MRC Falsely Claims Social Media 'Censored' Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 Conspiracy Film Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Catherine Salgado complained in a Nov. 2 post:
Big Tech platforms censored Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s documentary series on the events of January 6th even before it was fully released, and media leftists have called for more.
Carlson, his show, and supporters posted and tweeted a preview trailer of the documentary series, “Patriot Purge,” last week. The stated aim of “Patriot Purge” is to uncover the “true story behind 1/6.” Facebook censored the preview with a “sensitive content” label. YouTube imposed age restrictions and a warning that the content “may be inappropriate for some users.”
Earth to Salgado: None of those things are "censorship." The preview trailer can still be viewed, and there was nothing stopping Carlson from airing it on the widely viewed channel of his employer. Salgado could also argue that Fox News has "censored" Carlson's documentary because it's available only on the Fox Nation subscription streaming service instead of Fox News proper, but she won't -- that doesn't advance her narrative.
Salgado went on to complain that a Washington Post reporter "pushed the narrative that Carlson’s documentary was a 'conspiracy theory' using 'baseless claims,'" and that a Post reporter alerted Facebook to the video being posted there. As if Carlson isn't pushing a narrative? Besides, it's not a "narrative" if it's true; as Poynter found in its review, the show "not only whitewashed what happened on Jan. 6, as supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol, clashed with police and halted congressional proceedings in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. It also conjured a dystopian, alternative explanation for the insurrection, centered on a mix of conspiracy theories, including that the violence outside the Capitol was spurred on by left-wing instigators and agents provacateurs, and that the siege may have been a trap orchestrated by the FBI." Poynter went on to discredit numerous claims the show makes.
Salgado's response to all this was not to do any fact-checking on her own but, rather, to simply regurgitate what the preview claims and tout how many times it's been seen (which would seem to blow a hole in her claim that the video was being "censored":
The “Patriot Purge” preview said that the documentary series provides “the true story behind 1/6, the war on terror 2.0 and the plot against the People,” suggesting the alleged Capitol “insurrection” may have been a “false flag.” The Twitter preview has over 3 million views as of publication. The first part of the documentary series was released on Nov. 1.
From there, Salgado started repeating the MRC's boilerplate attacks on anyone who would dare fact-check a conservative:
Big Tech and its so-called fact-checkers have proven to be unfairly biased in the past. PolitiFact, which was cited by Lima against Carlson’s documentary, is a Facebook fact-checking partner. The fact-checker has relied on communist Chinese information in the past and is part of liberal Poynter Institute's International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), which received over a million dollars from liberal billionaires George Soros and Pierre Omidyar.
She also repeated an oft-repeated MRC falsehood that "Trump was also banned from at least 10 platforms after he called for 'peace' following the Capitol 'riot.'"
This complaint was rehashed in the Nov. 17 podcast from the MRC's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, in which she praised "Patriot Purge" without bothering to fact-check anything in it (or, apparently, to even watch it before issuing her judgment):
The video is clearly an attack on the leftist ideology ther everything pro-Trump is bad, if you're white you're racist, and if you don't consider Jan. 6 an insurrection, you're someho w terrorist. Facebook added a "sensitive content" filter to his video after the Washington Post whined about it. So: Half-naked girls online don't get a "sensitive content" filter, insane violence at a BLM or Antifa riot don't get a "sensitive content" filter, and neither does the viral image of Kathy Griffin holding a bloody Trump head. But Carlson's pro-America video did.
Yeah, the MRC would think that spreading right-wing conspiracy theories is "pro-America." Pretending that what happened on Jan. 6 wasn't an "insurrection" is another active MRC narrative designed to downplay those events.
WND Also Spread False Right-Wing Narrative About School Boards And Violence Topic: WorldNetDaily
If the Media Research Center and CNSNews.com were going to glom onto the false story that a national school board group depicted all parents who spoke up at school board meetings about right-wing culture-war issues as "domestic terrorists," you can bet that WorldNetDaily -- whose standards for accuracy are much lower than that of the MRC and CNS -- wanted in on that bogus action too. Bob Unruh embranced the false narrative in an Oct. 5 article:
Only days ago the National School Board Association asked Joe Biden to use federal anti-terror laws against parents who are protesting – and fighting – the leftist agendas of their school boards, who want to install Critical Race Theory and other indoctrination in classrooms.
Now the administration has responded with orders from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the FBI to move against those parents.
Without citing any instance of criminal activity, he cited a "disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff."
True to form, the "mama bear" mothers and the fathers who have been passionately speaking out at school-board meetings against "woke" curricula and mask mandates have something to say to Attorney General Merrick Garland and the National School Boards Association for effectively branding them as domestic terrorists.
"I am what a domestic terrorist looks like?" asked Asra Nomani, vice president of investigations and strategy for the non-profit Parents Defending Education. "You owe parents an apology!"
Her group, in a statement Monday night, accused activists of "weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice."
"This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America's underperforming K-12 education – and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced," the statement said.
Unruh returned two days later with a dubious conflict-of-interest attack on Garland in which he repeated the false narrative:
Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, who recently unleashed a formal Department of Justice attack on parents opposing extremist ideas like Critical Race Theory in their public schools, is being accused of a conflict of interest for his agenda.
It's because his son-in-law runs a company that sells products to school districts, and those products apparently include data tools involving surveys that gauge students' "emotional and mental wellbeing" as well as surveys on sexuality and promotions of CRT, which claims that all of the United States is racist, all whites are offenders, and all blacks are victims.
