 21-year-old woman recently elected to the national committee from Maine or the Ron Paul Hispanics or the independents who have never been involved in party politics.
[...]
Our people have been punched, yelled at, lied to and worked until they can hardly stand. But on they come, fighting for their children, fighting for their future, angry at the corruption of the banks, of Wall Street, of the lobbyists, of the Congress, of the White House. The battle for liberty is not over. It has just taken on a new phase. It cannot be stopped by the national media. If that were the case it would never have been born in the first place.
And some will say that it is a lost cause, which I will not concede but it does remind me of Clarence Darrow's famous line, "Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for."
Erick Stakelbeck, whose main job is to be an "authority on terrorism and national security issues" for Pat Robertson's CBN, is now doing videos for WorldNetDaily.
It's not terribly surprising. Stakelbeck's mission is to make alarmist claims to bash Muslims with a little Biblical prophecy mixed in, despite his complete lack of credentials on the subject (he is a former sports reporter). This sort of thing has earned him spots on Fox News and other right-wing outlets, and his association with WND simply moves him even further to the right.
Stak elbeck's first WND video is an interview with Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-Muslim activist. Stakelbeck plays softball with Wilders and allows him to play the victim, claiming Wilders was "subjected to a kangaroo court in his own country" for allegedly inciting anti-Muslim hatred, an effort that has included likening the Quran to "Mein Kampf."
Obviously, the Muslim-haters at WND eat this sort of thing up. And Stakelbeck has chosen to play to them by associating himself with the increasingly fringe WND.
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham has been making statements in non-MRC venues of late.
Media Matters notes that Graham has tweeted about ABC's Robin Roberts' interview with Obama in which he revealed his suport for same-sex marriage: "If black Christian voters still vote for Obama now, they're not really Christians. Just like Robin Roberts for being such a lamb on ABC."
That, of course, is nothing but Graham expanding upon the MRC's anti-gay agenda, only this time he's attacking the sincere beliefs of millions of Christians who don't believe that gays are evil simply because they're gay.
Then, Right Wing Watch highlights an interview Graham gave to right-wing radio host Janet Mefford, in which he claims that Obama's same-sex marriage announcement was "a tragic moment for the country, a very dark moment, a very depressing moment." He went on to say that it would be nice if anti-gay pastors like Harry Jackson could speak about same-sex marriage during interviews just as "he does at his church."
WND Still Bashing Higher Education, Vox Day Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's utterdisdain for book-learnin' continues in a May 13 column by Vox Day, who follows the WND script in claiming that a college education does not provide an adequate return on investment. His weird little twist on the argument is that it's not a physical asset:
However, the main reason one cannot consider the cost of a college degree to be an investment is because a degree is not transferable and holds no intrinsic value. Unlike stocks, bonds, housing or even art, the owner of a degree cannot sell it. It is no more an investment than an airplane ticket or a bus token. There are, to be sure, many jobs in government and corporate America that require college degrees, but it makes no sense to argue for the intrinsic value of college degrees on the basis of artificial requirements that only have the potential to limit one’s future income.
None of this should be taken to mean that college educations are totally worthless or that it makes no sense for anyone to pursue a college degree. What it does mean, however, is that no prospective college student or parent can blithely accept the results of the return-on-investment studies and expect them to have any meaningful application to any individual situation. Every college decision must stand or fall on its own unique financial merits, and, in many cases, a careful review will demonstrate that taking out a student loan and paying large sums of money in return for a 60 percent chance of obtaining college degree does not make financial sense.
Day, of course, has a college degree, from the (presumably) pricey private liberal arts school Bucknell. He offers no opinion on the intrinsic value of his own degree.
NewsBusters' Double Standard on People's Backgrounds Topic: NewsBusters
In a May 16 NewsBusters post, Ken Shepherd touts an item by Breitbart blogger John Nolte complaining about Politico reporting on the lengthy criminal record of a person who appears in a Romney ad -- or, in Shepherd's words, "digging up dirt on a private citizen who supports his Republican opponent."
Why, Shepherd and his NewsBusters buddies would never condone something so gauche as to investigate the backgrounds of private citizens who play a role in political campaigns.
Wrong.
Back in 2007, right-wing bloggers, most prominently Michelle Malkin, felt the need to attack Graeme Frost, a 12-year-old boy who delivered a radio address in support of the federal Children's Health Insurance Program, by skulking around his house and deciding that he and his family lived too well to qualify for the program. This, of course, ignored the reality of the Frost family's situation.
