Public disgust with Obamacare brought Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli closer to a win in the Virgina gubernatorial race than anyone expected, says Republican pollster John McLaughlin.
Cuccinelli "was able to close [in] on Obamacare, on the issue" in "what everybody thought was going to be a landslide," McLaughlin, of John McLaughlin Associates, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
"It was an amazing thing because he was focused on Obamacare," he said of Cuccinelli.
"[Democratic Gov.-elect Terry] McAuliffe was trying to do a rerun of Obama's race where he was doing war on women, he was trying to run on these social issues, on the liberal social issues on abortion and other things, and, really, what people really care about is they're trying to make their lives just get by every day," McLaughlin said Monday.
He said polls on election night, "before the media could pollute them," showed that of 600 voters, "41 percent were conservatives. Only 23 percent were liberals."
Burke apparently didn't fact-check McLaughlin, because she lets his claims stand unchallenged. By contrast, Media Matters notes, polling has shown that the Affordable Care Act did not play a major role in the Virginia governor's race.
Also, what the heck does McLaughlin mean by polling "before the media could pollute them"? Burke is not terribly curious about that, either.
A foundation created by legendary screen actor Jimmy Stewart with the active support of President Ronald Reagan is launching a new initiative to support citizen whistleblowers of all kinds who step forward to expose corruption and abuses of power.
The American Spirit Foundation‘s Citizen’s Whistleblower Network is a new You Tube channel that will feature videos and first-hand accounts by citizens and independent investigative reporters.
[...]
The foundation’s website has a whistleblower section that features foundation co-founder Peter Paul, whose exposure of Hillary Clinton’s handling of campaign finances led to the indictment of her campaign finance director and a fine assessed to her campaign for hiding Paul’s in-kind contribution of more than $750,000.
Peter Paul? That name sounds familiar. The article goes on:
As WND reported, Paul is in a federal prison for manipulating the price of the stock in his company, from which he made the campaign donation, as it was collapsing. He blamed President Clinton in a lawsuit for sabotaging the company, Stan Lee Media, to get out of a $17 million agreement to serve as the company’s international promoter after he left the White House.
Calling himself a hidden political prisoner, Paul claims Attorney General Eric Holder and his Justice Department are obstructing justice by reneging on a sentencing agreement that would have released him from federal prison more than three years ago.
Paul is a former business partner of Spider-Man creator Stan Lee, who once served as chairman of the American Spirit Foundation. Paul was the foundation’s president and CEO.
“Hillary is carrying out her promise to finally destroy my family to punish me for exposing the corruption that elected her to the Senate,” Paul contended to WND in an email in March 2012 from the La Tuna federal facility in Anthony, Texas, near El Paso.
The "political prisoner" claim aside, that may be the most truthful description WND has given to Paul's crimes. As we've documented, WND has previously soft-pedaled Paul's criminal record in order to preserve what little credibility he has as a Clinton-basher.
And of course, Paul's claim to be a "political prisoner" -- which nobody at WND apparently felt the need to fact-check -- is completely overblown. If he was innocent of his crimes, why did he flee the U.S. for Brazil in 2001, then spend two years fighting extradition to the U.S.? Paul also ludicrously claimed that "the Clinton Justice Department had him jailed while he was in Brazil" despite the fact that the original indictment against Paul was not issued until June 2001, and he was arrested in Brazil in August 2001 -- months after the Clinton administration left office and, thus, no longer ran the Justice Department.
The unidentified WND writer failed to note the sheer hypocrisy of allowing a twice-convicted felon (he also has a conviction for cocaine possession under his belt) who's still in prison running any kind of whistleblower operation.
CNS Ignores Facts About Medicare To Bash Illegal Immigrants Topic: CNSNews.com
Barbara Hollingsworth -- who we last saw getting an apparently false article she wrote deleted without explanation -- tries her best to attack illegal immigrants in a Nov. 5 CNSNews.com article:
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) spent almost $29 million to cover Medicare Part D prescription drugs for 4,139 individuals “unlawfully present” in the U.S. and thus ineligible to receive federal health care benefits, according to an audit by Daniel Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health & Human Services.