Another Oct. 7 article by Unruh regurgitated an attack on an Associated Prsss fact-check about the National School Boards Association letter about the threats by dishonest anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo, in which he deliberately misrepresents the letter by falsely claiming its warnings applied to all parents. As we've noted, even the MRC couldn't find anyplace where the group explicitly stated that parents were "domestic terrorists" simply for speaking out.
Chuck Norris ratcheted up the lie in his Oct. 11 column while repeating Fox News' alarmist take on the story:
Watching an episode of Tucker Carlson this past week, I was shocked to learn that the Biden administration is making plans to actually deploy FBI agents to round up American parents in every state who are disagreeing with public school boards.
Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI to address what he called a "disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence" against educators and school board members.
[...]
Are American parents now domestic terrorists because they disagree and dissent? Are parents really a national security threat? The feds are potentially criminalizing parenting because of protests!
How excessive is federal government overreach when American parents can't even disagree with school officials about subjects pertaining to their children that they conscientiously object to? Will the American public tolerate every breech of the federal government, even when the Biden administration gets it wish for the IRS to track every bank account with $600?!
At least Norris felt just enough shame that he added, "Let me state categorically that any acts or threats of violence against school board members are wrong."
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is improperly chilling Americans' speech with his attack on parents, according to prominent legal commentator Alan Dershowitz.
Garland recently released a statement that essentially threatened parents who are opposing their local school boards' leftist moves, such as promoting transgender ideology and Critical Race Theory discrimination, with FBI investigations.
Unruh went on to reference "Garland's agenda against parents."
Unruh misrepresented the situation again in an Oct. 18 article, in which he referenced "a letter from National School Boards Association to the Biden administration demanding he use the nation's anti-terror laws against parents who object to and oppose the leftist agenda items," going on to claim that Garland issued a "memo against parents."
In an Oct. 25 article, Unruh attacked the school boards group itself: "The National School Boards Association, the education industry group that suggested parents protesting leftist school-board agendas were "domestic terrorism," owes some $20 million to the IRS, according to a report."
A Nov. 12 article by Unruh complained that "the National School Boards Association coordinated with the White House before it requested that Joe Biden consider parents objecting to leftist ideology in their public school as domestic terrorists," though he didn't explain why the group and the Department of Justice were not allowed to be proactive over the situation instead of waiting for an act of violence to occur before anything would be done. Unruh then seemed to justify the attacks by playing whatabnoutism:
The dispute focuses on the leftist campaigns many school boards are adopting, including COVID-19 mandates, and the fact that parents object to those. While a handful of parents have shouted down board members, at least as often board members have ordered parents to be quiet, shut down meetings in order to silence them, and even called police to remove members of the public speaking at board meetings.
Unruh didn't explain why school boards should not be permitted to enforce order at their meetings.
MRC Writer Touts One Last Limbaugh Lie Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center had a major sad when Rush Limbaugh died -- so much so, it loudly complained that his offensive right-wing schtick was being criticized and almost completely censored that one time he call a college student a "slut" because she took birth control. Jeffrey Lord cranked up the waterworks one final time in his Oct. 29 MRC column:
It was, of course, only a matter of time.
With his passing in February of this year, there would inevitably be a last issue of Rush Limbaugh’s monthly magazine – The Limbaugh Letter. That issue has just arrived in my mail box – not the electronic one but the snail mail one as the magazine was indeed quite physical.
As a subscriber to Rush 24/7, I was a subscriber to The Limbaugh Letter. It would arrive in the mail every month like clockwork, with Rush’s latest musings for the magazine written in about 16 concise pages.
[...]
The last, freshly arrived issue dated October of 2021 features a tribute to Rush himself, aptly titled “Forever Dittos, Rush!” The piece is indeed a wonderful tribute, filled with the indelible memories of Rush that are shared by so many millions of his fans.
Among the memories is this quite accurate assessment of just why so many Americans loved Rush. It says: “You not only spoke for us, you woke us up and connected us to each other as an enormous force.” Exactly.
Lord went on to gush:
The Limbaugh Letter was a monthly treasure trove of information and spot on analysis.
Leafing through my collection of back issues the breadth of topics featured amaze. Rush on the NFL, Kim Jong Un and North Korea, and, memorably, “Democrats are exposing themselves as the wacko-radical America-hating Marxists they really are.”
In another issue, the Parkland, Florida killing of 14 kids and three teachers at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school is discussed with a focus on the startling fact that the killer, teenager Nikolas Cruz, had 39 police visits to his home by police - but was never arrested. Why? Because of a quite deliberate Obama policy called the PROMISE - Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports & Education program. Had Cruz been arrested just once for disorderly conduct, the Letter points out, it would have raised a red flag when he bought a firearm.
But Limbaugh's story about Cruz isn't true. First of all, the PROMISE programa wasn't an "Obama policy" -- while the program launched in that school district while Obama was in the White House, no federal departments or agencies, let alone Obama himself, were involved in its creation.
Second of all: A commission created to investigate the Parkland shooting found that while Cruz was referred to the program, there's no evidence he ever took part in it. As a local sheriff put it:
"The PROMISE program didn't fail for Cruz," Pinellas sheriff and commission chairman Bob Gualtieri told reporters. "It would never in any way, shape, form, would've affected his ability to buy that AR-15, to buy the shotguns, to buy anything else, to possess them."
He added: "It's completely irrelevant, it's a rabbit hole, it's a red herring, it's immaterial, and that's why we're taking it off the table. And the community needs to know that that has nothing to do with what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14."