In a October 2007 NewsBusters post, Shepherd promoted "conservative bloggers who brought scrutiny to bear on Frost's parents" and denounced "a lapdog liberal media that uncritically relayed the Frost family's account."
Shepherd expressed no reservations whatsoever about "conservative blogs raising questions about the Frost family," but apparently nobody is supposed to check into the background of someone who appears in a conservative ad. Go figure.
WND Bizarrely Blames Obama For 'Wrecking NASCAR' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joe Kovacs begins his May 17 article, headlined "Study: Obama economy wrecking NASCAR," this way:
With President Obama at the wheel of the U.S. economy, the car-racing industry appears to be wrecking, with few signs of getting back on the right track.
That according to a new study examining the financial state of NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.
Just one little problem: The facts don't back Kovacs up.
Kovacs is citing a study paid for by Race Fans 4 Freedom, which claims to be "an independent nonprofit dedicated to empowering race fans with the knowledge of what has made America the best and the ability to unite as a driving force for the future of our country." In other words, a right-wing group. Kovacs mentions nothing about the group's partisan leanings.
There is one word notably absent from the study: "Obama." That's right -- unlike Kovacs, the study doesn't explicitly blame Obama.
Also, Kovacs manages to further discredit himself by including a graphic from the study in his article:
Note that the decline in NASCAR attendance began in 2006 -- three years before Obama took office. It defies logic to blame Obama for that, but Kovacs has decided to do that anyway.
Is this bogus, mindless Obama-bashing more of that "real news" Kovacs says he came to WND to report?
AIM's Kincaid Insinuates Frank Marshall Davis Is Obama's Father Topic: Accuracy in Media
The Newsweek cover calling Barack Obama "the first gay president" for endorsing same-sex marriage was all the impetus Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid needed to start hurling sleazy insinuations.
The virulentlyhomophobic Kincaid headlined his May 14 AIM column "How Our “Gay President” Learned About Sex," implying that Obama is gay. Kincaid never actually gets there, though -- his column is mostly a screed about Frank Marshall Davis, "Obama’s communist mentor" who "drank heavily and smoked dope, wrote a pornographic novel in which the author declared, 'under certain circumstances I am bisexual."
Kincaid does insinuate, however, that Davis is Obama's father, claiming that Davis "discussed having sex with a young girl named 'Anne.'" Of course, Kincaid offers no evidence to back this up.
Kincaid is bringing up Davis as a distraction from the revelation that Mitt Romney, as a prep school student, forcibly cut the hair of a fellow student who was presumed to be gay, insisting that this is "a much bigger story than a haircut."
(P.S. The whole silliness about Davis being Obama's father completely undermines the idea that Obama isn't constitutionally eligible to be president.)
WND Can't Stop Pushing Vaccine-Autism Link Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has longbeen a fearmonger about vaccines, including promoting a purported link between vaccines and autism. Even though such a link has been all but discredited, WND is still clinging to it.
A May 4 WND article by Dave Tombers carries the headline, "Do vaccines really cause autism?" Tombers begins by explaining autism spectrum disorders for which "a staggering number of families are still searching for answers to the cause."
Tombers then shows off his Google skills:
An Internet search for the cause of autism points in every direction, except when it comes to thimerosal, a phased out mercury-containing preservative in many childhood vaccinations.
Once considered a potential cause of the neurological disorder, most doctors, government entities and pharmacies now dispute thimerosal has any connection. At least one report released by the CDC claims there are no medical studies that show a link between autism and childhood vaccines.
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., isn’t buying it.
Then, Tombers embraces the autism-vaccine link and starts sounding conspiratorial:
More than one study claims a connection between mercury and autism.
In the same year the feds released data acknowledging a drastic increase in the prevalence of autism in American children, a 2011 study in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health found a “statistically significant relationship” between mercury and autism.
According to the study, “the higher the proportion of children receiving recommended vaccines, the higher was the prevalence of autism.”
Another 2011 study in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry questioned more than just thimerosal in vaccines but aluminum as well.
According to the report, the number of children from countries with the highest rates of ASDs appear to also have the highest exposure to aluminum in vaccines.
However, the medical community steers away from vaccines as a cause and instead continues to question what is causing the terrible disorder.
It's not until the 26th paragraph of his article that Tombers gets around to noting the evidence against a vaccine-autism link, including the discrediting of a study by Andrew Wakefield -- but that is followed by quotes from Wakefield defending his work.
As we've noted, WND devoted no original coverage to the discrediting of Wakefield, being first mention only in a column by Phil Elmore.