Hollingsworth described the payments as "unallowable" despite the fact that she also acknowledges that CMS does not have a policy on Medicare payments to undocumented immigrants.
Further, Hollingsworth did not mention that, as Media Matters noted when Fox News picked up the story, that undocumented immigrants contribute $14.4 billion more to the Medicare Trust Fund that they are given in benefits, thus helping contribute to the solvency of the program. Native-born Americans, meanwhile, accounted for a $31 billion deficit to the program.
But reporting all relevant facts was not on Hollingsworth's agenda for this story -- bashing "illegal aliens" was.
WND's Klein Waits Until '60 Minutes' Retracts Benghazi Story To Pile on Discredited Witness Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein sounds rather smug in a Nov. 10 WorldNetDaily article:
Now discredited Benghazi whistleblower Dylan Davies scored a book deal and interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” even though evidence has been out in the open for over a year that his story conflicted with claims he made in both the book and interview.
On Friday, “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan apologized and said the network was “wrong” for airing a report based in large part on claims made by Davies, a private contractor at the Blue Mountain Group that provided security at the Benghazi compound that was overrun by Islamist militants on Sept. 11, 2012.
Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, has recalled Davies’ book, “The Embassy House,” spokeswoman Jennifer Robinson told CNN.
The retraction reportedly came after it was discovered Davies provided a conflicting account of his version of events – including where he was during and after the attack – in interviews with the FBI and in an unsigned Blue Mountain incident report provided to the State Department.
WND found, however, that all “60 Minutes” or the book publisher needed to do to discover the inconsistencies in Davies’ claims was search the Web for his last name and the word “Benghazi.”
The Telegraph reported: “Darryl Davies, the manager of the Benghazi contract for Blue Mountain, flew out of the city hours before the attack was launched.”
But Klein offers no evidence that he ran that search at any time before the "60 Minutes" retraction. Then again, Klein had no motivation to do so -- he didn't want Davies to be discredited.
In fact, less than a week ago, Klein was defending Davies, proclaiming that "alleged attempt to discredit a Benghazi guard possibly has backfired."
Of course, Klein was ultimately trying to spin things away from Davies, claiming that the incident report Davies submitted to Blue Mountain "provided a first-person account stating the attack was a coordinated jihadist assault."
The fact that Klein waited until "60 Minutes" retracted its story to tell readers about more conflicting stories from Davies shows that he cares more about taking down Obama than telling the truth.
The MRC Is Still Trying to Exonerate Herman Cain Topic: NewsBusters
Back in the early days of the 2012 presidential campaign, the Media Research Center was an aggressive defender of Herman Cain after allegations of sexual harrassment surfaced -- one of the benefits of being a personal friend of MRC chief Brent Bozell, apparently.
And, it appears, the MRC will never stop defending Cain. Noel Sheppard wrote in a Nov. 2 NewsBusters post on a new book claiming that fellow onetime Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman was the person who floated the sexual harrassment claims about Cain:
As for Cain, readers will certainly recall an October 2011 hit-piece in Politico accusing him of inappropriate behavior with two women.
Although Cain denied the allegations, the media firestorm that ensued was so fierce that he eventually withdrew from the race.
Not surprisingly, as soon as he exited, the accusers went back into their holes and we heard nothing more about the matter. Nothing.
Funny how that happens.
You mean like how we never really heard from Paula Jones again after President Clinton left office?
Sheppard also appears to have forgotten that the central fact of the claims against Cain -- that the National Restaurant Association did reach monetary agreements with two women to settle harassment claims while Cain headed the group -- has never been disputed, including by Cain himself.