How fitting that one of the strongest memories Lord has about Limbaugh is based on a lie.
NEW ARTICLE: CNS Learns To Live With A Republican Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com tried -- and failed miserably -- to destroy Glenn Youngkin as a Republican candidate for Virginia governor, but it ever-so-slowly came around. Plus: Like its Media Research Center parent, CNS hid the full story of a school sexual assault. Read more >>
Again! MRC Hypes Bad Employment Numbers Under Biden, Censors Good Numbers The Next Month Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writer Joseph Vazquez has a highly biased approach to writing about the economy under President Biden -- mainly a lot of emphasis on hyping bad ndews and censoring good news. We've demonstrated one example of this: promoting less-than-good monthly employment numbers while censoring any mention of the good ones.
Vazquez kicked off another round of hyping one bad month of employment numbers in an Oct. 8 post:
Here we go again! The ABC, CBS and NBC morning news shows protected President Joe Biden by censoring another horrible report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The BLS reported at 8:30 a.m. today that the U.S. economy added only 194,000 jobs in the month of September. The BLS figure completely dismantled predictions by economists surveyed by Refinitiv who were expecting a 500,000 increase. That means predictions were off by a whopping 306,000 jobs.
CATO Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards told the MRC in response to the BLS report that “[l]arge and small businesses are surely worried about the large tax increases planned by the Democrats in Washington.”
Edwards is one of Vazquez's go-to right-wing economists when he needs a reliably biased, anti-Biden take on the economy.
Vazquez added: "News Nation Now, however, reported on the massive miss as a “major disappointment.” Perhaps the Big Three morning news shows should take notes." He didn't mention that News Nation is run by former Fox News executive and Trump White House staffer Bill Shine, who was never known for being fair and balanced.
On Oct. 12, Vazquez bashed a New York Times reporter for offering context on the numbers that he didn't like:
New York Times senior economics correspondent Neil Irwin bent himself into a pretzel spinning the atrocious Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing the economy only added 194,000 jobs in September.
Following the release of the abysmal job growth report on Friday, Irwin had the nutty spin: “The New Jobs Numbers Are Pretty Good, Actually.” Irwin had a much different reaction earlier on Twitter that undercut the gaslighting in his article. He tweeted immediately at 8:30 a.m. ET, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report dropped: “+194k on payrolls, a big miss. But unemployment rate way down to 4.8%.” He tweeted one minute later (8:31 a.m.) in his instant coverage of the BLS data: “Debating how many ‘o’s should be added to the word ‘oof’ in this circumstance.” He wrote in the lede paragraph of his article: “It’s not as bad as it looks.” That’s an interesting way of characterizing the “Slowest [Job Growth] Pace of [the] Year.”
Irwin celebrated that the economy was in a “steady expansion that is more rapid than other recent recoveries. It is being held back by supply constraints and, in September at least, the emergence of the Delta variant. But the direction is clear, consistent and positive.” He falsely stated that the unemployment rate “fell for good reasons, not bad — the number of people unemployed dropped by a whopping 710,000 while the number of people working rose by a robust 526,000.” The Wall Street Journal reported that “[m]any workers gave up the job search and exited from the labor force last month, the data showed.” It continued: “The smaller pool of labor meant that despite the slowdown in hiring, the unemployment rate fell to 4.8% last month from 5.2% in August.”
Vazquez never explained exactly why Irwin's statement that the unemployment rate "fell for good reasons" was "false," despite later asserting that "The unemployment rate did fall for 'bad' reasons, despite Irwin's gaslighting to the contrary."
Vazquez got an assist from MRC writer Curtis Houck, who touted how a reporter "twice called out the administration’s absurd spin about the putrid jobs numbers" at a White House press briefing.
However, Vazquez failed to mention that the disappointing numbers blew a hole in one of his right-wing narratives: that unemployment benefits disincentivizes people from finding jobs. He cheered that narrative when Fox Business host (and credibly accused sexual assaulter) Charles Payne pushed it, and he wrote a July post declaring that "A new poll blew apart the media’s year-long gaslighting that extended unemployment benefits weren’t discouraging work," which claimed to find that "benefits reduced the number of accepted job offers by an estimated 1.84 million over the course of the pandemic." Never mind of course, that numerous studies have shown that unemployment benefits do not keep people from seeking work; he went on to rant that non-right-wing media outlets have "hoodwinked America on the effects of extended unemployment benefits" and "numerous left-wing outlets pounded the same gaslighting drum.
But pandemic-related unemployment benefits ended on Sept. 6, which theoretrically meant -- if the right-wing lazy-grifter theory was true -- that all those lazy people grifting off employment benefits would be forced into the workplace in September. But as the numbers showed, that didn't happen. Vazquez has been completely silent about that development. Instead, he gushed in an Oct. 19 postabout how "The Wall Street Journal editorial board didn’t hesitate to pin the labor shortage blame on the proper culprit: “Bidenomics," which included "pandemic enhanced unemployment benefits, which ended in early September" and "$300 monthly allowance per child, food stamps and rental assistance." Again, Vazquez didn't explain why the ending of pandemic benefits didn't create a surge of job-seekers.
The following month, Vazquez once again showed that good news for the country is bad news for the MRC if it happens when a Democrat is president. In October, not only did employment increase by 531,000 jobs, thenunmbers for September were revised from a increase of 194,000 to a 312,000 increase.
