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Tuesday, July 2, 2013
CNS' Jeffrey Abandons Objectivity
Topic: CNSNews.com

Terry Jeffrey isn't even bothering with objectivity on the "news" operation he run.

What is supposed to be a June 28 CNSNews.com article by Jeffrey ranting that how the final regulations for health care reform "requires virtually all health-care plans to provide cost-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs" concludes with this definitely-not-objective claim:

The Obama administration now says to Catholics and other Christians who oppose sterilization, contraception and/or abortion: You are not free to exercise your faith. You must act against its teachings. You must do what we say, not what your conscience says.

Jeffrey seems to believe that the federal government should follow the dicates of the Catholic Church, which would be a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

Then, in a July 2 article, Jeffrey deviates from journalistic objectivity from the get-go:

The final version of Obamacare’s “preventive services” regulation that the Department of Health and Human Services published on Friday discriminates against faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church by effectively barring them from owning and operating health-insurance companies.

At no point during this lengthy "news" screed does Jeffrey identify any "faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church" who operate health-insurance companies now, meaning that Jeffrey's fretting over this manufactured issue is meaningless.

Of course, when it comes to Obama, Jeffrey abandoned objectivity a long time ago.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:12 PM EDT
WND's Lazy Attack on Benefits For Same-Sex Military Spouses
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Gina Loudon turns in a lazy attack on gays in a June 29 WorldNetDaily article:

The benefits now granted to same-sex couples as a result of the Supreme Court decision striking down key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act will put an immediate strain on the defense budget, warns the Center for Military Readiness.

After the ruling Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that all benefits given to military spouses would now be extended to same-sex couples.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, said the “ruling will have immediate consequences in America’s armed forces, which employ personnel from all states and grant extensive marriage benefits under federal law.”

Donnelly said the U.S. military budget will be under pressure because of the Supreme Court’s actions, but it is hard to calculate how much.

“No one has estimated what the impact will be,” said Donnelly, “especially during a time when sequestration cuts, large and small, are affecting military families worldwide.”

Donnelly is the only person Loudon talks to on the subject for her article, so her claims are presented as indisputable fact. That ignores some basic logic that Donnelly and Loudon simply fail to apply.

While Donnelly is throwing around the "unknown" costs of expanding benefits to same-sex military spouses, it's a certainty those costs will be a tiny fraction of that currently spent on benefits of opposite-sex spouses, given the ratio of gay marriages to opposite-sex marriages in the civilian population.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Pentagon sought $150 billion to cover pay and benefits of current and retired members of the military for fiscal year 2013, which includes benefits for spouses. Any increase in that amount due to same-sex spouses is negligible.

We were able to figure that out. Why couldn't Loudon and Donnelly?


Posted by Terry K. at 7:37 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: Alan Caruba, Climate-Change Bamboozler
Topic: CNSNews.com
CNS and Accuracy in Media regularly let Caruba peddle factually challenged attacks on the reality of global warming. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 1:32 PM EDT
Larry Klayman: I'm Kind Of A Big Deal
Topic: WorldNetDaily

If there's anything Larry Klayman loves more than filing nuisance lawsuits that get thrown out of court at an increasingly rapid clip, it's talking about himself. Quoting himself is just the beginning.

In his June 21 WorldNetDaily column, Klayman again devoted two paragraphs to repeating what he said in another venue:

In the last few weeks, I filed two class action lawsuits seeking redress for the widespread violation of constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of association, security from unreasonable searches and seizures, and due process in the newest Obama scandal known as “NSA-gate.” See www.freedomwatchusa.org.

I stated earlier this week: “Now that the proverbial ‘cat is fully out of the bag’ concerning the National Security Agency’s and its cellphone and Internet corporate enablers’ massive violation of the constitutional rights of American citizens, the ‘establishment rats’ in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere predictably were sent scurrying to try to cover up their ‘NSA rat hole,’ by vilifying and then calling for the criminal prosecution of whistleblower Edward Snowden. Many of these rabid rats are of Democrat and Republican persuasions; they are the government officials, congressmen and senators who all collaborated to put the NSA’s illegal ‘Big Brother’ data mining of cell and Internet providers’ communications networks secretly into effect.