That would seem to count for something. To Sheppard, though, telling the truth about Cain is just a "hit-piece."
AIM Acknowledges '60 Minutes' Benghazi Implosion; MRC Still Silent Topic: Accuracy in Media
We noted last week that while Accuracy in Media joined others in the ConWeb in promoting a CBS "60 Minutes" story that included the account of a purported eyewitness to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, it also noted that the report failed to disclose that the purported eyewitness had also written a book published by a division of CBS. But it was also slow in responding to questions about the witness' credibility.
Now that the story of the "60 Minutes" witness, Dylan Davies aka "Morgan Jones," has completely imploded, AIM is finally acknowledging the problems in a Nov. 8 column by Roger Aronoff, in which he criticizes how "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan and others "were apparently taken in by this charlatan" and "doubled down" after criticism first surfaced.
Aronoff also engages in some damage control, insisting that "While Davies’ account may have been a lie, the administration still has much to answer for." He adds:
Maybe “60 Minutes” can re-examine the rest of the material from their hundred or so interviews they did for the segment, and come up with a hard-hitting story, that is also accurate. As Lara Logan said in the “60 Minutes Overtime” website-only feature, which has been pulled from the “60 Minutes” website: “So, we left about 98 percent of what we learned on the floor—didn’t even report it—because unless we could substantiate it with primary sources that we truly trusted and whose motivations we trusted, then we didn’t even go there.”
Many lies have circulated regarding the Benghazi attacks of last year. This wasn’t the first. That is why Accuracy in Media founded the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, which is searching for the truth behind the attacks.
You mean that kangaroo court that's stacked with Obama-haters and birthers?
Meanwhile, the Media Research Center, which also touted the now-discredited "60 Minutes" report, has been utterly silent on its implosion. The only acknowledgement of the controversy so far is an Associated Press article reprinted at CNSNews.com about Davie's book being withdrawn by its publishe.r
CNSNews.com recently started added a tag at the end of some of its stories:
The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold.
In practice, that means CNS has even more resources to cherry-pick economic data to make President Obama look bad.
So here's the monthlyonslaught of cherry-picked stories CNS published about the latest unemployment numbers, with the headlines pretty much telling it all:
None of these six articles mention that 204,000 jobs were created in October.
Also, the "real unemployment rate" CNS references is a fallacy. Because it includes people who are working part-time but would like to find a full-time position, it cannot possibly be an "unemployment" rate.
One has to wonder: Is Dr. Keith C. Wold spinning in his grave because his money is going toward creating such biased and fallacious reporting?
That the establishment media have a leftward lean is news to no one these days, but an episode of reporting on a speech by conservative Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., seems to push the envelope.
It seems the media trumpeted, and even headlined, the senator’s references to abortion, even though he didn’t make any.
The Associated Press reported about Paul’s recent speech at the 10,000-student Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., with the headline: “Rand Paul warns eugenics on horizon unless conservatives stand up against abortion rights.”
Except that Paul didn’t mention abortion in the nearly 18-minute address.
Farah then provided an summary of Paul's speech, refusing to concede that all his talk about eugenics was a pretty obvious reference to abortion. As one Paul supporter stated, "Historically speaking, there is a direct connection between eugenics, birth control, abortion, and race selection. ... Nonetheless, as much as pro-choice advocates want to repudiate part of their movement’s history, these are well-documented facts and are often used to support pro-life policy positions.
Farah then sought to quickly gloss over Paul's plagiarism: "Paul has been under attack for alleged plagiarism in speeches and an article recently. He has conceded he inadvertently made mistakes in crediting sources and has set up a new system for correcting the oversight."
Farah is so focused on distracting from the plagiarism allegations, in fact, that she completely ignores the fact that one of the prime examples of Paul's plagiarism appears in the very speech she's defending. Paul's Liberty University speech on eugenics includes a plot synopsis of the film "Gattaca" -- which was pretty much copied from the Wikipedia entry on the film.