Vazquez censored this information from his readers. Instead, he wrote a Nov. 8 post attacking that same New York Times reporter again, insisting that the economy is "poor" and only fleetingly acknowledged the "decreasing unemployment rate" and then -- like his co-workers at CNSNwws.com do when the numbers are too good under a Democratic president -- hyped "the dismal labor force participation rate."
But the following month, Vazquez went back to his old tricks.When the employment numbers failed to meet expectations for November, he was quick to crank out a Dec. 3 post declaring that "the economy only added 210,000 jobs, 340,000 fewer than expected" and criticized CNN for reporting the projected numbers before the real ones came out. He also complained that CNN reported that many people are leaving jobs for better-paying ones, which inVazquez's revisionism meand that "CNN still tried to twist itself into a pretzel to make it seem like the struggle to find workers was actually a good thing."
CNS Loves Promoting Polls That Make Biden Look Bad Topic: CNSNews.com
During the 2020 presidential election, CNSNews.com aggressivelypushedoutlierpolls -- often from dubious right-skewing pollsters like Rasmussen -- touting Donald Trump's alleged popularity and claiming Donald Trump was doing well despite him being behind in most reputable polls. But after Trump's loss and Joe Biden becoming the new president, CNS has largely focused on hyping polls -- again from dubious pollsters -- claiming that Biden is unpopular as a person and with his initiatives. A June 9 article by Aslianna Kreiner was typical of this CNS genre:
A poll by the Honest Elections Project (HEP) shows only 28 percent of people who are informed about HR 1, the “For the People Act,” actually support it.
“Only 29% of voters know anything at all about this expansive legislative attempt to reshape American elections, but when they are informed, only 28% support its passage,” the Honest Elections Project said in a memo to members of Congress and state legislators.
But as we documented when CNS previously touted polls issued by this group, the Honest Elections Project is a partisan right-wing group funded by dark money whose goal is to "advocate for greater controls on elections."In other words, the group is issuing these polls with the unambiguous purpose of promoting its agenda.
Nevertheless, CNS loves this group because it share those same partisan goals. An Aug. 24 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman touted that "A new poll shows that 81% of voters in the United States support laws that require "every voter to show a photo ID when they vote," according to Honest Elections Project Action (HEPA), which conducted the survey of 1,200 registered voters in mid-July.
Unsurprisingly, CNS regularly plugs Rasmussen polls bdcause they too advance CNS' right-wing, anti-Biden agenda:
CNS seems to love Gallup because. despite its reputation as a top pollster, it does generate right-wing-friendly results. Last December, an article by Chapman touted how "In Gallup's 2020 poll on the most admired man, President Donald J. Trump came out on top." This was about a week before the Capitol riot, however, so that finding didn't exactly age well.
MRC Writer Complains Americans Don't Hate LGBT People As Much As He Does Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Rsearch Center is fondofcomplaining that there are LGBT people are too visible in media and society in general -- which is to say, they're visible at all. We have another one in this genre in the form of a Nov. 3 post by Matt Philbin, who laments that fewer people are hating LGBT people the way he does and begins with a predictibly lame shot at a newspaper for simply reporting the story:
It’s nice that USA Today has found an identity after all these years. It never managed to be a real newspaper, and since few business travelers tote along their gerbil cages, it never really became useful to anyone.
But these days, USA Today is thriving as a PR shop for the gay agenda. On Nov. 3, Entertainment Reporter David Oliver took dictation from GLAAD for a piece in the “Health and Wellness” section fluffing the group's annual Accelerating Acceptance Study.
Here’s the good news: Ubiquity is having the intended effect. You can’t swing a leather speedo in popular culture without hitting a brave lifestyle trailblazer living his/her/their truth, and “Increased visibility educates non-LGBTQ people,” according to Oliver.
So, “The report found that 43% of non-LGBTQ people think gender is not exclusively male and female, up from 38% in 2020,” Oliver typed.
[...]
So, you celebrate and reward a behavior, you get more of it. (You may wonder how the “growing community” squares with the “born this way” argument we were supposed to accept last week -- maybe more fluoride in the water? -- but shut up, you bigot.)
But all is not unicorns and free condoms. “Among non-LGBTQ people,” Oliver says, “45% admit they are confused by all the different terms to describe people in the LGBTQ community.”
t’s true. Normal folks have trouble keeping up with the abnormalities the activists keep inventing. You add enough cars to the LGBTQXYZLMNOP freight train and those of us stuck at the road crossing as it goes by are bound to lose count.
Says the guy who is taking dictation from homophobes and working for the PR shop for haters.
But Philbin wasn't done hating yet. After noting a survey citing LGBTQ youth being positively impacted by LGBTQ celebrities, he sneered: "So we should all relax and let Lady Gaga raise our kids. What could go wrong?"
We can assume they would probably turn out better than any children raised by a hater like Philbin.
In 1940, the Germans defeated the French with incredible speed. The armies of fascism and totalitarianism simply went around their opponents' elaborately constructed defenses, and the swift collapse of what had only recently been a major military power came shortly thereafter.
In a similar fashion, America's strongest bulwark for the preservation of our most cherished liberties, embodied in the Constitution, has been neatly bypassed. The forces of collectivism, socialism and tyranny, uniquely American versions of Marxism and progressive dictatorship, moved swiftly through an undefended gap.
That gap was a wildly and deliberately exaggerated health crisis. A disease that has a low mortality rate for young and healthy people was used as a pretext for draconian denials of rights that not too long before had been considered inalienable. A swift expansion of government power into areas totally outside of its legitimate mandate followed. The rule of law was replaced by the arbitrary decrees of highly dubious "experts" and power-hungry politicians, and traditional legislative processes were abandoned in favor of irrational and socially destructive lockdowns and mandates.