“They also consist of the pro-Obama prime-time talk-show hosts of MSNBC, and Jeffrey Toobin, the legal analyst who also ran interference for the criminally minded Clintons during the late 1990s. These media apologists have miraculously developed a newfound concern for national security – having conveniently ‘overlooked’ President Obama, Vice President Biden’s and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s wholesale and highly damaging leaks of classified national security information to boost the ‘Felon in Chief’s’ 2012 election prospects; one of which actually resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Team 6 heroes who were shot down by the Taliban in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan after the Obama administration disclosed their involvement in killing Osama bin Laden. (See www.citzensgranjury.com.)”

Notice that Klayman misspells the name of his own website at the end of the third paragraph; additionally,  the period at the end of the sentence is embedded into the clickable link on the WND version of the column, making the link doubly unusable. It's clear that Klayman brings the same level of attention to his column as he does to his legal work.

In his June 28 column, Klayman essentially fellates himself by touting his utterly meaningless anti-Obama Citizens Grand Jury:

It is a tragedy that with each passing day, the American people are learning of and having to endure yet another government scandal – at a time when the nation is also headed down the tubes both ethically and morally. Surely, corruption has reached a new level during the reign of President Barack Obama – but we are also forced to ask ourselves: Where are the checks and balances that were put in place by our Founding Fathers? Few and far between are principled and strong figures in the other two branches of government, the legislative and the judiciary, who are willing or able to stand up to the unprecedented tyranny we now are being subjected to by our executive branch. And, these other two branches also have seen their fair share of corruption, particularly of late. Under these sad circumstances, the American people themselves are groping for a vehicle to express their frustration and mete out justice for the crimes that have been committed against them and the nation.

It was for that reason that I took it upon myself to exercise the God-given rights of citizens to control their own fate and initiate citizens’ grand juries in a place that represents the heart of America: Ocala, Fla. Ocala, which sits in historic Marion County, is a place that is down to earth, generally conservative in its way of life and thought, and very religious and forward thinking. Like the race horses that are bred there – the region is the world’s capital of breeding and training – the city has not only swiftly moved into the future, but has kept its old world Southern ways and traditions. It is the perfect place to wage a second American revolution, legally and peacefully. I got to know Ocala well during my 2004 Florida campaign for the U.S. Senate, when I had my campaign headquarters located there.

So it was that I again spent time in Ocala last week to appear before our citizens’ grand jury to present yet new indictments to the jurors.

[...]

The list of criminal charges emanating from Ocala is growing, and it could prove endless. See www.citizensgrandjury.com. But, for now, as citizens prosecutor, I am proceeding to try these government and judicial officials for these alleged crimes. The trials will commence shortly, and they will serve as a beacon for the American people to return to their foundations first established in my birthplace of Philadelphia in 1776.

Klayman offers no evidence that his Citizens Grand Jury is anything but a kangaroo court that seeks only to attack the Obama administration and bars any exculapatory evidence. Fortunately, nothing it does is legally binding.

That Florida Senate campaign, by the way, is the one in which he finished seventh out of eight candidates for the Republican nomination, whining a whopping 1.1 percent of the vote.

Klayman seems to think all this self-aggrandizement will make people forget about his incompetence as a lawyer. Actually, it just draws more attention to it.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:32 AM EDT
Monday, July 1, 2013
CNS Devotes 'News' Articles To Bill Maher Jokes
Topic: CNSNews.com

Remember when CNSNews.com was treating Obama-bashing Jay Leno jokes as "news"? They're at it again, now giving jokes they don't approve of the same treatement.

Melanie Hunter cranked out not one but two articles on jokes by Bill Maher. The first article huffed, "Comedian Bill Maher said Friday on 'Real Time with Bill Maher' that Jesus 'bitched' about the rich, but never said anything about homosexuality. The second article complained that Maher "accused Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia of being 'more racist' than Paula Deen."

Hunter makes no effort to counter anything Maher said -- she's just offended that he said them. 

Isn't whining about the jokes of late-night comedians the job of other MRC divisions like NewsBusters? Not anymore, apparently.

Comedian Bill Maher said Friday on “Real Time with Bill Maher” that Jesus “bitched” about the rich, but never said anything about homosexuality. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/bill-maher-jesus-b#sthash.5Uiy5Bo3.dpuf

 


Posted by Terry K. at 11:59 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, July 2, 2013 12:00 AM EDT
WND Touts 'Truth' Award For Man With Fake Name Who Uses Anonymous Sources
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Alyssa Farah writes in a June 29 WorldNetDaily article:

Former Iranian Revolutionary Guard member-turned-CIA spy Reza Kahlili, who has pulled back the curtain on some of the innermost secrets of the Islamic regime, has been honored by the Endowment for Middle East Truth at its “Rays of Light in Darkness” dinner.