Now that's putting a political agenda before facts!
Newsmax weighed in with a Nov. 5 article by Courtney Coren, who cited not only crazy birther Paul Vallely but the right-wing Investor's Business Daily to back up the conspiracy. Which, on the whole, is about the same amount of solid, documented evidence that WND has -- which is to say, none.
Coren also uncritically repeats Vallely's claim that "we had an Air Force sergeant that was relieved of his duty by a squadron commander who was a woman — she's a lesbian — and he did not believe in same-sex marriages, so he was relieved by her"-- a claim that's been completely discredited.
Over the past couple weeks, WorldNetDaily's Michael Maloof has been trying to assemble supposedly credible sources to back up his (entirely unsubstantiated) conspiracy theory that President Obama is systematically removing military officers for whatever reason. Maloof sums up the lead members of his retinue in a Nov. 4 article:
In response, prominent retired generals – ranging from Army Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News senior military analyst, to Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a founder of the Army’s elite Delta Force, to Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Gen. Patrick Henry Brady – have all gone on the record with WND, characterizing Obama’s actions as nothing less than an all-out attack on America’s armed forces.
Let's review, shall we?
As we've noted, Vallely is a crazy birther. Boykin, who's now with the right-wing Family Research Council, is basically rooting for a military coup against Obama -- or, more euphemistically, “fulfill [its] constitutional duty and take over the government,’” though Boykin laments that such a move wouldn't be constitutional. Brady, meanwhile, is another rabidly anti-Obama right-winger, has demonstrated his lack of honor by spewing lies and hate about Obama.
Maloof's mighty military Wurlitzer also includes Frank Gaffney, who thinks Obama may still be a Muslim, and Allen West, who has called Obama a "usurper and charlatan," which is birther-friendly language.
And then there's the whole thing about WND blaming the purported purge on Valerie Jarrett and giving her the same nickname as a notorious serial killer.
In short, crazy people without a shred of evidence to back them up. It's as if the "purge" is WND's new birther crusade.
CNS' Jeffrey Still Pushing 'Amnesty' Fallacy Topic: CNSNews.com
One of CNSNews.com's most biased behaviors (despite being operated by an organization that purports to fight against media bias) is portraying any immigration reform as "amnesty" regardless of what it is.
CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey keeps up the bias in a Nov. 6 article headlined "Obama: No Reason We Can't Do Amnesty Before End of Year." Needless to say, at no point does Jeffrey quote President Obama using the word "amnesty."
Jeffrey then tries to justify his improper usage of the word by writing:
Obama further said that providing an amnesty to illegal aliens--n.b. a "pathway to citizenship"--would grow the U.S. economy above "the growth that's already taking place," and reduce the federal deficit.
Wrong -- as we've documented, because Obama's proposed "pathway to citizenship" includes numerous conditions before citizenship would be made available, it is not, by definition, "amnesty."
As with his activism against Obamacare, Jeffrey has simply stopped caring enough about the truth that he can no longer be bothered to report facts. In other words, he's starting to turn into JosephFarah.
Colin Flaherty Doesn't Understand How Journalism Works Topic: WorldNetDaily
Colin Flaherty writes in a Nov. 3 WorldNetDaily article:
When a mom and daughter were kidnapped, forced to withdraw money from an ATM, raped, then shot last week, the Indianapolis Star played it by the book: Do not mention the suspects are black.
The “book” in this case is written by the Society of Professional Journalists, headquartered just three miles from the scene of the crime. In last month’s issue of the SPJ magazine, the oldest and largest organization of journalists in America reminded its members how they should report racial violence.
Don’t.
The SPJ story was just repeating what dozens of chapters around the country tell its members in regular seminars: Unless someone is considerate enough to wave around a sign saying, “Kill Honky,” or issue a press release or utter racial expletives in front of lots of witnesses, the fact that the suspects just happen to be black has no bearing on the story.