The advocates of dictatorial government by unelected or dishonestly elected elites have come uncomfortably close to their century-old dream of a planned society. Much more is yet to come – and if they continue to progress at their current rate of speed, the American way of life as we have known it will come to an end.
[...]
Great transformations are being achieved with extraordinary speed. Driven by false ideologies, as well as by hostility toward and contempt for what America at its very best used to be, they are striving persistently to realize their ambitions. It remains to be seen how far they will be able to go. It may very well be that the 20th-century experiences of China, Russia, Cambodia and Germany will turn out to be more relevant to us than anyone could have dreamed even a short decade ago. Yet it may also be that sufficient exposure to the deadly nature of their ideological and social reconstructions will provoke a sufficient counter-reaction, once enough Americans realize the danger they are in.
MRC Writer Gets Off On Gun Parts Labeled 'Let's Go Brandon' Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center hypocritically got way into the "Let's Go Brandon" euphemistic vulgarity to insult Presdient Biden. MRC writer Nicholas Fondacaro, meanwhile, was so into the vulgar insult that he's totally cool with gun parts engraved with it and doesn't see them as an implicit threat at all, trying to dismiss them as "novelty" parts. He wrote in a Nov. 1 post:
MSNBC was in a panic Monday after they discovered that companies in the firearms industry made novelty AR-15 parts featuring the anti-President Biden slogan “Let’s Go Brandon” adoring them. It also proved to be another demonstration of just how little the liberal media understood about firearms and gun laws, as they claimed the parts represented clear and present “threats” to the President. They even ran to the Secret Service to let them know and tried to link the parts to January 6.
[...]
The novelty part in question was this stripped lower receiver from Palmetto State Armory. According to the webpage for the pre-order part, the serial number range would consist of “BRANDON 0000” and the fire selector flipped between “‘F@CK!’ (Safe), ‘JOE!’ (Fire), ‘BIDEN!’ (Full-Auto)’” engravings. They sell for $59.99.
“A South Carolina gun dealer called Palmetto State Armory is selling what is known as a lower receiver, which is essentially the guts of an AR-15 assault rifle, branded ‘LETSGO-15,’” Dilanian said. “And as you said, on the weapon’s fire selector, the expletive we can’t say on television is next to the safety mode, the word Joe is next to the single-shot mode, and the word Biden is next to the automatic firing mode.”
But the horror of novelty AR parts didn’t stop there for Dilanian. “Now, after I got a tip about this, I came across two other companies marketing AR-15 ammunition magazines with ‘Let's go Brandon’ stickers on them,” he reported in all seriousness.
If they can be used as real gun parts, they're not "novelty" parts. Nevertheless, Fondacaro labored to justify tgheir existence:
What MSNBC failed to mention was the fact that since lowers are the serialized part of an AR, they needed to be shipped to a federally licensed gun store and required a background check before the part could be handed over to the buyer. This meant that those able to acquire them were law-abiding gun owners.
And just because it had a “full-auto” engraving, didn’t mean it would be utilized that way. For a law-abiding gun owner to own a rifle capable of being fully automatic, they needed a special license from the ATF, which was a long and tedious process. A buyer could get the lower and simply use a normal single-shot trigger mechanism in it, or possibly a binary trigger.
This is just another example of how the liberal media are trying to criminalize dissent and portray those opposed to Biden as violent extremists and terrorists.
Fondacaro doesn't know that, of course. And the mere fact that gun parts are being emblazoned with a vulgar insult of a president means that the violence is very much implilcit. And he seems cool with that too. You can bet he would not be so sanguine if said parts were inscribed with an insult to Donald Trump.
Blast From The Past: CNS Obsesses About Obama Using First Person Singular Again Topic: CNSNews.com
One of CNSNews.com's longtime word obsessions regarding Barack Obama has been complaining that he referred to himself too much in speeches: a 2009 column by editor Terry Jeffrey railed at Obama for this, and Jeffrey went on to devoteentirearticles counting how many times Obama used first person singular in a given speech. (By comparison, Jeffrey and CNS had few complaints about Donald Trump's rampant narcissism.)
When Obama spoke at November's climate summit, the powers that be at CNS decided the time was right for more Obama-bashing potshots. First up was Susan Jones to complain about the content of Obama's speech:
Addressing climate change "is going to be really hard," President Barack Obama said in a speech Monday to the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
Speaking at the event in person, which means he burned fuel to fly there, Obama dedicated much of his speech to young people, urging them to make true believers of their elders and "to vote the issue -- vote like your life depends on it, because it does."
Jones made sure to note that Obama "used a personal example" by noting that he could afford to alter his lifestyle but most people can't.
That was followed by an anonymous article credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff" -- but almost certainly Jeffrey, since this is his bizarre bugaboo -- counting all the first person singular references in Obama's speech:
Former President Barack Obama used the first person singular pronouns “I” and “me” 56 times during the speech he delivered on Monday at the COP 26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
Here is a video of his multitudinous expressions of "I" and "me:"
Obama set the tone early on in his speech, when he used the word “I’ about once every fourteenth word.
“I am a private citizen now so trips like this feel a little bit different than they used to,” Obama said. “I don’t get invited to the big group photo. Traffic is a thing again. Music doesn’t play when I walk into the room. On the positive side, I can give a speech like this without wearing a tie and not create a scandal back home. I hope. But even though I’m not required to attend summits like this anymore, old habits die hard.”