Tombers concludes with the anti-vaccine ranting of one "Dr. Mary Ann Block of Texas":
Many cringe when they hear about parents skipping vaccines for their children, yet Block has found the dangers to be unmistakable.
She explains there is more to a vaccine than just the active ingredients, and a close look at labels should make one shudder.
“Thimerosal, a mercury derivative, is still found in many vaccines in trace amounts,” she told WND.
Propylene glycol, or antifreeze; phenol, a disinfectant dye; formaldehyde, a carcinogenic preservative; aluminum hydroxide; aluminum phosphate; and even human aborted fetal tissue are among a long list of other chemicals Block cited.
“Why would anyone think it’s OK, much less safe, to inject these toxic substances into anybody, especially infants,” she asked.
We've previously detailed how Tombers (near as we can tell) wrote a WND article in January on a professor suing his school alleging retaliation over, among other things, "autism causation" -- a euphemism for anti-vaccine activism, despite the fact that he is a linguist by training.
MRC Dances On Grave of 'GCB,' Still Won't Publish List of Offenses Topic: Media Research Center
There was much celebrating at the desk of the Media Research Center's Lauren Thompson this week: ABC has canceled thet show "GCB."
As we've detailed, Thompson dutifully watched the show every week, tallying a list of the show's alleged offenses against Christianity, which stood at 157 offenses according to the most recent count she publicized. Curiously, Thompson refused to publish a full running list of the purported offenses.
The cancellation of "GCB," however, caused Thompson to take a victory lap in the form of a May 14 MRC Culture & Media Institute post saying "good riddance" to the show and ranting about how it racked up "more than 100 attacks on Christianity in its short run."
Again, Thompson failed to publish that now-complete list of offenses. What's holding her back? Since she made such a big deal out of keeping the list in the first place, you'd think she'd be eager to fully inform her readers.
Of course, it could also have been that Thompson never intended to fully document the number of offenses, just toss around an absurdly high number for shock value (and, of course, fundraising purposes).
Either way, Thompson is being dishonest. time to fish or cut bait, dear.
WND's Corsi Creates Secret Fund To Fund Obama Attacks Topic: WorldNetDaily
If there was ever any doubt that Jerome Corsi was never a journalist and is motivated only by trying to destroy President Obama by any means necessary, or that Corsi isn't a wholly owned subsidary of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, consider it dispelled now.
A May 15 WorldNetDaily email lets the cat out of the bag on Corsi's newest anti-Obama venture, a secret company to fund and support Joe Arpaio's cold case posse "investigation" of Obama's "eligibility." Corsi is even offering to hide the identities of his donors:
With the investigation entering a critical seventh month, key volunteers on the Cold Case Posse will have to drop out unless funds can be provided to substitute for the income they need to support their families.
Dr. Jerome Corsi has agreed to devote his corporation, Constitution Consultants LLC — a company he set up to help fund his investigative research -- to be 100 percent devoted to supporting Arpaio's Cold Case Posse volunteers, so the work of investigating Obama can continue without interruption.
Because Constitution Consultants is a New Jersey limited liability corporation, all donations must be after-tax and reported by Corsi to the IRS. The advantage to contributors is that contributions can remain anonymous because federal and New Jersey tax laws do not require disclosure of individual donors, as long as all donations are reported — a condition Corsi has a history of scrupulously meeting.
From now until the election in November, Corsi has committed to apply the donations he receives in Constitution Consultants to making sure he and the Cold Case Posse can pursue Obama until the last facts about Obama's identity and his eligibility to be president are uncovered and made public.
"This is one election we cannot afford to lose," says Corsi. "If Obama wins re-election, the fundamental freedoms our Founding Fathers defined under the Constitution are at risk of being lost. If Obama wins re-election, the very free enterprise system that has built the strongest middle class the world has ever known will be undermined in Saul Alinsky rhetoric of barely disguised class warfare."
If you want to make sure Sheriff Arpaio's Cold Case Posse of Obama's birth certificate and his eligibility to be president continue to conclusion, contribute to Constitution Consultants, so Sheriff Arpaio's law enforcement investigators can complete their vital work without interruption.
In short Corsi -- who has presented himself as a "journalist" -- is not only a researcher for the posse and an apparent "special deputy" for Arpaio, he's actually funding the posse he has written so lovingly about at WND (without disclosing that, of course).