And if you wonder about it, you are probably a “racist and hater,” said the SPJ.
Actually, not so much. As it just so happens, the SPJ's Quill magazine discussed the subject of reporting race and crime in a recent issue, and it tells a story much different from the one Flaherty is peddling:
Working journalists may need to look no further than their own media out- let’s policies, which likely will offer guidance on how to report on race and crime. Generally these policies will say to only include race when full descriptions of suspects are available that also include precise information such as height and weight, clothing, getaway car and/or other identifying features, among other details. Even Chicago Tribune’s Kern, in the controversy cited above, declared that he would have included race in the description of the victims and the alleged perpetrator if it were part of a series of identifying details that were relevant to the story (i.e. he was protest- ing including race as a sole identifier or where he thought it was irrelevant).
The Maynard Institute, SPJ and Poynter all have cautioned against gratu- itous references to race that might con- tribute to stereotypes. Poynter’s Kelly McBride, for example, has suggested the following criteria in determining whether race should be an issue in news coverage:
What’s the relevance of race? How do I know that?
Am I making that assertion myself, or do I have authoritative sources to make that assertion?
If race is relevant simply because “the community” or “commenters” were talking about it, is it a few people, or is the conversation widespread?
If I’m going to introduce race as an element in a rape story, how can I make sure the views of the primary stakehold- ers are accurate and accurately represented?
[...]
Nevertheless, official news outlet policies almost always allow for inclusion of a suspect’s race or ethnicity when it adds to other identifying details. That’s the policy that should be followed and that can be followed without compromising one’s journalistic ethics and re- sponsibilities.
This view, of course, conflicts with Flaherty's race-baiting narrative, in which all crimes committed by blacks (and some by non-blacks and even non-humans) are automatically considered "black mob violence" despite the utter lack of any link beyond the race of the offender. If a black commits a crime, no matter how petty, it's news according to Flaherty. He does not treat crime committed by offenders of other races with the same concern.
But since Flaherty cares only about race-baiting and not responsible journalism -- and thinks that every crime committed by a black person is, by definition, "racial violence"-- he does not know or care about such things. Neither does his employer.
MRC Completely Bypasses Opportunity to Bash '60 Minutes' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center usually doesn't pass up an opportunity to bash one of the most prominent mainstream-media targets of the right wing, CBS' "60 Minuets." But it has been silent about the latest trouble the show is in.
We've already documented how the MRC promoted a recent "60 Minutes" story on the Benghazi attack, featuring what MRC writer Matthew Balan touted as "an actual eyewitness of the attack." But it turns out that this supposed eyewitness, who went under the pseudonym Morgan Jones but whose real name is Dylan Davies, had told his bosses at the security contractor he worked for that he was nowhere near the Benghazi compound that night. This, of course, means that Davies/Jones was either lying then or is lying now, and is therefore suffering a severe lack of credibility.
The MRC has yet to tell its readers about the conflicting stories of this supposed Benghazi eyewitness. It passed up the the chance to do so once again in a Nov. 7 item by Matt Hadro. In the item, Hadro focuses very narrowly on CNN host Chris Cuomo's claim that there's "a negative mythology to what happened in Benghazi that is not supported by fact, it's supported by speculation." Hadro went on to complain that "CNN has failed miserably in holding the administration accountable on Benghazi." The post was accompanied by a 30-second clip of Cuomo's statement.
Hadro didn't tell his readers that Cuomo's comment came within the context of a much longer segment in which CNN examined the controversy over the "60 Minutes" segement and its supposed Benghazi "witness." Media Matters has the longer video demonstrating the full context.
Why did Hadro refuse to tell readers about the full CNN report and only cherry-pick a statement out of context? Is he -- and, by extension, his bosses -- so afraid to admit that there is doubt about the evidence conservatives have been using to hammer President Obama over Benghazi?
Apparently so. Why else would the MRC not grasp an prime opportunity to attack one of its biggest nemeses?