Jeffrey has never explained why Obama using first person singular sets him off so much -- and why Trump's narcissism doesn't bother him at all even though it has caused even further division in the country.
MRC Aims For Revisionism On GOP Attacks On Cleland Topic: Media Research Center
Brad Wilmouth is the Media Research Center's chief of historical revisionism -- see his attempts to recast Donald trump and the Central Park Five and claims about crimes committed by immigrants. He made another attempt to whitewash history in a Nov. 11 post:
On Tuesday's The 11th Hour show, MSNBC's Brian Williams began his last few weeks hosting the show by spreading more misinformation as he accused Republicans of running a "disgusting smear campaign" against veteran and then-Democratic Senator Max Cleland when he ran for reelection in 2002.
Picking up on the recent passing of the former Senator, Williams recalled some of his heroism that led Cleland to lose both legs and one arm, and to earn a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Silver Star. The MSNBC host then took a shot at Republicans over something that happened 19 years ago.
Williams recalled: "He went on to get involved in politics -- U.S. Senator from Georgia -- later defeated by a disgusting GOP smear campaign that somehow he wasn't tough enough on terrorism. The attack ad showed him next to imagery of Osama bin Laden."
Although it has been repeatedly claimed in the liberal media that Cleland's face was paired next to that of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, the image of bin Laden was used in a different frame, as can be seen in video of the ad.
As for the reason he was defeated, which Williams did not elaborate on, Cleland's colleague from Georgia, then-Senator Zell Miller -- a conservative Democrat -- chalked up the loss to the more liberal Cleland supporting the unionization of the newly formed Homeland Security Department in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Wilmouth is nitpicking here and trying to attack Williams for something he didn't say -- note that he has to attribute the Cleland-bin Laden claim to "the liberal media" and not Williams himself. Cleland's picture in the ad may be in "a different frame" from bin Laden, but it also appears immediately after bin Laden's picture.
Wilmouth did not supply a link to back up his claim that Miller blamed Cleland's loss on "Cleland supporting the unionization of the newly formed Homeland Security Department." However, a 2003 Roll Call article reported that "Miller contends that Cleland lost because [then-Senate Minority Leader Tom] Daschle refused to allow the Senate to approve legislation creating the Homeland Security Department before the elections" -- which is not the claim Wilmouth made.
It seems Wilmouth would rather not remind people that Republicans aggressively questioned the patriotism of a soldier who lost three limbs in Vietnam.
WND Hypes Attempt to Rebrand Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Topic: WorldNetDaily
Rachel Alexander uncritically repeated in her Oct. 11 WorldNetDaily column:
It's no longer considered politically correct to discuss changing physical attraction from one gender to the other, but some are forging ahead to explore it anyway. The left preaches that people should be able to determine their own sexuality, but hypocritically doesn't defend the freedom to change from same-sex attraction to opposite-sex attraction.
A new study published in the the Journal of Human Sexuality examined 75 adult males who reported same-sex attractions and wanted to explore their sexual-attraction fluidity. Therapists skilled in reintegrative therapy worked with the men to seek and resolve past traumatic memories. The focus was on resolving this emotional pain, not actually changing attraction, which can occur naturally as a result of this therapy. One participant explained, "My therapist never tried to get me to change my sexuality, or who I was attracted to, but instead helped me to process traumatic memories from my past that had brought me shame and fear."
[...]
While there is a movement to get rid of so-called "conversion therapy," which in the past has involved aversion techniques like shame, pain or coercion to try to force people to change their gender attraction, reintegrative therapy is nothing like it. In reintegrative therapy, the patient drives the treatment; it's his choice. For whatever reason, the patients have chosen to change their sexual attraction. People on both sides are finally starting to understand that sexuality is fluid, that it's not just something that can be boiled down to either, "Are people born gay, or is it a choice?" And so far no one has discovered a "gay gene" either.
Its proponents honestly admit it doesn't work for everyone. Dr. Joseph Nicolosi Jr. is following in the footsteps of his father, who pioneered the therapy. His father readily admitted that about one-third of his clients did not change their sexual attraction. However, the therapy helped them in other areas, such as improving family and peer relationships.
Alexander didn't mention that Nicolosi is the son of Joseph Nicolosi, one of the biggest promoters of conversion therapy. She also didn't mention that the Journal of Human Sexuality is the journal of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, which is the current name of the notorious anti-LGBT group Nicolosi Sr. co-founded, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.
Alexander then worked to whitwash the image of anti-LGBT "therapists like Nicolosi Sr. (though she never refers to him by name) and burnish Nicolosi Jr.'s rebrand:
The battle of gay rights is essentially over. Gays can marry and have children, and students are taught to be proud of being gay. So why can't gays who want to explore changing their sexuality consider becoming straight of their own volition? Wasn't the whole gay rights movement about letting gays decide what they want to do sexually?
Reintegrative therapy isn't about religion. It's about individualism, people making choices for themselves. This is why so many gays and transgenders are emerging on the right. They realize the left only allows one viewpoint about LGBT issues, and at the same time they see through the left's lies that the right is their enemy.
Meanwhile, Nicolosi Jr. is upset whenever anyone reminds people of the legacy of his family and his therapy. Bob Unruh wrote in a Nov. 7 article:
The Reintegrative Therapy Association and its California-based founder, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, are suing two researchers who used their so-called scientific paper to lash out at "Reintegrative Therapy," which they claimed was a piece of the "conversion therapy" movement.
