MRC Censors Full Controversy Over 'Christian Crowdfunding Platform' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alexander Hall fretted in a March 17 post:
The crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo stepped up to the challenge and was described by a liberal blog as the “go-to fundraising vehicle for some Trump supporters and far-right groups looking to solicit money online.”
GiveSendGo — and other new alternative platforms — may just be the pushback to Big Tech the conservative movement has been waiting for. “Donald Trump’s efforts to [allegedly] delegitimize the results of the 2020 presidential election set off a gold rush, allowing prominent lawyers, conservative PACs, Republican lawmakers, and others in the former president’s orbit to raise millions of dollars off false claims of a stolen election,” liberal outlet GEN reported via Medium. The blog post, “Trumpworld Has Been Using a Christian Crowdfunding Platform to Rake in Cash,” written by Medium Associate Editor Richard Salame, illustrated that “GiveSendGo has been a friendly resource for those looking to push claims of election fraud.”
Salame made clear that the large amounts of money being processed by the conservative crowdfunding platform were nothing to scoff at:
Among the most successful fundraisers is Matthew Braynard, the former director of data and strategy for Trump’s 2016 campaign. Braynard had launched his fundraising page on the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo on November 7, promising to use the money to “detect potentially fraudulent ballots.” After a week, donations had surpassed the goal of $590,000 that he had set by tens of thousands of dollars, and by mid-January, the campaign had raised more than $675,000 from nearly 9,000 donations.
See that "[allegedly]" in the first paragraph of Hall's item? Hall put that in -- apparently, he doesn't believe that Trump tried to delegitimize the election despite all the evidence showing that he did. He also omitted a key fact about Braynard's crowdfunding campaign that was in the article he's atacking: Braynard has yet to make public any evidence he claims to have of election fraud, which seems to suggest that the only fraud here is being perpetrated by Braynard.
But for all Hall's gushing about how "conservatives have actually begun to establish their own platforms to address their concerns rather than merely accept being deplatformed," he's not going to tell you other reasons GiveSendGo is considered controversial. The big ones is that it allowed crowdfunding campaigns for people arrested in the Capitol riot and for a legal defense for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot and killed two people at a Wisconsin protest against police brutality. Is it really "Christian" to give money to credibly accused criminals?
GiveSendGo popped up at the MRC again in an April 19 post, in which Autumn johnson complained that Twitter didn't block an article on a data breach at GiveSendGo that revealed the names of police officers who donated to Rittenhouse's defense fund.Johnson comlained it was a double standard because Twitter "banned the New York Post article exposing the contents of Biden’s laptop over unfounded allegations that the story relied on hacked materials." Hunter Biden is a right-wing obsession, and the origin of the laptop has never been proven -- and given that the story came from Rudy Giuliani as campaign dirt and published by the New York Post, which just got busted lying about Kamala Harris, there's good reason to question the veracity of that story.
Newsmax Writes An NRA Press Release Topic: Newsmax
A March 30 article claims to have been written by Eric Mack, but it reads like it came from the National Rifle Association's PR shop:
The National Rifle Association has faced some challenges with bankruptcy proceedings and a move to Texas after New York Democrats sought to engage in politically motivated investigations, but its membership growth is strengthening.
The NRA has seen 150,000 new members this year alone, averaging about 1,000 new members a day, NRA Director of Media Relations Amy Hunter told The Epoch Times.
Mass murder events and President Joe Biden's administration's talk of gun-control measures have also led defenders of the Second Amendment to join the nation's top gun lobby.
"We've had two federal bills that have been passed in the House, and they're going to be heard in the Senate soon," Hunter told the Times. "You have Biden talking about executive action that he's going to take, and it's been pretty steady throughout history that when you have an anti-gun president in office, and he's passing laws, signing executive action, that usually causes a surge in NRA interest in membership."
The NRA now boasts 5 million members after a summer surge, she added.
Mack provided no evidence that the New York investigation into the NRA is "politically motivated" -- in fact, given all the financialshenanigans that have been uncovered, there's more than sufficient cause to investigate the organization. Mack alluded to the NRA's problems only in the second-to-last paragraph of his article, when referenced an NRA board member trying to fight the New York investigation and declaring that "he must take on a culture of subservience and alleged financial misdeeds that has sprung up around the group's top executive, Wayne LaPierre."
That's not really enough to shake off the press-release feeling of Mack's article.
CNS Lets Columnists Launch Bogus Attack On Another Biden Nominee Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com hasaverybadhabit of launching partisan attacks on President Biden's nominees, and Kristen Clarke, nominated as assistant attorney general for civil rights, was no exception. CNS left it to its commentary section for the hit jobs on Clarke. In a Feb. 1 op-ed headlined "Biden Nominates Lawyer Who Outright Said Whites Are Inferior," Hans Bader claimed:
Clarke has said that blacks are genetically superior to whites.
"Melanin endows blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities," while "most whites are unable to produce melanin because their pineal glands are often calcified or non-functioning," wrote Clarke in the Harvard Crimson newspaper in 1994.