[...]

Kahlili appeared through Skype to accept his “Speaker of the Truth” award, donning a surgical mask, baseball cap and glasses to mask his identity. A device was used to disguise his voice as he addressed the audience.

Farah (who is WND editor Joseph Farah's daughter) didn't note the irony of a man who has taken such elaborate measures to hide his true identity receiving an award for being a supposed "Speaker of the Truth."

Farah also fails to note the unverifiable nature of the anonymous sources he cites for the increasingly fantastic claims he makes, making it difficult for anyone, let alone the Endowment for Middle East Truth, to verify whether Kahlili is, in fact, a "speaker of the truth."


Posted by Terry K. at 9:15 PM EDT
Cleric Isn't As 'Radical' As Newsmax Thinks
Topic: Newsmax

Under the headline "White House Slammed for Radical Cleric Meeting," Lisa Barron writes in a June 26 Newsmax article:

White House officials met  this month with Sheik Abdullah bin Bayyah, a deputy of radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the so-called spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who has been banned from entering the United States.

The June 13 meeting took place on the same day the Obama administration announced plans to arm Syria's rebel forces, reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).

However, even Fox News admits he's not as "radical" as he's being portrayed:

Bin Bayyah, for his part, has urged the U.N. to criminalize blasphemy. His group has spoken out in favor of Hamas and in 2009 issued a fatwa barring "all forms of normalization" with Israel.

In 2010, Bin Bayyah publicly rejected a fatwa that had been used as the justification for Al Qaeda terrorism.

In his criticism of the fatwa, he said: "Anyone who seeks support from this fatwa for killing Muslims or non-Muslims has erred in his interpretation and has misapplied the revealed texts."

The Muslim scholar has taken criticism from violent extremists for this position.

He has also worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other groups on global health issues.

By contrast, the IPT is run by anti-Muslim activist Steve Emerson, who most recently was promoting the discredited claim that a Saudi student was involved with the Boston Marathon bombings. Apparently, in Emerson's mind, every Muslim is a "radical."


Posted by Terry K. at 12:57 PM EDT
WND Rushes to Paula Deen's Defense
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It probably shouldn't be a surprise given its penchant for race-baiting and eagerness to portray Trayvon Martin as a violent thug, but WorldNetDaily is rushing to the defense of celebrity chef Paula Deen over the backlash to her racist remarks.

Chelsea Schilling asks in a June 29 WND article: "How did Paula Deen, a spunky 66-year-old TV chef, go from being the much-loved 'queen of Southern cuisine' to exiled pariah in just days?" Schillling makes sure we know that Deen's use of the N-word was "many years ago," and that "Even Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson came to Deen’s defense."

In case Schilling's pro-Deen bias wasn't clear from her writing, she includes the phone numbers and email addresses of the networks and companies that have dropped Deen, stating that "Concerned individuals may contact the following partners who have dumped Deen."

WND's columnists are also jumping on the pro-Deen bandwagon. Ilana Mercer laments in her June 28 column:

Celebrity chef Paula Deen has transgressed against America’s many Orwellian Ministries of Truth. While being deposed by a disgruntled employee, in May of 2013, Deen was forced to confess to using the “N-word” decades ago, upon which the Paula Deen Enterprises began to lose revenue.

Now the poor woman is on that familiar, modern-day Via Dolorosa: the apology tour.

Mercer goes on to suggest that Deen's views of black people are justified because one robbed her:

Blaming Old-South culture – as the prototypical knaves of conservatism are doing – is, moreover, unlikely to help exculpate Ms. Deen in the minds of the morons who judge her for her words, rather than for her deeds. The bad Old South macro-narrative is as ineffective in mitigation as is pointing out that Deen misspoke because of a near-death experience. “A black man [once] burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head,” recounted Deen. “I didn’t feel real favorable towards him.”

It is for the same reason that the young mother, seen here in a video gone viral being kicked and punched repetitively and mercilessly by a burly black man, should watch her words in the future. The home of the mom was invaded by the man, who delighted in brutalizing her in front of her toddler.

But then, Mercer also kinda misses apartheid, so she may not be the most objective person to talk to about racial issues.