UPDATE: The New York Times is reporting that Jones/Davies told the same story to the FBI that he told to his employer -- which, again, is fundamentally different from the one he told on "60 Minutes." Will that rouse the MRC into the kind of media-bashing it normally needs no rousing to do?
Is it possible that our propagandist-in-chief “innocently” impressed upon certain starry-eyed, Obama-worshiping journalists how tenuous he believes things are with regard to race in order to manipulate them into bringing these issues to the collective top of mind through their reporting? Further, might he be doing so as a precursor to some manner of “false flag” racial incident or incidents that are in the works? It does seem interesting that in addition to the usual suspects (like Jesse Jackson), we are seeing an upsurge in race-related rhetoric and reportage, despite nothing in particular having transpired in this area lately.
While race-baiting is nothing new for the left, the aforementioned incidents appear to have come somewhat out of left field with regard to the news cycle. Should some high profile, highly unpleasant race-related incident occur in the near future, it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing happened at a juncture that proved to be advantageous to the administration.
At this particular juncture, one might say that the Obama administration could use all the help it can get, considering Americans’ anger over the Obamacare rollout, mounting concern with regard to the several scandals in which the president is involved, his plummeting approval rating and the growing alienation of the press.
Let’s just hope that “help” is not forthcoming, for all our sakes.
Obama's natural disease to seek absolute power runs completely counter to the American Way of Life. And, perhaps because of the good-natured people that constitute this nation, we are loathe to identify exactly what is making us feel the warnings. But, acting as if it is not happening will not stop him from seeking and gaining that power, and the corruption that runs with it, hand in hand. In the case of Obama, not only is he the bully, but he has paid off the superintendent, the principal, and even the janitor.
Cathy Burke writes in a Nov. 11 Newsmax article:
An unbylined Nov. 9 WorldNetDaily 
Barbara Hollingsworth -- who we last saw getting an apparently false article she wrote 
Aaron Klein sounds rather smug in a Nov. 10 WorldNetDaily 
Back in the early days of the 2012 presidential campaign, the Media Research Center was an 
We 
CNSNews.com recently started added a tag at the end of some of its stories:
With tea party favorite Rand Paul being credibly accused of plagiarism, WorldNetDaily knew what it had to do: change the subject.
WorldNetDaily, surprisingly, does not have the 
Over the past couple weeks, WorldNetDaily's Michael Maloof has been trying to assemble supposedly credible sources to back up his (entirely unsubstantiated) conspiracy theory that President Obama is systematically removing military officers for whatever reason. Maloof sums up the lead members of his retinue in a Nov. 4 
One of CNSNews.com's most biased behaviors (despite being operated by an organization that purports to fight against media bias) is portraying 
Colin Flaherty writes in a Nov. 3 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center usually doesn't pass up an opportunity to bash one of the most prominent mainstream-media targets of the right wing, CBS' "60 Minuets." But it has been silent about the latest trouble the show is in.
Is it possible that our propagandist-in-chief “innocently” impressed upon certain starry-eyed, Obama-worshiping journalists how tenuous he believes things are with regard to race in order to manipulate them into bringing these issues to the collective top of mind through their reporting? Further, might he be doing so as a precursor to some manner of “false flag” racial incident or incidents that are in the works? It does seem interesting that in addition to the usual suspects (like Jesse Jackson), we are seeing an upsurge in race-related rhetoric and reportage, despite nothing in particular having transpired in this area lately.
Obama's natural disease to seek absolute power runs completely counter to the American Way of Life. And, perhaps because of the good-natured people that constitute this nation, we are loathe to identify exactly what is making us feel the warnings. But, acting as if it is not happening will not stop him from seeking and gaining that power, and the corruption that runs with it, hand in hand. In the case of Obama, not only is he the bully, but he has paid off the superintendent, the principal, and even the janitor. 