If Clarke still believes blacks are superior to whites, and is involved in formulating the Biden administration's affirmative-action policies, her racist views may affect their legality, by tainting their motivation.
In fact, it was clear then -- and was pointed out again during Clarke's confirmation hearing in April -- that Clarke's letter, published when she was a student at Harvard, was satire, a response to a controversial book (yet popular in right-wing circles) called "The Bell Curve," which tried to make connections between race and IQ and was co-written by a Harvard professor.
Nevertheless, this was followed by a Feb. 9 column by the Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky and Caitlin McDonough cited the satirical letter to claim "Clarke cited a number of 'experts' regarding what she called the 'truth' about the 'genetic differences between blacks and whites.'" The same day, Bader invoked the letter again to claim that Clarke "exhibited racism and anti-Semitism at Harvard Law School."
Despite publishing this misinformation, CNS refused to cover Clarke's confirmation hearing at which the truth was told about the letter. Instead, it published an April 19 column by Bader prestending that Clarke's satire wasn't clear at the time and that she only recently claimed it was satire:
Clarke now claims ;her anti-white statements were satirical, in contrast to the past, when she stood by them. But they occurred in a serious discussion, and she made these statements at a place and time where even shocking racial claims about whites were made in all seriousness.
Clarke and I both attended the same school, Harvard University. There, I encountered black students who believed crackpot racial theories that echoed Clarke's statements (such as the idea that blacks are, by nature, warm, communal, spiritual people, unlike whites, who are coldhearted oppressors). These bizarre racial claims were made without any hint of humor or irony. The black secretary of the Harvard Law School student government told me in all sincerity that his kids would fight mine in a race war some day. And I had thought he was my friend!
I don't believe Kristen Clarke, because she is a blatant liar. In the same April 14 hearing where she claimed her racist remarks were made in jest, she also denied having supported defunding the police, in an article in which she stated three times, "We must invest less in police."
Bader then cited right-wing publications claiming that it the satirical intent wasn't clear at the time, even though it came in the wake of "The Bell Curve," something Bader tried to downplay (not to mention the fact that Clarke was a 19-year-old undergrad at the time).
Art Moore credulously wrote in a March 24 WorldNetDaily article:
A former Republican member of Congress who ran for president, Michele Bachmann is now the dean of the graduate school of government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Noting some polls show nearly half the country still doesn't believe Joe Biden won the election, she put together a seven-hour virtual conference Tuesday called "Analyzing American Election Integrity."
The university, she told WND in an interview Wednesday, simply was a "forum for letting speakers put evidence out – it's their opinion, not ours – and then let people decide for themselves."
Some presenters, such as election experts John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky, addressed the general issue of fraud and the Democrats' controversial For the People Act while making no judgment about the outcome of the 2020 vote.
Others, such as former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, presented evidence to back their insistence that President Trump was the true winner.
Bachmann said her aim was to pull together the evidence "and let people decide for themselves: Was this a true and legitimate outcome or not?"
"And I'll tell you the evidence was overwhelming that it was not," she said. "People want truth and they want justice."
Moore went on to uncritically summarize claims made by presenters at the conference, such as touting how "Navarro is the author of a three-part report presenting evidence from six battleground states he believes Trump won." WND has previously touted Navarro's claims -- but didn't tell readers many were bogus.
Moore also highlighted the appearance from Gateway Pundit's Jim and Joe Hoft: "The Hoft brothers presented evidence, including video footage they obtained from Detroit's TCF Center on election night, that they have compiled from among the 1,700 articles they have published on the election." But Moore seems to have forgotten that WND previously promoted their claim -- then had to append a correction after it was prove that the video didn't show what thet Hofts claimed it did.
Meanwhile, Jim Swift of the conservative site The Bulwark did what Moore wouldn't and detailed the craziness and general factual inaccuracy of the conference: "Enough falsehoods were spewed by the speakers sponsored by Pat Robertson’s school yesterday to merit two-dozen rebuttal articles." Swift also added:
Many of the panelists brought up (you guessed it) GEORGE SOROS. I didn’t count how many times this bogeyman’s name was invoked, but if you had watched yesterday’s livestream while playing a drinking game with the sole rule of having another shot every time someone said “Soros,” you’d soon have been under the table. Which, come to think of it, might have been the best way to experience this travesty.
It was a total mess, but Moore won't tell you that because he's getting paid to perpetuate the false narrative of the election getting stolen from Trump.
Michael Master complained about oil prices in his March 23 WorldNetDaily column:
Gasoline prices lag oil prices until current inventories of gasoline are sold off. So we should expect gas prices to eventually increase about the same as oil prices, to be about two-thirds higher than the $2 per gallon when Trump was president. For average Americans, that would be about $3.40 per regular gallon of gas, depending on location, up from the $2.11 under Trump. If oil increases to $100 a barrel as some pundits predict, then gasoline could reach $5 – and oil oligarch net worths will increase 250%. That is a lot of incentive for oil oligarchs to try to influence U.S. elections.
The actions of the Democrat-controlled Congress and the Biden administration directly benefit oil oligarchs: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, oil company stock holders.