Erik Rush -- one of the black conservatives WND keeps around to provide it cover for Colin Flaherty's race-baiting -- laments even more in a June 30 column (while also working in a plug for his book):

Regarding the Deen debacle, some have criticized the inequity, capriciousness and mercilessness of the mob mentality, as well as the hypocrisy of the liberal media, which tolerates abject racism from Rev. Al Sharpton, Touré Neblett and other people of color, while queuing up to crucify someone who admitted to using a racial slur in private years ago.

The conditions to which I would call attention are those I have previously cited, and which were addressed at length in my book, “Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal – America’s Racial Obsession.” In general, they speak to liberals’ imperative for portraying America as still being an institutionally racist nation.

[...]

Obviously I don’t know what is in Paula Deen’s heart, but that is hardly relevant to her predicament or to the argument at hand. What’s really sad and unjust about this affair is that those pursuing the issue don’t care what is in her heart.

If what he writes is any indication, we know what's in Mr. Rush's heart: a raging case of Obama derangement.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:56 AM EDT
Sunday, June 30, 2013
MRC Complains Fringe Denier Views Aren't Treated Equally With Obama's Statements on Global Warming
Topic: Media Research Center

A June 26 MRC Business & Media Institute item by Julia Seymour complained that the "opposition" was largely omitted from the TV networks' coverage of President Obama's efforts to combat climate change, grousing that "The uncritical coverage of the president’s speech is consistent with the networks’ bias on the issue of global warming."

Given that credible surveys have repeatedly found that the vast majority of climate scientists agree humans are changing the climate, it appears that the networks engaged in appropriately balanced coverage. After all, there's no sense in giving a fringe view equal footing with one rooted in scientific consensus and agreed upon by 97 of 100 climate experts.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:25 PM EDT
WND Is Just Asking
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Between Colin Flaherty's obsession with "black mob violence" and Jack Cashill's eagerness to exonerate George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin, WorldNetDaily has been a veritable font of race-baiting recently.

WND wants to make sure its readers stay in a race-baiting mood, asking in a June 27 poll question, "Should George Zimmerman be convicted to prevent race riots?"

 

 

Demonstrating that WND knows its readers all too well regarding preconceived notions trumping actual evidence, the winning answer so far by a wide margin is, "He should be cleared because there is not a shred of evidence he did anything but defend himself."

So, will WND ask if Zimmerman should be exonerated to prevent Colin Flaherty and Jack Cashill from rioting?


Posted by Terry K. at 10:26 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, June 30, 2013 2:00 PM EDT
Saturday, June 29, 2013
MRC Cherry-Picks A Poll To Claim Pro-Choice Side Is 'Losing'
Topic: Media Research Center

Geoffrey Dickens writes in a June 28 Media Research Center item:

The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks were so excited by Democratic Texas state senator Wendy Davis’s filibuster they failed to notice she is on the losing side of the abortion debate.

Anchors like NBC’s Brian Williams and ABC’s Diane Sawyer were so busy hailing Davis’s “epic” filibuster and her rise to “folk hero” status that they failed to report the findings of a National Journal poll showing her extremist pro-abortion stance is an unpopular one.

According to the latest United Technologies/National Journal poll, Americans favor a bill banning all abortions after 20 weeks by a 48 to 44 percent. The poll also found that younger respondents are even less accepting of the Davis stance, as it found those between the ages of 18 and 29 were in favor of a post-20 week abortion ban by a margin of 52 to 39 percent.

Not one of the Big Three networks mentioned the National Journal poll findings.

First: Dickens offers no evidence to back up his contention that Davis took an "extremist pro-abortion stance," and he fails to consider the possibility that the bill she was filibustering against is what is "extremist."

Second: Dickens is cherry-picking poll results that conform to his right-wing, anti-abortion agenda. A more relevant poll would be one that polls Texans about the specific bill in question, not a national poll on a general issue.

From a June 17-19 Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll of Texas residents:

A majority of Texans oppose the legislation currently being considered by the legislature that imposes restrictions on abortion and 80 percent do not want abortion to be raised during the special session of the legislature called at the end of May by Governor Rick Perry.
 
Of registered voters, 63 percent say the state has enough restrictions on abortion and 71 percent thinking that the Governor and legislature should be more focused on the economy and jobs. A majority opposes the sort of legislation passed by the state Senate and being considered by the state House during this legislative Special Session, believing that it imposes further restrictions on abortion. Overall, only 34 percent trust the Governor and the legislature to make decisions about women's healthcare.