It's also laughable for WND to claim that Corsi "scrupulously" discloses his actions, since we didn't know about his little money-laundering operation until now. WND itself hasn't reported about it on his website. Real journalism doesn't hide behind mysterious money, nor does it use that mysterious money as a base from which to launch smear jobs.
As we've detailed, WND is turning itself into an anti-Obama super PAC, and Corsi's operation is just another branch of that. Also, since the cold case posse is a nonprofit organization, it must disclose the donations from Corsi.
Will WND report on these donations to its readers? Or will it hide this just like it hides other inconvenient facts that contradict with its birther obsession?
CNS' Bannister: Sebelius Will 'Poison ... Students’ Minds' Topic: CNSNews.com
It's not often you see a purported journalist demanding that someone be censored, but that's exactly what Craig Bannister does in a May 14 CNSNews.com blog post demanding that Georgetown University disinvite HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from an upcoming speech there.
Bannister rants that Georgetown is giving Sebelius "the opportunity to poison the school’s students’ minds with her anti-Catholic, pro-abortion, contraception mandate doctrine" despite several Catholic and religious organizations calling for Sebelius to be censored. Which means that Bannister himself is advocating Sebelius' censorship as well.
Of course, Bannister offers no evidence that Sebelius will be "poisioning minds" with "doctrine" -- indeed, he has no idea whatsoever what she will be talking about in her Georgetown appearance. Nevertheless, Bannister insists that Sebelius will "indoctrinate its students."
Um, aren't universities supposed to be open to exploring different points of view, even religiously oriented ones like Georgetown?
By screeching about Sebelius' purported "indoctrination" -- a claim that has no basis in reality because he does not know what she will say -- Bannister is the one who is advocating indoctrination by insisting that Georgetown students not be exposed to views that conflict with a certain interpretation of Catholicism.
If people should simply be automatons for a particular ideology and be trained to automatically reject anything that conflicts with said ideology, why have schools and colleges at all? That's the logical end point of Bannister's thinking.
For him, it seems, obedience is more important than independent thought -- an odd position for someone working in the leadership of a so-called "news" organization to take.
Les Kinsolving Anti-Gay Tirade Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Think about that.
“The equal rights of all.”
If that should mean marriage rights for homosexuals, why not marriage rights for polygamists and polyandrists?
Why, for that matter, should there be a law allowing marriage for that orientation, which repeated records reveal has the highest percentage of AIDS – and now syphilis – if those orientations with no such AIDS rates should be denied the right to marry: such as the incestuous, necrophiliacs and zoophiliacs (bestiality)?
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 55: Fighting Bigotry With Bigots Topic: Accuracy in Media
How does Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid respond to a black commentator making a reference to a "bow-tied white boy"? By calling in a white supremacist to comment on it. Read more >>
WND's Cashill: Obama Didn't Write His Own Love Letters Topic: WorldNetDaily
A big part of anti-Obama conspiracy-mongering, as practiced by WorldNetDaily, is the ability to move goalposts as inconvenient facts render earlier conspiracies inoperative. For instance, as it became clear that Obama was born in America, Joseph Farah simply lied to people and insisted that neither he nor WND had ever suggested he wasn't.
Now Jack Cashill is exhibiting the same behavior. Back in 2010 (h/t Media Matters), Cashill wrote a column essentially claiming that Obama made up the girlfriend he wrote about in his book "Dreams From My Father" and pushed the theory that the girlfriend in the book was actually the girlfriend of Bill Ayers, which of course dovetails with Cashill's discredited theory that Ayers wrote the book.
A new Vanity Fair piece, however, shoots that theory out of the water. An excerpt from David Maraniss' upcoming book on Obama, it details with the woman Obama wrote about in his book. Obama also said the woman in the book was a "compression" of girlfriends, and the book itself explains that "[f]or the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known."
So, having been thoroughly discredited and exposed for the desperate conspiracy-mongerer that he is, how did Cashill react to this news? By throwing a fit, of course.
In a May 3 column, Cashill desperately likens Obama to James Frey, who infamously invented incidents in his memoirs: "Team Obama is as promiscuous with the facts as Frey. Obama and his muse appear to have created most, if not all, of the racial dramas related in 'Dreams.'" Never mind, of course, that Obama admitted in the book that some characters in the book are composites. While Cashill again portrays Ayers as Obama's "muse" for his book, Cashill doesn't address is now-discredited claim that the woman wrote about was actually Ayers' girlfriend.
Cashill moved into shoot-the-messenger mode for his May 9 column, attacking Maraniss for "unforgivably sloppy reporting," even though it's clear Maraniss has done much more footwork on the subject of Obama's life than Cashill, who seems to be content sitting around at his Kansas City home concocting conspiracy theories.