[...]
How did oil prices increase so much? Because of what Democrats and especially Joe Biden did in the last couple of months. Biden oil policies are really pro-oil oligarchs and anti-average working Americans, those who consume oil products. While Democrats claim that their policies are meant to "save the planet" by discouraging oil consumption, they lie. Oil prices are inelastic. Therefore, increases to oil prices just act, in effect, as increased taxes on oil consumers and additional payments to oil oligarchs. And oil is used in much more than just gasoline.
Master is lying when he blames rising oil prices on Biden and Democrats. The low gas and oil prices in the final year of Trump's presidency -- which is what Master is citing when he priced gas under him at around $2 a gallon -- was caused by the pandemic, not by anything Trump did. And actualexperts have pointed out that oil and gas prices have rising since the beginning of the year because oil-producing countries lowered production last year due to reduced pandemic-driven demand and they have been slow to increase it. None of that has anything to do with what Biden and Democrats have done.
Nevertheless, Master continued to rant:
While Democrats and Biden claim to help working Americans, their actions say something different. Two-bucks-a-gallon Donald Trump actually helped average working Americans by achieving oil independence for the first time since Eisenhower, which must have really ticked off all those oil oligarchs, like Rex Tillerson. Is there any doubt why oil oligarchs ganged up against Trump to help Democrats? Because of low oil prices, just as China helped Democrats because of the Trump tariffs.
Actually, the U.S. oil industry did notsupport Biden's election because he supports policies that are seen as harming the industry.(And, again, $2 gas under Trump had nothing to do with anything Trump did.)
MRC Touts Fox's Doocy Spreading Fake News -- Then Tries To Paper Over It Topic: Media Research Center
As much as the Media Research Center manufactures tons of outrage at "liberal media" outlets when they get caught peddling "fake news," it's much more lenient on its fellow right-wing media outlets who do the same thing (remember, the MRC still hasn't told its readers that the Fox News story it heavily promoted before the 2016 election that an indictment of Hillary Clinton was imminent was retracted a few days later.
Curtis Houck was more than happy to gush over Fox News reporter Peter Doocy's performance in his biased review of the April 26 White House press briefing from Jen Psaki:
After a few uneventful White House press briefings, Monday’s episode drew a number of interesting exchanges on the border crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, masking, schools, and President Biden’s Wednesday address to a Joint Session of Congress.
And after having been off to get married, Fox News’s Peter Doocy returned with a bang in an exchange on the administration’s continued masking despite having long been vaccinated.
[...]
Doocy moved to his second topic by asking about reporting from the New York Post that "every" illegal immigrant child brought to one U.S. facility "is being given a copy of her children's books, Superheroes Are Everywhere."
Asking "why that is" and whether "she's making money off of that," Psaki played dumb by saying she'll "have to certainly check on that" though she "hear[d] it's a good book."
Just one problem: That story isn't true at all. As an actual media outlet reported, a single copy of the book was donated in a citywide donation drive to provide books to the children. This was a screw-up so severe that the Post completely deleted not only the article making the original false claim (though it later returned to the Post's website in edited form) but also a separate article on Doocy asking Psaki about the false story (Fox News and the Post are both owned by Rupert Murdoch). On top of that, Laura Italiano, the Post reporter who wrote the false story resigned, claiming she was "ordered" to write it.
So how are Houck and the MRC reacting to these developments? Very mildly. On the morning of April 27, the MRC's NewsBusters account touted Houck post featuring Doocy pushing the false story, adding, "@pdoocy continues to be one of the few reporters who consistently ask the Biden administration questions that the rest of the media don't want to touch." Yes, most in the media don't push the kind of fake news Doocy got caught using. Houck meanwhile, lashed out at CNN reporter Daniel Dale for the sin of noting Italiano's resignation, hiuffing, "You're a genuinely bad person, Daniel. @Italiano_Laura admitting she was wrong -- you and your CNN colleagues should try it sometime." Houck seems oblivious to the fact that the real story here is Italiano's claim that the Post "ordered" her to write a false story. (And Houck himself might want to try it sometime given that, again, the MRC still won't retract that 2016 Hillary story.)
Meanwhile, Houck's April 26 article got some quiet rewriting. The reference to "Feds Using Kamala's Book" was deleted from the headline, and the section on Doocy promoting the false book storywas completely rewritten to remove direct quotes from him and Psaki; it now references only "an exchange about a now-dubious claim from the New York Post about Vice President Harris's children's book being given out at one U.S. detention center for illegal immigrant children." It's not until the very end of Houck's post that there's any evidence that it was altered, with an editor's note that "This post has been updated to reflect the change in reporting to reflect the lack of veracity to the Post's claim about Harris's children's book." There's no mention of this major correction anywhere else on the NewsBusters website, nor is it noted on either Houck's or NewsBusters' Twitter accounts.
Also, note that Houck and the MRC won't actually call the Post story wrong, despite it being definitively discredited; they state only that it's "dubious" and has a "lack of veracity."