Why didn't Dickens report that poll, even though it's more directy relevant to the issue at hand? Because he wouldn't have a post otherwise.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:21 PM EDT
WND's Cashill Hides Holes In Zimmerman Witness Claim
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jack Cashill -- whose biased "reporting" is enthusiastically defending George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin -- declared in a June 28 WorldNetDaily article:

The testimony of eyewitness John Good on Friday in the murder trial of John Good should have put to rest any doubts about George Zimmerman’s innocence on the charge of second-degree murder for the February 2012 shooting in Sanford, Fla., of Trayvon Martin.

Curiously, though, Cashill doesn't directly quote any of Good's testimony. That's because he backed off from the assertions he initially made to police after Martin's death -- the same assertions that Cashill previously said when Good testifies to them, "the case will be all but closed."

Cashill has been taking refuge in Good's initial statement to police that Martin "was pretty much just throwing down blows on the guy kind of MMA-style" on Zimmerman as the main hook of Zimmerman's exoneration. But he doesn't tell his readers that Good walked that claim back somewhat during his testimony, admitting he never saw an actual punch thrown.

Indeed, Good -- originally known to the public as Witness 6 -- had walked that claim back in another law enforcement interview three weeks after Martin's death. Has Cashill told his readers about that?


Posted by Terry K. at 9:25 AM EDT
Friday, June 28, 2013
Joseph Farah and The Goverment's Secret Underground Maglev Railway
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah uses his June 27 WorldNetDaily column to rant about "today’s surveillance state." As part of a slightly paranoid list of "the hard, cold facts" of how Americans allegedly can be surveilled, Farah adds:

To ensure continuity of government (COG), one or more buildings in the nation’s capital are linked to an underground railway network over a mile below ground using magnetic levitation (maglev) trains, interconnected to over a dozen military installations in the U.S.

Say what?

We have no idea what Farah is talking about. The closest thing we've seen in poking around on the 'net that even remotely comes close to what Farah is describing is from this website:

There are numerous witnesses who speak about a subterranean highway through America just like our own Interstate highway system, except it’s underground. It seems this underground highway uses trucks, cars, and buses driven by electric motors. (You wouldn't want gasoline fumes polluting tunnels.) They also mention another style of transport for freight and passengers that are linked together in a worldwide network called the "Sub-Global System." It has checkpoints at each country entry. There are shuttle tubes that "shoot" the trains at incredible speed using a maglev and vacuum method. They travel in excess of the speed of sound.

Farah's paranoid beliefs explain a lot. If you believe that the government is running a secret maglev subway a mile below ground, it's an easy leap to lying in your readers' faces and peddling bogus claims about the president's purported lack of "eligibility" to hold the job.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:13 PM EDT
Newsmax-Dick Morris Rehabilitation Watch
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax's image rehabilitation project for the chronically wrong Dick Morris rolls slowly forward by giving him a June 27 column to rant about NSA surveillance.

Newsmax has been providing Morris with several opportunities to redeem his career after  getting canned by Fox News for, among other things, predicting Mitt Romney would defeat President Obama in a landslide.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:23 AM EDT
WND Can't Stop Keeping Arpaio Out of Homeschool Story
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For more than a year, WorldNetDaily has been reporting on a homeschooling family, the Loudermilks, who filed a lawsuit against a law enforcement agency over a search of their house after an anonymous complaint. And for all of that time, WND's Bob Unruh has repeatedly endeavored to obscure the fact that the law enforcement agency in question is the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, led by WND birther buddy Joe Arpaio.

Unruh's memory hole strikes again in a June 26 WND article on the case. While Unruh notes that the Loudermilks live in Maricopa County, he waits until the 22nd paragraph of his 25-paragraph article  to mention that "six uniformed sheriff’s deputies" took part in the search of the Loudermilk home. Not only does Unruh fail to identify the deputies as members of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, he fails to tell his readers that Arpaio is one of the defendants in the Loudermilks' lawsuit.

Unruh quotes only the legal representatives of the Loudermilks in his article -- from one of WND's favorite groups, the Home School Legal Defense Association -- and he makes no mention of the defense's version of the story, nor does he explain why he does not find the other side of the story newsworthy.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:51 AM EDT

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