Still, Cashill whines: "I am hoping Maraniss corrects the record, but given his track record, we can take at face value nothing Maraniss says about Obama not even his story of the missing girlfriends."
Cashill follows that up by demonstrating what happens when you sit around your house all day concocting conspiracy theories: they become increasingly detatched from reality.Thus, Cashill's May 14 column posits that Obama didn't write his own love letters. No, really:
As an Obama biographer – his book “Barack Obama: The Story” is due out next month – Maraniss obviously knows that controversy surrounds Obama’s writing skills.
Given that controversy, he owes his reader some proof of the letter’s legitimacy. He should tell us whether he saw a hard copy of the letter, whether it was typed or hand-written, and why it reads so much better than Obama’s published work of the same period. He does none of the above.
[...]
Recall that Obama, in the words of friendly biographer David Remnick, was an “unspectacular” student. A Northwestern University prof who wrote a letter of reference for Obama reinforces the point, telling Remnick, “I don’t think [Obama] did too well in college.”
And yet writing longhand, presumably from memory, Obama has the wherewithal to put an umlaut over the “u” in Münzer. In college, I was an Honors English student and a Classics minor, not a political science major like Obama. I had not even heard of Münzer before reading this letter.
That Obama could embark upon a sophisticated, spontaneous discussion of T.S. Eliot – he claimed not to have read “The Waste Land” for a year and never bothered “to check all the footnotes” – should have alerted Maraniss.
Nowhere in “Dreams” is there any mention of T.S. Eliot, Münzer or Yeats, or any of the themes in this letter that so excited Adam Hirsch. As Obama tells it, he and his pals “discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.” This I can believe.
[...]
In the Harvard of 1990, with his name fully emblazoned upon his work, Obama was not hesitant to share syntactically challenged clunkers like this one: “No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind.” Huh?
The letter Maraniss reproduces, by contrast, is exquisitely punctuated and free of all such errors. The author of the letter even uses his or her participles correctly.
Uh, yeah.
This is what happens when you can't admit your own errors and choose to live a life of delusion -- you descend further and further down the rabbit hole.
But crazy as it is, it's still primo Obama-hate, so WND will continue to publish Cashill's lunacy.
At The MRC, The Truth Is A 'Smear' Topic: NewsBusters
Only at the Media Research Center would the truth be treated as a "smear."
In a May 13 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard complains about "the [Washington] Post's recent smear of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney."That's a reference to the story about Romney's boarding-school years, in which he took part in a forced hair-cutting of a student suspected to be gay.
Where, exactly, is the "smear"? Sheppard doesn't say. After all, not even Romney himself has challenged the accuracy of the story. The Post is standing by the story, with ombudsman Patrick Pexton pointing out that it talked to five different sources about the hair-cutting incident.
In other words, Sheppard is attacking the Post for reporting the truth. But that's what we've come to expect from the MRC, whose "Tell the Truth!" campaign gets upset when the truth is told about conservative.
Sheppard's snit fit was merely the silliest reaction among MRC and NewsBusters writers to the Romney story.
A May 10 NewsBusters post by Tom Blumer endeavored to explain away Romney's behavior:
Of course, this wouldn't make anyone's list of their proudest moments as an 18 year-old (Romney had just turned 18 at the time). But [Post writer Jason] Horowitz did not note any physical injury Lauber might have suffered as a result of the incident, wasn't able to pin any specific anti-homosexual utterance to Romney, and provided no proof that Romney might have known for certain that Lauber had homosexual tendencies. No one can possibly believe that the WaPo writer didn't try to find evidence of all of the above, or that he would have eagerly reported it had he found it.
Blumer went on to assert that the story was "an archetypal example of why their newspaper publishing segment is in so much financial trouble" -- even though he, like Sheppard, could not identify any factual errors.
Tim Graham rants in a May 10 NewsBusters post: "Did The WashPost Report a 5,000-Word Expose on Obama's Cocaine Use In the Last Cycle? Of Course Not." Graham conveniently ignores the fact that Obama disclosed his youthful drug use himself in his 1995 bio, "Dreams From My Father," while Romney made no such self-disclosure -- even as he quotes a Post article citing political experts who claim that "it is better for a politician to disclose his own transgressions, rather than be put on the defensive by revelations."
This is what passes for "media research" at the MRC. Simply reporting inconvenient facts makes you guilty of "liberal bias."