By contrast, the MRC repeatedly raged over the Washington Post correcting the record on a two-month-old story involving a phone call then-President Trump made trying to strongarm a Georgia election official into throwing the election his way. And not only is it giving Doocy and the New York Post kid-glove treatment on this major screw-up, it has completely censored from its readers how Fox News earlier had to correct a story it heavily promoted claiming that President Biden's plan for fighting climate change will force Americans to cut meat consumption.
If we needed absolute proof that the MRC give its fellow right-wing media writers a pass on their screwups they would never give to anyone in the "liberal media" for lesser offenses, this is it.
Newsmax's Hirsen Embraces Extreme GOP Rep. Greene For Calling Vaccine Passports 'Mark of the Beast' Topic: Newsmax
James Hirsen began his April 5 Newsmax column by declaring, "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been a target of the establishment press and the social media ever since she was elected to office." But he failed to mention any of the legitimate reasons Greene gets criticized -- her support for QAnon, her personal harassment of mass shooting victims, her series of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic videos on Facebook. Heck, even fellow Newsmax colmnist Christine Flowers has denounced Greene for her denial of the existence of the Newtown school shooting.
Instead, Hirsen tried to defend another extreme view of Greene's, her claim that a COVID-19 vaccination passport is the "mark of the beast." Criticizing Greene for this extreme view means criticizing all Christians, Hirsen claims:
It is appalling to have to witness the parade of religious bigots in the news and entertainment media, who with apparent impunity think that they can display contempt for the beliefs of hundreds of millions of Christians.
Bible believers across the globe patiently await and prayerfully watch for a future that will someday unfold, one that is foretold in sacred Scripture.
Passages of the Holy Book, which Christians revere as the sacred Word of God, speak of a time when the Earth is ruled by a highly charismatic, yet deeply malevolent figure.
The “mark” to which Rep. Greene refers is an imprint taken upon one’s body, which is a demonstration of allegiance on the part of followers to the singular evil ruler.
Revelation, the final book of the Bible, sets forth key language on the subject.
Revelation, the final book of the Bible, sets forth key language on the subject.
“... all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, ... receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads ...”
The words of the scripture passage also make clear that no one will be able to “buy or sell” unless they have had the mark.
The evil leader about which scripture speaks is called the “son of perdition.” A specific number has been assigned to him, one that is familiar to many Bible believers and non-believers alike: 666.
Hirsen is apparently cool with Greene hatefully smearing people who are trying to keep a infection that has killed millions across the globe from spreading as akin to the devil:
Much like the financial markets make predictions using indicators, the Bible reveals to Christians that they are to watch for End Times indicators of coming events that are foretold in scripture.
One of these indicators is a decline in moral sensibilities.
Millions of Christians and others are painfully aware that this is an ominous trend in our current world. Rep. Greene, along with many of her Christian sisters and brothers, are also extremely uncomfortable with the potential use of intrusive digitally-based identifiers.
For folks like us, the book of Revelation looms large as current events seem to be leaping off the pages of The Word.
The End Times scenario of a one-world government, a one-world religion, and a totalitarian system of rule seem more and more plausible with each passing day.
Thankfully, though, the Second Coming looms larger than all of it.
No, Jim, Greene is not like "millionbs of Christians" in her spread of hate and embrace of hateful conspiracy theories. You may want to rethink your cynical embrace of her.
CNS Attacks GOP Governor Who Refused To Hate Transgender People Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com used to love Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. It touted her call to let the presidential election process play out, defended her from an article about the death of her grandmother, cheered her calls for additional abortion restrictions and happily promoted her call not to shame people who won't wear masks.
But she refused to hate transgender people to the extent right-wingers demand these days, and that got her in trouble with CNS.
It started according to the right-wing script, with a March 12 article by Emma Riley puffing Noem for declaring that "she was 'excited' to sign into law a bill that would prohibit transgender females (biological males) from participating in real women’s sports in the state’s public schools, its school districts, and in its colleges," much like CNS has done with similar anti-trans laws in other states.Craig Bannister added a March 19 bit of puffery on Noem stating that "Women tend to 'take a step back”' and question their abilities more than men, and they need to address that instinct."
But Noem ultimately decided that the anti-trans bill went too far and vetoed parts of it -- and that set off CNS' rage, initially in the form of a March 22 article by Michael W. Chapman:
Although South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem, who promotes herself as a firebrand conservative, strongly implied she would sign legislation barring transgender "females" (biological males) from participating in real girls' sports -- and using their bathrooms, locker rooms and showers -- she delayed last week, did not sign the bill, and now wants changes that would essentially gut the legislation, according tothe Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
The bill, H.B. 1217, was passed overwhelmingly by the South Dakota House and Senate, and Noem tweeted on Mar. 8, "In South Dakota, we're celebrating #InternationalWomensDay by defending women's sports! I'm excited to sign this bill very soon."
Everyone expected the apparently conservative Noem to quickly sign the legislation into law. But she delayed, and then last week it was learned that Noem was going to use her "style and form" veto power to partially gut the Fairness in Women's Sports bill.