The action was filed in U.S. District Court in the southern district in California by the Thomas More Society and its supporting attorneys.
The California organization, which owns the name Reintegrative Therapy as a registered trademark, explains it is a "specific form of psychotherapy that treats traumas."
It has been known to "trigger spontaneous sexuality changes as a byproduct," the legal team explained, but it is "dangerous health misinformation by LGBT political activists" to characterize it as "conversion therapy."
However, Unruh didn't mention Nicolosi's father or the fact that his "reintegrative therapy" -- Unruh's article is such a copy-and-paste job that several references to the term still have the trademark symbol that was attached in the Thomas More Society press release -- has its roots in conversion therapy.He also couldn't be botyhered to try to add journalistic balance to his article by seeking a response from the researchers Nicolosi is suing.
Meanwhile, the lie was further put to Nicolosi Jr.'s lawsuit by the website trying to keep Nicolosi Sr.'s legacy alive. A pop-up window (screenshot above) on the site's front page links to a press release about the study promoted in Alexander's column with this text:
VINDICATED: Landmark study, just published, demonstrates sexuality change.
FAST FACTS:
• Significant decrease in same-sex attraction experiences
• Significant increase in heterosexual attraction experiences
• Significant change in self-identity toward a heterosexual identity
• Significant increases in well-being, and decreases in psychological distress
Does that sound like a program that's not about conversion? Further, a video touting reintegrative therapy on Nicolosi Jr.'s website is titled, "This changed my sexuality."
Meanwhile, an observer noted that Nicolosi Jr.'s doctorate came from a school (the Chicago School of Professional Psychology) that wasn't accredited by the American Psychological Association at the time he received it, and that the Journal of Human Sexuality isn't exactly know for its peer review process.
Anti-Vaxxer MRC Sports Blogger Cheers Selfish Athletes Who Abandon Team By Refusing Vaccine Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted the anti-vaxxer activism of Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons. There's more where that came from.
In an Oct. 13 post, Simmons cheered NBA star Kyrie Irving for refusing to get vaccinated and standing up the vaccine mandate of the supposedly evil NBA, even though he's being selfish and harming his team by doing so:
Irving is on point; his perception is not wrong. The NBA is trying to use their power and influence to get people to be vaccinated, and they are threatening to take away their employees’ livelihood in the process (while Irving is already a millionaire, he will lose an estimated $380,000 for every game he doesn’t play).
What we see in the NBA and with Irving’s situation is an extension of what we see in our nation at large, and Irving is perfectly in the right to protest the vaccine mandate. He and any others who stand against it will be ridiculed, but hopefully, enough will stand against it to create change.
Until then, we can only hope Irving will not cave to the pressure of getting the jab.
The following week, Simmons defended Irving's selfishness when notorious individual Charles Barkley called Irving out on it:
Cleveland Clinic infectious disease specialist Lyssette Cardona, MD, said that there is still a chance that vaccinated people could get COVID-19, which means that you can still spread it to anyone you meet. Can it help your immune system in the physical battle against COVID? Sure. But is it a magical cure that will remove sickness for good? No.
So “getting it for other people” seems like a weak argument to use when criticizing another person for their decision. This argument is emotion-driven and not based on the reality that no matter what decision we all make, sickness and COVID-19 are just a byproduct of an imperfect world, and there is nothing we can do to fully eliminate it.
It sounds like anyone who uses this reasoning, including Barkley, is simply too scared of being sick to continue to live a normal life, and further needs everyone else to cater to their emotional needs. And that is more selfish than someone not getting the COVID jab because of personal preference.
Getting a vaccine is simply a matter of personal choice, nothing more, nothing less. Kyrie Irving is perfectly within his rights as an individual to not get the vaccine, and no one should coerce him into changing his mind, not even the great Round Mound of Rebound.
On Oct. 19, Simmons had a sad that Washington State University football coach Nick Rolovich was fired for not getting vaccinated, again portraying selfishness as individualism (apparently forgetting there's no I in team):
The beauty of individual autonomy is that you should have the freedom to make a decision without explaining why you did something, especially not the vaccine mob that apparently has a stronghold in Washington State’s government and colleges. Whether it is a vaccine mandate, our religion, our career paths, or where we live, we have the ability to choose and not be scrutinized for those decisions.
Rolovich and his assistant may have lost their jobs because of this, but they have chosen to value their freedom than comfort, something that will pay dividends in the long run.
Simmons found another selfish person to tout in an Oct. 22 post:
It’s been quite a week for Allison Williams. An ESPN college basketball and football reporter for 10 years, she quit the network last week because she declined to get vaccinated, and ESPN rejected her request for an accommodation. On Thursday, Williams did an interview with Megyn Kelly on her eponymous SiriusXM show, Williams criticized the president and others easily given to dismiss our freedom via COVID-19 vaccination mandates. And on Friday it was announced she’s joining the conservative Daily Signal.
During said interview, Kelly asked Williams about President Joe Biden (stupidly) remarking last month that the vaccine mandate “isn’t about your freedom.” Williams torched him for throwing freedom under the bus:
Because right-wingers like Williams and Simmons have decided that personal convenience is more important than public health, apparently.
Simmons went to the tennis world for his latest selfish athlete in an Oct. 26 post:
Novak Djokovic is without question one of the greatest tennis players of our generation. Nevertheless, he is often branded as a villain of the sport due to his racket-smashing shenanigans and his willingness to challenge the level-headed, gentlemanly mold of a tennis player with his intense competitiveness. But the villain might now be the hero in a greater cause after his stand against the Australian government.