"Gov. Noem had an opportunity to protect women and girls by signing the Fairness in Women’s Sports bill, but instead she pandered to the demands of special interests," said the ADF in a statement. "In what was an abuse of her ‘style and form’ veto power, she gutted protections for collegiate athletes and took away legal recourse for girls forced to compete against biological boys."
"We are shocked that a governor who claims to be a firebrand conservative with a rising national profile would cave to ‘woke’ corporate ideology," said the legal group.
“The governor tried to explain her betrayal with claims that her hands were tied by NCAA policy," reads the statement.
This was followed the next day with an op-ed by the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins going all "Mean Girls" on Noem, as summarized in the headline: "If Noem Doesn't Stand Up to the Left on Girls' Sports, She Can Forget About Being the Right's Rising Star." Apparently, hating transgender people is now a core Republican policy plank.
Chapman returned on March 29 with a list of "47 pro-family, conservative organizations" -- read: right-wing anti-trans activists -- who are mad she vetoed the bill.
On March 30, Chapman parroted another attack on Noem from ADF; after she pointed out that she was being the target of right-wing cancel culture for vetoing tyhe bill, the ADF huffed in response that "criticizing Gov. Noem for caving to woke corporations is not cancel culture. It’s accountability." CNS and its Media Research Center parent believe that only liberals engage in "cancel culture "and that even when right-wingers do the same thing, you can't call it that.
When Noem issued executive orders restricting transgender participation on sports teams -- thus accomplishing a good portion of what the law would have done -- CNS didn't even see fit to do a story on it, even though it played a role in bullying her into it.
Because Noem refused to fully hate transgender athletes to the extent that right-wing activists demand, CNS is apparently now denying her any sort of positive coverage. They must be a bunch of Mean Girls too.
MRC's Fondacaro Lies About Challenge To House Seat Topic: Media Research Center
Serial liar Nicholas Fondacaro of the Media Research Center has struck again. He ranted in a March 22 post:
While the liberal broadcast networks had spent plenty of time pushing lies about the Republican Party purportedly trying to roll back voting rights and bring back Jim Crow laws, they didn’t care that House Democrats were cooking up a plot to steal a House seat from the Iowa Republican woman who rightfully won the district back in November.
As Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier noted during Monday’s Special Report, “Republicans are calling it an obvious power play to pad the speaker’s slim majority.”
But instead of reporting on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) machinations and calling an assault on our democracy, ABC’s World News Tonight talked about the weather, CBS Evening News showed drone footage of an erupting volcano, and NBC Nightly News deflected blame away from President Biden for the rising price in gas.
[...]
Aside from the lies against Republicans on voting rights, the double standard was clear. If the roles were reversed in the House or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried something similar in the Senate, the media and the rest of the left world be apoplectic.
Apparently, stealing a seat from a duly elected representative wasn’t an attack on our democracy.
Fondacaro is lying when he pushes the right-wing narrative that this is an attempt to "steal" a House seat. As actual reporters pointed out -- as opposed to the partisan activists at Fox News that Fondacaro cited -- Hart was taking part in an existing procedure in the House that has been used dozens of times since the 1930s:
Rita Hart, the Democratic candidate in Iowa, filed a claim under the Federal Contested Elections Act, which brought the case to the House Administration Committee. The law is the main avenue through which candidates can lodge a challenge, and came about in 1969. It brings the claim to the committee and ultimately the House, which is empowered by Article 1 Section 5 of the Constitution to judge the “elections and returns” of its own members.
“The committee has handled things correctly so far,” said Jeff Jenkins, provost professor of public policy, political science and law at the University of Southern California. “Hart didn’t do anything wrong by filing a claim.”
But Fondacaro is more interested in pushing a narrative than telling the truth, so he returned on March 25 to complain that TV network news didn't "inform their viewers about how Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was trying to steal a Republican House seat in Iowa; a victory lawfully certified by the state." He again cited biased Fox News reporters declaring that "Pelosi was defending her move to disenfranchise Iowa voters and supplant Miller-Meeks with her preferred politician, Democrat Rita Hart" and that "Pelosi’s plot seemed on the road to failure." He laughably -- and falsely -- screeched that Pelosi was engaged in an "attack on democracy."
Hart ultimately dropped her challenge, which gave Fondacaro space to gloat and further falsely malign her legitimate effort:
For weeks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Democratic candidate Rita Hart had been plotting to steal Iowa's second congressional district from Republican Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who rightfully won the election back in 2020. But on Wednesday, Hart called it quits on her dubious efforts and NewsBusters couldn’t help but notice that the likes of ABC, CBS, and NBC refused to give airtime to the scheme at any point from start to finish.
As NewsBusters previously reported, the evening newscasts from these networks refused to cover the Democratic plot to undo the results of an election certified by a bipartisan panel of Iowa election officials.
Later, they also refused to tell viewers about how Pelosi had claimed it was her “right” to erroneously ignore the will of the voters in the district and supplant Miller-Meeks with a Democrat of her choosing, in this case, Hart. And at the time, Iowa Republican leaders were calling it a “coup.”
Of course, he again cited biased Fox News reporting to support his false framing.And of course, Fondacaro never explained how Hart trying to get 22 votes counted that were originally disqualified due to a clerical error anounted to "stealing an election."
But, again, Fondacaro is being paid to peddle right-wing narratives, not to tell the truth.
CNS Censors How Fauci Owned Mask-Hating Sen. Paul Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com doesn't really like Dr. Anthony Fauci -- it once published an op-ed accusing him of being an example of "scientific authoritarianism." It does, however, love Sen. Rand Paul's attacks on him -- so much so, in fact, that it hid the fact that Fauci owned Paul in their most recent clash.
CNS had been building up to this for a while. A February article touted how Paul, "a medical doctor, said that if you have had COVID or been vaccinated against the virus and are several weeks out from your second dose, you should 'throw your mask away and tell Dr. Fauci to take a leap.'" (Paul is actually an opthmamologist and has no expertise in Fauci's specialty of epidemiology.) An anonymously written March 18 article tried to pedentically play gotcha on Fauci's mask-wearing:
When he testified on Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, started out conspicuously wearing two masks—a black one over a white one.
When he made his opening statement to the committee, he took both masks off, laying them on the table in front of him, and spoke to the committee with no mask.
After this initial presentation, 29 minutes into the hearing, Fauci put both masks back on, according to the CSPAN video of the hearing.
As the hearing approached its 57th minute, and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D.-Wisc.) was asking questions, the CSPAN video showed that Dr. Fauci was now wearing only one mask—the white one that had originally laid under his black mask.
That same day, an article by Bannister cheered Paul lashing out at Fauci:
“You’re making policy based on conjecture,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a physician, told President Joe Biden’s White House medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Thursday at a Senate hearing on COVID-19 response.
Sen. Paul repeatedly asked Dr. Fauci to cite any evidence that people who have been vaccinated against the virus still need to wear a mask because they’re still at risk of contracting the virus again. Dr. Fauci did not respond, other than to say that the threat of presumed “variants” of the virus might still possibly be able to infect the vaccinated.
Sen. Paul said Fauci, who has been vaccinated, was going out in public wearing two masks simply “for show”:
Bannister gave Paul a pass on his false claim that "There is virtually zero percent chance you're going to get" coronavirus if you have previously had the virus or are vaccinated; in fact, there is always the risk of catching the virus or its variants, albeit reduced, despite a vaccine or prior infection. And Bannister censored Fauci's rull response to Paul, as documented by an actual news organization:
Fauci said that, despite the lack of reinfections thus far, we don’t have significant data in two very relevant areas: Whether people who get the vaccine or who have contracted the virus can still spread it, and whether variants of the coronavirus might override any existing immunity. He bristled at the idea that his personal use of masks was “theater.”
“No it’s not,” Fauci said before suggesting, as he has previously, that the true theater was being promulgated by Paul. “Here we go again with the theater.”
Fauci went on to address the specific study Paul had cited that supposedly indicated “everybody agrees they have immunity.” He noted it was not as conclusive as Paul suggested when it came to protection. The study was from, among others, Shane Crotty and Alessandro Sette at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, whom Fauci referenced.
“Let’s get down to the facts,” Fauci said. “The studies that you quote from Crotty and Sette look at in vitro examination of memory immunity, which in their paper, they specifically say this does not necessarily pertain to the actual protection. It’s in vitro.”
Indeed, the study says exactly that.
“Although immune memory is the source of long-term protective immunity, direct conclusions about protective immunity cannot be made on the basis of quantifying SARS-CoV-2 circulating antibodies,” the study says, “ … because mechanisms of protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 are not defined in humans.”
Fauci’s point wasn’t that people definitely can’t spread the virus after infection or vaccination but that it’s hardly as certain as Paul suggested.
CNS couldn't tell its readers thatP aul got owned by Fauci -- that would hurt its narrative, even though it was the truth.
NEW ARTICLE: Another Member of WND's Fringe-Right Medical Corps Topic: WorldNetDaily
Marilyn Singleton is one more member of the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons whom WorldNetDaily has given a platform to peddle dubious medical advice about coronavirus. Read more >>
How Is The MRC Freaking Out About Transgender People Now? Topic: Media Research Center
The last time we checked in on the Media Research Center's ongoing transgender freakout, it was losing it over fictional transgender characters on TV and "Blue's Clues" using flags that offended it. But the MRC is committed to the freakout, and so it continues.
MRC executive Tim Graham devoted his March 11 column to complaining that "Our dominant media’s celebration of transgenderism must inevitably include the distorted sounds of our tastemakers becoming transfixed by trans fiction," complaining that the new book "Detransition, Baby" was "subverting the 'dominant narrative' of the gender binary." He was further upset that the book is being developed into a TV series, huffing, "This is another reason why a new Gallup poll finds almost 16 percent of Generation Z (college-age) Americans now identify as LGBT.