Ahead of the Australian Open, the first leg of the tennis Grand Slam that is set to be held in January, Australian Minister for Immigration Alex Hawke said that anyone wishing to enter the country, not just tennis players, must be “double vaccinated” to cross their border.
Djokovic fired back at the command with the same force as one of his serves, telling local Serbian media that:
I will not reveal my status whether I have been vaccinated or not, it is a private matter and an inappropriate inquiry … People go too far these days in taking the liberty to ask questions and judge a person. Whatever you say -- ‘Yes, no, maybe, I am thinking about it,’ they will take advantage.
It appears that Djokovic having a spine and standing up to the bullies in the Australian government paid off. Yesterday, Tennis Australia, the governing body for Tennis in the country, announced that unvaccinated players will be allowed to participate in the tournament as long as they undergo a two-week quarantine period beforehand (this course of action goes against their original plan to have all tennis players vaccinated).
Djokovic’s convicted stance against tyranny is without a doubt a major victory for unvaccinated players and it is what likely forced Tennis Australia to change course (after all, how could they afford to forgo the millions they would lose in revenue if Djokovic refused to join the tournament?). But it also speaks to a more important lesson about just how easy it can be stand up to bullies and tyrants.
Just like a right-winger to portray people trying to preserve public health as "bullies and tyrants."
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is the only present scientific way of measuring deaths and injuries from any vaccine – including the COVID-19 vaccine. It's not my system. It's not based on politics. It has nothing to do with conservative or liberal opinions.
It is a science-based medical reporting system provided by the government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It is the only way of keeping track of deaths, crippling injuries and adverse reactions from any vaccine. It has been used for many decades.
No one in the medical community or media has EVER in history ignored or disparaged VAERS before – until now.
Here are the VAERS numbers: Over 17,000 Americans are reported dead from this vaccine – mostly from strokes, heart attacks and blood clots. Over 800,000 are reported injured, many of them hospitalized (over 83,000), many with life-threatening illness (over 18,000) and many others permanently disabled (over 26,000).
This information is all publicly available and provided by the CDC. This cannot be called "misleading" by anyone in the media. The very definition of "misleading" would be to either disparage or ignore VAERS and not report on it daily to your readers.
The number of deaths and significant injuries reported to VAERS is now dramatically higher than in the past 30-plus years combined. This has happened in only 10 months.
That's a fact. Facts cannot be "misleading."
Actually, facts can be "misleading" if you don't report all facts that are relevant to an issue -- and that's exactly what Root is doing here. As actual doctors stated about VAERS:
VAERS is set up to capture potential adverse events caused by vaccines. It is the best tool we have to find what may be previously unrecognized and extraordinarily rare adverse events that may eventually be linked.
VAERS cannot and does not determine whether a vaccine caused something. The CDC states this clearly in their disclaimer: "A report to VAERS does not mean that the vaccine caused the adverse event, only that the adverse event occurred some time after vaccination." The disclaimer continues, "The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental or unverifiable."
Root is deliberately misleading his readers by censoring the fct that none of those deaths reported to VAERS has been confirmed to have been directly attributable to the vaccine. Yet Root continued to rant:
Even more facts and SCIENCE ...
Studies are in from many countries, but in particular the U.K. and Israel, reporting:
No. 1: The vaccine is in fact failing miserably – a huge majority of recent cases, hospitalizations and deaths are among double vaccinated individuals. FACT.
No. 2: Cases are slightly higher in countries with higher vaccination rates, and slightly lower in countries with lower vaccination rates.
These are factual, credible, scientific studies from multiple countries.
Yet Root didn't link to any of them so we could judge for ourselves. He concluded:
More importantly, the very definition of "science" is asking questions and debating.
To not ask questions, especially in the face of so many Americans sick with COVID-19 who are double vaccinated, and so many dead or injured directly from the vaccine as reported by VAERS, would make someone either naive, gullible, blind, deaf or very dumb.
I'm proud that my time at Columbia University taught me to think critically, ask questions, never accept as fact what any government agency or authority figure says and always be a fearless debater.
We're pretty sure that Root's time at Columbia didn't teach him to deceive his readers in order to politicize science and health for partisan reasons. You know, just like he tried to further birther conspiracies by claiming he never met Obama at Columbia while both were students there, never mind that Columbia is a very large university and Root would have no reason to have met Obama at the time.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's School Wars, Part 3: The False Narrative Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center wants you to believe that a national school boards group and the Justice Department want to criminalize every person who speaks at a school board meeting. But even the MRC's own fact-check didn't back up that claim. Read more >>
The Media Research Center's Catherine Salgado complained in a Nov. 2 post:
If the 
The Media Research Center 
Media Research Center writer Joseph Vazquez has a highly biased approach to writing about the economy under President Biden -- mainly a lot of emphasis on hyping bad ndews and censoring good news. 
During the 2020 presidential election, CNSNews.com 
The Media Rsearch Center is 
In 1940, the Germans defeated the French with incredible speed. The armies of fascism and totalitarianism simply went around their opponents' elaborately constructed defenses, and the swift collapse of what had only recently been a major military power came shortly thereafter.
We've documented how the Media Research Center 
One of CNSNews.com's 
Brad Wilmouth is the Media Research Center's chief of historical revisionism -- see his attempts to recast Donald trump and the 
Rachel Alexander uncritically repeated in her Oct. 11 WorldNetDaily 
We've noted