Elise Ehrhard was unhappy with the "Punky Brewster" reboot because it doesbn't hate LGBT people as much as she does:
Remember Sunday nights in the 1980s when you turned on the tv to watch little Punky Brewster play in her treehouse with her friends? Did you ever think to yourself, “I hope they reboot this show one day with Punky as a New Age divorcée who has a gender-dysphoric kid. And they better make sure her best friend Cherie is a lesbian who gets engaged to an independent feminist lawyer.” Well, on Feb. 25, NBC’s Peacock streaming service delivered on that woke fantasy.
[...]
Punky’s childhood best friend from the original show, Cherie (Cherie Johnson), is now the token lesbian character required on all television programming. And naturally one of Punky’s kids, Daniel (Oliver De Los Santos), may potentially be gender dysphoric. Her daughter and her friends dress the boy up in a sarong and have him strut around like in a fashion show. Nobody thinks it may not be healthy for the girls to be treating him like a play doll instead of a growing human being.
Ehrhard returned to declare she wouldn't use Pantene shampoo anymore (though she offered no proof she hever did) because it did a commerical featuring "LGBTQ propaganda":
Time to find a new shampoo brand. The hair care company Pantene is now pushing LGBTQ propaganda with its products. The brand that became famous for a classic 1980s commercial featuring an attractive woman looking into the camera and saying, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful," has now hopped on the trans agenda that erases women altogether to promote "transgender visibility."
Pantene's new commercial features lesbian parents Ashley and Ellie and their gender dysphoric child Sawyer. Sawyer is a biological boy who now says he is a girl.
[...]
Pantene has a series of ads on YouTube promoting the agenda of Gay, Inc. and transgenderism, in particular, under the hashtag #HairHasNoGender. Pantene is owned by Proctor and Gamble, the same company that created the insulting 2019 "We Believe" ad which portrayed men as inherently toxic. Procter and Gamble saw the value of the Gillette brand tumble after that.
Hopefully, Pantene products will now face the same financial fate as Gillette. Refusing to buy their products will send the company the message that healthy adults do not think child abuse is beautiful.
Ehrhard went on to rant that the parents helping the child with identity anmounted to "normalization of child abuse." Also: The CNBC article Ehrhard cited to blame a reduction in "the value of the Gillette brand" on that one ad doesn't mention the ad at all; instead, it cites increased competition that has disrupted Gillette's traditional business model and the fact that fewer men are shaving.
Tierin-Rose Mandelburg chimed in to grouse that even the "Star Wars" universe isn't exempt from not hating transgender people:
Unfortunately, this isn’t an April Fools joke. Star Wars: The High Republic has once again joined the alphabet community.
On Wednesday March 31, the Star Wars social accounts released the exclusive cover for High Republic #6. In “honor” of Trans Day of Visibility, a made up holiday to bring awareness to the deeply confused and attention-starved, Star Wars shoved politics down fans’ throats once again.
The woke is strong with the brand. The cover featured Jedi characters, Terec and Ceret, who are “non-binary.”
She later sneered: "Someone call up Star Wars and ask why these non-binary characters aren’t holding rainbow lightsabers! Where are the SJWs when we need them!?" Sounds like Mandelburg is the one who's feeling starved for attention by needing to spew her anti-trans hate.
CNS Touts State Efforts To Ban Transgender Athletes Topic: CNSNews.com
It's been observed that right-wing activists have ramped up their targeting of young transgender athletes because their activism against same-sex marriage has turned into a failure -- indeed, it has become the latest culture-war wedge issue for right-wingers. Because CNSNews.com is a stenographer for these right-wing activists, it has eagerly pushed this anti-trans narrative by touting efforts to push state laws banning transgender athletes.
In February, it published an article by Quinn Weimer touting the Idaho student who has been made into the appealing face of anti-trans athlete laws, Madison Kenyon, insisting that "Idaho’s ban on transgenders in girls’ sports is positive, and that efforts to allow biological males to compete against biological females are wrong and unfair to women." Weimer went on to declare that "Female athletes continue to worry about the implications of allowing biological males to compete in their sports. Consequences of one male athlete joining could result in a missed scholarship, victory, or athletic opportunity." There was no attempt at balance made by publishing the other side of the story.
That was followed a few days later by CNS' chief LGBT-hater, managing editor Michael W. Chapman, quoting his favorite right-wing evangelical activist: "In reference to President Joe Biden's executive order mandating that transgender women (biological males) be allowed to play on real girls' sports teams at public schools and colleges, Rev. Franklin Graham said 'this is blatant discrimination against women and girls,' and asked where is 'the outcry from feminists and women's rights groups'?" Chapman included deliberately unflatterng photos of transgender athletes.
CNS finally serve up a counterpoint in a Feb. 10 article by Melanie Arter, in which she complained that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that "trans rights are human rights" -- a view that runs counter to CNS' editorial policy.
CNS even highlighted former President Trump playing to the crowd at the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference, where he declared that "Women’s sports as we know it will die" if transgender athletes are allowed to have the same rights as other athletes.
As states -- egged on by right-wing anti-LGBT groups -- started to push for bans on transgender athletes, CNS wrote of the efforts while burying or entirely ignoring arguments from those critical of such bans:
(Note CNS' continuing obsession with labeling transgender athletes as "biological females," so much so that it insists on putting the term in the headline.)
In that last article on Florida, Chapman added: "As CNS News has previously reported, Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is 'biologically impossible,' and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder." As we have previously reported, McHugh's views have been widely discredited.
UPDATE: Chapman added a new article on April 26, this one on the Alabama goveror signing the bill "that prohibits transgender 'females' (biological males) from joining real girls' sports teams."
MRC Shilling Again For Right-Wing Filmmaker's New Hatchet Job Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Reserarch Center was snugly in bed with right-wing filmmaker Phelim McAleer through the years of fund-raising and production for his film about rogue abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell -- while steadfastly refusing to disclose what sort of deals McAleer cut with the MRC for all that promotion. Now, it appears the MRC's Gabriel Hays is unmaking the bed to settle in with McAleer on his new hatchet job - er, film project:
If you missed the news story about Joe Biden’s son having a laptop with evidence that he gave access to his then-VP father to foreign countries in exchange for a windfall of cash, it’s not your fault. Big Tech took it off the internet before you noticed. Still an upcoming movie from Gosnell creators gives viewers a second chance to learn about allegations of Biden family corruption.
A press release put out by filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney on March 16 announced their next political film project titled, My Son Hunter: The Family Comes First. It described the project, stating, “Hunter Biden’s wild life and corrupt business dealings are slated to get the Hollywood treatment in the newly announced feature film ‘My Son Hunter.’ The movie will be a biopic of Hunter Biden chronicling his elitist party lifestyle, dodgy business dealings, family drama, and corruption.”
Sounds like a crime drama for the ages.
[...]
McAleer commented on this Biden/big tech/media alliance, saying, “The media and big tech covered up the bombshell report by The New York Post that showed the depth of corruption in the Biden family. The truth deserves to be told and it needs to be seen by as many people as possible.”
That’s the intention behind McElhinney and McAleer’s new movie, to get as many people as possible to see the truth about Joe and Hunter in the form of an “entertaining and enjoyable movie.” McAleer added that the medium is “the best way to tell the story of the Biden family’s corruption and to ensure as many people are educated about this as possible.”
Of course, Hays must shill for McAleer, since he wouldn't have it any other way: "For their new movie, McElhinney and McAleer announced their goal of crowdfunding $2.5 million within 60 days. The press release claimed that, 'if successful it will be the largest crowdfunding ask for a film in history.'"
We don't recall McAleer being similarly concerned about the corruption in the Trump family. Perhaps he could explain why sometime.
WND Columnist Fearmongers About COVID-Spreading Immigrants Topic: WorldNetDaily
No doubt, when future generations read about the fall of The United States of America, if such historical reading is even allowed at that point, they will question how we allowed "a mask" to be the bullet that took us down. I can almost see each student sitting in front of their computers (in a world where distance learning has become norm and the great outdoors, foreign) shaking their heads and saying, "Had they only taken them off and united in protest as the illegal immigrants flooded the border, we might not have to wear these masks still today." And they would be right.
As we sit back and watch U.S. citizens being hauled off to jail for refusing to wear a mask while illegal immigrants, many carrying COVID-19, flood our borders without a single test required, our inaction can be seen as none other than agreement with the destructive direction we are currently heading. Through it, we are agreeing with the messaging that legal citizens are automatically deemed second-class within our nation. We are agreeing never to walk around in public again without masks. We are agreeing with a nationally mandated vaccine. We are agreeing with a voiceless, vote-less existence. We are agreeing to communism over capitalism. And we are agreeing that indentured servitude is all we could ever expect for our children … most of them anyway. Certainly, not the offspring of the elite.
[...]
In some ways, removing our masks now, in unison and nationally, is the most humane way of saving lives. It will reestablish the citizens of the United States as THE force to be reckoned with. It will demand the current administration answer for its lax border policies, resulting in mass illegal immigration and increased COVID-19 spread. It will send a strong signal to all politicians to reexamine their ways, especially blue state governors. It will awaken SCOTUS. God knows they need to be woken up. And it will bring our nation's slow decline to an immediate head, saving all of us a lot of stress and worry. It might also reduce bloodshed and any additional unnecessary death.
[...]
As Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with regards to the horrific murders perpetrated against the Asian American community in Atlanta this week, "None of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate." It is this single statement that I agree with. This is the reason I find myself writing this column as well as the reason I am speaking out against her, her boss and the rest of their squad of fear mongers who, according to their actions, hate the American people. How else should we interpret their inaction at the border?
It is our turn, however, to decide how we are going to meet this inaction in kind – with more of our own? Mask on or mask off? They can't arrest 332,209,157 U.S. citizens or even half that number at the same time. We should pick a date and remove our masks together, marking a line in the sand and, quite possibly, a new national holiday to be honored in perpetuity by generations of freedom-loving children to come.
The choice is ours. The result could save our nation.
-- Laura J. Wellington, March 18 WorldNetDaily column